Statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, 21 October, 2023
The US Government has unabashedly extended its political and military support to Israel. President Biden visited Israel hours after the bombing of Al Ahli Arab Hospital and declared that the USA will stand by Israel till the very end.
The US imperialists have sent two aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean off the coast of Israel and rushed in sophisticated arms. It has stood by as Israel bombed the airports of Syria. The US is using threats as well as other means to pressurize the Arab countries to condemn the Palestinian people’s just struggle against the Israeli occupiers as terrorism. The peoples and countries of the Arab world are refusing to do so. The peoples of these countries are extending wholehearted support to the just struggle of their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
The ongoing war unleashed by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza has shocked the conscience of humanity. It is a crime against humanity. The brazen bombing of the Al Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17, resulting in the death of at least 500 doctors, nurses and patients has been met with worldwide condemnation. For over 10 days and nights, Israel has been indiscriminately bombing Gaza, targeting residential apartments, schools, and refugee camps. Thousands of men, women and children have been killed in these bombings, thousands more have been injured. Israel has imposed an inhuman blockade of the 2.3 million people living in tiny Gaza. The people have been deprived of the most basic essentials of life — food, water, electricity, fuel and medical supplies.
Israel is justifying this inhuman war in the name of destroying Hamas, the Palestinian organisation that is governing Gaza. It is justifying it in the name of “right to self-defense”. The world knows that sending people to a certain death by raining bombs on their homes, schools, and hospitals, and depriving them of food, water, electricity, medical supplies, and other essentials is not self-defense. It is genocide.
Millions of people in all countries of the world have come onto the streets in protest against the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. They are demanding in one voice an immediate end to the blockade and the war. They are supporting the long standing demand of the Palestinian people for their right to be as a nation.
Peoples and countries have been incessantly demanding that the United Nations take immediate steps to stop the war. However, every effort to do so by member states of the United Nations has been blocked by US imperialism and its NATO allies.
On 16 October, Russia introduced a resolution in the UN Security Council calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. The resolution was co-sponsored amongst others by Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mali, Malaysia, Mauritania, Maldives, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkey, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe. The draft text called for release of all hostages, access to aid for people of Gaza, and safe evacuation of civilians. The US and three other members of the Security Council — Britain, France and Japan — voted against the resolution. Five members of the Security Council — China, Gabon, Mozambique, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates —voted in its favour, while 6 abstained. The resolution failed. The Russian permanent representative in the UN said that the Western countries’ delegations “basically stomped” on global hopes for the Council to put an end to violence.
The Permanent Observer of Palestine in the UN urged the Security Council to be guided by the principles of international law “with no exception”. “Do not send the signals that Palestinian lives do not matter. Do not dare say Israel is not responsible for the bombs it is dropping on their heads,” he said. He noted that what is happening in Gaza is not a military operation, but a full scale assault against his people and a massacre against innocent civilians. “Nowhere is safe in Gaza, families embrace every night, not knowing if it is for the last time,” he said.
On 18 October, a fresh resolution on the war, introduced by Brazil, was put to vote in the Security Council. The resolution called for humanitarian pauses to allow full, safe and unhindered access for United Nations agencies and their partners. It was not a call to end the war, but merely to organise pauses to allow relief material to be delivered to the population of Gaza. It called for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and for the protection of all medical personnel and humanitarian personnel, as well as hospitals and medical facilities, consistent with international humanitarian law. 12 countries voted in favour and two abstained. The US used its veto power to prevent this resolution from being adopted.
The US Permanent representative at the UN justified its opposition to this resolution calling for humanitarian pauses in the war, with the argument that the resolution did not explicitly support the “right to self-defense” of Israel. This shows that the US is in full support of the genocidal war unleashed by Israel. While referring to this as self-defense, the US does not defend the right of the Palestinian people to exist as a nation.
The US has led a campaign of disinformation through its dominance over the media. The peoples of the world who are condemning Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians are condemned as anti-semitic (anti-Jew). The campaign of disinformation deliberately hides the fact that many Jews in the US and in other countries have come onto the streets in protest against the war, saying “not in my name”, and defending the right of Palestinians to their own homeland. The campaign vilifies the Palestinian people, who are fighting for their survival as a people, as the source of the problem, and paints Israel as the victim. The Palestinians resistance fighters are falsely accused of all sorts of crimes, which are later revealed to be fake news.
It is becoming ever clearer to the peoples of the world that the US shares the responsibility for the genocide of the Palestinian people. The US has armed Israel to the teeth, with the aim of using it to defend and advance its imperialist interests in the region. Towards this end, the US has used its veto powers in the UN, right from the days of the founding of the state of Israel 75 years ago, to defend all the indefensible actions of Israel against the Palestinian people.
The US is pursuing a course which is disastrous for Israelis, Palestinians and all the other peoples of the region. A leading member of the military industrial complex of the US, Lockheed Martin Chief Executive Officer James Taiclet, encapsulated the US policy in the following words: “There’s no point in restraining Israel from any military actions. […] There are conflicts which need to be resolved with arms and we are prepared to provide these arms, these weapons.”
The people of India are one with the peoples of other countries of the world in demanding an immediate end to the war and the blockade of Gaza. The Palestinian people have the right to exist as a people. The only way lasting peace can be ensured for the people of Israel, Palestine, and other countries of the region, is by implementing the UN resolutions that uphold the rights of the Palestinian people. These include that Israel withdraw from Palestine territories to its pre-1967 borders, the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, the removal of Israeli settlements from the occupied territories, and the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.
The Communist Ghadar Party of India condemns the US imperialists for deliberately prolonging the genocidal war launched by Israel against the Palestinian people. The US has shown its complete contempt for all the principles established by the United Nations at the time of its founding. It is pursuing a course that is fraught with great danger for the world’s peoples.
Long live the just struggle of the Palestinian people for their own homeland!