LCP: Raise the flag of Palestine higher than ever before
We publish an unofficial translation of a statement of the National Commission of the League of Poor Peasants of Brazil (LCP).
Raise the flag of Palestine higher than ever before
Defend the political and military organizations of its heroic National Resistance without any cowardly reservations
The Leagues of Poor Peasants of Brazil, by decision of principle, in all the struggles it participates in, as well as in all its areas of work, in addition to its own flag already raises and waves in the wind the flag of the Palestinian Nation.
But today, the LCP calls on all comrades, leaders, militants, masses and supporters to raise the banner of the Palestinian National Resistance higher than ever! And we extend this call to all the serious movements of the peasant struggle in Brazil, whether large or small, new or old, which are directly involved in the struggle to conquer the land and destroy the large landowners or which support the demands of our brave peasantry, to do the same.
Imperialism, especially US imperialism and Zionist Israel, in the face of the advance of the heroic Palestinian National Resistance, cowardly committed the most barbaric war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes that the new generations had neither seen nor experienced, but which are by no means new to the Yankee sole hegemonic imperialist superpower (US) and its reactionary dogs and henchmen. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the US has used its Monroe Doctrine of “America for Americans” as a brazen pretext to intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American countries and invade them, as well as after World War II, when it assumed hegemony in the capitalist world and launched its anti-communist Cold War strategy to try to stop and destroy the growing national liberation movement and provoke the socialist Soviet Union and People’s China and other countries of people’s democracy into a new world war. The act of dropping the first two atomic bombs on Japan, already militarily defeated, on its cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in a single day, murdering more than 200,000 civilians and leaving thousands more dead and disabled, as well as terrible illnesses for the following generations, was nothing else but its intention to intimidate the democratic and socialist world and the masses of its own country and the other capitalist countries. Although the workers have suffered heavy defeats with the destruction of the socialist regimes in the world, which did not happen without a hard struggle of resistance by the popular masses, they were temporary defeats. There is no definitive defeat for the proletariat, the class struggle and resistance against colonial/semicolonial domination has never stopped. The “best possible world” promised by the imperialists is only this world of oppression and exploitation of the working masses and the plundering of the nations dominated by them, which are the vast majority of countries and where the immense and overwhelming majority of the Earth’s population live.
As FEPAL (the Palestinian Arab Federation of Brazil) very rightly pointed out in an article published in “Plantão Palestina” in the newspaper A Nova Democracia, the genocide committed in Gaza by Zionists and imperialists is already PROPORTIONALLY GREATER THAN THAT PERFORMED BY THE NAZIS in World War II. On Gaza, a small strip of land with one of the highest population densities in the world, more than the equivalent of the two bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have already been dropped. In Gaza, the bloodthirsty Zionists murder civilians, the elderly, women and children; they arrest, kidnap and murder doctors and journalists; they destroy homes, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, buildings, water supplies, power stations, crops, boats and roads. The Zionists’ greed follows the motto of Japanese fascism in Korea and China: “kill everyone, steal everything, destroy everything“. Speaking of which, you should know that the Zionists even rob the bodies of dead Palestinians: Israel is the world champion in human organ transplants!!!
But they can no longer win as they did before!
The heroic Palestinian National Resistance, its political and military organizations are deeply rooted in the masses of its people and the Arab masses of the region and the world, as much as its famous tunnels, which are a fabulous military strategy against oppressors and foreign occupying forces, used by the Chinese people in their triumphant war against the Japanese invader, and by the Vietnamese people in their victorious war of liberation against the French, Japanese and North American (damn Yankees) invaders, both glorious wars that lasted more than two decades of armed struggle. But just as in these wars, in the heroic Palestinian National Resistance the relevant aspect is the support and participation of the masses, which is why they counterattack, ambush, destroy tanks, bomb Zionist-Nazi Israel, show their moral superiority in dealing with prisoners of war (while the prisoners freed by the Palestinians are grateful for the treatment, on the other side there are reports of torture and all sorts of abuses) and, gloriously, inch by inch, they are defeating the beast. Long live Palestine and its heroic people!
Like the Brazilian peasants, the Palestinians are fighting for their stolen land
In 2009, Brazilian cartoonist and illustrator Carlos Latuff, of Lebanese descent and a supporter of the Palestinian cause, visited the revolutionary areas organized and run by the LCP in Rondônia. He noted that, like the Palestinian National Resistance, we are treated as violent, bandits, terrorists, etc., by the press monopolies (the corporations that own the media and press: TV, radio, newspapers and the Internet), by the parties of the right, center and electoral opportunist ‘left’, by the extreme right, by the large estates, by the big bourgeoisie and imperialism. He also noted that in our revolutionary areas, where we had conquered the land, we were producing and continuing to resist against the official gunmen (police forces of the old state) and the traditional gunmen of henchmen and paramilitaries, as well as against the absurd persecutions of the corrupt justice system sold out to the big landlords. As well as beautiful illustrations, he made a revealing definition, saying that “THE PEASANTS OF RONDÔNIA ARE THE PALESTINIANS OF BRAZIL”.
