“We call to put the body on the street in solidarity with the Palestinians,” the Feminist Collective said.

Nov. 12 — On Sunday, Puerto Ricans marched through the streets of San Juan to denounce the genocidal acts that the State of Israel has been carrying out incessantly from Palestine since Oct. 7.

Carrying flags of Palestine and Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans walked from the south side of the Capitol to the Federal Courthouse in Old San Juan.

People carried signs with messages such as “Free Palestine,” “Puerto Rico with Palestine,” “Stop Killing Children,” and “It’s not War, It’s Genocide,” according to journalist Laura Perez.

“The Palestinians have been victims of a genocidal bombing by the Army of the State of Israel for more over four weeks,” said Ricardo Santos Ortiz, spokesman for the Palestine Solidarity Network of Puerto Rico.

“There is a situation of humanitarian crisis and genocide. There are clear intentions of racial extermination. Therefore, we see as urgent the solidarity from the people, the entire world, and Puerto Rico, which is also a colonized and intervened country,” he said.

“Our historical reality, as an occupied and colonized people, living under the U.S. imperialist yoke, has to direct us to a clear and forceful stance in favor of the Palestinian people’s struggle,” the Feminist Collective organization said in its call to the march.

“From Puerto Rico to Palestine, we demand liberation for all oppressed peoples. We call to put the body on the street, in solidarity with the Palestinians,” it added.

Source: teleSUR

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Workers at the Spanish port of Barcelona announced their refusal to allow any ships carrying weapons to operate inside the port, rejecting the violence practiced by Israel in the occupied territories, and accusing the UN of failing to carry out its role.

The workers said in a statement to their association that it is their duty to adhere to and defend the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, at a time when the signatory countries have forgotten about it.

The statement continued: “We decided within the association not to allow ships containing war materials to operate in our port, for the sole purpose of protecting any civilian population, regardless of their location, as there is no justification for sacrificing civilians.”

The statement called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the search for peaceful solutions to conflicts, and for the UN to stop its complicit and negligent behavior in order to maintain international peace and security and defend international law.

Earlier last week, the Belgian transport workers’ unions called on their members to refuse to load or unload arms shipments being sent to Israel.

“While genocide is under way in Palestine, workers at various airports in Belgium are seeing arms shipments in the direction of the war zone,” the trade unions said in a joint statement.

A Belgian government spokesman declined to comment on whether weapons were being shipped to the region via Belgium.

The unions said that loading or unloading these weapons means contributing to supplying regimes that kill innocent people.

Source: Middle East Monitor

Over the last few days, this video clip has gone absolutely viral. Syrian Girl, a user on X (formerly Twitter), shared it with the compelling caption, “BREAKING: Israel admits Apache helicopters fired on their own civilians running from the Supernova music festival.”

Syrian Girl also shared this passage from an article in Yedioth Ahronoth, a major Israeli newspaper, that has been quoted in several other publications:

“The pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian … The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point, did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.”

Since Syrian Girl posted the tweet on 9 November, the embedded video has been viewed almost 26 million times. The tweet itself has been reposted or liked almost a quarter of a million times.

Syrian Girl’s tweet has given many the impression that this type of footage has just emerged.

In fact the Israeli army published similar footage in the middle of October, though its significance may have escaped many at the time. And while Syrian Girl only posted a 14-second clip, the video released by the Israeli military is almost three minutes long.

As The Times of Israel reported on 15 October, the army published video claiming it shows “helicopter gunships striking Hamas terrorists as they streamed across the breached border from Gaza” on 7 October.

The army video was also published by other major media outlets at the time.

It’s not clear whether the clip posted by Syrian Girl is sourced from the same longer video released by the Israeli army.

But the army video almost certainly does show Israeli helicopter pilots shooting at Israeli civilians, and possibly soldiers as well.

‘Shoot at everything’

The quote in Syrian Girl’s tweet comes from an article published on 15 October in Hebrew by Yoav Zitun, military correspondent for Ynet, the online outlet affiliated with Yedioth Ahronoth.

The full article translated into English appears below. Zitun’s article also includes the video released by the Israeli military – and that is the video at the top of this article.

Zitun does offer clear evidence that the Israeli military fired indiscriminately, targeting Palestinian fighters and Israeli civilians alike.

