By MUNIR NASER and MARKUS SOKOL*
From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – a single democratic state
For two months now, there has been horror in Gaza. Israel broke the seven-day “pause”, but with honorable exceptions, most editorialists repeat the Zionist narrative that justifies the bombing of civilians. There are more than 15 thousand dead, 6 thousand children. For us, who signed here, of Palestinian origin, one, and of Jewish origin, the other, the children torn apart in the Gaza Strip are the same as the children torn apart in the Warsaw ghetto.
The Palestinian resistance is standing. There are successive acts of ceasefire, from the Jews of New York to the Muslims of Kerala (India), with various beliefs and without beliefs. Millions in the capitals of the world.
There are manifestos from intellectuals and artists, medical and human rights entities. On the 29th, 50 acts expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people in Brazil. On the 30th, European port unions took protest actions, the port of Marseille stopped for an hour. And on December 1st in the USA, the powerful UAW union called for a ceasefire.
UN agencies have already taken a stance, but as an institution the UN has done nothing practical. Nevertheless, it defines genocide as “the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such”. This is what Benjamin Netanyahu repeats, armed by Joe Biden, including in ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
We, who signed, asked: how is it possible to bomb civilians for two months? For us, this is an expression, there are others – hunger and misery, unemployment, the environment – of an exhausted international order, which threatens to drag humanity into the chaos of wars, the abyss.
Rosa Luxemburg, a revolutionary of Jewish descent murdered in Germany in 1919, formulated the acute dilemma “socialism or barbarism”. Nothing more current. If the revolution is delayed, traces of barbarism loom large.
It is a barbaric extermination, what we are seeing in Gaza. He comes from far away. The partition of historic Palestine began in 1917. Lord Balfour, minister of His British Majesty, the military occupier, sent a letter to the banker Rothschild promising him a “Jewish national home”, the flag of the then minority Zionism.
The final partition, at the UN in 1947, was sponsored by Harry Truman, from the USA, and Joseph Stalin, from the former USSR, interested in the Zionist enclave to manipulate the Arabs and their oil wealth. But most of the millions of traumatized Jews who left Eastern Europe in the post-war period did not go to Israel, they went to the USA, Canada, Australia, Western Europe and Latin America.
Israel did not respect the founding borders, nor the “peace agreements”. It is a State in permanent war – with the detestable deaths of civilians on all sides – to expand “safe” borders, in the face of the unacceptable expropriation and expulsion of 750 thousand Palestinians in Nakba. The state-apartheid of Israel denies Palestinians the right to return, and those from the interior, civil rights.
Today, it is clear that the “two-state” solution – Israel and the so-called Palestinian National Authority – has failed.
It is not reasonable for President Lula's government to maintain “normal” relations with a State-apartheid genocidal. It is time to escalate the blocking of military contracts, cultural agreements and commercial relations, to the breaking of diplomatic relations.
We, who signed here, started young people to fight Zionism in different situations, however, together we propose this reflection to public opinion. It is necessary to guarantee equal rights to the two peoples who lived together and, however difficult it may be, they can once again live together fraternally, without racism or oppression, in the sovereign way they decide.
We join all voices against genocide, in particular, the One Democratic State Campaign, by Palestinians and Jews such as Haidar Eid, a literature professor in Gaza, and Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian. We are together for humanitarian aid, an end to colonization, freedom for the Palestinians, for a single democratic state.
*Munir Naser is a member of Juventude Sanaúd.
* Markus Sokol is a member of the PT National Directory.
Originally published in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.
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