International Action Center statement
Stop the U.S.-Israeli war against Lebanon and Palestine!
Published Jul 18, 2006 4:30 PM
July 13, 2006
The blood in Gaza and Lebanon is on George Bush's hands.
The bombs, shells and missiles now pounding Lebanese and
Palestinian cities and villages, wiping out entire families and
leaving hundreds of thousands without power or water, are made in
the U.S. So are the planes and cannons that launch them.
The Israeli attack on Gaza and the sovereign state of Lebanon
is part of Bush's war against Iraq--part of a decades-long
war against the Arab people and the people of the Middle
East.
The Bush regime pays the bills for the Israeli war machine and
has given it a green light to go to war. And it is using the
Israeli-created crisis as a pretext for attacks on Syria and
Iran.
Israel has launched a terror bombing against the people of
Gaza and Lebanon, allegedly in response to the capture of Israeli
soldiers by Palestinian and Lebanese freedom fighters. This
excuse is a lie. Israeli artillery murdered a dozen civilians in
Gaza, including a family resting on the beach, the week before
Corporal Shalit was captured.
Israel's invasion of Gaza and kidnapping of Palestinian
ministers were planned six months ago. What Israel seeks is the
overthrow of Palestine's democratically elected government.
And the Bush regime seeks complete control over the Middle East
for the greater profit of Big Oil and the military-industrial
complex.
The three captured Israeli soldiers are not hostages, as
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert claims. They are volunteers in
the brutal, racist Israeli military. They are prisoners of war.
The real hostages are the 9,000 Palestinian political prisoners,
including hundreds of women and children, held in Israeli
concentration camps. They are illegally imprisoned, and many have
been tortured. If the Israeli state cared about its soldiers'
welfare, it would agree to a prisoner exchange.
The three POWs are the latest of many pretenses used by Israel
to justify decades of war and terror against the people of
Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan. Since the
Palestinian people were forced from their homes by force and
massacre in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Arab women, men and
children have been murdered and maimed
by Israeli bombs and missiles. And the U.S. government has
spent hundreds of billions to make this possible. The U.S. poured
arms and aid to Israel while the people of New
Orleans drowned, while Katrina evacuees are being evicted onto
the street, while tens of millions in this country lack health
care.
The International Action Center calls on justice-loving people
in the U.S. and the world over to stand in solidarity with the
people of Palestine and Lebanon. They have a right to defend
themselves. They have a right to fight for land and freedom. They
have a right to seek freedom for their unjustly imprisoned
compatriots.
The Lebanese and Palestinian combatants--be they in Hezbollah,
Hamas or the Popular Resistance Committees--are not terrorists.
They are freedom fighters, like the Spear of the Nation in South
Africa, like the Jewish resisters of the Warsaw Ghetto. The
Israelis, with their mass collective punishment of civilians, are
emulating the Nazis.
We salute the stand of the Congress of South African Trade
Unions (COSATU), which fought so long against a white minority
regime backed by Israel and the United States. COSATU has
denounced Israeli apartheid as worse than that in South Africa,
and called for international sanctions against the racist Israeli
settler state. The South African Council of Churches has also
adopted this call.
Peace in the Middle East is possible. It requires an end to
occupation from Iraq to Palestine, the freedom of Lebanese and
Palestinian prisoners and the right of displaced Palestinians to
return to their homes. It requires the U.S. to withdraw from the
region and stop financing the brutal Israeli war machine.
U.S.-Israel, Hands Off Gaza and Lebanon!
Free All Lebanese and Palestinian Political Prisoners!
U.S. Out of the Middle East!
Stop Aid to Israel!
International Action Center
www.iacenter.org
212-633-6646
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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