Call to Action for August 12
National Emergency March on Washington D.C.
I lend my voice to the thousands of people from all over the United States who will be converging in front of the Bush White House on Saturday August 12 in opposition to the U.S. backed Israeli war against the people of Palestine and Lebanon.
The death toll climbs ever higher as Israeli war planes destroy bridges, power stations, roads, apartment complexes, and convoys of civilians fleeing the war zone.
For the past five months, since the Palestinian people elected a government that Bush and Olmert found “unacceptable,” there has been a non-stop campaign to deprive the Palestinian people of food, water and medicine. More than 9,500 Palestinians, including 335 children, have been held as hostages in Israeli prisons.
When the Palestinians took one Israeli soldier prisoner it was used as a pretext for an all-out military assault on the people of Gaza. When the Lebanese resistance movement captured two Israeli soldiers it was used as an excuse for the full scale bombing of Lebanon.
Having learned the lesson of Iraq, we recognize that Bush and the Israeli government are carrying out a long planned and premeditated war under a false pretext. The targeted peoples are portrayed in carefully crafted war propaganda as the “aggressors” rather than the victims of aggression.
Reality has been turned upside down by the Israeli and White House propaganda machine. The U.S. accuses Syria and Iran of acting as “foreign powers” meddling in the Middle East and initiating war in Lebanon, while it is the U.S. government that actually provides $15 million each day to Israel along with the most sophisticated weapons so that it can wage war against all the people of the region.
The real purpose of the war is closely linked to the aggression against Iraq. The Bush administration, and its backers in Congress, is seeking to “reorganize” the oil-rich Middle East as an outpost of the new American Empire. Toppling the government of Iraq, destroying the Palestinian National Resistance, establishing U.S. puppet regimes in Lebanon, Syria and Iran are the unstated but real objectives of Bush’s “endless war” scenario in the Middle East.
The people of the United States must stand together and reject the lies of the war propaganda. Instead of spending billions of dollars each week for war and occupation we demand money for jobs and education. The Palestinian and Lebanese people must be allowed to exercise their basic right of self-determination, the right to live free from colonial occupation. The Palestinian people must have the right to return to their homes and villages.
I endorse and will take specific action to support the August 12 National Emergency March on Washington.
I will organize transportation to DC on August 12.
I will contribute to cover the expenses of the march.
The August 12 National Emergency March on Washington is initiated by the ANSWER Coalition, the National Council of Arab-Americans (NCA), and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.