Some facts
Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people has been going on for over eight months, during which:
• 37,780 Palestinians have been slaughtered, including 548 in the West Bank – most of them women and children. This does not include the 10,000 still buried in the rubble;
• At least 42 Palestinians have been murdered in Israeli prisons;
• About 1.7 million, or 75% of Gaza’s population are presently displaced;
• About 1.1 million, out of a total population of 2.3 million, are facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity;
• 90,237, including 5,200 in the West Bank, have been wounded;
• Tens of thousands of Palestinians languish in Israeli prisons, where they are routinely tortured, mistreated and subjected to starvation and denied medical treatment. The Sde Teiman military base, where Palestinians captured for no reason are held, has received well-deserved notoriety as a torture centre and a place where the victims of Zionist gangsters and thugs, who pass for the Israeli Defence Force – allegedly the most moral army in the world – are humiliated and beaten as a matter of course. Prisoners characterised as ‘unlawful combatants’ can be held for up to 75 days without judicial permission and 90 days without access to a lawyer, let alone a trial.
Barbaric attacks
On Sunday 26 May, in a barbaric attack, the Israeli air force bombed the tent camp in Tal as Sultan, burning alive 45 people, 23 of them women and children. This savage bombing caused outrage across the globe and Israel, claiming a ‘tragic mistake’, apologised:
“Harrowing images of destruction, displacement and death have emerged from Rafah, including infants torn apart and people burnt alive”, UN experts said.
Indiscriminate Nazi-style dis-proportionate bombing left people trapped inside the burning plastic tents with the resultant horrific casualty toll. All this was done in violation of the laws of war and international law, let alone human decency and collective humanity. Two days later, on 28 May, the Zionist butchers struck the al-Mawassi camp, previously designated as safe by Israel, and to which the Palestinians were asked to move. This attack left dozens killed and many more injured. It has been the tactics of the Zionists throughout the war to designate certain areas as ‘safe’ then to bomb them indiscriminately as soon as the victims of their genocidal war have moved to the allegedly ‘safe’ place in question. Often people have been slaughtered on their way to such ‘safe’ places.
4 hostages for 1000 Palestinians
On 8 June, Israel launched a mammoth assault on Nuseirat in Rafah to rescue four Israeli hostages held by the resistance, in the process killing 274 and injuring 600 Palestinians – an egregious massacre, even by fascist Israeli standards of savagery. It has come to light that, as a part of this operation, the Israelis used the pier built by the US supposedly to facilitate humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza. What is more, the US supplied intelligence for this operation, gathered through drone footage, satellite imagery, communications intercepts and data analysis, using advanced software, some of it powered by artificial intelligence, according to current and former US and Israeli intelligence officials. It was indeed a case of unprecedented intelligence-sharing partnership.
Even according to the New York Times, a fiercely pro-Zionist organ, the Gaza pier, built at a cost of $230 million “has largely failed in its mission” (Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt, ‘Pier for Gaza aid is failing, and could be dismantled early’, 9 June 2024).
It was in service for a mere 10 days since it was attached to the shoreline. For the remaining time it has been out of service ‘for reasons of security or repairs’. But it has served its main purpose, namely, to provide ‘humanitarian’ cover for the Biden administration’s unreserved and unstinting support for Israel’s non-stop brutal bombing of Gaza for the last eight months.
If the US were serious about providing aid to Gaza or, for that matter, stopping the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people, it would take no more than a short telephone call to the Israeli prime minister to tell him in no uncertain terms to stop hindering humanitarian assistance and to stop forthwith the assault on Gaza, failing which the US would withhold all military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel. Such a message would meet with an instant positive response from the Israeli side, for without such US support Israel cannot continue to exist.
Imperialism’s complicity
But this won’t happen as Israel is the chief attack dog of US imperialism in the Middle East – a dagger pointed at the hearts of the Arab people’s democratic and revolutionary movement serving US monopolies. The truth is that US imperialism, and its junior imperialist partners – Britain, Germany, France, etc. – are right behind Israel’s genocide. They are all guilty of the genocide. The peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and increasingly the masses in the US and Europe, have grasped this truth, precisely for this reason, the imperialist narrative no longer carries much weight, based as it is on falsification and downright lies.
Just one example will do: when in their attempt to rescue four hostages, the Israelis attacked Nuseirat refugee camp, killing and wounding the thousand innocent men, women and children, in the press, the political representatives and leading propaganda organs, of imperialism were ecstatic over the rescue of four hostages, with hardly a word of sympathy for the Palestinian victims, let alone any condemnation of this senseless slaughter by the Zionist savages. As someone put it, it was a case of unadulterated display of colonial racism.
