Internet Statement 2006-54

Israel’s War in Lebanon
– and its Consequences

Hartmut Dicke, July 29, 2006       

Israel’s assault on Lebanon and the massive bombings of the civil population jolted the whole world. There is much talk now about the “disproportionality” of the Israeli military deployment, and it is repeated a thousand times that the reason for this action were the two soldiers kidnapped by Hizbollah. The bombing, however, is directed predominantly not against Hizbollah but the Lebanese civil population and the infrastructure of the Lebanese state, which is of basic importance for the life of Lebanon’s population. Nobody is able to justify the creation of a stream of 500.000 or more refugees in a small country by two kidnapped soldiers alone, and that under the condition that the Zionists themselves have committed innumerable acts of injustice against the various parties of the Arab nations living around Israel.
   
Wrong ideas about the Israeli state are dominant up to now, which are nourished by the media in a systematic fashion. Even if the brutalities, single ways of action are criticized, Israel is painted as a “parliamentary democracy”, representing the progressive element in this region, so to say, whereas the rest consists of backward or even “rogue” states. Against that the following facts have to be stated:

   1.   Zionism, the foundation of the Israeli state, is clearly racist. Up to today, Israel’s laws recognize as full citizen only who is Jew according to so-called racist standards. Only who is a Jew by blood relationship can without limitations become a citizen of Israel. At best, an exception can be made in very few cases by a decade-long process of being lead to the Jewish people. The Arab inhabitants of Israel are still discriminated in many ways. The formal equal treatment of the Arab citizens of Israel is a swindle upon this fundament. The laws of Israel are such as to prevent marriages between Jews and Non-Jews.
   
When Zionism was founded in 1897, it wrote upon its banners to amalgamate the Jews, who had long since become parts of other nations, into an artificial nation, following supposed principles of blood relationship, which had become completely obsolete already at that time. The goal was in fact to create an outpost of colonialism and reaction and to initiate a kind of fundamental reaction which was to haunt the whole of the 20th century. Zionism even was the model and gave the beat for other racist movements; nazi-fascism, which was created in 1921, learned a lot from it, too.
   
And these principles Israel is still following today. It bullies the surrounding nations by all perfidies and subversive methods one can think of, it promotes the most negative elements within them, it itself promotes the spreading of a mentality of desperation and of the resulting Islamic fundamentalism, which make a progressive development impossible in this whole region. It’s an atrocious crime.
The whole fuss about the normal parliamentary nation is just a sham and a wrong facade.

   
   2.   Since Israel came into existence it has contributed to the polarisation in the Middle East. Fundamental reactionary crimes are connected to its name. The creation of a religiously defined state which was to collect the Jews from the most diverse countries, who for the most part had long since become part and parcel of these countries, in fact according to racist and religious-fundamentalist principles, and to settle them in Palestine, was right from the start bound to provoke the Arab nations and states of this region. In the epoch of the 20th century, when most nations revolted against colonialism, this colonization Zionism was pursuing against the trend could not but thoroughly inflame these countries.
   
The renaissance of the religious fundamentalism of Islam has a lot to do with that. But that is not the only consequence. The conservation of reactionary bureaucratic structures in most Arab states was in that way furthered, too. These countries are not able to concentrate on the development of society, permanently they must scuffle with Israeli Zionism, which is expansionist by its very nature. The former People’s Republic of China, until 1976, time and again criticized these relations and spoke about the preservation of a decade-long state of “neither war nor peace” !
   
The result of these reactionary atrocities is gigantic. There are not only the dead of four large and innumerable smaller wars. Nobody has counted the energies which all of these countries were forced to squander in the struggle against this provocation, nobody counts the dead who perished from misery in the refugee camps.

   3.   The spread of theocratism in the Islamic countries cannot exclusively be attributed to Israel’s role. Iran’s development into an oil state under the shah (until the beginning of 1979) brought about public affluence of the state on the one side, and at the same time it uprooted the rural masses. This was one of the decisive factors for the rise of Shiite fundamentalism, which simultaneously was fostered from abroad, from the very West, where all of a sudden the religious leader Khomeny was discovered as its “hero”. As for the Arab peninsula, the still existing deep religiosity was anchored in the newly formed states (the clearest example is Saudi-Arabia). So, even if there are various reasons for fundamentalism, the existence of Israel as the contradiction, a state itself founded on religion, has continued to foster the fundamentalism on the opposite side.
   
