Why Palestine?
Among the defenders of the Palestinian Resistance or people who simply express their solidarity with a people victim of genocide, it is not uncommon to find a woman or a man to whom someone has asked this recurring question about the vehicles of the dominant ideology: " But why do you always talk about Palestine? And not about Sudan, the Congo, or even Burma or Ukraine? "
These are often Zionists or pro-Israelis who couldn't care less about the fate of the people of Kivu, in the north-east of Congo, or Darfur, in the centre of Sudan. The ineffable Bernard-Henri Lévy is accustomed to this, and does not hesitate to mention the fabrication of the false "genocide of the Uighurs", for which the UN mission concluded that it did not exist [1] .
But sometimes sincere people ask the question. We can also mention the majority indifference in union circles, including those most vocal about the Palestinian issue. It is clear that the real issues are being hidden, by supporters to one degree or another of the Zionist entity, by the indifferent, but also by a good portion of those who believe they are defending Palestine without shedding light on the real issues.
The question is therefore not trivial: what makes Palestine unique? What gives it this importance for revolutionary activists, and in particular for the Revolutionary Communist Party?
In Palestine, what war is it?
Obviously, simple humanity leads us to be concerned about the fate of the Gazans, whom the occupying army constantly bombards, whom it lures into food distributions that are traps where they are shot, whose homes and public buildings it razes to erase its past, whom it starves and deprives of healthcare. The first live-documented genocide in human history is no small feat. This alone would be enough to take sides with the oppressed and massacred Palestinians.
But there are other reasons. For the Revolutionary Communist Party, Palestine is not a site of a global confrontation between the supporters of a unipolar world (Western imperialists) and those of a multipolar world (other imperialists, such as China and Russia). Similarly, the Palestinian Resistance is not, for us, a component of a mythical axis of resistance, combining authentic national resistance organizations with imperialist states or regional powers defending their own interests.
The root of the problem is the colonial situation
This is what distinguishes the situation in Palestine from other theaters of war where imperialist powers confront each other militarily, indirectly (Sudan and Congo) or directly (Ukraine). We note, moreover, that the very often ill-intentioned critics of the speech defending the Palestinians never ask us why we do not talk more about New Caledonia or Western Sahara; quite simply because their goal is to mix everything up, to mix up conflicts whose meaning is totally different, to hide the real issues, to hide the colonial fact. In this sense, even an overly general discourse on Peace can turn out to be ambiguous. Palestine is a particular and unique issue!
What brings Palestine closer to Kanaky or the Sahara is its colonial character. In all three cases, there is a colonized people and a colonial state, and the colonized people resist, even by force of arms, and seek to free themselves from colonial oppression.
The special character of a substitute colonization
This colonization has several specific aspects. In the Sahara, the king and the Moroccan bourgeoisie exploit the Sahrawis (at least those who are not in exile or engaged in armed struggle). In Kanaky, the policy of the capitalist state of France has consisted of organizing migrations (of Europeans, but also of Wallisians) in such a way as to make the native population a minority on its own soil, but it is also, for the stone capitalists, a matter of exploiting the Kanaks, notably by making them work in the nickel mines.
In Palestine, this is not the settlers' goal. It is a substitute colonization. The goal is not to exploit the Palestinians, but to drive them out or kill them. Right now, it is the second option that is truly underway: the eradication of the Palestinians from Gaza. Their Resistance, in all its forms, which is admired by many peoples and workers around the world, is something that the Zionist settlers and their leaders did not foresee. From their point of view, therefore, there remains only massacre, genocide, for those who stubbornly refuse to leave, even if it means dying.
Historically, this substitution or settlement colonization is similar to that of European emigrants to the USA, who chased and massacred Native Americans and herded the last into reservations, similar to what the Zionists are planning in Gaza: concentration camps for the last recalcitrant survivors. There is, however, once again a difference between these two genocides. Apart from the fact that colonization in North America is pre-capitalist in nature, except at the end, the genocide was carried out, so to speak, by walking, empirically.
Zionism, a substitute colonialist ideology
In Palestine, genocide or at least "ethnic cleansing" was planned, it was thought of, it is part of an ideology totally in line with substitute colonization, Zionism. Everything that is being done at the moment has been theorized and planned since the end of the 19th century and began with the migrations after the First World War when European emigrants drove Palestinians off the land they were cultivating, after bankers had bought it for them from rentier owners, Arab squires or, most often, Ottomans.
It turns out that Zionist ideology was invented by Jews. However, this question is secondary. Many Jews in the world are anti-Zionist; at the time of the movement's emergence, it had very little following in Europe, unlike organizations claiming to be socialist, such as the Bund. Even if it were carried by Buddhists or Assyrians, it would not change anything. If the Zionists exploit the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis at will, it is important to remember that the armed militias that unilaterally created the colonial state called "Israel" had nothing to do with the victims or survivors of the Holocaust; they were composed of European emigrants present in Palestine since the beginning of the 20th century or the 1920s or 1930s, and had never known Nazism.
