GIWUSA is Extremely Alarmed and strongly condemn the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and other senior leaders of Hezbollah and escalating Israeli aggression in Lebanon.
The General Industrial Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA) strongly condemns this cowardly assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, a prominent leader and General Secretary of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, perpetrated by the Israeli state.
This brazen act of terrorism is a stark reminder of Israeli regime’s blatant disregard of peace and security in the middle east including Lebanon, Palestine and Israel itself, and the imperialist warmongering belligerence of its racist right-wing leadership.
The fact that this assassination was carried out in the manner and circumstances in which it was, amply demonstrate not only colonial arrogance, but a sense of impunity, facilitated by unconditional support from the US Imperialism, and complicity of Western powers in Israel’s ongoing imperialist aggression in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and across the whole of Middle East.
GIWUSA views this escalation as a dangerous provocation that brings the entire region to the brink of all-out war. The Israeli state’s actions, enabled by US military aid and diplomatic cover, which insulate Israel’s right-wing regime and its settler colonialist leadership from any accountability before institutions of the western dominated institutions of international law, threaten regional stability and global security.
The world has never inched this closer to a complete regional conflagration in the whole of the middle-east, a war which can easily spill over into a World War 3 in the highly charged geopolitical world situation, especially with US fighting another proxy war with Russia in Ukraine and trying to provoke another with China in the pacific.
We condemn the Israeli state’s terrorism and the US government’s enabling role. We stand in solidarity with the people of Lebanon, Palestine, the working-class people in the Middle East and their forces resisting occupation and oppression.
The international working class should mobilise to demand accountability for Israeli state crimes and demand an end to US and Western complicity.GIWUSA is making a clarion call to the working class and Palestinian Solidarity Movement as well as all progressive people globally, to unite against Israel’s genocidal attacks. this injustice. On a weekend in which enormous destruction has again been recorded in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, we urge unions, Palestinian solidarity organizations, and everyone person committed to international solidarity and world peace, here and abroad to join forces for an all-out coordinated International Day of Action protests. against Israel’s genocide, apartheid, land grabs, al campaign, barbaric cruelty, and criminal assassinations and regional terrorism which are inexorably driving West Asia the whole of Middle East into towards a full-fledged bloody regional war.
We will argue that an International Day of Action should be called, entail and should demand:
- Global Mobilisations for coordinated protests, rallies, and demonstrations worldwide
- Solidarity with Palestine insisting on: Demand an end to Israeli genocide in Gaza and occupation of West Bank, and recognition of Palestinian statehood, rights of return to 1948 Nakba victims and an end to internal Israeli racism.
- Immediate end to the invasion and all acts of aggression in Lebanon and across the region.
- To these ends, Demand for Targeted and Effective Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Against Israeli state and every corporation and institution in Israel and across the world enabling the genocide and occupation, including those in South Africa profiting from trade in coal, diamonds, grapes and other exports and imports.
- Ending US, UK and European military and other aid, trade, investment and finance, plus all forms of and Western Complicity in Israel’s crimes.
- Removing Israel’s protection from accountability – e.g. Hague court prosecutions (limited as they are), and any other measures to achieve the end of their colonial policies, aggression and violence against the people of West Asia Middle East.
- Accountability for war crimes through international prosecution, as well as reparations cases of all those credible by a credible international criminal tribunal, not the pathetic ICC.
- Increased Humanitarian aid to Gaza and all affected populations in the Western Bank, Lebanon, etc
- Accountability for war crimes through investigation and prosecution of all those credible by a credible international criminal tribunal, not the pathetic ICC.
SA Government Should Sever Trade Ties with Israel.
The crucial point made by the International Court of Justice and endorsed overwhelmingly by the UN General Assembly in recent weeks, is that no state or national economy should be assisting Israel in any way from now on.Not that we have any illusions in courts, especially the international courts in service of Western Imperialism, however, the recent judgement of the International Court of Justice, UN’s highest Court, in effect, instruct all the bourgeois states across the world party to it, to impose military, trade, investment and financial sanctions on Israel. In this judgement, the International Court of Justice ruled: “all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
There is therefore not only a political case we have argued in countless demonstrations over years by hundreds of thousands of people across the country, but now also legal obligation on South Africa to act.
GIWUSA therefore reiterate its call and insists that the South African government drop its unprincipled position towards trade with Israel, and impose boycotts, divestments and sanctions. We strongly oppose the position articulated most recently in Parliament on 25 September 2024 by Minister Parks Tau. We especially insist on an immediate cessation of coal sales by the likes of Glencore and African Rainbow Minerals, as well as an end to diamonds and grape trade.
We insist that the government break diplomatic relations with Israel, as Parliament specifically mandated in November 2023. We insist that mercenary soldiers recruited to join the IDF be prosecuted, as is occasionally threatened by state officials.
No illusions in the bourgeoisie and all their institutions
But just as we have no illusions in courts, we have none whatsoever in the bourgeois states, South African and Foreign. Our faith entirely and absolutely lies in the organized power of the working class. That is the reason we call on the working class to build a mass action and coordination of these actions at an international level.
We need workers in companies trading with Israel to take actions and to fight for divestments, boycotts and sanctions in a way that correspondence with their situations and interests. We need to put these grassroot workplace organizing at the core of our Palestinian solidarity movement strategy, and to link these with communities affected by operations of those corporations as we are currently doing with Glencore mining affected communities.
These, alongside stepping up of the ongoing mass demonstrations, is the only way we are going to win our demands, and not because of any court or treacherous rhetoric of ANC bourgeois politicians, especially now that they are co-governing with rabid Zionists. To these ends GIWUSA will join two protests against the U.S. Consulate in Sandton – on October 4 and 5 – as well as the march on Parliament on October 5.
Issued by:
The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA)
For more information, contact:
Mametlwe Sebei – GIWUSA President
081 368 0706 / mametlwesebei@gmail.com
Koketso Phasha – GIWUSA Media Officer
076 046 5639
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