Louisa Morgantini, Yanis Varoufakis - Importance of Solidarity with Palestine (2022)

Luisa Morgantini: Well, I'm very happy to be here with all of you. Happy to meet also Varoufakis and all the others. I think it was a great effort to organize it. And it's very important to be here on this 29th of November. which is so many years that the United Nations say it's the day of the independence of the people, of the Palestinians, and nothing has been done. So it's every year we repeat over and over again self-determination, freedom from the Palestinian people. At the same time, you see the situation inside the occupied territories, The situation of the diaspora, not only in Lebanon, but all the other parts, is getting worse and worse. And this is our responsibility, not mine or yours, only yours, that you are here and you are convinced of the need and the right of the Palestinians to live free in their own land. but it's the responsibility of the European Union, it's the responsibility of the United Nations, of course the United States, because also us as European Union, even if you every time say that Israeli is violating human rights, Israeli build settlements, they shouldn't do it. Children going to prison, they shouldn't be there. Gaza should not be bombed. But they say very little time that Gaza should be free without any sort of siege that they are experiencing all day. So I think for us it's a great responsibility to try to change not only for Palestine, but also for us, for our dignity, to change the situation and start to get Israel accountable for the crime that every day they are committing. Today, our friend from the embassy said, five martyrs? But every day, they are killing children, young people. Every day, they are grabbing land, putting settlement and settler. And you saw Sheikh Jarrah. how the violence is there. And this year, in the last government, settlers became more and more aggressive. Why? Because settlers now are totally legitimate inside Israeli society. Till 1994, when Rabin was still there, so many people in Israel saw the settlers as parasites. They were not the settlers. In the same time, the Labor Party and the Labor government of Rabin and others built the settlement with the mystification that also some of us believed that the settlement will go away. So we had Oslo, which was a track. It was an important moment because I remember that we believed that Oslo was possible to bring not justice, not to give back the land, not to have one state, but at least to have the possibility of having two people and two states. We believed it was a challenge. I think it was right to make a challenge, but then we saw that this challenge was not taken, that the plan of the Israelis was clear. I think not only from Oslo, but it was clear from before. The plan of the Israelis is not... Like Rabin was saying, give back territories for peace. The plan is to get all the land of Palestine, of the historical Palestine. The plan is to throw out Palestinians from their own land. In 1948, they succeeded to make ethnic cleansing. They expelled 70,000-50,000 Palestinians. But now the Palestinians are more and more. So it was not the plan of evacuating all the Palestinians. The plan of ethnic cleansing was not succeeded because the Palestinians, there were 1,300,000 in 1948, and now there are millions. millions inside Gaza in a big prison, millions in the territories, and millions in the diaspora. So Palestinians are there and they're going to resist. You saw The violence of the settler, the violence of the soldier, not soldier, the police, because of course the police intervened in East Jerusalem because Israel considered East Jerusalem, Jerusalem, so the palestinians inside jerusalem are under attack not only in sheikh jarrah or al-bustan or in the different places they are under attack since years and years i remember for example during the first intifada that bezzelin which is this organization of human rights defenders from israel they made a leaflet explaining the way in which Israel was going to Judah and Zion, Jerusalem. And the leaflet was titled, The Quiet Deportation. I was surprised in that year to read that one Israeli organization was speaking about deportation because for us deportation was a deportation. So the plan of making East Jerusalem without Palestinians is a plan of many, many years. And what the Israeli are planning always, and now with this government or the previous government, they are going straight forward the total. I don't know, this government, can you imagine the hypocrisy of our government? This government and the government before was made mainly by settlers. So the Europeans consider, and also the United Nations, consider settlers and settlement illegal, which are illegal under international law because a country which is occupying a people or a country cannot transfer its own population. But now, no government feel as bad that they have to treat with fascists, they have to treat with, sorry, but they have to treat with a person like Ben-Gur that who is a khanist, khanist that even the Knesset expect, didn't allow. in the 80s to be part of the Israeli society. They expelled him. Even the American put Kahane under the list of terrorists. And now we have a government, we have a government that the main people are settler. Settler, but not only settler, fanatic. Because I think that we have also to analyze Israeli society and the judgment that in Israeli