In spite of all efforts for peace and the longing for peace among the masses, war was always going on, and by their latest belligerent advance the Israeli Zionists themselves have uncovered the intentions. Therefore, a more sustainable struggle will now ripen, which is bound to entail an engagement for longer periods also from the part of the revolutionary forces in the world. The core question is: how can a development be supported in the Middle East which, upon a progressive and hence effective fundament, builds up a counter movement against Zionism and its expansion, subsequently giving rise also to the effective decisive military factors.

   4. The present attacks, at first in the Gaza strip and then in Lebanon, were each justified with the kidnapping of one or two soldiers, as everybody knows. Whatever be the background of these kidnappings, it can be stated anyway that they do not justify in any way the destruction of infrastructure and the terror against the masses on the largest scale. For decades the hope was nourished that Israel would some day be saturated and normalized, that it would become possible to declare: we want the past to be put at rest, want to let Israel exist and pass to a good neighbourhood, and in this way to pave the way for a progressive development in Palestine and the whole Middle East. These politics, these hopes have again been proven to be sheer mock and a false hope. As already stated long ago: the goal of Zionism cannot be a normal Jewish state just living in neighbourhood with Arab countries. This is not the task of Zionism. Its task is to sting permanently, to keep the region permanently in a state of neither war nor peace, to keep the countries on the level of mere vegetating. Whenever some consolidation is underway, you can be sure that Israel wades in.

   5. When the attacks against Lebanon started, the whole world was exasperated. Even the official heads of state of capitalist countries with old colonial traditions spoke about the complete disproportionality and brutality of Israel.
   
That the kidnappings by people of Hamas or Hizbollah were taken as cause ought to be a reason, too, to talk about the role of these organizations and their emergence once again. As already mentioned, they are on the one hand a result of the despair resulting from the permanent miserable situation of the Palestinians and the Lebanese. They are a result of subversion, too. All of us know that the money of Saudi-Arabia plays a big role in supporting fundamentalism, and Saudi-Arabia is itself a product of Great Britain and the USA and has always been closely connected in particular with the US.
   
By their attack, the Zionists will achieve something very different from what is in their minds. The present renewed attack will exert coercion to question the structures governing this whole region and enabling Israel to exist at all.

   6.   The UNO is being invoked for help to end the terrifying massacre. But the UNO has been engaged in the Middle East-question for already 60 years, there are already innumerable resolutions by the UNO, probably more than about any other subject in the world. It is speaking volumes, indeed, that many of these resolutions have simply been neglected by Israel. Israel made them waste paper and continued its crimes. Now it is being said the other way round, that Hizbollah did not care for resolution 1559, did not let itself be demilitarized, that this is a contradiction. If the Zionists break resolutions in throngs, this is no reason to behave, but if there is a break of a resolution once or twice by an organization like Hizbollah, this is a reason to terrorize in the most brutal way – not Hizbollah in the first place, but the whole Lebanese people. The language of Zionism is the language of fascism, in practice, too. Between both of them, Zionism and fascism, there has always been a very close relation, and this relation must be tabled.

   7.   Presently, there is talk again about a special obligation Germany allegedly is in with regard to Israel, and therefore we were to give special support to Israel This is the right subject in a way, it is leading us to the point which matters, as the Federal Republic of Germany and Israel both stem from the same process, when after WW II it was attempted to create certain bulwarks of reaction and both these states were founded. The old friendship between the FRG and Israel was founded already at the time of Adenauer and Ben Gurion, and what was it that became connected then? It is no secret that at Adenauer’s time masses of high- and highest-ranking Nazis were sitting in the administration, the courts, the ministries, whereas the Zionist state in turn was founded by people who had closely collaborated with the Nazi-fascists still until 1941, even at the time of the persecution of the Jews by Nazism, and even exceeding 1941 in single cases from 1941 to 1945. The collaboration between German fascists and Zionists went immediately on with the FRG, in which high-ranking Nazis had their positions, and a state Israel where activists of this criminal collaboration took part in the power. And if a special obligation to settle accounts with fascism is mentioned, this means something completely different, also with regard to the Israeli population in its majority: that accounts have to be settled with Zionist fascism, and nothing else. Israel is a formation of Zionism, racism and fascism, and silence about these points must not be continued.
   
