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From DISCOVERTHENETWORK.Org:
The Commie Loons speak out on the Lebanon War...

UFPJ-Anti-war coalition consisting of more than 1,300 local and national groups Co-chaired by pro-Castro socialist Leslie Cagan

United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) has accused Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of "creating a humanitarian and political catastrophe in Lebanon and Gaza" by conducting military strikes that "have killed 210 Lebanese, almost all of them civilians; destroyed much of Lebanon's infrastructure; put Israeli citizens at much greater risk; … and made a full-scale regional war a possibility."

In UFPJ's analysis, Hezbollah's recent seizure of two Israeli soldiers and its killing of eight others were mere "border skirmish[es]" to which "Israel could have responded by negotiating a prisoner swap with the Palestinians and Lebanese." "Instead," says UFPJ, "it chose to attack Lebanon's civilian infrastructure, along with Gaza's, and it has killed more than 196 Lebanese civilians. These aren't defensive acts; they are acts of aggression."

UFPJ has also denounced Israel's military actions in the Gaza Strip, where "[t]hree weeks of Israeli air strikes and attacks have killed more than 60 Palestinians, stripped most of Gaza's 1.4 million residents of access to electricity and water, and plunged them into further deplorable living conditions."

UFPJ makes no mention of the approximately 1,000 rockets that have been fired from Gaza into Israel since the September 2005 Israeli withdrawal from that region. Moreover, UFPJ complains that "George Bush is giving a green light to Israel's use of force, which is being conducted in part with U.S.-supplied weapons. The Bush administration's trampling of international law and national sovereignty in its war on Iraq has also emboldened Israel to disregard international condemnation of its behavior."

United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is an anti-war coalition consisting of more than 1,300 local and national groups joined together "to protest the immoral and disastrous Iraq War and oppose our [American] government's policy of permanent warfare and empire-building."

The coalition's Unity Statement denounces "the 'pre-emptive' wars of aggression waged by the Bush administration" in its "drive to expand U.S. control over other nations and strip us of our rights at home under the cover of fighting terrorism and spreading democracy."

In an effort to diminish the potential calamities that might result from what UFPJ characterizes as America's aggressive pursuit of world domination, the coalition has launched a Nuclear Disarmament Campaign. "The world," it says, "is destined to find itself in a state of perpetual war so long as the United States maintains its bloated nuclear arsenal. Nuclear disarmament must become a core issue on the global peace movement's agenda."

UFPJ was officially created on October 25, 2002 in the Washington, DC offices of People For the American Way. Its initial membership consisted of approximately 70 organizations. Prior to UFPJ's founding, the anti-war movement had earned a reputation as a hodgepodge of extremely radical elements. All the large-scale peace demonstrations to that point had been held under the auspices of International ANSWER, an organization aligned with the Workers World Party; Global Exchange, headed by the longtime communist Medea Benjamin; and Not In Our Name, a project organized by Ramsey Clark and fellow leaders of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

Because such stewardship had created a public perception of radicalism that made many would-be sympathizers uneasy, UFPJ was created for the purpose of putting a milder face on the anti-war movement. The distinction between UFPJ and the aforementioned organizations, however, was merely symbolic, not substantive. From its inception, UFPJ shared with those groups a passionate hatred for the United States and for capitalism.

The Co-Chair and principal leader of UFPJ is Leslie Cagan, an original founder of the Committees of Correspondence, a strong supporter of Fidel Castro since the 1960s, and a committed socialist who proudly aligns her politics with those of Communist Cuba.

The breadth of UFPJ's agendas extends well beyond anti-war activism. Passionately anti-American, this group condemns virtually every aspect of U.S. foreign policy and domestic life. It impugns America's "daily assaults and attacks on poor and working people, on women, people of color, lesbians/gays and other sexual minorities, the disabled, and so many others." It asserts that "the government treats all immigrants as potential terrorist threats until proven innocent, in violation of the Constitution," thereby "expanding the scope and depth of racial injustice within the U.S."

UFPJ was a Co-Sponsoring Organization of the April 25, 2004 "March for Women's Lives" held in Washington, D.C., a rally that advocated unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.

In 2004, UFPJ was a signatory to a letter urging members of the U.S. Senate to vote against American support for Israel's construction of an anti-terrorist security fence in the West Bank, a barrier that the letter described as an illegal "apartheid wall" that violated the civil and human rights of Palestinians.

UFPJ is also a sponsoring organization of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride Coalition, which seeks to secure ever-expanding civil rights and civil liberties protections for undocumented workers, amnesty for illegal immigrants, and policy reforms that diminish or eliminate all restrictions on immigration to the United States.

The UFPJ steering committee includes nearly four-dozen representatives of such organizations as Global Exchange, Peace Action, Veterans For Peace, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Tikkun Magazine and Community, the Communist Party, Code Pink, Not In Our Name, the American Friends Service Committee, the Institute for Policy Studies, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and Military Families Speak Out. Among the individuals serving on the steering committee are Van Gosse, Kevin Martin, Rania Masri.

UFPJ has received financial support from the Colombe Foundation, the Samuel Rubin Foundation, the Shefa Fund, the Tides Foundation, and the Town Creek Foundation.