Zionism: regional expansion in pursuit of a Greater Israel

Written by: Nick G. on 19 March 2026

 

On March 17, a senior official in the Trump intelligence community resigned in protest against the war with Iran.

Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the US agency responsible for coordinating and analysing terrorism intelligence, said “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

US imperialism had its own reasons for wanting to attack the Iranian regime, concerned about its siding with the Russian and Chinese imperialists and opposing both US imperialism and Israel.

However, the reasons given by Trump for joining Israel’s surprise attack on Iran, namely, that Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity posed a direct threat to the US, has been undermined by yesterday’s Senate hearing testimony from Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence. 

In a written version of her opening statement, Gabbard said Iran's nuclear enrichment program had been "obliterated" in 2025 strikes, and that the regime had not resumed enrichment activities. She omitted that portion of her statement in her spoken testimony, explaining later in the hearing that she did so to save time.

If, as Kent suggests, it was Israel that controlled the timetable for the attack on Iran, then an examination of Israel’s game plan is in order.

Israel is a racist, genocidal, apartheid state with regional expansionist ambitions.

It was created by acts of terrorism and maintains itself through terrorism.

Its existence is based on the 1897 teachings of the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl.

Herzl defined Israel based on a promise made by God to Abraham’s descendants that they would inherit the land between the Nile and the Euphrates (Genesis 15:18-21). 

The Irgun, the Stern Gang and Haganah terrorised the British into surrendering their Mandate over Palestine, and terrorised Palestinians into fleeing the area that became the State of Israel.

But the Zionists wanted more.

The Irgun flag depicted a map, divided by a gun, with modern Israel on one side, and Jordan on the other. Both were areas sought by the Zionists.

Both were part of Herzl’s Greater Israel which includes parts of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, Turkey and Iraq. 

The dream of a Greater Israel is what drives Zionist regional expansionism.

Its chief proponents are Netanyahu, Finance Minister Smotrich (banned from travelling to Australia by the federal government in June 2025), and Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir live illegally (under international law) on lands seized from Palestinians in the West Bank. Smotrich gave a speech in 2023 at a podium that displayed a map that showed Jordan as part of Israel.

During a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 2023, Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held up a map that shows Israel stretching “from the river to the sea.” When his Likud party was formed in 1977, its original party platform read “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” (Judea and Samaria refer to the West Bank; Gaza is included in the area between the Sea and the Jordan.)

We are yet to see whether the Queensland government, which has arrested two young people for supporting the Palestinian slogan “from the river to the sea”, will also condemn Netanyahu and Australian Zionists for espousing the Zionist’s “from the sea to the river” objective.

Proponents of a Greater Israel have support from an influential section of Trump’s MAGA rightists. Mike Huckabee, who twice ran for the Presidency as a Republican candidate, was appointed Ambassador to Israel in 2025. He is a Christian Zionist and said in an interview aired mid-February that he would not disavow the belief that the Bible promised that land to Israel – even though it now encompasses all or part of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

“It would be fine if they took it all,” Huckabee said.

Zionism constitutes an on-going threat to the sovereignty of its neighbours. It provoked the war against Iran in pursuit of Greater Israel, knowing that Iran was supporting elements of the resistance movement in Palestine and in Lebanon and therefore constituted a blockage and obstacle to its further expansion. 

US imperialism’s Trump agreed with and participated in the attack. We can thank him every time we fill up our cars for petrol prices that have gone through the roof. 

Together, the political ideology of Zionism and the arrogance of the Trump administration must be fought.

Our struggles to halt the incorporation of Australia into the US empire are part of that fight.

Condemn Israeli Zionist Aggression Against Iran

 Written by: Nick G. on 19 June 2025

 

(Above;  Source https://cpiran.org/ )

One week ago, on June 13, Israel initiated military attacks on Iran.  

The attacks were described as pre-emptive strikes carried out in accordance with Israel’s right to self-defence. This was the attitude taken by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

There is no justification in international law for pre-emptive strikes.  Israel’s actions were illegal acts of unprovoked aggression, aided and abetted by its protector, US imperialism.

The Australian government must immediately declare that Australia will not join the attack on Iran, and nor will it allow Australia territory to be used by US bombers to refuel or to operate from RAAF Base Tindal near Katherine in the NT.

Wong has joined an international chorus of imperialists and their lackeys who are urging “restraint”.  All of this is directed at Iran, the victim of aggression. 

