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Middle East

By VVAW

At our recent National Steering Committee Meeting, VVAW/WSO took a stand in support of the Palestinian people and their just struggle. Why do we join with the people of the world and stand with the Palestinian struggle? Because they were robbed of their homeland, and their fight is against our own enemy here -- U.S. imperialism.

Since the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) came to the United Nations, massive propaganda campaigns have been waged through the media to whip up hysteria against the "Palestinian terrorists." The campaign has even gone so far as to distort reality by comparing the Palestinians to the Nazis. All this is going on at the same time that Israel is bombing refugee camps with U.S.-supplied jets and bombs. All this while Israel sends commando teams into Arab countries, killing many citizens.

The purpose of this propaganda is to stir up support for Zionist expansion and aggression, fully backed by the U.S. government. While trying to hide its real intentions from the people of the world, the U.S. has consistently backed and supplied the armed adventures of the Israelis in their attacks on the Palestinians.

The vast majority of the countries of the world invited the PLO to the UN to discuss the Palestinian question, over the frantic objections of the Israeli delegate got up to speak before the UN General Assembly. The Palestinian, Yassar Arafat, was greeted with tremendous applause, while almost all the seats in the Israeli delegate spoke. Most of the countries were hosting a welcoming banquet for the Palestinians and boycotted the Israeli speech.

Brief History

During the late 1800's a movement developed among a few rich Jewish businessmen to create a nation-state for Jews. This movement is known as Zionism, and those who back it are known as Zionists. Instead of organizing Jews to struggle against the persecution and prejudice coming down on them where they lived, the Zionists held out the idea of forging a Jewish "nation" with themselves at the top. At the same time, this idea had little support from the overwhelmingly poor and working Jewish people, so the Zionists concentrated on getting European and the U.S. governments to politically and materially support their plan.

The British declared in 1917 that it would support such a state in the Middle East, specifically in the area called Palestine. This land was already in the hands of Palestinian Arabs, Jews and Christians who had been living there together peacefully for thousands of years. With the rise of WWII, many Jews began organizing to resist Hitler by taking up arms and fighting the Nazis. The Zionists, on the other hand, worked against the resistance movement, using religious leaders. These mis-leaders told the Jewish people that "God was against violence" and that Jews must "wait for a miracle from God."

With the real sympathy that arose for the Jewish people after the fascist atrocities took place, the Zionists pushed for the takeover of Palestine. Helped by the British to from Jewish military units and excluding the Palestinians already there from government, the Zionists got the help of the U.S. government, which was only too willing to have a state that would support U.S. policy in the Middle East. With ever-increasing swiftness, the Jewish colonizers pushed the Palestinian Arabs from their land.

Since its creation by the UN in 1948, Israel has never stopped its drive for more territory. In 1956, Israel, Great Britain and France attacked Egypt to try to seize control of the Suez canal, a very vital link in that oil-rich area. In 1967, Israel launched a major attack on almost all its Arab neighbors and seized great chunks of land from them.

Today

Now, the U.S. government sends Henry Kissinger scurrying around the Middle East in order to try to force a political settlement on the Arabs and Palestinians which would keep the U.S. in a favorable position. Key to their idea of "favorable"is the continued existence of the state of Israel, forcing the Arabs to recognize Israel's right to exist and forcing the Palestinians to give up their struggle to regain their homeland. All this is done with the aim in mind of gaining U.S. control of the oil and the Middle East.

The Soviet Union, the other big superpower with its hands in the Middle East, shares the same idea as the U.S. for a favorable settlement, but favorable to the Soviet Union -- that is, control of the oil and the Middle East for the USSR. So, to compete with the U.S. which openly backs Israel, the USSR poses as the friend of the Arabs. But the Soviet Unions is not a real friend of the Arab and Palestinian peoples. Instead, just like the U.S. , it operates in its own narrow interests. For instance, during the recent Arab oil boycott, the USSR forced Iraq to sell a quantity of oil to them as partial payment for arms shipments. Then they turned around and sold the same oil to West Germany for 3 times the price they paid for it.

So, Just like the U.S. , the USSR wants a part of the action in any political settlement in the Middle East area so it can keep its thumb in the pie. There is the real danger in this contention between the two superpowers of a new World War breaking out, as the U.S. and the USSR compete for control of the Middle East.

Thousands of poor and working people died in Vietnam to protect the interests of U.S. imperialism, but the struggle of the Vietnamese people, the resistance of GIs and a vast amount of the American people is putting an end to U.S. involvement there. The lessons learned form that struggle will not be forgotten, and it is up to the American people to resist every attempt to draw us into another war -- this time in the Middle East.