Every week, the US-Israel war machine invents new levels of depravity. They have carried out a regime of assassinations and implemented the systematic kidnapping, torture, and sexual assault of Palestinians. They have dropped bombs on schools, homes, hospitals, and houses of worship for nearly a year in Gaza, while carrying out pogroms in the West Bank. Yesterday in Lebanon, the US-Israel war machine invented a new level of depravity, carrying out a mass terrorist attack by detonating thousands of pagers. 

In homes, in crowded marketplaces, in cars, and across the whole country, thousands of pagers beeped for several seconds before suddenly exploding. At least 12 people were killed and thousands suffered injuries, including children and elderly people. The heroic medical staff working to treat the injured reported that 10 percent of the injured were in critical condition, that people had lost hands and fingers, and suffered injuries to the face and stomach. One of the youngest victims of this brazen attack was 9-year-old Fatima Abdullah, who had just returned home from her first day of 4th grade. 

This Israeli operation makes a mockery of any notion of rules of warfare, respect for sovereignty, or international humanitarian law. There is not another country on the planet who could carry out such a ruthless and arbitrary terrorist attack on the communication system of a neighboring country with such impunity. Even as we write this statement, the media is reporting new rounds of explosions across Lebanon, including where funerals for those killed yesterday are taking place. 

US officials are currently claiming that they had no prior knowledge of this attack. Whether or not that proves true, the more important fact remains that every Israeli crime, from Gaza to the West Bank, Lebanon to Syria, Iran to Yemen, is a US-Israeli crime. The US has given Israel billions of dollars in military aid in the past decades, essentially a financial blank check, and continues to provide the genocidal Israeli military with all the weapons it requests. Genocide Joe, Killer Kamala, and the entire apparatus of US imperialist foreign policy have lined behind the genocide in Gaza, giving diplomatic cover to any and all Israeli war moves. 

Even while occasionally disagreeing about some tactic or degree of immiseration to cause, the US and Israel continue to move as they have for decades: in lockstep to maintain the overall US domination of the Middle East and North Africa, to punish the peoples and countries that assert their rights to sovereignty and self-determination, to ensure that the US and its allies can continue to exploit the people and resources of the region for their own economic benefit, and to keep the key commodities flowing. Israel is a nuclear-armed pariah state and an attack dog of US imperialism. 

In the face of unimaginable horror, the people of Palestine, Lebanon, and across the region are demonstrating a steadfast commitment to resilience, resistance, and dignity. At the heart of this monstrous system of global imperialism is the United States, which serves not only as the armorer, the banker, and the cheerleader for the Gaza genocide, but also the driver of the aggression against Lebanon. People who live in this country are way overdue to take their place alongside the people of the world, break with the imperialist consensus, and start taking risks and making sacrifices to end this genocide and the regional escalation. 

Stand with Palestine, Stand with Lebanon! 
No votes for genocide! 

Behind Enemy Lines
9/18/2024