On Lebanon:

Lebanon [1]

Dying and Killing for Israel, Palestine, The United States, and Capitalism : August 2006.

T Miles ::: Socialist Party - USA, Secretary: Greater NYC Local.

As a party and as human beings, The Socialist Party of New York City has condemned the mass murder taking place in South West Asia at this moment. From Beit Jalin to Haifa to Sadr City, the United States government is provoking, sustaining and arming those hateful and desperate enough to kill entire peoples.

Make no mistake, these wars are wars of control over land and resources. The profit from such wars goes into the pockets of the rich, and distracts us from the life of wage slavery which we live. The fear and hatred it engenders strengthens our ties to nationality, religion, and government. It makes us all more willing to see others as less than human, just as it strengthens our desire for some violent savior to ride in and protect us from our neighbors. All for a price written in very fine print.

The United States continues to occupy the third largest oil producer in the world while gasoline prices reach record highs, as do the profits of oil companies and arms manufacturers. These companies are filled with former government officials and always have room for more. It is these same corporations that cannot possibly support a minimum wage increase for fear of their bottom line. It is in the interests of these same people that "a new Middle East" is being designed.

Israel continues to occupy the homes of others some forty years after their seizure. Having dispensed with the need for cheap Arab labor since the influx of East Europeans after 1991, Israel no longer needs the people of the occupied lands. In fact, Israeli nationalists fear that Arab-Israelis may soon become a majority, and that ethnic and religous supremecy might be overturned by democracy. This cannot be allowed to happen. An economically suffering Israel still wants their neighbor's land, but land without their neighbors on it. Land for new housing, water, resources, and cheap real-estate. [The Golan is not just for gun emplacements: it is now boasts the only ski resort in the Israel.] The hyper-nationalistic painting of one people as more deserving than another is an ideology which justifies seizure, murder, and occupation. It is hoped that those not like them will simply disappear. If not, they can be helped along.

convoy of civilians killed by US 'smart' bombs. You paid for this.

The inevitable backlash we now see is not some 'eternal hatred'. It has been created in our times. It can be destroyed only by giving all people justice and respect.

A unilateral and immediate withdrawl of Israel from all territory occupied in 1967 must be the first step in this. Without justice, there will never be peace. As the PLO and PFLP were replaced by AMAL and Islamic Jihad, who were replaced by Hezballah and Hamas, there will always another resistance movement, more furious, more hate-filled and more powerful than the last. There is no buffer zone large enough to protect a nation which occupies the homes of another.

The United States has been complicit in this crime for half a century. This complicity is not born of sentiment, but of political calculation in the service of the US ruling class.

Israel can be our hammer, able to do things even the United States cannot. Israelis, so used to oppression, no longer have fear of world censure. They can attack Iran or Syria, to (in the la-la-land of the current government) protect our project in Iraq, and to enable the United States to control the lifeblood of our economy: oil. Capitalists whose fixed costs are controlled by others are uneasy capitalists. A predictable supply of energy is crucial to predictable profit.

Israel can be our most reliable market. Occupation has led to eternal war and eternal war has led to eternal markets for United States corporations. $US10 billion in the last few years alone have been taken from your taxes, given to the Israeli government, and passed immediately into the pockets of politically connected US arms dealers. Israeli manufacture, technology and elites have few other places to go, and are always a ready resource.

Israel can be our most reliable friend. There is nothing our government can do that will be publicly opposed by the Israeli government. The political cover this gives the United States helps it to sell its actions to the American people. With Israel firmly in tow, there is always a "Coalition of the Willing".

Attacks during first month of the war [2]
But the time is coming soon when the world will no longer tolerate the Israeli ideology that says that the lives of Jews and non-Jews are not of equal worth.

Jewish thinkers, artists and leaders have long been the most powerful voices against such hatred. That even Israel, through Zionism, has come to regard the murder of children to protect their own as acceptable shows just how alike we all are. We cannot allow the nationalistic right wing of Israel to silence us with the cudgel of anti-semitism. Hatred of Jewish people and culture still exists and cannot be tolerated in any community. But Zionism has become religious nationalism which seeks to create an 'pure' state for one group alone. The struggle to do so has allowed Zionists to see any means as acceptable and any non-Jewish life as expendable.

It is long past time to reject this ideology as the fascism that it is. To accept Zionism is to accept eternal war with Israel's neighbors, or else to accept the eradication of these neighbors. We cannot support such an ideology among a people who have suffered oppression, any more than can support it among the French or Sudanese or the Turkish people. Nor can we support the cynical use of Zionism and those willing to die for it by the United States government and ruling class.

Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians have a right to resist Israeli occupation. At the same time we must oppose the ideology of theocratic hatred of groups like Hezballah. The targeting of civilians, like the blueprint of religious dictatorship some resistance groups hold must be universally rejected. If there is one thing that Zionism has taught the world, it is that oppressed peoples are as likely as any to become oppressors. National, ethnic and religious difference cannot prevent us from seeing our common humanity. It is that human dignity, not ethnic grievence, which we must defend.

As Socialists we fight to destroy these false divisions. We know that they are used to keep us sweating and bleeding for the rich and powerful. Until Israel jetisons Zionism, militarism, and occupation; until Hezballah and Hamas reject theocracy and bigotry; until the United States rejects empire that plays with the lives of all working people like pawns; until then we will fight.