South African Communist Party

Sunday, 22 October 2023 

The SACP reiterates its unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people in their just struggle for the freedom of Palestine, denounces the apartheid Israeli settler state for its genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.

The apartheid Israeli regime’s decades-long impunity must end with immediate effect. Its leaders, past and present, must be held accountable for expropriating Palestinian lands, erecting illegal settlements and occupying Palestinian territories, and for their human rights violations, atrocious deeds and war crimes against the Palestinian people. 

In pledging our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people in their just struggle to end colonial and imperialist occupation, reclaim their expropriated lands, and exercise their democratic national sovereignty free from oppression, as the SACP we strongly condemn the apartheid Israeli settler state for its genocidal bombardment of Palestinians, destruction of their homes and civil infrastructure, and cutting off of access to water and electricity. 

In intensifying its 75 years of Palestinian land expropriation and occupation, human rights violations and atrocious acts against the Palestinian people, since 1948, from 7 October the apartheid Israeli settler state has killed civilians—including patients and medical professionals in healthcare facilities such as the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza which the Israeli military bombed on Thursday. 

Israel has killed Palestinian children, women and men for many years. It has now killed, and it is still killing more others, cut off access to water and electricity in Gaza, destroying their homes, roads and logistics infrastructure. The apartheid Israeli settler state has blocked humanitarian aid from flowing into Gaza while carrying out the pogrom and genocide. Besides bombarding Gaza every day now, the apartheid Israeli settler state is killing Palestinians in the West Bank as well, as it also displays its insatiable appetite for offshore Palestinian oil. 

The Israeli regime is not alone but has the automatic support of, and arms and other forms of active backing by the imperialist regime of the United States. It is also backed by numerous imperialist regimes of the European Union. The SACP denounces the United States and its allies for their support of the atrocious apartheid Israeli settler deeds. 

Amnesty International has shared damning evidence of the war crimes that the Israeli apartheid regime has committed since 7 October, including wiping out entire families in Gaza, as the regime intensified its 75 years of atrocious acts and human rights violations against the Palestinian people. In its report, the Amnesty International concludes that the horrific destruction, including attacks directed at civilians and civil infrastructure by the Israeli regime, violated international humanitarian law on each case:

Since 7 October, Israeli forces have launched thousands of air bombardments in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 3,793 people, and still killing, mostly civilians, including over 1,500 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. Approximately 12,500 have been injured and over 1,000 bodies are still trapped beneath the rubble. Israel is daily increasing the numbers by killing more people and causing injuries to more others.

In the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, at least 79 Palestinians, including 20 children, have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers amid a spike in excessive use of force by the Israeli army and an escalation in state-backed settler violence, which Amnesty International is also investigating. 

The Israeli regime has also blocked key telecommunication channels and access to important online Palestinian hubs, while the United States and Western European imperialist “news” agencies, media propaganda machinery, bombard the world with one-sided reportage in favour of the apartheid settler state.  

The SACP calls upon the world working-class movement and progressive forces in every country to intensify mass demonstrations against the atrocious apartheid Israeli settler state and its genocidal deeds. In our country, we will press ahead with democratic protest action among others for the apartheid Israeli settler state embassy to shut down and leave. We call upon our trade union movement to intensify the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activities against the apartheid Israeli regime.