By Andrés Figueroa Cornejo on March 23, 2024
photo: Andrés Figueroa Cornejo
Along the Alameda, the main artery of Santiago de Chile, and from the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center to Plaza Los Héroes, humanity marched today in solidarity with the cause of the people of Palestine to demand that the Boric administration break diplomatic, commercial and military relations with Israel. Likewise, demonstrations were replicated in practically all the cities of the Andean country, one of the nations in the world with the largest concentration of Palestinian diaspora.
“It is not necessary to be Palestinian to be sensitive to the extermination that is being perpetrated before our eyes with the complicity of the international community that fears to see its interests linked to imperialism affected. We will not be complicit in this genocide at the hands of Zionism. Our duty as citizens of the world is to be the voices of internationalist resistance for a free Palestine”, said Tania Melnick, spokeswoman for the Coordinating Committee for Palestine, a group that together with more than 130 organizations called for the march.
The journalist and analyst specializing in Middle East and African affairs, Pablo Jofré, stopped in the street for a moment and pointed out that “every march of the peoples, anywhere on the planet, is a duty to accompany when it comes to supporting Palestine, even if the governments do not do so. When hundreds of thousands of people march in Australia, the United States, France, Germany, in places where the governments are allies of America and Zionism, it is immediately demonstrated that there is a dissociation between what the societies think and feel with respect to the governments. Those same governments are the ones that intend to perpetuate their domination over the globe”, and added that “they tear their clothes in the name of human rights and recite that we must take care of life, but they are the same ones that finance and support the Zionist regime politically and militarily”.
– What is behind the discussion on whether or not it is a war, Pablo?
“This is not a war either from the classical or non-classical point of view. It is rather a ‘final solution’ policy of Israel to expel and exterminate the Palestinian people.”
– What are the short-term prospects, considering international power relations, for the conflict in terms, at least, of a cease-fire?
“Peace, impossible. I say this with enormous sadness. As long as Zionism exists, there will be no peace. And I am thinking of all the peoples who suffer from Zionism, and not only Palestine, which faces it directly. There is Lebanon, Syria, Yemen. Chile itself has harmful links with it from the technological, military and security perspective, corruption with the military industry and with the country’s water. So, as long as Zionism exists, peace will not be possible. And even a ceasefire is difficult. On Friday, a US resolution was published about which the international press said that China and Russia are opposed to a ceasefire. But this is not so! China and Russia oppose the narrative of that articulate presented by Israel’s sponsor. It is a resolution completely favorable to Israel, which is the party that must unilaterally cease fire, because Palestine is not at war, it is simply making use of its right to self-defense, as stated by United Nations officials in accordance with international law.”
The social fighter, son of the resistance against the Pinochet dictatorship and who currently writes s in the Anticapitalist and Popular Platform, Arturo Mancilla, highlighted the size of attendees to the demonstration and “the importance of solidarity with the Palestinian civilians who are being massacred. But it is also important to remain attentive to what is happening in terms of self-defense in Gaza. Now into the sixth month of the conflict, Zionism has failed to achieve any of its military objectives in Palestine: in fact, they have not eliminated or disbanded Hamas, nor have they released the hostages,” adding that “more than ten Palestinian organizations with military units are participating in the resistance, both in Gaza and in the West Bank. Even with Israeli munitions that do not explode on Gaza soil, the Palestinians are manufacturing their weapons”.
For his part, the leader of the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Movement, MPMR, Marco Riquelme, whose group carried a huge Palestinian flag, said that the march “is another demonstration of solidarity with those who are fighting for independence and the improvement of the lives of their people. And we also salute the various armed groups of Palestine that have allowed that people to still exist, in the face of the ferocious imperialist and Zionist onslaught that has lasted for more than 75 years of death, terror, massacre, usurpation”.
– How does the Palestinian resistance collaborate with the struggles in Chile?
“It is an example in every line. The unity of the Palestinian people when facing a criminal enemy, puts in first order to overcome the fragmentation of a popular, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement in Chile.”
Dauno Tótoro is one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Workers Party, PTR, and with his comrades have long made the Palestinian cause their own. “Here the basic thing is how much active internationalist solidarity is needed, since we are living a genocide, a massacre sponsored by U.S. imperialism. One of the most serious aspects at the local level has to do with the fact that the State of Chile has not taken more emphatic measures in terms of breaking off relations with Israel and expelling its ambassador. Now, from the vision that the anti-capitalist and revolutionary groups hold, Israel is the spearhead of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, the ‘vanguard’ of world reaction and that, consequently, it is against the organization of workers, women, indigenous peoples, the oppressed”.
In the Plaza Los Héroes, in the middle of the Alameda, at the end of the march, the militant and revolutionary social and political fighter Rafael Agacino characterized the moment as “a capitalist offensive of pillage and extermination of the peoples and territories of Palestine and the Wallmapu, which unites them in the same enemy. Now, how much death is humanity capable of tolerating? What happens that so many peoples of the world are subjected to indolence? Well, this march and activities that are being carried out in other places in Chile for the Palestinian cause, is a manifestation of the opposite, that there is a humanity that does not support more death”, and added that, “the Palestinian people have every right to self-defense, to resistance, to take up arms for their liberation against a colonialism that has simply treated them as a variable of adjustment of history to reconstitute the order, after the Second World War”.
“In the specific”, Agacino affirmed, “this idea of the two States is no longer a demand, when a part of the world capital is trying to exterminate another part of humanity. Coexistence with murderers is not possible. The only peace that capital admits is that of the cemeteries, and Zionism is an expression of this. What is possible to imagine is a secular, unitary and plurinational State of Palestine”.
A colorful fact that can be interpreted as a clear provocation: as the march for Palestine passed in front of La Moneda, a few meters away and strongly protected by police officers, a small group of neo-fascists from the Republican Party shouted pro-Zionist slogans. Several demonstrators of the march recognized in the ultra-right-wing band the same ones that stand in front of the Cuban and Venezuelan embassies to try to make the same poor display that is easy to ignore.
Source: Rebelion, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English