Anti-imperialists unite at Beirut Forum
By
Bill Cecil
Beirut, Lebanon
Published Jan 21, 2009 5:04 PM
As the people of Gaza staved off yet another attempt by the U.S.-armed and
-funded Israeli military to eradicate the cause of Palestine by murdering its
people, delegates from around the world gathered in Beirut to build solidarity
and practical support for their cause among secular leftist and Islamic
anti-imperialist forces.
As Dr. Ali Fayyad, the director of the Consultative Center for Studies and
Documentation in Beirut, who hosted the Beirut Forum, laid out its goals:
“In this part of the world the resistance is Islamic. The resistance
movement here must introduce themselves to other forces of resistance to
imperialism around the world. The ideological differences must be postponed.
The resistance must prevail. ... An important goal of the forum is how, despite
the ideological contradictions, to find how to work together hand in hand to
achieve unity against imperialism.”
The Beirut International Forum for Resistance, Anti-Imperialism, Solidarity
between Peoples and Alternatives, held from Jan. 16 to 18, assembled 450 international and Arab bodies, in addition to social movements and figures from 66 countries on the soil of Lebanon, where the
U.S.-created Israeli war machine suffered its first strategic defeat at the
hands of the Lebanese Resistance in 2006.
Besides the host group, also participating was the National Gathering to
Support the Choice of Resistance (Lebanon), in collaboration with the
International Campaign against American and Zionist Occupation (the Cairo
Conference), the International Anti-Imperialist and Peoples’ Solidarity
Forum (the Calcutta-India Conference) and the Stop War Campaign (London). Many
hundreds of resistance organizations and prominent individuals endorsed the
call for the Beirut Forum.
Manik Mukherjee, the secretary general of the International Anti-Imperialist
and Peoples’ Solidarity Forum, who traveled for and worked on the Beirut
Forum for the past year, headed an important delegation from India. The
International League of People’s Struggle also participated.
The largest number of delegates came from the Arab world, including the
Ba'ath and Communist Parties of Syria, and Iran, but there were also many
from Latin America, including 30 from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Guests from Venezuela comprised members of parliament, unionists and youth from
both the United Socialist Party (PSUV) and the Communist Party of Venezuela
(PCV).
From Europe, besides the collaborating groups, members of the Party Red of
Norway, Odiario.info of Portugal, the Anti-Imperialist Camp, workers’
parties in Greece and Cyprus and many other anti-imperialists from around
Europe attended.
Anti-war forces there from the U.S. included former Congressperson and
presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey
Clark and delegations from the International Action Center and the Freedom Road
Socialist Organization. McKinney was recently on the ship Dignity, which was
rammed by the Israeli Navy while trying to bring medical aid to Gaza. Sara
Flounders, IAC co-director, addressed the Palestine Plenary Session (WW
publishes her talk in this issue).
Two camps in the world
“There are two camps in the world, that of imperialism, led by the United
States, and that of resistance,” declared the Hezbollah deputy general
secretary, Sheikh Naim Kassem, at the conference’s opening session.
“And I think the resistance camp will overcome.” He called on
fighters for freedom and justice around the world to follow the example of the
Lebanese resistance, where “We have united the leftists, with the
secularist, the committed Muslim and the nationalist. ... We should join hands
to form a pressing and effective force, regardless of color, ethnicity,
language, religion or creed.”
Sheikh Kassem denounced Washington’s attempts to impose “a market
economy” on other countries, saying, “People around the world find
that their problems are caused by U.S intervention, and we should unite. But
there is no solidarity without support of resistance. ... Gaza today is the
symbol of resistance and human dignity. We call upon you to stand with Gaza to
scatter the darkness of imperialism and Zionism.”
Speakers from Hamas, Gaza’s democratically elected governing party,
Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine drew
rousing applause from all assembled as they described the horrific suffering
and heroic resistance of Gaza’s people and called for political
solidarity so that the people of Palestine would not lose diplomatically what
they defended on the battlefield.
Panels and workshops combined political talks and action proposals with
powerful personal testimony. Egyptian journalist Dalia Saladin described her
visit to Gaza last January when freedom fighters forced open the Rafah crossing
with Egypt. “Every household has at least one martyr and another disabled
by the war. But when you walk among the people, you feel you have entered a new
culture and a new social perspective, a culture of giving and sacrifice for
others, where the poorest of the poor, especially mothers, set the
example.”
A Lebanese man, Hussein Shokr, brought delegates to tears when he told how an
Israeli missile had killed his wife and four children during the 2006 war while
he was away working in Canada.
Activists from Greece and Cyprus told of their efforts to break the blockade on
Gaza physically and of how Greek dockworkers had refused to load U.S. arms
bound for Israel.
In the conference closing session, Palestinian Resistance hero Leila Khaled of
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) spoke of the
“unilateral ceasefire” just announced by Israeli forces. “We
salute all those who fight to break the siege of Gaza. We affirm that this
victory was won by our freedom fighters on the ground. The unilateral ceasefire
proves that, with all its destructive capacity, Israel could not achieve its
goals on the battlefield. They are now seeking the help of the United States to
achieve those goals politically. But we consider occupation to be an act of
war. When injustice is law, resistance is duty. And the only answer to
occupation is resistance and liberation.”
“A prime organizer of the conference was Mohamed Kassem, a leader of the
Lebanese teachers’ union. “For the first time, in Lebanon,”
he said, “we have created a platform for struggling people all over the
world, secular, nationalist, leftist and Islamic to speak their views and work
together, against the wars in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, against the
threats to Iran and the sanctions on Sudan, against the blockade of Cuba and
the attempts to block the revolutionary direction in Venezuela, Bolivia and
across Latin America. ... We are building mechanisms of international
cooperation and South-South solidarity, and we plan to intensify those efforts
in the future.”
Cecil represented the International Action Center at the Beirut Forum. More
documents and voices from the forum will appear in a future issue of Workers
World newspaper.
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