It’s true and not just the peasants of Rondônia, all the popular masses fighting for land “are the Palestinians of Brazil”! All the indigenous nations, the quilombolas, those affected by dams, mining and the cultivation of homogeneous forests and the more than 50 million Brazilian peasants, because they are the legitimate owners of the land, but in order to be able to live and work on it, have to wage war against the occupying forces, here the large estates and the big bourgeoisie serving imperialism, and in Palestine imperialism itself in the guise of the racist and criminal Zionist State of Israel, we can say that yes, WE ARE THE PALESTINIANS OF BRAZIL!
It is a lie that the Zionist occupation of Palestine is religiously motivated
This “war” is not a religious one between Jews and Muslims. The imperialists, their press and the false prophets who enrich themselves by manipulating and abusing people’s religious faith, try to cover up the Israel-Palestine question as an millennia-old religious war. They lie shamelessly! This is a war by the Palestinian people for their right to self-determination, for their country, their territory, their nation, their homeland and their freedom against a foreign occupying force, colonialist and Nazi Zionist Israel. Zionism is a movement of European Jews, fundamentally white, right-wing and extreme right-wing and wealthy (big bourgeoisie: bankers, merchants and industrialists and their executive servants, administrators, people from the top business and state bureaucracy). They have nothing and never had anything to do with the millions of poor people of Semitic origin, not only Jews, but also Christians (Catholics and Protestants) and even Muslims, refugees from the decadent Ottoman Empire (Turkish Empire), who were barbarously persecuted in Europe, just as the indigenous, black and northeastern people still are in Brazil, or the Africans, Arabs and Turks in Europe today, or the Latin Americans (from Mexico and the countries of Central and South America) in the United States. And it wasn’t just the Tsarist Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the fanatical Hitler and his Nazi regime that persecuted poor Jews. In practically all imperialist countries there was discrimination and persecution, especially after the crises of capitalism in the 20th century, whose disputes between the powers led to the two great imperialist wars.
In Palestine today, whether its inhabitants are religiously Jewish Palestinians, Christian Palestinians or non-believing Palestinians, they are just as persecuted and segregated as Muslim Palestinians. Their land is stolen to build colonies for Israelis and large imperialist enterprises. Palestinians have no right to anything.
Ultimately, the Zionist and imperialist state of Israel is financed, armed and directed by Yankee imperialism, with the aim of preventing a real revolution in the world’s most oil-rich region. The United States has no problem with the treacherous kings and feudal lords, “dictators” (as they are used to accusing their opponents) of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, etc.
That’s why, like the struggle for land in Brazil, like the Agrarian Revolution, the national resistance struggle in Palestine is an anti-imperialist struggle. It has absolutely nothing to do with religion, as the reactionaries lie. Nor is it an ancient war, dating back to biblical times, as the false prophets or intellectuals would have it. It is a war of national liberation for the Palestinian people as part of the struggle of the Arab peoples, most of whom are subjugated by the puppet regimes of imperialism and colonialism from the days of Yankee hegemony. And the occupation of Palestine by Zionism was only carried out because of the betrayal of the Palestinian landowners and feudal lords, who were licking their chops in agreements with British imperialism at the time Zionism invaded Palestine. We and the Palestinians are brothers against the same enemies.
Fight against captivity
Since the creation of the State of Israel and the expansion of the Zionist colonial occupation, the Gaza Strip, the heart of the Palestinian National Resistance, borders Egypt to the south, where passage is controlled by the Egyptian state, which is subordinate to the United States-Israel, along the entire east and north surrounded by Israel and to the west the Mediterranean Sea, whose Palestinian territorial waters are controlled by Israel. The Gaza Strip is completely surrounded and Palestinians can only cross at certain points, undergoing humiliating searches and being cursed at for being “Arabs”. The imperialist Zionist occupation forces are constantly arresting, torturing and murdering Palestinians. And in the heaviest work within the territory occupied and controlled by the Zionist entity Israel, whether in agriculture, the construction industry or service sectors, the bulk is made up of Palestinian workers. Gaza is considered to be the largest open-air prison in the world, true captivity.
And in our immense Brazilian territory, peasants are also prevented from working by the large estate’s fences, which are increasingly modern with security systems imported from Israel. The landowners have just approved in this “rotten congress” the Marco Temporal, which perpetuates the theft of indigenous peoples and what little they have left of their ancestral lands.
Just one observation: the thesis that Palestine belonged to the Hebrews 2,000 years ago is ridiculous and untrue, but this scum of big landlords who are thieving land, not just federal but mainly from the peasants, defends Israel. 2023 years ago, according to the Bible, it was the Jewish leaders who, by denouncing Jesus Christ as a false prophet to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, won authorization to criminalize him, arrest him, torture him and crucify him together with two men accused of being thieves. And today, the Neo-charismatic false prophets, like Judas Iscariot, lie, manipulating the faith of their flock, defaming the Palestinian people and supporting the criminal Israel.
