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 30, 2024
On Monday, September 23, in one day of brutal carpet bombing, Israel’s air force struck more than 1,600 targets in southern Lebanon. This is about 300 more than the number of targets Israel had hit during the first three days of its bombing of Gaza a year ago, which experts had described as “unusually intense” at the time.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported that 558 people, overwhelmingly civilians, were killed in the Israeli air raids on Sept. 23. This, too, is an astoundingly high number for such bombing campaigns—a number that was not reached until the third week of Israel’s bombing of Gaza in October 2023. And even this enormous civilian death toll in one single day is certainly an undercount, given the difficulty of recovering bodies from under concrete rubble.
Even if not at the same brutal intensity as on September 23, Israel’s bombing raids on Lebanon have continued, raising the death toll to more than 700, with more than 1,800 wounded, according to official figures.
Clearly, Israel is targeting heavily populated areas with its most murderous weaponry. Officially, more than 90,000 people are said to have been displaced, but given the destructive power of Israeli bombings in heavily populated areas, the real figure must be much higher. And while some of the people fleeing the slaughter may have found shelter in schools and hotels, many still remain outdoors, without shelter.
After nearly one year of carnage in Gaza, turning more than one million people into homeless refugees, Israel is now doing the same to the population of southern Lebanon, with even greater barbarism. It’s an open declaration from Israel’s leaders, above all Prime Minister Netanyahu: “We’ll hit anyone, any time, more brutally than ever, and no one can stop us.”
One power that could stop Netanyahu, the United States, will obviously not do it. To the contrary, the U.S. continues to finance the barbaric wars of Israel, its top enforcer in controlling the strategic, oil-rich Middle East.
If Israel’s leaders are turning more and more of the region into hell, it’s hell made by the imperialist policies of the U.S. ruling class.