Wong would not dare urge US imperialist chieftain Trump to “exercise restraint” as he ponders whether to join the Zionists in their attacks.

There is also a chorus urging the Iranian people to overthrow the Islamic Republic “regime”.  Iranian Communists and other progressives have a proud history of struggling against the regime and have not hidden their aim of leading a mass uprising for the revolutionary overthrow of the regime. They alone will determine when the time is right to do that.

The genocidal Zionist regime has killed over 60,000 Palestinians over the past two years.

It has bombed and imposed its authority on parts of Lebanon and Syria.  It is a racist, regional expansionist and we condemn it.

Condemn Zionist aggression against Iran!
Condemn US and Australian support for Israel!
Solidarity with the people of Iran!

 

Palestine will live!

 Written by: Alice M. on 16 November 2023

 The Palestinian people’s protracted struggle for self-determination and liberation is inspiring people the world over.   

Centuries of oppression, from slavery to Palestine today, show that the oppressed will resist, organise rebellions and revolutions for freedom, national liberation and class struggle.  

Struggles against colonial, capitalist and imperialist oppression, exploitation and plunder, ebb and flow, take different forms, depending on the conditions and the relative strengths between the oppressed and their oppressors. 

But the resistance and fight for freedom can never be crushed.   Zigs zags and setbacks in struggle are learnt from and strengthen the conscious mass resistance. New generations of revolutionary fighters, steeled in the fire of protracted fight for liberation, advance the struggle to a politically higher level.

 

Every act of Zionist Israeli oppression, massacre, dispossession and genocide only strengthens the Palestinian people’s resolve to live, organise, resist and fight for liberation and freedom.

 

For every Palestinian child massacred by the fascist Israeli state hundreds of new resistance fighters are born (and rise) every day.  

 

Every Israeli massacre and brutal occupation of Palestine expands and strengthens the world wide support for Palestinians and isolates the fascist Zionist state and its US imperialist backers. 

 

Crisis for Zionist Israeli state and world imperialism

 

The barbaric brutality of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank and the resolute struggle of the courageous Palestinian people is igniting worldwide outrage and sharpening the political and social crises of capitalism and imperialism.

 

The naked genocide in Gaza, the massacres, the violent expansion of settlements and barbaric apartheid, the imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians, many of whom are children, is exposing the reality of 75 years of brutal repression and occupation by the Zionist Israeli fascist state.  

 

• Political crisis in Zionist Israel is intensifying. The colonial/capitalist state of Israel is riddled with internal colonial, class and social conflicts and irreconcilable contradictions. It is only the Zionist chauvinism and whipped up fear of Palestinians that prevents the artificially created state from imploding.  No longer is Israel’s ruling class able to conceal from the world, and its own people, 75 years of violent dispossession, brutal colonial occupation and slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank.  

 

More Israelis are questioning their government’s claims of peace and security for the Jewish people, demanding the resignation of the Netanyahu government, an end to the siege and slaughter in Gaza and an end to the expansion of Zionist settlements into the West Bank.  Some are calling for a one democratic secular state for Palestinians, Jews and Christians as the only solution to the conflict.

 

Thousands of Jews are joining global protests in solidarity with Palestinians, condemning Zionist Israel and the US.  Hundreds are occupying government and politicians’ buildings and offices chanting “Not in Our Name”, refusing to leave and getting arrested.   

 

  • 75 years of Palestinian suffering and resistance is exposing the impotence of the United Nations, under US control and domination, unable to condemn, let alone stop the Zionist state’s colonial brutality

 

• The Australian Labor government has exposed itself as a lap dog of US imperialism, complicit in Israeli genocide. Australian people from all walks of life are outraged with the subservient Labor government for refusing to support a ceasefire in Gaza.  They demand the government immediately calls for a ceasefire, an end to Israeli slaughter and for an independent foreign policy ending the subservience to US imperialism.  More parallels are being made between the dispossession of Australia’s indigenous people and the people of Palestine.  The organised working class is taking action banning Israel’s shipping lines and refusing to handle weapons bound for Israel.

 

• Massive world wide support for Palestinian liberation is widening the gulf between the masses of the people and the imperialist, capitalist and reactionary ruling classes.  Huge public pressure is forcing governments to condemn Israel and move away from western imperialism. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/6/in-tunisia-pro-palestinian-fervour-used-to-pass-stricter-laws

 

Unions, port workers and seafarers are slapping bans on Israeli shipping lines and refuse to handle weapons bound for Israel.  

