the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Sep 2, 2024
The following is translated from the August 30 issue, no. 2926, of Lutte Ouvriere (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the Trotskyist group of the same name active in France.
On Sunday, August 25, the Lebanese Hezbollah claimed responsibility for firing hundreds of rockets into Israel, a belated and actually very measured response to the assassination of a senior member of its military wing by an Israeli strike on Beirut on July 30. Israel retaliated by immediately bombing hundreds of alleged Hezbollah military sites in Lebanon.
Since October 8, the State of Israel has not only been waging war against the Palestinian people and Hamas, but also seeking to settle its accounts with Iran, the Yemeni Houthis, and the Lebanese Hezbollah.
While the press cynically talks of “pre-emptive strikes” and “targeted assassinations” to describe Israel’s military actions in this country, the reality is quite different. The people of Lebanon are paying a very real price, with dozens of deaths and destruction adding to the catastrophic misery into which the country is plunged. And so, on August 25, the people of southern Lebanon once again suffered the terror of massive Israeli bombardments.
In response, after boasting of successful firing on southern Tel Aviv, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah declared to the Lebanese population: “Go home!” A way of saying that, for him, vengeance had been taken. And as the State of Israel, for its part, played down the impact of these shootings, Nasrallah felt obliged to add: “Benjamin Netanyahu is lying ... but that’s okay, if it means he can do less crazy things.”
For the past eleven months, Hezbollah’s preoccupation seems to have been to seek a response to the assassination of its leaders, a response capable of satisfying its base with a show of force while avoiding the military escalation it does not want. It was a similar concern that led Iran to launch a series of direct strikes on Israel, but with advance warning and to ensure that they would cause as little damage as possible.
For both Iran and Hezbollah are well aware of the extent to which the Israeli state has the support of the United States, despite some hypocritical statements by their leaders. In July, while expressing “concern about the Israeli bombardment of Beirut” and fearing an escalation of the war, American imperialism dispatched three warships to the region, and the British two.
For his part, while he has silenced the most fanatical ministers in favor of all-out war, Netanyahu is undoubtedly not unhappy with a new pretext for postponing truce negotiations with Hamas indefinitely. He has said repeatedly, threatening Lebanon, Iran, Yemen and Hamas, that Israel has no intention of stopping there. And the arsonist can count on the imperialist powers to continue covering up his destruction, exactions and provocations.