Solidarity with Lebanese and Palestinian people

The criminal Israeli invasion of Gaza and Lebanon has awakened protest all over the globe. Along with demonstrations and meetings have come statements from communist parties and anti-imperialist and working-class organizations expressing solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese people and their organizations.

The excerpts here give an idea of the range of condemnation of Israel and support for the Palestinian and Lebanese people and their resistance movements, as well as analysis of the crisis provoked by the U.S.-Israeli onslaught upon the peoples of the oil-rich regions of western Asia known as the Middle East.

All described the capture of Israeli soldiers as a “pretext” for the invasion and not its cause.

The political bureau of the Communist Party of Lebanon, which participates in the national resistance movement whose strongest military element is the Hezbollah fighters, issued a statement on July 17. Here are some excerpts:

“This aggression is a part of the Zionist-American plan for the region and is furthermore an act of aggression undertaken with international permission and cover, in particular that of the United States of America, which is using the Security Council and the United Nations as tools with which to exert pressure and control. The aggression also bases itself on compliance and collusion by official Arab regimes and takes advantage of the current atmosphere of political division inside Lebanon.

“Despite the steadfastness [of the resistance] there is an international effort involving the United Nations, Europe, and France under U.S. pressure aimed at securing political benefits from the aggression, such as the implementation of UN Resolution 1559, by holding negotiations and bringing in Israeli and international stipulations under the cover of the continued military operations.

“In the event that this effort fails—and we believe that it will fail because of the high ceiling of conditions set by the Americans and Israelis, in particular their requirement that Hezbollah must be broken up and its role completely ended ... we believe that the military operation will be relatively prolonged and could spread outside Lebanon’s borders . ...

“[T]he fundamental task is to confront the aggression with a comprehensive, cohesive patriotic stance, a stance that reinforces national unity.”

Asian parties

The Communist Party of the Philip pines, currently waging a mass and a military struggle against the pro-U.S. Macapagal-Arroyo regime in Manila, said on July 20:

“Israel’s all-out bombing aims to force Lebanon to its knees and compel it to suppress Hezbollah—a patriotic armed politico-religious group that fought the 1978-2000 Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and supports the Palestinian people’s struggle for self-determination.

“In bombarding Lebanon, Israel also aims to threaten and provoke Syria and Iran who are among the supporters of the Hezbollah movement. U.S. and Israeli authorities have accused Syria and Iran of supplying arms to Hezbollah and hinted that some of the rocket attacks in northern Israel were launched by these countries. The objective is to lay out the justification for a possible invasion of Syria and Iran in the same way the U.S. carried out its all-out invasion and occupation of Iraq.”

Manik Mukherjee of the All-India Anti-imperialist Front (AIAIF) wrote: “The AIAIF unequivocally denounces this act of the U.S. imperialists and their cohorts, as well as the Israeli Zionists, which smacks of machination for escalating aggression over the people of the entire Middle East, in the face of ignominious defeat the U.S. imperialism is experiencing on the soil of Iraq.”

Latin America and Europe

The Communist Party of Brazil called for “the Brazilian peoples and the active progressive forces in our country to mobilize in solidarity towards the Arab countries being attacked.”

The Portuguese Communist Party in a July 13 statement said: “Israel feels encou raged to continue and intensify, under the usual excuse, its terrorist policy with the aim of annihilating the Pales tinian cause, annexing territories, imposing its hegemony in the region, in alliance with imperialism.

“The silence and the complicity of the European Union (EU) and of the United Nations regarding these crimes, that nothing can justify, is unacceptable and constitutes a true insult to human dignity.”

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which later announced plans to send a high-level delegation including its secretary general, Aleka Papariga, to Lebanon to show solidarity, wrote on July 14:

“It became evident that U.S. and EU are taking full advantage of the aggressive stand of the Israeli government, targeting people and countries of the Middle East who resist or are not fully in line with their dangerous projects.

“The Communist Party of Greece appeals to the Greek people to use any opportunity to express its rejection of the positions of the Greek government and PASOK [the main opposition party in the Greek parliament—JC] and to vehemently condemn the new attacks of the Israeli army this time against Lebanon.”

Most of these and other communist parties’ solidarity statements can be found in full at solidnet.org.

Other organizations

Workers’ organizations also took strong positions on the new war crisis. Gulzar Ahmed Chaudhary, general secretary of the All Pakistan Trade Union Federation, wrote:

“Now we workers and people have more responsibility to continue our collective resistance and agitation for stopping fascist forces from creating further Afghanistan and Iraq and killing millions of millions innocent people. Palestinian and Lebanese people have right to defend themselves. They have a right to fight for their land and freedom.”

The Anti-Imperialist Camp in a July 24 statement also raised the possibility that while U.S.-Israeli aggression was inflicting punishment on the Lebanese, it could also blow up in the aggressors’ faces:

“Lebanon is democratic because its people could liberate itself from Zionist occupation and imperialist predominance thanks to the popular resistance embodied and led by Hezbollah.

“The fresh Zionist aggression against Lebanon must be understood as an element of the U.S.’s Greater Middle East project. Its essence is to subdue the region —whether ‘rogue states,’ popular movements or military resistance groups—by brute military force. ...

“We already can see in Iraq and Afghanistan that the U.S. first of all lacks the political hegemony to create functioning puppet states according to their model of ‘exporting democracy.’ The more armed aggressions they start the more popular resistance they evoke.” (www.antiimperialista.org)