Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 4 mins.)
Thousands marched recently in two cities of the Basque Country, Bilbo and Iruña/ Pamplona,1 respectively the capitals of the Bizkaia and Nafarroa2 provinces, in solidarity with the Palestinian people and with their Resistance.
And almost immediately posters could be seen calling for the same on the 11th November, but in four Basque cities, including a city in one of the provinces on the French state’s side.3
“Well that’s great but sure we do that here every second week or so,” some might say. But they’d be wrong. The marches organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, while calling for solidarity with the Palestinians and BDS4 of the ‘Israeli’ state and businesses, do not support the Resistance.
Nor do the marches organised by the main Palestine solidarity organisations in England or in Scotland. It might be pleaded that in the UK at least, people could be arrested for declaring support for a number of Palestinian resistance organisations that are on the EU “terrorist” list.5
The leadership of the Basque Patriotic Left6 does not support the resistance either, preferring to draw the Palestinians and Basques together as victims under a Gernika-Gaza initiative and even criticising the resistance along with the Zionists in a “both sides” kind of analysis.
But no law exists in these countries forbidding expression of “solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance.” The organisers of those campaign organisations don’t declare for the Resistance because a) they don’t support it or b) wish to remain tolerated by the upholders of the status quo.
IT MATTERS
Well, ok, but does it really matter? Yes, it does and it matters a lot, for the Palestinians, for others struggling against imperialism elsewhere around the world – and for us. Not supporting the Resistance leaves open the question of, for example, the Palestinian Authority.
This Vichy-like organisation headed by a corrupt Quisling sends its security force to intimidate and beat up critics and demonstrators, to arrest them and also Resistance fighters (including invading hospitals to chase down the wounded) and removes defences against IOF invasion.
The PA, despite its widely-acknowledge corruption and the contempt in which it is held by broad Palestinian society, is formally recognised as the ‘representative of the Palestinian people’ by the western imperialists and by many social-democratic parties in Europe.
It is an offence against the Palestinian people and internationalist solidarity to accept the PA as any kind of representation of the heroic Palestinian people – or even to leave the question open. Furthermore, such a stance leaves the door open to all kinds of traitors and confusion.
In our own struggles, we need to be clear who are our enemies and friends. To accept treasonous agencies as representatives of struggling people contaminates our own attitudes in struggle, confuses and undermines our thinking, clouding our vision.
BEING CLEAR AND MAKING IT CLEAR
We need to be clear – and to make it clear – that we support the Palestinian resistance in all its forms: popular, armed, trade unionist, cultural, artistic … and that we abhor collaboration and collusion with the enemy.
We can do that – and it has been done on occasion – by mobilising all who agree on a demo behind a banner celebrating the Palestinian Resistance. But how much better, if like the Basques today in Bilbao and in Iruña/ Pamplona, the whole demonstration marched behind that kind of slogan!
It might be thought that the demonstrations on 5th October would gather less than the safer Gernika-Gaza group of the official leadership of the Left Basque Patriotic movement (Otegi & co.) and other liberals but this was not the case in Bilbo anyway, on the biggest solidarity demonstration since October last year.
Two Palestinian Resistance factions, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine sent messages of thanks to the organisers and the demonstrators.
The demonstration and its theme were covered widely in Basque, Spanish, European and Latin American media, usually with photos.
Addressing the rally after the march in Bilbo on 5th October, a speaker listed the many crimes of the Zionist State and was loudly cheered when she said that only the abolition of that state could bring that career of genocidal crimes to an end.
The cheers grew louder still as she called for solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and all others fighting against imperialism and Zionism. And continued as she went on to call for a break with all states and political parties that support the Zionist State.7
The cheers might even have reached EH Bildu’s office and the leadership of the Gernika-Gaza group.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1A number of places with Basque toponymics, under Spanish colonialism, were given Spanish names.
2Also known as ‘Navarre’ and ‘Navarra’.
3There are seven provinces in the Basque Country, three on the French side of the Border (Iparralde, ‘the North Country’) and four on the Spanish side (Hegoalde, ‘the South Country’).
4Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
5https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror-groups-or-organisations–2/proscribed-terrorist-groups-or-organisations-accessible-version There is actually no universally agreed definition of ‘terrorism’ neither in objectives nor in actions but if we were to accept “use of violence to achieve a political end” then we’d had to include the chief actors fitting that definition in the world – the western imperialist states, in particular the USA and the UK!
6That was the broad movement of legal and banned organisations of revolutionary Left and independentist outlook, the movement now reformist, much reduced and fragmented under the leadership of Arnaldo Otegi and the EH Bildu party.
7That clearly includes the conservative Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) currently in coalition government in the Basque Autonomous Regional Government.
SOURCES
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