TEN members of the Palestinian resistance movement, members of the Al-Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad, were killed in missile attacks by Israeli warplanes in the Gaza Strip and by a special Zionist death squad operating near Jenin in the West Bank on Monday and Tuesday.
The BBC reported, without comment, Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai, who told its Army Radio yesterday: ‘I’m very pleased with our achievements last night. The important thing is not the number of them who are hit, but their place in the organisation’s hierarchy.’
The British state media organisation justified the state terror of the Zionist forces deployed against Palestinians living under occupation by adding that ‘Israel’s leadership has been under public pressure launch (sic!) a major ground offensive in Gaza to put an end to rocket and mortar fire from the territory, which is run by the Hamas militant group’.
On Monday night, the general commander of the Al-Quds Brigades, 36-year-old Majid Al-Harazin and his aide 38-year-old Jihad Ath-Thahir were killed in a missile attack by Israeli warplanes on a car and five other people were injured.
A short time later, an Israeli fighter attacked Al-Quds Brigades members as they made their way to At-Tawba Mosque in the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip. Husam Abu Jabal, Mohammed At-Taramsi and Usama Yasin were killed and three others were injured.
Then Israel fighters launched missiles at an Al-Quds Brigades group in the west of Gaza City, killing Karim Ad-Dahduh, Ammar Abu As-Sai’d and Ayman Al-Aylah and injuring another three men.
A Zionist death squad operating in the West Bank near Jenin riddled a car with bullets in Qabatia, killing Tariq Abu Ghali, a leading member of Islamic Jihad, and wounding three other people who were with him. Israeli special forces then made off with Abu Ghali’s body.
The death toll in the first two days of this week was 12, with twice that number injured. In addition to the assassinations of members of Islamic Jihad, two Palestinian police officers were killed and five injured in the south of the Gaza Strip in an Israeli air strike.
The murderous extra-judicial mass executions, carried out by Israeli occupation warplanes against those resisting the 40-year-old illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, were condemned as a ‘terrible crime’ by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’s spokesman.
Abbas was forced to condemn these killings, despite the struggle he is waging against those who support armed resistance, like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, the DFLP and even sections of his own Fatah movement, the Al Aqsa Brigades.
It is clear that Israel is an imperialist-funded entity that carries out the dirty work for the US and Britain in the Middle East. Palestinians live under the threat of death and in extreme poverty under the Zionist occupation.
Workers in Britain do not go along with Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s uncritical support for Israel and are not duped by the BBC’s (Biased British Coverage) report of the struggles in that region.
British workers, outraged by these latest atrocities of Israeli state terror must demand their trade union leaders organise action now to support the Palestinians, and deliver a blow against the Zionists and their backers.
The unions must implement trade, financial and cultural boycotts of Israel.
To organise such a struggle a new leadership will have to be forged in the unions, because there are close links between the Zionists, the British state and the Labour leadership and many of the present union leaders have made it clear that they will not challenge these forces.
The struggle by workers to support the Palestinians, end the Israeli occupation and enable the people to establish their State of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital, is inseparable from the fight against all the anti-working class attacks of the government.
The ousting of the Brown regime by mass strike action and its replacement with a workers government and a socialist foreign policy, will create the conditions for every assistance to be provided from Britain to the Palestinian people.