A colonial state in the service of Western imperialism
The most significant thing, like all late colonization, from the capitalist period, is that these emigrants came from Europe. There were other colonizers, in Antiquity, in the Middle Ages, or in the Modern Era, the Chinese or the Arabs, for example, or colonizations in Europe itself like that of the Germans at the expense of the Slavs and the Balts, the famous "DrangnachOsten [2] ". But colonization at the imperialist stage of capitalism, since the last quarter of the 19th century , was almost exclusively the work of European emigrants, from European capitalist states to other continents, with the exception of the USA, itself made up of former Europeans and Japan. In this sense, Zionism is no exception, especially since its militias were the armed wing of the Western imperialists, Great Britain and then the USA.
Here too, we touch on a peculiarity of Palestine. The imperialists of the time did not tear each other apart to possess it. They decided, together, to occupy the land, to establish a buffer state there, intended to serve their interests. They colonized through an intermediary, the Zionist European emigrants. All the Western imperialist powers, Great Britain, France, then the USA as dominant, and finally, later, Germany, were co-actors in the colonization; their capitalists were involved directly or indirectly through stakes in capitalist companies of the Zionist entity. Carrefour would not contradict us. As Georges Ibrahim Abdallah wrote: "Israel is the organic extension of Western imperialism."
To end colonization is to end the Zionist colonial state
This is why the Palestinian question has such a unique character. The anti-colonialist struggle is intrinsic to revolutionary activists. This is why the Revolutionary Party defends the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people.
Fair and effective solidarity with the Palestinians obviously requires supporting their demands, including those that many bury, such as the return of refugees. But it also requires understanding that the very existence of the Zionist colonial state is the cause of everything, and that liberation implies the disappearance of this apartheid state. Without this, we will never have true peace, only colonial peace, like the Oslo Accords. There is no possible compromise on this issue. Ultimately, the Zionist colonial state must give way to a secular, decolonized state where everyone has equal rights.
Those who believe they are defending the Palestinian cause by omitting this fact are mistaken at best or lying at worst. The proponents of the "two-state solution" or the improbable "fraternization between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples," or even the equally illusory "union of the workers of the two peoples," are, at best, useful idiots of the Western imperialists and their Zionist lackeys. The workers of Israel cannot be free if they do not break with Zionism and continue to find themselves objectively and actively in the camp of the colonizers, the genocidaires. We therefore need a state where all inhabitants enjoy the same rights and can live together, regardless of their origins—in this case, a democratic Palestinian state.
Similarly, we cannot share the blame, as some organizations that condemn the genocide and defend the Gazans, such as LFI, do. All the uses of the term "Hamas" instead of "Palestinian Resistance," all the condemnations of the so-called "crimes of October 7," especially given what we know of the reality, are smokescreens that prevent us from understanding the situation and effectively defending the cause of the Palestinian people. Any compromise only serves to obscure the horizon, when it must be cleared.
In conclusion
Therefore, more than ever, we need a clear, anti-colonialist, anti-Zionist discourse, denouncing the actors, the accomplices of the substitute colonization implemented in Palestine, the accomplices of the genocide of the Zionist entity which increasingly resembles that of the American West, perpetrated there also by European settlers!!! We need a clear position, total support for the Palestinian people, for their resistance, in all its forms, from everyday gestures to armed combat. It is not possible to support the struggle for a free Palestine without supporting the armed Resistance, in all its components and in all its actions; without demanding the end of the colonial apartheid state, because its existence prevents true peace.
And more than ever, we need the active solidarity of peoples and workers around the world with the resistance of the Palestinian people, in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. It is high time that a large-scale popular demonstration be organized in France to support the Palestinian people's struggle for national liberation and to proclaim that enough crimes are enough, and that the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people must be recognized.
Such a demonstration must carry the demand for a just peace in Palestine. A just peace means the dismantling of settlements, the return of refugees, and a state where all residents enjoy equal rights and can live together, regardless of their origins—in this case, a democratic and independent Palestinian state.
The Revolutionary Communist Party supports more than ever the fundamental demands of the Palestinian national liberation movement: a complete end to Zionist military aggression, the right of return for refugees, and the formation of a Palestinian state on the territory of Mandatory Palestine.
[1] Read, on this subject, the excellent and very well-documented work by Maxime Vivas: “Uighurs, to put an end to fake news”.
[2] The DrangnachOsten (push to the east) refers to the medieval colonization of German nobles in Eastern Europe, bringing with them peasants in the central plains and bourgeoisie such as in Krakow or Prague.