EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY OCTOBER 12, 2023

Zepp-LaRouche: ‘Stop the Slaughter in Southwest Asia; Survival Depends on Having the Courage to Change Axioms!’

Oct. 11, 2023, (EIRNS)—Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche held her weekly “Dialogue” webcast on Oct. 11, in which she discussed the rapidly worsening strategic crisis and war danger, and what to do about it. With President Biden giving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a de facto green light for extending the brutal siege and slaughter underway in Gaza (Biden said, “If the United States experienced what Israel is experiencing, our response would be swift, decisive, and overwhelming”); with the U.S. sending in a carrier strike group, the USS Gerald R. Ford, to the Eastern Mediterranean to address “any and all escalation scenarios” that might arise; and with the governments of China, Russia, Egypt, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and many others all urging that a ceasefire and immediate negotiations begin for a two-state solution to the Palestine problem, as provided for in numerous UN resolutions; Zepp-LaRouche addressed the strategic issues at stake.

The following are excerpts from her opening comments:

“The developments in Southwest Asia since last Saturday clearly have added one full dimension to this (war) danger. What is unfolding in the so-called Middle East is a complete tragedy, and it is the developments which started 75 years ago, and ever since you have one step after the other, on top of each other; injustices have been committed....

“There are many questions which are completely unanswered. There are those who say it is impossible that Israel, with its absolutely impeccable intelligence service, should not have noticed the preparation by the Hamas—I cannot judge that. There are so many factors which I think need to be evaluated very carefully. But it is very clearly the case that you have now an eruption of a very complicated, very complex situation, which does have the potential, alone, even without the Ukraine situation, to lead to World War III....

“If it would come to an escalation that would involve all the different groupings, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Yemen, and eventually Iran, Israel would get involved in a war in which the unthinkable could happen. That would be the path to World War III, there is no question about it.

“The UN Commissioner for Human Rights has said that the idea of completely making a blockade, cutting off the population in the Gaza Strip, from electricity, water, food and other life-urgent necessities, is a clear violation of international law. And it is collective punishment, which is illegal, completely, because it punishes civilians. Now, naturally, once you get into a long, long situation of injustice, cruelties happen on all sides, and the danger now is that a very bloody conflict will play out with the potential of going beyond the region, leading to world war, because if it involves Iran, I think we are off the charts. So, I can only say, it’s a complete tragedy. It must be stopped right away....

“I can only say, that if you look at the strategic situation as a totality, and that includes what’s going on inside the United States, what’s going on with Ukraine, the proxy war between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine, now the new situation in Southwest Asia, the tensions in other places, like for example, the pending crisis between the United States and Global NATO, and China over Taiwan, we are sitting on such a powder keg, internationally, that I think the only reasonable approach must be that all forces that are for peace agree that we need a completely new paradigm of international relations. That within this old order, which is terrible and many things have gone wrong for decades, there is no solution.

“That is why my call of, now, about a year ago to have a new international security and development architecture, which takes into account the interest of every single country on the planet—and that really means every single country, and not just some—and it means that there can only be peace through development. Only if you change this present system, which increases the gap between rich and poor, and replace it with a new credit system which allows for the development of every single state to overcome the terrible conditions in which many peoples of the world are living in, only then do you have a chance to have peace.

“Now, I think there must be a discussion about a new security and development architecture. I think a reference point can be the Peace of Westphalia, which, indeed, developed this principle that a peace must always take into account the interest of the other....

“And I think that there is some hope ... for example, reflected in the new White Paper which China just published on the 10-year anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative. And I’m sure this will be more prominently discussed at the Belt and Road Forum which will start next week. It will obviously discuss the tremendous potential which lies in the idea of a community of a shared future of all of mankind, based on development. So there is a framework for resolving all of this. It would require, however, that unilateralism stops, that bloc building stops, and that we accept the idea that the so-called West must cooperate with the countries of the Global South and completely change the axioms of their thinking.”