Netanyahu’s invasion of Gaza continues, as the flames of war engulf Lebanon

Since October last year, invading Israeli troops have inflicted massive and disproportionate casualties on the people of Gaza. Over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank. By late April 2024, Israeli troops had dropped more than 70,000 tonnes of bombs on Gaza, leaving behind an obliterated landscape where more than 50% of structures had been damaged or destroyed. Numerous statements and reports issued by the UN and by member states have accused Israel of grave and systemic violations of international law and crimes against humanity. Not only has Israel’s conduct far exceeded the bounds of military necessity, there is much reason to believe that such conduct is in fact intentional—carried out in accordance with Israel’s“Dahiya strategy”, which seeks to shatter the will to resist of the Palestinian, and now the Lebanese, people through the use of overwhelming and disproportionate military force. Today, Israel is attempting to turn Gaza into an uninhabitable wasteland to which the Palestinians will not be able to return for generations, concocting a “Second Nakba” on a scale that far exceeds the horror and the brutality of the first.

Facing a growing chorus of international concern and condemnation over its conduct in the war in Gaza, Israel has not only failed to restrain itself but has embarked on a series of increasingly dangerous military escalations in the region, despite a joint statement from the United States, France, and other Western allies demanding that Israel cease further escalatory action and adhere to an immediate 21-day ceasefire. The very next day, on 27 September 2024, after declaring at the United Nations that “There is nowhere in Iran or the Middle East that the long arm of Israel cannot reach,” Netanyahu launched an air strike on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Dahiya, Beirut, assassinating Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Netanyahu then followed up on his declaration to “[change] the balance of power in the region for years to come”by ordering a ground invasion and massive bombing of Lebanon on 30 September, threatening the Lebanese people with “a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza”. Though it is clear by now that Netanyahu does not want a truce or ceasefire, it is still unknown what kind of endgame or outcome Netanyahu and his far-right Zionist allies are pursuing now that Israel is fighting on six fronts—in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and ultimately, against Iran. In fact, Netanyahu and his fellow Zionists may not know either.

The United States must immediately suspend military aid to Israel to stop its war crimes

The Zionist regime in Israel is currently waging a war of genocide against the Palestinian people. However, the United States’ longstanding military and diplomatic support for Israel is the main reason why Israel can flagrantly violate international and international humanitarian law with impunity. Since Israel’s creation, the United States has provided a total of US$310 billion in military and economic aid to Israel, and it continues to provide US$3.8 billion in military aid to Israel each year. To prevent the number of arms sales from exceeding the threshold for congressional review, the Biden administration has broken up its arms sales to Israel into a large number of “small” arms sales, bypassing Congress and public scrutiny. Most of these arms sales to Israel are paid for by American taxpayers.

Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to the Biden administration, has said that“There have been deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians in this conflict and that is an absolute tragedy… Those people did not deserve to die. Those people deserve to live lives of peace and safety and dignity.”Biden, on the other hand, has said that “The defence of Israel is still critical, so there’s no red line [where] I’m going to cut off all weapons.”The reality is that the United States will continue to provide Israel with the bombs and military supplies necessary for the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Only with US munitions can the Israeli army carry out its scorched earth policy in Gaza. The West’s continued silence on Israel’s war crimes and the US’s unstinting military and diplomatic support for Israel leave an indelible moral stain on the conscience of humanity.

Zionism—a racist and settler-colonial ideology

The Zionist regime in Israel is trying to smear the global upsurge of popular protest against Israel as ‘anti-Semitism’. We must make it clear that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism. The Zionist regime in Israel claims that Israel is the only Jewish state in the world, thus claiming to be the ultimate representative of Judaism and Jews around the world. But the fact is that there are many progressive Jews around the world who have joined the ranks of the anti-Zionist upsurge against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and who have repeatedly stated that Israel does not speak for them, and that in no way does Israel represent all Jews.

To oppose Zionism means opposing racism and settler-colonialism. The establishment of Israel as an independent state in the Middle East entailed the forcible expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land and the systematic destruction of up to 500 Palestinian villages and towns in what is known as the Nakba; ‘the Catastrophe’. The Nakba is still ongoing; the remaining 150,000 Palestinian Arabs living in Israel today are second-class citizens, whose freedom of movement is restricted, whose land is subject to confiscation and occupation by Israeli settlers, and whose civil and human rights are restricted and routinely violated, all under the aegis of Israeli law. Netanyahu has proclaimed that “Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people—and only it.”

Solidarity with the Palestinian resistance; Free Palestine!

Two years ago, we stood in solidarity with the people of Ukraine in their armed resistance against the invasion of their powerful neighbour, Russia. Based on the same anti-imperialist, anti-war, anti-hegemonic and anti-colonial principles, we also support the resistance of the Palestinian people. However, supporting the resistance of the Palestinian people against Israeli oppression and the Palestinian right to self-determination is not the same as supporting Hamas. We have reservations about Hamas’s Islamism and its stated intention and efforts to ‘Islamise’ the people of Gaza, and we disagree with the systematic suppression of the freedom of speech, demonstration and the press under Hamas rule. We also oppose Hamas’s attack on civilians on 7 October last year. However, our opposition to Hamas does not detract from the legitimacy of the resistance of the Palestinian people. Our solidarity with the resistance of the Palestinian people does not mean siding with any particular existing Palestinian political party or faction, but rather, upholding the right of the Palestinian people to resist their Israeli oppressors and occupiers, up to and including armed resistance.

In reality, Hamas is the direct consequence of Israeli policy. As a form of “divide and rule”, Israel had facilitated and supported the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza as a counterweight and rival to the secular, nationalist and leftist Palestine Liberation Organization. It was the Muslim Brotherhood that advocated armed resistance and founded Hamas after the First Intifada. By crushing the secular Palestinian resistance and by continually sabotaging efforts to achieve a lasting peace and a two-state solution, Israel bears direct responsibility for the rise of Hamas and their grip on Gaza

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” The slogan of the global Palestine solidarity movement has been deliberately distorted by the Zionist regime in Israel through the prism of its own ethno-nationalist religious fundamentalist Zionism, which precludes any form of coexistence or co-prosperity between Jews and Palestinians; that the land of Palestine can only belong to one or the other, but not to both. We believe that a free Palestine, whether under a one-state or a two-state solution, requires the liberation of both Palestinians and Jews from the shackles of Zionism, and the freedom of all peoples in the region to live in a democratic, egalitarian and secular Palestine on the basis of national self-determination and equality. Free Palestine!

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