WW condemns U.S.-backed Israeli murder of Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah

Workers World condemns Israel’s assassination of the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, that took place in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, on Sept. 27. Nasrallah had been leading the Lebanon-based liberation organization for 32 years. His assassination was part of a larger massacre, as the same Israeli airstrikes killed and wounded hundreds of Lebanese people, mostly civilians. 

Workers World also condemns the Joe Biden administration’s complicity in the assassination of Sayyed Nasrallah and the ongoing massacre of civilians in Lebanon and in Gaza and the West Bank. We point out that New York City police protected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he promoted his military’s war crimes in his speech to a near empty U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York and ordered the strikes on Lebanon. 

The president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, said on Sept. 27 that, “The international community will not forget that the order for this terrorist attack came from New York, and the Americans cannot absolve themselves of complicity with the Zionist regime.” 

The same attack that killed Nasrallah killed Brigadier General Abbas Nilforooshan, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Council’s deputy chief for operation. Three months earlier, another Israeli airstrike killed the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, Iran. 

According to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) for Palestine Refugees, more than 50,000 Lebanese and Syrians living in Lebanon have crossed into Syria to escape Israeli airstrikes that are targeting homes, hospitals, schools and other civilian facilities since Israel’s Sept. 17 cyberattacks on Lebanon. This pattern of massacres is very similar to what has happened in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. 

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris lined up with the war criminal Netanyahu by labeling Nasrallah’s murder “a measure of justice.” The administration’s position is no surprise. The U.S. recently granted another $8.7 billion in arms to Israel to continue its almost one year genocide in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon. 

All of the Palestinian resistance factions have condemned the execution of Nasrallah in solidarity with Hezbollah, a member of the Axis of Resistance, along with Yemeni, Iraqi, Syrian and Iranian resistance forces, in solidarity with the anti-apartheid, anti-occupation armed struggle in Palestine. It’s no secret that the Israeli settler-state has considered Hezbollah a major threat to its continued domination of its seized territory since the liberation group was established in the early 1980s. 

It is of utmost importance that pro-Palestine activists worldwide show solidarity with the Lebanese people and with Hezbollah by denouncing not only the Zionist regime but its main ally, U.S. imperialism, along with other Western governments. This duty applies especially to anti-imperialists in the NATO countries and their close allies. Workers World adds its name to this denunciation with no hesitation. 

Israel could not exist one day without the political and military support of U.S. imperialism, which is the main enemy of oppressed peoples everywhere from West Asia (the Middle East), Africa, Latin America, Asia and right here in North America in the belly of the beast.

As the resistance organizations of the West Asian region have said, the killing of Nasrallah, just like the killing of Hamas leader Haniyeh, will not diminish the struggle for liberation but will only serve to intensify the struggle against colonialism, occupation and imperialism. As Miriam Saleh from Press TV stated, “Israel may have killed one Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, but they created hundreds of thousands of Nasrallahs.”

Long live the resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria! 

Down with Israel and U.S. imperialism!