Israel’s genocidal bombardment and siege of Gaza continues. As the number of Palestinian journalists murdered by Israel increases, occupation forces bombed communications towers, plunging Gaza into communicative darkness for 34 hours.
As the death toll in Gaza surpasses 8,000, health services in Gaza are under attack. Israel is launching strikes near Al-Quds Hospital where 14,000 refugees are sheltering. Due to Israel’s siege against Gaza, hospitals have been forced to shut down due to lack of fuel and water.
This is all supposedly in response to a historic offensive led by Palestinian resistance fighters against the Israeli occupation.
Celebrated Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled, a central committee member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, attended the III International Dilemmas of Humanity Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. This is her address from the opening panel of the conference on October 14. She spoke about the decades-long Palestinian struggle, the need for diverse forms of resistance, the historic ties between Palestinian and South African liberation, and the devastation wrought by Western imperialism.
As I told Nelson Mandela and all comrades, this is my second homeland. Where there is freedom, it’s our homeland.
Since 1917, after the Second World War, there was a call from [Arthur] Balfour, the Minister of Britain at that time, calling for Queen Elizabeth to have a homeland for the Zionists.
From that time, we lived a bitter life, a state to be established on our people. For our people it meant death to the Palestinians and life for Zionism.
These are the roots of terrorism in the world. To occupy, to steal a land, a homeland from a people who were and still called Palestinians.
Still, the Zionists are practicing their policies. And they called for the whole world: a people without a land to a land without people to be the homeland.
The world at that time, after the Second World War, practiced that. They believed the big lie in history, that they deserve a land which was promised by God.
God is not having real estate to give to those people and that people.
The whole world at that time believed that those poor Jews in Europe deserved this land.
Until now, part of the world, the imperialists, the colonialists, the capitalists, they are still practicing this lie on our land in Palestine. And here I tell you from that moment that our people did not accept this.
I’m not going to have a lecture about history, but I’m going to focus on the roots of this catastrophe that happened to the Palestinian people. We never stopped struggling, and all the time we were besieged as a people, in camps, in exile.
All the massacres that the Zionists did in Palestine and outside Palestine, they began with Deir Yassin and many other massacres because this is the ideology of Zionism. It’s an inhuman and a racist movement. It was condemned in the United Nations, but afterwards, with the change of the balance of forces in the world, they deleted it. And that was the only resolution that was deleted.
Although, there are a lot of resolutions, in the United Nations until now, from the Resolution 194 that calls Israel to accept the return of Palestinians as a condition to be a state in the United Nations.
How cruel, what the United Nations did to us at that time. Israel was recognized as a state and the Palestinians are still refugees. I’m one of them.
We are a people of strength, of will, of dignity, of humanity. We are defending humanity in Palestine.
Palestine is not only for the Palestinians, it’s a human cause.
The conference is speaking about the problems of humanity.
If you speak about poverty, Palestine is the example. If you speak about wars, Palestine is the example. If you speak about imperialism, we are the people who are now facing imperialism. We are the people who will make peace for the whole world if we become free.
Without that, don’t ever think that the water will be free for you, for the whole world. Because the Zionists now cut the water for 2 million and more in Gaza.
Gaza now is the peace for humanity. Although we are still defending our humanity with our children and our women who are killed there by bombarding their houses over there, places where they live.
The only way for the imperialists, the Zionists, the colonialists, the oppressors of the people, whoever they are, the only way is to use force against them, to use armed struggle against them.
In America and in Europe and everywhere, I call all the people of the world, where there is injustice, you have to struggle. You struggle with all means. We believe in that.
But for occupants, they don’t need anything except our guns, and our blood. We are proud that Palestine, now Gaza, is without water. Our children, our women, they are watering it with their blood.
This is very hideous to us. This is very sad, for a people who is in an open prison in Gaza, and in the West Bank, and in exile.
And all the governments of Israel always speak about [Palestinians] as demographic bombs. Then you imagine what that means? That we are bombs living on our land?
They consider us bombs, not human beings. Why? They have the nuclear bomb.
But they are occupants. We will not forget.
So we will not forgive, until Palestine is free.
As Lenin said, what shall we do? This is the question. And this question must be answered according to the facts, according to the balance of forces in this world, according to the sufferings of peoples who are still living under oppression.
This is a problem for all humanity. And when people suffer, fight, organize themselves, I think we will be victorious.
It’s not enough to go to the streets. It is appreciated highly by us. And this is one of the peaceful means to use. We use peaceful tools also. When we call for BDS, we learned that from South Africa. And we still say Durban is the capital of BDS.
But we also use some other means. The mainstream for people is to go to arms, always. Wherever there is oppression, this oppression is facing people by killing people, if they go to demonstrations, they kill them, the peasants, the workers everywhere in the world.
The United States came to the West, the Middle East, as they say. They are not coming to help the oppressed. They are coming to pressure us and to pressure Israel to go on with her attack on us. When people rise, the occupants begin to shiver.
They feel it. The fear. They fear us and this is important to change the balance of forces. Let them fear everywhere. They are thieves. They stole our land and built settlements on it. Israel is a state of settlements. It’s not a state that was born by people who were living on it, historically speaking.
They are shivering now to defend the base of terrorism in the world. They are shivering and they look at Israel as if it’s homeland, not our homeland, but our people are strong enough to spread the facts of this conflict. You are now Palestinians when you speak about Palestine and spread the truth of Palestine.
Now this conference has a mission. How to support the struggle of Palestine until liberation. It will take time.
There are a lot who died, were martyrs in Palestine. I remind you of Rachel Corrie who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer. Imagine, nobody was charged with this cruelty. Not only cruel, criminal.
All the media are speaking about is international law. I tell you, this is a lie. We have to learn the lesson. We have all to learn the lesson that the United Nations has a lot of resolutions, and yet none of these resolutions was implemented in Palestine. The Resolution 194 calls for the return of Palestinians. This is in 1947.
Imagine what is the power of the United Nations. It’s the power of the imperialists.
It’s the power of the oppressors, the capitalists, the imperialists and the Zionists.
They defend human rights, human rights in America. When it crosses the ocean, it’s something else. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Vietnam, in South Africa, in every country of the world. They speak about human rights as if they are the defenders. They are the violators of human rights everywhere in this world.
We have to stop them. We stop them in our countries. We stop them when we mobilize our peoples in the world to show them that truth.
This text was edited for clarity from a talk given by Leila Khaled. It is part of a series, Voices of Dilemmas, which seeks to bring the perspectives and key debates of the different organizations, intellectuals, and political leaders that are part of the Dilemmas of Humanity process.
