Struggle-La Lucha and the Socialist Unity Party send our deepest condolences to the Iranian government, the Iranian people, and their families and loved ones on the loss of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, H.E. Ayatollah Sayed Ebrahim Raeisi, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H.E. Dr. Hossein Amirabdollahian, and their entire accompanying delegation.

We mourn with the Iranian people and stand in solidarity with Iran.

Our immediate duty as organizations functioning in the United States is to demand that U.S. imperialism respect the sovereign rights of Iran and cease any interference, overt or covert, in the affairs of Iran and its constitutional process.  

Again, we amplify our call for an end to the sanctions in the United States.

While an investigation of the helicopter crash by Iranian officials has yet to be completed, we take special note that the cruel sanctions imposed by the United States, which also block the sales of aviation parts to Iran, may have played a contributing role in this disaster.  

This horrific tragedy took the lives not only of President Raeisi and Minister of Foreign Affairs Amirabdollahian but also Malek Rahmati, Governor of East Azerbaijan, Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem, the representative of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution to the East Azerbaijan province, as well as five crew members. East Azerbaijan Province’s Governor Malek Rahmati, and Mehdi Mousavi, the head of Raisi’s bodyguard team.

Echoing the sentiments of the Palestinian Resistance, we salute the contributions made by Iran’s president in support of the Palestinian and anti-imperialist cause and join the world community in mourning.

U.S. hands off Iran!  End the criminal sanctions now!

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• Pride 2024: Solidarity with Gaza
• Hundreds march in Philadelphia to free Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Mumia to student protesters: ‘Shake the earth’ for people of Gaza
• UCLA students for Gaza resist violent attacks by cops, Zionists
• Resist the witch hunts!
• Los Angeles marchers link arms with student protesters
• Build a movement to stop genocide from Los Angeles to Gaza!
• ‘Trump & Biden, no solution!’ Revolutionary march in San Diego
• May 1 with Baltimore students
• New Orleans celebrates diverse working class
• Twenty thousand march in New York
• Behind southern governors’ anti-union agenda
• UAW workers at Daimler Truck win big wage gains: Organize the South!
• Cisgender activists speak: Why is supporting trans rights important?
• Louisiana needs a statewide anti-Landry movement
• Conga in Cuba against Homophobia & Transphobia
• Biden, Congress stoke war on all fronts with $95.3 billion package
• Joe Biden’s ‘antisemitism’ farce
• U.S. administration fully responsible for escalation of aggression in Gaza
• PFLP: Solidarity with student protesters
• Nakba protest: Cops arrest hundreds of Palestinians and supporters in NYC
• Thousands march in NYC demanding ‘Hands off Rafah!’
• Guantánamo Peace Seminar: A global call for justice and resistance
• Never forget the U.S.-NATO bombing of China’s embassy!
• Nicaragua’s Day of National Dignity
• La privatización mata
• Por Palestina libre conga contra la Homofobia y la Transfobia en Cuba

In early April 2024, the navies of four countries—Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States—held a maritime exercise in the South China Sea. Australia’s Warramunga, Japan’s Akebono, the Philippines’ Antonio Luna, and the United States’ Mobile worked together in these waters to strengthen their joint abilities and—as they said in a joint statement—to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight and respect for maritime rights under international law.” A few weeks later, between April 22 and May 8, ships from the Philippines and the United States operated alongside Australian and French naval troops for Exercise Balikatan 2024.

For this Balikatan (“shoulder-to-shoulder”), over 16,000 troops participated in an area of the South China Sea that is outside the territorial waters of the Philippines. Alongside the navies of these nations, the Coast Guard of the Philippines took part in Exercise Balikatan. This is significant because it is the boats of the Coast Guard that most often encounter Chinese ships in these international waters, part of which are disputed between China and the Philippines. Although the official documents of these exercises do not mention China by name, they are certainly designed as part of the increasing military activity driven by the United States along China’s maritime border.

During the Balikatan exercise, the navy vessels from the Philippines and the United States jointly attacked and sank the decommissioned Philippine Navy BRP Lake Caliraya. The ship—which was made in China—had been donated to the navy by the Philippine National Oil Company in 2014. The fact that it was the only ship in the Philippines’ navy that was made in China did not go unnoticed within China. Colonel Francel Margareth Padilla-Taborlupa, a spokesperson of the armed forces of the Philippines, said that this was “purely coincidental.”

