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The Party of the Laboring Masses (PLM) supports the Palestinian bid for statehood and its submission to the UN for an independent Palestinian state. We call on the Philippine government to vote in favor of this submission and campaign at the United Nations for its passage. We condemn the US government attempts to block and veto the resolution in favor of its hardened support for Israel.

We support the historical struggle of the Palestinian people for a democratic and secular Palestine in which Arabs, Jews and other people can live in peace. We reject the fallacy that the Israeli state has a biblical claim to its existence.

The state of Israel is a recent creation established only in 1948 as a result of a conscious policy of resettlement of European Jews who were fleeing the fascist holocaust against them. This resettlement was engineered by the then imperialist powers led by Britain and the newly formed Zionist movement.

The Israeli state is founded on the ideology of Zionism which is a sectarian and racist ideology based on the dispossession, exploitation and apartheid-style discrimination of the Palestinian Arab population. This dispossession was carried out violently and brutally with the massacre of the original Palestinian population in order to resettle the European Jews and establish a Zionist Israeli state.

The dispossed Palestinians are now forced to live in Bantustan-style settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under Israeli occupation. Israel continues to build Jewish settlement and encroach even on these small pieces of Palestine land. Meanwhile the Palestinians who fled the violent occupation have no right of return even today.

Support the Palestinian bid for UN membership! Support the right of return and end the diaspora of the Palestinian people! Stop the building of Israeli settlement! For a democratic and secular Palestine!

Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM)

http://www.masa.ph/
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Akbayan Youth Solidarity Message to Fatah Youth Movement of Palestine

September 20, 2011

Dear Comrades from the Fatah Youth Movement,

Greetings!

Akbayan Youth extends its support to the Fatah Youth Movement as you call for an independent Palestinian state recognized by the United Nations. In the spirit of international solidarity, we strongly condemn the violent incursions of the state of Israel, which has consistently acted as a colonial apartheid state. Akbayan Youth believes that the cause of Palestinian freedom is one of the greatest progressive struggles of this generation. We sympathize with all the victims of Israeli state terror, and we believe it is incumbent upon all progressives to recognize their suffering.

Your call for statehood comes as the suffering of Palestinians become more difficult to deny. Those who refuse to acknowledge the injustice of the Gaza occupation and the unlawful expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank are burying their heads in the sand. The state of Israel, by delaying the peace process, has given the Palestinian people no other option other than to ask for international recognition. Legal recognition of an independent Palestinian state is a recognition of your sovereign right as a people to be free from foreign incursions.

We categorically condemn the United States of America’s continued military and diplomatic assistance to the state of Israel. If genuine peace in the Middle East is to be achieved, the US needs to hold Israel accountable for its acts of violence. We are also saddened that US President Obama has refused to support your legitimate call for UN recognition.

Akbayan Youth commits itself to the global BDS campaign and to other forms of peaceful popular struggle. If there is anything else we can do to support the cause of Palestinian freedom, please inform us immediately. Perhaps, one day, we can meet to talk about our common struggles.

Finally, we would like to express our deep admiration for the Fatah Youth Movement. Your struggle for freedom and justice continues to serve as an inspiration for the our activists. The Philippines may not be under the occupation of a colonial state, but the poverty that envelopes our society and the violence we experience under elite rule, at times, mirrors the injustices occurring in the Occupied Territories.

Your comrades in the Philippines shout clearly and categorically: FREE FREE PALESTINE!

In Solidarity,

Akbayan Youth

http://akbayanyouth.wordpress.com/