Statement of the PTS
Stop the State of Israel’s military escalation in Gaza
18/11/2012
Friday, November 16, 2012
On November 14, the State of Israel set in motion Operation “Pillar of Defense,” murdered Ahmed Al-Jaabari, a senior Hamas military leader, at close range, and launched an aerial attack, which is still underway, on the Gaza Strip. As a result of this military escalation, at least 25 Palestinian civilians, including several children, have already died.
B. Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government has now announced that this is just the beginning of a major offensive, leaving posed the possibility of an invasion of Gaza with ground troops, for which, 75,000 soldiers have already been called up. Let us recall that the last time the Zionist state invaded Gaza, between December 2008 and January 2009, in the operation known as “Cast Lead,” it killed around 1,400 Palestinians, as well as destroying the already miserable infrastructure of this city, where 1.7 million Palestinians live crowded together in refugee camps.
The US President, Barack Obama, immediately came out to support the State of Israel and its terrorist methods, like the “targeted assassinations” of leaders of the Palestinian resistance and civilian victims, by arguing that it is exercising its right to “self defense,” showing once again the strategic character of the alliance between the Zionist state and imperialism. Obama is continuing the policy of the “war on terror,” initiated by Bush, and he is using the same methods of “targeted assassinations” with his unmanned aircraft, that have claimed the lives of thousands of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.
This new military offensive is part of the State of Israel’s colonial policy over the Palestinian people, condemned to live under Zionist occupation and deprived of their basic right to national self-determination.
But this time the situation is different. Millions have stood up in the Arab and Muslim world, and they have overthrown dictators, allies of the United States, the imperialist powers, and Israel. The highest point of this wave of mobilizations, known as the “Arab Spring,” was the revolutionary process in Egypt that overthrew H. Mubarak. That process was diverted with the arrival in office of a moderate Islamist government of the Muslim Brotherhood, that seeks to guarantee the regional “status quo” in the service of imperialism, by keeping the peace treaty with the State of Israel, while that State massacres the Palestinian people. However, the Palestinian cause could again ignite the region, opening the road to a struggle now not only against the dictatorial regimes, but against the exploitation and oppression practiced by imperialism, the State of Israel, and the reactionary, pro-imperialist Arab governments.
In various cities of the world, mobilizations to condemn the State of Israel’s attack have already taken place. We call on the organizations of workers and the poor, on the organizations of the left, on human rights’ organizations and on all those who claim to be anti-imperialist, to organize the broadest mobilization to condemn this new massacre and express our solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Stop the State of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza!
We demand that Cristina F. Kirchner’s government break diplomatic relations with the terrorist State of Israel!
Solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people!