As long as this is not clearly enunciated and attacked, such sallies as now against Lebanon will happen again and again, and perhaps even worse things.

   8.   In the past, Israel was supported not only by the US. Already its origin came about by a decision in which the Soviet Union took a decisive part. Later on, since 1952 approximately, the Soviet Union took an adversary position against Israeli Zionism, and still later, after 1956, a system developed which could be described thus: in public, the Soviet leadership condemned Israel and Zionism, and underhand they fostered them, by constantly keeping the Arabs from drawing the necessary consequences and by approving a large exodus of Soviet Jews to Israel, thereby filling the ranks of the Zionist militants in Israel.
   
This close conjunction with the so-called superpowers of then carried the Israeli state onwards for decades, bringing reaction and stagnation for the Arab states and supporting the rise of fundamentalism, as described.
   
Even today, again, the G8-summit hypocritically criticizes Israel only weakly and directs its eyes to Hizbollah, as if the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers could, if only approximately, explain the full military attacks on the Lebanese people. For this declaration all of the G8-States, Russia included, are responsible. It means a fostering of the massacre, even if it outwardly takes some precautious distance.

   9.   In this present conflict the organization Hizbollah has moved into the center. It is simultaneously a political party and a militia of Islamic Shiite fundamentalism in Lebanon, and in this way it is closely connected with the Islamic fundamentalism of Iran.
   
The overthrow towards Islamic fundamentalism and fascism in Iran during the year 1979 is the very event which fundamentally relocated the weights in the Middle East, and on which in the final analysis also Zionism was able to capitalize fundamentally. Misusing the resistance against the shah and a democratic revolution, such an Islamic-fascist order was engrafted which was bound to radically worsen the situation in the Middle East. Thus all of the secular, democratic and revolutionary movements in the whole region were weakened. In Iran, they were eradicated by the Islamic fascists – thus it can be said.

Hizbollah goes back to the year 1982 in Lebanon. At that time the Israeli troops – then, too, unter the protest of the whole international public - encircled the fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Beirut, besieged them and achieved that finally they entrusted themselves into the US’ care, a dubious act which, in the final analysis, paved the way for a catastrophic development of the whole Palestinian Liberation Movement. In the Bekaa plains, the majority of the fighters refused to participate in this liquidatory course. Still in 1983, they were fighting it and in their way kept to the struggle against Israel, too. But they, too, pinned their hope on the Soviet Union, expecting she would continue to support them. We know that the SU thwarted the struggle of the Palestinians as well as of the other Arab countries even stronger than before during the following years. It was the time when Gorbachev was gradually made party president in the SU (definitely in 1985), when the complete destruction of the SU began; a new Russian state without any socialist façade was the result.

   10.   A catastrophe was triggered off already earlier, when in 1979/80 the Palestinian leadership contrary to its own program subordinated itself to this Islamic “revolution” in Iran and joined its ranks. It celebrated the Islamic “revolution” as a fundamental relocation of weights in the region.
   
Apparently Hizbollah was able, as far as it is known so far, to tie in with the defeat of the revolutionary forces of Al-Fatah and, so to say, to put itself in its place. It has a well-developed system of social care, it does comprehensive charitable work and in this way seems to give a perspective to the desperate people in Lebanon. Thus it was able to take such an important place now, and these fundamentalist forces in Lebanon are now able to present themselves as the “leading forces” against Israeli Zionism. That for its part points to the fundamentalism and the reactionary character of these forces, in order to justify its own crimes in Lebanon. But is it possible at all to separate the existence of Hizbollah and the fundamentalists in general from the decade-long aggression of Israel against the Arab peoples? Did Israel itself not plow the ground for the emergence of this organization? Of course this is the truth, and there must not be a moment’s deflection from that.

   11.   The fighters of Hizbollah are now putting up, according to the news, stiff resistance against the Israeli troops, embarrass them and thus get a considerable amount of popularity and respect in the whole Arab world. There are also different aspects of their activity. If, for example, the president of Hizbollah, Nasrallah, comes to the fore with such dicta as: ‘we have more weapons than you think’ and declares they would be able to lead a big war against Israel by means of the rockets, then he practices the typical fundamentalist bragging. In fact Israel cannot be hit militarily in a decisive way even by numerous rockets, which reach deeply into the territory. By that, civilians are hit predominantly, and this will rather help to get back the many opponents of the Zionist regime, who are existing in Israel itself in many variations, into the line of defence of the own land.

