As the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) takes the 26th of December to celebrate Mao Zedong’s birthday and the 50th anniversary of a home-grown resistance movement inspired by his ideology, leading Israeli weapons companies are working to open a manufacturing plant in the Philippines that would equip the forces of President Rodrigo Duterte’s regime.
Just weeks after Duterte signed Memorandum Order Number 32, increasing the military presence in Samar, Bicol and Negros, the Romulo Jallores Command of the New People’s Army (RJC-NPA) declared that Duterte would fail to crush the world’s longest-running armed revolution.
Samuel Guerrero, 69-year-old spokesperson of the NPA-Celso Minguez Command, said this is because the revolutionary movement is deeply rooted among the masses.
“In any war, the people are the most decisive and so, the military will never be able to crush the party,” he added in reference to the Maoist CPP.
Guerrero clarified that the NPA is not only the CPP’s armed fighting force but also implements agrarian revolution, participates in agricultural production and provides many services to the poor.
“They [the ruling elite] only comprise one percent of the population. If all the oppressed and the exploited would unite, we could defeat them,” he said.
The rebellion in the Philippines has been led by the CPP since 1968.
Since Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines in 2016, thousands of citizens have been killed by his forces as part of what the regime has dubiously labeled a “war on drugs.”
Raymond Buenferza, spokesperson for the RJC-NPA, declared recently at a press conference that “The people’s army will never ever be defeated.”
He said that despite the continuous military operations in the region, the NPA has gained more strength and the mass base of the revolutionary forces has widened, largely as a result of mass line tactics in local communities.
Buenferza further reported that state forces often target civilians, adding that there have been 77 victims of extrajudicial killings in the region since Duterte assumed the presidency.
He added that armed NPA units in the region, in response to the “heightening calls for justice,” have carried out 87 tactical offensives in 2018, killing 68 state security forces and wounding dozens more.
The NPA spokesperson cited the October 18 ambush on a convoy of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in Lupi, Camarines Sur as retribution on police forces engaged in “anti-drug” operations. Three police officers were killed.
Buenferza said the Army’s 9th Infantry Battalion (IB) and the Task Force Bicolandia failed to crush the revolutionary movement in Bicol in 2018.
With the deployment of the 49th IB, 42nd IB, Special Action Forces and Duterte death squads in the region, Buenferza said the Bicol NPA would have the opportunity to avenge itself against these units for their atrocities against the people.
While Jewish values and experiences should dictate solidarity with the people of the Philippines and struggle of the NPA, Jerusalem currently sides with the Duterte regime. Israel’s weapons industry has been condemned by Israeli human rights activists, most notably Elie Yosef, for arming Duterte’s forces and turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed against Maoist guerrillas and their supporters.
Israel has a long and unfortunate history of aligning the Jewish people with the wrong sides of conflicts throughout the world. Since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948, Jerusalem has had a policy of seeking “superpower patronage” in order to obtain a sense of security, even if it means allowing the Jewish state to used as a tool of exploitation for foreign imperialist agendas (a clear result of what takes place when counter-revolutionary forces take power following a successful anti-colonialist insurgency).
Understanding how anti-Semitism functions in the capitalist system and how the State of Israel has fallen into the middle-agent oppressor role for the imperialist powers on the global stage makes clear that Jewish liberation demands a conscious shift from serving the interests of oppressors in hopes they’ll provide Israel some protection and material benefit (weapons, money, UN vetos, etc.) to siding with the oppressed of the world.
The people of Israel must ask ourselves an important question regarding our role in the Philippines conflict. Should the State of Israel cooperate and benefit from an oppressive regime’s suppression of the population or should we side with guerrilla forces acting with and on behalf of the people against tyranny for half a century?
