Joint Statement of Colectivo Emancipacion Proletaria and the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, 2 July 2020, www.thecommunists.net

 

 

 

1.             On 18 June 2020, the three deputies of FIT-U in the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires voted for a bill which opens the doors to criminalize those who protest against the Zionist state of Israel and its crimes against the Palestinian people. (*) This bill has been based on the notorious IHRA definition of “Anti-Semitism” which denounces any form of Anti-Zionism. This IHRA definition is advocated by the Israeli government and many imperialist states. It has been already used by European governments to criminalize pro-Palestinian activists. Hence, socialists and pro-Palestine activists around the world, including the BDS movement, have condemned since years the pro-Zionist IHRA definition.

 

2.             Authentic Marxism must intransigently oppose both Anti-Semitism as well as Zionism, which is inherently racist. The Colectivo Emancipacion Proletaria (CEP) and the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) call for the unrestricted right to return of all Palestinian refugees to their home land, the abolition of the Zionist state and the creation of a single democratic state in the whole of historic Palestine (“from the River to the Sea”) which will have a Palestinian majority population. We unconditionally support the Palestinian liberation struggle and stand for the defeat of the Zionist enemy. We call for the immediate abolition of all laws which discriminate and criminalize Anti-Zionism.

 

3.             The support of the Zionist bill represents an unprecedented capitulation of the parliamentary delegation of FIT-U. Unsurprisingly this has provoked an outcry by numerous activists – including many rank and file members of the parties which constitute FIT-U. When the public pressure by progressive activists became too strong, the three deputies published nine (!) days later a statement in which they announced the “rectification of their mistake”. They provided the lame excuse that they had not enough time to read the bill. This is impossible to believe. Do the three deputies with their apparatus of assistants really not read the bills on which they are voting?! And do they not even read these bills in the days after the vote?! It seems that they take the supporter base of FIT-U for fools! As a matter of fact, another left-wing deputy (from “Autodeterminación y Libertad”) voted against this bill and denounced it on the same day in public. The FIT-U at this point makes an involuntary confession, since they show that in case of "doubts" they vote together with the class enemy.

 

4.             CEP and RCIT sharply denounce the pro-Zionist capitulation of the FIT-U deputies. Supporting a pro-imperialist and pro-Apartheid bill is not “a mistake” which can be “rectified”. It is supporting the camp of the imperialist enemy. This is even more so as the deputies obviously did not consider it a mistake at all by themselves but only made a lame “self-criticism” nine days later when a huge outcry forced left them no alternative. The FIT-U vote is particularly cynical as it has taken place in the weeks when the Zionist state is preparing further annexations of the Palestinian territory in the West Bank. To give a historic analogy, it was not just a “mistake” when the social democratic deputies voted for the war budget in August 1914. It was a reformist betrayal against the international working class!

 

5.             This scandal demonstrates how much central sectors of the FIT-U leadership (the three deputies belong to the two strongest parties of this alliance – PTS and PO) has already opportunistically adapted to the pressure of the bourgeois public. We have also seen this in the past few months when the FIT-U leadership de facto capitulated to the pressure of the ruling class and supported the reactionary Lockdown policy under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic. This pro-Lockdown policy is a social-bonapartist capitulation to the anti-democratic policy of the bourgeoisie which expands the repressive state apparatus in a period of the worst crisis of the capitalist world economy. It is the quarantine and the state of siege is what ties the hands of the working class and the popular sectors that defend the Palestinian masses. The Lockdown Left is the one that sustains this attack in the world, preventing the masses from rising up against the current Zionist attack on Palestine.

 

6.             The Lockdown Left "suspended" the class struggle in the midst of a war with the bourgeoisie by tying the hands of the working class. Because today, in Argentina, the governing institution which is the real center of power is a one-person Bonapartist regime, based on the police and armed forces. The "sessions" of the parliament are only a decoration to validate with a "democratic" disguise the state of siege and the "apartheid" in the working class neighborhoods as we saw happening in Villa Azul or in working class neighborhoods of Córdoba, the attack on the Assembly of Western Mendoza resulting in the jailing of comrade Micaela. Repression and the "easy trigger" of the police are common. In Tucumán just a few days ago, the police murdered a worker in Tucumán, like the US police did with George Floyd. At the same time there is a draconic increase of the costs of living, layoffs and suspensions, etc.

 

7.             All revolutionary activists of the FIT-U should not accept the lame excuse of the three deputies for their pro-Zionist voting. Well this is not just a matter of repudiating a “wrong” vote of three legislators who pretend to have slept and just woke up to vote. We insist that they confess that they vote laws with the bourgeoisie. Time passes and the Zionist state of Israel carries out new advances in this war of extermination. This is why we propose:

 

We call on all the workers on the lists in opposition against the trade union bureaucracy, on all the student centers, structures, factories that the led and influenced by FIT-U to set up grassroots assemblies and demand that the FIT-U leadership breaks with bourgeois policy by opposing all laws which allow the state of siege and the policy of quarantine, by refuting all forms of support of Zionism, etc.! Furthermore, FIT-U must break with its electoralist policy, i.e. it must turn away from its focus on participating in parliamentary elections and concentrate instead on organizing the class struggle in the workplaces, neighborhoods and streets.

 

We propose that from such grassroots assemblies a march to the Israeli embassy should be called against the Zionist State's offensive to the West Bank and the continuation of its colonialization of Palestinian territory!

 

In these assemblies of combative workers and students we call that the struggle for the Palestinian cause should be the banner of the struggle of the workers and students movement!

 

Let's hold rallies and public meetings in defense of the Palestinian masses and against the Zionist aggression!

 

For the destruction of the Zionist state of Israel! For a revolutionary, workers and socialist Palestine!

 

All militants who still believe in the FIT-U project should act now!

 

 

 

(*) While CEP considers Israel to be a fascist state, the RCIT characterizes it as a racist settler state.

 

 

 

Colectivo Emancipacion Proletaria (Argentina, Chile)

 

Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Israel/Occupied Palestine, Yemen, Nigeria, Kenya, Russia, Britain, Germany and Austria)