Rebellion against US/Israeli terror is justified
by Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center
Speech at the April 7, 2001 Al-Awda demonstration in New York
I would like to extend the solidarity and support of the International Action Center to Al Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition. Today's demonstration in defense of the heroic Palestinian resistance resonates in Palestine and all over the Middle East.
Last November I had the honor to travel to Palestine with a delegation from the International Action Center and witness this heroic Intifada. Standing atop a roof in Ramallah we watched as Apache helicopter gun ships—horrific weapons supplied to the Israelis by the United States government—fired rockets and shells at civilian neighborhoods, destroying homes and offices.
Today I look around and can read on so many hundreds of placards the slogan, "USA Stop Funding Israeli Terrorism," and I say, Yes, this slogan goes right to the heart of the relationship between the U.S. government and Israeli terror.
U.S. President George Bush is the leader of the country with the largest, most technologically advanced and most violent military machine in the world. And what was Bush doing last week? He was embracing the war criminal Ariel Sharon. And while he embraced Sharon he demanded that the Palestinian people "stop the violence."
In Gaza I saw Israeli tanks fire rounds of shells at youths armed only with stones. This terror force has bulldozed thousands of homes, uprooted tens of thousands of olive trees and orange trees. It has placed Palestinian cities and towns under a total lock down.
How dare Bush demand that the Palestinians "stop the violence"? When he says "stop the violence" he really means "stop the resistance" to Israeli terror and simply bow down to colonial domination.
And Bush made this demand this while Washington was vetoing at the United Nations the simple request for international observers in the Occupied Territories.
President Bush's embrace of Sharon in Washington and the U.S. veto at the United Nations confirmed once again 52 years of total political, diplomatic, military and financial support by the United States to the State of Israel. It is an admission to the world that justice is not on the U.S. agenda, that peace is not on the U.S. agenda—not even as a phony slogan.
Without the constant infusion of arms and aid from the United States Israel could not last one day. U.S. aid totals more than 10 million dollars every day for the last 52 years. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world, every year. The U.S. has given over 100 billion dollars to Israel, more than the total combined aid to Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa.
The U.S. gives this aid not because it is a friend of the people of Israel, but because the Israeli state is strategic to Washington's domination of the oil- rich Middle East. It intends Israel to exist as a garrison state, a cats-paw for U.S. policy, a continuing source of instability in the region.
Washington has imposed sanctions that caused the death of millions of people. It has organized coups, assassinations, wars and invasions on every continent against any country that doesn't comply with its demands. But it has never given as much as a reprimand to the Israeli state for all its violations of United Nations agreements. Why? Because Israel is just carrying out U.S. policy.
U.S. domination of the entire Middle East feeds on instability, war and crisis. The system of U.S. rule feeds on war, it's profits are based on war and militarism and the control of global markets. It is a system that creates the greatest wealth for a few and at the same time the greatest human poverty in history.
It is a completely bankrupt system that is incapable of resolving any social problem.
What do we mean when we say, "No Justice, no Peace"?
No peace is possible in Palestine until the totally justified demands of the Palestinian people for a real state on contiguous territory, with Jerusalem as its capital and with the right to return for the almost 5 million Palestinian refugees and in the Diaspora is a reality.
Over the past decades the struggle of the Palestinian people has inspired hundreds of millions of people worldwide because of its dynamism and revolutionary fervor.
Despite every effort to wipe out Palestine the struggle has been reborn again and again.
The whole world owes a debt to the Palestinian people. Their resistance gives new heart, new confidence, new strength to the growing fight against the policies of corporate globalization, sanctions and racism.
Long live the Palestinian Resistance!
No Justice, No Peace!
U.S. Out of the Middle East!
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