On July 19, a group of independent organisers with Middle Eastern background, organised an emergency call out for Syria on Robson Square, Vancouver. This emergency rally came right after the vicious and murderous attack waged by Israel on Damascus. Since the destabilization of Syria in late 2024, foreign-backed forces have prioritized external agendas over the needs of the Syrian people. Now, under the pretext of “protecting” minorities, Israel is escalating military operations in Syria, including airstrikes on cities like Deraa and Damascus. The time has long since passed to call what has happened in Syria for what it truly is: yet another imperialist intervention. The people of Syria deserve self-determination, not another chapter of outside interference and war! This was a call for mobilization to demand that the empire takes its hands off Syria and West Asia. A solid number of community members came together to demonstrate solidarity and resistance to intervention in Syria and the region. The following is a statement given by myself as a member of the Young Communist League of Canada, and a local student organiser from Iran.
Imperialism thrives through the ignorance of the people. It has a deep-rooted interest in maintaining ignorance of the people. We are here because we are tired of ignorance. We are here because we know that the same way the western promises of democracy and freedom in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan were made of stinking lies, today’s narrative in our media and schools around the Syria situation stinks of ignorance and deceit.
Today, our brothers and sisters in Syria are once again at the frontlines of imperialistic aggression. From one side, mercenary groups, only a short time ago labeled as international terrorists by the west itself, are now decorated in western attire selling the wealth of Syria to their foreign beneficiaries. From another side, the apartheid state of Israel is now bombing residential neighbourhoods in Damascus in the name of defence and human rights.
It was only a short time ago that the American-made bombs of the Israeli occupation forces were raining terror on the population of Iran again in the name of self-defence. And just a bit before that, on the people of Lebanon.
But just when we begin to see a pattern in the trail of death and destruction that U.S. imperialism and its Zionist cronies bring, we turn on the news and see that our honest journalists on CNN, BBC, and CBC are there to slip us back into ignorance. These extremists and war-hungry Middle Easterners, they say, can’t wait to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons and missiles to kill good, hard-working American and Israeli soldiers occupying their lands, their fields, their homes. We have to attack them or they will attack us.
But Syrian soldiers are not currently occupying Israeli territory, whereas Israel is occupying Syrian sovereign territory as we speak. With the media teasing, as if it’s an emergency, that Iran is only two days or two hours or two minutes away from a nuclear weapon, Iran has yet to develop a nuclear weapon and is openly telling the world that it does not seek one, yet it is Israel that without the oversight of international nuclear watchdogs has now for decades been maintaining a major nuclear arsenal. And yet it has the audacity to deny it to this day and point the finger at other nations.
Iraq never bombed the U.S., it never developed weapons of mass destruction. Yet the American terrorist armada, with the veil of lies and propaganda, killed more children in Iraq during the Iraq war than in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima — two bombs also dropped by the U.S., the only state to utilize nuclear weapons against civilian populations in the history of mankind.
Yet, this is not what we see and hear in our classrooms and news broadcasts. While these crimes are happening, they say they are necessary to the survival of civilization. And when the numbers come out and a nation once robust and independent becomes a failed state, it is called a bad policy, a mistake. Friends, the Iraq war was not a mistake; the destruction of Libya, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, and too many others to count were not slips or mistakes. They are deliberate plans of plunder, subversion, and submission of free peoples around the world.
No joke is funnier today than the hypocrisy of western democracy. Right-wing extremists cut health care and social services in the U.S., and our own Mark Carney defunds our already defunded healthcare system to spend more money on the military, all to get Trump’s approval. Many have forgotten, but we remember how Mark Carney won a surprise election on the promise of battling American bullying.
No, western imperialism and democracy are the opposite of each other. It is only when a nation’s democracy is actually working that the iron fist of western militaries has to engage to tear it down, to maintain its power and profits. Only when a people stand up, unite and resist that they are called terrorists. A cabal of profit-driven corporate boards and capitalist hogs, willing to destroy any nation to raise the percentage of their profits this year from last year. And to resist them, a united defence is required.
Our enemy seeks to sow division amongst us. It is only through organisation and unity that we can resist imperial aggression. I urge all of you today who are not already a part of an anti-war or anti-imperialist organisation to join one now. Only united can we stand against imperialist aggression!