Bogata, October 7—Nearly 3,000 protestors marked the second anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel, which served as an excuse for the deadly Zionist offensive that has left nearly 68,000 dead and hundreds of thousands wounded and displaced in Palestine. Gathering in Bogotá at various points in the capital, including the U.S. Embassy, we protested the U.S. government’s ties to the genocidal Israeli state students from public universities, trade unionists, and workers marched late into the night toward the emblematic Plaza de Bolívar in downtown Bogotá, chanting slogans in protest against the occupation and systematic violence. 

Members of PLP were there each step of the way, sharing our party’s line and raising awareness of CHALLENGE newspaper, exalting the need for international solidarity, overcoming nationalist ideas, and betting on the unity of the working class, because the oppression of the world’s workers will not be resolved by building new bourgeois states, since only communism and its red flag will destroy our chains and the engine of war.

Workers reject genocide and exploitation by bosses

Workers also gathered at institutions such as the National Association of Industrialists (ANDI), criticizing  for its active communication with the Benjamin Netanyahu government, defending the deplorable need to increase coal exports to Israel. The so-called Committee of Solidarity with the Palestinian Cause, composed of Arab activists, independent political organizations and human rights defenders, student and union groups such as La Federación Colombiana de Trabajadores de la Educación (FECODE) among others, called for massive mobilization in the streets, supporting the resistance of the Palestinian people and demanding an end to the genocide

Although protests against Zionism in Colombia had not reached the scale of other countries, the October 7 demonstration made it clear that Colombian workers are also fed up with the exploitation, abuse, and bosses’ war that plagues the global proletariat. The march was largely peaceful, with some clashes with the police, who violently attacked some students. Fascist representatives of the far right took advantage of the opportunity to brand the thousands of protesters as “terrorists.”

For his part, President Gustavo Pedro hypocritically expressed his support for the pro-Palestine marches, criticizing “the working classes” for not joining these protests en masse. Once again, Petro, with his messianic complex, seeks to harness the discontent of the working class, using the so-called “popular causes” as a political and electoral platform

Communism can end the carnage of capitalism

While these types of mobilizations can fall into revisionism when championed by unions, reformist collectives, and even the national government, and be limited to defending the Palestinian state constitution and calling for an end to the genocide, working-class discontent over Netanyahu’s fascist onslaught and his relations with U.S. imperialism can be an initial step toward an international mobilization of workers in solidarity against the bosses’ wars.

Only communism will eradicate state violence against the working class, and it is necessary to promote communist education to channel the potential of the mobilizing masses. While politicians like Petro and Trump, who claim to have achieved the ceasefire in Gaza, seek prominence over the suffering of the proletarians, the war expands, and the forms of exploitation diversify and intensify.