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