He cites the startling case of one Lieutenant Colonel A., the commander of Squadron 190 who around mid-morning of 7 October, “instructed the other fighters in the air to shoot at everything they see in the area of the fence, and at a certain point also attacked an IDF [Israeli army] station with trapped soldiers in order to help the fighters of Navy commando Unit 13 attack it and liberate it.”

But Zitun’s account indicates that this was not isolated.

“The air force has begun to summarize the events of the surprise attack that began the war in Gaza, and it emerges that there was a fog of war during the first hours of Black Saturday, not only for the fighters on the ground, but also for the air teams that were summoned to the skies of the western Negev,” Zitun’s article begins.

‘Difficult to distinguish’ between fighters and civilians

“After the pilots realized that inside the army stations and the settlements that were conquered, it was very difficult to distinguish between terrorists and [Israeli] soldiers or civilians, the decision was made that the first objective of the fighter helicopters and the armed Zik [Elbit Hermes 450] drones is to stop the deluge of terrorists and the murderous masses that flowed into Israeli territory through the holes in the fence,” Zitun writes.

Zitun then adds: “Twenty-eight fighter helicopters shot over the course of the day all of the ammunition in their bellies, in renewed runs to rearm. We are talking about hundreds of 30 millimeter cannon mortars (each mortar is like a hand grenade) and Hellfire missiles,” he adds.

“The frequency of fire at the thousands of terrorists was enormous at the start, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow their attacks and carefully choose the targets.”

At least one Israeli survivor has said that another Israeli woman was killed when a helicopter fired on the vehicle she was in with Palestinians and other Israelis.

Citing the Israeli military’s preliminary investigations, Zitun describes an utterly chaotic situation: “The air activity on the first day was not organized, and in the skies pilots had to improvise solutions to the complicated and unprecedented situation: much of the firing and targeting directions received from forces battling on the ground reached the pilots via phone calls or images sent by WhatsApp.”

The most bizarre element of the account in Zitun’s article is the claim that “Hamas made it more difficult for helicopter pilots and the drone operators” by using a ruse.

According to the Israeli military investigation, Zitun says, the Hamas fighters had been ordered “to march slowly towards the settlements and army stations, and inside them, and not to run under any circumstances, to make the pilots think they are Israelis.”

It is not explained why anyone would think Israelis would not run amid such a violent and chaotic situation, but according to Zitun, the army concluded that “the deception worked for a little while, until the Apache pilots understood they needed to sidestep their restrictions.”

He also says that some pilots started “on their own initiative to spray the terrorists with cannons without permission from their superiors.”

Two elements stand out here: By the military’s own admission, Israeli pilots could not distinguish clearly between Palestinian combatants and Israeli civilians but decided to open fire with massive amounts of weaponry anyway.

300 ‘targets’

Perhaps in order to preempt the obvious conclusion that Israel killed many of its own people, Zitun inserts this strange sentence: “Reflecting on the enormous number of murdered and kidnapped, the air force is convinced that without the fire support and many attacks carried out by the IDF fighter helicopter pilots on that day, the carnage would have been much greater.”

According to the air force, Zitun writes, “in the first four hours from the start of the battles, helicopters and fighter craft attacked about 300 targets, most in Israeli territory.”

Israel pilots fired at hundreds of targets on their own territory without even having a clear picture of who or what they were shooting at.

With that admission, it would be all but impossible for the Israeli military not to have killed large numbers of its own people.

Blasting away at civilian cars

In light of Zitun’s report, the video released by the Israeli military last month may show much more than Israeli officials are willing to admit.

The video released by the Israeli army shows the helicopters and perhaps drones firing away at civilian cars the identity of whose occupants cannot be determined. They may well have been Israeli civilians trying to flee the area. At one point, a car comes under fire and people pour out only to be machine-gunned by the Israeli aircraft.

It also appears far more likely that the graphic images of burned bodies distributed by Israel and its propagandists – supposed evidence of Hamas atrocities – were caused by helicopters firing heavy caliber shells or Hellfire missiles, rather than the light weapons that the Palestinian fighters were generally seen carrying.

Accumulating evidence

Over the last month, compelling testimonies and other evidence have appeared in Israeli media indicating that a large though undetermined number of Israelis were killed on and after 7 October by Israeli forces.

These accounts have been reported in English primarily by independent media, including The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss and The Grayzone.

One of the first testimonies was from Yasmin Porat, who survived the violence at Kibbutz Be’eri.

She told Israeli state radio that Palestinian fighters treated her and the other Israelis they were holding “humanely.” Israeli security forces then showed up and started a gunfight.

