Israeli attack on Syria widens war -- U.S. anti-war movement on alert: IAC Statement

The latest Israeli warplane striking the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, during the nights of May 2-3 and May 4-5 have dangerously escalated foreign intervention in the ongoing war in Syria. The anti-war movement in the United States must be alert to the growing attempt by the U.S., other NATO powers and now the main militarist threat in the region, Israel, to overturn the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria and replace it with an imperialist puppet.

These strikes and Washington's obvious support for all Israeli aggression against Syria appear to be the opening thrust of open imperialist military intervention in the war in Syria. For the past two years, Western imperialism fed weapons through the Qatar and Saudi monarchies through NATO-member Turkey to arm and fund reactionary "rebel" forces inside Syria. This support kept them going and extended the bloodletting of Syrians.

In recent months the support not only from the U.S. but from imperialist Britain and France, the former colonial powers in that region of Western Asia, has increased and grown more and more overt. The Pentagon has placed Special Forces on Jordan's border with Syria. The U.S. and other NATO countries have personnel with anti-missile batteries on Turkey's border with Syria.

The governments and the corporate media machine in the NATO countries have carried out an intensive propaganda campaign against the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria. The stories about use of chemical weapons have no basis in fact. The imperialist gun running has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Syrians, yet all the blame for these deaths is heaped on the Damascus government. For the imperialists, Syria's real sin was to have wrested some independence from U.S. and West European domination and to be an enemy of the Israeli settler state.

Despite the material, diplomatic and political support for the "rebels," the Syrian government in recent weeks has clearly been defeating the reactionaries militarily. At the same time, the "rebels" are split into dozens of little groups, each with its own leadership. The military initiative of these contra rebels has slid over to those groups closest to al-Qaida in ideology. The U.S. and its allies have contributed by recruiting people closest to this ideology from all around the world and sending them -- mercenaries, reactionary fundamentalists of all backgrounds -- into Syria as veritable death squads. They are capable only of bringing sectarian slaughter to Syria.

No matter what today's or tomorrow's pretext for more Israeli attacks -- and the Israelis and their U.S. backers will tell plenty of lies -- Israeli air strikes against Syrian soil put Israel on the side of the reactionary uprising against Damascus. It clearly places bloody U.S. and NATO imperialism and the Israeli local gendarmes on one side and the Syrian people and government and their allies on the other. It means that U.S.-NATO forces are resorting to what is a desperate measure: using the Israeli pit bull against an independent country in that region.

It would not be the first time the Israeli state has played the role of cat's paw of imperialism in the region. The French-British-Israeli seizure of the Suez Canal in 1956, the June 1967 war against the progressive Syrian government, the 1982 invasion and occupation of Lebanon and the more recent blows against the Palestinian and Lebanese liberation movements are other examples. While serving its own interests as an expansionist settler state in the region, Israel also serves the interest of the worldwide dominant U.S. and NATO imperialism. In the current situation with U.S. and other NATO powers controlling all intelligence and monitoring the airspace, it is more than reasonable to assume that any Israeli airstrikes are first signaled to and approved by Washington.

For the anti-war movement in the United States, it is a time to remove any doubts about who is who in the war going on in Syria. The worldwide forces of oppression -- U.S., NATO and Israel -- are all lined up against the Syrian government. It is time demand U.S., Israeli, NATO hands off Syria!