The Israeli State does nothing by accident; its actions are all done by a callous and murderous design. Only by understanding this can we understand the horror visited upon Lebanon in the last 24 hours – a high-tech, highly calculated act of terror that massacred 558 Lebanese people, including 50 children. Tragically, these figures will only rise in the coming days as the Israeli regime vows to “accelerate” its assaults.
Yesterday’s events came a week after Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, planted bombs throughout Lebanon via pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members, which were detonated indiscriminately and without warning – killing 32 and injuring thousands. The aim is to terrorise the Lebanese population into submission through shock and awe attacks and psychological warfare. The bombings have resulted in hundreds of thousands of residents from southern Lebanon being forced to flee their homes in recent days. This is on top of over 100,000 forced to flee since October of last year.
Genocidal rhetoric
In justifying these brutal attacks, we have heard the same chilling, genocidal rhetoric from Israeli Ministers as we heard before the commencement of the genocide in Gaza last year. Minister for Education Yoav Kisch stated in an interview that “There is no difference between Hezbollah and Lebanon. The way things are progressing at the moment, Lebanon will be annihilated.” This echoes comments made by Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant that Lebanon would be sent “back to the stone age”
The horror in Lebanon may yet intensify. It remains to be seen how the Lebanese State and Hezbollah will respond, with some bombings of military targets within Israel already carried out. There is clearly a real threat of an Israeli invasion and a wider regional war in the Middle East. While representatives of US imperialism make hollow calls for restraint, it continues to unconditionally fund, arm and politically back the Israeli regime, its main ally in this region.
Israeli State and Lebanon
The Israeli State has a long and bloody history of wars against and occupations of Lebanon. In June 1982, the Israeli invasion of the country resulted in the deaths of an estimated 15-20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians (an estimated 300,000 Palestinian refugees are living in the Lebanese State, victims of the 1947-1948 Nakba and their descendants). This culminated in the horror of Sabra and Shatila when, in September of that year, an estimated 3,500 Palestinian refugees were slaughtered by the fascistic Christian Fallange militias in collusion with their allies in the Israeli Army.
The Israeli State maintained an 18-year-long occupation of southern Lebanon until it was forced to withdraw in 2000. During this period, thousands were tortured in the Israeli-run Khaim prison, a brutal example of its colonial rule. Another such example was the massacre of 109 Palestinian refugees in Qana in 1996. Six years after its withdrawal, the Israeli State launched a new invasion in July 2006, this time resulting in the deaths of 1,300 Lebanese people.
Hezbollah, the Shia-based militia in Lebanon, is a key ally of the Iranian State and is part of its so-called “Axis of Resistance”. It has long been a thorn in the side of the Israeli State, defeating it in 2000 and 2006 in what were unprecedented victories for Arab armed forces. They undermined Israel’s prestige and its “deterrence capacity”, i.e. the notion that the Palestinian people and its other opponents in the region are to be perennially cowed by its military prowess.
How can the Israeli regime be defeated?
The people of the Lebanese State have every right to resist the aggression of the Israeli regime, including by engaging in armed resistance. A military defeat of the Israeli State would clearly be a positive development and would undermine the genocidal war in Gaza. The best means to achieve this would be the organisation of armed resistance under democratic control based on the unity of the working class and poor of Lebanon of different religious communities and nationalities to resist terror and a potential Israeli invasion.
In 2006, Hezbollah partially played a role in uniting Lebanon’s religious groupings in opposition to the Israeli invasion. However, this was only temporary due to its sectarian politics and the actions that flowed from that. Since then, it has also massively undermined its position through its support for the autocratic Assad regime in the bloody Syrian Civil War – a regime responsible for many atrocities against Syria’s Sunni population.
Hezbollah’s methods of indiscriminately firing rockets into the “Green Line”, the Israeli State’s officially recognised borders, are not only militarily ineffective, they also assist the Israeli ruling class in building support for its attacks on Lebanon. This comes at a time when real cracks are appearing within Israeli society, as shown by the recent general strike to demand a hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza.
End the rule of genocidal capitalism
The question of armed resistance by the masses should be linked to the struggle for a government of the working class and poor in Lebanon that breaks with sectarian rule and capitalism. A democratic socialist Lebanon would see its vast wealth and resources seized from the super-rich and corporate elite. Today, Lebanon’s richest 1% owns 25% of the country’s wealth, and living standards for the majority have been massively undermined after five years of economic crisis.
A revolutionary struggle such as this could reach out to the working class, poor and oppressed across the region, not least the oppressed Palestinian people. It could seek to exploit the growing divisions within Israeli society and point out that its rulers only offer its working class a future of insecurity through its continued oppression of the people of Palestine and Lebanon. Fighting for socialist change means fighting to overthrow the Zionist State and all other rotten capitalist regimes in the Middle East and North Africa and their imperialist backers. In a socialist Middle East, all its people’s national and religious rights could be guaranteed, making the threat of war, insecurity and genocide a thing of the past.
