Momentum is building for the Aug. 12 demonstration to defend the people of Palestine and Lebanon. On Thursday, July 27, organizers held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to announce the demonstration and discuss issues relating to the U.S.-Israeli war on Lebanon and Palestine.
There have been widespread protests against the Israeli invasion in the last few weeks, but the Aug. 12 protest at the
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Speakers at the press conference, which was chaired by ANSWER member Peta Lindsay, included: former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; Brian Becker, national coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition; Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice; Mahdi Bray, director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation; Dr. Mounzer Sleiman, NCA member and independent military and political analyst; and Reverend Graylan Hagler, senior pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church and president of Ministers for Social and Economic Justice.
Sleiman, who recently returned from Lebanon, gave direct eyewitness testimony from Lebanon where his father had just died of a heart attack after Israeli missiles struck near his home. He noted that the personal loss was only one part of the larger national tragedy. “The aim of this war is not to free two captured soldiers, it’s purely and simply to bring Lebanon to its knees,” said Sleiman. He reported that about 55 percent of the people injured in the ongoing assault are children.
Becker described the attack on Lebanon as an extension of the U.S. war against Iraq. He said that both are part of an integrated plan for colonial-style domination of the entire region: “Any government that seeks to resist the U.S. imposition of power is dubbed as a terrorist. We recognize that you are not our enemies; you are our sisters and brothers.” Click here to read the full text of Brian Becker’s statement at the press conference.
Mahdi Bray criticized the Bush regime’s backing of the invasion: “it looks as if my government is saying that Muslim life is cheap.” He further noted that the Israeli attack was in clear violation of the Arms Export Control Act.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark gave additional historic background, describing earlier Israeli attacks on Lebanon in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The country, having rebuilt from the earlier invasion, is now being destroyed again, in what U.S. Secretary of State has proclaimed are “the birth pangs” of a new Middle East. “There’s Condoleezza Rice, not just fiddling, but orchestrating,” Clark said to compliment Bray’s earlier observation that the Middle East is burning “while Condoleezza fiddles.”
The Aug. 12 national march will be a crucial demonstration to show the people of Lebanon and Palestine, and all the world, that we do not support the U.S.-backed Israeli terror campaign. ANSWER volunteers are working hard across the nation to spread the word.
Click here for more info and to donate to the Aug. 12 effort.
