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First We Take Athens, Then We Take... Gaza?
There is a significant development taking place for the Palestinian cause in Europe, as a win for the Greek radical-left party SYRIZA in the elections might not only make the European elite and international markets tremble and galvanize social movements against austerity across the continent, it may also turn out to become a huge blow for European support for the Zionist state of Israel.
The party, that is poised to gain a victory on 25 January and will most probably form a government thereafter, has more consistently than any other party coming to power in Europe clearly alligned itself with the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation. SYRIZA has worked together with different pro-Palestinian groups and migrant organizations that support the resistance.
Official documents of SYRIZA as well as calls by the party platform have proposed the end of Greek cooperation with Israel regarding matters of defense of Israeli aggression. During the bombing last summer, party leader Alex Tsipras, wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh, attended a rally that marched on the European Commission Representation offices in Greece and then to the United States Embassy to protest the Israeli army military campaign in the Gaza Strip and unilaterally demanding an end to the brutality in Palestine by Israel, saying that “we cannot remain passive, because if this happens on the other side of the Mediterranean today, it can happen on our own side tomorrow.”
Party members have repeatedly criticized the Zionist aggression and advocated for international pressure on Israel. SYRIZA’s youth wing that is active in the pro-Palestine movement in Greece put out a call “to stop the genocide”. A SYRIZA spokesperson from Athens said that the party will make “support to Palestine a permanent feature of Greek politics” when in power. The party has a substantial number of active members among Muslims and migrants, especially from Turkey and lately also East Europe; groups that together with the pro-Palestine left have generally formed the backbone of the growing solidarity movements all over the world.
Though it was in Greece under the social-democrat Andreas Papandeou that the first Palestinian embassy in any Western country was opened, his son George has disgracefully shifted Athens towards Tel Aviv during his term in power. The dramatic decline of the social-democrat party PASOK and the stunning rise of SYRIZA may significantly help reorientate the Greek left and the country in general back to a principled tradition of international solidarity against imperialism and colonial domination, something the Greeks both historically and now more recently under the Troika have been the victim of themselves.
Although the proposal of SYRIZA to create a democratic Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, in agreement with the UN resolutions, might not go far enough yet (and it is up to the members to keep pushing for the right party line on this matter), a victory for SYRIZA nonetheless may come together with the first anti-Zionist prime minister in Europe. Hopefully the rest of Europe will follow suit, so that after taking Athens, and Madrid, and Berlin, and Paris, and London, one day we might take back Gaza and Al-Quds.”
Source: daily-struggles.tumblr.com