society happened. And there are very, very much big changes. Till Rabin, there was a kind of mediation between secular and religious Jew. now this mediation is finished because most of the people now in israel also they are messianic fundamentalist religious and nationalist and this changed also the israeli society so i think that personally i think that israel is going to an abyss because they cannot go on like this They are very racist. They are very much in charge. I think this is not only the question of being occupied or colonizing. They are really cruel and very racist. because what the other doesn't exist, the Arab, the Palestinian are not human beings for them. I'm not speaking, of course, about all the Israelis because I have a lot of friends inside Israel that we are going together in Sheikh Jarrah, for example, in Sheikh Jarrah, There are young Israelis who are even making a drum for a revolution. There are a lot of young Israelis who are coming, for example, to the Jordan Valley, trying to defend and stop the demolition of the houses, the evacuation of people. There are B'Tselem who signed that evacuation of people from Jordan Valley. Oh, now from Asafer Yatta and all the South Ebron Hill, it's just a crime. It's a crime against humanity because they are evacuating people. So there are Israelis who are coming there. And now, I remember that in the first intifada, but even the second one, when we were trying to stop the soldier, when we were trying to free the road for the Palestinian, The Israeli were there, the soldier were taking care of them, they were not arrested. But now, the Israeli are coming with the Palestinian in Sheikh Jarrah, they're coming with the Palestinian in South Ebron Hills, in Ebron. They are beaten like the others, like the Palestinian. Because really, inside also the army, there was a big change. Because still, 94, In the army, there were the army, but not many settlers, not many religious. Now, inside the army, more than 40% of the Israeli army are settlers. One of the last action of the previous government, for example, Israeli, it was to elect the new head of the IDF, of the Israeli soldier, is a settler. So when you have settler in the government, when you have settler inside the court, of course I'm not speaking about apartheid, the fact that the israeli and even the young people of 12 years are under military court and of course the the israeli don't don't go to the military cause so there is a part that also in that system well i think israel is really going to nabis i have to stop i don't have the time i have to stop i want to stop no i want to decide what you No, I think that I don't want to bore you. I mean, also I think that Costas gave us a time, so Costas controlled the movement here. Now, okay, just a few words because it's very complicated to speak a lot about Palestine now. I really think that one of the stereotype that comes to our society is that the Palestinian violent Palestinians are terrorists. Palestinians are victims when they are good to them. No. What I learned from the Palestinians is that the Palestinians are really resistance. Only making They are resisting every day and I think they are a miracle. When they said they're violent, I said what? Where is the violence of the Palestinians? Of course there is some form of resistance or some form of terrorism because I don't consider what Hamas was doing in the Second Intifada like resistance because if I respect international rights, international international legality then i have to say that when you send poor desperate young people to kill themselves and kills civilian this i don't consider resistance i consider an act which is not resistant but the young people that now in nablus for example the lions them who are attacking soldier who are making incursion inside their town, inside their homes. Okay, they're shooting, but this is resistant because they're attacking soldiers who are going inside. Unfortunately, these people have been killed already because the Israelis are totally unpunished for their crime. And we have a solidarity movement explain to the people the truth for example we organize as italian but i saw so many greece in this year in palestine you are organizing trip and delegation of people from civil society going to palestine to see with their own eyes to see what is the truth to see that the palestinian when they're telling us, where is the Palestinian Gandhi? They would see that the Palestinian Gandhi are thousands of people who are just resisting to stay in their land, which is the plan of Israel to get away. So when these, I finish now, when the Israelis are saying, well, there is no Mandela in Palestine. No, there are millions of Mandela. And one of the Mandela is in jail, like Marwan Barghouti. And I say to them, look, it's Israel who doesn't have the clerk. The Palestinians have many Mandela and they prove they wanted peace and they want justice. So I hope we will be able together, all together, with the... heart and mind and being very rational that israel should finish his violation of human rights and the palestinians should be free complicated difficult but we have to go on because the palestinians deserve all our love and dignity for them and dignity for us because for us it's a question of dignity we don't have any dignity if the continuation of the occupation of departed and the colonization goes on

