This speech was given on behalf of ANSWER Indiana on October 5, 2024 at the Indianapolis Global Day of Action for Palestine.
Free, Free Palestine!
End the War on Lebanon!
I’m an organizer with the ANSWER Coalition that has helped organize this event with the other great organizations that stand with you all today.
Let me first start with a question for you all—what other government or regime in the world has turned people’s cell phones and pagers into human bombs? We live in a country in which publications like the New York Times call such murderous acts “a tactical success” and praise the planning of the genocidal organizers in Israel. Can you imagine what the headlines would be if this attack had been carried out by the Palestinians or Lebanese against Israel?
We all are familiar with the racist way the media in the U.S. distorts these events. Over the past week, over a thousand civilians have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli airstrikes. But more outrage is expressed by American government officials and the American media over the Iranian missile strikes that hit Israeli military infrastructure and caused zero Israeli casualties that we know of. Where is the mourning for the children of Lebanon who lost their lives for the blood thirsty Israeli expansionist aims?
Israel has now opened up a war on many fronts. It is carrying out genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing and massacres in the West Bank, and an invasion of the sovereign territory of Lebanon. It is also bombing Yemen—one of the poorest countries in the world, which continues to struggle on the side of the Palestinians despite bombings and crippling sanctions from the United States. They know that their liberation is tied up in that of Palestine. So is ours! Here in the United States, we are fighting imperialism on yet another front. We are fighting a political battle. In the United States, we must all be engaged in the political front where we tell the ruling class that if you are going to ruthlessly kill people all across the world for the sake of maintaining economic and political hegemony, we the people of the United States are going to rise up and say NO! That’s what we are doing today.
We are here today to demand and make it clear that every step that the U.S. government takes to justify war is in direct conflict to the wants and needs of the American people. Here in our state of Indiana, we have public education being defunded but over $12 million of taxpayer money from Indianapolis every year is going to buy bonds which support the Israeli military. Indiana as a whole has increased its spending on Israel from $65 million to over $100 million this year. We say we will never support our money going to drop bombs on children. This cannot become our permanent reality. We cannot be complacent. The fight for Palestinian rights is truly connected to the fight against oppression all over the world.
As Palestinians and Lebanese pull the dead from the rubble and cry out to the freedom-loving world for justice, we cannot let Gaza and Beirut become the graveyard of international law. Decimated neighborhoods cannot become monuments to the international community’s tolerance, acceptance, and facilitation of Israel’s violation of all basic human rights. As we speak, entire bloodlines have been wiped out in Gaza and Israel seems intent to follow the same playbook in Lebanon.
We all must make a commitment. No matter how much they repress us, slander us, or try to ignore us here in the United States, we will not give up fighting for Palestine. In spite of the crushing attacks by Israel and supported and coordinated by the United States government, the Palestinian and Lebanese people have not given up their struggle for freedom. In Gaza, over 90% of all buildings have been flattened, but Israel has come no closer to destroying the human need to resist. You can never terrorize an occupied people into giving up their struggle for dignity and freedom. So here in the U.S., we need to keep fighting together for this common goal, because it is right, and because we know that history is on our side. You all are on the right side of history. Don’t forget that fact.
We the people of the United States are going to rise up and say No! We will not give into the endless wars and genocide taking place in our name in Palestine and Lebanon. It is clear that the United States government is not only complicit, but the primary driver of this genocide. Israel could not carry out this war for a single day without the full political, military, economic, and diplomatic support of the U.S. Every time you see an article about how “the Biden-Harris administration is fed up with Netanyahu” or “the U.S. government is concerned about civilian casualties in Gaza,” remember that you are being lied to. Months ago Genocide Joe said his red line was an Israeli invasion of Rafah. Every so often he pretends to be upset about something that Israel has done because it is destroying the image of the U.S. on the world stage, but ultimately they have no red lines. If the murder of tens of thousands—possibly hundreds of thousands–of innocent civilians, the bombing of schools and hospitals, torture, and sexual assault on a wide scale aren’t your red line, you have no red line! We refuse to allow Holocaust Harris to repeat these lies as well. Our sellout politicians will not bring about change, but it will be the people who organize, work together, and see change is only possible through mass movements like this one.
Stop the genocide and war in Palestine and Lebanon and stop all U.S. aid to Israel.
We have the chance here today to say no to war on Palestine and the Palestinian people, we say no to war on Lebanon and the Lebanese people, and in Yemen and in Syria and in Iran. We will not be complicit. The way to free us from the scourge of war is to free ourselves from the scourge of injustice, poverty, and misery. Keep fighting and free Palestine.
Featured image: An ANSWER Indiana organizer speaking at one of several events for the Global Day of Action for Palestine. Credit: Indianapolis Liberation Center
