Antony Blinken meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Israel. February, 2024. (Official State Department photo by Chuck Kennedy)
Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to drag the world into a Middle East war which will see Israel squaring up to Iran. That’s the meaning of his series of criminal attacks on Lebanon in recent weeks culminating with the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.
The death of Nasrallah, caused by the horrific bombing of apartment blocks in south Beirut by US-supplied bunker buster bombs, was meticulously planned and directed by Netanyahu. He addressed the United Nations in New York in the most insulting and belligerent terms, then had himself photographed giving the orders for the airstrike while still in the US.
All this was a deliberate ‘fuck you’ to the US, who had put forward a mealy-mouthed ceasefire proposal that very day, to all those who have accused him of war crimes, to all those showing solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, and to the Palestinian people themselves, who in the last year have suffered the brutality of the Israeli armed forces.
Netanyahu has in recent weeks opened up a second genocidal war front against Hezbollah and the people of Lebanon. The exploding pagers which killed and maimed thousands were a war crime and have been followed by a series of airstrikes which had already killed hundreds of people before last Thursday’s attacks.
The US has responded to this series of war crimes by….supporting them. Joe Biden described the assassination of Nasrallah as ‘a measure of justice’. Would he describe the killing of an Israeli minister in the same way? Kamala Harris also took the opportunity to stress her support for Israel ‘defending itself’.
Yet the truth is that the US has been humiliated by Netanyahu – not for the first time. At every stage over the past year he has ignored their supposed ‘red lines’ in terms of targeting civilians, stopping food from getting into Gaza, and a series of other war crimes – and the US government has done nothing. According to the Financial Times, Israel wanted to stage this assassination of Nasrallah soon after October 7th last year, but the US told the government not to. This time, Netanyahu knew there would be no comeback from Biden – and he was right.
It’s probably true that most in the US government don’t want an escalated war in the Middle East. It is also true however that some within the US state have been keen to see Hezbollah defeated and are desperate to weaken Iranian influence in the region. The Israeli assault is unlikely to do either in the longer term, despite any apparent short term ‘victories’. And those who don’t want escalation aren’t prepared to stop one from happening. For while they repeat constantly that there should be restraint and moves towards peace, they continue to supply Israel with an array of arms which have enabled these war crimes.
To the question of how to stop Netanyahu the answer is simple: stop arming Israel. But they have allowed him to use their weapons to commit genocide in Gaza and now in Lebanon. He would not be acting with such impunity now if he hadn’t been allowed to get away with everything that he has done and escaped all sanction for it. Israel truly is a terror state.
Our own government has behaved shamefully, providing weapons, supporting Israel to the hilt. Keir Starmer and David Lammy continue to follow Tory policy. They were quick to denounce Russia for invasion of another country at the UN but say nothing about Britain’s own sorry record of invasion and occupation, nor would they dream of making a similar speech about Israel. Yet they are in a minority in this country, where polls show support for ceasefire and end to arming Israel.
We are now entering a new phase of Middle East war. Hezbollah have clearly been weakened by these attacks but are still a strong and heavily armed force. Iran has been trying to avoid escalating war but this is looking less possible, given the determination of Netanyahu to destroy or drive out the Palestinians, let alone agree to any idea of a Palestinian state.
The attempt to portray this as a struggle between ‘terrorism’ and ‘democracy’ is false. It is not often mentioned in news reports, but Hezbollah has MPs, is part of the Lebanese government, and provides extensive social resources in a crisis ridden country. It is engaged in armed conflict with Israel, but Israel was attacking Lebanon before the organisation even existed. Many Lebanese support Hezbollah because it fights against Israel, whose record of intervention there is considerable.
I have been to the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, and witnessed survivors of the terrible massacres carried out by Christian militias in 1982, facilitated by the occupying Israeli army. That is only one of the atrocities people in Lebanon have lived with.
The truth is that Israel designates anyone who opposes it as terrorists because they stand up against occupation and war crimes. However there is a right to resist occupation under international law and many organisations once deemed terrorist are now part of legitimate governments, as in South Africa. The resistance will not stop until there is justice.
At the Irish nationalist O’Donovan Rossa’s funeral in 1915, Patrick Pearse said of the English government: ‘The fools, the fools! They have left us our Fenian dead, and, while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.’
It is true of the Middle East today.
The legacy of imperialism and partition weighs heavily in the Middle East and at its heart is the national oppression of the Palestinian people. Until there is justice for the Palestinians the fight against that oppression will be central. It also links with the other results of imperialism past and present: the devastation caused by the Iraq war, which had the unintended consequence of strengthening Iran in the region; the partitioning of the region in the interests of western imperialism; the backing of the undemocratic oil rich states by the US and others.
The Israelis want to remake the Middle East to strengthen those oppressive forces against those who want to end national oppression and the exploitation of millions in this region – that’s what their policy of ‘normalisation’ is about.
Which makes fighting against war and solidarity with Palestine all the more important. We are at a dangerous time, and we need to escalate our opposition to their wars.