During Balikatan, the defense ministers of the four main nations met in Honolulu, Hawaii to discuss the political implications of these military exercises off the coast of China. Australia’s Richard Marles, Japan’s Kihara Minoru, the Philippines’ Gilberto Teodoro, and the United States’ Lloyd Austin met for their second meeting to discuss their collaboration in the region that they call the Indo-Pacific. It was at the edges of this meeting that the public relations teams of these ministers began to float the term “Squad” to refer to these four countries. While they did not formally announce the creation of a new bloc in East Asia, this new nickname intends to provide a de facto announcement of its existence.

From the Quad to the Squad

In 2007, the leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States met in Manila (Philippines) to establish the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad) while their militaries conducted Exercise Malabar in the Philippines Sea. The Quad did not initially include the Philippines, whose President at the time—Gloria Arroyo—was trying to improve relations between her country and China. The Quad did not develop because Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was unhappy with Washington’s growing belligerence towards Beijing. The Quad revived in 2017, once more in Manila, with a more forthright agenda to work against China’s Belt and Road ambitions in the region (which U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called “predatory economics”).

Over the course of the past two years, the United States has been frustrated with India’s discomfort with the kind of pressure campaign that the U.S. has been mounting against China and Russia. India refused to stop buying discounted Russian energy, which was a pragmatic decision during an election period (although India’s purchase of Russian energy has declined over time). When asked if India will consider being a NATO+ member, India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, said that India does not share the “NATO mentality.” India’s reluctance to join in the full-throated New Cold War against China annoyed the U.S. government, which therefore decided to set aside the Quad and assemble the Squad with the more pliant and eager government of Philippines president Bongbong Marcos. It is important to note, however, that in April, India delivered a batch of supersonic BrahMos cruise missiles to the Philippines (sold for $375 million and produced by a joint venture between arms manufacturers in India and Russia). That these missiles might be part of the new pressure campaign against China is not something buried in the fine print of the deal.

Provocations

Since its “pivot to Asia,” the United States has sought to provoke China. The U.S. trade war that began in 2018 largely fizzled out due to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its attempt to build the advanced production lines to circumvent U.S. trade restrictions (for instance, when the U.S. tried to prevent China from importing semiconductor chips, the Chinese developed their own manufacturing capacity). The U.S. attempt to make Taiwan into the frontline of its pressure campaign has not borne fruit either. The inauguration of Taiwan’s new president Lai Ching-te on May 20 brings to the helm a man who is not interested in pushing for Taiwan’s independence; only 6 percent of Taiwan’s population favors unification with China or independence, with the rest of the population satisfied with the status quo. Unable to create the necessary provocation over Taiwan, the United States has moved its gunsights to the Philippines.

While the Philippines and China dispute the status of several islands in the waters between them, these disagreements are not sufficient to drive either country to war. In April 2024, former president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte recalled that when he was president (2016-2022), “there was no quarrel. We can return to normalcy. I hope that we can stop the ruckus over there because the Americans are the ones pushing the Philippine government to go out there and find a quarrel and eventually maybe start a war.” In March, President Marcos said that he is “not poking the bear” and does not want to “provoke” China. However, the formation of the Squad two months later does indicate that the Philippines has now replaced Taiwan as the frontline state for U.S. provocations against China.

China’s vice chair of its Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia, warned against “gunboat muscles.” “Reality has shown,” he said, “that those who make deliberate provocations, stoke tensions, or support one side against another for selfish gains will ultimately only hurt themselves.”

This article was produced by Globetrotter. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

June 1 will mark five months in office for Louisiana’s far-right governor, Jeff Landry. In this short amount of time, he and the Republican supermajority state legislature have unleashed a barrage of attacks on the state’s working-class and oppressed people.

These range from greenlighting new, cruel methods of execution (such as asphyxiation by nitrogen gas) to deregulating homeowners’ insurance, making it easier for giant corporations to raise rates and drop customers. He sent the state’s National Guard to the Mexico-U.S. border in Texas, wasting three million in taxpayer dollars to further scapegoat immigrants for the problems caused by U.S. capitalism.

At this point, the anti-Landry movement has yet to fully flower, but the potential is there. Various organizations are keeping up the pressure. And the huge Palestine solidarity movement has kept people marching in the streets of the greater New Orleans area and in Baton Rouge, showing that the will to resist is strong.

