CWPUSA All-Florida Orlando Palestine Rally
The CWPUSA concluded its All-Florida Orlando Palestine Rally drawing on the necessity of the reconstitution of the communist party in our country as the only counterweight to the warmongering parties of the bourgeoisie.
Below are the speeches made by the CWPUSA.
Text of Speech
A despicable propaganda mechanism with the participation of the US, the EU, bourgeois governments and states of the so called “civilized West” as they call it, throws all it's efforts to exonerate the barbarity of the Israeli state, to incriminate the resistance of the Palestinian people and the solidarity expressed in their struggle on the universities and in the streets. We are here to break through the veil of misinformation, to disseminate the positions of the communists and to widen the struggle in solidarity with the Palestinian right for liberation. The Communist Workers Platform USA stands resolutely at the side of the Palestinians and fights for the end to the Israeli occupation, for an independent Palestinian state, for the complete withdrawal of all US aid and its military forces from the region and worldwide.
Comrades,
All the governments are responsible for strengthening the economic, political and military relations with the State of Israel, promoting Euro-Atlantic energy plans, supporting it as a strategic partner in the rivalries in the region.
The bourgeois parties, together with the mass media and the so called "experts" make a daily parade through their studios of misinformation, attempting to erase history and delete the word "occupation" from our vocabulary- they provocatively attempt to identify the resistance of the Palestinian people with terrorism.
All sorts of "hypocrites and Pharisees", subordinated to imperialist law, the law of the most powerful and the interests of the bourgeoisie they serve, have not once said that the Palestinian territories are occupied by the State of Israel, attempting to legitimize the outcomes of the long-lasting Israeli interventions and the 1967 Six-Day War, which the UN has also characterized as illegal.
Since the occupation was imposed in 1947-48,with the support of the USA, NATO and the EU, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been expelled, over 100,000 have been killed, and thousands of political prisoners have been held including women, children, and the elderly.
The apologists of the Israeli occupation HIDE that year after year the Palestinian territories are forcibly shrinking, that the West Bank, of which 60% is controlled by the occupation forces, is encircled. Every town, neighborhood and village, is controlled by "security zones" and hundreds of outposts where armed Israeli soldiers make the life of the Palestinians unlivable, arresting, beating, killing, as they have killed dozens of children who stood up against their armed occupiers with slingshots.
THEY HIDE that the settlements being built in the Palestinian territories are a racist apartheid regime, and tools of occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. About 40% of the West Bank is in the hands of the settlers who have multiplied seven times since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.
THEY HIDE that the Gaza Strip has been blockaded since 2007 and the people are suffering and in the period of 2008 to 2022 alone, it has faced over 13 weeks of Israeli bombardment.
Comrades, we are clear,
The war did not start now, it has ravaged on for decades, and as long as the occupation continues, peaceful coexistence between people is impossible. and the conditions will be created for the escalation and expansion of military conflicts following the intense imperialist rivalries and the US-Israeli plans to promote their interests in the region, with the Palestinians and other peoples as victims.
As long as the occupation remains in force, the heroic Palestinian resistance will continue as an answer to its underminers. The propaganda machine of the USA, NATO, the EU and Israel, and right next to them, the bourgeois parties in our country - the Democrats and Republicans - regurgitate that the Israeli state has the right to "self-defense" and to use every barbaric means to maintain the occupation. But, they also say that Ukraine has a right to "self-defense", which they support in NATO's war with Russia. However, the Palestinian people, who are suffering, bleeding and imprisoned by the occupying state, do not have the right to "self-defense". This is the absurdity of their obscene propaganda which the people of this country sees right through.
And that is why they are raging at every minute, mobilizing the dogs of the State to snuff out the movement of the students and workers who can no longer stand to see the barbarity. They resort to staged broadcasts and targeted publications in the mass media, completely excluding the Palestinian position, organizing an orgy of lies, slandering those who stand by the Palestinian people and waging a war of fake news presented as facts.
The Palestinian people have the inalienable right and historical duty to fight to live in a free homeland, without occupation and occupying troops, to be the master in their own land, shaping the conditions for their total liberation from capitalist exploitation.
The situation is critical. At any moment military operations may be expanded. The US fleet is patrolling the Middle East with war-ready forces, in conditions where the web of antagonisms is becoming more and more complicated and the imperialist war in Ukraine is escalating.
Israel's offensive and the developments that place the Palestinian issue in intensifying geopolitical antagonisms underline the need to strengthen the struggle to end the occupation. In confrontation with the forces that call on the people to align themselves with occupying forces of Israel, what is now urgent is to strengthen solidarity with the Palestinian people, to support their struggle for a free homeland, to stop the Israeli massacre and to support the anti-war struggle throughout the region.
The clouds of war gather and it is our duty, the people and the workers, to act urgently and decisively. But this is only possible with a political party, the Communist Party, which is rooted in the movement of the workers and people, targeting all the warmongering parties as well as the capitalists and their international allies. This decaying system that gives rise to oppression and wars, here in the US, in the heart of the beast, we have the responsibility to pluck out its heart.
THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE WILL WIN!
FREE PALESTINE!
Text of Speech
For decades, the people of Gaza have been living through a brutal occupation by Israel. Throughout this history there have been no shortage of cruel and inhumane deeds perpetrated by the state of Israel but what has been occurring for the past nine months is beyond words. For the better part of a year, the Palestinian people have been suffering the most horrific acts of terrorism and barbarism at the hands of the Israeli state. With the undeniable proof of videos and pictures, working people all around the world have rightly condemned Israel's acts as genocidal and have come out in the hundreds of thousands in support of Palestine. From the university encampments to the Marches on the capital, the people have been making their support for Palestine felt and heard.
