By National Council, League of Revolutionaries for a New America
A year and 45,000+ Palestinian deaths after October 7, 2023, it is past time for the people of the United States to halt their ruling class complicity in genocide. Demand that the US war-makers stop arming Israel.
On September 17, 2024 – nearly a year after Israel launched its genocidal military campaign against the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank – Israeli Zionist forces triggered hundreds of explosives-bearing pagers in Lebanon. Supposedly targeting Hezbollah fighters, they killed and maimed thousands of innocent people. The next day they ignited walkie-talkies. They understood they were attacking civilians – hospital workers and children – which is the textbook definition of terrorism. Then they began a ground invasion and aerial bombardment that destroyed housing, hospitals, schools. According to the Lebanese government, they killed more than 1,000 people, injured another 6,000 and displaced a million.
The genocide begun in Gaza has expanded to Lebanon. Terrorism aimed at people holding pagers is now escalating to threats, by the Biden administration and Israel’s Netanyahu, to strike Iran directly. Not far on the horizon: Israel threatens to embroil all Western Asia in a regional war that could become nuclear. This political moment screams danger and threatens all humanity.
This is not just another conflict far from US shores.
First, the US is bankrolling this conflict. Military aid to Israel, on average $4 billion annually, exploded to $14 billion shortly after October 7, 2023 with more and more money poured into arming Israel – culminating at the end of September with an additional $13 billion. That’s the tax money of the American workers, devastation being wreaked in our name. Meanwhile the ruling class tells us they have no money to provide housing, health care, education — whatever the people need to survive. Money that our government could use to house the homeless here is used to destroy people and homes in Lebanon, as well as make defense industry billionaires even richer.
Second, a Western Asia regional war threatens to engage Russia and China and become a world nuclear war. Despite rhetorical flourishes to the contrary, the US undermines every effort at making peace and, in recent threats against Iran, is provoking a region wide conflagration. Already, even before a wider war, the US has committed 43,000 troops and more than a half dozen warships to the area. The US military budget of close to a trillion dollars is 40% of the world-wide arms expenditures.
Further emphasizing the global impact of US war-makers, the US Department of Defense is the largest single contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the world. A tiny fraction of the military budget – say the $13 billion just given Israel – could resolve the devastation from hurricane Helene. The climate catastrophe is here, and Washington/Wall Street goes to war. If we have any hope of obtaining basic needs for our own people we must stand against the genocide and stay the hands of our own war-makers in Washington.
Third, the heat waves, droughts, hurricanes, rising oceans, and other elements of climate change should have taught us that human beings everywhere need to cooperate to protect the planet, our only home. War threatens our planet. We all need to curtail the powers of leaders who favor war. In the midst of a very dangerous presidential election campaign, the people everywhere can call attention to the holy grail of the bipartisan one trillion dollar “defense” budget.
In every way possible, the League extends its hand to all people and organizations moving for an end to arming Israel. All the fine words of working toward a cease-fire have been only that – pretty words. As our ruling class continues to undermine any possibility of a ceasefire, this is the time for people everywhere to recognize the stakes and fight together to end arms shipments to Israel. That alone would quickly end the genocides. This will take actions in the streets as well as actions in organizations and legislatures. The Biden-Harris administration has it within its power to end this. Instead, it threatens to escalate a regional war by blowing up Iran’s missile capability.
Stop all arms for Israel! Turn the military budget into funding for the needs of the people everywhere.
By National Council, League of Revolutionaries for a New America
Published on October 8, 2024
This article originated in Rally!
P.O. Box 477113 Chicago, IL 60647 rally@lrna.org
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