Porat said that the heavy fire from the Israeli side killed almost all the civilians, along with many of the Palestinian fighters.

Need for investigation

Mainstream media and Western governments have ignored the story, preferring to stick to Israel’s lurid, unsubstantiated and often outright false atrocity tales – such as the infamous claim that Hamas fighters beheaded dozens of Jewish babies.

While sometimes unjustly questioning well-documented Palestinian death tolls, media and governments have accepted without question Israel’s claim that 1,400 people were killed on or just after 7 October.

On Friday, Israel revised that death toll down to 1,200.

While there can be no doubt given the evidence and testimonies available so far that Israel killed some of its own people on and after 7 October, knowing exactly how many would require an independent investigation – something Israel will almost certainly not allow.

But a good start would be for mainstream media – and its various investigative powerhouses – to do their own examinations and test Israel’s often outlandish claims against the evidence.

As I noted in a recent Electronic Intifada livestream, they are failing miserably to do that:

Translation of Ynet article

Translation for The Electronic Intifada by David Sheen.

SOURCE: Ynet

LINK: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b111niukzt

HEADLINE: Hamas tricked Israeli helicopters, and pilots over WhatsApp | The Air Force on Day 1

SUBHEAD: The first helicopters were summoned from the north ironically, and reached the Gaza envelope about an hour after the battles began. The terrorists were instructed not to run so that from the air they will be thought of as Israelis. The pilots fired at those who crossed the fence, and even right inside the settlements. The pilots received information from the ground to their mobile phones. In four hours 300 targets were attacked | The events of Black Saturday [2023-10-7].

BYLINE: Yoav Zeitun

DATELINE: 15 October 2023

BODY: The air force has begun to summarize the events of the surprise attack that began the war in Gaza, and it emerges that there was a fog of war during the first hours of the Black Saturday, not only for the fighters on the ground, but also for the air teams that were summoned to the skies of the western Negev.

The first pair of fighter helicopters that was immediately available to the Gaza Division reached the Gaza envelope about an hour or more after the start of events, around 7:30 to 8:00, from Ramat David base in the north [SW Galilee]. This though the Apache helicopters’ parent squadrons are at the Ramon base, which is closer to the Gaza Strip. At the Ramon base they quickly understood that something odd is developing and they got a fighter helicopter in the air with the Commander of the 190 Squadron Lt. Col. A himself, arriving at the Gaza envelope at 8:32.

After the pilots realized that inside the army stations and the settlements that were conquered, it was very difficult to distinguish between terrorists and [Israeli] soldiers or civilians, the decision was made that the first objective of the fighter helicopters and the armed Zik [Elbit Hermes 450] drones is to stop the deluge of terrorists and the murderous masses that flowed into Israeli territory through the holes in the fence. Twenty-eight fighter helicopters shot over the course of the day all of the ammunition in their bellies, in renewed runs to rearm. We are talking about hundreds of 30 millimeter cannon mortars (each mortar is like a hand grenade) and Hellfire missiles. The frequency of fire at the thousands of terrorists was enormous at the start, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow their attacks and carefully choose the targets.

It turns out that the Hamas made it difficult for helicopter pilots and the drone operators: the investigation revealed that the invading forces were asked in their final briefings to march slowly towards the settlements and army stations, and inside them, and not to run under any circumstance, to make the pilots think they are Israelis. The deception worked for a considerable while, until the Apache pilots understood they needed to sidestep their restrictions. Only around 9:00 did some start on their own initiative to spray the terrorists with cannons, without permission from their superiors.

The air activity on the first day was not organized, and in the skies pilots had to improvise solutions to the complicated and unprecedented situation: much of the firing and targeting directions received from forces battling on the ground reached the pilots via phone calls or images sent by WhatsApp. Reflecting on the enormous number of murdered and kidnapped, the Air Force is convinced that without the fire support and many attacks carried out by the IDF fighter helicopter pilots on that day, the carnage would have been much greater.

Something else that helped the Air Force commanders realize the severity of the event in its early hours occurred around 10:00 AM, when the commander of Squadron 190 Lt. Col. A. got out of his helicopter at Ramon [Air Base] to rearm and refuel. He extracted the full video that the helicopter camera documented and quickly broadcast it to the IDF HQ at the Kirya [in Tel Aviv]. In less than 20 minutes he was in the air again, and with the information extracted, he instructed the other fighters in the air to shoot at everything they see in the area of the fence, and at a certain point also attacked an IDF station with trapped soldiers in order to help the fighters of Navy commando unit 13 attack it and liberate it.

