Piotr Ikonowicz, New Left:
When Al Jazeera started its reportage on the attack on the Gaza strip, they turned their cameras to the night sky. The screen was dark, but you could hear the noise of bombers, of Apache gunships. And all of us who have seen that were afraid - we felt a basic fear for the children of Gaza who were waiting for bombs to fall on them.
In our fine Polish-Jewish history, which I throw in the face of the Israeli state, there was a man called Janusz Korczak. Korczak went into the gas chamber because he didn't want to leave the children alone there. And now Korczak accuses you, and all of us, like Korczak, want to be there with these children and hold their hands as the Israeli bombs fall on them.
The Red Cross accuses Israel of not letting medical aid get to the victims...
In this burning flag there is Barak, there is Peres, there are the generals - but not the victims! Because what Israel is doing, what the cynical Israeli fundamentalists are doing - a religious, fanatical state - it is a cynical element of the electoral campaign: they are killing Palestinians to win the elections. But the victims of this mass murder will also include Israeli civilians. And we, today, forever, we want to affirm that we will always be on the side of the murdered and we will always be against the orgy of hate which is in fact against the Israelis. We want to say: Jews! Israelis! Do not be manipulated! Do not allow yourselves to be hurled against the Palestinians, because you will die. Because if you leave only despair, anger and hate to the people of Gaza, to the Palestinians, you leave them no other solution.
To extinguish the hate, one must extinguish the source of evil. And the source of evil is not only the state of Israel. The source of evil is the evil empire. Israel is the hand, the tool of the imperialist politics of the United States. Without the US, Israel's strength would crumble tomorrow - and that would be good for the Israelis. Because from then on they would have to live in peace with their neighbours. Because they live in the heart of the Arab world whether they like it or not.
Global propaganda would divide the Palestinians into good Palestinians, like Mahmoud Abbas, and bad ones, like Hamas. Today, the whole Palestinian people is united. We must not let ourselves be manipulated. It is not true that the defenders of Palestine, who have take up arms and won elections in that country, are terrorists. A terrorist is someone who intentionally kills defenseless people. So the Israeli criminals who have organised the massacre of Gaza sooner or later must face judgement before a court. Like the American criminals who are exterminating the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, they agree that civilians should be killed. They lie all the time about surgical strikes, but how can one think that a strike can be aimed precisely at fighters when those fighters form part of a nation? The only way to destroy Hamas is to vanquish the fighting spirit of the Palestinians. You would have to kill them all. It cannot be done. Which is why one day, sooner or later, Palestine will be free. And when Palestine is free, our world will be free.