AnarchoBolshevik

On the occasion of International Workers Day, which falls on the 1st of May, we invite all movements, unions, and workers’ federations around the world to a week of solidarity events with the workers of Palestine and the Gaza Strip, by organizing demonstrations and marches that roam the capitals and cities of the world, supporting and endorsing the rights of Palestinian workers in Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Al-Quds, and the occupied interior, and to reject, criminalize, and expose all forms of crime and injustice they face, due to the Zionist occupation.

Furthermore, we direct our call to the transportation unions and port workers, specifically inviting them not to deal with Zionist shipping companies, and to intensify all forms of boycott\s against the criminal Zionist occupation, which commits genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, actively participating with all labor union formations, in the week of solidarity with the workers of Palestine.

Throughout history, workers have bravely opposed oppressive regimes. We have refused to handle goods from apartheid South Africa, and factory workers have rejected the production of arms for dictatorships like Chile’s Pinochet. As the Palestinian death toll continues to climb, this May Day and as we mark 76 years since the [neo]colonization of Palestine and the uprooting of over 750,000 Palestinians from their lands during the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, we ask you to stand with us — and let us strive together to construct economies rooted in justice not destruction.

Stand with us as we demand an end to [the] genocide and siege in Gaza. Stand with us as we demand our rights as workers for a decent living, free from settler colonialism and military occupation.

Take Action!

Here are some actions you can take this May Day (May 1, 2024) and Nakba Day (May 15, 2024): Refuse to handle goods coming from or destined to Israel. Organize a work stoppage or slowdown. Hold educational meetings within your trade union branch to discuss the Palestinian struggle.

Workers Solidarity Day with Palestine. Philadelphia, April 13, 2024. WW Photo: Joe Piette

Distribute informational flyers, pamphlets or newsletters in your workplace to educate colleagues and provide resources for action. Circulate a workplace petition among coworkers calling for specific actions or policy changes, such as divesting pension funds from companies complicit in the occupation or implementing boycott measures against complicit companies.

Now is the time for courageous worker-led solidarity! Long live international solidarity with Palestinian workers in their struggle for return and liberation!

(Emphasis original.)

The Biden administration, complicit in the brutal war on our Palestinian people, does not want to acknowledge that it faces a U.S. public that has discovered the truth about the Nazi entity and has sided with human values, deciding to stand on the right side of history. Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders, and their suppression today means a costly electoral bill that the Biden administration will pay sooner or later.

And on April 17, far-right […] national security minister Ben Gvir called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners “to ease overcrowding.”

There are so many people in the camp, all of us in tents that do not protect from heat or cold.

Winds sometimes uproot tents. There are stray dogs everywhere. Every day we line up for drinking water. Sometimes the water runs out and we return to our tents empty-handed.

My family’s tent is in the middle of the camp. Next door is a medical point that supports those who have been displaced here.

I’ve seen doctors stitch up children’s wounds with care. Often there is no local anesthesia, so the doctors compensate with extra warmth and smiles. An elderly woman came to the tent for treatment for a chronic condition. They treated her with kindness. They did not have much medicine for her.

Since medical supplies are scarce, the doctors use what they have on hand.

We are being annihilated. We are running out of options. The north and south are separated, and communication is cut off. I used to hope that I would see friends and family in the north again, but now I just don’t know.

After this war ends, where will we go? [Neocolonialism] has destroyed our homes, and our favorite places no longer exist.

As consciousness in the U.S. continuously develops into more awareness of our impact on the world and the purpose of the capitalist system meant to keep our mouths shut and too poverty-stricken to fight, we’re also confronted with the fact that we are also a violent nation spitefully marching towards a [neo]fascist state. Since 2020, it’s become painfully evident that stripping back the few protections protesters have is a greenlight for more violence from the opposition.

One consolation offered to those concerned about what this decision may mean for the U.S. is that it may not be a permanent ruling. Although SCOTUS allowed the First Amendment right to protest to be attacked, they didn’t outright reverse it, possibly rendering this decision a temporary one.

But why wouldn’t it be? It’s not hard to draw the conclusion that the gag order on protesters intends to be a nationwide feature. The working class has gotten too comfortable with the idea of having a say on how their country runs, and in response we have politicians radicalizing an angry, often armed opposition to keep us in line from just enough of a distance that they face no consequence legally. There are only benefits for the bourgeoisie. If we let them take this from us, it will be gone forever.

Regarding the U.S. rôle, “Genocide Joe” Biden, with the enthusiastic cooperation of the Republican Party, has, as of April 20, pushed a $95 billion war bill through the House of Representatives. The bill, which the Senate passed on April 23, finances a drive toward World War III on three fronts: the […] genocidal war aimed at Palestine, the U.S.-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and preparation for a U.S.-led war in the Pacific against Peoples China and the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea.

This war bill includes $26 billion more for [neocolonialism’s] genocidal war on Gaza and its active settlement policy in the West Bank aimed at removing Palestinian people from their land. It is direct evidence that, despite Biden’s feigned separation from the Netanyahu-led war régime in [occupied Palestine], both the Republican and Democratic Party intend to continue supplying weapons for genocide.

There is no doubt [that] the movement here will demand the U.S. stop the transfer of weapons to [neocolonists].

