Ayman Odeh: The real struggle in Israel is between Fascism and Democracy

Photo: Zo Haderech

Nationwide demonstrations calling for a Gaza cease-fire and hostage release deal, as well as protests far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, were scheduled to take place on Saturday night, July 12, as negotiations between Israel and Hamas have reportedly stalled.

Hadash MK Ayman Odeh was the main speaker at the weekly demonstration in the Jewish-Arab city of Haifa, he asserts that the “real struggle” in Israel is “between fascism and democracy” and “between occupation and freedom.” 

Israel: Solidarity with Hadash leader Ayman Odeh

Two weeks ago, Ayman Odeh, MP and head of the Parliamentary Group of Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), was violently removed from the podium of Knesset for denouncing the genocide in Gaza. 

In a demonstration held in Haifa on May 31, Odeh sharply criticized the far-right Israeli government, claiming the country has become isolated internationally. “Israel has become a pariah state among the nations of the world, including in the West,” Odeh stated. 

KKE MEPs: Letter to EU Council and EU Commission Presidents regarding the situation in Gaza

Letter from the MEPs of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) to EU Council and EU Commission Presidents regarding the ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people:

Mr President,

These days we are witnessing a new escalation in the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza by the Israeli state, which has so far caused over 61,000 casualties, of whom more than 28,000 are women and girls.

Secretary General of the Communist Party of Israel: "Netanyahu government seeks to neutralize the PLO"

"The Palestinian left has an important historical role in uniting the Palestinian political forces", underlined Adel Amer, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Israel (Maki), this week in a discussion with "Zo Haderech" newspaper, concerning Palestinian politics in the midst of the war in Gaza. The transcript of the interview is as follows:

— Amid the annihilation war in Gaza, have there been changes in the Palestinian political arena?

Joint Statement of Communist and Workers’ Parties: Stop the genocide against the Palestinian people

Joint Statement of Communist and Workers’ Parties

The Communist and Workers’ Parties condemn the new crime against the Palestinian people, which is being carried out before the eyes of the whole world and has been brought about by the intensification of the barbaric military aggression and the criminal Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip.

Communist Knesset member Cassif: "They are trying to silence us, there’s a fascist atmosphere in Israel"

Racist Otzma Yehudit MK Almog Cohen announced past week that he would begin collecting lawmakers’ signatures to initiate impeachment proceedings against Hadash MK Ofer Cassif, condemning what he described as the Communist legislator’s “vile and disgraceful comparison of the voluntary emigration program for Gaza residents to the voluntary emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany.” 

In November, Cassif was suspended from the Knesset for six months over comments he made about the Israeli army war in Gaza. Under the terms of his suspension, Cassif is not allowed to enter the Knesset plenum or committee meetings except to vote.

European Communist Action meeting in Istanbul: Statement on the developments in the Middle East

The European Communist Action convened in Istanbul on January 19, 2025, hosted by the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP).

The parties participating in the meeting organized under the title “Developments in the Middle East We strengthen our solidarity with the peoples of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria” exchanged ideas on the developments in the Middle East.

Gaza: By whatever name you call It – Is Genocide!

By Avishai Ehrlich*

The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, published the results of a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) claiming that the figures published by the Hamas Ministry of Health on the deaths in Gaza are biased downwards. 

The real number of Palestinian deaths and missing in Gaza, according to the London statisticians, is not 46,000 but closer to 70,000, almost 3% of the population, of whom about 59% are elderly, children and women. 

Hadash MP Touma-Sliman: Israel Must Be a State with Equal Rights for All its Citizens

Last week, while visiting the European Parliament on the invitation of the Portuguese Communist Party, MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash) give an interview to Rosa Luxemburg Foundation on the escalating repression against Arab-Palestinians in Israel, the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s plans for territorial conquest, and the shrinking space for left-wing forces in the country. Above some excerpts of the interview.

As an Arab-Palestinian citizen of Israel, you have been very vocal about the discrimination and inequality facing your community in the past, even referring to Israel’s 2018 Nation-State Law as an “apartheid law”. How have things changed since 7 October?

 

The destruction of Gaza and what followed did not start on October 7

By Oded Goldreich and Assaf Kfoury

An incendiary war has been raging for more than a year in the Middle East.  It has been indescribably devastating on Gaza and has now extended to the West Bank, to northern Israel and Lebanon, with ominous signs of expanding further into a regional war. This is a war driven by an Israeli government bent on exacting vengeful retribution on all its perceived enemies, unrestrained by its American benefactor and main purveyor of weapons. While this war has been extensively covered by the media, what is mostly understated or forgotten are the circumstances that led to it – a covert decades-long war waged by Israel on the Palestinian people. 

