Emergency Demonstration to Protest the U.S.--Israeli War Against Lebanon and Palestine
Thursday July 20th
5:00 PM
Downtown Federal Court House at Pratt and Hopkins Plaza


Called by the All Peoples Congress and International Action Center



International Action Center statement:
STOP THE U.S.--ISRAELI WAR AGAINST LEBANON AND PALESTINE!

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!