Hundreds of peasants are politically imprisoned and dozens of their leaders murdered every year, lawyers are persecuted, big landlords go with the police, armed to the teeth, to repossess land and the government and its justice system say nothing (any resemblance to the Zionist “settlers” going to steal land from Palestinian peasants, along with the Zionist army, is no coincidence). Big landlords steal land, fill it with agrochemicals, poison the water, sell everything abroad, don’t pay taxes or INSS contributions, and when a peasant goes to the city with a chicken, he has to pay tax (GTA, animal transportation guide). Whenever we fight, we are called bandits, terrorists, etc. And the same rotten press that defends Israel also hides when we defeat our enemies, and accuses us of so many crimes that they must have started being committed when our great-grandparents were still dreaming of giving birth to our grandparents.
For all these reasons, by organizing themselves to fight and conquer the land and destroy the latifundium, the Brazilian peasants, realizing that only the Agrarian Revolution will give them the land, are expressing their deep hatred by stating that this system in which we live, this rotten and decaying bureaucratic capitalism, servant of imperialism, especially North American (Yankee) imperialism, is CAPTIVITY! Death to captivity, latifundiums and imperialism!
Palestinian military organizations are not terrorists!
When Brazilian peasants arm themselves to resist the attacks of the big landlords’ gunmen, armed to the teeth “like never before in the history of this country” (and always in collusion with the repressive forces of the old state and covered up by its justice system, which is also increasingly armed, not only against the rural poor, but also against the urban poor), they are also called “bandits” and “terrorists”. And also with pejorative adjectives with which they try to hide the class character of our struggle, not only today, but historically: fanatics, messianics, vandals, gang formation, etc., etc., etc.
Like us, the political and military organizations of the Palestinian National Resistance, be it Hamas, which is the main target of imperialist and Zionist hysteria and is currently the leading political force in the Gaza Strip for the construction of the anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist Palestinian state, for these reasons and also for the brilliant performance of the Al-Qassam Brigades, as well as Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other possible Palestinian revolutionary movements, ARE NOT TERRORISTS! The terrorists are the Zionist state of Israel, its Nazi government and its master, Yankee imperialism!
Israel rations the Palestinian people’s water and energy when it’s not destroying their sources, as it is now. Israel prevents any and all modern machinery and equipment from entering the Gaza Strip. Israel has never accepted any resolution that is even remotely favorable to Palestine from the UN itself, the institution that created it and gave it the right to invade Palestine. For years, Israel has imprisoned thousands of Palestinian children and women who react and throw stones at the occupying military forces on charges of being terrorists.
The masterful Al-Aqsa Flood operation, treated as terrorist by imperialism and Zionism, by opportunists and domesticated people in general, achieved its goal of taking prisoners of war on the Zionist side and freeing imprisoned Palestinians. What an example of Palestinian heroes! They will be recognized by history!
And to repeat once again: THE TERRORISTS ARE IMPERIALISM, ZIONISM, THIS MONOPOLY OF THE ROTTEN PRESS, KILLERS OF CHILDREN, COWARDS!
But we can’t help but feel proud to be treated by all this garbage as they treat the Palestinians, who are the great heroes of the anti-imperialist struggle of our time.
Raise the Palestinian flag higher and radicalize in their defense!
In Minas Gerais, on October 7, the day on which the Heroic Palestinian National Resistance unleashed its Al-Aqsa Flood counter-offensive, peasants fighting for the right to housing in an area of the Jaíba Project, whose construction had been promised after an occupation in 2015 and has still not been completed, received the support of the LCP and raised the Palestinian flag. That was enough to mobilize the pathetic Zema, Governor of the State, his puppet Tadeu, President of the Legislative Assembly, and the agribusiness spokespeople (who, with the connivance of the state and federal governments, CODEVASF and the Jaíba Project board, have distorted and usurped the Jaíba Project for themselves), and a special force of almost 50 men from the state Military Police was sent and was stationed in the area. Let them roar with rage and terrorize themselves, you thieves of federal land, sell-outs and imperialist henchmen, in front of this mighty banner. Your old order’s days are numbered. Today this banner, against and despite all the lies of the press monopoly, is raised by hundreds of millions of hands of the popular masses around the world, in a powerful anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist cry, against all injustices, all exploitation, oppression and national subjugation.
Brazilian peasants, indigenous people and quilombolas, who are once again facing increased repression against the sacred struggle for land and territory, today have another powerful spear in the Palestinian flag. We must raise it higher, in greater numbers, and point it at the hearts of the people’s gendarmes. The “Palestinians” of Brazil will not run away from the fight!
Long live the heroic Palestinian National Resistance!
Long live the Agrarian Revolution!
Death to the latifundium, imperialism and Zionism!
League of Poor Peasants – LCP
National Commission
Goiânia-Brazil, December 2023
