ISRAEL'S INDISCRIMINATE-yet thoroughly systematic-slaughter of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians should be a moment of truth for the U.S. Left. The fact that “about 55 percent of all casualties at the Beirut Government University Hospital are children of 15 years or less,” according to journalist Dahr Jamail, should dispel the myth that Israel's latest incursions are acts of “self defense” as Israel's many apologists claim.
The Bush administration's rush shipment of precision bombs to aid Israel's onslaught should be a wake-up call for those on the U.S. Left who purport to follow antiwar principles yet until now have failed to take a clear stand against the Israeli manifestations of Washington's so-called war on terror.
To do so would require acknowledging that the United States' wars on Afghanistan and Iraq were meant to be mere stepping stones in a strategic plan aimed at establishing U.S. dominance over the entire Middle East region. With the U.S. occupation of Iraq rapidly spinning out of control and descending into bloody civil war, Israel is providing another route toward achieving that same goal-for U.S. domination over the Middle East ensures Israel's domination as well.
Look no further than the mainstream media to verify this revelation. As the Washington Post argued on July 16, “For the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East, U.S. officials say.” This requires crushing Arab organizations fighting for self-determination-whether in Gaza, Lebanon, or Iraq.
Acknowledging this simple fact, however, also requires admitting the crucial role played by Israel as the U.S.'s historic regional partner in enforcing its Middle East policy. The Arab leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, despite their subservience to U.S. imperialism, remain despotic rulers who could easily meet the same fate as Iran's shah in 1979. Israel remains the only “reliable” imperial partner for the United States in the Middle East.
Yet United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), the largest national antiwar coalition, argued in a July 18 “action alert,” “We condemn Hezbollah's attacks on Israeli civilians, and we condemn the Israeli assault in Gaza and Lebanon.” The statement repeated the mainstream media's depiction of Israel's assault as a response to Hezbollah's seizure of Israeli soldiers and firing of rockets into Israel, which UFPJ called “irresponsible acts.” Echoing liberal commentators, UFPJ criticized Israel for its “disproportionate” response-as if Hezbollah started the conflict and Israel is guilty only of over-reacting.
Israel: U.S. watchdog
In reality, the conflict is decades old and is intimately tied to Israel's historic role as the U.S.'s watch dog/attack dog in the Middle East. This latest episode began when Israel launched an assault on Gaza-and Hezbollah responded by launching a raid, in nothing more than a common border skirmish. Israel then launched missiles into Lebanon-and only then did Hezbollah launch rockets.
This incident merely provided Israel with an excuse for a major assault on Lebanon. Israel's ridiculous claim that it is attacking Lebanon to get its soldiers back is belied by the fact that Hezbollah has repeatedly offered to exchange the two Israeli soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinian political prisoners held by Israel (a common practice in the past). But Israel has time and again refused. Israel has no interest in a prisoner exchange because the captured soldiers provide the excuse for using its full military might against Hezbollah. In reality, Israel has had a plan in place for well over a year to take advantage of any opportunity that presented itself to launch a military attack on Lebanon by air, land, and sea, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the Chronicle, “In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal.… By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board.”
Israel's goal was clearly articulated on July 22 by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who stated that the United States opposed a ceasefire until Hezbollah has been destroyed as a significant fighting force in Southern Lebanon. “I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante,” Rice scoffed at a press conference.
If there had been any doubt about the sharing of blame between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel's massacre at Qana on July 30 should dispel any confusion. An Israeli precision-guided bomb landed on a building in which civilians had taken refuge, killing more than sixty Lebanese civilians, the majority of them children. As journalist Robert Fisk described, “You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the 'pinpoint accuracy' it claims, this was also a war crime.”
Israel once again blamed Hezbollah, claiming it had used these civilians as “human shields” when firing rockets from Qana. Fisk noted, “Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about 'Muslim terror' threatening 'western civilization' as if the Hezbollah had killed all these poor people.” But all evidence shows that Hezbollah fired no rockets from Qana on July 30. Red Cross workers and residents of Qana confirmed this fact for reporters. “There were no Hezbollah rockets fired from here,” thirty-two-year-old Ali Abdel told the Interpress Service News Agency (IPS). “Anyone in this village will tell you this, because it is the truth. They bombed it, and afterwards I heard the screams of women, children, and a few men-they were crying for help. But then one minute after the first bomb, another bomb struck, and after this there was nothing but silence, and the sound of more bombs around the village.”
IPS also reported, “Lebanese Red Cross workers in the nearby coastal city of Tyre told IPS that there was no basis for Israeli claims that Hezbollah had launched rockets from Qana.” According to another Red Cross worker, “We can tell when Hezbollah has been firing rockets from certain areas, because all of the people run away, on foot if they have to.”
Israel, for its part, is known to have used Palestinians as human shields in its house-to-house searches in the West Bank and Gaza on more than one occasion. Most recently, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem reported that on July 20, during an invasion of the town of Beit Hanun in Gaza, Israeli soldiers seized control of two buildings, seizing “six residents, two of them minors, on the staircases of the two buildings, at the entrance to rooms in which the soldiers positioned themselves, for some twelve hours. During this time, there were intense exchanges of gunfire between the soldiers and armed Palestinians. The soldiers also demanded that one of the occupants walk in front of them during a search of all the apartments in one of the buildings, after which they released her.”