In one instance, removing his own self-imposed restrictions, he shot a distance of only twenty meters from one of the houses on the kibbutz in order to cover the Deputy Commander of Division 80 that was called in from the Sinai sector and killed four terrorists in a difficult battle. According to the Air Force, in the first four hours from the start of the battles, helicopters and fighter craft attacked about 300 targets, most in Israeli territory.

On the ninth day of the war (Sunday) the Air Force is embedded in the effort to eliminate the leaders of Hamas, while preparing for its massive contribution in advance of a ground invasion. The Air Force has not related to the dilemma created by attacking targets in which Hamas leaders like Muhammad Deif and Yahya Sinwar are hiding next to Israeli hostages used as human shields.

The Air Force is working to create a new barrier between Israel and the Gaza Strip up to three kilometers wide, and to encourage the Gazans to go southward in advance of the heavy bombardment that will rain down on Gaza City and the northern towns. The phrase currently driving the Air Force is “the destruction of military capabilities, movements and authorities of the terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip that threaten Israel.” The pilots were instructed to act calmly and professionally, with organized intelligence and operational logic behind every one of the thousands of attacks carried out up to now.

Currently the air effort is invested in Gaza, but at heightened readiness for days of battle that is already unfolding in the north. The IDF explains that the Air Force is trained and equipped to deal with two fronts simultaneously, but its preference is to focus on one main theater. Thus for example the Air Force is not automatically attacking every Hezbollah anti-aircraft missile launcher that shoots a rocket at Israeli drones.

At the same time, the IDF has identified for some time a great effort by Iran to transport advanced weaponry to Hezbollah in Lebanon. According to the foreign press, it was the Air Force that in recent days attacked the Syrian airports of Aleppo and Damascus, shutting them down, along with the large weapons transports on the way to Lebanon.

Air Force Commander Major Tomer Bar spoke about the events of the first day, saying: “There are many stories of courage by soldiers on the ground. The pilots killed many terrorists and helicopters brought fighters to the battlefield while under fire. We are proud of them and of the reservists who prove the strength of the IDF and the Air Force. We are investigating every day, and improving every day.”

Regarding a ground invasion, Bar said: “We are preparing the theater for the most effective maneuvers possible, and are removing as many threats as possible from the ground and the air, in order to give the fighters operational freedom of action. At present we are focusing on the southern theater but are prepared at a high state of readiness to any development that could also occur in the north.”

Source: Electronic Intifada

 

Genocide Joe: Ceasefire now!

People around the world are demanding that the Zionist apartheid regime stop murdering Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 4,500 children.

Three hundred thousand people marched on the White House in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4. They demanded that “Genocide Joe” Biden stop the massacre being carried out by the U.S. client state of “Israel.”

This was the biggest march in defense of Palestine in U.S. history. Many Palestinian organizations helped organize it, along with the ANSWER coalition.

Activists in the Black Lives Matter movement have rallied to defend Palestine. So have Indigenous nations and organizations defending immigrants.

Marches took place the same day across the United States. Five thousand people took to the streets in Minneapolis. The Minnesota Anti-War Committee also organized a busload of people who traveled 1,400 miles to join the Washington protest.

Hundreds of thousands marched in London and other British cities for Palestine on Nov. 4. The Tory government wants to stop a demonstration in London on Nov. 11, since that’s the anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I.

As former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn pointed out, wasn’t that armistice a ceasefire? What better day to demand peace for Palestine?

Corbyn said “the Palestinian cause will never go away.” 

Thousands have also marched in Berlin and Paris. Italians are demanding a ceasefire. “Peace with Gaza” has been painted on Italian railroad passenger cars.

Thousands marched in Mexico City. They rightfully called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal.

Massive marches to stop the killing in Gaza have taken place in both Istanbul and Ankara in Türkiye. Demonstrators tried to storm the U.S. air base at Incirlik in southern Türkiye.   

Nelson Mandela supported Palestine

An estimated 2 million people marched in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. 

The 278 million people of Indonesia have been politically smothered since the CIA-orchestrated massacres of a million communists, workers and peasants in 1965-66. The mass marches for Palestine are helping to break through decades of reaction.

