Living in Canada, it is easy to feel powerless about the occupation of Gaza and the daily terror inflicted on Palestinians. But we have more power than we realize, as long as we can get organized.
Canadian imperialism and its political representatives explicitly support the Israeli state’s atrocities against Palestinians. The Liberals and Conservatives have exactly the same position on this, while the NDP is propping up the same Liberal government that supports Palestinian oppression.
The Canadian government does billion-dollar deals with the reactionary Israeli regime, providing weapons and resources that are used to murder Palestinians. Investment by Canadian banks, multinationals, and universities all aids this destruction.
The establishment media in Canada spreads all manner of lies and distortions when it comes to the siege of Gaza and the oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli state.
We can do something about all of this, if we organize, agitate, and mobilize.
In every school and university, mass meeting and rallies of solidarity with Palestine should be called and organized. In every workplace, we should start up discussions about these issues, including the complicity of the bosses.
We should focus around these demands:
- Both the Liberals and Conservatives should be denounced for supporting the Israeli regime’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
- The Canadian government must cut all ties and support with the Israeli state, including the arms trade.
- The capitalist media should be condemned for its lies about the Israeli occupation of Palestinians.
- High schools and universities should tell the truth about the history of the Israeli state and Canadian imperialism, and their many crimes against the Palestinians.
- Canadian universities should refuse investment and deals in the arms industry.
- None of this will happen just because we ask nicely. The government, the bosses, the capitalist media, university administrators, and high-school administrators will all try to ignore us. So we have to make them listen.
Trade unions should pass motions of solidarity with the Palestinian workers and youth—calling on the union federations to do the same. Fightback members in CUPW locals 730 and 580 have done this, a model version of their resolution can be found below.
The NDP must abandon their ‘both sides’ position and retract their support for the Liberal government. Unions must also help organize and attend local solidarity rallies, calling on their members to attend.
Workers can also mobilize and take militant action. Dockers can block arms shipments. Engineers can prevent the manufacture of weapons. Truckers can refuse to transport weapons. Media workers can stop the printing of the capitalists’ lies.
Students should pass resolutions through student unions, and join forces with academic, administrative, and other staff on campus or in school. Coordinated action—such as walkouts, occupations, and strikes—should be organized to shut down universities and schools completely.
Accompanying this mass direct action should be teach-ins that cover the real history of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and the role of Canadian imperialism.
All of us can discuss the situation with workmates, classmates, friends and family. We should collect quotes and interviews with those who are enraged by the Israeli state’s violence against the Palestinian people.
We can publish these in our own media. Send us reports, pictures and videos to reports@marxist.ca.
All of this will have a direct impact on the fight to end imperialism and free Palestine.
Above all, we need to overthrow imperialism and capitalism here at home.
Bringing about a socialist revolution in Canada—putting a workers’ government in power, with a foreign policy based on socialist internationalism—is the best way we can offer real solidarity to the Palestinian workers and youth.
For that, we need you to help us build a genuine communist movement in Canada by joining the International Marxist Tendency and getting organized as a communist.
Model Resolution to Support Palestinians
___ resolves:
- To declare its solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people against occupation and for national self-determination.
- To call on its members to mobilize and campaign – through mass direct action – against companies, banks, and institutions that aid the manufacture and delivery of arms to Israel.
- To condemn the Canadian government’s support for the Israeli state and the distortions of the mainstream media in Canada in its coverage of this conflict.
- To organize and support local rallies in solidarity with Palestine.
- To submit this motion to the national union leadership of CUPW and call on it to publicly support the Palestinian struggle and oppose Canadian imperialism’s role in the oppression of the Palestinian people.
___ notes:
- A new conflict has flared up between Israel and the Palestinian people.
- Thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed by the Israeli security forces in recent years, such as during ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in 2008-09 and ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in 2014. Before the events on 7 October, 200 Palestinians have been killed this year alone.
- Israel is actively supported by western governments, with billions in Canadian and western military equipment being used by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). The United States subsidizes Israel’s military to the tune of 3.6 billion dollars per year.
___ believes:
- This latest conflict is a direct consequence of decades of violent oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state, with the support of western imperialism, beginning with the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba in 1948.
- Recently, this oppression has been intensified by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which is the most reactionary in Israel’s history.
- Imperialist diplomacy – such as the Oslo accords – has failed. Only a mass uprising on both sides of the green line and across the Middle East can free the Palestinian people, end the occupation, and ensure equal rights for all peoples.
- It is the duty of the international movement of workers and youth to support this struggle.
For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East!
Intifada until victory!
