Under darkness of night early on May 31st, Israeli military forces assaulted a flotilla heading for the Gaza Strip, killing 15 volunteers of aid organizations mainly comprising Turkish civilians. The Netanyahu-led fanatic Zionist regime of Israel committed this brutal crime out of hatred and irritation against the Erdogan-led Turkish government, which strongly criticizes the Israeli blockade on Gaza and is taking a cooperative attitude towards the Iranian government bent on developing nuclear weapons. We, the JRCL, with burning anger, denounce the blood-thirsty Zionist regime for perpetrating this brutality.

Workers and people all over the world are seething with rage against the Israeli government. Under the pressure of this growing anger of the masses, not only rulers of Islamic states in the Middle East but also those in Europe, Russia and China are pronouncing condemnations one after another. Notwithstanding this, only the Obama-led US imperialist government is carrying out all sorts of manoeuvres to save the state of Israel from its predicament. The Obama administration is seeking to emasculate the Turkey-drafted resolution against Israel that was submitted to the UN Security Council. We strongly condemn this villainous deed by Yankee imperialism.

Muslim workers and people are standing up in a fight against Zionist rulers and US imperialists in every country of the Islamic world. Their fight is increasingly growing like a ground swell. In solidarity with Muslim people's fights, we, the anti-Stalinist revolutionary left in Japan, will stir up a storm of struggle to denounce the Zionist regime for the murderous assault on the Gaza aid flotilla. We will fight for a great surge of struggle by connecting this fight with the anti-war, anti-military alliance struggle, which is presently focussed on opposition to the US, Japanese and South Korean preparation for war against North Korea (and China).

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The flotilla of six ships was organized by an aid group for Palestinians, the Free Gaza Movement, to save hunger-stricken Gazans in protest of the Israeli blockade. Israeli commandos dropped from helicopters onto a ship and fired directly into the crowd of civilian volunteers, murdering 15 of them (mainly Turkish) in an instant. They seized the flotilla and forcibly transported it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. This murderous assault was carried out under the order of the Netanyahu government. This government has laid bare its reactionary nature in this atrocity, driven by irritation about the growing international criticism against its continued blockade on Gaza and occupation of Palestine, and by hatred for the Turkish government, which made clear its attitude against Israel.

The Free Gaza Movement organized a convoy of six boats for this ninth voyage, the largest of all that the Movement had made since the August of 2008. (Its convoys have been captured four times by the Israeli military.) This aid group for Palestinians, a coalition of five human rights organizations based in Turkey and other European countries, has been supported openly by the Turkish government of the Erdogan-led Justice and Development Party [AKP]. The AKP government had announced its 'support' for the aid flotilla this time as ever. This government, under the leadership of the Islamic political party, strongly condemned Israel's aggression and military blockade against the Gaza Strip late 2008. Since then, the Turkish government has suspended its mediatory efforts for 'peace talks' between Israel and Syria.

This is not all. In the recent conference to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] in New York (May 2nd-27th), the Erdogan government collaborated with Lula's Brazilian government to set forth a counterargument against the Obama-initiated resolution of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Instead, this government made a proposal that Turkey mediate the shipments of nuclear materials for 'peaceful use' of nuclear energy by the Iranian government. This Turkish proposal gained supports from many representatives of economically emerging and developing countries, and thus foiled the attempt by US imperialism. In addition, in this NPT review conference, the Egypt-initiated resolution to start talks for a 'Middle Eastern Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone' was also adopted. - These developments mean a fruition of the behind-the-scene manoeuvres by the Putin-Medvedev government of Russia, which originally proposed a 'Middle Eastern Nuclear-Free Zone' with the intention of supporting Iran, and those by Hu Jintao's China, which is leading a group of emerging and developing economies.

In Middle Eastern countries, and in the Islamic world as a whole, angers and resentment are boiling against the state of Israel, which already holds nuclear weapons, and, as well, the imperialist state of America, which continues a double standard policy, defending Israel on one hand and condemning Iran, on the other, to prevent latter's development of nuclear weapons. Among them, the Erdogan government has expressed its firm resolve to lead this 'anti-US, anti-Zionist' tide, in collaboration with even the Ahmadinejad government of Iran, which is now ambitious to hold 'Islamic nuclear weapons'.

Towards these behaviours of Turkish rulers, the fanatic Zionist regime of Israel is mounting a sense of crisis more than ever. In the first place, this regime confronts the Iranian government, which has started development of nuclear weapons while forming an 'anti-US, anti-Zionist' common front by rallying the Syrian and Iraqi governments together with Hezbollah of Lebanon and Hamas of Palestine. In the middle of this situation, Turkish rulers have come to the forefront of struggle against the state of Israel.

Turkey is the only NATO member in the Middle East and was, in the past, a pro-US state, which used to carry out even a joint exercise with Israeli forces according to a military corporation agreement (signed in 1996). But the first Islamic one-party cabinet in Turkey's history appeared in 2002. This Gul-Erdogan government adopted a strategy to promote the Turkish state to 'a big power in the Islamic world of the Middle East'. On this basis, it made clear its 'anti-Zionist' position, taking Israel's Gaza invasion as a turning point. This government has effectively scrapped the military agreement with Israel (as seen in its refusal of Israel's participation in a joint military drill in Turkish territory in October, 2009).

The fanatic Zionist regime has lost the only 'friendly nation' in the Middle East and is laying bare hatred for it all the more hysterically. Israel's assault on the Gaza aid flotilla and murders of Turkish volunteers is nothing but a crime of the Zionist regime driven by this hatred for Turks.