The people of South Africa are heart and soul with Palestine. Nelson Mandela said in 1997 that “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Marches have been organized in both Cape Town and Johannesburg. People remember how Israel supplied rifles and other military hardware, including nuclear weapons, to the old apartheid regime. 

They also remember Ruth First, a Jewish South African communist who was murdered by a bomb sent by the apartheid secret police. Thousands of Jewish people around the world have marched to demand freedom and peace in Palestine.

But in “democratic Israel,” nobody is allowed to march for peace and to stop murdering Palestinian children. Zionist police chief Yaakov Shabtai has threatened to arrest anti-war protesters and bus them to Gaza. 

On Nov. 9 people in the U.S. took to the streets again. At least 10,000 people demonstrated in New York City.

Among them were thousands of high school and college students who walked out of class earlier in the day. Struggle-La Lucha’s Bill Dores reported they marched from the New York Public Library down Fifth Avenue, across 34th Street through Herald Square, then up Eighth Avenue to the New York Times.

Hundreds of writers and journalists were sitting in there to protest the Times’ support of the war on Gaza. People then marched through Times Square back to the library,

Earlier in the day, activists at the People’s Forum took over the lobby of the BlackRock financial octopus that has assets of over $9 trillion. Among its holdings are war profiteers like Lockheed.

The world is with Palestine. Ceasefire now! Palestine will be free!

Sunday, November 12 – 2:00 p.m.

Gather at Union Square, 14 St & Broadway, Manhattan
March to Stonewall Inn

The House of Representatives voted 234-188 to censure Rashida Tlaib — its only Palestinian member — for condemning the U.S. / Israeli genocide in Gaza. Over 10,000 Palestinians have been murdered so far in Gaza by U.S.-made and U.S.-paid-for bombs and shells. Four thousand have been children.

The Nov. 7 resolution is as racist as was the expulsion of Harlem Congressperson Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in 1967. Powell had earlier been ousted from chairing the House Education and Labor committee, where he battled discrimination and fought for all poor people.

It’s reminiscent of Georgia’s state legislature refusing to seat Julian Bond in 1966 because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. Bond was among the first Black people elected to Georgia’s legislature since the bloody overthrow of Reconstruction.

What was Rashida Tlaib censured for? According to Politico, “Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) had moved to censure Tlaib for what he called ‘promoting false narratives’ about the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ attack on Israel and for ‘calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.’”

So Rashida Tlaib was punished for her opinions, just as Julian Bond was prevented from taking his legislative seat for what he said about the dirty U.S. war against Vietnam. “Freedom of speech” was never meant for the oppressed.

Tlaib’s censure follows the expulsions earlier this year of Justin Bautista-Jones and Justin Pearson, two Black members of Tennessee’s House of Representatives. The Montana House of Representatives prevented Zooey Zephyr, its only transgender member, from speaking or even entering the legislative chamber.

All these elected legislators were punished for expressing their opinions. The real “cancel culture” is capitalist reaction trying to silence any genuine opposition.

An earlier Nov. 1 vote to censure Rashida Tlaib narrowly failed. Its sponsor was the reactionary Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who believes “Jewish space lasers” caused California forest fires. 

Six days later, McCormick’s censure of Tlaib passed in revenge for the massive protests around the world in defense of the Palestinian people. Three hundred thousand people marched to the White House on Nov. 4 in a demonstration organized by many Palestinian organizations and the ANSWER coalition.

Twenty-two Democrats shamelessly voted with Republicans to censure Tlaib. Along with the one Democrat who was counted present, their votes were the margin of victory to try to silence the lone Palestinian voice in Congress. 

Refuses to censure Israeli racism

Prominent Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer refuse to condemn racist statements made by Israeli officials and media. Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichay Eliyahu called for dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza. 

Prime Minister Netanyahu ostensibly kicked Eliyahu out of the cabinet. Nobody is supposed to admit that “little Israel” has nukes. The thousands of bombs dropped on Gaza have twice the equivalent of TNT compared to the atom bomb the U.S. used to incinerate Hiroshima. 

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “total siege” on Gaza. “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed,” Gallant said. “We are fighting animals and are acting accordingly.”

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog proclaimed there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, meaning that any child or adult can be killed. 

U.S. Congressperson Brian Mast also denied that Gaza lives matter, comparing the civilians there to Nazis. Yet Democrats pulled their censure resolution of the Florida Republican. 

The Israeli daily newspaper Hayom demanded that the time had come to “send Gaza back into the Stone Age.” 

