A Statement from The World Peace Council
Just short of one year since Israel’s criminal attack and invasion of the Gaza Strip and brutal bombardment and genocide of Palestine, the Zionist state committed yet another crime against humanity, on September 23, 2024.
Israel carpet bombed Lebanon and assassinated the top leaders of the Resistance Front, including Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, the widely revered leader of Hezbollah, and brigadier general Abbas Nilforoushan, commander of Iran’s Quds Brigade in Lebanon, among others. Since the start of this criminal attack, Israel has continued to assassinate more leaders of the Hezbollah, including the organization’s communications chief, Mohammad Rashid Sakaf, on October 4.
Iran has exercised restraint in response to extreme Zionist provocation. In retaliation, and fully within its rights in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Iran launched close to 200 ballistic missiles into Israel. Iran targeted Israel’s military facilities and security installations in various parts of the country, while intentionally avoiding the population centers, unlike Israel. Iran has also warned that any military response by Israel, the United States, and any other country that helps in this response, will face more devastating consequences.
There is no doubt that Israel’s criminal violations of international law in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and other parts of West Asia, has increased the possibility of a full-fledged regional war, which can easily escalate into a global, possibly nuclear, confrontation. Such escalation must be avoided at any cost, first and foremost by stopping Israel’s blatant criminal actions.
We should have no illusions that the U.S. is in any way restraining the Zionist’s escalation of the war and the continuation of genocide. Whether the Israeli tail is wagging the Yankee dog is their problem. For the rest of humanity, it is all one beast. Washington is as much complicit as Tel Aviv.
The imperialist project and the Zionist project are one and the same. Without active U.S. diplomatic, financial, and military support, Zionist Israel would not have been able to commit such crimes. For many decades, every U.S. administration has vetoed every UN resolution to stop Israeli crimes. Even today, as we are witnessing the massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese by the Zionist state, the Biden administration is urgently allocating an additional $8.7 billion in military aid to Israel.
There are strong imperialistic reasons for this support. Israel is the largest and most powerful U.S. military base in West Asia. The U.S. needs this base for controlling the region and its resources, as well as for creating divisions among the Arab states of the region to weaken any resistance to U.S. domination.
In addition, the world is going through a fundamental transition, and the U.S. is increasingly losing its hegemonic control over it. This transition is on the verge of becoming — like the present climate crisis — irreversible. The U.S. ruling class does not care about the climate crisis, but it is super-sensitive about losing its imperialistic hegemony in every corner of the world. The ever-increasing U.S.-Israel military attacks on the regional resistance movement is based on the awareness of the fact that the defeat of Zionist Israel fundamentally threatens U.S. hegemony in the region and, through it, a shift in the global balance of forces against the empire itself.
As a result of the unconditional and unwavering U.S. support of the blatant crimes of Israel, they both have lost any semblance of moral and diplomatic credibility. The only weapon left for the imperialist-Zionist project is escalation of military conflict and instigation of a regional and, if necessary, a global war for maintaining hegemony. It is now at a stage where the U.S. and Israel may be ready to bring down the whole world with them as they fall. And all this at a time when the post-war institutions established and now controlled by the West have failed to defend international law and the functionality of the structures and institutions established through the UN process.
Today, a counter-hegemonic movement — internationally and here in the belly of the beast — is rising with the understanding that the Zionist enterprise exists because it is an integral part of the U.S. empire. The barbarism of the genocide has exposed the essential nature of US-led imperialism. We commend the peace and justice movement’s deepening consciousness of the fact that imperialism is the main enemy of humanity. From its sound moral foundation for peace, the anti-war movement is becoming more consciously anti-imperialist.
We specially salute the U.S. student movement for its brave and heroic protests on various university campuses against Israeli aggression and its genocidal policies. It is our hope that this movement, which has been rekindled for the first time since Vietnam War protests, will be able to overcome the effects of the recent suppression and resume its historical role as the vanguard of peace and social justice.
Global humanity cannot and should not allow this disaster to continue. We must all mobilize to stop the crime of war, destruction, and genocide that is being committed against humanity. We call upon all defenders of peace and human rights in the U.S. to:
• Organize broad mass demonstrations in every corner of the country against U.S. and Israel atrocities and demand an immediate end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and a halt to its military actions in Gaza and against Lebanon and Iran.
• Organize public events to spark a public discussion of these crimes and inject the issue of U.S.-Israel war crimes into the ongoing process of the presidential election.
• Join hands to develop a common strategy to counter U.S. militarism and imperialist policies.
