by Ana Hurtado, published on Resumen English, November 23, 2023
The dictatorship of the multinationals. We can call it by various names. Also of capital. Of the civilized world. If Luis Buñuel were to come back to life and take a look at the world we live in today, he would have material for thousands and thousands of films. He would not have enough life to write so many scripts.
Without wishing to be apocalyptic, the Western panorama is going downhill. For more than a month we have been witnessing a genocide televised live by various media and the world is turning upside down: Susan Sarandon’s acting agency is firing her in the United States for demonstrating in favor of the Palestinian people and some other American actress is having her contract withdrawn.
Decent countries do not hesitate to denounce the passivity and double standards of the international community in the face of the massacre in the Gaza Strip and in the occupied territories of Palestine. But the planet continues to consume, believing itself liberated by having the option of entering a supermarket and choosing seven different brands of milk and thinking that this is freedom.
The new slaves are the masses of consumers. Those who do not question because they do not move and cannot hear the noise of the chains and shackles that condemn them to a life of production and consumption to a system that exploits them until their last breath. Where the majority are from below, not from above. Where those at the top laugh and those at the bottom suffer. But they call that freedom.
And the alienated masses believe that those who are not free are those who choose their destiny without imposition, despite having to comply with sanctions and punishments, as in the case of Cuba. And extermination, as is happening in Palestine.
They are still deluded into thinking that their constructed and theatricalized liberal democracies are the valid ones. They do not even consider why they have no participation in them. They live under domination and control.
Because being free has a price. And it is paid high.
That is why now they create matrices of opinion to criminalize a people who only fight for their identity, for their lives, for their territory, to recover everything that has been taken away from them.
Rosa Luxemburg said: “When the Revolution comes down from our heads to our fists”. Sometimes, in certain historical moments, and it is always good to turn to them, there has been no choice but to make use of this sublime phrase.
In the French Revolution, they did not engage in dialogue with the king. They cut off his head. Then came the famous motto Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Which is nothing more than treating people fairly, with emphasis between rulers and people.
But do modern states treat their citizens (or subjects) this way?
I assert that they do not.
Is it legitimate that the resistance of the Palestinian People has risen up against a Zionist regime that has been oppressing and killing its people for years, decades?
In my opinion, yes. Because there comes a time when ideas, forces, firmness in the face of injustice, have to materialize.
Does humanity expect that a people who are tortured and blockaded day after day (this did not begin on October 7, 2023) should remain still and not struggle to survive?
When you are drowning in the middle of the sea in front of a swell and in the middle of a storm, you move your arms, your feet, you do your best to get afloat, to breathe, to not sink in the middle of the ocean. It is the right to life that no one can take away from us. It is the right to legitimate defense that Palestine has against every attack it has been suffering for 75 years by its settlers.
A few days ago, the State of Israel assassinated two journalists in southern Lebanon.
Every day they kill children. Women, civilians.
No one who loves life can ever condemn the right of a people to defend itself. Whoever does not understand this is because he has not yet seen death up close.
How well Mahmud Darwish reflected in part of a poem written in Arabic with so much feeling that overflows:
We say to you:
Sing for the land that remains.
Rebel.
Teach our dark history to the children,
so that our blood may remain on the flag of the criminals,
as a sign of catastrophe.
We ask you:
Protect the weak from the bullets,
so that those who live may be saved
and those who will be born in the future.
The source of crime is still drooling.
Obstruct it.
And remain vigilant, ready for combat.
We revolutionaries will certainly go down in history as those people who stood by the side and hand in hand with the Palestinian People; ready and steadfast for combat. Making theirs our cause. It is not the cause of a place, it is the cause of the free man and woman.
*Featured Image: Palestinian mourners carry the bodies of three children who were killed in a fire caused by a candle, during their funeral in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, Saturday, May 7, 2016. (AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English