Latino Leaders Demand Withdrawal of US and British Troops from ME
By Lisette B. Poole
Newark, CA

Leaders of two grassroots political and civil rights organizations are calling for the immediate withdrawal of American and British troops from the Middle East and are demanding that Israel pay an estimated $ 8 billion dollars to Lebanon for damages Israeli troops inflicted when they invaded that sovereign nation.
The two, in separate interviews this week, vehemently criticized the administration of President George Bush and declared that their parties are helping expand the growing grassroots awareness of American-Israeli complicity in the death and destruction in the Middle East despite the mainstream media’s efforts to suppress it.
These organizations are part of a greater –statewide - coalition known as the California Civil Rights Alliance (CCRA).
The calls for war reparations by Green party candidate for Governor Peter Miguel Camejo and Nativo Lopez, state and national president of the influential Mexican American political association, came as multinational peacekeepers were preparing to deploy in Lebanon where fighting claimed the lives of over 1,000 Lebanese and less than 100 Israelis.
“How much death and destruction has occurred! This cannot be simply explained as a move to get back two soldiers. In our view this is a naked attempt to draw Iran into a fight to provide the pretext for the United States to intervene against Iran. Iran did not bite the bait and so Israel was left naked in an act of aggression against the sovereignty of a united nation member, Lebanon,” Lopez charged.
His statement coincided with a report in The New Yorker Magazine that charged the US Administration was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Lebanon. The article in the August 21st issue quoted former intelligence and diplomatic officials as saying that President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney “were convinced that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.”
“From a historical perspective Israel is the client state of the United States. It has been armed to the teeth by the United States; it would not exist without the military and economic aid that comes in from United States taxpayers. So it is only fair that we demand all British and American troops to withdraw from the Middle East and give up the military bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the region,” Lopez added.
“The United States should stop arming Israel and measures must be taken to disarm Israel of its nuclear weapon,” charged Peter Camejo. “Both issues have led to the instability of the region and Israel has been projected by the media as a victim rather than for what it is -- an aggressor — a beachhead of American military might and European colonialism.”
He charged that the 2003 American invasion of Iraq and current Israeli invasion of Lebanon are leading to an increasingly dangerous rate of racism in the United States.
“Arabs, in general, and, Muslims, in particular, are being demonized by the press and by the political parties that control the media —150 years ago British troops went into the Middle East as a superior race that could do no wrong and the Arabs could do no right. This attitude is condoned and imitated by the US today. That is a tragedy!”
Both Lopez and Camejo accused the Bush administration of hypocrisy in the Middle East charging that while it claims to uphold democratic freedoms, civil rights and local rule it has in fact impeded self-determination for the Palestinians by overlooking Israel’s transgressions in Gaza and the occupied territories, and now the invasion of Lebanon. They said Israel’s militarism must be curbed and the Israeli state be made to pay restitution to Lebanon estimated at around eight billion dollars.
“America is isolated, and Americans are misinformed. Everyone in the world can see that the idea of starting a war over two people is a totally irrational act, and the fact that our media accepts it and follows the administration in its explanation of it is a distortion of the truth,” Camejo added. “Homes, schools, bridges, hospital have been turned into rubble and more people made into refugees. We must stand up against this!”
His organization, the Green Party, has won elected office mostly at the local level on a largely non-partisan ballot election. The highest ranking Green in the nation is currently John Eder, a state representative in Main. The party has 305,000 registered members nationwide. The Mexican American political associations represent the largest Spanish-speaking population in the United States with 350,000 registered members. Issues of civil rights, immigration and current US military involvement in the Middle East are common hot button issues for both parties.
The two organizations are formulating position papers to present to members of congress, and are planning to continue educating their members about Middle East developments.
The coalition among the Latinos and the Arabs is historically grounded in the mid-1960s when the civil rights movement in the US under Malcolm X and the revolutionary movement in Cuba under Fidel Castro connected with the non-aligned movement in the Middle East under Gamal Abdel Nasser to raise political consciousness against segregation in the United States, French and US invasion of Vietnam war and later the 1967 Israeli occupation on Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian and Palestinian lands.
Dr. Agha Saeed, National Chair of the American Muslim Alliance (AMA), a grassroots organization with 101 chapters nationwide, said: “In 1967, Che Guevara had called for the creation of ‘two, three, many Vietnams.’ Although, he and his colleagues didn’t succeed in creating many Vietnams, ironically the neocons did. They have created new ‘Vietnams’ in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon. No one will be surprised if they created a few more in Syria, Iran and the Sudan.”
“Latinos, Muslims and Arabs have historically suffered colonialism and have been aggressed upon by European countries. We are strengthening our ties in and outside the US to assure a voice for the people,” Lopez said.
(Lisette B. Poole is a freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She also lectures at California State University, East Bay)

 

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