Israel and Hezbollah
- This topic has 39 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 1 week, 4 days ago by
.
-
Posts
-
That’s a good find, especially coming from a witch doctor and a supreme one at that. It shows that even he accepts a materialist (as opposed to a religious) explanation for the conflict in the Middle East.
Here for the record (and it’s worth recording for future use) is what his official website says what he said:
“The insistence of the US and its allies on ensuring the safety of the usurping regime serves as a cover for their lethal policy of changing the [Zionist] regime into a tool for seizing all the resources of this region and using it [that regime] in major global conflicts.
Their policy is to turn the [Zionist] regime into a gateway for exporting energy from the region to the Western world while facilitating the import of goods and technology from the West to the region. This [approach] ensures the survival of the usurping regime and increases the entire region’s dependency on it.”The Hannibal Directive – “How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October”
https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hundreds-its-own-people-7-october/49216
Also this
I just don’t get why some people are prepared to cast far and wide for arguments to somehow justify or at least play down the Hamas attack of 7 October, which has also proved disastrous for Palestinian workers.
“I just don’t get why some people are prepared to cast far and wide for arguments to somehow justify or at least play down the Hamas attack of 7 October, which has also proved disastrous for Palestinian workers.”
——————————————-The point of citing evidence that the Israeli regime very clearly lied through its teeth when it came to accounting for what happened on Oct 7 is not to “justify” the Hamas attack. I do not know how you could have possibly drawn such a conclusion. I no more support Hamas or Hezbollah than you and fully agree that Oct 7 turned out to be a disaster for Palestinian workers….
No, the point in citing such evidence is to illustrate and underline the extent to which this vile racist regime of Israel (that believes it is the land of “God´s chosen people” and that Palestinians are animals to be culled) will go to promote and justify its murderous policies of butchering other people in the repulsive cause of zionist nationalism. Over 20,000 Palestinian kids have so far been murdered by this regime in Gaza. Are we supposed to condone this by merely saying it wouldn’t have happened had Oct 7 not happened?
Oct 7 was not the start of the conflict – merely a moment in an ongoing conflict going back decades. Are we to remain silent about the fact that Gaza had been turned into an open-air concentration camp or that Palestinians in the West Bank have found themselves turfed out of the homes they had lived in for generations, which homes were subsequently bulldozed by racist thugs for the purpose of expanding Israeli settlements there? I sincerely hope not!
The evidence is now pretty convincing that the Israeli regime embarked on a massive campaign of deliberate disinformation to justify its wholly disproportionate and asymmetrical use of military force to raze Gaza to the ground, killing tens of thousands of innocent human beings in the process. Remember the lurid tales of Hamas killing 40 babies? It turns out it was all lies. It now also turns out that it was the Israeli military itself that killed hundreds of Israeli citizens itself and then blamed Hamas for their deaths.
That is not to excuse what Hamas did but, at the same time, we cannot in all honesty stand by and allow such lies to go unchallenged and be used for the purpose of promoting mass murder. Most of the mainstream media went along with the regime’s outrageous narrative and are therefore complicit in its criminal acts. As socialists, we surely cannot possibly do the same
Very good article in the I newspaper here. Tells it like it is.
I couldn’t open it so I don’t know what it says. But Patrick Cockburn’s articles in the weekend i paper are always good. In a recent one he makes the point that the no decent-minded human being can honestly condone what the Israeli killing machine directed by its present government is doing. They are ordered to kill their opponents’ military and political leaders irrespective of how many ordinary people are as well. In fact they have a calculus of how many can be killed depending on the importance of the intended target. If you happen to live in the same apartment block as one of these or just to be passing by, too bad you are expendable. You will be killed too. See this article from the May Socialist Standard:
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2024/05/pathfinders-death-by-algorithm-2024.html?m=0
The Israeli killing machine has reduced Gaza to rubble and has killed tens of thousands of ordinary people. It’s now embarked on doing the same to Beirut.
I realise that this is what a state will do if it considers that its very existence is threatened, but even so.
ALB –
Here’s a link, that will work, to the h.moss recommended article: https://archive.ph/lRWgPThanks. Read it now. Yes, it does describe the brutal theocracy in Iran as it is. Not sure, though, that the aim of the regime there is to impose the rule of Ayatollahs and mad mullahs on the Arab countries where Sunni not Shia Islam is the majority. Imposing barbaric and anti-woman sharia law would be more likely to be what the dynastic rulers of Saudi Arabia would like.
I think it is rather a question of the current rulers of Iran seeking to use Shia minorities in Arab states to further its foreign policy aim of kicking out the US from the region.