Retired Israeli general Giora Eiland said a “total war” was necessary to defeat Palestinians. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels also demanded a “total war” after the German defeat at Stalingrad.

Eiland, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, called for creating “a terrible humanitarian crisis in Gaza because this kind of pressure might be the most effective one.”  

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir doesn’t want to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza. 

This barbarism is intended to drive the Palestinian population out of Gaza as well as the West Bank. Zionist leaders want a new Nakba — Arabic for catastrophe — like what happened in 1948. “Israel” was born with 15,000 Palestinians murdered and 531 Palestinian villages destroyed.

Palestine extends from river to sea

All the big capitalist media are supporting the ruthless Zionist invasion of the Gaza ghetto. “Freedom of the press” is for those who own one.

Palestinian freedom fighters are being labeled “terrorists” just like the slave masters called Nat Turner — who led a revolt of enslaved Africans in Virginia — a “monster.”

Neither the media nor the Biden administration nor Bernie Sanders are calling for a ceasefire. Refusing a ceasefire is endorsing the continued bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in an area that’s as densely populated as New York City. 

The Zionist military and its Pentagon advisors are deliberately targeting hospitals, schools, and other shelters. Hundreds of children are guaranteed to be killed every day.

The same House of Representatives that censured Rashida Tlaib voted five days earlier to give another $14.3 billion to Israel for killing Palestinians. At the same time, $3 billion has been cut from SNAP benefits (formerly called food stamps) every month since March. 

Rashida Tlaib was censured for supposedly “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.” What’s wrong with destroying a racist apartheid state that even restricts Palestinians from traveling on certain highways? 

It’s anti-racist, not anti-Jewish, to chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” Thousands of Jewish people have demonstrated in support of Palestinians.

The people of Zimbabwe wiped racist Rhodesia off the map and took back their land. So will the people of Palestine.

Hands off Rashida Tlaib!

“Down with Yoon Suk Yeol — Workers united will never be defeated,” was one of the many chants resounding through this busy intersection in Koreatown, Los Angeles, on Nov 4. The spirited rally was organized by the Korean American Labor Solidarity Association (KALSA) in coordination with protests in South Korea sponsored by the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU).

David Yun of KALSA said: “Workers struggle anywhere in the world is a global struggle for all peoples living under capitalism. Right now, while American workers struggle for fair wages and access to health care, Congress is sending billions and billions of dollars to fund a genocide in Palestine. And for the past 78 years, South Korean workers have been living under U.S. military occupation.

“The workers’ revolution that took place in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [North Korea] resulted in Korean workers getting 8-hour work days, a standardized wage scale, two-week annual vacations, and the right to collective bargaining. This was in 1946! These are rights that workers in South Korea and America are still fighting for to this day. 

“The situation for workers in South Korea is dire,” Yun explained. “To feed their families, workers have to work multiple jobs and work over a hundred hours a week. In the past year, over 2,000 Korean workers died on the job due to unsafe working conditions and over exhaustion. That’s six workers a day! 

“The current Yoon Suk Yeol administration in South Korea fervently opposes workers interests and is offering Korea as an imperialist playground for the U.S. Empire. For this, we the people demand he step down!”

Tsukuru Fors of the Asian Pacific Nuclear-Free Peace Alliance said: “I consider it to be of paramount importance for me to express my solidarity with my Korean brothers and sisters. Japan’s decision to dump radioactive water during the month of August, the A-bomb memorial month, was a grave insult and betrayal to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a child of Hiroshima, I found that to be absolutely horrendous and sickening. 

“I want to acknowledge that under the colonization of Korea by Japan, so many Korean people suffered, and many resistance fighters were imprisoned. I also want to acknowledge that 5 million Koreans were killed in the Korean War, which no one wants to talk about in this country. 

“In the light of what’s happening in Palestine right now, I thank all of you for standing up for Palestinians. As a descendent of the colonizer Japan, it is my duty to stand with the Palestinian people and all who are victims of Imperialism and colonialism.”

Members of the ANSWER coalition and the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice also gave solidarity remarks. Maggie Vascassenno of HTC closed the afternoon picket with these words: “It is especially important now, when global capitalism is unleashing terror and repression against workers and against the global south, that the world’s progressive and working-class forces stand together in support of all those around the world that are fighting back – from Palestine to South Korea, from Venezuela to Syria. 

