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Down with Israel's terrorist war!

The first demonstration in Vienna against Israel’s terrorist war was a complete success with 2.000 participants. The demonstration was called by the Antiimperialist Camp, the Arab-Palestine Club and the League of Socialist Revolution (LSR) and supported by well-known Austrian Social Forum activists like Leo Gabriel and Hermann Dworczak.

Most participants were Arabic or Turkish migrants and many youth who were all – as every sincere person is – enraged about the criminal war of the Israeli state. Slogans like “Freedom for Palestine” or „Israel = Terrorist“ dominated the inner city of Vienna where we where marching on our way to the US embassy.

In contrast to the “usual” left demonstrations the mood was not calm and routinist, but lively and militant. Hundreds took up our slogans. The 600 leaflets which the LSR and the youth organisation REVOLUTION were distributed in 15 minutes because of the enormous interest of people. We said in our leaflet that there should be no neutrality in this war but open support for the Palestinian resistance. We do not agree with the Islamist ideology of Hamas but today they have a leading position within a justified struggle against occupation so we are on their side in this war against Israel. We also argue for the right of all Palestinians to return, for the abolition of the Israeli apartheid state and a common Arab-Jewish socialist state in Palestine. We also called for an international boycott movement against the Israeli state and its economy to support the Palestinian struggle.

At the end of the demonstration several speakers took the platform amongst them a representative of the LSR.

On our homepage [INTwww.sozialistische-revolution.org]http://www.sozialistische-revolution.org[/INT] you can find the LSR’s leaflet, reports, photos and video respectively they will be put online during the day.

On Friday, 2.1. we will demonstrate again.

Finally a note on the Austrian left. This is the only negative aspect of the demo, i.e. because most of them were not present at all at the demonstration. This also includes forces who attended past Social Forums like ATTAC or the Communist Party. The later is represented in the International Council of the World Social Forum by Walter Baier who was the General Secretary of the CP from 1994 till 2006 and is now heading the think-tank of the European Left Party “transform” of which the Rosa-Luxemburg foundation is the German sister organisation. This absence is of course not accidental but results from the pro-Zionist positions of these forces. Walter Baier himself goes even so far that he supports the right-wing Zionist campaign “Stop the Bomb” which calls the West to pressures Iran and whose organizers call for a Westerns war on Iran. Baier even went so far to publish an article in the conservative daily “Die Presse” (the Austrian equivalent of the French Le Figaro or the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) in which he accuses left wing, antiimperialist activists – amongst them also myself – as antisemitic! (you can read the article http://volksstimmen.at/news/article.php?story=20060830141110473)

It is sad that WITHIN (!) the social forum movement there are forces who are totally silent on the Israeli war against the Palestinian people and who slander anti-imperialist forces who defend them . It is time for them to stop and to reconsider their position.

In solidarity,

Michael Pröbsting

(LSR, Austrian section of the League for the 5th International)

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