Lebanon will Never be Subdued! Stand with the Axis of Resistance!

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle condemns the escalation in brutality and aggression of the US-Zionist war towards the people of Lebanon. In the face of indiscriminate warfare against civilians, infrastructure and the natural environment, there is no other option for the people of Lebanon, Palestine, and the whole West Asia region but to fight back and defend their land against the Zionist occupation and expansionist war.

Zionist warplanes have been bombing southern Lebanon nonstop since the start of the recent aggression against Palestine, using as its excuse the participation of Lebanese fighters, predominantly from Hezbollah, in strikes at Zionist military targets in solidarity and defense of Palestine. This later escalated into assassinations of key resistance leaders, shutting down of civilian internet and electricity, and increased bombings of civilian areas. The recent escalation began with an indiscriminate and terroristic operation by the Zionists in which multiple pager devices exploded, killing multiple people in Lebanon and wounding dozens more. After retaliatory strikes against Zionist military bases, the Zionist military began a full-scale bombing campaign against southern Lebanese suburbs, striking entire apartment buildings and infrastructure centers in the same way they have done in Gaza.  Already hundreds of Lebanese civilians have been killed in just a few nightmarish days. The assassination of Hezbollah’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, during an equally terroristic and indiscriminate bombing of a suburban area, demonstrates how far the Zionists are willing to go to brutalize and demoralize the people.

This war is an expansion, initiated by the Zionists with the blessings of their US imperialist funders, of the genocide being undertaken against the Palestinian people for the past year. It shows that the strategy of the Zionist forces is more than just the destruction and land theft of Palestine, but an aggressive and expansionist regional war for the annexation of nearby countries into the ultimate ethno-religious and apartheid project of “Greater Israel”. For the US and other Western backers of the Zionists, it is a continuation of imperialist aggression and a main component of the new world order in the region, orchestrated by the US and European imperialist powers for control over key resources like oil and natural gas as well as significant trade and development centers like the highly sought-after India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC).

But the resistance to the US-Zionist aggression against Lebanon is also part of the regional Axis of Resistance and the global anti-imperialist struggle of semi-colonial nations fighting against the aggression of imperialism. As a former colony of France, the people waged a national liberation struggle against their colonial masters, which developed into a bloody civil war that was in fact a proxy war between the Lebanese people on one hand and NATO and Zionist backed fascist proxies on the other. Following the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Zionist seizure of the West Bank and Gaza, the PLO was given refuge in Lebanon to regroup and plan future resistance operations, during which time the Zionists launched a full-scale invasion that led to horrific massacres like the 1982 Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres in which up to 3,500 were killed by Zionist soldiers and fascist Christian nationalist Lebanese gangs trained by Mossad and the CIA. Another Zionist invasion occurred during 2006 as Lebanese liberation fighters assisted Palestinian fighters during the Second Intifada. Since then, Lebanese fighters have continued to pledge solidarity and wage small-scale operations in solidarity with Palestine while engaging in civil rehabilitation programs and funding schools, health centers and disaster relief for their own people in the midst of state neglect by the Western-backed Lebanese government and economic crisis due to crippling foreign loans and foreign privatization of infrastructure.

Lebanon has long been a target for destruction and annexation by the Zionist regime. But the people of Lebanon have always fought back for their independence and have long stood in solidarity with the people of Palestine and all those fighting for freedom.

The current aggressive war is targeting Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, and is still widening and is trying to include Iran and Jordan (by using its reactionary monarchy as a proxy) and is trying to expand even more. The zionist state is the major imperialist tool for this war.  Thus it is being trained and armed via finance and arms transfers.

The imperialist states usually single out each country alone to destroy it. Now, there is an Axis of Resistance, that includes revolutionary forces, in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, and other countries that are aware of the enemy’s schemes and are thus going into this war together. These revolutionary forces are not targeting civilians in the Zionist state, but rather military targets. But the imperialist forces are doing all kinds of massacres against civilians, tens of thousands of civilians are being slaughtered.

This is a very decisive confrontation between all peace loving peoples of the world and the imperialist forces all over the world, that will have a major say in governing the future of all the world’s peoples.

The ILPS calls on its members around the world to stand in solidarity with the people of Lebanon in the face of their war of national defense and national liberation against expansionist Zionism and Western imperialism. This should be done alongside the continued militant solidarity for the Palestinian people nearly one year into the genocidal assault by the US-Zionist occupation regime. We call for militant demonstrations to mark the one-year anniversary of the Al Aqsa Flood operation that bravely rose up against the genocidal settler colonial state of “Israel” to fight for a free Palestine, a struggle that today still stands as a beacon for all movements and peoples fighting for national and social liberation all over the world.

Signed,

Len Cooper, Chairperson