Yanis Varoufakis: Hannah Nanshraoui, who was meant to be here today and who will come in the future, we hope, once said that you cannot rely on silenced people to convey their stories. And this is why I need to thank Meta on behalf of everyone for having chosen three wonderful cinematographers to tell the stories of silenced people. I don't need to add anything regarding the historical context of the Palestinian struggle or regarding the need for our solidarity, for our constant work to help Palestinians liberate Palestine and liberate their nation, their people, their communities. But it is important, I believe, on days like today, to draw lessons broader lessons from the plight of the Palestinians regarding ourselves here in Greece, in Europe, in the United States, in Africa, everywhere. Because the Palestinian issue is a worldwide, international Nakba, catastrophe. It's not just for the Palestinians, it is for humanity. And let me narrate this a little bit. When Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine on the 24th of February. Our party came out and condemned unequivocally the invasion of Ukraine on the basis that we always take the stance, always take the position in favor of the invaded. And then we added, I added in Parliament, in exactly the same way that we support the Palestinians whose homes have been invaded. We cannot... not support Ukrainians facing Russian troops at their doorstep. And then suddenly I saw the rest of the political spectrum in our parliament freeze. Because for them, invasion and violence is to be condemned. Unless of course it concerns carpet bombing Gaza or violating the lives and the homes of Arabs, Palestinians in East Jerusalem. A few weeks later, President Zelensky of Ukraine came out and in one of his many very successful propaganda speeches, likened the emerging nation of Ukraine to David fighting Goliath. And therefore he said, this is very important, therefore he said, I want, that's Zelensky, not me, I want Ukraine to become the Israel of Eastern Europe. What? Israel is not the David and the Palestinians are not the Goliath. This is a fundamental lie at the heart of the Palestinian question. From the 15th of May 1948, that black day, in human history, Nakba. The crime against the Palestinians, the ethnic cleansing, systematic ethnic cleansing, planned ethnic cleansing, ethnic cleansing that was designed, that was perpetrated with strategic vision, with tactical prowess by Israel by their supporters in Washington DC and continues to this day. This has been Goliath crashing David and ensuring that David's catapult was taken away from him. And the propaganda was to invert it, to present the state of Israel as David. Every war that took place after the 15th of May 1948 to this very day, the war that we saw because this is war, what's happening in East Jerusalem today or in Gaza, has had one objective to get rid of Palestinians from Palestine. This was the textbook case of a dynamic program. First, of inflicting terror in the hearts and minds of many to encourage them to leave. Second, the ones that were left behind to be constantly terrorized, constantly abducted, constantly asphyxiated until they left or died or tried to themselves convince their children to emigrate. That was the plan and it is being carried out with military and mathematical precision with the assistance of the European Union and the United States of America. Let us not mince our words about that. Interestingly, The war in Ukraine, which is a war of two evil sides, from the perspective of Mera25 and Din25. On the one hand, Vladimir Putin's regime, fascist regime, and on the other hand, NATO. NATO that doesn't care about democracy. Proof in 1967, this is a NATO country. We had a NATO American orchestrated coup d'etat against our democracy. They don't care about democracy. when democracy threatens their interests, they banish it. And it doesn't care about occupation. It doesn't care about carpet bombing of innocents. This is what they do in Yemen. This is what they do in Palestine, what they did in Iraq, what they did in Afghanistan. This Ukrainian conflict, which is, as we speak, plunging billions of people into poverty across the world, including in the first world, including in the first world. People are going to bed hungry and cold in Europe, in the United States of America. This Zelensky attempt to create a narrative of victimhood by portraying Ukraine as the next Israel, this, I think, tells you everything there is to know about the centrality of the Palestinian conflict, not only in the Middle East, but worldwide. There was a Soviet dissident who once said that when a crime is silenced, the silence becomes a lie. That was Yevtushenko, Yevgeny. And this, I think, is very pertinent to what has been happening since the 15th of May 1948 in Palestine. But I also remember, and that's how I close, I remember the great British journalist, Robert Fisk, who doesn't remember him. I met him some years ago and he said something over a third glass of whiskey, which was very prescient, I believe, and highly insightful to me. He said, you know, Yanis, liberty will not visit the land of Palestine. until the Americans are liberated. That, allow me to paraphrase, or to expand, is so true, but it concerns Europeans as well. Palestine will not be liberated until Europeans are liberated, until Ukrainians are liberated, until Russians are liberated, until Latin Americans are liberated, until the whole world is liberated. Thank you.