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International condemnations are growing against Israel's brutal attack, and fundamentally against its blockade on Gaza and occupation of Palestine. Not to mention the Turkish rulers with burning anger, other power holders of Middle Eastern and Arab countries and Indonesia are severely criticizing the assault as 'state terrorism' in chorus. Egyptian President Mubarak was compelled to open the border with Gaza in order to gloss over his criminal assistance in the blockade on the Gaza Strip effectively under the rule of the Hamas organization, which has been fighting for the liberation of Palestine. (He had continued this crime with the aim of ingratiating himself with US imperialists and of supporting Palestinian 'President' Abbas, a betrayer of the Palestinian liberation movement.)

The Russian government and the European Union issued a joint statement in their summit meeting (on June 1st) that they condemned the Israeli assault on the aid flotilla and called for 'immediate opening of crossings for the flow of goods and people to and from Gaza'.

Despite these condemnations from the rest of the world, the Netanyahu government justifies its murderous assault, saying that the Free Gaza Movement is among the terrorist supporters. The Obama-led US imperialist government continues to support this brutal Zionist regime.

In the emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in the wake of the incident, the US government obstinately opposed the Turkey-initiated resolution of condemning the Israeli government. By perversely opposing Turkey's draft that condemns the Israeli attack 'in the strongest terms' and asks the UN Secretary General 'to undertake an independent international investigation', the US government forcibly toned down the UN response into a mere presidential statement that 'regrets the tragic loss of life and injuries'.

Never tolerate this crime of US imperialists, who justify Israel's brutality and give a continued support to this Zionist state under the pretext of 'the need to eradicate the terrorist Hamas organization'.

Imperialist America has been defending the brutality of the fanatic Zionist regime and continuing a double standard as to the issue of Iranian nuclear development. As a result, it is suffering a failure in its initiative for 'indirect peace talks', which is designed to suppress the Palestinian liberation struggle. It is too natural because member states of the Arab League are rejecting a US-mediated talk one after another in the wake of the incident. (In May, just before the incident, the Arab League had agreed to the 'indirect talks'.)

The Obama administration has initiated 'indirect talks' under the banner of 'coexistence of Israel and Palestine as two states'; however, in fact, this initiative is premised on the continued military occupation of Palestine by the Zionist state of Israel (including the maintenance of the Jewish settlements that have already inroaded into the West Bank). Only on this premise, the autonomous area of Palestine with reduced 'territory' (that under the rule of the PLO-Fatah) is to be recognized as 'a state' by the Israeli government. On top of that, this scheme is truly against the Palestinian people in that it gives the representation of the Palestinian people only to the PLO-Fatah (headed by Abbas) and excludes Hamas, who have the broad support of Palestinians.

Yankee imperialists are hell-bent on eradicating the Hamas organization to suppress the Palestinian liberation struggle in collaboration with the Zionist regime of Israel. Never let them continue it!

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Fighting workers, people and students!

We call on every one of you. Stand up to condemn this brutality by the fanatic Zionist regime of Israel! Denounce the Obama-led US imperialists for their continued patronage to this regime!

Palestinians in Gaza are suffering all kinds of misery under the military blockade by the Zionist regime of Israel. Repeated air raids and continued embargoes have been destroying their houses and daily lives, plunging the 80% of the working population into unemployment, and bringing about starvation and deaths from diseases due to the fatal lack of food and medicines. The frenzied Zionist regime dares to carry out brutal offensives against even human rights organizations, which are working to save these Palestinians, as seen in the assault and capture of the Free Gaza Movement's flotilla.

In defiance of the Zionist regime's brutality and imperialist America's repression of the Palestinian liberation struggle, Muslim masses are successively rising in an 'anti-US, anti-Zionist' struggle in various countries throughout the Islamic world. In Turkey, Iran and other Arab countries, and in Indonesia as well, oppressed Muslims are carrying out protest actions against Israel and US imperialism in a massive scale. Muslim struggles - which broke the imperialist US aggression and military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and that triggered the collapse of its unipolar dominance over the world - is going to flare up again as a fight to destroy offensives of the Obama-led US imperialist power, which is ambitious 'to re-conquer' the Middle East, together with the frenzied brutality of the fanatic Zionist regime of Israel.

Notwithstanding this, the converted Japanese Stalinists, the self-styled Japanese Communist Party led by Fuwa and Shii, hate, in their hearts, the struggles of Muslim people, especially the Palestinian liberation struggle led by Hezbollah and Hamas, regarding it as 'terrorism'. For this very reason, the JCP leaders do not organize any protest against the Israeli blockade on Gaza. Far from it, they do not issue even a sentence against Zionist Israel's assault on the Gaza aid flotilla. (What they are doing is only to write objectivistic dry 'reports' in their daily about the incident and international responses.)
We are resolute to expose this degeneration of the JCP bureaucrats! While criticizing their degeneration, we will advance a struggle to denounce the Zionist Israeli regime's assault on the aid flotilla and its blockade on Gaza and to condemn the US imperialist patronage of this regime. We will create this struggle in connection with antiwar, anti-military alliance struggles to oppose the US, Japanese and South Korean rulers preparing war against North Korea (and China) and to protest the strengthening of their triangular military alliance! In solidarity with Muslim people rising in an 'anti-US, anti-Zionist' fight, we will advance this struggle internationally!

We, the anti-Stalinist revolutionary left in Japan, are resolved to fight for a great upsurge and an international advancement of this struggle!

June 7th, 2010