PFLP praises direct actions for Palestine and urges further escalation
Aug 06 2014
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine praises the direct actions taken by various groups around the world to shut down the operations of the war machine assaulting the Palestinian people, and calls for increasing and escalating these actions everywhere the occupier and its supporters are present.
The Front commended the multiple direct actions around the world targeting Israeli embassies, consulates, institutions and corporations, including the 2-day occupation of an Elbit arms factory outside Birmingham, UK; the blockade of the Israeli embassy in The Hague; the shutdown of El Al’s ticket counter in Athens; popular de-shelving and removal of Israeli products in Ireland; and actions in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Albuquerque in the United States at Israeli missions and consulates, Bank Leumi, Israel Discount Bank, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin, as well as a upcoming blockade of an Israeli ZIM Ship in Oakland, California. These actions come amid a flurry of die-ins and sit-ins in parliamentary and government offices across Europe, North America and around the world, and demonstrations in Paris and elsewhere taking the streets, defying police and government repression to stand with Palestine.
Comrade Khaled Barakat said, in a message to the solidarity movements with Palestine around the world, that “These actions are part of the Palestinian, Arab and international resistance to the Israeli massacres against our people. They illustrate that the people of the world are fed up with the images they have seen for the past month – of children torn apart and innocent Palestinians besieged and bombarded. This has been the Palestinian reality for over 66 years – and the people of the world are saying, ‘Enough!’ We want to see more of these direct actions, such as occupying Israeli and U.S. embassies and consulates, shutting down war profiteers and occupation corporations, and civil disobedience actions in cities around the world. These actions make clear that Palestinians are not alone, and that the people of the world are putting their own bodies on the line because they will no longer tolerate the illegitimate occupation state’s actions.”
Barakat emphasized that the Palestinian struggle is an international struggle; as Comrade Ghassan Kanafani said, “The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.”
“The impact of these direct actions is felt in every Palestinian heart in Gaza. They are heard and felt by every Palestinian fighter in Gaza who emerges from the tunnels of resistance, that the people of conscience of the world stand with our just struggle for liberation,” said Barakat.
Barakat noted that “while the colonial and settler colonial governments of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and the European Union are engaged in an imperialist campaign to liquidate the Palestinian people and their cause, hundreds of thousands of people in these countries have taken to the streets to stand with Palestine and denounce the bloody complicity of these powers, the sponsors of the racist settler colonial project in Palestine. What drives individuals and groups to occupy an Israeli embassy or shut down an Israeli weapons factory is their deep sense of justice, and their outrage at the injustices inflicted upon the Palestinian people.”
He saluted the support of the people of Latin America, as well as the official support extended by Latin American governments, including Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, El Salvador Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador. “The people of Latin America have fought colonialism and U.S. imperialism for too long to remain silent in the face of the U.S.-sponsored war machine occupying Palestine and massacring our people,” said Barakat.
sains“The Palestinian resistance has always welcomed internationalists to fight among us, and to be an integral part of this struggle. There are countless internationals: fighters, leaders, artists, writers, journalists, who have done so and continue to do so, and we know them through their direct actions. They join the Palestinian struggle through their direct actions, in armed struggle, in demonstrations, in occupying embassies and war and occupation profiteers and putting themselves on the line alongside our people,” Barakat said.
Barakat noted that “these direct actions send a significant message also to the occupation state: that the world is watching and the people are watching – and that they are angry, and acting, and not merely observing. Occupying Israeli embassies, consulates, trade offices, and corporations everywhere in the world is an important part of boycotting and isolating the settler-colonial apartheid regime in Palestine. This kind of action is also reaching the occupier’s media and public. They can no longer count on the silence or the ignorance of the people of the world – today, after over 66 years of Zionist colonization and occupation in Palestine, it is quite clear that the world does know, and is speaking and acting to bring an end to the massacres and the crimes. The Israeli entity must learn that the world no longer can tolerate Zionism.”