Ethnic cleansing
Since 7 October Israel has committed (in 251 days) 3,308 massacres in Gaza, claiming the lives of nearly 50,000 Palestinians – mostly women and children. Starvation, famine, denial of water, electricity fuel and medical supplies have been weaponised in Israel’s medieval siege of Gaza, accompanied by relentless bombing 24/7. Israeli destruction of Gaza’s farming, fishing and banking have added to food insecurity. All this is aimed at the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Not only is Israel hindering the delivery of food to Gaza but it is trying its best to have UNWRA, the chief humanitarian agency for Gaza, designated as a terrorist organisation!
On Wednesday 29 May, Israel seized control of the Gaza side of the narrow buffer zone that runs across the territory’s entire southern border with the tip of Egyptian Sinai, putting its troops in control of the military zone for the first time since 2005, in brazen violation of the treaty with Cairo that saw Israel evacuate the eight-mile buffer zone and hand over control to the Egyptian forces, part of its unilateral withdrawal and its forces from the Gaza Strip.
To increase the economic pain on the Palestinians, Israel has frozen work permits for 80,000 West Bank Palestinian workers, 170,000 of whom were working in Israel prior to the war. It has begun transferring part of the tax revenue it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority to the families of Israeli hostages.
The Israeli army of occupation is a collection of thugs, thieves and murderers
Since October there have been 84 incidents of IDF personnel stealing the personal property of journalists, according to the Palestinian journalists’ syndicate.
His blood lust not yet satisfied after the genocide in Gaza, Israel’s finance minister, Smotrich, has demanded that Palestinian corpses should be put in carts and dragged through the streets as a warning to others.
Israel’s failed war
But for all its genocidal activity, the cruelty inflicted on the people of Gaza, the weaponisation of starvation, Israel is as far from achieving its twin goals of destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages as it was on 8 October last year. Over 120 hostages still remain in Gaza and Israel continues to face stiff Palestinian resistance. High ranking serving and former Israeli military personnel openly admit that Hamas (the Israeli and imperialist nomenclature for the Resistance) cannot be defeated, for it has strong roots in Palestinian society and the ideology of resistance resonate with the Palestinian people, who give it support at the risk of losing their lives.
Isolation
Israel has lost in the court of world public opinion; its very name has become a synonym for Genocide. The Zionists, with their racist supremacist ideology, hand in hand with their countless massacres of Palestinian people, have brought shame to the Jewish people who, through their suffering and their participation in the movement for the liberation of humanity over centuries, played such an important role in history, and who are now sought to be enrolled by the Zionists into the ranks of those perpetrating the current genocide in Gaza. No wonder, then, that progressive Jewish people in the US and Europe, disgusted by Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestine, and by the support given to it by various imperialist powers, are increasingly turning away from Zionism and giving their support to the Palestinian resistance. No longer are they frightened by accusations of anti-semitism so lavishly thrown at them by the Zionists and the imperialist establishment.
The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement is growing with accelerated momentum.
Even the US was forced to take to the Security Council a resolution for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
Repression
Unable to control the narrative, the governments of imperialist countries and the Zionist lobby are increasingly advocating repression. Students at universities across the US and Europe are being persecuted for supporting Palestinian resistance; police violence against peaceful protestors and prosecution of demonstrators on trumped-up charges are the order of the day. In Britain members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) were arrested on two occasions, detained in police cells, their houses searched in the early hours, then released on bail subject to severe restrictions on their freedom of movement. After 6 months, they have just been informed that no further action will be taken against them. LALKAR sends its heartfelt greetings to these comrades and salutes them for their courageous stance against persecution.
As was to be expected, in this episode the Zionist establishment played an active role by assisting the police in spotting our comrades for arrest, going so low as to get in touch with employers of at least one of them in an attempt to prevent him earning his living. But all that ended in a fiasco. If our comrades had been taken to court, the case against them, being as baseless as it was, would have been thrown out.
Economic cost
Israel’s economy has been hit badly by this war. According to Bloomberg, the total cost to Israel of the war until 2025 will be $67.4 billion. In the fourth quarter of 2023, Israeli economic output fell by 21.7% year on year, according to the Bank of Israel. Before the war, Israel’s defence spending was 4.5% of its GDP. This year, however, it will be 9%, resulting in stagnation or reduction in spending on health and education. – Israel’s strengths. In addition, the war has caused a flight of investment and skilled labour, with half a million Israelis having fled the country since October, according to reliable estimates.
