Statement of the Israeli Communist Forum (September 17, 2001)
The Attacks on the US and their Implications
On September 11, 2001, a terrorist attack in New York and Washington, D.C., astonished and shocked the world. In a series of suicide attacks, airplanes hijacked in the US were flown directly into the chosen targets - the Twin Towers in New York, headquarters of the World Trade Center, and the offices of US Defense Department at the Pentagon in Washington. The terrorist attack caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians, including hundreds of fire-fighters and members of rescue teams killed when the two towers collapsed while rescue activities were taking place. This terrorist attack deserves the most clear and unequivocal of condemnations.
At the same time, we must warn against the attempt of the United States and its allies to use this attack as a pretext to open aggressive military offensives against countries or organizations which have no connection to the terrorist attacks in the US. Such offensives could result in the death of many innocent civilians, and in the creation of new focal points of tension and conflict, thereby actually increasing the incidence of terrorism and of the support for it.
It should be remembered that the US already carried out numerous criminal acts of war against various countries and peoples, which had resulted in millions of casualties among innocent civilians. It is enough to mention the bloody war against Vietnam, the criminal blockade of Cuba, the invasions of Panama and Grenada, the murderous attacks on Yugoslavia, and the support extended to fascist dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere. Among the latter were regimes whose leaders came to power by toppling democratic and progressive governments, with direct help from the US.
At the time of writing it is not yet completely clear who perpetrated the terrorist attacks in the United States. Among those suspected, a name conspicuously mentioned is that of Osama Bin Laden and his Afghanistan-based organization. Here it should be mentioned that Bin Laden is a product of none other than the US's own intelligence agencies, which created and financed his organization when for years he carried out murderous terrorist attacks against the revolutionary regime then holding power in Afghanistan. At the time, Bin Laden and his fellows were highly praised by the US as "Freedom Fighters" and "Friends of the Free World". The same is true for the Taliban regime as a whole, one the darkest regimes existing on the globe today. If indeed the recent terrorist attacks in the US originated from this direction, it is the US government itself, and in particular its clandestine agencies, who must bear primary responsibility.
For its part, the Government of Israel made use of events in the US, which drew away the world's attention, in order to increase its aggressive acts in the Occupied Territories. On the very day of the attacks it launched a new invasion of Palestinian territory, the longest and bloodiest to date, with 12 Palestinians being killed on a single day including a nine-year old girl. In right-wing circles, and even among some who used to claim identification with the "left", we hear calls for all-out war against the Palestinian Authority. There have been such wars in the past, and they did not bring the Palestinian people to their knees - nor will such war have that effect now. An assault on the Palestinians can only lead to an acceleration of the cycle of bloodshed, including an increase of terrorist attacks with all their implications.
In summation: together with our revulsion and unequivocal condemnation of the kind of attacks launched last week in the US, we must remember that the perpetrators of such attacks are sometimes driven to them by the terrible despair and distress experienced among many peoples and countries due to the policies of the world's dominant powers, of which the United States is foremost. Therefore, action is urgently needed to remove the underlying causes which drive people to acts of despair. In particular, there is an urgent need to fundamentally change the economic policies which caused the gap between reach and poor, between developed and "developing" countries, to become wider than it was ever before.