Aftermath of Israeli attack on Beirut -- image via X
The South African Communist Party (SACP) along with the Communist parties of Canada, India and Greece have all issued powerful statements condemning Israel's brutal attacks on Lebanon.
The National Secretariat of the Communist Party of India issued today (September 29, 2024) the following statement:
The Communist Party of India (CPI) expresses its grave concern over the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, by Israeli forces. This act represents a significant escalation in an already volatile region. Since October 7, 2023, more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including over 16,000 children, and nearly 2 million Gazans have been displaced. Hezbollah, as a resistance movement, has always supported the just cause of Palestine and resisted Israel's ongoing aggression against Lebanon.
The assassination of Hassan Nasrallah is likely to incite retaliatory strikes, further inflaming tensions between Hezbollah, Israel, and neighboring countries. It will undoubtedly destabilize the Middle East, drawing nations into a broader and potentially full-scale conflict.
CPI condemns Israel’s barbaric attack on Lebanon and calls upon Israel to immediately cease its dangerous aggression against the people of Lebanon and Gaza. The CPI believes that only UN proposed two-state solution can bring peace to Middle East. Peace cannot be achieved through military strikes or assassinations. Dialogue, diplomacy, and firm initiatives for an independent Palestinian homeland, with pre-1967 borders and East Jerusalem as its capital, are the only viable paths to resolve the ongoing crisis.
In expressing its unwavering solidarity with the people of Palestine and Lebanon, CPI calls upon the government of India not to adopt any pro-US or Israeli stance. Instead, India should condemn the warmongering policies of the US and Israel to strengthen its respectful position in the Global South.
CPI calls upon all its units to organize demonstrations on October 7, along with other Left parties, to oppose Israeli aggression and reaffirm our solidarity with the people of Palestine and Lebanon.
Solidarity with the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon
On 30 September, the Press Office of the CC (Central Committee) of the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) issued a statement on the escalation of Israeli aggression, which reads as follows:
The terrorist state of Israel, with the blessing and the support of the USA, NATO and the EU, is proceeding to a generalized war against the peoples of the Middle East, with unpredictable consequences for the wider region and internationally.
The bombings in Beirut and Yemen, the assassinations of political leaders such as H. Nasrallah and others, some of them on foreign territory, the preparations for a ground operation in Lebanon and the threats against Iran, together with the ongoing operations in Palestine and the genocide of the Palestinian people, prove that a plan is underway to escalate the war and the imperialist interventions, the impact of which goes beyond the borders of the Middle East.
The pretexts of ‘self-defence’ used by Israel and its allies have not only collapsed in the face of the ongoing crimes, but also exposed in the eyes of the peoples those who insist on invoking them.
The New Democracy government is complicit in these crimes. From the very beginning, it has adopted and continues to promote Israel’s pretexts, as have other parties, while providing Israel and its allies with multifaceted political, economic and military support, such as the dispatch of a Greek frigate to the Red Sea, thus drawing our people into dangerous adventures. Therefore, Mr. Mitsotakis’ wishful thinking about “de-escalation and stability” is nothing but blatant and provocative hypocrisy, as the Greek government is supporting in every way the fire-starter who has set the region ablaze.
Now it is necessary for the people to intensify the mass condemnation of the Israeli crimes, to strengthen the struggle against the involvement of our country and to express solidarity with the peoples who shed their blood due to imperialist plans and wars.
Monday, 30 September 2024: The South African Communist Party (SACP) condemns the apartheid Israeli settler regime’s murder of the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and other Lebanese people in a continuous imperialist aggression, threatening Lebanon’s national sovereignty and violating international law. The attacks escalate tensions against the axis of resistance to imperialism.
The United Nations’ records show that, owing to the apartheid Israeli settler regime’s attacks on the people of Lebanon, more than 50,000 have fled Lebanon for Syria. At least 700 people since Monday and on Sunday alone 105 people were killed and 359 wounded in the attacks by the apartheid Israeli settler regime as its army jets continued nonstop bombardment across Lebanon, including suburbs of the capital Beirut.
The attacks by the apartheid Israeli settler regime, which has the automatic backing of the imperialist regime of the United States, have led to the displacement of over 200,000 people inside Lebanon.
Israel’s attacks against Lebanon happen within the context of its heinous crimes in Palestine, in which the occupying regime has killed over 41,586 people in Gaza since 7 October 2023 in an act of genocide. A third of the casualties are children, with thousands still buried under destroyed buildings and infrastructure, including over 5,000 children.
All these are crimes for which the apartheid Israeli regime’s leaders must account. The continued attacks are also within the apartheid Israel’s quest to control the Middle East region in pursuit of a bigger imperialist agenda.
The SACP conveys its message of solidarity to the people of Lebanon in their defence for their independence and national sovereignty. We further call for international solidarity for the people in the Middle East who have been the victims of colonial land expropriation and imperialist bombardment for many decades.
The Communist Party of Canada strongly condemns the recent Israeli attacks against Lebanon, the largest and deadliest since the 2006 war. In the span of barely a week, we have witnessed the detonation of Israeli-rigged pagers, bombings, and airstrikes—some reaching the suburbs of Beirut—that have killed more than a thousand people, primarily civilians. These attacks have destroyed public infrastructure, including roads, hospitals, and schools, and forcibly displaced half a million people.
We condemn the recent statements by Israel which, despite repeated calls for an immediate ceasefire to prevent Lebanon from becoming a second Gaza, persists in its determination to intensify the attacks and is literally preparing to invade Lebanon. We are concerned by this escalation of violence, which has taken place almost for the last year. This has resulted in 43,000 deaths at the very least and the almost total destruction of the Gaza Strip since the genocide began last October. We know that the objective of Israel and its Western imperialist backers is to ignite the whole region.
In order to complete its plan to destroy Gaza and then annex the West Bank, Netanyahu’s Zionist government is seeking to wipe out any force that might support the Palestinian people’s struggle for national liberation, or any force opposing Israeli hegemony in the region.
Like the genocide against Gaza, we know that Israel’s criminal actions are only taking place because they are unpunished by the United States and its NATO allies, including Canada. In fact, for almost a year now, the vast majority of the world’s countries have been condemning Israel’s crimes, including the UN itself.
In addition to Israeli hegemony, the hegemony of Western imperialism in the region is waning. This can be seen in Saudi Arabia, a long-standing ally of the United States, which re-established relations with Iran in March 2023, and in the recent Beijing Declaration, which supersedes the Oslo Accords as the framework for peace negotiations. Another example is the failure of the US strategy to dismantle Syria and impose its ‘Greater Middle East’ plan.
It is in this context of relative weakness that NATO and its allies are relying on their spearhead in the region, Israel, to guarantee the interests of their monopolies, at the risk of unleashing a regional war that could extend well beyond the Levant.
Ultimately, what is at stake is neither Israel’s right to exist nor its security, but the right of peoples to their sovereignty in the face of increasingly violent, barbaric and murderous Western imperialism.
This is why we are calling on all the political, trade union and democratic forces fighting for peace and democracy to organize against the deadly silence of the Trudeau government, which is tacitly giving a blank cheque to the Netanyahu government. We also salute the tenacious and constant efforts of the Lebanese Communist Party, the heroic Patriotic Resistance Party, to whom we send our revolutionary greetings. It is not too late. The forces exist to block the road to war. It is up to us to mobilize them.
Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada
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