Free Palestine ! Against the genocide

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We take to the rivers and the sea – until Palestine and all oppressed peoples are free, and until genocide, borders, and fossil capitalism are ended.

We raise the flag of Palestine as a symbol of dignity, resistance, and freedom and sail the Mediterranean as part of f.Lotta’s mass occupation against the violent EU border regime and for liberation and freedom of movement for all.

The Mediterranean Sea has become a graveyard for tens of thousands fleeing war, genocide and oppression. While weapons, fossil fuels, and products for mass consumption move freely across borders, people in search of a life with dignity face injury, trauma and death.

Palestinians face some of the most extreme forms of attack on their freedom of movement. For decades, Palestinians have resisted against all sorts of colonial violence and oppression. Their homeland has been divided and besieged by imperialist borders and settler colonial occupation. The Israeli apartheid system has reached its logical conclusion in the past two years in all its nakedness: a live-streamed genocide, now continued with a deliberate policy of starvation, and destruction of land, water, and life. The Zionist entity is exhausting all methods of dehumanization, in front of the eyes of humanity with impunity.

The fight for freedom of movement is inherently linked to the struggle for a free Palestine and the global struggle against colonialism and imperialism. In this joint effort of several groups, the f.Lotta Palestine campaign echoes the sounds of streets and squares around the world: the freedom of Palestine is the freedom for all!

Unveiling colonial violence and racial capitalism

The violence that we are witnessing in Palestine exposes a global order that sacrifices racialized lives for profit and power. The EU border regime is a gatekeeper of this system. Those crossing the Mediterranean are survivors of wars waged for resource extraction, territorial control, and authoritarian expansion. This involves violent depopulation, land grabs, ecocidal megaprojects, and infrastructural projects that obstruct the movement of people and endanger living beings and nature. Indigenous populations resisting these projects are treated as obstacles to be removed – met with brutal violence, dispossession, incarceration and murder. 

One of the key tools for sustaining imperialist domination is the global energy economy. Many present and future wars revolve around access to the resources that power the global energy system and its so-called green transition. In recent years, fossil gas has been promoted as a “clean” alternative, yet it serves as another opportunity for colonial extraction from the Global South. As Israel pursues its genocidal project to occupy and ethnically cleanse the entirety of Gaza, it simultaneously strikes record gas deals with Egypt and large pipeline deals with Cyprus, and Greece – moves that go hand in hand with deepening military cooperation and bolstering authoritarian regimes. These projects are not only about profit, but about cementing a regional fossil order that fuels genocide, colonial expansion, and climate breakdown.

Exposing the EU’s genocidal and colonial liberalism

The dominant systems are based on racialized hierarchies. They determine who is allowed to live and thrive, and whose life can be disposed. This logic is as clear in Palestine as it is in the deaths and suffering at the EU border. 

The EU border system relies on Israeli technologies to monitor and prevent people on the move: The very same Israeli Heron drones used to monitor and target Palestinians in Gaza are also deployed by the EU’s border agency, Frontex, to patrol the Mediterranean. Beyond surveillance, Israel exports experimental technologies – from border biometrics to geoengineering projects like Stardust Solutions – that turn Palestine into a laboratory for militarized ‘climate solutions’ and repression.

From policing methods to surveillance tech – states in Europe and beyond are receiving training, services, and products from the Zionist entity, to oppress people within their own borders. While war criminals act and travel freely and luxuriously, people face deportation and prison sentences for protesting the governments’ role in a brutal genocide. Meanwhile, sea rescue and other acts of solidarity are increasingly criminalized, as is migration itself. 

The crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement in Europe is being leveraged to stoke racism against Palestinians, Muslims and everyone that it considers a “foreigner”. This climate of racism creates fertile ground for ongoing deportations, EU asylum reforms, and the expansion of border externalization. Meanwhile, as fascist parties and politicians in Europe plot to strip citizenship and deport millions, Israel pursues similar measures against the Palestinian population in Gaza and all over the occupied territories.

The genocide in Palestine has exposed the depths of violence and impunity that imperialist powers will resort to in order to protect their interests and agendas. Standing with Palestine is therefore a question about what kind of world we are willing to accept.

Sailing on the path of all those who resist!

Solidarity recognizes no borders.

People’s organized action on the Mediterranean Sea has saved countless lives, creating hope and solidarity amid deadly border systems. 

As people on the move continue to break the borders in the Mediterranean daily and show immense solidarity and revolutionary reimagination of their lives and communities, hundreds of activists have been preparing actions to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Since years, the Freedom Flotilla has sailed in numerous routes and constellations to break the siege on Gaza. Earlier this year, a group of activists onboard the Madleen sailed towards Gaza to break the siege before being kidnapped and deported by the Israeli occupation forces. On the way to Gaza, the crew was able to rescue Sudanese refugees,  fleeing genocidal forces and counter-revolutionary war. While sailing to break the siege in Palestine, the Madleen was able to prevent that refugees are pushed back to Libya where they face enslavement, incarceration, and death by EU-backed militias. The Sea connects the struggles.

Now, the Global Sumud Flotilla is preparing to sail with people from over 44 countries to break the siege in the largest civilian maritime mission to Gaza since 2007. Thousands are risking their bodies, pushing the boundaries of resistance, and demonstrating the height of their political awareness and collective action.

Just as these previous and current actions, this campaign sails with the f.Lotta to break borders, link the struggles and broaden the imagination of a world with freedom of movement and collective liberation. 

These are among many other concrete grassroots actions in the face of international complicity and escalating violence that will spare no one in the future.

We salute and stand in solidarity with the people who take matters into their own hands to end the genocidal siege. We sail on their path, reclaiming the Mediterranean Sea as a site of struggle and resistance in contrast to those who have turned it into a graveyard. 

Connecting the struggles

More than ever before, now is the time for everyone to unite forces and struggles towards the only viable solution to this world imposed on us: freedom and self-determination for all.

While EU states continue to back genocide, ecocide, and war crimes: 

• We commit to exposing all state entities and corporations, including fossil fuel and arms manufacturing companies as well as tech firms, that profit from war and destruction. 
• We must recognize Israel’s genocide and ecocide, and Europe’s role in funding and arming it.
• We fight and resist for a global energy embargo against Israel and call on all the harbor and factory workers to persist in withdrawing their labor, refusing the starvation of Palestinian children and families. 
• We must commit to rebuilding through just reconstruction and healing of Gaza based on the will and self-determination of the Palestinian people, ensuring sovereignty over land, water, and energy.
• We stand alongside billions of people in the world who will never stop demanding nothing less than a free Palestine, from the river to the sea – and a world rebuilt beyond genocide, fossil capitalism, and borders.

With these demands, we simultaneously fight for the freedom of all oppressed peoples and for an ecological, just future for all living beings.

Core signatories

Endorsements

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Here is the list of groups that signed up to the campaign:

MELITEA

Gaza Freiheitsflottille

Migrantifa Köln

f.Lotta boats, The Synergy mast