After massive air strikes on the Dahiyeh district of Beirut, the Israeli military succeeded in assassinating the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, together with other top commanders of the organisation. It seems that the head of Hezbollah’s southern front, Ali Karaki, was also killed in the attack. Netanyahu ordered the strike personally and he is clearly provoking both Hezbollah, and its main backer Iran, to enter into all-out war with Israel. This danger is now closer than ever.
The US Administration was quick to announce that it had nothing to do with the attack, although the Israelis stated that they had informed them in advance. The fact remains that in the Sept. 27 attack, the missiles used to kill Nasrallah were provided by the United States. They can try and distance themselves, but everyone can see the role of US imperialism here.
In words they talk of ceasefires, but every time Israel carries out one of its bloody attacks it knows it can count on continued US support. Biden and his administration – together with all the western governments that support Israel’s supposed ‘right to defend itself’ – are covered from head to toe in the blood of tens of thousands of Palestinians. Now they are adding the blood of the Lebanese.
The most that the western imperialist powers, with the United States at their head, are prepared to do is talk of peace, suggest temporary ceasefires, while they shed crocodile tears over the death and destruction being unleashed by Netanyahu and his government.
But they will not stop supplying arms and military aid to Israel, which would be the only concrete way of weakening the Zionist war machine. They will continue to back Israel even if this means seeing the whole Middle East engulfed by a regional war. They will continue to defend Israel even if its actions risk disastrous consequences for the people living in the region, and also for the world as a whole.
Israel is often referred to as a ‘terrorist state’ by protestors around the world. The Zionists feel deeply offended by this and accuse Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian people of terrorism. Let us be clear here: it is the Palestinians who are the oppressed – it is they who have suffered mass expulsions from their homeland; it is they who have been forced into refugee camps; it is they who have suffered mass killings on numerous occasions. And the oppressor state is called Israel. It is a state that feels it has the right to bomb and destroy, to kill and maim, to keep the oppressed in their place.
They like to portray themselves as ‘civilised’ and don’t like being referred to as terrorists. But how else can one describe what happened on Sept. 27? The airstrikes hit densely populated areas in the south of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Over 800 people have been killed in the past week – most of them innocent civilians – and at least 250,000 have been forced to flee their homes.
The Bekaa valley has also suffered heavy bombardment, with thousands of people fleeing the area. According to a New York Times article: “Where factories, stores and houses once stood, there are piles of cinder blocks, twisted pieces of metal and shards of glass. Emerald green shrubbery is coated in dull gray dust, and power lines — yanked from their metal posts in the blasts — dangle over the road, swaying with the breeze.”
We highlighted in our previous article how Iran has shown extreme restraint in the face of constant provocations. The western media always portray Iran as the aggressor and Israel as the victim. But the aggressor here is Israel. It is the Israeli government, led by Netanyahu, that wants an all-out regional war. That was made very clear in Netanyahu’s speech to the UN on Friday.
Listening to Netanyahu, no one could have any doubts as to his intentions. He vowed to continue the war on Hezbollah.
“As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice and Israel has every right to remove this threat,” he said. “We will continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met.”
He also directly threatened Iran, and the whole of the Middle East, when he said, “There is no place—there is no place in Iran—that the long arm of Israel cannot reach. And that’s true of the entire Middle East.”
Herzi Halevi, chief-of-staff of the IDF, made it clear today that yesterday’s strike does not mark the end of Israel’s bombing campaign when he said: “This is not the end of our toolbox. The message is simple: anyone who threatens the citizens of Israel — we will know how to reach them.” This is not the language of those who seek peace; it is the language of all-out war.
The fact that the IDF have issued messages to the residents of Dahiyeh in Beirut to evacuate the area and move to other parts of the city is an indication of their plans over the next few days. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesperson for Israel’s military has spoken very clearly: “Are we ready for a wider escalation? Yes,” he said, adding that “our forces are on high alert .”
The Iranian regime does not want a regional war. Hezbollah’s measured responses to Israeli aggression show that they too did not want to increase the level of military confrontation. They wanted to keep the conflict at the level it has been over the past year, of skirmishes and tit-for-tat bombings across the border.
The imperialists – in particular the Europeans – don’t want a regional war as they can see the disastrous consequences for themselves. And yet the situation is tobogganing towards the very thing they all fear.
Revolutionary Communists always identify who the oppressed and the oppressors are, and we stand on the side of the former. The warmongers here are called Netanyahu, Biden, Starmer, Macron and all the other leaders of the West. To stop their warmongering it is not enough to appeal to them. It is like appealing to the devil to stop sinfulness. They do not listen. They must be removed!