Activists set up a pro-Palestine encampment in New Orleans’ Jackson Square. Tulane and Loyola students set up a joint encampment about a day later. Both encampments were violently cleared by police, but resistance has continued. 

Students and faculty at historically Black Xavier University successfully got pro-genocide U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfieled, dropped from speaking at graduation.

Concerted action works, even in Louisiana. What’s needed is a statewide movement uniting everyone who’s under attack.

HB608, the ‘trans erasure bill’

Despite having a gay brother who has spoken out against Landry’s anti-LGBTQIA+ bigotry, the governor has accelerated the attacks on our communities.

The Queer and Trans Community Action Project (QTCAP) is one organization that has led marches against Landry and showed up to protest at the legislature in Baton Rouge. They have sounded the alarm about the “trans erasure bill.” Their statement says:

“HB608, sponsored by Rep. Roger Wilder III, seeks to legally define ‘sex’ as an individual’s gender assigned at birth, functionally and knowingly erasing trans people from the law. This bill would ban trans people’s safe access to bathrooms and beds in schools, prisons/jails, and domestic violence shelters.”

The statement goes on to say that Wilder and other legislators (with Landry included) claim that this bill is supposed to protect women and girls. This assertion falls flat when we look at Landry’s budget slashing: He wants to cut funding to domestic violence shelters by $7 million.

That’s in his proposed state budget, set to go into effect on June 1. The Louisiana Illuminator Reports: “Domestic violence is one of the largest public safety issues facing Louisiana. In 2020, the state had the fifth-highest female homicide rate in the country. More than half of women victims that year were killed by an intimate partner, according to the Violence Policy Center. …

“A 2021 investigation by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor concluded the state desperately needed more shelter beds for domestic violence victims. Louisiana’s 16 shelters had a total of 389 spaces, while Louisiana had an average of 2,700 unmet requests for shelter beds every year.”

So, if Landry and company don’t really care about women’s safety, we have to look elsewhere in order to discover their motivations. To the point, on April 11 of this year, a House committee struck down a measure to gradually increase Louisiana’s ridiculously low $7.25/hour minimum wage and another measure that granted LGBTQIA+ people legal protection against workplace discrimination. (When he was campaigning, Landry told a reporter that he wants to abolish the minimum wage entirely.) 

Who could possibly benefit from these actions besides the bosses who would pay zero dollars if they could and who want to keep their ability to fire workers for any reason whatsoever?

This is one very clear reason that the right supports LGBTQIA+ discrimination on behalf of the capitalists. Respecting basic human rights cuts into the bosses profits. In addition, keeping us divided prevents us from fighting back in a united struggle.

Landry is a paper tiger

Mao Zedong famously stated that imperialism is a paper tiger – fierce-appearing but ultimately flimsy compared to the power of the masses. This was dramatically illustrated when Vietnamese peasants and workers defeated U.S. imperialist invaders, the most powerful and technologically advanced military force in history. That’s what’s possible with unity.

Likewise, Landry may be a paper tiger. His zombie government does not have a mass base. He simply outspent everyone else. Big donors wanted him. 

For example, an out-of-state billionaire, Richard “Dick” Uihlein of Illinois, paid $450,000 to flood Louisiana with Landry ads during the election. Uihlein owns packing and shipping supply company Uline, and funds far-right causes across the country. 

Apparently he thought Landry was a good investment for people like him, and he’s likely right; in month two of his governorship, Landry issued an executive order that corporations receiving tax breaks in Louisiana do not even have to meet a meager job-creation quota, which was the conventional excuse given for the already-outlandish tax breaks.

With his big-money backers, Landry just strolled into the governor’s mansion, effectively unopposed by a weak Louisiana Democratic Party that had defamed itself by supporting the abortion ban. He activated his fascist base, but the election still had record-low voter turnout. Only 35.8% of the state’s 3 million registered voters even went to the polls, with only 18% of registered voters casting their ballot for Landry.

Meanwhile, there are 4.59 million people in Louisiana, and the vast majority are not rich – far from it. The majority have a stake in fighting the attacks. We just have to figure out how to reach more workers (employed and unemployed). We need to get out in the streets, talk to people at bus stops and laundromats, and anywhere else we can find workers to build this movement. 

