(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #242 - International - Palestine: Against Apartheid, fighting back, boycott! (fr, pt)

[machine translation]

The Israeli offensive in Gaza and the support of France in this operation have triggered a 
strong protest in the streets, evidence that the solidarity movement with Palestine still 
exists. To confirm the long term, including strengthening the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions 
campaign (BDS) to weaken the Israeli state. ---- Demonstrations against the Israeli 
bombardment of Gaza marked the summer news. As in 2009, the street has spoken and the 
population of working class neighborhoods have been strongly present. After the ban 
outrageous in the month of March of the anti-colonial Power, Manuel Valls recurred 
prohibiting several demonstrations in Paris, held by the organizers. ---- Revolts against 
the police took place, especially at the rally July 19 at Barbes (which of Alternative 
libertarian activists participated in parallel with the wild event having won the Sacred 
Heart and the Halles). The government wanted to prevent the protest? There have been 
several[1].

Prohibitions unprecedented, they made real political failures for PS, he tried to hide 
through a scramble of marginal drift "anti-Semitic". Support for Israel: an imperialist 
policy to deny these accusations, an important reminder that counteracts the same time a 
theory of the Semitic Alain Soral: this is not Zionism that spawned imperialism but 
Western imperialism spawned Zionism; this is not the Representative Council of Jewish 
Institutions in France (CRIF), which is all-powerful or that dictates the policy of the 
state, but the state has an interest in hearing and give moral authority to CRIF well.

The duo Valls / Holland is unapologetic Zionist, but this ideological alignment is only a 
reflection of a historical geostrategic tactic: domination of the Western world on the 
Middle East since the Sykes-Picot Agreement dated May 16, 1916, followed in 1917 the 
"Balfour declaration" for the creation of a "Jewish national home" in Palestine.

The State of Israel is a militarized entity, equipped with nuclear warheads and 
permanently on a war footing, advanced stronghold of the West in these economic and policy 
issues that are the Suez Canal and energy resources oil and gas that flooded the West for 
sixty years. It is therefore not a foreign conflict that anyone in France as the various 
reactionary argue, but the Palestinian people who pay for our lifestyles, our economic 
needs and geo-strategic alliances.

Ideological constructions fight

Remember these imperialist parameters is important to understand that unwavering support 
for Israel and the important ideological constructions of legitimacy (support the "only 
democracy in the Middle East").

The accusation of anti-Semitism makes it, to delegitimize all criticism of Israel; the 
risk for supporters of Zionism is that the street requires a shift in the current 
political alignment. However, the arguments of function less. As for the accusations 
against the progressives to attribute too much importance to this conflict (with 
comparisons of the deadliest conflicts), Alain Gresh was very responsive to these 
arguments (recalling the example of opposition movements in the Vietnam War and apartheid 
in South Africa): it is not by holding a macabre accounting that people show solidarity, 
but because a conflict may at some point express the "truth of an era"[2].

And indeed to Latin America, the struggle of the Palestinian people, the blockade and the 
wall became magnifying mirrors of North-South relations, the expression of the survival of 
the old colonial order and the emblem of domination neocolonial present. But also a symbol 
of resistance!

Similarly, treatment of the Palestinians and the words we use to talk about them echo the 
treatment and arguments against racialized populations in France: security control and 
unpunished police violence, urban segregation, discrimination, stigma Islamophobic 
(discourse on cultural and safe Muslim threat is the same everywhere in the West and 
especially in Israel). This is the side of these social determinants that are the reasons 
for the wide support of the people from colonization in Palestine long before the identity 
or religious determinants.

The repression of demonstrations has been the developer of the racist order: collective 
punishment in the Barb?s neighborhood facies arrest and conviction at trial of the young 
Mohamed S., bans except addressed to the organizers. The Left was also referred in 
particular through the indictment Alain Pojolat activist NPA for calling for the 
unauthorized demonstration.

Strengthen the BDS Campaign

Reports of oppression here are never disconnected from our imperialist policy. It is now 
in the momentum of the protests this summer, giving the means to act over duration in 
solidarity with Palestine. The international campaign for Boycott Divestment Sanctions 
(BDS[3], which is a member Libertarian Alternative) is still the best leverage to fight 
Israeli policies and the only solution to the isolation currently experienced by Palestinians.

It's not for nothing that Netanyahu called it a main current threat to Israel. BDS, by his 
actions, identifies institutional complicity with Israel and capitalists including 
compromises with the colonization of the occupied territories (including the companies 
Veolia, Sodastream, Mehadrin ...).

Active in the mobilization, the BDS campaign has been all year through meetings, rallies 
and public awareness campaigns, such as regular gatherings to Orange stores (the company 
is subject to its partnership with the Israeli company Partner Communications which 
provides the service with its network of settlements and IDF). The campaign has already 
won as victories against Agrexco company in 2012 and now accounts for the best support in 
the struggle for Palestine in France and around the world, and should be strengthened, 
particularly in poor neighborhoods and businesses .

Nicolas Pasadena (AL Montreuil)

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[1] See press AL: "The cops PS failed to muzzle the street" from July 20, 2014

[2] Alain Gresh, What Palestine Is the name? , Ties That release, 2010

[3] www.bdsfrance.org