Holding aloft red flags and chanting anti-imperialist slogans, several hundred Hadash and Communist Party of Israel (CPI) activists demonstrated in Haifa Saturday evening, April 14, against Washington-led missile strikes on Syrian targets. The rally against the attack was held in front of the US Consulate in Haifa.

Hadash and CPI condemned the attack and said that the US has a history of “aggression and bullying in the region, with the excuse of destroying weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be false.”

Participants also shouted against Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, who came out in support of the US airstrikes, carried out in a joint operation with Britain and France before dawn on Saturday in response to the Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons a week earlier.

Joining the demonstrators were the Secretary General of the CPI, Adel Amer and Hadash MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash). In February, Touma-Sliman accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of provoking escalation on Israel’s northern border in order to distract the Israeli public from the mounting corruption probes against him.

Joint List leader MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash) came out against the imperialist attack in Syria on Saturday, sparking an angry response from far right Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan. “The American, British and French leadership and their partners from the Gulf States and foremost Saudi Arabia, put together are weaker than the will of the Syrian people,” Odeh wrote on Facebook. “I am with Syria against the American attack.”

Minister Erdan slammed Odeh, taking to Facebook to send him an open letter calling for him to resign from the Knesset. “The whole Western world is uniting against Assad’s evil regime in order to prevent him from killing children with chemical weapons, but you’re standing with him. What impressive loyalty,” Erdan wrote. The minister said Odeh “sits in the Knesset… supporting the cruel ruler of Syria and the axis of evil that wants to destroy Israel. From this moment, every MK who cooperates with you, every organization that kisses up and invites you to an event must understand that you are collaborating with the enemy, no less,” concluded Erdan, conveniently ignoring the fact that no independent proof of the Syrian regime’s responsibility for the April 7 gas attack has yet been furnished, and that rebel forces within Syria are known to have the means, motive and opportunity to conduct a false flag operation, precisely to provoke American-led retaliation against the Syrian state.