Zionist hands off Lebanon! Down with the criminal imperialist invasion! All our solidarity with the armed resistance of the Lebanese people!
At around 2 a.m. on Tuesday 1 October, the Israeli army began its criminal invasion of Lebanon.
A military offensive that has already claimed the lives of more than 1,000 civilians, the displacement of a million people, and the destruction of the southern neighbourhoods of Beirut. And all this is made possible by the active support of US and European imperialism. The militant and internationalist left must say loud and clear: Zionist hands off Lebanon! Down with imperialist intervention!
Things have become clear. This new aggression, which continues the genocide perpetrated in Gaza and the West Bank, aims to design a new correlation of forces in the Middle East at any cost. To create Greater Israel, as advocated by the Nazi supremacists ruling in Tel Aviv, and to spearhead US and EU interests in their struggle for world hegemony against China and Russia. That is the goal of Zionism and its international sponsors, and if the price is the blood of tens of thousands of innocent women, men and children, so be it.
Like the Nazis...
The sequence is brutal. After sowing panic in numerous Lebanese cities with terrorist attacks organised by its secret services, after several days of devastating bombings that have turned the lives of millions of defenceless people into a nightmare, the Netanyahu regime's criminal machinery of destruction has struck again because it feels unpunished.
In our last statement we analysed the aims of the Netanyahu regime, comparing it to the Nazis in the 1930s and explaining the threat it poses to the world. If anyone thought we were exaggerating, here is the answer. The messianic, supremacist, messianic clique in power in Tel Aviv has a criminal plan that looks like a copy of Hitler's own plan in the 1930s against the Jewish people and other nationalities.
This new aggression, a continuation of the genocide perpetrated in Gaza and the West Bank, is intended to create Greater Israel, and to serve the interests of the US and the EU in their struggle for world hegemony against China and Russia, regardless of the lives of tens of thousands of civilians.
The aim of the Nazis then was to expand German imperialism into Eastern Europe by crushing the working class and its organisations, democratic rights and wiping entire nations off the map. The aim of these neo-Nazis who have replaced the swastika with the Star of David is similar: to expand the borders of the Zionist state in order to create Greater Israel by blood and fire; which means expelling and exterminating the Palestinian people and laying the entire Middle East at their feet.
This alone explains why the powerful Zionist secret services, which have shown their capacity for infiltration and destructive power in recent days by assassinating Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and militants with a precision rarely seen before, let Hamas's plan of 7 October be carried out when they knew it inside out. This is what is behind the Zionist genocide in Gaza, the bloody offensive in the West Bank in recent months and now this new carnage in Lebanon. They are determined to wipe out the lives of tens of thousands more. It is madness, but it follows a logic. The relentless logic of fascism.
US and European complicity fuels Zionist destruction
The cynical calls by Biden and Kamala Harris for ‘controlled intervention’, ‘limiting’ civilian casualties’, declaring a “humanitarian truce”, etc., as they did when the invasion of Gaza began, can only produce disgust, outrage and anger. Without their weapons, money and diplomatic cover, the Nazi government of Israel could not continue to deploy its destructive power in Gaza, nor would it have even thought of invading Lebanon.
At the same time as the Zionist army began its invasion, the US government announced that it was increasing its military contingent in the Middle East by 3,000 troops to 43,000. The statements of various spokesmen of the Biden Administration, and in general of US imperialism, make the reason for this deployment very clear: ‘The protection of US forces already deployed in the region’ and ‘if necessary, the defence of Israel’, explained Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.
Earlier, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin threatened ‘Iran, its partners or the militias it supports’(1). (1) This message is not only directed at the Iranian regime, Hezbollah, Hamas or the Yemeni Houthis. It is also addressed to all Arab governments which, in the face of the real holocaust that the Palestinian people are living through at the hands of the Zionist regime, have so far looked the other way, limiting themselves to statements of condemnation and shedding crocodile tears.
Beijing's pressure on the Iranian government and other Arab governments with which it has signed trade agreements and which have increased their dependence on Chinese investment has been decisive in preventing an escalation of war in the face of continued Israeli provocations.
