Calif. meetings draw hundreds in support of Iraq,
Palestine
By Brenda Sandburg
San Francisco
As the Navy's Blue Angels fighter jets roared low over San
Francisco during the military's annual "Fleet Week," anti-war
activists gathered at the Horace Mann school here in solidarity
with the Palestinian and Iraqi peoples Oct. 12. The annual
military show of force, at the moment the United States is
preparing to wage war on the Iraqi people, highlighted the
message of featured speakers Ramsey Clark, a former U.S.
attorney general in the Johnson Administration, and Palestinian
historian Naseer Aruri.
Clark said that in calling for a war against Iraq, the U.S.
government has proclaimed its right to violate the sovereignty
of any nation. "Not that the government hasn't done so all
along," Clark said, noting that the United States has led more
than 80 violent interventions in the last 100 years--from the
taking of half of Mexico to invading Grenada, Nicaragua, and
Haiti, to overthrowing democratically elected governments in
Chile and the Congo.
"Who's the greater danger to the people of the world: the
United States or Iraq?" Clark asked. During the Gulf War in
1991, he said, the United States launched 110,000 aerial
sorties, dropping 88,500 tons of bombs, and killing at least
150,000 people. It also dropped 900 tons of depleted uranium,
which has caused widespread cancer and other illnesses among
the Iraqi people.
Clark, who led a peace delegation to Iraq in early
September, said the UN sanctions, which block medicines from
reaching the country, have killed more than half a million
children under the age of 5. That is four times more than were
killed in the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima. Children and infants
are dying of dehydration because they can't get pills, he said,
and mothers are so malnourished that they give children sugar
water. But, he said, the water is bad so the babies die.
"I watched an 11-year-old girl have her leg sawed off below
the hip without anesthesia or antiseptic," Clark said. "The
doctor said he didn't know if he was taking a life or saving
it."
Aruri, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts
at Dartmouth, discussed the importance of al-Nakba--"the
catastrophe" of 1948 in which hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians were expelled from their land--and the struggle
for the right of millions of refugees to return. He praised the
renewed focus on these issues by organizations pushing for the
right of return and students leading campaigns to stop their
schools from investing in Israel.
"We're facing an Israeli government that looks more like a
military junta" with a South African strategy of apartheid,
Aruri said. He recalled that U.S. officials stood in support of
Israel at the anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa.
They told attendees "not to pick on Israel," Aruri said.
"That's tantamount to saying a rapist is being picked on by the
victim for being prosecuted for his crimes."
Alicia Jrapko of the International ANSWER coalition chaired
the San Francisco meeting.
Saul Kanowitz, also with ANSWER, talked about a project the
coalition initiated: the Commission of Inquiry into U.S.-backed
Israeli Crimes of Occupation, which is continuing to gather
data and will hold a hearing next year. ANSWER member Nancy
Mitchell asked everyone at the meeting to become an organizer
for the Oct. 26 national day of action to stop the war against
Iraq.
"We are at a critical, critical moment in history, as the
Bush administration is marching toward one of the largest
bloodbaths," Mitchell said. "The global community is looking to
us to see if we can organize opposition to stop the war. We
believe we can stop the war and must."
Rulah Khalafawi of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee-San Francisco and Free Palestine Alliance said, "The
Iraqi and Palestinian people have one fight--the imperialism of
the United States and its demand for oil."
After speaking in San Francisco, Clark and Aruri flew to Los
Angeles to speak to a packed house at a Hollywood hotel.
The Los Angeles meeting was co-chaired by Ban Al-Wardi, an
Iraqi woman, and Michel Shehadeh of the ADC and the Free
Palestine Alliance.
Tamara Rettino of Jews for a Just Peace, who recently
traveled with the international solidarity movement to the
occupied territories, showed slides documenting conditions
there and the Palestinian people's resistance.
Other speakers at the Los Angeles meeting included
immigrant-rights leader Juan Jose Gutierrez of Latino Movement
USA and James Laferty of the National Lawyers Guild.
Reprinted from the Oct. 24, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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