20th National Ceasefire Now protest, Central London, 5th October 2024.
It is hard to credit that our government, Joe Biden, and assorted media spokespeople keep tell us that Israel is ‘defending itself’. The Israeli government has in the past week bombed Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. It is threatening to launch airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear installations and oilfields. This is surely attack and not defence. And it is attack by a heavily armed state, with some of the world’s most sophisticated weaponry, against non-state actors, and organisations formed in response to previous Israeli aggressions.
For that is the reality of Hamas and Hezbollah. They are much more than military forces, playing roles in for example health and education, and in Lebanon Hezbollah part of the government. Yet these realities are all too often ignored, on the grounds that they are ‘designated terror organisations’ in Britain. Also ignored is the history of the crisis, as though everything started on October 7th last year and that Israel is the injured party.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The horror we are now seeing played out in the Middle East has deep roots. It is part of a historic oppression of the region dominated by western imperialism for the last 100 years. That has involved the carving up of countries between the imperial powers of France, Britain and later the US, the backing of profoundly undemocratic rulers prepared to do deals with imperialism at the expense of their own populations.
The creation of the state of Israel was at huge cost to the Palestinians, driven from their homes during the Nakba of 1948. That’s not how those who support Israel want to see it. But peace in the Middle East is only possible with justice to the Palestinians – which means one democratic secular state where all can live equally.
The refusal of the imperialist powers and their apologists to acknowledge this background leads to a very distorted set of double standards about who is the aggressor.
So we are told that since October 8th Hezbollah has been firing rockets at Israel. We are not told that far more rockets and airstrikes have been launched from Israel into Lebanon over the past year than the other way round, as these graphics from Bloomberg show. Keir Starmer was quick to condemn Iran’s rocket attacks on Israel last week, but joined in the Israeli government lie that they were aimed at civilians whereas they were aimed at military targets.
Condemnation was rapid for Iran, but none has been forthcoming over a year when Israel has killed at least 42,000 people in Gaza, many of them women and children, and has rightly been accused of genocide.
Now it is doing the same to Lebanon. Already over 1 million people are displaced, over 2,000 killed, amid air bombardment from the north in Tripoli to the south, and ground invasion where they have tried to move Irish UN peacekeepers out of their positions no doubt the facilitate further Israeli attacks. Beirut has suffered its worst attacks of the current war this weekend.
The threat of escalating war with Iran and throughout the region is only worsening by the day. Yet talk of ceasefires both in Gaza and Lebanon are empty.
The reason Joe Biden has done everything to support Israel, refusing to halt the supply of arms and fully supporting its invasion of Lebanon, is because this is still in the interests of US imperialism. This year has seen at most mild criticism from Biden over the Gaza genocide, echoed by both Tory and Labour governments here and the EU, which has only emboldened Netanyahu. Why feel constrained in attacking Lebanon when you have been able to organise a genocide and destruction of Gaza, facilitated by western-supplied arms and funding?
Whatever the reservations of the western powers – and France’s Emmanuel Macron has called for an arms embargo, no doubt partly because of the onslaught on Lebanon – Netanyahu still has their overwhelming support, because Israel represents their interests in the Middle East. It is this which is central. The Zionist lobby, often cited as the key to Israeli support and certainly powerful, is the symptom not the foundation of the relationship.
It was heartening to see such solidarity for Palestine worldwide at the weekend. Our own demo in London was the 20th national protest and a huge 300,000 strong – the largest for some time. That reflects the year anniversary of the assault on Gaza, but also the threat of escalating war in the Middle East. There were also big protests in France, Italy, Australia, Ireland, and many other places. These mass demonstrations are the engine of the solidarity movement, demonstrating the depth and breadth of support for the Palestinians and against war.
The protest movement wants not just a ceasefire now but an arms embargo. That should easily be deliverable by the US and west European governments. But it isn’t because of Israel’s relationship to western imperialism in maintaining its influence and power in the Middle East, and the very close connection between government, arms companies and the region. The role of Israel as imperialism’s watchdog in the Middle East is key to understanding the situation. Fighting imperialism is therefore central to achieving justice for the Palestinians.