We Say NO to Weapons to Ukraine and to Israel!

Speech given by Anti-War Committee member Andrew Josefchak on 11/26/24 at the MN Peace Action Coalition protest in front of Senator Klobuchar’s office

The single greatest struggle in the world today, and the most pressing issue in the anti-war movement, is the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Palestinian liberation has a place at every anti-war protest, or every protest in general, as far as I’m concerned. And I think it’s urgent that we connect the necessity of Palestinian liberation to the US’ criminal intervention in the war in Ukraine, because this is an issue that has confused not only the general public in the US but even sections of the anti-war movement. 

The fundamental factor underlying both the war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestine is the role of US imperialism. Why is it that the US sends billions of dollars in arms to Israel annually, not to mention the billions that have been sent in just the last year, denying Palestinians their right to determine their own destiny in the most severe and brutal way possible: assisting a genocide? It is because of the role played by Israel in furthering the interests of US empire. Israel is a US satellite. It destabilizes the entire Middle East, acting as an unsinkable aircraft carrier for the US. Every time the people of the Middle East have stood up against US imperialism, when movements or governments have arisen that say, we will not be servants of the US, we will not allow our natural resources to be exploited by the US, we will not sell out the working people of our country, we will build an independent country that fights for its own freedom and determines its own destiny, Israel, the loyal attack dog of the US, is there to say: no, you will not. We will bomb you until you cannot take it anymore. We will make you submit.

And what I particularly want to address is this: why is it that the US applies the slogans of freedom and self-determination to Ukraine when it so viscously denies these rights to Palestinians? Again, the answer is the same: Ukraine becoming a satellite of the US gives the US a weapon it can deploy against Russia, to move missiles and nukes closer to Moscow, to push NATO further East. And in fact, Ukraine did at one time pursue its own policy of independence, but it was independence from the US. That was in 2013, when the president of Ukraine pursued new trade policies, trying to free Ukraine from its dependence on the US and EU, and refusing to submit to the US’s demands that Ukraine destroy its own social safety net and allow US businesses to essentially strip the country for parts. What happened next? The president was overthrown in a coup only months later. The CIA has confirmed it had agents there, training ultra nationalists and neo-nazis in guerilla warfare. A bunch of US politicians, including Dick Cheney, traveled there to make sure the right people got into power. And who would have guessed, a new government of Ukraine emerges that is pro-US, ready to sell the country out, ready to join NATO, ready to send ultranationalists to start killing ethnic Russians on the Russian border, ready to destabilize the region. Now hundreds of thousands of people are dead. Now missiles are falling deeper inside Russia and things have a real chance of getting much worse.

This is how the US operates these days. The US doesn’t invade countries ourselves all that often anymore. Instead, it finds someone willing to unleash chaos on its behalf, to start interminable conflicts that will erode the ability of anyone who isn’t the US, or a subservient ally of the US, to pursue their own goals, their own independence. And it tries to convince the world that it’s doing it for noble reasons, that in Israel it’s supporting “the only democracy in the Middle East,” that in Ukraine it’s fending off completely irrational Russian aggression. It’s critical that we look past this bullshit, and see the US for what it really is: THE threat to world peace. If the US is selling someone, anyone, weapons, I’m going to start wondering why, and I hope you will too.

What’s the number one threat to the world today?  The Pentagon and the CIA!