En attendant notre communiqué #Palestine, voici la traduction de notre motion de CF sur la campagne #BDS.
Des rassemblement ont lieu depuis samedi pour le #Rojava, n'oublions pas l'#Armenie et le #HautKarabakh
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#NoWarButClassWar

Palestine : For a libertarian communist re-commitment to the BDS campaign

This text, adopted at the Federal Coordination meeting in March 2023, aims to revive the momentum and coordinate the UCL's involvement in the BDS France (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) campaign.

During its national meeting on January 14-15, 2023, the BDS France campaign against apartheid and colonialism in Palestine decided to raise the profile of its action and launch a campaign specifically against Carrefour, which supports illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine.
Signatory organizations of the BDS appeal, including UCL, are invited to take part in it. The UCL supports the struggle of the Palestinian people [1] for freedom from the colonial war that's being waged by the State of Israel. Israel is entering a new phase, with the arrival in power in Tel Aviv of a coalition of the right and far right, the ensuing provocations, the individual attacks launched out of desperation on Israeli settlements, the military bombings in retaliation, the threat of bankruptcy looming over the Palestinian Authority and the emergence of young resistance groups (such as the Nablus Battalion) independent of both Hamas and Fatah…

Despite facing repression under the Sarkozy-Hollande era (with the Alliot-Marie circular of February 12, 2010 penalizing boycotting Israel or Israeli settlements), despite divisions over tactics and methods [2], the BDS-France campaign continued: boycott of Puma, Axa, actions taken during the 2020 Tour de France (alongside the UCL) [3], against the participation of Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest...

Quick reminder about BDS: this international campaign was launched in 2004 by the whole of the Palestinian civil society (i.e. those living in Israel, in exile or in the Occupied Territories). Modelled
on the boycott campaign against South Africa in the 1980s, its aim is to demand, by peaceful means, the application of international law: put an end to occupation and colonization, tear down the West Bank barrier, end the Gaza blockade, give access to equal rights and the right for refugees to return (or receive fair compensation).

In France, BDS started off in June 2009, notably with campaigns against Agrexco [4], Orange (which ended up victorious), Veolia (a company that had been entrusted with building the Jerusalem tramway and was involved in the destruction of Arab neighborhoods, etc.).

The current campaign is aimed at the France-based multinational retail corporation Carrefour. Carrefour, through its partnership with the Israeli company Electra Consumer Products and its subsidiary Yenot Bitan, both operating in illegal settlements, finds itself complicit in war crimes, occupation, settlement colonialism and apartheid under international law. Targeted for export, it is now also targeted for import. Campaigns are also being put into motion in Africa, in several Arab countries and in Asia, where Carrefour has a strong presence.

The UCL is a member of the BDS campaign, as are many anti-racist and trade union organizations (CNT, Solidaires, certain local branches of the CGT) in which libertarian communists actively participate. Here are several rather simple actions we take to support their efforts :
• On a broader, more general level : relay the BDS slogans on our social networks and communications media;
• At federal level: stick a small BDS logo on the back page of the newspaper and, on the home page of the website, a visual linking to a section compiling information and articles on the campaign, and invite our partners in the Anarkismo network to do the same;
• At local level: local groups may set up actions and "label" them BDS (as in 2020 for the Tour de France); they may also join forces with local BDS committees or raise funds with other signatory organizations.
Additionally, an international week—the Israeli Apartheid Week—is organized on a yearly basis every March (this year's edition took place from March 13 to 27). In the past years, it was mainly held on university campuses, with screenings, debates, etc. It ends with the Journée de la terre ('Land Day'), every March 30, which commemorates peasant resistance in the face of expropriation, most notably the Palestinian general strike of March 30, 1976 (during which 6 strikers were murdered).

A team is being put together and is to be given the mandate to :
• Organize the UCL's actions within BDS in a way that's in line with our federal guidelines on the matter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ;
• Set up internal training courses on the Palestinian question, which has been losing ground in France - including in the social movement - since the 2010s.

The UCL's anti-colonialist commitment and anti-racist vigilance must be beyond reproach, to repel both any attempt at anti-Semitic intrusion and instrumentalization, and the Zionists' usual slander ('anti-Semitic', 'Islamo-leftist'), which the French state was also seen using in order to further stigmatize the far left, the Muslim minority and working-class neighborhoods.

Union Communiste Libertaire, March 2023

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CLARIFICATION OF THE TERM 'ZIONISM'

The term Zionism used here refers to the definition it was given in the "Against colonialism in Palestine, for a free and democratic Palestine" motion adopted in June 2020: The Israeli ruling class, and most of the political class, are deeply imbued with a nationalist and colonialist ideology, Zionism. This ideology was born against a backdrop of growing anti-Semitism and nationalism in Europe.
Unlike assimilationist or revolutionary movements, Zionist movements considered anti-Semitism to be inevitable for as long as Jews remained a minority everywhere, and their historical goal was to create a Jewish national majority in Palestine—which translated into the expulsion of Palestinians throughout the entirety of the colonial process, as well as a policy of ethnic cleansing.
In the continuation of that ideology, the current Israeli ruling class aims to maintain an ethno-nationalist state in which the national majority remains Jewish. The political project of part of this ruling class goes as far as advocating for the total exclusion of Arab and Druze minorities: the 2018 law on the "nation-state of the Jewish people" is the inescapable consequence of the policy that's been consistently pursued ever since 1948.

[1] « Pour une Palestine libre, laïque et démocratique », Alternative libertaire, n°312, January 2021
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[2] « Palestine : Aujourd’hui plus que jamais, renforcer et élargir BDS », Alternative libertaire, n°333, December 2022
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[3] « Tour de France : le sport pour blanchir l’apartheid israélien », Alternative libertaire, n°309, October 2020
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[4] « Israël / Palestine : Agrexco : la coalition continue le combat », Alternative libertaire, n°199, October 2010
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