There’s a long road ahead, but we gotta start somewhere.

First-ever Northshore Pride

Here is one bright spot on the horizon. The Northshore (that is, the parishes north of Lake Pontchartrain and thus north of New Orleans) is going to have its first Pride parade. It is scheduled for June 1 in Mandeville, and a month of activities are planned to follow it.

This area has been a major focus of struggle in the state. The Landry-aligned, book-banning, Moms for Liberty clones – The St. Tammany Parish Library Accountability Project – caused havoc in St. Tammany. This was ground zero for the Landry movement’s street-level assault on queer and trans people. 

But throughout it all, LGBTQIA+ and other progressive community members came out in large numbers to council meetings. They showed up at libraries to defend these important public institutions. Queer and trans activist and social groups formed.

Northshore Pride is a result of all that and is hopefully a sign of things to come.

Joe Biden has engaged in some pretty abhorrent politics over the years. 

At Strom Thurmond’s 90th birthday party in 1993, Joe Biden spoke, heaping praise on the segregationist stooge. Biden’s glowing remarks reached a height when he compared Thurmond to another segregationist stooge, Robert E. Lee. 

Ole Genocide Joe did not mean this as a criticism, nor was he drawing a thoughtful parallel between the neo-Klan movement and the Confederacy. This comment was genuinely meant as a compliment. 

Thurmond had led the “Dixiecrat” charge against the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, famously filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours. The man certainly had a dogged commitment to the most pernicious racism and fascism. 

If you don’t remember that particular saga, you may remember Biden’s championing of racist mass incarceration legislation, or his glib threats of genocide against Serbia … or, last one, his insistence that “poor kids are just as bright as white kids.” Woof. 

That said, Genocide Joe Biden may have outdone himself May 7 with a right-wing tirade on national television that the Democratic Party had the nerve to frame as a “speech against antisemitism.” 

Genocide Joe began this “speech against antisemitism” with recognition of some alleged friends of the Jewish community and allies in the fight against antisemitism. In particular, Biden named Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and former Anti-Defamation League (ADL) spokesperson Abe Foxman. 

Let’s start with the esteemed speaker, Mr. Mike Johnson. Johnson is an open Christian Zionist and a proud Trump right winger. Christian Zionists support the colonization of Palestine by U.S.-backed Jewish Zionists because they believe that the full “return” of Judaism to Palestine will usher in the end of the world, where all non-Christians will be destroyed. Does this seem like a real friend to the Jewish people? 

Moving on to Hakeem Jeffries. The Democratic minority leader in the House has voted for every piece of legislation to arm Ukraine, despite neo-Nazis playing a prominent role in the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian society being deeply engulfed in fascism since the 2014 Maidan coup. As if that wasn’t enough, Jeffries has said that the U.S. should consider sending troops to Ukraine to protect those fascists. 

Last but not least, we get to Abe Foxman, a fervent Zionist spokesperson and lobbyist who formerly ran the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman is a huge supporter of the “birthright” program, which grants young Jews free trips to Palestine in order to indoctrinate them into the Zionist colonial project. Many of these young Jews from the United States are brainwashed on these trips into literal or figurative soldiers for the Zionist entity.

In 2016, Foxman attacked anti-Zionist Jew and IfNotNow founder Simone Zimmerman, taking particular aim at her new position in Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign. Foxman’s attack actually led to Zimmerman being suspended from her position just two days after she started. 

Foxman has a strange way of showing support for young Jews. The cherry on top is Foxman’s vitriolic stance against collegiate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. 

These men may be friends of Zionism, but they are certainly not friends to the Jewish community. 

Distorting history

After these insidious introductions, Biden launched into a lecture on Jewish history, and who better to speak on Judaism than an old white Catholic guy from Scranton? 

In his speech, Biden preached many inaccuracies and twisted versions of history. However, one rang out as particularly bold in its evil. 

About a third of the way through, Biden made a parallel between two events. He declared that the events of Oct. 7, 2023, were equal to the Shoah (or Holocaust) in their horror, hatred, and violence against the Jewish community. 

The events of last Oct. 7 were not an attack on Judaism. They were an attack against violent Zionist settlers who stole Palestinian land and waged a terror campaign against the Palestinian community, who the colonists themselves forced into Gaza and the West Bank. 

