I would like to thank you for inviting me once again to participate in this conference. We all look forward to contributing to the success of its proceedings.
We have become accustomed to the convening of this conference, which holds a special place and great significance within the movement advocating for peace, freedom, equality, the promotion of human values, and the strengthening of solidarity with the working class and the toiling, civilized masses around the world. Each time the ZENKO Conference is held, it coincides with major global events. Yet, there has always been — somewhere in a corner of this world — a space for freedom and a margin of safety. The ruling bourgeoisie, through its tools in media, economy, and politics, still maintained some semblance of dialogue around human rights and universal values such as equality and the rejection of gender, racial, and national discrimination.
Indeed, we were never deceived or deluded by the bourgeoisie. The platforms of this conference have always exposed and denounced the policies and schemes of this parasitic class, whether in Japan or among its allies in NATO and the West. Nevertheless, the bourgeoisie was adept at political hypocrisy, feigning decency, and putting on a “cosmetic” political face to beautify its image before the world through its paid pens.
Today, however, that mask has fallen — or rather, it was torn apart before it could fall — revealing the true faces of the representatives of this class, turning the world into an unbearable hell.
A glaring example of this is what is currently happening in the Gaza Strip, where the world stands helpless in the face of daily crimes committed by a fascist and Nazi-like state such as Israel. When we used to read about the brutality and barbarism of past empires in history, we understood it within the context of the absence of human rights concepts and standards at that time. But today, the political thuggery practiced by the United States — through its unconditional support for a Nazi-like state such as Israel — goes beyond what the human mind can fathom in the first quarter of the 21st century.
After more than a century of struggle to establish human values, we now find ourselves in a world governed by the logic of old empires, where populations are slaughtered without hesitation, deterrence, or accountability.
Following World War II, the victors established courts such as the Nuremberg Tribunal to try war criminals. One of the charges on which the leaders of the Nazi regime were sentenced to death was the Holocaust. If we apply the same standard to what is happening today in Gaza, then all members of the Israeli government — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, current Defense Minister Ysrael Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — must be brought before a “new Nuremberg Tribunal.”
They are attempting detention camps that closely resemble Nazi camps, under the deceptive label of a “Humanitarian City” in Rafah, and all in plain sight of the world — without a single official response from the UN Security Council or the United Nations itself.
We are truly living in an age of barbarism and savagery, where any dissenting voice within the very heart of so-called “Western democracy” is immediately branded as antisemitic.
What is happening in Gaza right now — at this very moment — is a stain on humanity. We must rise up. We must stand firmly against these crimes.
What is happening today raises a profound question on our human identity. This blatant disregard for the lives of children—before even considering the lives of adults—is clear evidence that those committing these crimes want us to live outside the realm of human history.
Comrades, friends, sisters and brothers…
Israel’s crimes have overshadowed the tragedy of the war in Ukraine, the ongoing crisis in Sudan, and the harsh austerity policies being led by the bourgeois classes—policies that, in the end, direct their blows squarely at workers and the poor everywhere.
They are increasing military spending for NATO at the expense of the health and well-being of our families and children. At the same time, they are slashing budgets for social services, healthcare, and social security—just like the United States, which is led by a reckless man who can only be described as arrogant, deranged, and bloodthirsty. His hands are indirectly stained with the blood of Gaza’s children through his support for the Nazi-like Israeli state. And yet, this same man seeks a Nobel Peace Prize! What kind of world are we living in?
Through the trade war waged by Donald Trump, he is trying to halt the decline of the United States’ global standing through bullying tactics—at the expense of workers and the poor. The world now offers us two fatal paths: death through war under the doctrine of “peace through strength,” or slow death through systematic impoverishment.
What we are witnessing is a dramatic retreat from human values, and a troubling rise of the far right across the globe, especially in its hostility toward migrants and refugees.
There is now a real convergence between the right and the bourgeois left: the left suppresses freedoms and leads campaigns of mass impoverishment to preserve capitalist profits, while the right rises on the ruins of that failure through deceptive populist slogans.
But that is not the whole picture. On the other side, we are witnessing a growing global mass movement—a movement rooted in the working class and modern humanity. In fact, it may already be stronger than the anti-war movement that opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
It is the movement of the working class in Spain, Portugal, France, Brazil, Morocco, Sweden, and Norway—where workers are refusing to load weapons onto ships bound for Israel, unions are demanding that governments cut energy supplies to Israel, and calls are rising to boycott Israeli products.
parallel, we are witnessing strikes, protests, and student sit-ins across American universities—waves of public anger expressing deep and heartfelt human emotions.
We must keep our eyes on this rising humanist movement, as we saw in Austria with the formation of a Jewish front against Zionism and the crimes of Israel. This is a movement that dismantles the false narrative portraying all criticism of Israel’s crimes as antisemitism, and it disarms the justifications used to suppress voices protesting Israeli atrocities.
Comrades, friends, sisters and brothers…
Let us continue—through this conference—building the bridge we began two years ago, and carried forward during last year’s conference, in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom, the end of national oppression, and the establishment of their independent state.
Our victory is a victory for all of humanity.
The Palestinian cause is no longer the exclusive domain of nationalists, Islamists, or sectarian forces who have long exploited it to advance their own agendas.
It is, in every sense, a universal human cause—a cause of the working class and of progressive humanity everywhere.
This conference we are holding today is an essential part of that global humanitarian front.
And above all else, we must offer hope to the human community:
That it is the working class that creates life,
That our movement for freedom, equality, and a better world is what brings life,
That life is made by the revolutionary will alive in the halls of this conference, and in the many liberation and revolutionary movements of which we are a part.
Long live the ZENKO Conference!
Long live international solidarity!