Media Statement: 9 October 2023
Since Saturday morning, the latest stage in the state of war between Israel and Palestine has
begun. The war started in 1948 with Israel’s expulsion of 700 000 Palestinians in the Nakba
and was regularly ratcheted up, including in times of supposed peace such as the Oslo
Accords which gave license for more illegal settlements. After resistance took several forms,
including the Palestine Liberation Organisation, several ‘intifada’ popular uprisings, and
Boycott Divestment Sanctions, the Israeli ruling class led by the far right Benjamin Netanyahu
became even more violent in recent years, imposing what is universally understood as an
apartheid regime on Palestine.
But in spite of Mossad’s reputation, a well-coordinated surprise military operation was
launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, unprecedented in scope, coordination, and casualties
on the Israeli side, which number in the high hundreds. The Israeli army responded with the
therat that all who live in Gaza – around 2.3 million people – should leave, as an even more
brutal crackdown has begun, already killing more than 400 Palestinians.
This is an escalation in a state of war that has existed for 75 years, and with the 50th
anniversary of the 1973 war still fresh in the region’s political mind. The escalation does not
change the nature of what is a just war for national liberation on the part of the Palestinian
masses, against colonial aggression on the side of Israeli imperialism – just as South African
liberation movements engaged in a multi-faceted just war against a crime against humanity
until democracy was won in 1994
Our Solidarity with Palestinians.
It is with shock and horror that we are learning of increasing casualties, many of whom are
ordinary working-class people whose lives are being destroyed due to no fault of their own.
We always regret the loss of lives of ordinary working class people on either side of the fence,
and wish to expresses our sincerest condolences.
Despite our open criticism of Hamas, this is not a regrettable conflict between two sides which
are equally responsible. It is war between an imperialist colonial power and freedom fighters
resisting this colonial power, its occupation and violence.
In this war, GIWUSA is unambiguously on the side of Palestinians. We absolutely defend their
democratic right to their own state, to resist colonialism, including by means of arms.
GIWUSA unequivocally stands in solidarity with the fighting masses of Palestine and we hold
the Israeli regime ultimately responsible for all the casualties of this war, at a time of heroic
national resistance on the part of Palestinians.
Israeli Imperialism and its rightwing Zionist regimes responsible.
Regardless of who fired first, the sole cause of this war is Israel’s colonialism, drawn from the
Zionist ideology which has often been described as official racism.
Palestinians are resisting Israeli settler colonialism, its land dispossessions and expansions of
illegal Jewish settlements in Palestinian lands,the brutal military occupation advancing this
colonial policy and especially the way Gaza has been reduced to an open-air prison.
Although this has been a reality of the Palestinians since the foundation of Israel 1948, and
Zionist terrorism in the few years leading to it, successive rightwing Israeli regimes in recent
years have taken this colonial project to new levels. Land dispossessions and encroachments
of Jewish settlers on Palestinians have expanded exponentially, the military crackdown and
repression have been tightened, and ethnic cleansing is ever more brazen.
Under Israeli-Egyptian siege, people in Gaza are starving, and dying from lack of water,
sanitation, medical supplies and other basic needs. The Gaza Strip is under permanent
blockade, making it impossible for people to earn any living, travel freely, and enjoy freedoms
many people across the globe today take for granted. Agricultural fields are regularly sterilized,
water sources are deliberately poisoned, and life is generally made intolerable for the already
suffering masses of the oppressed. Racism and daily humiliations have also reached new
levels in recent times. This includes incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy sites of
Islam, which Hamas has cited as an important trigger.
The violence of the rightwing settlers and their juggernauts inside Israel has also been
escalating.
Palestinian workers should rise.
The spectacular military operation of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, named ‘Operation Al Aqsa
Flood,’ may strike at the heart of the Israeli establishment, but we should point out that this
can never be a substitute for an organised mass movement of the Palestinian working class.
The new trade unions should call for general strikes in Palestine and Israel, and for the workers
movement to join across the world. The masses of Palestinians have the right to defend
themselves in these strikes and through other acts of resistance, including by means of arms.
To this end, the workers of Palestine should build armed detachments linked with the masses
in workplaces, farms and communities, which could grow alongside mass mobilization to
constitute a basis for an armed, mass insurrection against the Israeli state. Currently, the
puppet Fatah administration running the West Bank, led by Mahmoud Abas, remains part of
the problem, and a legitimate target for opposition.
It a movement of working-class people could rally the masses across the entire region, it would
throw off the yoke of imperialism and its puppet regimes, and lay the basis for a truly
independent Palestine, a socialist Palestine. Only a socialist Palestine will guarantee national
sovereignty, freedoms, and equality of all, regardless of religion and gender amongst others.
It will also be able to raise the quality of living from its appalling conditions under the regime
of Israeli occupation.
Calls for mass solidarity actions.
Sunday morning, GIWUSA participated in a meeting with a dozen other organisations involved
in Palestinian solidarity including BDS. This meeting has agreed on series of mass actions we
will also be taking part in.
These includes mass solidarity protest marches across the country on Wednesday including
the protest at 15h00, Israeli Consular Office in Hatfield. The meeting has also scheduled for
further actions at Claremont Main Road, Mosque on Friday.
The meeting has also constituted itself into a Coordinating Committee, which GIWUSA will be
participating in, to ensure better coordination of actions in coming days, and mobilization of
the trade union movement.
GIWUSA mobilisation.
GIWUSA leadership will be convening its Organisers Forum on Monday morning to share its
analysis and discuss its proposals with all the union officials.
It further intends to call for shopstewards councils in all its branches to discuss and mobilise
in preparation for a day of action.
GIWUSA further commit to actively lobby affiliates to call on SAFTU to call for lunchtime
protests to register its solidarity with the Palestinians in the context of the ongoing Israeli
crackdown, to challenge South African foreign policy towards Israel and for the expropriation
of all the Zionist interests in the SA economy without compensation, to use the money to
support the fighting masses of Palestine.
Lastly, we will be convening an extended NOBs meeting open to all Branch office bearers to
further evaluate these ideas, and our interventions in this struggle.
Mametlwe Sebei
President
081 368 0706
John Appolis
General Secretary
071 576 993
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