Many Jews live by a saying: Tikkun Olam. It is Hebrew for “heal the world.” My old rabbi opened every Friday evening or Saturday morning service with a discussion of Tikkun Olam. As a community, we asked ourselves, “How will we heal the world?” 

So it needs to be asked, how is the violent seizure of land from an Indigenous people healing the world? How are the armed Zionist settler militias that commit pogroms against the Palestinian community healing the world? How are the Zionist bombs that rain all over Gaza healing the world? 

The Jews who are staying true to the values of their community and the legacy of their ancestors’ struggles against fascism are the ones who now struggle against Zionist fascism. Those Jews are trying to heal the world. They are trying to heal the infected wound that is the state of “Israel.” 

So for Joe Biden to assert that resistance against vicious settlers, settlers who have really replaced their Judaism with a form of fascism, is not only an insult to living Jews but to all our ancestors who struggled against monarchism and fascism in Europe. 

Lucky for us, Genocide Joe did not stop there. He took it all one step further. When discussing the recent pro-Palestine protests and encampments at colleges across the United States, Biden again drew a comparison to the Shoah. 

Apparently, 19-year-olds protesting against apartheid are as serious a threat to the Jewish community as the policies of Hitler. This is a pretty wild comparison considering that 97% of pro-Palestine encampments did not even cause “serious damage,” according to a study by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a nonprofit. 

The study analyzed 553 campus demonstrations between April 18 and May 3 of this year. It found that fewer than 20 resulted in any serious interpersonal violence or property damage. So, we are supposed to believe that several hundred relatively tame protests against apartheid are equivalent to the systematic industrialized murder of millions of Jews, Roma people, communists, LGBTQIA+ people, Slavs, and others? Really? 

Comparing the two is at best a trivialization of the Holocaust, and at worst – outright denial. 

Joe Biden’s speech didn’t have anything to do with antisemitism. It was just another despicable chapter in the propaganda war against the Palestinian liberation struggle disguised as an overture to the Jewish community. The spectacle was evil beyond evil, and not a word of it should be believed by Jews or anyone else. 

Free Palestine!

Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist in Baltimore.

Protest Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates
Friday, 5/17 (lunch hour) 12 to 1 pm
At 120 East Baltimore Street

Demand he end support of deadly exchanges between the Baltimore Police Department and the Israeli Occupation Forces known as the Israeli Defense Forces.

Also join with families to demand justice for Duryea Green and Tyrone West.

Not only is Ivan Bates a supporter of deadly exchanges between the Baltimore Police Department and Israeli death squads, he holds a unique power to win justice for the families of Duryea Green and Tyrone West.

He can make important decisions for Baltimore City: sever ties with Israeli death squads, free Duryea Green, and prosecute the killer cops who killed Tyrone West.

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You can also write checks to Solidarity Center (earmark for March)

Send to 703 E. 37th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218

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Havana, May 11 — The Cuban Conga Against Homophobia and Transphobia took its message of “Love is the law” to the central avenues of the capital’s Vedado neighborhood, along with demands for a free Palestine and against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Representatives of Cuban LGBTQIA+ activism and friends from other countries joined the parade that called for “All rights for all people,” convened by the National Center for Sexual Education (Cenesex) from May 3 to 18 within the framework of the Cuban Days Against Homophobia and Transphobia.

Cuba encourages the effective exercise of the sexual rights of LGBTQIA+ people and the combination of academic, cultural, sexual education, and community participation activities that promote that purpose during these days.

In recent statements to the “Mesa Redonda” program on Cuban television, the director of Cenesex, Mariela Castro Espín, highlighted the need to continue making visible the forms of violence that transgender people and their families experience.

She underlined the purpose of Cenesex to provide tools against different forms of discrimination and under the premise that love is the law, endorsed in the Constitution and the Cuban Families Code.

In that sense, she pointed out the urgency of increasing the communication effort of the country’s institutions to achieve higher levels of understanding, learning, and acceptance in relation to gender identity and sexual preferences within families and society.

Likewise, she drew attention to the existence in the LGTBQIA+ community of revolutionary activism in defense of popular causes in the midst of the active imperialist media crusade that stimulates rejection and discrimination against homosexual and transgender people.