The United States' fingerprints are all over the bombing of Qana. The Washington Post revealed that a bomb fragment found at the bombing site read “For use on MK-84, Guided Bomb BSU-37/B”-an attachment produced by Boeing to convert MK-84s into precision bombs.
International outrage over Qana did not slow Israel's destruction of Lebanon as August began. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated there would be no cease-fire and repeated the fictional scenario that Israeli forces would continue their bombardment of Lebanon until Hezbollah returns the two captured Israeli soldiers. “We are determined to succeed in this struggle,” Olmert said. “We will not give up on our goal to live a life free of terror.” As Israel prepared to escalate its ground war after Qana, the geopolitical intelligence agency Stratfor commented, “If there is a major attack coming, Washington has signed off on it.”
On the U.S. home front, Congressional Democrats and Republicans have been equally vocal cheerleaders for Israel, taking turns at the podium at pro-Israel rallies across the country in July. At one such rally, Senator Hillary Clinton condemned the “unwarranted, unprovoked attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah and their state sponsors” and called them “the new totalitarians of the 21st century.” At a San Francisco rally, Senator Dianne Feinstein ranted that Israel is “fighting for its very existence.” She called the Hezbollah raid, and the June 25 raid by three Palestinian militant groups that killed two Israeli soldiers and captured a third, “clear acts of war” by terrorists.
The right to resist
These accusations against Hezbollah are absurd. Israel invaded and occupied Southern Lebanon in 1982-the last of its troops pulling out only in 2000. Hezbollah gained its legitimacy as a resistance movement by finally driving Israel out of Lebanon, after eighteen years of occupation. And Israel has been seeking the opportunity for revenge ever since.
But Israel's new war on Lebanon has greatly increased Hezbollah's support within the Lebanese population. A late-July survey by the Beirut Center for Research and Information showed 87 percent saying they support Hezbollah in its fight against Israel.
Just as in Iraq, the violence of an imperialist occupying force cannot be equated with the resistance of an occupied population, as if both sides are equally responsible for the bloodshed. One side is fighting to conquer an oppressed population; the other side is fighting to free an oppressed population. Antiwar movements cannot be effective unless they accept this principle and champion the right to resist war and occupation. This is particularly the case for an antiwar movement in the heart of the imperialist beast.
There can be no equivocation on this issue among those who profess to be for peace and against war. There is no symmetry in this conflict, and to pretend so is to obscure and distort what is really taking place in Lebanon and Gaza today. This attack on Lebanon is an extension of the U.S. war on Iraq. It is therefore astonishing that the dominant organizations of the U.S. antiwar movement are acting as though this is a sideshow-“even-handedly” condemning both sides.
UFPJ's equivocation is not surprising, since it takes its political lead from the virulently pro-Zionist Democratic Party. But UFPJ's weak response to this crisis has left a political vacuum-allowing pro-Israeli forces to pose as “peace” advocates. Thus, at a pro-Israel rally in San Francisco, a thousand Israeli flag-waving protesters demonstrated in support of Israel's war on Lebanon-carrying signs stating, “Pro-Israel, pro-peace”-unchallenged by the mainstream of the antiwar movement.
But Israel's own barbarism has forced its role as attack dog for U.S. imperialism to the front and center of the antiwar movement. And over the last month, the antiwar movement is reviving on a principled basis, despite the gaping absence of its largest national coalition.
There is evidence that the fear and demoralization among Arabs and Muslims that have prevented larger scale mobilizations in recent years is beginning to fade. Furthermore, judging from the turnout at the July protests, there are indications that more non-Arabs and non-Muslims-that is, native-born antiwar activists-are turning out than in the past few years and expressing their solidarity with Palestinians and Arab victims of U.S./Israeli wars. A larger number of antiwar activists are drawing similar conclusions about the “war on terror” and the issue of Palestine.
Ten thousand came out to protest Israel's war on Lebanon and Palestine in Dearborn, Michigan. Two thousand came out on a weekday afternoon in New York City. Four thousand came out in Chicago. One thousand came out in Boston. In each case, the demonstrators were predominantly Arabs and Muslims, but supported by a significant layer of antiwar activists.
Moreover, the connection between the U.S. war on Iraq and Israel's war on Lebanon and Palestine were repeatedly made clear. At the Chicago protest, for example, there were chants such as “Free, free Palestine; free, free Lebanon; free, free Iraq”; “Occupation is a crime, from Iraq to Palestine!” and “No justice no peace, U.S. out of the Middle East!”
For these directly affected immigrant communities, no hand-wringing debate is needed to support genuine resistance against U.S. or Israeli war and occupation, as there is in the mainstream peace movement.
The weakness of the U.S. antiwar movement toward Israeli war crimes is not a temporary aberration but a long-standing and shameful phenomenon. As journalist Laura Flanders recalled, “On June 12, 1982, American activists massed in New York City to call for peace and nuclear disarmament. But the Central Park rally made no mention of the week's own bombing-Israel's then defense minister, Ariel Sharon, had just sent Israeli forces into Lebanon two days earlier.
“But while we rallied, U.S. jets flown by Israeli pilots dropped bombs on Palestinian refugees and men, women and children in Lebanon. The 1982 invasion led to the massacre of over 1,000 Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila.... A message sent then might have saved a generation of Palestinians and Israelis from 20 years of occupation, fury and fear.”
Sharon Smith is the author of Subterreanean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States (Haymarket Books, 2006).
