This past week, Israel stepped up its criminal, bloodthirsty attack against the small, impoverished country of Lebanon, in particular against Hezbollah, an Islamic fundamentalist organization supported by Iran.¹ Israel carried out over 2,000 airstrikes,² killing at least 1,000 people, wounding many more, and displacing a half million people, overwhelmingly civilians.  

On Monday (September 23) alone, Israel massacred 558 people³ and injured another 1,600.  

During the week, factories, stores, homes and apartment buildings were reduced to piles of rubble, twisted metal, and broken glass. Hospitals were flooded. One man had lost four of his nieces and nephews when a bomb hit their house. His 16-year-old daughter lost both her eyes in the strike.

On Friday (September 27), Israel dropped more than 80 bombs, likely including U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound “bunker busters,” to assassinate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (murdering uncounted others in the process). Lebanon’s health minister said the Israeli strikes had completely destroyed four to six high-rise residential buildings filled with people: “Whoever is in those buildings is now under the rubble.” The explosions left a trail of destruction three miles long and rattled homes and windows 18 miles north of Beirut.

Self-Defense? Israel Has No Right to Self-Defense

Israel has repeatedly justified its slaughters in Gaza as “self-defense,” and now is doing so with its attacks in Lebanon, citing Hezbollah’s relatively low-level missile attacks into Israel beginning last October 8. This “conveniently” erases the last 75 years of history. Israel is an illegitimate state. It was established with the backing of imperialist powers in the 1948 war in which whole villages of Palestinians were slaughtered, mass rape was carried out and over 700,000 Palestinian people were driven from their country. One hundred thousand of these Palestinians ended up in Lebanese refugee camps. Over the decades, Israel has waged extremely violent war against Lebanon five separate times, always to reinforce their influence and wipe out any force they perceived to be a potential threat. In such a context, there is no such thing as “legitimate self-defense.”

In addition to that big historical lie about the cause of the war, Israel is just plain lying about how it is conducting its war. On Monday, September 23, Israel claimed it had dropped more than 1,400 bombs, which hit some 1,300 Hezbollah military targets. But Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the bombs struck hospitals, medical centers, ambulances, apartment buildings, fire trucks and people fleeing. The “overwhelming majority, if not all,” of those killed and injured were civilians. At least 24 were children. 

Was the U.S. Involved? The Question Is Not Whether, but How

When news broke of Nasrallah’s assassination, the U.S. claimed it was “not involved” and had “no advance warning.” But whether the U.S. knew ahead of time is not the point—there is a more fundamental relationship that means the U.S. is not only involved but ultimately responsible.

Israel is a military, political and intelligence outpost and attack dog for the U.S. in the Middle East and beyond. Over the years it has acted to crush nationalist or anti-U.S. struggles by the people, as well as regimes that stand in the way of U.S. objectives or are aligned with other global powers. The U.S. strengthens Israel to maintain its own domination of the Middle East (as well as other parts of the world, including Latin America and Africa in particular). Dominating this region—with its vast petroleum reserves, critical trade routes and strategic location—is not optional for America’s rulers. U.S. capitalism-imperialism cannot maintain its dominant position without controlling key regions and essential markets and resources, while preventing other imperialists or regional rivals from doing so. And for these imperialists, Israel plays an essential and irreplaceable role, especially now, when the U.S. faces many global challenges.

This is why the U.S. has provided Israel with some $310 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance since 1948, by far the largest amount doled out to any country. This is why the U.S. has delivered at least 29,100 guided bombs, artillery rockets and various missiles to Israel since 2009 alone. This is why in the weeks following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack and the launching of Israel’s Gaza genocide, “the U.S. sent planeloads of weapons to Israel, including about 3,000 bombs and tens of thousands of artillery shells,” and has delivered at least $3.5 billion in weapons and military aid since then. And this is why just this week, the Biden-Harris administration provided Israel with another $8.7 billion in military aid 

It’s also why both genocide Joe Biden and VP and presidential candidate Kamala Harris issued statements backing Israel’s massive bombing campaign in Lebanon and its assassination of Nasrallah. Biden called Nasrallah’s murder “a measure of justice for his many victims” and reiterated that the U.S. “fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah” and other Iranian-backed groups. Harris also repeated her “unwavering commitment to the security of Israel.” Neither criticized Israel’s slaughter of innocents.

The Potential for Wider, Much Deadlier War 

At this writing, Israel’s bombing strikes in Lebanon continue. And Israel may be preparing for a ground invasion, as Israeli Prime Minister Netan-Nazi dismisses talk of any ceasefire and openly threatens not just Hezbollah and Lebanon but Iran as well. Meanwhile, Biden ordered the Pentagon to “further enhance the defense posture of U.S. military forces in the Middle East region.” 

Hezbollah is a reactionary Islamic fundamentalist organization that has committed crimes against the people and stands against human emancipation. But Israel’s assassination of Nasrallah is a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, yet another Israeli war crime, and a blatant and provocative act of escalation. Nasrallah was the leader of Hezbollah, a major political and military force in the Middle East and Iran’s key ally in its “axis of resistance” to the U.S. and Israel. 

Now his assassination upsets the old political-military equation and understandings, and introduces tremendous uncertainty and explosiveness into the whole situation in the Middle East. This could spiral out of control and lead to a much wider and much more deadly war, which could literally threaten the lives of many millions in the region and beyond.  

In his social media dispatch REVOLUTION #87, @BobAvakianOfficial, “The U.S. military—sexual slavery, and other crimes against humanity—enforcing a criminal system” (issued before Israel’s massive escalation in Lebanon), revolutionary leader Bob Avakian made this crucial point: 

In arming and backing the actions of Israel, the U.S. government is not only enabling the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians but is also increasing the possibility of a war with Iran, and perhaps an even wider and more destructive war. At the same time, by massively providing weapons, as well as intelligence and strategic direction to Ukraine, the U.S. government, headed by the Biden/Harris administration, is already indirectly at war with Russia, while also making preparations for military confrontation with China —all of which could lead to world war, between nuclear-armed imperialist powers, with the possibility of wiping out human civilization as we know it.

This again underscore the urgency of his call: 

We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that we do not have to live this way.