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The Cape Town-based movement, Qibla, calls for global resistance and solidarity with Palestine, Cuba, Iran and other nations confronting US-led imperialism and Zionist expansion.
Qibla affirms its steadfast and militant solidarity with the peoples of Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, who stand at the forefront of imperialist aggression led by the United States, Israel and their allies in the global north.
We call on all workers, students, progressive intellectuals, faith communities, trade unions, social movements and revolutionary organisations to organise, mobilise and resist the expanding wars being waged against the sovereignty, dignity and self-determination of oppressed peoples.
What confronts us is not a series of isolated crises. The problem is global. It is imperialism in its most brutal form: military conquest, sanctions, destabilisation, siege, regime change operations, propaganda warfare, economic strangulation and the criminalisation of resistance. Closer examination shows that even the centres of power in the global north need decolonisation. The logic of war has repercussions in London, Paris, Washington, Tel Aviv and Bonn. Bombs abroad and the loss of fundamental freedoms at home.
Across Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, the justifications used by imperialist powers constantly change because their true goal remains the same. They speak of ‘security,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘counterterrorism,’ ‘stability,’ ‘human rights’ and ‘peace negotiations,’ but what they genuinely pursue is imperialist and Zionist domination. Their language shifts because their project is illegitimate. It is ‘regime change’. Their propaganda adapts because they cannot openly defend their crimes. Therefore, they rely on the media to wage a propaganda war within their own countries.
This is the political reality of our time: a decaying Euro-Atlantic imperial order, led by the United States and enforced through Zionist and imperialist militarism, attempting to discipline all peoples and states that refuse unconditional submission to Western capital and geopolitical control.
The true barbarism is imperialism.
The real terrorism lies in the systematic bombing, starving, displacement and collective punishment of entire peoples.
The genuine extremism is the belief that some states can dominate the world without limits and without consequences.
The peoples of Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela are not guilty of any crime except standing up for dignity, sovereignty and the right to determine their own futures. That is their unforgivable offence in the eyes of empire.
We therefore call for a renewed worldwide politics rooted in working-class solidarity, anti-imperialism, anti-colonial struggle and socialist transformation. Oppressed people of the world must unite to defeat Zionism and imperialism. No one can be free while the empire holds entire regions hostage. Kwame Nkrumah said that Ghana will not be free until Africa is free. President Mandela said that South Africa will not be free until Palestine is free. Imam Khomeini said that Iran will not be free until the oppressed people of the world are free. President Castro said that Cuba will not be free until the oppressed of the world are free. Hugo Chavez said that Venezuela will not be free until the whole of Latin America is free. No meaningful democracy can survive while capital, militarism and racial domination determine who may live and who may be exterminated. No peace is possible without justice, and no justice is possible without confronting imperialism directly.
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We call on all progressive and revolutionary forces to:
- Demand the immediate end of all military aggression, siege, sanctions and destabilisation against Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.
- Build mass campaigns of political education, protest, workplace action, boycott, solidarity and public confrontation against imperialist war and Zionist expansionism.
- Defend the right of people everywhere to speak, organise, publish, protest and mobilise against genocide, occupation and economic warfare.
- Expose and isolate the local political, media and corporate forces that serve as enablers of imperial power.
- Rebuild anti-imperialist internationalism as a living political practice, not a slogan: linking struggles across the Global South and inside the imperial core itself.
- Advance a social justice movement capable of defeating the system that produces war, colonial domination, deprivation and permanent global hierarchy.
We are under no illusions. The forces aligned against the oppressed are ruthless. They possess money, armies, surveillance systems, media power, diplomatic cover and local collaborators. They do not negotiate in good faith. Again and again, negotiations are used to buy time, neutralise resistance and prepare new assaults. Their peace is the peace of surrender. Their diplomacy is the diplomacy of domination.
That is why the people of the world must rely not on imperial benevolence, but on mass struggle, political clarity and organised solidarity.
South Africa and the broader Global South are not outside this process. Destabilisation, elite capture, political assassination, information warfare and economic coercion are not distant possibilities. They are methods of rule. Wherever imperialism finds weakness, it exploits it. Wherever it finds resistance, it attempts to crush it. Wherever it finds collaborators, it rewards them.
This is a historic moment of decision.
We can remain passive while the ruling classes normalise genocide, siege and total war.
Or we can take our place in the camp of the oppressed and the resisting.
We can look away.
Or we can organise.
We can retreat into fear.
Or we can build power.
We stand with the oppressed.
We stand with Palestine against genocide.
We stand with Lebanon against invasion.
We stand with Iran against imperial coercion.
We stand with Venezuela against destabilisation.
We stand with Cuba against blockade.
We stand with internationalism against empire.
We stand with socialism against barbarism.
The future does not belong to empires, but to the peoples who resist them. Conscientise, organise and mobilise to oppose Zionism and imperialism.
End the aggression.
End the siege.
Break the blockade.
Defend sovereignty.
Defeat imperialism.
Issued by Yusuf Patel, Aziz Kader and Rederwaan Craayenstein on behalf of Qibla
