The Communist Party of Canada’s Central Committee, meeting on the weekend of September 13-14th, repeats its condemnation of Israel’s murderous 51-day war on the people of Gaza. We call for the immediate lifting of the siege of Gaza and express our continued full support for the Palestinian people’s struggle for an independent sovereign state.
“Operation Protective Edge” was an act of genocide, killing over 2 200 Palestinians. More than 500 of the dead were children. To this date at least 450 000 people have been displaced. Direct deliberate bombing hit refugee centers, turned into rubble tens of thousands of homes, and destroyed schools, hospitals, clinics, factories, mosques, water and sewage infrastructure, and Gaza’s only power plant. Already, Gaza was effectively an open-air prison. Its population of 1.8 million people remain penned into an area about half the size of Toronto, now without electricity or even clean drinking water and running water.
If the carnage in Gaza constituted a military victory for the Apartheid state of Israel, in all other senses they lost the war. The people of Palestine, however, remain unbroken and united. They continue to refuse to surrender to the Zionist project which has again been clearly shown to be an extreme national chauvinist ideology about colonization, ethnic cleansing and the support of US imperialist interests in the region — and having nothing in common with friendship or peace.
Support of Zionism has never been unanimous within the Jewish community in Canada and internationally. However, the false claims that opposition to Zionism is evitably anti-semitic, again echoed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper during the war, is a reactionary attempt to confuse matters and shut-down all criticism of the government of Israel and smear its critics. (In fact, while Harper continues to use full support of Israel as an electoral wedge issue, the Conservative Party is no champion against anti-Jewish slanderers; Harper is giving full and unqualified support to the coup regime in Ukraine, where key cabinet posts are held by the neo-fascist and openly anti-semitic Svoboda party).
The Central Committee condemns the Harper Conservative government’s endorsement of the war as heinous and criminal. PM Harper and Foreign Minister Baird’s statements of “unconditional support for Israel” granted a free diplomatic pass for the complete violation of international law and the slaughter of women and children. The Harper Conservative’s vile strategy clearly aims to break any support of United Nations resolutions on Palestine and instead align with the Israeli ultra-right regime and Washington’s agenda for the Middle East.
Shamefully, the NDP opposition did not even meaningfully distance themselves from the Conservative’s warmongering approach. Both the Mulcair NDP and the Trudeau Liberals made efforts to excuse Israel.
The Central Committee applaudes Mde. Sana Hassanian, Member of Parliament from a Québec riding north east of Montréal, for leaving the NDP over her party’s indefensible stance.The CC also views as welcome the Bloc and Green MPs call for peace, and prompt resignation of Green Party president Paul Estrin following his racist pro-Zionist diatribe. Regrettably, the Green’s July convention reaffirmed the unhelpful so-called “engaged neutrality” position.
Significantly, the most forceful opposition to the Harper Conservatives came from the streets, as across the country tens of thousands of people held weekly and even daily vigils and rallies to end the war. All peace-loving forces should take heart from these actions and continue to work to deepen the organized movement against war. The struggle for a more class-oriented position in the labour movement of clear support for the Palestinian people is ongoing, shown for example by the valuable statements of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, labour leaders like Ontario Federation of Labour, and the labour movement in Quebec — including the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ) along with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), who both called on their membership to join the mobilizations.
The Central Committee also notes the active support and assistance of the Party for these mobilizations, the successful mass lanter vigil organized by the Parti Communiste du Québec, and Party’s signing of an international declaration against the massacre along with over sixty other Communist and Workers Parties.
For the Communists, the paramount question remains full support of the struggle of the Palestinian people for a viable and genuinely independent state, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. We demand the right of return for all Palestinian refugees, and the release of all Palestinian political prisoners from Israeli jails. We reiterate our support for the right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation in their territories. We call for the wall of separation to be dismantled and condemn all efforts to divide the Palestinian people and territories. We again demand the implementation of all relevant UN resolutions, the verifiable denuclearization of Israel, and mutual security guarantees for all states in the region. We also demand Canada adopt an independent foreign policy based on peace and disarmament.
Until such basic justice is achieved for the Palestinian people, the Communist Party of Canada continues to support the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. As well as, our party will join in mobilization towards the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people on December 1st. This is especially important in the current context, and recognizing that 2014 is actually the United Nations International Year For Solidarity with Palestine.
Incremental genocide
In analyzing Israel’s latest war on Gaza — the seventh offensive in the past decade alone — the Central Committee again completely rejects the tired story of “equal blame.” In fact the war was part of the continued “separation policy” to further isolate Gaza from the West Bank, blocking any more to form an independent state, and another incremental step of genocide against the Palestinian peoples.
In fact for the Netanyahu government coalition, which is sustained by extremist Zionist elements, peace is a major danger. “Operation Protective Edge” occurred in response to a serious political crisis which faced the Netanyahu coalition, resulting from their sabotage of negotiations with the Palestinians — negotiations which already occurred in an almost impossible framework for the Palestinians because they were under the direction of US imperialism, not international agreements.
Unable to hide the fact that they were refusing to negotiate — by not making the slightest move to free any of the over 5,000 Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails, and approving a massive spike of new housing units in the occupied West Bank — the Netanyahu regime took considerable heat within Israel when in April negotiations broke down. The pressure continued as a new Palestinian National Consensus Government formed and a widely publicized hunger strike was launched by hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners.
To turn the situation, Netanyahu launched “Operation Brother’s Keeper” in June. Supposedly responding to a kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers, the operation arrested hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank, including children and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Over 80 airstrikes hit Gaza and, in “retribution” racist Israeli extremists also kidnapped and burned alive a Palestinian teenager. This was the context for Hamas rockets. On July 8th “Operation Protective Edge” began, continuing with a ground offensive on July 17th.
Even in Israel tens of thousands of protesters filled the streets — despite attacks from Jewish ultra-right mobs, and police action. For example, in Haifa an ultra-right mob attacked a peace protest and beat up the deputy Mayor, while a police concussion grenade at another peace demonstration injured a communist Member of the Knesset.
Global mobilizations were record in number, sending a loud and clear message: the broad sweep of progressive-minded peoples around the world will never allow any force that perpetuates colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, murder and oppression to hide behind the banner of peace and democracy.
The day is coming when Palestine will be free.
Statement of the Central Committee, Communist Party of Canada, Sept. 13-14, 2014