The first month of 2023 leaves no doubt about the urgency of strengthening international solidarity with the Palestinian people: 35 were killed by the Zionist occupation forces in the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem alone, including six under 18 years of age. From Brazil, it is urgent that the demand to the new federal government be fulfilled, that it recognize apartheid and, consequently, suspend the agreements with Israel, promoting an immediate military embargo.
Por: Soraya Misleh / Originally posted on Middle East Monitor
This claim, raised by dozens of Arab-Palestinian and Brazilian organizations and intellectuals to the working groups of Foreign Relations and Human Rights during the government transition, must be at the center of the mobilization and pressure of solidarity with the Palestinian people -a effective demonstration of support for his just cause in the midst of the ongoing Nakba (catastrophe since the formation of the racist State of Israel on May 15, 1948 through planned ethnic cleansing).
In addition, an immediate military embargo against the institutionalized apartheid regime and the aggressive Zionist colonial expansion – which daily kills more and more Palestinian men and women – is an important part of the fight against the genocide of the poor and blacks in the Brazilian peripheries. and indigenous extermination.
They are the same weapons that kill here and there, tested every day on the guinea pigs to which Israel has converted the Palestinians for decades. Embracing the Palestinian cause is not only solidarity, but also a cry of resistance in Brazil: enough of the shedding of black, poor and indigenous blood. It is to fight against oppression and exploitation here too.
With the change of government –fortunately with the defeat of the genocidal and adorer of the dictatorship Bolsonaro, an explicit ally of Zionism at the headquarters of the Planalto–, the classic Brazilian diplomacy was resumed. The government under the leadership of Lula already published notes in January expressing its concern about the events in occupied Palestine, but it speaks of “conflict”, the search for peace, “both parties refrain” from violence, “two-state solution ” – which, if it were not unfair since forever, is dead and gone.
It is important that you express concern, the change is important –since Bolsonaro made shameless pro-Israel ideological propaganda and sought even more agreements–, but absolutely insufficient and reveals a lack of understanding that urgently needs to be overcome, so that in fact this has repercussions on the tragic life imposed on the Palestinians in the continuous Nakba. It is worth insisting: it is not “conflict” or “confrontation”, it is ethnic cleansing, massacre, genocide. There are not two sides to blame for the violence, but one oppressor, colonizer, aggressor: Israel; and an oppressed people –the Palestinians–, humiliated, usurped, without fundamental human rights, which has the legitimate right to resist by any means (as recognized by the United Nations Organization itself -UN-, in the face of an occupation). “Do not confuse the reaction of the oppressed with the violence of the oppressor”, Malcolm X already taught.
There is no peace without justice, which must encompass the entire Palestinian people: in the territories occupied in 1948 (“Israel”) and in 1967 (the West Bank, Gaza and the Old City of Jerusalem), in the refuges and in the diaspora. The only way to guarantee justice is a free Palestine from the river to the sea.
lurking death
Sixteen of the 35 Palestinians killed were in the last five days of January. On the night of the 25th, one of them was killed in the village of al-Ram, near Jerusalem. On the 26th, in another massacre planned by the occupying forces in the Jenin refugee camp, nine Palestinians were killed, including a 60-year-old woman, and more than 20 were injured, at least four seriously. What happened next reveals the cruelty of the colonial project: preventing first aid and even the invasion of the region’s hospital by the same people who committed the massacre, with tear gas being fired at the pediatric ward.
The situation is dramatic. Ethnic cleansing and collective punishment advance amid international neglect. In 2022 alone, around 220 people were killed in the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem, including 53 children.
This week, more than 110 Zionist settlers invaded the Esplanade of the Mosques again, something more and more frequent. Three others tried to burn down the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Holy places respectively for Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem, which shows that it is not a religious issue, but that it affects any Palestinian, whether Islamic or not. Whether a child or not. Whether male or female, young or old. It is colonization.
mobilization
How many more Palestinians will have to die for this lesson to be learned? How many more will have to die for the indignation to spread? The Arab-Palestinian community in Brazil and solidarity organizations/activists have the sad experience that what happens in occupied Palestine only mobilizes a lot of people when the ethnic cleansing that has been going on for more than 75 years is made visible by the mass media. mass communication and scandalizes in fact. This has only happened even when there have been massive bombardments in Gaza.
In the narrow strip, home to 2 million Palestinians who have been subjected to the inhuman Israeli siege for 15 years, however, the bombs also fall dropper periodically. Children also die of hunger and disease because their parents are prevented from guaranteeing treatment given the murderous blockade, in addition to the massacre that devastates everything, even hospitals, and does not allow reconstruction. Diseases, including those transmitted by water, since 96% of the water is contaminated. “Israel” poisons not only wells, but also crops, prevents fishing and subsistence farming. The humanitarian crisis is dramatic.
It is necessary to urgently change this script of massification of solidarity. In this sense, the call is for the union, political, social and popular organizations, all in the fight against exploitation and oppression, to strengthen the mobilization and pressure on the federal government (but also the state and municipal ones) for recognition of apartheid and commit to BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions). That they establish in their spaces the connection of their struggles with the Palestinian question, together with the working class, the youth, the blacks, the indigenous, the women, the LGBTI, the oppressed in general. After all, it is an international cause par excellence, so that everyone can be free.
Article reproduced in www.pstu.org.br, 2/6/2023.-
Translation: Natalia Estrada.