Stop U.S.-Israeli aggression in Middle East!

Workers World Party condemns the U.S.-backed Israeli aggression against Lebanon. The aims of this military offensive are to annihilate the Lebanese national resistance movement led by Hezbollah and to establish the authority of a pro-imperialist puppet government over all of Lebanon.

As regards these two aims, there is full collaboration and complete unity of purpose between Washington and its Zionist clients in Tel Aviv. There is similar unity and collaboration between the Bush administration and the Israeli regime of Ehud Olmert in the attempt now underway to destroy the democratically elected government of Palestinian national resistance, led by Hamas, through the use of brutal Israeli military violence in Gaza and the West Bank.

This collaboration between the superpower imperialist master in Washington and its military pit bull in Tel Aviv is on display for the whole world to see. The Bush administration is using all its political and diplomatic leverage at the UN, at the G-8 summit and in all political circles to prevent a cease-fire and to ensure that nothing interferes with the expanding offensive of the Israeli Defense Forces as they rain down death and destruction from land, sea, and air on neighborhoods, villages, hospitals, water supplies, power stations, bridges, communications installations, etc., from one end of Lebanon to the other. Hundreds have been killed, thousands wounded and half a million people pushed out of their homes in the first eight days of the attacks--except in those areas where the imperialists and their class allies dwell in the well-to-do neighborhoods of Beirut.

The hue and cry about fighting for the return of captured Israeli soldiers, two in Lebanon and one in Gaza, is the height of hypocrisy. Israel has over 9,000 Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian prisoners--men, women and children. Furthermore, this claim is pure subterfuge to mask these long-planned offensives hatched by the IDF and approved by the White House and the Pentagon.

The attack on Lebanon is an attempt at a military implementation of the U.S.-Israeli stated goal of disarming Hezbollah, as embodied in the U.S.-sponsored UN Resolution 1559. The current brutal attacks on Hamas are a continuation of the offensive which began when Bush declared Yasir Arafat an enemy and gave Ariel Sharon the green light to destroy the Palestinian Authority.

Despite the tens of billions of dollars of U.S.-supplied advanced weaponry to the IDF, including fighter planes, helicopters, missiles, tanks, howitzers, high-tech tracking and communications equipment, the popular forces in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank have refused to submit to the occupiers. The brutality of the Israelis, backed by the U.S., and the steadfastness of Hezbollah, Hamas and other fighters are driving more and more people to the side of the resistance. Washington and Tel Aviv have totally miscalculated the determination of the liberation forces and grow more isolated hour by hour.

In this latest phase of the struggle in the Middle East the Bush administration has not learned the lessons of Iraq. Once again the U.S. rulers have underestimated the power of the masses. The neo-cons told Bush and Cheney that Iraq would be a “cake walk.” Instead they faced a cauldron of national resistance. The Israeli expansionists (who were close to the U.S. neo-cons) told Bush that they would go in and wipe out Hezbollah and transform Lebanon into a pro-imperialist, pro-Israeli stronghold. Instead they have created a widening base of seething hatred for not only the Israeli occupiers but also for their sponsors in Washington.

The propagandists of Washington and Tel Aviv are trying to rally their populations at home by presenting this conflict as a war of “Islamic fundamentalism” against Western civilization and “democracy.”

But Islam--like most developed religions--has varied interpretations and doctrinal emphases and practices. Only chauvinists would lump everyone who practices some form of Islam into one bag.

The Saudi monarchy is Islamic, as are the Kuwaiti and Jordanian monarchies. The Shiite collaborators in the Iraqi puppet government are Islamic. They are all with imperialism.

But Islam also plays a role as the rallying cry for the masses of the Middle East and elsewhere to take up arms against Washington and its agents in the region. To that extent, it is the ideological form whose actual content is the struggle against imperialism. Hamas is Sunni and Hezbollah is Shiite--and these Islamic groups are both fighting imperialism.

The root cause of the immediate crisis is the 58-year occupation of Palestine by the Israeli settler state, the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland and the establishment of Tel Aviv as a cat’s paw of imperialism – a proxy military outpost in the oil-rich region of the Persian Gulf. Surrounded by 200 million oppressed people, Israel serves to protect the profits of the oil companies and the strategic interests of the Pentagon. Time and again the Israeli government has struck a blow at liberation movements or progressive nationalist governments that threatened the interests of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. The attack on Hezbollah, coordinated with the attacks on Hamas, is the latest act in the long drama of U.S.-backed Israeli aggression.

It is part of a larger U.S. government offensive aimed at the reconquest of the Middle East, which began with the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. The aim is to eliminate all anti-imperialist forces in the region that stand in the way of complete domination by Washington and the Pentagon. That is what is behind the offensive in Gaza and in Lebanon. That is why the Bush administration and the Olmert government continually point a threatening finger at Syria and Iran.

So long as U.S. imperialism and the Israeli apartheid regime threaten the people and the independent governments of the region, there can be no peace and stability. There is only one solution to the problem of the Middle East: for the U.S. to get out of the region and for the grip of Zionism on Palestine to be broken.

The movement must mobilize to defend Hezbollah and Hamas and all forces of national resistance against U.S.-Israeli aggression.

End the Israeli occupation of Palestine!
Hands off Syria and Iran!
Bring the troops home from Iraq now!
U.S. out of the Middle East!