Translated by Melinda Butterfield

Source: Granma

Thousands of people marched in Brooklyn, New York, on May 11, to commemorate the 76th anniversary of the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from their homes. Called the Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe” — by Palestinians, the 1948 massacres allowed Zionists to set up their apartheid state of Israel.

Over 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed and 15,000 Palestinians were killed during the Nakba. At least 110 Palestinians in Deir Yassin village were murdered on April 9, 1948, by the Irgun and Lehi terrorist gangs. Zionists threw bodies down wells.

Seventy-six years later, Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Genocide Joe Biden have killed over 30,000 children, women and men in Gaza. Hundreds more have been slain on the West Bank by Zionist settlers, cops and soldiers.

It was these war crimes that were protested by thousands of people who came to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The basketball arena is named for the Barclays Bank, British loan sharks with $2 trillion in assets whose business was jump started by slavery. With billions invested in arms companies, Barclays now profits off genocide in Palestine.

The rally was called by Palestinian Assembly for Liberation – Al Awda: the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PAL-Awda) and supported by the Shut It Down for Palestine Coalition.

Speakers included representatives of PAL-Awda, the Palestinian Youth Movement, American Muslims for Palestine, The People’s Forum, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Raja Abdulhaq, co-founder of the Quds News Network and former director of the Islamic Leadership Council.

Even as the rally was beginning, helmeted police charged into the crowd to seize an organizer holding a bullhorn and another protester. That’s freedom of speech in the capital of capitalism.

Hundreds of cops wearing helmets and other riot gear threatened protesters. Prison buses were lined up on Flatbush Avenue along with dozens of police vehicles.

After the rally, people began to march, with cops trying to block them and force them off the streets. Hundreds attempted to march to Manhattan, with many arrested on the Manhattan Bridge. Even a media photographer was busted. The bridge was shut down for hours. 

Other contingents marched through the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. Police arrested 20 or more protesters on Myrtle Avenue. Many residents and shoppers greeted the marchers.

Around 200 people were arrested in total. Police were obviously seeking to bust such a large number in order to try to stop the Palestine solidarity movement.

So far nearly 3,000 people have been arrested across the United States with dozens of university encampments raided. None of these attacks will stop the movement for Palestinian freedom.

The zionist army is drowning in the quagmire of Gaza and paying the price for Netanyahu’s narrow political interests.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) holds the U.S. administration and the international community fully responsible for the continued closure of crossings, intensifying shelling in various areas of the Gaza Strip, and forcing refugees once again to flee to unsafe areas under bombardment and gunfire.

The Front emphasizes that the recent statements by U.S. officials regarding the occupation’s operations in Rafah confirm high-level coordination between the U.S. administration and the zionist entity, especially regarding the plan to occupy the Rafah crossing and close the crossings, exacerbating the humanitarian situation as a means of pressure on the resistance.

The Front warns of the catastrophic consequences of the continued closure of crossings, especially the Rafah crossing, amid severe shortages of relief supplies and medical supplies due to the non-entry of relief convoys into the Strip for several days.

The Front affirms that the return of the zionist army to invade areas it had previously invaded, such as Jabalia and Zaytoun, despite claiming to have cleared them of resistance, indicates disagreements between the military and political levels. This was expressed by chief of staff of the zionist army, Halevi, when he repeatedly interpreted “the army’s return to work in places where work had been done due to the lack of any political horizon,” confirming that the zionist army is drowning in the quagmire of Gaza, suffering severe losses and failing to achieve any field accomplishments on the ground, and that it is paying the price for Netanyahu’s narrow political interests.

The Front also warns of the deceitful methods practiced by the occupation to cover its upcoming crimes in Rafah, when it classified neighborhoods in the center of Rafah city as the Shaboura and Yabna Camps and included them within the areas located east of the city that must be evacuated, which is a prelude to committing massacres against the citizens and displaced in these neighborhoods.

The Front concluded its statement by affirming that the moment of truth is approaching for the war criminal Netanyahu, his war council gang and his defeated army; they are on the verge of a strategic defeat drawn by our heroic resistance fighters in various confrontation axes from the far north of the Strip to its south, with its other landmarks and details.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Central Media Department
May 12, 2024

Source: Resistance News Network

Join us this year for the 6th Annual Queer Liberation March for Black, Brown, Queer, Trans, Gender Nonconforming, and Nonbinary Youth and Against War and Genocide