May 15th this year marked 74 years of ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine. In the same month, Israeli forces killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist and one of the most prominent voices reporting on the occupied West Bank, and stormed her funeral, beating mourners and using what they call “riot dispersal means.” CPSO Toronto condemns the actions of the Israeli state and its prolonged genocide and oppression of the Palestinian people. We also condemn Canada and the United States for not simply being complicit but also providing active material support to the settler-colonial project of Zionism.
As anti-imperialists, we understand that the same system is responsible for perpetuating the oppression of both the Palestinian and Filipino people. The AFP and IDF both train with and receive the majority of their funding from the U.S. government, with the intention of protecting their capitalist, imperialist interests in both Asia and the Middle East. Canada tacitly allows the illegal recruitment of Jewish Canadians into the IDF, while land defenders in the Philippines are killed for protesting the occupation of their sovereign lands by Canadian mining corporations. It is imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, that facilitates and presupposes this violence around the world. It is not just a side effect but a fundamental strategy of imperialism and its perpetuation.
CPSO-Toronto calls upon residents of Canada to denounce the complicity of one settler state in the atrocities of another. From Palestine to the Philippines – stop the US War Machine! From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!