Editorial

Condemn the Brutal Israeli Assaults on Gaza and Lebanon

During the past week, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) continued its bombing and shelling of residential areas of Gaza and initiated a bombing campaign against civilian targets in Lebanon. So far, dozens of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians have been killed in the attacks and hundreds have been injured. The Israeli government claims that the military actions are justified by the “kidnapping” of one Israeli soldier in Gaza and another two soldiers in Lebanon. The Palestinians state that the capture of the Israeli soldiers was in response to the IDF’s ongoing deliberate shelling of civilians in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s economic blockade of Gaza, both of which are designed to bring down the democratically-elected Hamas government in the Occupied Territories.

The Israeli assault against Lebanon is beginning to take on the appearance of an all-out war, with large-scale strikes against the Beirut international airport and various predominantly Palestinian residential areas. The Israeli government is also accusing Iran and Syria of planning the “kidnapping” of its soldiers and threatening to expand the attacks against those countries if the soldiers are not released. For the past several months the Israeli government has been sabre-rattling against Lebanon, Syria and Iran and there are indications that the IDF deliberately engineered the kidnappings of its own soldiers in order to provide itself with a pretext to invade Lebanon. In the case of Gaza, Israel has an ongoing program of kidnapping and assassinating Palestinian leaders, which it escalates whenever hostilities die down and international pressure increases for a return to negotiations. Then it uses the inevitable retaliation by Palestinian militants as an excuse for massive military intervention.

A United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire was vetoed by the United States, which called the resolution “one-sided”. Ten of the 15 Security Council nations voted in favour, while Britain, Denmark, Peru and Slovakia abstained. Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper supported and justified the Israeli offensive, calling it a “measured” response to the “kidnapping” of its soldiers. He had nothing to say about the scores of civilians killed and maimed by the IDF during the past several days.

A very dangerous situation is being created by the Israeli military actions and by the political actions of the governments of the United States, Canada and other countries aimed at blocking any peaceful resolution to the conflict. It is becoming clear that neither Israel nor the U.S. will be satisfied until they have overthrown and replaced every government in the region which does not meekly submit to their dictate. However, as the U.S. dilemma in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate, what the imperialists wish for and what they are capable of achieving may be two entirely different things.

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