 

• In the belly of the US imperialist beast, powerful mass opposition to US support for Israel is intensifying the political, social and economic crisis of that country.

 

• Amongst the people there is growing distrust of the bourgeois monopoly media peddling lies and propaganda.

 

• Israeli genocide in Gaza backed by the U.S. is exposing and isolating the US-led imperialist world order of plunder, oppression and exploitation. 

 

Worldwide the tide of anti-colonial and anti-imperialism is raising political consciousness.

 

US imperialism – main pillar of the Israeli fascist state.

 

For 75 years, since the “Nakba” catastrophe and the creation of the settler Zionist Israel state in 1948 the US has supported Israel’s violent expulsions and dispossession of Palestinians from their homes.  For 75 years US has funded and armed Israel’s brutal expansion and occupation of Palestinian territories, arming the Zionist settlers against Palestinians.   

 

For 75 years trillions of dollars of most advanced hi-tech weaponry, missiles, rockets, tanks, drones, military cyber intelligence, the colonial Israel state and its US – led western imperialist powers have been thrown against the Palestinian resistance, but still cannot crush the heroic Palestinian people’s struggle for national liberation.  

 

Without the immense financial, military, economic and political support from the U.S. the Zionist colonial state would not be able to maintain the brutal colonial occupation, expansion, repression and barbaric apartheid system in Palestine.

 

The US, and its lackeys, veto every attempt in the UN to pass even the most inconsequential and non-binding resolutions mildly criticising Zionist Israel’s horrendous crimes against the Palestinians.

 

Since 1948 the US has gifted Israel $3-$4 billion each year in military and financial aid to help maintain Israel’s violent occupation and expansion of settlements into Palestinian territories. In recent years the entire US aid to Israel has been for its military occupation and suppression of Palestinian resistance.  The IDF is heavily dependent on military aid from the US and western imperialist powers.

 

From its foundation in 1948 the Zionist Israeli state has been a vital geo-political, economic and military base for US-led western imperialism in the resources rich Middle East and West Asia region.

 

Until recently, the US has maintained its imperialist dominance in the region, rich in oil and gas reserves.  1,525 billions of gallons of still untapped significant gas reserves borders the eastern Mediterranean coast of the Gaza Strip. The West Bank sits on rich gas and oil reserves. https://english.palinfo.com/news/2017/10/21/Palestinian-oil-and-gas-wealth-under-Israel-s-control

 

However, the US is now facing challenges to its regional domination from the wealthy and powerful Arabic states and China’s expanding investments and influence in the Middle East and West Asia.

 

The increasing opposition to US imperialism by the people of the region continues to weaken the US supremacy.

 

Zionism

 

Zionism is a reactionary chauvinist ideology of colonialism, capitalism and imperialism created in 19th century Europe to establish a separate Israeli state exclusively for the Jewish people.  In 1948 the establishment of Israel in Palestine led to the brutal eviction of Palestinians from their historic homeland of hundreds of years.  Centuries of antisemitism, fuelled by the ruling classes, and the WW2 Nazi Holocaust, created fertile ground for the spread of reactionary Zionist ideology exploiting and seizing on the horrendous experiences of traumatised Jewish people.  Many progressive and communist Jews strongly opposed Zionism from its inception.  During and after WW2 powerful Zionists and US imperialists flooded Jewish communities with anti-communist and anti-Soviet propaganda.

 

Colonial Israel’s aim is to expand Israel by expelling Palestinians from Gaza and West Bank into Egypt’s Sinai desert.   https://www.scribd.com/document/681086738/Israeli-Intelligence-Ministry-Policy-Paper-on-Gaza-s-Civilian-Population-October-2023

 

In our millions we are all Palestinians

 

Despite blanket capitalist monopoly media support for Israel and the demonisation of Palestinians, ordinary people are mobilising in their millions in all corners of the world.    

 

Across Australia, from Darwin to Hobart, Perth to Sydney, in many regional centres and communities, tens of thousands join rallies calling for a ceasefire and an end to Israeli genocide and occupation.   With every intensified massacre on Gaza and West Bank the rallies swell in numbers and calls for a Free Palestine.  Palestine flags fly from people’s homes, and in some local councils.  

