Right now, the Biden Administration, via the U.S.’ longstanding partnership with the increasingly fascistic Israeli occupation forces, is marching the world into a regional conflagration in the Middle East, or worse.

The demand to de-escalate the terrifying war and violence in the Middle East cannot be more urgent.

The demand for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and ending U.S. support for Israel’s war of aggression against Palestine, Lebanon, and its other Arab neighbors, cannot be more urgent.

The demand for ending U.S. weapons deliveries to Israel cannot be more urgent.

The demand for full humanitarian aid to Gaza and an end to Israel’s hateful blockade cannot be more urgent.

There are corollary demands required of the U.S. government: obey the U.S. Constitution; abide by U.S. and international laws to end its support for apartheid, occupation, and illegal settlements; allow for Palestinian sovereignty and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.

Fascism and war

Over one year ago, the fascist Netanyahu government immediately responded to the October 7th attacks with a massive bombing campaign on Gaza that has so far killed, minimally, 41,000, of which 70% are women and children. But perhaps as many as 186,000, according to the respected international medical journal The Lancet, have now, in fact, been slaughtered by this genocidal campaign.

The Netanyahu government has systematically destroyed Palestinian culture in Gaza: nearly all housing, electrical generation, water and sewage systems, schools, churches, mosques, museums, and hospitals. It has sent over a million residents fleeing repeatedly, and murdered them even in the so-called “safe zones” where they were sent to. It has specifically targeted journalists, health care staff, and United Nations and other international aid workers. It has tightly restricted aid shipments of food, water, electricity, shelter, and medicines, so that Gazans are widely starving, dehydrated, and suffering preventable infectious diseases.

While the Biden administration, most members of Congress, and the corporate media constantly point to October 7, 2023, as the beginning of the current hostilities, they ignore that the violence of that day, in truth, results from the over 75-year ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population by the Zionist project.

Israel has accompanied its continuing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza with expanded violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank and in refugee camps. Now, it is expanding the scope of its aggressions with its scorched earth bombing of Lebanon, as well as targeted and mass assassinations — including of children — in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. Israeli troops have invaded Lebanon for the first time since 2006. The Biden administration is backing them, sending 100 U.S. troops and a high altitude missile system to Israel, providing Netanyahu with additional cover to strike Iran.

Now that Iran has retaliated to Israel’s aggressions with a salvo of ballistic missiles targeting Israeli military sites, Israel is stating that it will rain even more destruction on the civilian populations of its neighbors.

A partner in crime

The United States, under the Biden administration, as in previous administrations, is a full partner in the Israeli government’s aggressions against its neighbor, providing weapons, funding, intelligence, missile interception, and diplomatic protection. The Pentagon has sent more ships and troops to the Middle East to protect Israel from retaliation, to strengthen those troops already on the ground in Israel, and to bolster its illegal bases in Syria and Iraq. U.S. participation in the war on Lebanon and Iran is carried out absent Congressional declaration. It is unconstitutional.

Israel’s vicious slaughter of Palestinians is rightly being called a genocide, a charge the International Court of Justice has affirmed plausible. The Court has called for Israel to stop its war, to immediately remove its colonial settlements from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to allow refugees to return — a right protected under international law, and to pay reparations to Palestinians. The Biden administration has the power to stop Israel from thumbing its nose at the ICJ.

During the critical 2024 national elections, neither candidate from either of the two major U.S. political parties have condemned Israel’s genocidal aggressions or offered meaningful positive policy change to end the escalating death and destruction in the Middle East. This is despite majority support in the U.S. for a ceasefire and for a halt in weapons shipments to Israel. The Biden–Harris administration shows no sign, beyond tired rhetoric, of stopping the bloodshed, thus leaving hundreds of thousands of voters boycotting the elections, or choosing to vote against Harris–Walz, even though the Trump-led MAGA Republicans are even more wedded to supporting Israel’s atrocities.

The only winners in this conflict are the profiteers of the financial-military-industrial complex, including the giant weapons manufacturers and fossil fuel corporations. The working-class and people of all countries involved are the losers.

Democracy and peace

To defend the interests of the war profiteers, government leaders and university administrators are attacking our First Amendment rights to speak, write, and peacefully demonstrate for peace. To be pro-Palestinian is to be charged with anti-Semitism. To be pro-Palestinian is to be charged with supporting terrorism. To the contrary: supporting Palestinian human rights against several of the world’s most powerful military and economic powers in existence is a fundamentally anti-racist stance.

We urge everyone who hates war and supports human civilization to act: Join in mass mobilizations demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Demand our members of Congress stop the administration from sending weapons to Israel and from diplomatically covering Israel’s crimes. Demand the U.S. government de-escalate and use diplomacy to end the war, to end apartheid, and to abide by our own Constitution, the UN Charter and the International Court of Justice. Demand the U.S. resume funding for UNRWA and private humanitarian aid, ensuring it reaches Palestinians in Gaza by breaking through Israel’s blockade.

Peace is patriotic!
Stop the wars, feed the people!

Image: Philly march to Save Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza by Joe Piette (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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