Displacements
Since October, not only have tens of thousands been evacuated from their homes in southern Israel, on the border with Gaza, but an even larger number have fled northern Israel consequent upon the daily exchange of fire taking place between the IDF and the Lebanese liberation movement, Hezbollah. About 150,000 civilians in Israel and Lebanon, and probably an equal number in each country, have been displaced. The Israelis who left their homes in the north of the country are now living in hotel in central Israel and won’t return home until it is safe to do so. They are costing a lot to the Israeli exchequer and depriving Israel of their labour power. So Israel is in a bind – whether or not to wage a full-scale war against Hezbollah, knowing that Hezbollah is a very hard nut to crack. In 2006, Israel fought a 34-day war against Hezbollah and lost it, being forced into a humiliating retreat.
War against Hezbollah?
Today, however, Hezbollah is far stronger than it was in 2006. It has tens of thousands of battle-hardened troops, 200,000 rockets, drones and long-range precision-guided missiles that can strike targets deep inside Israel.
The 2006 war killed 1,000 Lebanese and 160 Israelis, and displaced over a million people. In that war, Hezbollah fired about 4,000 rockets towards Israel. Now, however, it could fire that many rockets in just one day; drone strikes could overwhelm Israel. A few days ago, an Israeli strike killed a Hezbollah commander, Taleb Abdullah, prompting Hezbollah to step up its retaliatory strikes on Israel, which wounded several Israeli soldiers and civilians. Since October, 80 Lebanese and 11 Israeli civilians have been killed in the fighting, In addition, 300 Hezbollah fighters and 17 Israeli troops have been killed.
A full-scale war with Hezbollah would be devastating for Israel and could result in its physical destruction. Hezbollah have just released a video giving an aerial view of the important Israeli sites in Hezbollah’s cross-hairs should war break out. It sent Israel into a state of panic; it made arrangements with Cyprus to move some of its air force there, but the arrangement came unstuck when Hezbollah found out and told Cyprus bluntly that it would be wiped out should it host the Israeli air force, forcing Cyprus scuttle the arrangement.
Israel beaten
In fact, Israel has already lost the war. The Resistance today is stronger than it was prior to 7 October. Notwithstanding industrial-scale destruction of human lives and infrastructure, the Resistance continues to put up a spirited response; Israel continues to lose about 15 soldiers a day. There are now 70,000 Israeli soldiers permanently wounded, the cost of looking after whom would be an extra burden on Israeli finances.
The Israeli war cabinet has collapsed, while the fissures in Israeli society continue to widen. Even the Israeli-US relations are much more strained, to say the least. The Israeli prime minister has publicly accused the US of withholding ammunition, something that no previous Israeli leader has ever dared to do – for the simple reason that, without US support, Israel cannot continue to exist. In the international arena, Israel has become a pariah state. The International Court of Justice will soon deliver its verdict in the proceedings brought before it by South Africa, accusing Israel of committing genocide. Even the International Criminal Court, which had become a laughing stock as a tribunal for only prosecuting Africans, has initiated an investigation into war crimes by Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and by his defence minister Yuav Galant, evoking the wrath of Israeli leaders and its chief backer, US imperialism, both of whom have threatened the chief prosecutor of the ICC with dire consequences should he persist with pursuing the Israeli war criminals.
Preparing for wider war
Faced with an almost impossible situation, the Israeli ministry of defence announced on 8 June that top military commanders had approved operational plans for a potential offensive against Lebanon. Unless it is able to come to some agreement with the Palestinian resistance and put an end to Israel’s war, it is likely that Israeli forces would go to war against Hezbollah. If that happens, large swathes of Israel would be destroyed. It would be a war in which Lebanon would suffer serious material and human cost. It would also be a war which could end up by destroying the ethno-racist Zionist state of Israel. The Israeli army is fully aware of the fearful consequences of a war against Hezbollah, but, blinded by the ideology of Zionism, it is hurtling towards self-destruction. In this war, Hezbollah would be supported by the Palestinian, Yemeni and Iraqi resistance, and it would enjoy the sympathy of the overwhelming majority of humanity.
VICTORY TO THE PALESTINIAN AND LEBANESE RESISTANCE!
DEATH TO ZIONISM!
DEATH TO IMPERIALISM!
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