Flo Rojo
The death of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is the latest highpoint of Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah and the entire people of Lebanon. Over recent days and weeks, warplanes have been blasting Lebanon’s capital Beirut and its southern region, forcing an estimated 500,000 to flee northwards.
Israeli Defence Force units are massing on their state’s northern border ready, commanders say, for a full-scale invasion of the country in order to create a buffer zone. Hezbollah has a huge arsenal, including ballistic missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv, but has largely restricted itself to less powerful rockets. Despite calls for a ceasefire by Israel’s closest allies, Netanyahu brusquely tweeted his rejection saying the IDF would continue “with full force”. And, as the assassination of Nasrallah shows, it has.
The latest phase of the crisis began on 17 and 18 September when explosives concealed in pagers and walkie-talkies killed 37, including two children, and injured hundreds across Lebanon. Pagers are part of everyday life not just in the military but also the medical sector. These lethal devices were most likely prepared by Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, before their purchase. That brazen act of terror marked a major expansion of Israel’s war against Gaza and the West Bank into Lebanon and what could become a regional conflagration.
Why does the entire Israeli establishment support the attempt to destroy Hezbollah? Quite simply because it is the strongest military force in the surrounding area and has successfully resisted attacks from Israel since 1983 when it de facto drove the US forces out of Lebanon and has done the same during several Israeli incursions. It stands alongside the Palestinian resistance as the main obstacle to the Zionist project of the complete ethnic cleansing of former Mandate Palestine, and military domination of the entire central region of the Middle East. This would mean keeping the four major states of the region (Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq) in a state of fearful subjugation, while taking a major cut of the Western imperialist exploitation of the region by acting as its gendarme.
UN
A proposal from France and the USA for a 21-day ceasefire was contemptuously rejected by Netanyahu when he addressed the UN General Assembly, knowing that within minutes bombs would completely destroy the entire residential block in Beirut where Nasrullah had his headquarters. He knew he could act with impunity because the Biden administration has not only always stressed its unconditional support for Israel but is currently paralysed by the election circus with Trump.
Of course, Biden and Harris do not want a regional war, just before the elections, but they do not dare take any actions to prevent one by, for example, publicly halting weapon deliveries and blocking intelligence support.
Netanyahu, however, and both his fascist ministers like Ben Gvir and Smotrich and his critics, like defence minister, Yoav Gallant and some IDF commanders who have been critical of him over Gaza, fully back the switch to provoking a full scale war with Hezbollah and maybe its Iranian backers, too.
Escalation of the situation
There has been mutual shelling between Hezbollah and Israel since October 2023, but on a limited scale. In the summer, when Israel calculated that Hezbollah feared a full-scale war more than the Zionist state did, they began assassinating Hamas and then Hezbollah leaders. This at first limited escalation did not lead to any qualitative change in the situation. But those who lulled themselves into a sense of security would soon be proved wrong.
The Netanyahu government’s strategy does not stop at assassinations or bombs. The genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza proves this beyond doubt. With over 41,000 dead, almost 2 million displaced and the destruction of 70% of housing, hospitals and schools, Israel is demonstrating the ability and will to expand, expel and maintain control over its occupation. The recent attacks on Lebanon have already forced half a million to flee to the north.
The claim by Israel, backed by its friends Biden, Scholz and Starmer, that it is just protecting its Jewish citizens’ lives, is sheer deceit, and millions worldwide can see through it. Nowhere is that more true than in the surrounding states, but they do not have the power to stop it unless they overthrow their rulers. Last November, Likud made clear that its aim is to further consolidate Israel’s position in the Middle East and to expel the Palestinian population from Gaza and the West Bank. Cabinet member Avi Dichter blurted out the truth; “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba”.
Now, as it becomes clear that, for all the genocidal killing and destruction of the infrastructure, the IDF has not eliminated Hamas, which still denies it absolute control of Gaza, it has turned to “destroying” Hezbollah. Here, although it can add huge numbers to its victims, this will not increase but rather undermine the security of ordinary Israeli citizens whilst Israel’s reputation sinks further into the abyss.
Even though the US and the EU powers would prefer a pacification of the situation in Gaza and the Middle East at the present time, they stand firmly with Israel because the country is a central outpost of the imperialist order, a bridgehead of Western imperialism in the Middle East.
What do we need now?
Despite the support still given by Democrats Biden and Harris and in Europe by Labour’s Starmer and the SPD’s Scholz, large numbers have demonstrated in support of Gaza and will take to the streets over the war in Lebanon.
Revolutionary socialists have the duty to defend the right of Hezbollah and all resistance forces in Lebanon to resist the Zionist attack. Hezbollah has said it will not agree to a ceasefire until Israel declares one in Gaza. Our support does not for one minute require political endorsement of their programme and goals (or any other bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces in Lebanon). We fight their political Islamist, counterrevolutionary ideology and policies, as they have shown themselves, especially in Syria.
But Israel’s attack on them is part of a gigantic collective punishment for the resistance to the genocide in Gaza and the oppression of Palestinians. To rebel against this is not only right, but necessary.
In order to stand in the way of an escalation by the Zionist war machine, the solidarity movement must expose the propaganda lies of the rulers worldwide. In this way, it can lay political foundations for growing beyond symbolic protest and forge the practical weapons to counter the aggression against Lebanon and end the genocide. This requires campaigns in the imperialist states that back Israel, in schools, universities, trades unions and workplaces. In addition to putting pressure on the universities and research centres to break with the institutions of the occupation, this means blocking arms deliveries to Israel and bringing the complicity in genocide and support for the apartheid state to an end through strikes and protests. So we can and must weaken Israel here, too!
In the Arab states, the masses must rebel against the hypocrisy of their rulers and rekindle the flame of the Arab Spring. They must fight for an immediate and effective cessation of all political, economic and military cooperation with the Zionist state and for unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian people.
As a lesson from the defeats of the struggles of the last decade, it is crucial that the working class comes to the head of the movement, by building action committees in the work places and trades unions. But, to give them a political direction, a new leadership is needed. Only by combining resistance with mass working class action, directed towards a strategy of permanent revolution, will it be able to prevent an escalation of a war and finally put an end to the racist Israeli state. It must be replaced by one in which there are equal rights for Jewish Israelis and Palestinians and common ownership of the farms, factories and offices – a single, secular and socialist state of Palestine from the river to the sea. This must include the right of the expelled Palestinians to return to their homeland. This will only be realised by revolution across the whole region, including in Lebanon, and by building a federation of socialist states in the Middle East!
- Hands off Lebanon!