It is not a surprise to see the capitalist propaganda machine going full throttle to demonize the just Palestinian struggle while justifying Israel’s crimes. Our politicians, those contemptible puppets of the capitalists class, tell us that this fight is about protecting Israel's right to self determination or that it is about fighting terrorism but we know that's a bold face lie. They talk about terrorism, antisemitism and self determination as a smoke screen for the real reasons for their facilitating of genocide; Imperialism.
The greater Middle East, with its vast energy reserves and valuable trade routes, has been an area of great economic and political importance to the capitalists for decades. In 1983, then president Ronald Reagan called the Middle East the “key” to the economic and political life of the capitalist west and that should this “key” slip from their grasp it would pose a direct threat to the United States.
It is then no coincidence that since the 1980s we have seen the ties between the US and Israel strengthen significantly. In the context of their struggle against the USSR and other countries of socialist constructions, the US called upon Israel to be the gendarme of the region with the signing of the Memorandum of understanding on November 30, 1981. With the signing of this document, Military agreement after military agreement followed. Between 1979 and 1989, 40 times more financial and military aid was sent to Israel than was sent between 1959 and 1969. All of this in service of imperialism, in the service of maintaining, strengthening and expanding US capitalists’ domination of the region’s resources, markets, and infrastructure. In this way, Israel has become a key player in the region in the broader imperialist agenda of the western capitalists. This is only highlighted by the involvement and support of Israel in the US’s military interventions in Iraq, Syria, and Iran
Today with the victory of counter-revolution in the socialist countries, the threat to US dominance in the Middle East is no longer the socialist system but rival imperialist countries. We are seeing a sharpening of the contradictions in the world imperialist system where two major camps have already formed, the Euro-Atlantic camp headed by the US and the China-Russia camp. China, having restored capitalism and reached its final stage, has rapidly ascended to the upper ranks of the world imperialist system rivaling the US.
One of the characteristic features of imperialism is the export of capital taking on exceptional importance as opposed to the export of goods. For China, this comes in the form of their Belt and Road Initiative. These investments in the Middle East have amounted to at least $123 million* in Belt and Road-related project financing. Further, countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt have major port and infrastructure projects scheduled for the near future. These investments have led to a large economic corridor being established in the region which facilitates the flow of Chinese capital and goods. These economic corridors have been built around Eurasia most notably in the Middle East connecting China to Istanbul. All of which threatens the dominance of the US-EU imperialist camp throughout Eurasia. Thus we are seeing a growing tension between the meteoric rise of China and the weakening power of the US which manifests itself as an imperialist struggle over control in the middle east. This is why we are seeing proposals like the India-Middle-East-Europe Economic Corridor or IMEC being promoted by the US and other western powers as a clear counter to China’s Belt and Road.
Our capitalist class have long considered the entire middle east “theirs” so seeing another rival capitalist power like China begin to strengthen its own economic-political control over the region is unacceptable to our bourgeoisie. For them, Israel is an indispensable asset in their struggle against the China-Russia camp of imperialist. Without a permanent and powerful military and economic ally in the middle east, the investments, resources, and trading routes of the US and EU could not be safeguarded. Thus, the US will continue to send arms, money, and whatever else is needed to maintain their control no matter how many deaths it leads to because the monopolies profit immensely from it.
Just in the last year, this bourgeois government has provided military and financial aid to Israel amounting to $21.2 billion. All of which has been used by Israel to further their genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people. It would not be a stretch to say that without this aid the level of destruction and brutality that we are witnessing would be impossible. So what is to be done? We, the workers in the belly of the beast, are in a unique position in the anti-imperialist struggle. The successes of our movement here, because of the US’s dominant role in the world imperialist system, have the ability to reverberate across the world.
The working class and popular strata of this country have the power to stand up against the funding of genocide but we need organization. We need to link the various struggles of the people and orient it in a militant, anti-capitalist direction!
Imagine if, from the coast to coast, port workers refused to load goods or arms en route to Israel. Imagine if all workers, from the freight and telecommunication industry to education and the service industry, went on strike on the same day and refused to return until the US withdrew all US aid and military personnel from the region and worldwide. It is actions like these that cripple the capitalist machine which hurt the capitalist class the most. They make the people’s demands impossible to ignore but they all require solid organization and cooperation across various industries and unions. We of the communist workers’ Platform hold that only the communist party can provide the kind of organization needed to secure not only concessions, not only small victories, but a real victory for the working class. This is why we must struggle to rebuild the communist party which will be able to lead the working class and popular strata in the overthrow of capitalism. So long as the capitalist class exists in this country, the decimation of Palestine will be in their class interests. Only once the majority, the working class, takes state power for itself, will we see the end to US imperialism. This starts with the building of the communist party. It starts with us organizing, agitating and mobilizing our workplaces and unions in support of the just Palestinian cause and for the socialist cause to which it is inextricably linked! It is our duty to fight for the end of imperialism, for the end of the exploitation of man by man. Thus, we say organize to fight!
FOR A FREE PALESTINE!
THE RESISTANCE OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE WILL WIN!
BUILD THE COMMUNIST PARTY!
*Correction: $123 billion