Workers World Party solidarity message to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

The following is the solidarity statement that Workers World Party sent to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on the 50th anniversary of that revolutionary organization’s founding on Dec. 11, 1967.

Workers World Party salutes the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on the 50th anniversary of your foundation. We honor the memory of Dr. George Habash and Abu Ali Mustafa, Ghassan Kanafani, Muhammad Al Aswad, Shadia Abu Ghazaleh and so many other comrades martyred in the cause of liberation. They are heroes and inspirations not only for the people of Palestine but for the workers and oppressed all over the world. We call for the freedom of Comrade Ahmad Saadat and all political prisoners held in the dungeons of the racist settler state in Palestine.

We condemn the Trump regime’s moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem as yet another act of war by U.S. imperialism against the Palestinian people. Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine, and Palestine must be free, from the river to the sea.

Nineteen sixty-seven was a grim time for the Palestinian and Arab people. Fifty years after the Balfour Declaration and 30 years after partition, the Zionist settler state proved its worth to its imperialist creators. The June 1967 attack, which put the entire land of Palestine and the Sinai and the Golan under Zionist rule, was exalted by the U.S. ruling class. They dreamed it would put an end to the nationalist wave unleashed by the 1952 Egyptian Revolution. The devastation wrought on Egypt and Syria by the U.S.-funded Israeli war machine shifted the balance of power in the Arab world in favor of the House of Saud and other Gulf dynasties and kept the oil wealth of Arabia flowing into the coffers of Wall Street banks and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

But amidst these grim events, the Palestinian people and their own resistance movement seized center stage. The PFLP brought the lessons of the great October socialist revolution and of revolutionary struggles in China, Vietnam and Cuba to that movement.  You identified the enemies of Palestinian liberation as the alliance of world imperialism, Israel, Zionism and Arab reaction.  You identified the working class and peasants as the mainstay of revolution and placed the Palestinian struggle squarely in the camp of the struggle of oppressed people around the world against imperialism. You stood steadfast in word and deed against all schemes to derail, divide and subdue the fight for the freedom of all of Palestine and the right of all Palestinians to return to their land.

Much has changed in the past 50 years — there have been victories and terrible defeats — but the struggle of the Palestinian people remains a focal point of the global war between oppressors and oppressed. Nothing illustrates the decay of U.S. imperialism more than its utter dependence on war and destruction in the so-called “Middle East,” including the bloody Zionist occupation of Palestine. The Trump regime, representing the most desperate faction of the U.S. ruling class, seeks wider war in the region. That is its ”peace plan.” It is part and parcel of its escalating war against people all over the world, including the working class and oppressed inside the U.S.

The importance the imperialist ruling class attaches to strengthening the Zionist occupation and its war machine must be matched by international solidarity with the people of Palestine, especially from here inside the belly of the beast. Your struggle is our struggle. We demand an end to U.S. arming and funding of the racist state of “Israel” and the removal of all U.S. military and intelligence forces from the region. We stand with you until the entire land of Palestine is liberated and every Palestinian has the right to live in every part of Palestine in peace and freedom. That will be a day of victory for workers and oppressed people everywhere.

In the words of George Habash, “The oppressed and starving of the world shall be victorious.”

Long live Palestine! Long live the PFLP! Long live international solidarity! Workers and oppressed people of the world unite!

International Department

Workers World Party