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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