Palestine must be free!

We are here for the fifth Kurdistan Solidarity Network (KSN) Gathering.

Almost a year has passed since Israel intensified the 76-year long genocide against Palestine into the brutal violence that has marked the last year. The number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons doubled within the first few weeks of this escalation. Military and settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank is at the highest rate for more than twenty years. More than a third of buildings in Gaza were destroyed in the first five months following 7 October. And now, Israel has escalated its aggression across the region, invading Lebanon. The value given to human life by the British state, alongside its main allies, is sorely biased. The official number of Palestinians killed in the last year stands at 41,700 at the time of writing, but The Lancet, a prestigious international journal, suggests that this is probably a severe underestimate, with the number likely reaching closer towards 186,000 due to the number of indirect deaths caused by the war. This scale of suffering is devastating, incomprehensible, and something willed into action by colonial powers.

We condemn the genocide in the strongest possible terms. It is the culmination of the apartheid system, of the occupation, of the forced dispossession of Palestinian land and identity, and the layers of military, political, and economic imperialism that has allowed this to continue without consequence from global powers.

The UK must stop arming Israel. However, the British state will never do this from a place of compassion or justice; the only way this can be achieved is through force and popular organising. Despite intensive Zionist propaganda against the population of this country, millions of people support the Palestinian struggle for freedom and demand an end to the occupation. We join their call for participation in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, for direct action against complicit companies, and for all forms of organisation and solidarity guided by a strong politics of internationalism. We believe it is the grassroots resistance across the world, led by the anti-colonial peoples’ struggles, that can shift the balance of power. Not the occupiers and demagogic state leaders that seek to capitalise on regional and international conflict for their own benefit.

The Kurdish and Palestinian struggles for freedom have a shared history; from the participation in the Beqaa Valley training camps by the PKK, who fought shoulder to shoulder with Palestinians against Israel, to Leila Khaled’s visit to Leyla Güven in which Khaled, the PFLP revolutionary, sent strength and solidarity to the Kurdish political prisoner and member of Turkish parliament during her hunger strike. Despite attempts to co-opt each movement from oppositional and conflictual positions in the axes of world powers, the two struggles remain those of the people, against US-led capitalist forces and regional occupations and aggression led by Israel and Turkey.

We are inspired by the steadfastness and resistance that continues to burn in the heart of the Palestinians, in the camps, villages, and cities. We, too, vow to work as internationalists until all people, including the people of Palestine and Kurdistan, can lead a free life.