Behind China's policy of condemning the Israeli offensive while demanding restraint from its Arab partners lies the growing weight of its investments in the region, including in Israel itself, of which it is already the second largest trading partner, as well as its interest in appearing as a responsible, strong power that guarantees stability in the face of American decadence and lack of control.
China condemns the Israeli offensive while calling for restraint from its Arab partners over their investments in the region. China is Israel's second largest trading partner. But the invasion of Lebanon and Zionist and US threats to Iran could blow everything out of the water.
Iran responds
But the invasion of Lebanon and the Zionist and US threats to Iran have the potential to blow everything out of the water. The level of provocation has crossed all red lines. And Iran's response has been swift: Tehran has launched more than 200 ballistic missiles according to the latest reports, although this could rise to 400.
It is the largest attack on Israeli soil and its material consequences are not yet known. But the politics are clear. Iran, and behind its position China, are sending a serious warning to Tel Aviv and Washington that they will not accept Zionist plans without resistance. The aggression against Lebanon and the prospect of slaughter against its population, and tens of thousands of Hezbollah supporters, is too much.
The Mullahs' regime cannot tolerate such a thing, given its precarious situation inside the country after the popular uprisings of recent years and the bloody repression it unleashed, and because it would be a crippling blow to its prestige.
It would be foolhardy to raise the prospect of a full prospect at this point in time. But Israel's strategy can backfire. Not only by provoking a military response from Iran that they thought would not happen, but also by creating the elements for revolutionary movements in the Middle East and throughout the Arab world.
Obviously this militarist and criminal agenda encourages the internationalist struggle against Zionist genocide and its barbarism. In the US and Europe it will strike at the conscience of millions of young people and workers, and in the run-up to the November elections it is terrible news for the Democrats.
We must not forget the lessons of history. Biden and his colleagues in the Democratic Party, like their predecessors, have shown that behind their mask of liberal progressives lies a policy of militarism, coups and genocide.
The Western imperialists are responsible for this war, as they are for the war in Ukraine, adding to their long history of atrocities against the oppressed peoples of the world.
Increase solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese people!
The double-speak hypocritically lamenting the bombings and attacks of Netanyahu, the biggest war criminal of the last decades, and at the same time continuing to supply the weapons, capital and military cover to massacre every village that crosses his path, proves the complicity and cowardice of the reformist parliamentary and governmental left.
Iran responds. Aggression against Lebanon and the prospect of carnage against its population, and tens of thousands of Hezbollah supporters, is something the Mullahs' regime cannot tolerate. Image of Iranian missiles hitting Tel Aviv.
Both the US Democratic Party left, led by Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, and international social democracy, including the government of Pedro Sánchez and his allies, do not hesitate to denounce Putin's warmongering and ‘war crimes’, but enthusiastically support sending arms to the ultra-right-wing US puppet and friend of the Nazi Azov Battalion, Zelenski, and the stratospheric increase in military budgets. The difference is starkly evident in the face of Israel's holocaust against the Palestinian people and now its invasion of Lebanon: they make statements in mournful tones but still refuse to break diplomatic and trade relations with the Zionist regime.
We cannot trust the institutions and parties of capitalism. All their statements and resolutions are a pantomime to embolden Netanyahu. The only way to stop the massacre of the Palestinian people and the invasion of Lebanon is to continue to build an increasingly massive and militant internationalist solidarity movement.
As revolutionary communists, we are against imperialist war and Zionist aggression head-on. But we are neither pacifists nor neutral. We stand with the oppressed masses of Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank and their legitimate right to armed resistance against their aggressors and oppressors.
The task is clear. The streets of the world, of the USA, Europe and the Arab world must be filled again. We must promote all possible actions, demonstrations, boycotts, student strikes and workers' strikes in all countries. And here, in Spain, fill the demonstrations called for 5 and 6 October.
The Palestinian and Lebanese cause is united with socialist revolution. Only by overthrowing the Zionist state, its imperialist allies, and the bourgeois Arab regimes and building a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, can we sweep away this barbarism.
The cause of Palestine and the Lebanese people is inextricably linked to the cause of socialist revolution. Only by overthrowing the Zionist state, and its imperialist allies, only by ending the tyranny of the bourgeois Arab regimes and building a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, can we sweep away this barbarism.
