Bulletin N°58 juin 2025 Diversion and widening of the conflict
The Zionist entity's attempt to widen the conflict, or at least create a diversion, only works for those who have been waiting for it for a long time. So much so that they felt obliged, given the global disapproval of the peoples now facing the Zionist colonial state, to condemn, even if only half-heartedly, the genocide, or rather "far-right Netanyahu." The unilateral attack on Iran did not arouse the slightest enthusiasm among the peoples of the world; on the contrary, it generated strong disapproval, while the response had many citizens in the Arab world and elsewhere dancing in the streets. But it allowed a whole host of "left-wing consciences" in France to move on, and Macron to postpone, for " logistical and security " reasons, the UN conference on the recognition of a Palestinian state, which had been strongly condemned by Netanyahu. The diatribes against "the mullahs' regime" are redoubled; the fallacious pretext of the bomb is now abandoned, the harsh truth is emerging: this is an attempt, probably with the complicity of a section of the Iranian bourgeoisie, to change the regime in Tehran.
The Revolutionary Communist Party is not a fan of the Iranian regime, any more or less than of any other capitalist regime. We wrote in our statement regarding the Zionist aggression against Iran: " The Revolutionary Communist Party has no particular sympathy for the Iranian state, a capitalist country within the imperialist system. We have stated on several occasions that we do not believe in a so-called Axis of Resistance. We support the armed organizations of the Palestinian, Lebanese, or Yemeni resistance. But we know that, whatever the real will of certain Iranian leaders to defend the Palestinians, behind this lie ambitions of regional imperialist power. " But, as Lenin said: " Only the truth is revolutionary ." And the truth is that the Zionists attacked a non-belligerent state, that their aim is to eliminate the spearheads of Iran's anti-US policy, notably the Revolutionary Guards, and that all this is aimed at reshaping the Middle East for the benefit of US imperialism, its proxy, the Zionist entity, and also to make people forget the genocide in Gaza.
It is clear that, while the media world has resumed the offensive, unanimously defending the Zionist colonial state, the left is replaying the dance of the right-thinking. From LFI to the Socialist Party, everyone is condemning the Iranian regime; these are the same people who condemned, not the plural Palestinian Resistance, but Hamas, as if it were alone, saddled with the adjective always used by the colonialists to designate armed resistance: terrorist.
Diversion of the struggle for the liberation of Georges Abdallah
This return to basics is ultimately not surprising, considering what's happening around solidarity with Palestine in France. While the number of protesters is still not as high as it should be, initiatives in France are increasingly taking an anti-Zionist turn, like those in Belgium, the Netherlands, or the United Kingdom, and that doesn't please everyone.
The example of the demonstration of June 14th in Paris is eloquent. The demonstration, initiated by the United Campaign for the Liberation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah (CUPLGIA), has been filed since February; it is deliberately taking place a few days before the new trial to rule on Georges' release, on June 19th. However, since the beginning of the week of June 9th, a number of organizations, including five unions that are waking up very late and left-wing political organizations that are late or have already been engaged in the battle for a long time, such as LFI, have called for a demonstration, at the same time, in the same place (Place de la République) without mentioning the release of Georges Abdallah. This is a real attempt to hijack the demonstration, to divert its purpose.
It's not just a matter of the CGT, CFDT, Solidaires, UNSA, and FSU appearing in a fight they've been waiting for for a long time. It's not just a matter of LFI gaining political advantage from their commitment to the Palestinians. In short, all of this is not just motivated by self-recognition. The slogans of the unions and left-wing parties are those of the National Collective for a Just and Lasting Peace between Palestinians and Israelis (CNPJDPI). The very name of this collective is a whole program, that of putting colonized Palestinians and "Israeli" settlers on the same level. Of course, it includes criticism of "far-right Netanyahu," used in every possible way, and not of Zionism, the movement that promotes substitute colonization, and the eternal "two-state solution." It mentions the right of return of refugees, but without saying how those who left Haifa, Acre or Jaffa (now a district of Tel Aviv) in 1948 will be able to return home to the Zionist colonial state that has been maintained.
Anti-Zionism at the heart of the divide
The differences are fundamentally political: either one sticks to a humanitarian message, of solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza who are suffering intolerably, who are victims of genocide, or one points to the cause of the evil, colonialism in its Zionist version of substitution or settlement. In one case, one can ask for an illusory peace that will not stop the massacre of the Palestinians, in another one can only conclude that the disappearance of the colonizing Zionist entity is the prerequisite for any "just and lasting" peace, which is therefore not a "colonial peace," like that of the Oslo Accords.
However, the June 14 demonstration had a strongly anti-Zionist tenor, and not only in the procession of the Unity Campaign. This increasingly important role played by revolutionary activists in the struggle for solidarity with Palestine is expressed most clearly in the call for the release of Georges Abdallah, a communist activist who does not renounce any of his commitments and who supports the armed Palestinian Resistance, something that the left-wing parties in France do not do, much less the unions.