   12.   In the final analysis, there cannot be a true unity with the Islamic fundamentalists, at best at certain points, as it has to be anticipated that they will radically do away with all progressive forces, if they should somewhere achieve larger portions of their goals. They are no alternative to Zionism.
   
Zionism is stuck in a blind alley, and the goal cannot be to replace it by an Islamic fundamentalism, when its gradual paralyzation and disintegration comes about. As always, the task is even now in the aggravated situation to attack Islamic fundamentalism. The Iranian opposition, for example, must just now resume and reinforce the struggle against fundamentalism and the undemocratic fascist conditions and simultaneously stress the national independence, the general national liberation struggle of all peoples and nations in the Middle East.

   13.   There is also the question, if perhaps a war against Syria and later on even against Iran is on the agenda. Some people as the “linkezeitung” are already speculating about it, as if it were imminent immediately. This cannot be ruled out completely, but it is not probable. Presently, it is rather about changing the overall pressures in the region, in order to subsequently soften up the Syrian state, too, and thus to further encircle Iran.

   14.   So what can be done now?
Many people are now calling for the UNO and an immediate truce, for a massive action by the UNO which is to prevent at least the massacre of the civilian population. By their recent attacks against UN-units, however, the Israeli Zionists are demonstrating, that they are those who have the US behind themselves, and that the UNO is a nothingness if it does not completely obey what the supreme masters command.
   
What can we do now for the support of the Lebanese people in its violation by Israeli Zionism and the possible violation by fundamentalists in the future? Basically, the situation can only be liquidated by the revolutionary forces and the Arab states and nations themselves. There are relatively strong Arab states in Israel’s immediate neighbourhood, Syria, Jordan and a fortiori Egypt. Egypt, a colossus with 72 million inhabitants, is acquiescing in the violation and humiliation of numerous Arab people at its immediate border. All of these states want to accomodate themselves somehow with the Zionists, as if it were possible to cooperate with them. But in reality the focus of unrest will remain, as there is no solution upon this basis.
   
There are people who at that want to bring the Muslim brethren to power in Egpyt, in the place of the presently ruling bureaucratic depraved regime. This would be a catastrophe more than ever. The Muslim brethren would completely decompose Egypt and give it away to imperialism, this must be clear. If the Muslim brethren or the organisations akin to them would succeed in Egypt, it would be a catastrophe in the region. Such a concept of spreading Islamism would in fact be at least as reactionary as the Zionist system.

   15.   A demand which can be raised here against the Zionist regime is: break of the diplomatic relations with the Israeli Zionist state by all states of the EU, at least as long as it is not ready to abandon its racist policy and its violation of the Palestine people, for that is definitely not the case.
   
Secondly, the demand for a democratic secular Palestine must be raised unconditionally. Whoever here wants to fight colonialism must be asked, even it is a religious organization, to acknowledge that a secular state is to be aimed at, in which all religions, the different Islamic directions included, can work and live on an equal footing, otherwise there cannot be a solution for the region. And if there is something positive in the negative, than it certainly is the fact that the Israeli advance will again, against their will, prove the weakness of the depraved Arab regimes as well as the weakness and the big mouth of Islamic fundamentalists.
    
Really, we in Europe cannot solve the problem for the Arabs. It is possible to refute the aggression and attack it, but the war against the Israeli-Zionist aggression must be lead by the Arab states themselves. If there is a task here, then it is to really support such forces in the Arab countries which will in the future be able to act more efficiently against Israel. All Arabs, in fact, must ask themselves why they are not capable, in spite of the majority they form in that region, to succeed against Israeli Zionism. This has, predominantly, to do with their own inner social structures and class structures. This question must be addressed. If this question is circumvented, further defeats are to come.
      
Furthermore there exists the question of the corruptive influence of oil money in the whole region. It simply is a fact that Saudi-Arabia, above all, and the gulf emirates with their money play a certain role in the whole Arab region and simultaneously are closely connected to the main forces of finance capitalism which are based on mineral resources (oil monopolies). It is impossible to intend a struggle against an aggression and to collaborate with those who pursue the aggression through the backdoor. This is bound to collapse. As long as these practices and methods are continued or accepted by Arab forces, the defeats will continue. This has to be said with all strictness.

Hartmut Dicke
   
Gruppe Neue Einheit

www.neue-einheit.com