Solidarity with the student encampments!

The Young Communist League – Ligue de la jeunesse communiste (YCL-LJC) extends our solidarity and militant greetings to the students on campuses across the country fighting for freedom in Palestine. 

The YCL-LJC welcomes the continuation of the solidarity struggle with the Palestinian people.

The world demands a ceasefire, a political and diplomatic solution to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In response, Canada and the imperialist countries continue to reaffirm the myth of Israel’s right to defend itself. Let us be clear, there is no right to occupation, let alone a right to commit genocide. The imperialists do so in a context where the danger of globalized conflict is growing daily, particularly in the Middle East, but also elsewhere in the world. 

The mainstream corporate media in this country says the conflict that has killed 40,000 people, including 20,000 children in Gaza, began on October 7th. They do so to obscure more than a century of struggle for national liberation. The ruling class tries to criminalize any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle. The YCL-LJC denounces the attempts by the bourgeois media to frame international solidarity by peace loving forces as anti-democratic and war-mongering. 

We condemn the repression and use of force against peaceful protestors. 

The struggle of the Palestinian people is neither ethnic nor religious. This is a fight of national liberation directed against the plans of Western imperialism in the region and against its global hegemony. It is a fight for peace and international solidarity, and that is why it disturbs the warmongers, especially in a context where Western imperialists such as Canada are called to increase their military budgets.

Students, faculty, and campus workers have long been mobilized for solidarity with the cause of Palestinian liberation. A significant resurgence in the movement on campuses began in the 2007/8 school year when several local assemblies at university and Cégep campuses across Quebec voted to support the Boycott Divestment Sanction (BDS) campaign against Israel.  The organized campaign was supported by Fédération nationale des enseignantes et enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ) Quebec’s largest college level teachers union. The campaign reached a new level when the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), the historic student union that led the 2005 and 2012 student strikes, voted to support the international BDS campaign at a Quebec-wide level in 2008. 

Students in English speaking Canada followed the lead from the Quebec student movement, with at least 16 student unions in the rest of Canada passing resolutions in support of the Palestinian people’s cause and some if not all aspects of the BDS movement from 2012-17. 

The Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario assembly in 2014 (CFS-O) representing 300 000+ members passed a resolution endorsing the BDS campaign. This was followed by a winning motion at the CFS annual general meeting in 2018.

In 2022 alone students at Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia, McGill, Concordia, and University of Toronto passed resolutions in support of the struggle of the Palestinian people and against the apartheid and occupation of Israel. This included motions calling for boycotts and/or divestments of Israel. 

This year, the Université du Québec à Montréal became the first university in Canada to have all of its student unions adopt BDS mandates.

The resolutions and motions have required immense levels of organization from students. Passing BDS endorsements have led to attacks from administrations on student democracy, including the withholding of dues in some cases. But with the brutal war on Gaza and the increased drive for settlements in the West Bank, students across Canada have answered the call and once again began to mobilize for the liberation of the Palestinian people. 

We reiterate our statement from October of last year: “We recognize ourselves in neither the ideology nor the methods of Hamas. However, we understand that its popular support is the result of decades of Zionist colonization, invasion, occupation and blockade, with the tacit support of Western governments, the manifest failure of the Oslo Accords and an ossified Palestinian Authority riddled with internal contradictions … We therefore denounce all forces that try to shift the burden of these attacks onto the Palestinian resistance, and reiterate our demands for the creation as soon as possible of a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, the guarantee of the 1948 refugees’ right of return, and the dismantling of all Zionist settlements (illegal under international law). These demands may not solve the entire Palestinian problem, but they are the only ones that could pave the way for a lasting solution to this conflict. Finally, we offer our full solidarity to our sister organizations in Palestine and throughout the region”

The YCL-LJC as a member of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, the largest anti imperialist youth organization in the world, reiterates the demands from our sister organisations in Palestine, such as the General Union of Palestinian Students. At our 2023 Central Convention, the highest decision making body of the YCL-LJC, we prioritized building the BDS and solidarity with Palestine movement in Canada, and exposing the profiteering of the Canadian capitalist monopolies in occupied Palestine. We commit ourselves and call on all democratic, working-class forces, unions, progressives; all supporters of true lasting world peace from coast to coast to intensify this fight and to demand:

– The creation of a viable and independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, in accordance with UN resolutions;

– The guarantee of the right of return of the refugees of 1948;

– The denuclearization of Israel and the end of the apartheid regime;

– The severance of commercial and diplomatic relations between Canada and Israel, starting with an embargo on the shipment of weapons and military equipment, and including academic boycotts, as long as the occupation continues;

–  Canada’s positioning in favor of an immediate and unconditional ceasefire on the part of Israel;

–  Furthermore we call for Canada to withdraw from all military alliances such as NATO and NORAD and to end the senseless arms race by slashing the military budget by 75% and investing the savings into universal public social services such as free post-secondary education for all 

Palestine will live, Palestine will win!