EDITORIAL
War and Destruction from Gaza to Lebanon and Beyond

Oct 14, 2024

War in the Middle East is spreading by the day.

This war started in Gaza a year ago with a brutal massacre of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas. The Israeli military responded by carpet bombing and invading Gaza, resulting in the mass slaughter of 42,000 Palestinians and the wholesale starvation of two million Palestinians, more of whom are dying every day.

This war set off other long-simmering conflicts and wars. Israeli pogroms of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank multiplied. In September, the Israeli military invaded neighboring Lebanon, bombing Lebanon’s cities and towns. The Israeli military also bombed Syria, Iran and Yemen. It killed top Iranian military commanders and their allies. So, Iran launched missiles against Israel. Now, the Israeli military is threatening war with Iran.

Throughout these wars, the U.S. government and military has backed the Israeli military to the hilt. It has provided Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and the latest weaponry, as well as the full support of vast U.S. military forces in the region, including 42,000 troops, hundreds of U.S. warplanes and several naval armadas.

Both the U.S. and Israeli officials say they are trying to stop terrorism. And yes, the attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel are terrorist attacks. But the wars carried out by Israel are terrorism on a much vaster scale. The Israeli military drops 2,000-pound bombs on densely packed apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, market places. These attacks are aimed at killing ordinary people indiscriminately. And they are doing it with the latest, most sophisticated instruments of death provided by the mighty U.S. war machine.

The U.S. government claims that its war machine is simply defending Israel’s right to exist. This is a lie. The U.S. is not arming Israel to uphold some great humanitarian principle. No, the U.S. military arms Israel because it uses Israel as its main cop in the Middle East.

The Israeli military is the U.S. military’s partner in enforcing the robbery and plunder of the Middle East and its workers of the wealth that they produce. Certainly, the Israeli military is not doing anything different than what the U.S. military has done in that region in an even bigger and more monstrous way. Just look at the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria: the U.S. military totally destroyed those countries, murdering millions.

These wars are always presented as ethnic and religious wars, Israelis against Arabs, Jews against Muslims. These wars are supposed to be eternal conflicts, going back thousands of years. This is pure fiction. These wars have nothing to do with peoples’ different beliefs, customs or cultures. These wars are about power and money. Which group of thieves will dominate this region? Who will profit from the oil? Who will profit from all the commerce and trade that passes through the Middle East, which is located at the strategic crossroads between three great continents?

This is what is behind the rivalry of all the powers, the big powers from the U.S. and Israel to France, Germany, England, Russia, and China, as well as all the dictatorial regimes in the area that are linked to them. They are all lying thieves and murderers, who try to use their own peoples to grab a bigger piece of the pie for themselves. It is these rulers who are fueling one war after another. As for Hamas and Hezbollah, the guerrilla groups linked to Iran, their aim is not to end the poverty of their own peoples, but to gain recognition by the big imperial powers.

The real enemy of the working class and oppressed masses throughout the world are their own rulers who foment these wars. The real enemy of the Israeli working class is not the Arab workers and poor—it is their own government and rulers. The same goes for the Arab masses. Their real fight is against their own governments and rulers, who have to be defeated and overthrown. And this fight must begin, of course, right here in this country, by the working class in the U.S. against the biggest super-power and war monger of them all.

There is only one way out of this bloody trap. The working class and oppressed masses throughout the Middle East and the working class inside the big imperial powers have everything in common with each other, and nothing in common with their own rulers, governments and military.