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!

International Action Center

www.iacenter.org

212-633-6646