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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

HEZBOLLAH STRIKES BACK

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

Hezbollah has struck back hitting Haifa and Tel Aviv following devastating Israeli air-raids on Lebanon that threaten to plunge the entire region into a sea of blood. Hezbollah rockets rained down on military targets in northern Israel including Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv and a strategic military base in Haifa this week in “strike for a strike” reprisals in defence of Lebanon and its people.

This week prominent climate activist Greta Thunberg joined demands to boycott Chevron over its supplying of energy to Israel. “In Palestine and all over the world, the fight against colonialism and corporations’ destruction of the planet are intrinsically linked” she said. Look at Chevron. Everyone knows that Chevron is one of the world’s biggest climate criminals, but the oil giant is also fuelling Israel’s genocide in Palestine”.

Meanwhile an international human rights organisation has raised the alarm over the escalated attacks on civilians and residential neighbourhoods in Lebanon, saying the Israelis intentionally leaves civilians both in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon with insufficient time to flee from bombed areas.

The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor says Israel’s intensified assaults on civilians and residential zones in Lebanon, coupled with evacuation orders, have sparked significant concern across the region. On Monday Israel carried out over 330 raids in more than 117 Lebanese towns and cities, particularly in the south and Beqaa regions, killing at least 558 people, including 50 children, and wounding 1,800 others.

Aida Touma Sliman, a communist MP in the Knesset – the Israeli parliament, called the deadly Israeli strikes against the people in Lebanon a “massacre”.

“The same shocking images we saw at the beginning of the war in Gaza, the same horror, the same blind support. Innocent women, children and elderly people are crushed under the bombings. How much more blood will be spilled until they realise here that war will not bring any security?” she said.

“This war brings only destruction and crimes, not peace or security. Gaza is still suffering under the bombings, and the humanitarian crisis is worsening. There is no safe place, even the evacuees are bombed in their tents, exposed to hunger, disease, and rains. In the occupied West Bank, the settlers attack and lead terror day after day. Did all this bring back the hostages?” she said.

At the United Nations People’s China and Russia con- demned Israel’s new offensive that clearly has the blessing of US imperialism and the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has broken ranks with his NATO allies to urge the international community to take action against Benjamin Netanyahu’s “murder network,” once again likening the Israeli prime minister to Adolf Hitler.

The Kremlin has called for an immediate cessation of hostilities “before the situation spirals completely out of control” and China called for Israel to abandon its reliance on force and refrain from further risky actions that could plunge the Middle East into new disasters. And in his address to the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, condemned the Israeli invasion of Gaza, describing the Palestinian enclave as a “concentration camp”.

Erdogan accused countries that unconditionally support Israel, including the United States, of being complicit in the violence against Palestinians. He emphasised the need for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, as well as a hostage-prisoner exchange and uninterrupted humanitarian aid.

“Just as Hitler was stopped by the alliance of humanity 70 years ago, Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped by the alliance of humanity,” Erdogan said. He accused Netanyahu of trying to “drag the entire region into war for the sake of his political fortunes” .