Solidarity with heroic Gaza

The International Action Center condemns the criminal U.S.-backed Israeli bombing of Gaza that has led to the massacre of 200 Palestinians and the serious wounding of another 300. We call upon the progressive, anti-war and workers’ movements in the United States to join the growing worldwide protests against these latest Israeli war crimes, committed with U.S. complicity. There must be no impunity for the Israeli state or its backers.

The rightist Zionist regime had the arrogance to announce in advance its intention to strike Gaza’s embattled civilians. Like every serious Israeli move, this latest assault was done with a U.S. green light using U.S. weapons and spy services.

Compounding this arrogance and exposing his genocidal intent, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has already said, “The operation will go on and be intensified as long as necessary.” (AFP, Dec. 27) The Israeli attacks, targeting civilian population centers and coinciding with the end of the school day, reveal a malicious intent to inflict as many casualties as possible, including on children.

Under Israeli siege for over a year, the people of Gaza have been struggling to survive despite insufficient food and power plus a damaged and depleted medical-care system. The world has condemned this siege as an Israeli crime against humanity. Yet the Israelis have carried out this murderous siege without protest from their powerful allies in Western Europe and the United States. However, the Palestinian people in Gaza have faced down the siege for over 18 months, providing once again an example for the world’s people that the criminal U.S.-Israeli alliance has grown desperate to tear down.

Like the bombing, the siege itself is a U.S.-Israeli war crime. Washington sends billions in aid every year to Israel that Tel Aviv then uses to bomb the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, cut off their electricity and kick them out of their homes. Meanwhile, back home, the same U.S. government lets banks foreclose on workers’ homes, lets bosses lay off millions of workers, and lets tens of millions live in fear that illness that will wipe out their savings—if the economic crisis hasn’t already made them destitute.

The U.S.-Israeli genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people of Gaza are also against the interests of the people here. We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people against U.S. imperialism and Israel, Washington’s outpost in the Middle East.

We demand that U.S. aid to Israel be cut to zero and that this money be used instead for reparations for the Palestinian people, to ensure their right to return, and for homes, jobs, health care and education for working people in the U.S.

Protest demonstrations have taken place already in Amman, Damascus, Cairo, the cities of the West Bank and in towns within Israel’s 1967 boundaries that are mostly Arab. Organizations in Brussels, Madrid and other European centers have also called for protests. In the United States, the first action has been called for New York’s Rockefeller Center, at 50th Street and Fifth Avenue, for 2 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 28.

The demonstrators will say:

Defend Palestine!

Solidarity with heroic Gaza!