Assassination of Hamas political leader, bombing of Dahiye, Lebanon, will lead to defeat of Israel

Workers World Party denounces the latest criminal Israeli / U.S. attacks in Lebanon, Iran and on Palestine, including the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political bureau of Hamas. WWP also condemns a U.S. drone attack near Basil, Iraq, that killed four members of the Popular Mobilization Units. 

These criminal acts are a major escalation of the war on Palestine. They will  only lead to a howling defeat for Zionism.   

This dangerous escalation flows directly from the U.S. public embrace of Israeli war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by President  Joe Biden, presidential contenders Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and both Houses of the U.S. Congress, which gave him 23 standing ovations.

The assassination of Haniyeh took place while he was in Tehran, Iran, for the swearing-in ceremony of Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Workers World Party sends our revolutionary respect and condolences for Hamas leader and martyr Ismail Haniyeh’s decades of unbending resistance to Zionist occupation. This cowardly murder of the chief Palestinian negotiator will have wide consequences.

Israel’s bombing on July 30 in the southern part of Beirut, in Dahiye, is in the most densely populated, poorest part of Beirut. The bombing once again directly targeted civilians.  A senior leader of Hezbollah, Fouad Shukr, was also killed.  

It is not an accident that Israel struck the Dahiye neighborhood of Beirut. It was intended to recall the notorious Israeli military strategy of directly targeting civilians and essential civilian infrastructure called the “Dahiye Doctrine

The Dahiye Doctrine employs disproportionate force against defenseless civilians. It is a military doctrine that was employed by Nazi Germany. Israel previously saturation bombed and leveled into rubble the entire section of Southern Beirut, called Dahiye. Israeli General Gadi Eizenkot, the commander of the operation declared: “What happened in the Dahiye quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which shots will be fired in the direction of Israel. We will wield disproportionate power and cause immense damage and destruction. This isn’t a suggestion. It’s a plan that has already been authorized.”

Despite massive destruction and saturation bombing in 2006, Israel was defeated by Hezbollah fighters and forced to totally withdraw from Lebanon. Like Israel’s resounding defeat in Lebanon in 2000, the defeat of 2006 confirmed the limits of Israel’s U.S.-supplied military equipment. It was no match for armed people’s resistance.

After 2006, Dahiye was painstakingly and entirely rebuilt with the assistance of Iran and aid from throughout the entire Arab world.

Criminally widening the war by again bombing Dahiye will lead to a far greater defeat for Zionism and its U.S. backers.