“Down with Yoon Suk Yeol, down with the Chaebols and their U.S. banking partners! Down with U.S. and Japanese imperialism! Long live the Korean people’s militant struggle.”

Statement by the Korean American Labor Solidarity Association (KALSA) on the occasion of Korean Confederation of Trade Unions protests.

Demand South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol resign, regain the rights that were taken away, and prevent war.

Yoon Seok-yeol’s regime is currently at war with laborers and the general populace. He prioritizes the rule of law and labor reform for the benefit of businesses, while being determined to eliminate labor unions and harm workers. He is also enthusiastic about providing deregulation and tax breaks as gifts to conglomerates and the wealthy to realize the interests of capitalists. 

Yoon Seok-yeol has been denying the basic human rights of those who oppose his regime. He has severed dialogue with labor unions, and resorted to unilateral authoritarianism and repression. Despite a continuous increase in industrial accidents and fatalities, he blatantly enforces 69-hour workweeks and openly pressures laborers to work to their deaths. He is isolating and attacking labor unions by categorizing them as corrupt entities through financial disclosures.

The size of household debt has surpassed the national GDP, and Yoon Seok-yeol is fully shifting the burden of high-interest rates, high exchange rates, and inflation onto the shoulders of laborers and the general populace. He intends to break the backs of laborers and the general populace who are already struggling with stagnant wages, rising public utility costs such as buses, subways, electricity, gas and heating, and skyrocketing prices.

As Yoon Seok-yeol openly declared that the government and businesses are a single entity, to them, the survival rights of laborers and the general populace are merely a nuisance that should be eliminated and made to disappear.

Under the Yoon Seok-yeol regime, oppressive actions and the greed of capitalists have combined to lead to the deaths of Yang Hoi-dong and Bang Young-hwan, following the earlier death of Yang Hoi-dong. Who is acting illegally, and who are the thugs here?

Yoon Seok-yeol ignores the three labor rights specified by law and supports the illegal actions of capital. He has employed the police and the National Intelligence Service to violently suppress the legitimate rights of laborers. In his speech on Armed Forces Day, he openly admitted to a sustained infringement on the rights of the people through the deprivation and oppression of the regime.

Allegiance to declining U.S. 

Yoon Seok-yeol, who has pledged allegiance to the declining United States, brought in his accomplice, Kishida, and, through U.S.-Japan cooperation in national security, threatened the Korean people and sided with the inhumane crime of discharging radioactive water from Fukushima. The people of our country had to endure the dismal fact that U.S.-Japan joint military exercises took place on the day of Takeshima, which the Japanese marked as Japan’s territory, in the East Sea.

Yoon Seok-yeol, who once gave absolution to the crimes of imperial Japan, now conceals his own heinous acts and distorts the nation’s history, fostering division and enmity. He wrongly labels the righteous anti-Japanese armed resistance as anti-communism while supporting acts of violence, territorial occupation, and the brutal collective massacres committed by Israel. Yoon Seok-yeol is nothing more than a loyal henchman of imperialism.

While Yoon Seok-yeol is serving the United States by paying tens of billions of dollars in tribute to the American imperialists and paying enormous defense expenses and purchasing weapons worth tens of billions of won, the people are swallowing dry tears as they are deprived of even their meager welfare. 

Yoon Seok-yeol, who became the pet dog of the U.S. imperialists and NATO and funneled weapons and tax money to Ukraine, which was devastated by the U.S. imperialist proxy war, is an accomplice to the U.S. imperialist war crimes.

Due to the war alliance, nuclear alliance, and ROK-U.S. alliance, the nuclear strategic assets of the U.S. nuclear fighter planes, nuclear submarines, and nuclear aircraft carriers are mobilized and frequently travel in and out of the homeland as if it were their own home, threatening nuclear war.

Yoon Seok-yeol, a descendant of the Syngman Rhee regime, which proclaimed its subordination to the U.S. imperialists by turning his country into a military base, war powder keg, and outpost for the U.S. imperialists 70 years ago through the humiliating ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty, became a slave to the nuclear-based ROK-U.S. They are trying to turn it into a battlefield. 

There is no other choice for the working people who are in a moribund state, their survival is at stake, and suffering from the threat of war.

In order to survive, we must uproot Yoon Seok-yeol, who wields fascist tyranny against the working people on the inside and becomes a loyal dog of the U.S. imperialists on the outside and goes crazy for war, and destroys the lives of the working people.