Resistance grows as West Asia war widens

For over a year, the capitalist media has falsely portrayed Israel’s genocidal war against the people of Palestine as a war between Israel and Hamas, the resistance group that launched the Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023. The Flood was a heroic challenge to apartheid conditions imposed on Palestinians since 1948.

There is evidence that the Zionist regime seeks to establish a “Greater Israel” by expelling the Arab masses from occupied Palestine and beyond. The Jerusalem Post published an article on Sept. 25 advocating Israeli control over “not only modern-day Israel, but the West Bank, Gaza and parts of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey.” 

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich “claimed Israel would gradually extend control over Palestinian territories, as well as parts of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.” This is the expansionist goal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party. (theweek.com, Oct. 18) 

The war against Palestine has widened, becoming a regional and potentially global war. Israel bombed a residential building in Damascus, Syria, Nov. 14, martyring two leaders of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, Abdul Aziz Saeed Al-Minawi (Abu Saeed) and Rasmi Youssef Abu Issa (Abu Issam), and other members of the resistance organization. Two days later, in another targeted assassination, Israel bombed the headquarters of the Ba’ath Party in Lebanon, killing Hezbollah’s media relations official, Hajj Muhammad Afif.

The vast majority of those slaughtered and wounded in Palestine and now Lebanon are non-combatants, a large number of them children. The Palestinian Ministry of Health put the number of fatalities at 43,846 on November 17, but the number may be much higher. 

Last July, the medical journal The Lancet stated that “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.” (July 10) Many more people have been martyred since then.

A death toll of 200,000 represents almost 9% of the population of the Gaza Strip! That fits anyone’s definition of genocide.

Slaughter expands to Lebanon, U.S. sends troops 

Over 3,000 people have been killed by Israeli troops in Beirut, its suburbs and other parts of Lebanon. Now the Israeli regime/army has handed Hezbollah a ceasefire “proposal” that is tantamount to demanding surrender.

The widening of the war is reflected in the expanding role of the primary backer of the Zionist state, U.S. imperialism. In October, Washington sent 100 U.S. troops to Israel to accompany its latest gift, a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile battery, and 3,000 additional troops to bases and ships around West Asia. This brings the total number of U.S. troops in the region to 43,000.

U.S. and British armed forces have bombed cities in Yemen in retaliation for Yemen’s targeting of ships attempting to deliver weapons to Israel.

Regardless of what some voters were misled to believe, President-elect Donald Trump will not bring peace to West Asia. This was made clear by the huge billboards that popped up in Tel Aviv reading, “Trump, make Israel great again.”

Axis of Resistance weakening Israel

The flip side of this tragedy is that the Axis of Resistance — which includes the united armed resistance groups in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Ansarallah in Yemen and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — has dealt a major blow to Israel and its imperialist supporters. 

Hezbollah, the Palestinian Resistance and other forces in the Axis of Resistance have, time after time, hit bases, tanks and gatherings of the Israel Occupation Forces with rockets and drones. Attempts at a ground invasion of Lebanon have been rebuffed by Hezbollah, which recently hit Netanyahu’s residence with flares.

Ansarallah has hit ships bound for Israel. “The combination of wide-area surveillance, close-in target shadowing and terminal guidance has allowed the Houthis to achieve some impressive feats of marksmanship, such as an apparent near-miss on a U.S. aircraft carrier,” said Michael Knights, referring to the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, almost hit in June. (nationalinterest.org, Nov. 2)

IOF morale is at an all-time low, and as casualties among its soldiers mount, Israel is having to employ mercenaries. Zionist settlers are leaving Israel in record numbers, and Israel’s economy is in shambles. The settler-colonial project is in jeopardy.

Why? To quote the Popular Resistance Committees: “Our people, their resistance and the axis of resistance will continue with steadfastness and determination until the aggression is broken and the fascist zionist project targeting the entire nation is defeated and crushed.” (Resistance News Network, Nov. 16)