Melbourne Stop the War Coalition offers its sympathies to the brave people of Lebanon and Palestine, and those whose relatives have been killed in the last few weeks.
We are also here to voice our anger and opposition to this brutal war. For decades, Israel has been terrorising the Palestinian and Lebanese people. When is enough enough? How many innocent people have to die?
For three years, Stop the War has tirelessly campaigned against the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war based on lies and waged by the mightiest military power on Earth, the United States. In Iraq, the resistance to the invaders has been, and continues to be, fierce. Our hearts also go out to the heroic people of Iraq.
Stop the War has also consistently opposed the criminal and brutal oppression of the Palestinian people, and the occupation of their land. As US and British forces kill and maim civilians in Iraq, and steal their resources, Israeli tanks are slaughtering Palestinian children, bulldozing Palestinian houses, ripping up their olive groves and stealing their water.
Both invasions and occupations have been deemed "necessary" in the global fight against "terrorism". How hypocritical!
Four weeks ago, Israel opened up a new front in the war of terror and started a military offensive against Lebanon.
It is not about rescuing a couple of captured soldiers. The Israeli military is targeting Lebanon's infrastructure — factories, airports, roads, residents' houses, UN compounds, civilians, and Red Cross facilities — to sow terror and fear into people's hearts. Israel is carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing in south Lebanon.
Lebanon's rapid recovery from decades of civil war and occupation is a danger to the fundamentalist and racist state of Israel. Lebanon has started to become an example of the possibility of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, and this example is a big threat to apartheid Israel and its imperial master, the US.
The US-Israeli wars in Gaza and Lebanon are aimed at crushing resistance to the West's imperialist expansionist policies in the Middle East, in particular Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel's war is wrong. Every country has the right to determine its own politics.
Shame on Prime Minister John Howard, ALP leader Kim Beazley and Victorian Premier Stephen Bracks for not publicly condemning the invasion of a sovereign country and the slaughter of its people. We demand that the Coalition government condemns Israel's aggression and breaks all ties with the Israeli state.
Silence helps oppressors and we owe it to our brothers and sisters in the Middle East to be public about our opposition, and persistent! Neither the politicians nor the media spin doctors speak for us.
The whole world is watching the slaughter in Lebanon and Gaza, and the majority say "no" to war and injustice. We need to keep mobilising public opposition to end this war. That, in the end, is the only way to make Howard, George Bush, Tony Blair and Ehud Olmert listen.
Israel out of Lebanon and Palestine now!
Margarita Windisch
[Abridged from a speech on behalf of the Melbourne Stop the War Coalition to a July 30 rally organised by the Melbourne Palestine Solidarity Network, Stop the War Coalition, the Federation of Muslim Students, the Islamic Girls' and Women's Group and others. Margarita Windisch is also the Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Footscray in the November Victorian state election.]