We in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, along with all our people, the honorable of our nation and the world, confirm our steadfast support for the struggle of the student youth movements, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) at universities such as Columbia, Rutgers, Yale and Stanford, among others. We call for enhancing the unity of students and their struggle to divest U.S. universities from the Zionist entity and cut all forms of relations with it.

As we highly appreciate the positions, movements and struggles of our students in U.S. universities and call for the escalation of their struggle against aggressive policies and the rejection of compliance with the policies biased in favor of the occupation, we also call for the strengthening of ranks and enhancing the unity of students.

We highly value the supportive and solidarity positions for the struggle of our people in various U.S. universities and around the world and all the strugglers for freedom, justice and human dignity.

“It’s really unbelievable in this day and age that a sitting U.S. Senator can threaten violence to protesters and not be sanctioned or censured or anything else by his colleagues,” said Hatem Abudayyeh, National Chair of the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), to The Electronic Intifada.

“It’s been an incredible challenge, in the past six months especially, to experience what Palestinians have in the U.S. — that our lives are expendable, that our rights aren’t defended, that our very existence is threatened. But we can’t and won’t back down, and we will continue fighting to stop the genocide and make sure that racist, white supremacist apologists for [Zionism] like Tom Cotton will see a free Palestine in his lifetime.”

The American Civil Liberties Union did not respond to requests from The Electronic Intifada for First Amendment analysis on how much latitude Cotton has to encourage vigilante violence against protesters.

The crowd blocked traffic for over an hour, surrounding a cop car and refusing to leave the street after two people were arrested. Chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Let them go,” the demonstrators eventually “de-arrested” the two activists, who were released without charges.

Several Palestine solidarity workshops and meetings were part of the conference. An impromptu meeting about the Columbia University occupation included graduate student members of United Auto Workers Local 7902, some of whom were among those arrested at Columbia. Many conference attendees wore keffiyehs in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Rittenhouse shot three antiracist protesters on Aug. 25, 2020, killing two, at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was acquitted of homicide, attempted homicide and reckless endangerment in 2021. Turning Point reportedly pays him $5,000 for each 30-minute speech. When Rittenhouse attempted to speak at the University of Memphis, he was loudly booed and shouted down, leading him to cut his talk short.

Aciano Rosales, freshman ambassador for the Spanish and Latine Student Association (SALSA), opened the press conference saying, “Kyle Rittenhouse’s presence as a guest speaker mocks the legacy of blood shed by protesters on Kent State’s campus. It optimizes hateful white supremacism that we as Ohio students feel is unacceptable.” (Kentwired.com, April 16)

Rosales was followed by Paul Prediger, formerly Gaige Grosskreutz, who Rittenhouse shot and wounded. For almost four years Prediger kept a low profile but on April 16 felt compelled to speak out, saying, “Enough of the lies and the deceit that has been told by Kyle Rittenhouse for three years about what actually happened in Kenosha August 25, 2022.”

SALSA President Aimée Flores reminded the crowd of the May 4, 1970, Kent State shootings, in which four unarmed students were killed by the Ohio National Guard at a protest of the U.S. war against Vietnam. Calling out bigotry and white supremacy, she said, “That is why Gov. James A. Rhodes was able to send the National Guard to Kent State 54 years ago on that hill. That is why today we ask ourselves, ‘Who will defend us?’”

Yaseen Shaikh, president of the Kent State chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, told The Progressive that a large portion of the student body was unhappy with “a vigilante coming to campus.” SJP helped organize the press conference, along with SALSA, Black United Students, Sister Circle, United Students Against Sweatshops and other student groups.

The Front considered the adoption of this resolution by the House of Representatives to reflect the hypocrisy of the U.S. administration. While it declares its hostility and rejection of the slogan “From the River to the Sea” and accuses those who promote it of being “anti-Semitic,” it allows the Zionists to circulate the slogan “From the Nile to the Euphrates”, which means the establishment of “Greater israel” on the ruins of the Arab states and not just Palestine.

The Front added: “However, what is noteworthy is the vote of 44 American representatives in favor of this slogan, which is something we have not previously seen from within one of the most important official American institutions that sponsor the zionist entity. This indicates a partial shift in the stance on the Palestinian issue.”

The Front emphasized the need not to ignore the popular movement in the U.S. streets that opposes the Zionist genocide in the Gaza Strip, which is beginning to grow restless from the official U.S. support for the Zionist entity. This confirms the existence of brave voices inside the U.S. that oppose these stances or the continuation of the flow of U.S. weapons, and explicitly calls for a change in these positions, with some voices adopting the strategic solution to the Palestinian issue, and refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the entity.

The Front demands the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region and the cessation of support for the Zionist entity, considering the presence of these forces to protect the entity and impose dominance at the expense of the U.S. citizen and their livelihood, and from their pocket, exacerbates relations with the peoples of the region and places the U.S. as an outcast and hated by the peoples of the world.

The Front concluded its statement by affirming that the slogan “Palestine Will Be Free from its River to its Sea” will remain the realistic discourse that echoes in the squares of the world, for Palestine and its people are a bright reality, and “israel” is the fabricated entity with no future or existence at all.