The general positions of the left and the unions, including those with the most advanced positions, LFI, can be summed up in their condemnation of the Palestinian Resistance and the day of resistance that was the "Al-Aqsa Flood" and their refusal to condemn the Zionist state as the source of the problem, and consequently, a condemnation of colonization that does not go beyond words. Clearly, these positions weigh heavily, in the sense that they do not allow for a broadening of the mobilization, due to a lack of understanding of the real issues. While it is certain that LFI contributed in a significant way to strengthening the mobilization at the time of the Freedom Flotilla and the kidnapping of its crew by the Zionists, this strengthening remains limited, for the reasons we have given above.
The colonial question is closely linked to the national question
There is generally a lot of confusion that prevents a clear understanding of the issue, and this also comes from certain so-called "extreme left" activists who speak of "fraternization between the Israeli proletariat and the Palestinian proletariat" and refuse to condemn Zionism. All this because they do not understand the concept of nation, which for them is only an "empty shell" (Rosa Luxembourg and the "Left Communists" criticized by Lenin in "The Infantile Disease") or systematically reactionary, hence, for example, a refusal to criticize the European Union (Workers' Struggle). If there is indeed a proletariat in the Zionist entity, it is composed essentially of Palestinians, whether or not they are citizens of the colonial state, workers from various Asian countries (India, Thailand, the Philippines, etc.) and Ethiopian Jews. If indeed descendants of European emigrants are involved, they are not proletarians, they are colonists. The proletariat, said Marx, has only its chains to lose. However, colonists of European origin have not only their chains to lose, but also their status as colonists.
The Palestinian question is the expression of what has been called the national question since the 19th century , a primordial question that Marxists have profoundly transformed by managing to develop a materialist and historical theory of the nation. In reality, the colonial question is unquestionably part of the national question; one cannot separate the one from the other in this great historical movement for the emancipation of peoples. Just as one cannot separate the attitude of the workers' movement toward the colonies and oppressed nations from the present and future interests that it defends in its long struggle to transform Western societies.
In a lecture given at the University Center for Marxist Studies on the relationship between Marxism and Palestine, Patrick Bobulesco recalls the fundamentals: " The communists of the first socialist state were therefore the first to highlight the link between the national problem and that of the emancipation of the peoples of the colonies, to put forward the slogan of the right of the colonies to separate from the metropolises, to form independent states. And this true internationalism, that of the communist movement, could not remain formal and purely verbal: the Communist International, the Third International , thus dictated to its sections in the imperialist metropolises, in its 8th condition adopted at its Second Congress in 1920, the obligation to lead and direct the anti-colonial struggle, since the victory of the proletariat in these metropolises could not be solid without the destruction of the colonial relationship, without the emancipation of the colonies and oppressed nations, which should not be seen as a distant horizon. The Soviet leadership and the Comintern argued that even if this or that national struggle had not yet had time to free itself from bourgeois nationalist influences, had not yet freed itself from the conceptions of the old bourgeois movement of national emancipation, the important thing was that it was now and strategically a struggle against the system of imperialism, sometimes putting unsuspected forces into action, and that this historical movement would inevitably have to reach its logical conclusion .
The deep meaning of the Palestinian question and its perception in France
This is what many "left-wing" activists or those who call themselves revolutionaries fail to grasp. It is their relationship to the concept of nation that is biased. But also their relationship to the reality of Palestine.
Generally speaking, the vision of the Palestinian people that is gradually gaining ground as a wave of solidarity grows in France is in fact the reductive one of a people who are victims of unjust domination, not of a people fighting for their liberation. This status of tragic victim plays on emotions but contributes little to understanding the essence of the "Palestinian question." Resistance in Palestine is, moreover, praised as long as it remains peaceful, the "French left" having the unfortunate pretension of wanting to decide in place of the peoples and their vanguards the forms of struggle to be used to free themselves from colonialism, the moment to seize to launch the offensive and the alliances that must be made to win.
Also misunderstood is the profound nature of the "Palestinian cause." Support for Palestine is not just support for a just cause or a question of taking sides in a struggle that is external to us. However, any failure, even any weakening of the Zionist oppressor constitutes a setback for imperialist domination at the global level; any advancement of the Palestinian cause constitutes a point of support for the anti-imperialist struggle at the global level. This can be summed up in this extract from Saïd Bouamama's Strategic Manual for Palestine and the Middle East : " The Middle East is, by this geostrategic situation, a condensation of global contradictions. […] This is what constitutes, yesterday as today, the tragedy of the Palestinian people, but also the greatness of their resistance. It is also what confers a global anti-imperialist centrality to the struggle of the Palestinian people. "
To conclude, here is the remarkable conclusion of Patrick Bobulesco's conference: " Heavily handicapped by the historical weakness on the left of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism in France, if a broad current of solidarity with the Palestinian people has nevertheless been able to develop, this support has remained very dependent on a rhetoric that is above all humanitarian, on a single moral dimension, on a sympathy for a martyred people and on a compassion that makes the suffering of the Palestinian people its own but struggles to understand the deep political roots of the Zionist enterprise of conquering Palestine. True solidarity with the Palestinian people requires abandoning this passive and victim-based vision to recognize them as a people active in their own history, fighting against Zionism, imperialism and reaction, for their national liberation, a long struggle whose centrality and strategic character for our own emancipation we must recognize. "