Greek dockworkers blocked the loading of a container full of bullets bound for Israel

On Thursday 17 October, COSCO dockers at the Port of Piraeus detected a container full of bullets that had entered the country via North Macedonia and was bound for Haifa, Israel, to be used in the massacre of the Palestinian and Lebanese people. 

The COSCO dockers, led by their trade union, the Container Handling Workers’ Union at the Piers of Piraeus (ENEDEP), took decisive action to prevent the container from being loaded onto the ship and demonstrated on the spot, calling on the people of the region to join the demonstration.

Joint Statement of Communist and Workers Parties: We stand against the widening of war in the Middle East!

Joint Statement of Communist and Workers Parties

We stand against the widening of war in the Middle East!

We, the undersigned communist and workers parties campaigning for peace and progress in the Middle East, hereby express our most profound concerns over the unprecedented escalation of the situation in the region with the Israeli multi-dimensional attacks on Lebanon and full-scale invasion of the country. This has predictably resulted in the retaliatory missile strikes by Iran on Israeli targets, following on from Israeli attacks on Lebanon and other provocative infringements on Iranian sovereignty.

Online meeting of Palestinian and Israeli communists: Stop the war on Gaza and Lebanon Now!

Stop the war on Gaza and Lebanon Now!

Only by establishing a Palestinian sovereign state will there be peace and stability in the region.

Dear comrades, the Communist Party of Israel and the Palestinian People's Party would like to invite you to an online meeting. We will discuss the escalation in the region, and the situation in Palestine and Israel.

Speakers:

Communist Party of Greece (KKE): Article on the war in the Middle East, Palestine and Israel

ARTICLE by the International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE:
 

In the last few months, the whole world has witnessed a generalized attack of the political-military machine of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people, especially in the Gaza Strip. Most of the bourgeois media, which support Israel, are trying in vain to convince the people that it all started on 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing and taking Israeli hostages. The vast majority of the peoples know that the Israeli bourgeois state, with the connivance of the USA and its other Euro-Atlantic allies, has been occupying the territories where, according to the UN resolutions, the state of Palestine should be established and oppressing the Palestinian people for seven decades. 

KKE denounces Israeli attack in Beirut and Haniyeh's assassination

In a statement (here in Greek) concerning the recent Israeli attack in Beirut and the assassination of Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the Press Office of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) warns about an unpredictable escalation of war in the Middle East. 

 

The statement reads:

"The KKE denounces the new murderous attack by Israel on Beirut which, combined with the assassination of the leader of Hamas in Tehran, leads to unpredictable escalation of the war and a general conflagration in the Middle East.

 

Palestinian and Israeli Communists meet in Ramallah to coordinate struggle against war and occupation

A high-level tripartite leadership meeting was held in the city of Ramallah in July between delegations representing the leadership bodies of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI), the Palestinian People’s Party (PPP), and the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash).

The meeting reviewed the latest political and battlefield developments considering the ongoing war and genocide to which the Palestinian people are being subjected, especially in the Gaza Strip. It also discussed ways to enhance the struggle and joint action of all three organizations.

Israeli communists: “ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant signals Israel’s rapid decline into a fascist regime"

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Kahn, said Monday that he had request arrest warrants from the court’s judges for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with top Hamas leaders. Kahn said that the charges against Israel’s premier and defense chief are for the crimes of “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict. 

 

Communists from Israel and Cyprus demand an end to the war in Gaza

Protest in front the UK military bases in Cyprus, January 14, 2024

The General Secretary of the Central Committee of AKEL (Progressive Party of Working People, Cyprus), Stefanos Stefanou, met Friday, May 17, with MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash), member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Israel, with whom the situation in Gaza and in Israel in general was discussed. 

 

In statements made after the meeting, both Stefanou and Touma-Sliman called for an end to the war and the implementation of the resolutions of the UN on the Palestinian issue.

Communist Party of Greece demands from government the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state

With a written question addressed to the Greek Foreign Minister G. Gerapetritis, the Parliamentary Group of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) demands the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

More specifically, according to 902.gr portal, the question submitted by the 21 KKE MPs reads:

 

Communist Party of Israel-Hadash: Netanyahu's fascist government on verge of causing humanitarian disaster in Rafah

“Israel’s fascist government is on the verge of bringing about a humanitarian disaster in Rafah,” Hadash and Communist Party of Israel (CPI) says in a common statement on Monday, May 6.

Protesting far-right Israeli government plans to “bomb and invade the Rafah area on the Egyptian border, which houses hundreds of thousands of displaced people,” Hadash and the CPI warns of “the mass slaughter and humanitarian disaster involved in the bombing of a very small area containing more than a million displaced people.”