Stop Israel’s Massacres in Palestine!

Stop USA’s Genocide in Afghanistan!

For a Worldwide Anti-Imperialist Front!

A declaration of Abnaa elBalad movement

21 October 2001

The Grave Situation in Palestine

Israel’s current attack in the occupied West Bank is the worst in the long list of war crimes against the Palestinian people since the beginning of the Al-Aqssa Intifada. The Israeli army is moving with tanks and troops into most Palestinian towns. Tank shelling of a school, killing a small girl in her class. Firing missiles from Helicopters into a cinema. Firing into a Church in Bet Lehem, killing a man there... The Israeli Apartheid regime led by arch terrorist Sharon, the hero of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, is trying to drown in blood the Palestinian resistance to the occupation. Tens of Palestinians were killed in the last days, most of them civilians, including women and children.

All this was not possible without direct support from the USA, that finances Israel, arms it to the teeth and gives political and international coverage to its racist terrorist crimes. While Palestinian resistance to the occupation is described by the imperialist war mongers as ‘terrorist’ acts, shelling schools by tanks or letting a woman that give birth bleed to death at the army’s checkpoint are the legitimate acts of America’s best ally.

All this proves that Bush’s and Blair’s talk of a political plan that will include a “Palestinian State” is just a camouflage to detract Arab and world public opinion from their current support to Israel’s war crimes. At that time the Israeli occupation is building more settlements on Palestinian land and continues a creeping ethnic cleansing by destroying Arab neighborhoods around the settlements and army camps. They try to crush the Intifada by assassinating Palestinian leaders, killing militants and civilians alike, and forcing unbearable hardship and humiliation on the whole population.

USA’s Genocide in the making in Afghanistan

The systematic bombing of Afghan towns and villages, killing many helpless civilians, not sparing even Red |Cross and UN installations, is only the first stage in the USA’s aggression. By destroying the fragile infrastructure of this poor country and preventing the distribution of food and medical care, the USA’s aggression is putting in direct danger the life of many millions that will starve and freeze to death in the harsh Afghan winter.

The arrogant stand of Bush and Blair is that the life of millions of Afghans has no importance, and that genocide is a small price to pay in order to catch or kill whom they define as suspected terrorists. But even that thin excuse proves an outright lie, as they refuse to give any evidence to prove their claims, and deliberately refuse to even negotiate extradition of the ‘suspected’. What they want to enforce is not international law, but their being above any international law. The destruction of Afghanistan and the suffering of its people are the direct goal, and not a by-effect, of the imperialist aggression: It is designed to terrorize the whole world’s people into submission and acceptance of USA’s supremacy.

After the self-dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the establishment of USA imperialism as the only world superpower, they claimed to rule the world by the promise that capitalist control of a globalized world market will bring prosperity to all. The disillusion did not take much to come. In the name of privatization, all the accumulated social capital of the socialist countries was robbed and they were degraded to third world status. In the name of the open markets, the agriculture and natural resources of the third world are controlled by imperialist multinationals, and their prices are driven to the lowest values in history. The conditions of trade forced by institutions like the IMF and the World Bank make the working power of third world workers dirt-cheap. A third of humanity lives in absolute poverty, at different levels of hunger.

The New World Order, the self styled ‘globalization’, is a World Apartheid. Racist movements and restrictive governments limit the movement of people, while the capital is free to move, buy human and natural resources, and dispose them at its will, to maximize its profits. Any attempt to defend workers’ and national rights and interests is sanctioned and punished. The world order is not the result of any democratic process, but dictated by the single super power and its cronies, for their own self-interest. Maintaining such an uneven and unjust world economic order clearly requires a world military dictatorship. The new ‘coalition against terror’ is only the latest proof of the USA’s ability to buy and bully third world governments to line up behind her against the feelings and vital interests of their people.

For an Anti Imperialist United Front

The suffering of our Palestinian people, the constant victims of US-Israeli racism, the immediate danger to the lives of millions of innocent Afghan civilians, the USA’s threat to bomb more countries – all proves the urgent need to mobilize all forces to stop imperialist aggression. The imperialist onslaught is not a war against terror; it is a war against humanity. In the old Roman Empire, or in the old colonialist empires, when a soldier was attacked, the ruling power used to re-impose its supremacy by burning the nearest village. Now, in our global village, the USA fills it can’t reinstate its dented supremacy by less than burning a whole country, or rather several countries.

The poor people of the world should unite to stop this aggression that is aimed against the whole of them. The poor people of Africa, Asia and Latin America are forced by USA’s supremacy to starve to service the debts, most if it made of the expenses of puppet regimes that financed the oppression of these very people. It is the might of USA and British imperialism that enables white colonialist farmers to keep hold of most of the lands of Zimbabwe and South Africa, while the vast black majority stays landless and hungry. While the USA describes its aggression as a war “for freedom” it supports the most oppressive dictatorships, as their freedom is not for the poor peoples that should be subdued. As they call their aggression a war against terror, they give billions of dollars to the Israeli terrorist government that systematically assassinate Palestinians, and to the Colombian army that organize death squads to massacre poor peasants.

Bush and other imperialist leaders portray their aggression as a Crusade for superior western civilization, as they speak for internal usage to quell public opinion by racist rage. It is nothing but a disgusting disguise for the self-interest of a small and ultra-rich elite, which is ready to carry the whole world through bloody conflicts and endless wars, that will leave nobody out of the reach of harm. The movement against globalization that started a few years ago, and the anti-war movement that started from the beginning of the current imperialist onslaught, proves that even in the “first world” many people understand that imperialism is the real enemy of humanity.

There is a lot that we can do. As the vast majority of world’s people oppose the imperialist aggression, a mass movement should be mobilized everywhere to show this and force the will of the people on all social and political institutions. The economic and military might of USA imperialism is built of accumulating the resources and hard work of all our people, all over the world, and is reused to oppress and expropriate these very people. Social and political struggle, economic boycott, all sorts of resistance can be used to stop this exploitation and oppression.

The stop the current massacres, to end the constant victimization of the worlds’ people, we should keep a clear view of the evils of world imperialism. We are the majority, we are the people of this world, and we should unite and win our freedom and dignity!

Ma’an ‘Ala edDarb – Together on the road

Abnaa elBalad – Sons of the Country

www.abnaa-elbalad.org

(Abnaa elBalad is a Palmovement, active in the part of Palestine occupied since 1948, and calling for the return of Palestinian refugees and the creation of a secular democratic Palestine.)