Today the world crosses a shameful and dangerous threshold.

Exactly one year after the beginning of a live-streamed genocide by Israeli forces against the Palestinians in Gaza, the industrial scale slaughter of men, women and children and the destruction of the essential conditions necessary for human existence continue apace.

That after at least 42,000 deaths and a determination of plausible genocide by the International Court of Justice, the international community has not intervened to halt the genocide speaks to the extent to which world leaders and their handmaidens in the media have enabled, legitimised and normalised it against the overwhelming opposition of ordinary people all over the globe.

From its very conception, Zionism has been a genocidal ideology concerned with ethnically cleansing or eliminating the native Palestinians. And just as freedom in South Africa could not be achieved without removing apartheid, the liberation of Palestine cannot be complete without the dismantling of the racist and violent ideology that underpins it.

Nothing can justify the wholesale murder of a population and no matter how hard its supporters may try to obfuscate and legitimise it, the people of the world must stand up and call it out as an intolerable crime against humanity and resist it however they can.

We must also vigorously oppose any attempt to undermine or remove the right to armed struggle by occupied and oppressed peoples as is the case in many jurisdictions. Not only are some governments actively assisting Israel by furnishing it with the weapons and intelligence to prosecute its genocide but they are also trying to prevent the Palestinians from defending themselves and also seeking to silence those whose conscience compels them to speak out.

This is a red line. Let us be clear that it is the natural and legally established right of any occupied people to take up arms in order to regain their freedom and their property, regardless of what any government might say.

In recent weeks we have seen how the world’s collective failure to rein in the Israeli genocide machine has seen it launch indiscriminate bombings in Lebanon with huge loss of life and limb.

It is not only the survival of the Palestinians that is at stake, but humanity as a whole. If we allow this genocide to continue and succeed, it will further encourage Israel, not to mention other governments, by sending them the message that they can annihilate populations at will without consequence. And by accepting or resigning ourselves to it, we diminish our own humanity.

[ENDS]

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