What I don’t understand is why the Shia minority in Lebanon — which historically has been a downtrodden group, the bottom of the pile there, beneath the Christians and the Sunnis — should think they have a stake in destroying Israel. As its immediate neighbours it might be thought that they would think in terms of live and let live.
But just as the Israeli Jews allowed themselves to be the US rulers’ cat’s paw in the region so the Lebanese Shia have allowed themselves to be Iran’s. Two big mistakes whose results we are now seeing.
In connection with #254338 —
About expatriate Irani royalism’s pro-Israelism: https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/exiled-iranian-monarchists-align-with-israels-hardliners/
And also here, by the infamous David Miller, writing on the Irani state’s Press TV website … and in fact he mentions the author of the h.moss recommended article, in an uncomplimentary fashion naturally:
A quite interesting and informative article by Chris Hedges on the role of the media in the current conflict
https://x.com/chrislynnhedges/status/1850217151925465400?s=43&t=APE_TKXnYnrsmOJtpqdVfA
“Israel´s War on Journalism
There are some 4,000 foreign reporters accredited in Israel to cover the war. They stay in luxury hotels. They go on dog and pony shows orchestrated by the Israeli military. They can, on rare occasions, be escorted by Israeli soldiers on lightning visits to Gaza, where they are shown alleged weapons caches or tunnels the military says are used by Hamas. They dutifully attend daily press conferences. They are given off-the-record briefings by senior Israeli officials who feed them information that often turns out to be untrue. They are Israel’s unwitting and sometimes witting propagandists, stenographers for the architects of apartheid and genocide, hotel room warriors. Bertolt Brecht acidly called them the spokesmen of the spokesmen.
And how many foreign reporters are there in Gaza? None.”Published on the New York Times and the Washington Post
Israel and Hezbollah agree to cease-fire, halting year-long conflict
The deal would include a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon, as well as the retreat of Hezbollah fighters to north of the Litani River.Israeli soldiers near the border with Lebanon in northern Israel on Tuesday. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
By Rebecca Tan, Mohamad El Chamaa, Abbie Cheeseman, Shira Rubin and Karen DeYoung
November 26, 2024 at 7:16 p.m. EST
JERUSALEM — Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have agreed to a cease-fire that will take effect Wednesday morning at 4 a.m. local time, U.S., Israeli and French officials said, bringing a tenuous halt to more than a year of hostilities that escalated sharply in recent weeks.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
The deal calls for Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group, to retreat north of the Litani River in southern Lebanon in exchange for a gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops over an initial 60-day period. At the same time, the Lebanese military and U.N. peacekeepers will redeploy and secure the region — terms that have been accepted by both parties, President Joe Biden said in a speech announcing the cease-fire on Tuesday.
“This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” said Biden. “We’re determined this conflict will not be just another cycle of violence.”Israel’s cabinet voted 10-1 on Tuesday evening to approve the deal, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. In a televised speech before the vote, Netanyahu said a cease-fire with Hezbollah served Israel’s interests, but added that the country would “maintain full freedom of military action,” with the option of striking again at the militant group if it poses a threat.
🌎
Following World news
Following
“We will respond forcefully to any violation,” Netanyahu said.
It was not clear if the agreement explicitly allows Israel to strike Hezbollah if it believes the group has violated the agreement. “If parties on all sides implement the agreement, as they have committed to do, there should not be a need on either side” for military action, said a senior Biden administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the White House.
Although, “both Lebanon and Israel retain the right of self-defense in accordance with international law,” the official said.People in Beirut watch on television as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin makes a speech. (Ed Ram/Getty Images)
Hezbollah leaders also signaled they would closely monitor the deal’s implementation. “We are accustomed to Netanyahu’s deception,” Mahmoud Qamati, deputy head of the group’s political council, told the Al-Manar news channel.The terms of the agreement require that Lebanese forces ensure all heavy weaponry and Hezbollah infrastructure has been removed from the area between the Litani River and the Israeli border, the Biden administration official said. The United States and France will also join an existing verification mission, established after the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, to make sure “on a real-time basis … that any violations are deterred,” according to the official.
For more than a year, as the two sides traded cross-border fire, a cease-fire deal remained stubbornly out of reach. Hezbollah said it would not negotiate until Israel ended its war with Hamas in Gaza. In September, Israel escalated its campaign, targeting the communication devices of thousands of Hezbollah members, killing the group’s longtime leader and eventually invading southern Lebanon on Oct. 1.An ambulance at the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut on Tuesday. (Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters)
A final consensus around a cease-fire emerged, however, after weeks of intense mediation led by the United States, which said it hopes it can use this deal to revive moribund negotiations for a similar agreement in Gaza. “Over the coming days, the United States will make another push with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and others to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza,” Biden said.More than 44,000 people have been killed in the Palestinian enclave since the start of the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of those killed are women and children.
