A-Infos (en) The Gaza slaughter: Europe's hand is bloodied too by FdCA (Italy) Zabalaza (South-Africa) - International anarchist communist statement

We will continue to support the struggles and act of solidarity with the Palestinian people, 
supporting all those embryonic manifestations of self-determination that typify the struggles of 
whole villages in Palestine... ---- Hundreds of dead and thousands of injured, sacrificed on the 
altar of Zionist expansionism and fundamentalism. In Europe, the foreign ministers of every EU 
country talk about an "exaggerated", though "legitimate", reaction on the part of Israel, reversing 
the true situation with an operation that would make the most cynical illusionist feel proud by 
making the aggressor, the State of Israel, appear to be the victim. ---- They continue to pretend 
that they do not remember that Gaza - one of the most densely-populated regions with around one and 
a half million inhabitants, about half of whom are children - has been the object of a total 
embargo for years, an embargo which includes medicines and basic necessities and which is supported 
by the entire "civilized" western world, imposed by Israel and the West as a result of the Hamas 
election victory, thanks to the mixed electoral system of majority and proportional representation. 
Just as they pretend to forget that Hamas was once financed by Israel as a way of countering the PLO.

Despite a 6-month truce, the embargo was not even slightly relaxed and not one of the Western 
powers even timidly suggested relaxing it. The State of Israel has returned to its strategy of 
military control over Gaza and the West Bank. All Europe's useless, hypocritical proclamations of a 
desire for peace systematically forget to mention that for 60 years Israel has been blithely 
violating countless UN resolutions and continues to occupy the territory militarily, with Israeli 
colonies spreading throughout Palestinian land day by day, building walls that segregate entire 
villages and prevent millions of refugees from returning to their land, uprooting olive groves and 
killing livestock, day after day humiliating anyone who tries to cross the segregation walls in 
order to go to work, to hospital or to school.

And not only that: they hide the fact that the truce was broken by the Israeli State on 4th 
November 2008 when its army killed a 22-year-old Hamas militant.

But aside from the false, hypocritical proclamations of pacifism, what is the reason for this 
unconditional support for such an aggressive, warmongering State by practically every major Western 
power?

As far as the USA is concerned, there is no doubt. Apart from the important strategic and 
territorial alliance that Israel represents for American imperialism in the Middle East, it also 
has to deal with the powerful US pro-Israel lobby, which is strong enough to bring about a 
stong influence on US foreign policy. And what is happening today comes across as a clear warning 
to the president-elect, Obama.

Europe has partially regained its unity on foreign policy and is probably playing the card of 
active diplomacy in order to strengthen its role in the Mediterranean and to warn the USA that it 
cannot act alone in the Mare Nostrum[1] area. But one must not forget arms sales, an area where 
States are always ready to hide the truth under the blanket of "State secrets" and support the 
orders of those companies who produce arms and support systems. And these businesses are never 
biased. They are quite happy to sell arms to opposing parties, as long as they can pay for them. 
Italy, for example, is one of the biggest arms suppliers to Iran and Lebanon, but has also supplied 
the Israeli army for years with arms technology through companies like Oto-Melara, Beretta, 
Borletti and Selenia. And the other countries in Europe do likewise.

Palestine is cynically used as an experimentation ground for deadly new technologies which are 
increasingly specialising in "urban warfare" and in which every arms company is interested: from US 
and Israeli companies to English, French, German, Italian, and so on.

So, in this tortured land where men, women and children, crushed by the wargames of the powerful, 
seem to have no future, new arms are tested, from cluster bombs to impoverished uranium bullets, 
the effectiveness of UAVs (pilotless aircraft) - able to launch remote controlled missiles - is 
studied, Achzarit tanks able to withstand landmines are experimented, Namer armoured vehicles with 
Continental Motors (US) or MTU (German) engines are tested, as is the efficacy of avant-garde 
systems such as Italian added protection and remote-controlled turrets mounted on Puma armoured 
vehicles, and Alenia's futuristic robotic war systems such as Sky-X, the first system in the world 
able to refuel pilotless aircraft in flight.

All this on the shoulders of a people who have always been used in clashes between States and 
others, cynically used even in the political clashes between the internal factions of one State, as 
in the case of Israeli political machinations connected with the electoral struggle both within the 
governing coalition between the hawkish Kadima, responsible for some of the most extreme acts - 
like the evacuation of the Strip proposed by the MK Yisrael Hasson - on the one hand and the Labour 
doves, in favour of a more measured approach, on the other, and between Kadima and the Likud 
super-hawks, increasingly moving towards ultra hardline positions.

We certainly do not expect the Arab and/or Islamic States to do anything, divided as they are or 
intent on strengthening their prestige and their influence in the area, even if it comes at the 
cost of the Palestinian people. Like the case of Iran, that uses the Palestinian tragedy to 
publicise itself as the only bulwark against the hated American imperialism and set itself up as 
the emerging power in the region.

But beyond all the international political conjecturing, the situation of the Palestinian 
population today seems bleak, with few prospects for reaching a solution that can give them a 
chance for a life with even a minimum of dignity, both from the point of view of social security 
and from that of guaranteeing respect of the minimum rights of survival.

Today perhaps the only guarantee that the Palestinian people may, as quickly as possible, find even 
a little respite and peace is that the marauders of all shapes and sizes - physically or 
ideologically thronging at their borders, or engaging in political speculation inside - reach a 
new, precarious balance.

The only real prospect for emancipation that we can glimpse in the near future is a growth and 
spread of the sort of self-organisation that many Palestinian villages practise, encouraged by the 
solidarity between Palestinian popular committees and initiatives such as Anarchists Against the 
Wall, involving internationalists from all over the world and anti-Zionist Israelis, who fight the 
arrogance of the Israeli settler colonists and the army that supports them using prevalently 
peaceful resistance. And it is not by chance that in these villages another road has been chosen 
and not the militarism of Hamas.

As class-struggle anarchists and libertarians we will continue to denounce Zionist settler 
colonialismm as we denounce all forms of imperialism and fundamentalism that oppress the liberty 
and dignity of every people. We will go on denouncing the fact that huge swathes of the world's 
proletariat suffer under the oppression and misery that results from inter-imperialist clashes and 
the cynical political games of powerful local oligarchs who are in turn used, knowingly or 
unknowingly, as pawns in the international chessboard of imperialist disputes, marked with the 
blood of the proletariat.

We will continue to support the struggles and act of solidarity with the Palestinian people, 
supporting all those embryonic manifestations of self-determination that typify the struggles of 
whole villages in Palestine, convinced that only if they can free themselves of the malicious 
influences of all State or para-State oligarchies can the working men and women begin to hope for a 
more dignified life.

2 January 2009
Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (Italy)
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (South Africa)

Note:
1. Literally "our sea", used by the imperial Romans with reference to the Mediterranean. The 
suggestion is that the modern European powers want to control the Med as the Romans did 2,000 years 
ago.

Related Link: http://www.anarkismo.net
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