To workers, to labour activists,
To defenders of democratic rights
Unconditional, total and immediate lifting of the blockade of Gaza
Immediate end to all war measures against Gaza
The peoples and workers of the whole world have been horrified by the killing and mass destruction inflicted by Israel and its army on Gaza and the whole of the Palestinian people, unleashing a deluge of fire that lasted 51 days. The macabre tally: 2,150 dead, around 12,000 seriously injured, 20,000 homes destroyed throwing 25 percent of Gaza’s inhabitants onto the street, all basic infrastructure destroyed (schools, hospitals, factories, roads, universities, etc.), resulting in the destruction of 200,000 jobs.
The peoples and workers of the whole world do not agree that the majority of western governments, beginning with the Obama administration, should arm and support Israel, which is guilty of genuine genocide.
The workers and peoples do not agree that several governments, especially a certain number of Arab regimes in the Middle East, should serve as accomplices in this crime against humanity.
Have the Palestinian people the right to live? Because what the Palestinian people are demanding is what the peoples of the whole world are demanding: land, peace, freedom and re-establishing their unity as a nation.
On every continent, notably in Europe, in the United States, in Latin America, in the Maghreb, in the Middle East, in Japan, Pakistan, South Africa and elsewhere, powerful demonstrations bringing together tens of thousands – sometimes hundreds of thousands – of workers and youth have demanded an end to the killing, an end to the bombing, and the lifting of the blockade that has been strangling Gaza since 2006.
And while Israeli Jews were also demonstrating in their thousands in Tel Aviv to condemn the war on Gaza, hundreds and hundreds of Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide and their descendants in Europe and the United States declared:
“As Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide we unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine. (…)
Nothing can justify bombing UN shelters, homes, hospitals and universities. Nothing can justify depriving people of electricity and water. We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. (…)
“Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!”
They are right. And the international mobilisation has helped the Palestinian people, through their resistance, to force Israel to take a step back, including a partial lifting of the blockade and ending the bombing.
But the Israeli aggression against the battered people Palestinian is continuing through mass arrests, assassinations, incursions by the Israeli army, the continuation of the blockade and the confiscation of Palestinian land in order to extend the Jewish settlements, while starving and ghettoising the Palestinian populations even further. This at a time when the inhabitants of Gaza, which is completely devastated, find themselves in total destitution, deprived of a roof over their head, of food, water and electricity – in short, facing death.
The General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) and the Workers Party (PT), which in Algeria are organising the labour and popular mobilisation in defence of Gaza, solemnly appeal to all the organisations of the international labour movement, from north to south and from east to west, to all activists, to all defenders of democratic rights, to all defenders of peace and fraternity between peoples:
– Let us together demand the satisfaction of the vital aspirations of the Palestinian people,
– Let us support the unanimous aspiration of the Palestinian people: “We do not want to die a slow death.”
There can be no peace without the unconditional, total and immediate lifting of the blockade, without the rebuilding of the factories, infrastructure and homes that have been destroyed, without the unconditional re-establishment of the right to fish, without the right to have ports and an airport, without the means for hospitals and schools to operate, without the right to work, the right of smallholders to cultivate their land, the right to electricity and water…
There can be no peace without an end to the repression, without the freeing of the detainees, who include 262 children, many women and people who are ill.
We say: it is the particular responsibility of the organisations of the labour movement throughout the world to put an end to the helping hand provided by every government that supports Israel, its army, and their murderous frenzy.
On this basis, we call for every necessary initiative to be taken to achieve an end to this murderous frenzy. (14 September 2014)
Abdelmadjid Sidi Saïd
General Secretary, UGTA
Vice-President of the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity
Louisa Hanoune
General Secretary, PT
