The world is moving for Gaza

The Madleen sailboat, featuring Rima Hassan and Greta Thunberg, succeeded in revealing the unacceptable and shattering the silence. The actions of the CGT dockers of Fos, followed by those in the ports of Genoa and Antwerp, and elsewhere, revealed to millions of Europeans that our countries are indeed supplying weapons to the far-right Israeli government. At the same time, they demonstrated in action the path toward the suspension of free trade and cooperation treaties. Veterans for Peace and a coalition of 45 religious and humanitarian organizations took turns in front of the United States mission to the UN, eating less than 205 calories a day, like the inhabitants of Gaza. So many acts, so many demonstrations, so many addresses of resistance. So many reminders of international law. So many stones thrown into the machinery of organized annihilation.

The solidarity movement against the piracy of the Madleen represents a revival of a movement in which young people are the majority . In all European cities, the popular movement is united with Gaza . French trade union organizations are now taking their part with a joint call for solidarity. And the day of mobilization on June 21 in front of the Paris Air Show is transformed into an anti-war day and against the exhibition of Israeli weapons, the very weapons that kill the children of Gaza and destroy homes and farms in the West Bank.

A global march to lift the blockade is now underway. From European cities, Algiers, Tunis, Rabat, Cairo, and many other places, processions are forming towards Gaza.

As during the struggles against apartheid in South Africa or for the liberation of Vietnam, the global movement to end the genocide of Gazans and the erasure of the Palestinian people is underway. European institutions, the Macronist government, and the UN international conference opening in a few hours will not be able to ignore it.

The silence is broken . The unacceptable is exposed to the light of day . The narrative of the dominants collapses under the weight of the unspeakable, the deaths, the destruction, the desire to annihilate an entire people. When an army deploys five ships to board a frail unarmed sailboat with twelve peace activists on board, it is difficult to conclude that this is a sign of strength. By acting like a terrorist state in international waters, the Israeli power flouts international law while claiming to have violated it by maintaining the blockade of Gaza. Let us remember that the blockade does not date from October 7, 2023, but from… June 2007.

Like all the ships launched as part of the "Freedom Flotilla," while it didn't reach Gaza, the Madleen did more. It raised awareness of the attempt to erase the Palestinian enclave from world maps. It couldn't distribute the food supplies that the residents of Catania had hoarded there. It did more. It issued a resounding appeal, changing schedules in chancelleries while building new bridges of solidarity with the Palestinian people, who find strength and comfort there.

A sailboat, European dockers, large and young demonstrations, union calls, actions for justice and peace in Tel Aviv and New York, three days against the presence of Israeli and other death machines at the Paris Air Show, patrols and marches on Gaza, it is another vision of the world that is taking shape, a world to build together, a common world.

Gaza has become a proper noun that circulates from mouth to mouth, from placards to banners, from conferences to rallies and marches. Gaza is becoming much more than a besieged territory. It is becoming the symbol of the methodical construction of Western dominant powers thirsting for geostrategic positions, resources, and territories, while the peoples of the Global South stubbornly refuse to be humiliated, dispossessed, trampled, denied a future. With them, let us join forces for a humane globality.

From everywhere, people, the worlds of work and creation, and young people are crying out against the predators who preempt resources, territories, and the labor force of children, women, and men to inflate their dividends and feed tax havens.

Gaza is one of the laboratories , a tipping point into the inhuman, integrated into the strategy of the colonialist and capitalist West with its diplomatic, media and military apparatuses at the service of the economy of violence.

Gaza reveals the maneuvers of Western powers that have destroyed labor and progressive forces in the Arab world in favor of Islamist fundamentalism. They did the same in Palestine: they built and financed Hamas to weaken and prevent Yasser Arafat. The inhumanity of Israeli leaders toward their country's hostages leaves them cold. They maintain this pretext to continually bomb without making an effort to free them alive. It is the Israeli people they mistreat and deceive. Even better. To combat Hamas's military Islamism, they create from scratch and finance new Islamist militias close to Daesh. Criminal cynicism to maintain the existing order is their trademark.

The current international solidarity movement is tearing away the veil of this political continuity, of this political order that nationalists and the extreme right are calling for.

The global movement for justice and the rule of law is very good news. It is full of the common world that is searching for itself. We are part of it.