 

Workers and Unions in solidarity with Palestinians

Rank and file unionists are organising members, holding meetings and passing resolutions in solidarity with Palestinian unions.  Union members of AMWU, MUA, HECSU, NTEU, ANMF, CPSU, UWU, AEU and others join Palestinian solidarity rallies with their union flags.

 

The Victorian Trades Hall is proudly flying the Palestinian flag next to Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Eureka flags.

 

In Naarm (Melbourne) 400 unionists and community members blocked trucks in the Port of Melbourne carrying ZIM shipping containers for over 2 hours.  Melbourne school students are organising a walk out during school hours on 23 November, protesting the genocide of Palestinian people and calling for a ceasefire.  The school students are supported by parents and teachers

 

In Sydney hundreds of jetskiers flying Palestinian flags converged on the waters of Sydney Harbour opposing Israel ZIM shipping line and in solidarity with the Palestinians.

 

Recently over 250 rank and file members from many unions met at the Victorian Trades Hall to establish a Unionists for Palestine network.  Members of Australian and Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) addressed the meeting explaining the history and background of the 75 year-old Palestinian liberation struggle.  An APAN spokesperson and union member called for the mobilisation of the union movement in support of the Palestinian liberation struggle and Palestinian unions.  She explained the history of the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaigns and the anti-apartheid movement against South Africa.

Assistant secretaries from MUA and AMWU pledged their unions’ support for the Palestinian struggle, invoking the militant industrial actions by Australian workers and their unions during the South African anti-apartheid campaigns. 

 

Jews Against Zionism

 

More Jewish people are seeing through the Zionist and imperialist lies and propaganda.

 

More speak out and condemn the Israeli Zionist genocide, calling for a free and secular state for Palestinians, Jews, Christians and Moslems.

Several groups of young Jews, some religious, invaded and chained themselves inside the Minister for Defence, Richard Marles’ Electoral offices, demanding the Australian government withdraws economic, military and political support for Israel’s occupation and genocide.  “I condemn the use of Jewish grief and trauma as justification for committing genocide against another people.” said one of the young Jewish spokespeople during the occupation of Richard Marles’ offices.

 

For a free, democratic and secular country

 

The two state solution is not viable for either the Palestinian or Jewish people.  Palestinians have the right to return to their historic homelands and live as equals with Jews, Christians and Moslems in a secular, democratic and free Palestine.  This hope and vision for a just future for Palestinians and Jews is expressed in a popular chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”. 

 

Solidarity with Palestine

 

The Australia people can take action to assist Palestinians to end colonial and imperialist genocide and occupation

 

• Close Pine Gap and all US bases in Australia.  Pine Gap, the US controlled military intelligence base in central Australia is one of the biggest US military intelligence bases outside the US. Pine Gap military intelligence is used by the IDF in its military and surveillance operations in the genocide on Gaza, occupation and military repression of Palestinians.  The IDF and Israel’s fascist intelligence spy agencies use Pine Gap for extensive surveillance of Palestinians in occupied territories, in the precision guided missile attacks and drone strikes.  The indigenous Arrente people of Central Australia fought against the establishment of Pine Gap US military installation on their country and land.  

 

• End the US-Australia alliance – isolate and weaken US imperialism.  Demand Australia condemns the occupation and violent repression by the Zionist Israeli state.  Adopt an independent foreign policy upholding the rights of peoples to independence and self-determination.

 

• Support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign

 

• Oppose US imperialism the source of oppression, exploitation and imperialist wars

 

Power to the people!  

 

For 75 years of fascist and imperialist brutal repression and dispossession, and the Palestinian people still refuse to give up their struggle for national liberation.  They will continue to inspire the people of the world and overcome all obstacles to win their liberation and freedom.  

75 years ago, the Soviet Red Army opened the gates of Auschwitz....

Written by: Nick G. on 28 January 2020 

January 27 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz by the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front of the Soviet Red Army (above).

Over 230 Soviet soldiers, including the commander of the 472nd regiment, Col. Siemen Lvovich Besprozvanny, died in combat while liberating the Main Camp, Birkenau, Monowitz, and the city of Oświęcim. The majority of them are buried at the municipal cemetery in Oświęcim.

Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nazi Germany’s largest concentration camp and extermination camp, was actually three camps in one: a prison camp, an extermination camp, and a slave-labour camp. Between 1.1 and 1.5 million people died at Auschwitz; 90 percent of them were Jews. Also among the dead were some 19,000 Roma (Gypsies) who were held at the camp until the Nazis gassed them on July 31, 1944.  Anti-Nazi Poles constituted the second largest victim group at Auschwitz, where some 83,000 were killed or died.

Auschwitz has come to symbolize the atrocity that was the Holocaust.  It was one of numerous concentration camps set up by the Nazis after they came to power in Germany and in countries they overran during World War 2. The first camp was opened in Germany in March 1933 for political opponents of the regime (Communists, left Social Democrats and trade union organisers).

Anti-Semitism was not confined to Germany. Between 1894 and 1906 France was in turmoil over the Dreyfus Affair when a French Jew serving as a Captain in the French Army was framed on charges of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment. In Tsarist Russia, the right-wing Black Hundreds gangs conducted murderous pogroms against Jews with the connivance and protection of the authorities. The same was true of the Ukraine and Poland. During the Civil War that followed the Great October Socialist Revolution, the anti-Communist Ukrainian leader Pilsudksi was noted for the ferocity of pogroms carried out under his command. Leaders of the Polish Government told Hitler they would welcome anything he could do to rid Poland of Jews. 

Communist attitude to anti-Semitism

One national leader alone denounced anti-Semitism. That was Stalin. He had been asked by the US Jewish News Agency about anti-Semitism, and replied on January 12, 1931.  It is worth quoting the full text of his reply:

In answer to your inquiry :

National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

J. Stalin

No other leader made such a definitive, strong and wholly condemnatory statement about anti-Semitism.  Few made any statement. As the Nazi violence against Jews intensified, the Soviet paper Pravda republished the statement on November 30, 1936 in an expression of sympathy and solidarity for Hitler’s victims. The opening of the gates of Auschwitz by the Red Army in January 1945 confirmed just how apt Stalin’s use of the word “cannibalism” had been in relation to anti-Semitism.

Seventy-five years on from the liberation of Auschwitz and anti-Semitism is on the rise again. Even in Australia there are a few grubs who periodically crawl out from under whichever rock has given them shelter to heroically daub swastikas on Jewish-related artefacts and sites. But it is Poland which causes the greater concern:  since the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice Party took power in 2015, Poland has set about rewriting its story of the Holocaust to evade complicity in the extermination of Jews by Poles who supported and collaborated with Hitler. In 2017, the party reduced the number of times Polish schoolchildren would learn about the Holocaust from three to two and  outlawied the description of Auschwitz as “Polish death camps”, making it a criminal offence – reduced, after international backlash, to only a civil offence – to attribute the Nazis’ crimes to the Polish state or nation. The same government follows the standard right-wing objective of making abortions illegal and denying entry to “illegal” migrants and refugees.

Relations between Israel and Poland have deteriorated because of Poland’s actions, but a study by Israel’s Tel Aviv University Kantor Center confirms that anti-Semitic incidents world-wide spike sharply upwards when the Zionist state commits aggression against Palestinians. Zionism is the political ideology that justified the creation of a Jewish homeland at the expense of occupied Palestine, and anti-Zionism is not, and must not, be a cover for anti-Semitism. 

Historical memory is a precious thing, yet few Australian schoolchildren leave school with an appreciation of what the world owes to Stalin and the glorious Red Army. 

We remember.
 

PFLP interview with Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat

Following the massacre committed by the Zionist army in Gaza on 14 May, when Israeli occupation forces killed 61 Palestinians as they participated in the Great Return March for their right of return and to break the siege, Comrade Khaled Barakat, leftist Palestinian writer, participated in a discussion with the PFLP media committee.

“What happened in Gaza is a revolt to throw off the Israeli occupation and to break the siege that has continued for over 11 years,” said Barakat. “The popular classes in Palestine are reviving their role and claiming their cause as they witness a direct attempt by the United States, Israel and Arab reactionary regimes to liquidate the national rights of the Palestinian people.”

“The Palestinian people in Gaza have taken the responsibility of breaking the siege into their own hands,” Barakat said. “The role of the popular classes has also been represented by the wide participation of youth and women in the struggle, which has created a rich soil for the creative development of forms of struggle, from flying kites to throwing rocks to bringing back the spirit and the lessons of many intifadas, including the great intifada that was being born and developing 30 years ago.”

