WE ARE now approaching three years since the start of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, with millions displaced, alongside the widespread deliberate destruction of hospitals, schools, homes and universities.

Despite the so-called ceasefire, that genocide continues, with almost 1,000 Palestinians violently killed by Israel since it supposedly took effect, accompanied by ongoing severe restrictions on vital aid and life-saving organisations.

Meanwhile, in the illegally occupied West Bank, Palestinians continue to confront violence and forced displacement through the expansion of Israeli settlements, settler attacks and military occupation. Throughout their homeland and as refugees in exile, Palestinians are subjected to a cruel system of apartheid.

In response to these horrors, millions have taken to the streets and, answering the call of Palestinian civil society, have got involved in campaigns for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).

In their decades-long struggle against oppression, dispossession and apartheid, global solidarity matters to Palestinians, but it is also increasingly clear that the Palestinian struggle also matters to us all.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is proud to be part of the International Anti-War Conference in Westminster Central Hall on Saturday because one thing that the last three years have taught us is that what is at stake today, not just in Palestine but here too and around the world, are two very different visions of the future.

Israel is only able to carry out and get away with its atrocities because of the military, economic and political support that it receives from Western governments and institutions. Just a few days ago, the British government allowed stolen land in illegally occupied Palestinian territory to be openly sold at the “Great Israel Real Estate Event” in London. In contrast, those who oppose these crimes are demonised, falsely branded as terrorists and subject to attacks on our democratic rights.

Marching lockstep with a genocidal Israel, pursuing its longstanding goal of eliminating the Palestinian people from their homeland, those same governments that support Israel’s crimes are dragging us all towards disaster.

Under Donald Trump, from Venezuela and Cuba, to Iran, Lebanon and across west Asia, the US is increasingly trying to use its military might to bolster and maintain its declining economic global position. They want to use Palestine as the testing ground for what Palestinians have described as a “might-makes-right order that threatens humanity at large.”

In a world in which the genocide in Gaza continues, where Palestinians in the West Bank face escalating violence and Palestinian refugees are denied their inalienable right to return to their homeland, all of us are threatened and none of us is truly free.

But if the world that Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu want us to inhabit is one born out of the genocide in Gaza, then the struggle and determination of the Palestinian people can inspire all of us to resist. Because the paradox of this moment is that the global movement for Palestinian rights is stronger that it has ever been before.

In the past few years, we have built the largest and most sustained protest movement since the struggle for women’s suffrage. From weekly shopping baskets to town halls throughout the country, the campaign for BDS is growing. Across Britain, dozens of local councils have now endorsed divestment of pension funds from companies that are implicated in Israel’s crimes. Consumers are refusing to buy Israeli apartheid products and students are demanding an end to complicity on their campuses.

This week, PSC has launched a new campaign — Delete Genocide Tech — targeting corporations such as Cisco Systems, Palantir and Oracle that are providing Israel with technology used to monitor and target Palestinians.  

In our workplaces and trade unions, towns and cities, universities and communities, our movement brings together people from all backgrounds and every walk of life, in the spirit of solidarity. And that is how we will win.

Even the government is starting to feel the effects of mass popular pressure and the public demand for sanctions against Israel. For millions of voters, Palestine is now on the ballot when they go to the polls.

In the 1930s, when fascism threatened the world with war and destruction, the struggle for democracy in Spain became the totemic international issue that, in every country, separated the forces of reaction from those who believed in human liberty and progress.

Today, all around the world, those who believe in the principles of freedom and justice stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Their struggle for freedom and justice matters to the progressive majority of the public and the labour movement, and so is central to the wider battle against the right at home and abroad.

If we want to live in a world without war, it has never been clearer that we must fight for a world in which Palestine is free.

Peter Leary is deputy director of PSC.

The Stop the War International Conference takes place at Central Hall Westminster, Storey’s Gate, London SW1H 9NH on Saturday June 20. For more information and to book tickets visit stopwar.org.uk.