Three years after the terrorist attack by Hamas and its allies, we pay tribute to the victims of this mass crime, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis, including more than 800 civilians (children, women and men) murdered at the Nova Festival and in kibbutzim in southern Israel. This attack was the largest massacre of Jews since the Shoah.
It also killed Palestinian citizens of Israel and migrant workers. The rapes and sexual violence, together with the kidnapping of 250 hostages, 50 of whom died in captivity, added to the horror of the massacres.
This attack, which the International Criminal Court has described as a war crime and a crime against humanity, caused deep trauma in Israeli society, and well beyond it.
In response, the far-right government led by Netanyahu, which had favoured and funded Hamas in order to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, and had refused to heed the many warnings of an imminent Hamas attack, launched a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip, denounced by numerous Israeli organisations, including B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights and Standing Together, or binational ones such as Combatants for Peace. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army. This same government sabotaged several opportunities that arose to free the hostages through negotiations.
At the same time, the Netanyahu-Smotrich-Ben Gvir government, a backer of supremacist settlers, has hardened the occupation and accelerated colonisation in the West Bank. The Israeli army and the settlers are jointly pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, which terrorises and kills Palestinian civilians. Since 7 October 2023, more than 1,100 Palestinians there have been killed by settlers and/or soldiers. In parallel, cases of torture and sexual crimes against Palestinians have been documented in Israeli prisons.
In France, the earthquake of 7 October and of the genocidal war in Gaza has caused a profound upheaval in society.
From 7 October onwards, antisemitism resurged brutally in French society, with a very sharp increase in the number of antisemitic acts, and this was followed by a very sharp increase in Islamophobia, these two racisms being fuelled by the rise of the far right and the possible coming to power of the National Rally.
We, the Collectif de Lutte Antifasciste contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme (Antifascist Collective against Racism and Antisemitism), call for a solidarity-based struggle against antisemitism and Islamophobia, and for a just and lasting peace in Israel and Palestine, without annexation or ethnic cleansing.
We reject all forms of violence against civilian populations, and stand in solidarity with the victims of 7 October in Israel and with the Palestinian victims in Gaza, in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.
The Collectif de Lutte Antifasciste contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme (CLARA) can be contacted at [email protected].
The French original of this communiqué first appeared on CLARA’s social media accounts. This English translation first appeared on the Left Renewal Blog.
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