“The scene in Gaza, as Israeli soldiers shot live ammunition at unarmed civilians, was accompanied by a simultaneous celebration in Jerusalem of the opening of the U.S. embassy in the occupied Palestinian capital,” noted Barakat. “This move by the United States and the Trump administration is seen by Palestinians as a direct attack on their rights, particularly their rights in Jerusalem.”

“Today, the triangle of aggression confronted by the Palestinian people is the same one as it has always been – imperialism, Zionism and Arab reactionary regimes,” Barakat said. “This is manifest today in the relationship between Trump, Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman – the true ‘axis of evil’. It is in this context and against these forces that our people in Gaza are leading, for the past month and a half, these heroic and brave popular efforts under the slogan of return and breaking the siege.”

Barakat noted that “the massive popular participation that has far exceeded the number of ‘faction supporters’ has revealed the immense popular anger and resistance against the continuous siege and all of its components and accomplices, especially the dirty role of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah who have been punishing our people in Gaza in an attempt to create an internal explosion of the Strip and divide and disarm the resistance.” However, he said, “the popular classes have turned this instead into a wave of uprising against the true enemy, elevating the principles at the very roots of the Palestinian cause: return and liberation.”

“This movement reflects the the wisdom of the masses, the popular classes, who constitute the basis of the Palestinian armed and popular resistance,” Barakat said. “If you remember, the siege was supposed to be lifted in 2009, 2012, 2014, after great sacrifices and heroism from the Palestinian masses. However, after every aggression and war, the siege has become tighter and more brutal. The so-called ‘Egyptian guarantees’ that accompanied the end of each war became empty promises and Israel never honored any of them.”

Barakat noted that “our message today to the world is to expose the role of the so-called ‘international community,’ particularly the U.S. and Europe – the imperialist powers who are responsible for Zionism and colonialism in the region. We also emphasize the importance of not being misled by the Western mainstream corporate and official media, who is trying to turn the struggle over Jerusalem into a issue of competing religions and turn a massacre in Gaza into ‘clashes.’ In addition, it is important not to present a false perspective on the Palestinian cause in order to appear more acceptable or appealing to these same Western media by minimizing the principles and demands for which tens of thousands of Palestinians are marching and confronting live fire and for which Palestinians have struggled for over 70 years.”

“As there is a great deal of sacrifice, we also see a great deal of community and social solidarity and unity,” Barakat noted. “It may seem as if our peole in Gaza are fighting alone these days, but they are not. This is a general feeling that every Palestinian popular contingency has today, whether they are Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, ’48 or in exile and diaspora. However, this new wave of Palestinian popular resistance is bringing Palestinians togeher in a popular unity and not in a mere facade of official unity. The massive sentimental unity that Palestinians feel must be transformed into a material unity of action.”

“This week, for example, we’ve seen unified calls for action in almost every Palestinian community. We see spontaneous actions in which all Palestinians from different political trends are participating. So the Palestinian people are not divided and separate from one another, despite the talk of ‘division,'” Barakat said.

“What is happening in Gaza today is also a clear criticism and rebuke to the Palestinian capitalist compradors in Ramallah. It is here that we find is the essence of the Palestinian internal contradictions. 99 percent of Palestinians are in conflict with one percent of Palestinians who are trying to speak on behalf of that 99 percent while consuming and bargaining with their rights for their own narrow interests,” he noted.

“Palestinians today are facing great challenges. It is not the first time in the history of their struggle that they do so, but it is also a part of what the people of the region are experiencing – a hegemonic, intensified attack by the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia and an attempt to shift the conflict from the anti-colonial struggle between the Arab people and Israel to create a conflict between the Arab people and Iran,” Barakat said. “Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the latest effort in the attack on Iran, illustrates how the United States does not back up its own words and is happy to throw away treaties at a moment’s convenience for the interests of its rulers. Trump is not only threatening the future of the people of Iran, but is also threatening the people – not the interests of capital – in Europe and the United States.”

“In this context and because of these facts, it is absolutely necessary today to build the unified national resistance front that includes armed resistance in particular, with a unified national strategy achieved through popular participation. The free participation of the Palestinian people in the liberation struggle is both a duty and a right,” Barakat concluded. “Today, all Palestinians are asked to assume their responsibilities – and the first is to reclaim their cause from those who seek to sign deals on behalf of the Palestinian people. In order to do that we must create space for the widest Palestinian participation as well as the widest Arab and international participation and alliances.”