Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the Knesset.
More than 100 Gazans were massacred by Israeli shelling and
bombardments in the last few of days and the list grows every hour. In
comparison to the murderous Olmert-Barak team, Ariel Sharon looks like a
disciple of Mahatma Gandhi: the massacre of Jenin that provoked a huge
international outrage in 2002, had far less victims measured next to the
present Israeli aggression against Gaza. Nevertheless, the reaction of the international
community is significantly milder than it was six years ago.
Why?
This question should be at the heart of the reflection of the
international solidarity movement and, more generally, of the global
resistance.
For, the Israeli war crimes are possible only because, in the last
six to seven years, the international community has stopped putting any kind of
pressure on the Israeli government; in fact, it is supporting it. This has not
always been the case, at least with most of the European states, which used to
oppose the “global-non-ending-preemptive-war” strategy of the US neoconservative
administration, and to defend a strategy of global stability instead of the
politics of global-chaos of Bush and his gang.
The rise of European neo-conservatism (French President Nicolas Sarkozy
is an example of this phenomenon) is a new challenge for the solidarity
movement, and more generally, for the anti-globalization movement throughout
the world: the global-war strategy is no longer the monopoly of the US
administration (supported by a few other countries, like Great Britain), but of
the “international community” as such.
This is definitely a change that the Global Resistance should take into
consideration very seriously: there is a world war and everyone is now part of
it. Over and against an “international community” aligned with Washington’s
global war, a united international anti-war movement is becoming a burning
priority.
What does this have to do with Gaza? Because today, Gaza is the
frontline of the resistance to that offensive. If Gaza surrenders, Washington
and Tel Aviv will feel free to launch a second round in Lebanon and to attack Iran.
They know well that Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are different
battles in one and the same war, and they are concentrating their forces in
order to bring the surrender of Gaza, its people and its elected leadership.
That understanding should penetrate the Global movement too, and bring it to one
conclusion: the Palestinians of Gaza are fighting not only for their own rights
and dignity, but for the freedom of all the peoples of the world; they are
resisting the united leaders of Empire leaders and their attempt to transform
the peoples of our planet into their slaves, including the working people in
the industrialized metropoles.
No one in our camp, the camp of worldwide resistance to Empire, has
the right to run away from the duty of total solidarity with the Resistance of
Gaza, under the pretext of disliking the leadership that the Palestinian people
of Gaza have chosen. The same should be said about the people of Iran.
At the core of the solidarity campaign with Gaza, one must call for
a blockade on Israel as long as the blockade on Gaza is not lifted. An
economic, political and cultural boycott of a state which has put itself, by
its war crimes, outside the civilized world: until the bloody attacks on Gaza
are not stopped and the siege lifted, the duty of decent people is to say, loud
and clear: No relations whatsoever with the criminal State of Israel!
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