Over the past year, talks have centered around a potential agreement that would end the fighting, return Israeli hostages abducted by militants and see a surge of humanitarian relief into Gaza, where more than 2 million people are living in dire conditions, aid agencies say.
In the hours leading up to the cease-fire in Lebanon, both Israel and Hezbollah ramped up attacks. Throughout the day Tuesday, the Israeli military pounded Lebanon with airstrikes. The bombardment sparked panic in multiple cities, including Sidon in southern Lebanon, where the Israel Defense Forces issued evacuation orders for the first time.As bombs hit six different areas of the capital, Beirut, the streets grew congested with people fleeing. Dozens gathered outside the American University Hospital in the Hamra district after nightfall, some wrapped in blankets, others carrying their pets. Reem Hussien, 60, said she had already fled Beirut’s southern suburbs in previous weeks to seek safety in the Lebanese capital.
Earlier in the day, the IDF said it had struck numerous Hezbollah targets, including intelligence centers and weapons storage facilities. A multistory building in Beirut’s Nuwairi area was hit, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens more, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said in an initial toll.
Since October 2023, when Hezbollah began attacks on Israel in solidarity with Hamas, at least 3,768 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. More than a quarter have been women and children. The war has also eviscerated swaths of civilian infrastructure in Lebanon, with more health workers killed proportionally in Lebanon than in Ukraine and Gaza, the World Health Organization said this week.Hezbollah has used southern Lebanon as a staging ground to rain down tens of thousands of rockets and missiles on Israel. At least 78 people have been killed in the last year, about half of them civilians, according to the IDF.
Tens of thousands of Israeli citizens were also forced to evacuate their homes in northern Israel after the outbreak of war and local officials across this region on Tuesday slammed the prospect of an Israeli withdrawal of troops, which they said would not create the conditions for residents to return home safely.
“This surrender agreement is a disgrace on an historic scale. … This is a failure to seize an historic opportunity to change reality for decades into the future,” said Michael Kabesa, mayor of the northern town of Hatzor Haglilit.
The deal also drew criticism from far-right Israeli leaders such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who called it a “grand mistake.” Eventually, he said in a statement, Israel will have to return to Lebanon.In his speech, however, Netanyahu argued that Israel needs a cease-fire with Hezbollah to focus on fighting Hamas and facing the threat of Iran, and because there have been “big delays in weapons and munitions deliveries.”
The Biden administration earlier this year paused the shipment of thousands of bombs to Israel amid a rift over Israel’s expanding operations in Gaza.
Attacks from both Israel and Hezbollah continued after officials in Washington and Jerusalem announced the cease-fire. The IDF announced more evacuation orders for Beirut’s southern suburbs while hitting more targets in the Lebanese capital. A Hezbollah rocket struck a bus station in the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, causing a fire.
El Chamaa and Cheeseman reported from Beirut, Rubin from Tel Aviv and DeYoung from Washington. Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv, Ellen Francis in Brussels and John Hudson in Washington contributed to this report.If the ceasefire works it can only be welcomed. As we said in the Peace Manifesto we issued in the middle of WW1:
“Every Socialist must, therefore, wish to see peace established at once to save further maiming and slaughter of our fellow Workers. All those who on any pretext, or for any supposed reason, wish the war to continue, at once stamp themselves as anti-Socialist, anti-working class, and pro-capitalist.”
The question is how long that ceasefire is going to last ? It is a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel but Iran and Hamas are not included, and the new cabinets of Trump includes many pro Israel and zionists, and Biden already approved more military aid for Israel.
Joe Biden is leaving a hot potato in the hands of Trump and preparing the conditions for the continuation of the war in Ukraine or to make negotiation to take a big chunk of the natural resources
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/28/g-s1-36146/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-ceasefire-middle-east-crisis
Israel-Hezbollah-Lebanon ceasefire
The ceasefire agreement between Hezbollah and Israel brokered by the United States and France states it is designed to “promote conditions for a permanent and comprehensive situation,” while President Biden earlier this week characterized it as an attempt to deliver a “permanent cessation of hostilities.”It includes 13 separate points of agreement, with several of those broken up into separate parts, with specific requirements of both sides to adhere to agreed upon timetables for withdrawal from or arrival in designated regions of southern Lebanon that have long been military strongholds for Hezbollah – an Iran-backed group the U.S. and several other nations have designated a terrorist organization.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.