US Calls for Ceasefire But Keeps Supporting War

 by Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. Posted on August 23, 2024

 

On August 12, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, issued a press statement commemorating the anniversary of the adoption of the Geneva Conventions.

He said: “The 75th anniversary of the adoption of the 1949 Geneva Conventions is a fitting occasion to reaffirm our commitment to respecting international humanitarian law… We call on others to do the same.”

Except Israel.

Blinken added: “Faced with the horrible reality of war, parties to armed conflict must comply with international humanitarian law to mitigate many of war’s worst humanitarian consequences, support pathways to peace, and advance the protection of civilians and other victims.”

Except Israel.

Of course, Blinken did not add the words “except Israel” but he should have, considering what had happened just two days earlier.

On August 10, Israel dropped bombs on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians, killing over 100 and injuring hundreds more.

The New York Times reported that one witness “said he found a scene of carnage unlike any he had seen in the past 10 months of war: A prayer hall strewed with bodies and body parts over two floors.” Another witness said “the dead were all in pieces.”

CNN said there was “no advance warning of the attack” and reported that the director for ambulance and emergency services said, “All of these people who were targeted were civilians, unarmed children, the elderly, men and women.”

NBC News described the event as “one of the deadliest attacks in the 10-month war” and said the strikes hit the school “during dawn prayers.” The network reported, “The White House said it was deeply concerned.” Two days earlier, Secretary Blinken announced that the US was sending billions more to Israel in a new weapons package.

The Financial Times quoted a surgeon as saying, “This was a very bloody day,” and that he had performed several amputations including on at least four children.

War deaths in Gaza have now passed 40,000 with thousands more still buried under the rubble. At least two-thirds were women and children. Over 95 percent of the people in Palestine were not members of Hamas.

Jeffrey Sachs is a world-renowned economist and foreign policy expert and holds the highest rank awarded by Columbia University. He is a Jew and a fierce critic of this war.

He said during Judge Napolitano’s August 13th podcast that Israel is now a “completely lawless country.” He said Israel is “doing whatever it can to provoke” war in the Middle East and “this is not what the American people want.”

He added that “Netanyahu and his party want no Palestinian state and this means no peace.” He said this is what the Israel Lobby wants.

Netanyahu received 50 standing ovations when he spoke to the Congress on July 24. None of these members would have applauded the killing of thousands of children in any other country. In fact, they would have been rushing to condemn it.

Professor Sachs has said in many interviews that the US is “complicit in the genocide” that is still going on in Gaza. He says this war would not last one more day without US support.

I believe God will punish the members of Hamas who did horrible things to Jewish people last October 7. But I also believe that God loves the innocent people of Palestine, too, especially the little children.

Psalm 147 says: “The Lord builds up Jerusalem, He gathers together the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” There are certainly no more outcast people in Israel today than those living at the brink of starvation in Gaza.

The Bible also instructs us, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, to “seek peace and pursue it.”

A few weeks ago the US supported a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. Netanyahu has ignored this because he either wants to kill all the Palestinian people or at least ethnically cleanse them out of Israel.

We are $35 trillion in debt. We are spending money we do not have to support this war. Almost every member of Congress is scared to death that the Israel Lobby will spend millions against them if they speak out against Netanyahu. I guess, unfortunately, that this war will continue.

Reprinted with author’s permission from The Knoxville Focus.

John James Duncan Jr. is an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for Tennessee’s 2nd congressional district from 1988 to 2019. A lawyer, former judge, and former long serving member of the Army National Guard, he is a member of the Republican Party.

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Israel Using Ceasefire Talks to Expand Colonization of Palestine, UN Expert Says

 By Sharon Zhang , Truthout Published August 22, 2024

 

Israeli tanks are seen next to destroyed buildings during a ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip on July 3, 2024.

Israeli officials’ ceasefire demands show that they aren’t just using ceasefire negotiations to prolong their genocide of Gaza, but also to secure permission to further deepen their colonization of Palestine, a UN expert has said.

In the latest ceasefire talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been insistent that Israel be able to maintain a permanent military occupation of Gaza’s border with Egypt and a corridor built by Israeli forces cutting across the middle of the Gaza Strip, which Israelis respectively call the Philadelphi Corridor and Netzarim Corridor.

Israel’s insistence on maintaining control over these corridors is a clear show of their intention to expand their ethnic cleansing and “eat up” more of Palestine, said Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories.

“Under the guise of ‘ceasefire negotiations’ Israel is trying to create the conditions for permanent occupation and more land grab. Those familiar with Palestine’s history recognize in what is happening to the Palestinians under Israel’s unlawful occupation, the pattern of settler colonialism,” said Albanese on social media on Thursday.

Albanese shared an observation from University of Edinburgh international relations professor Nicola Perugini, who noted: “Corridors are key tools of fragmentation, enclavisation and land dispossession in the history of Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. Corridors (Allon Plan etc) were key in settling the West Bank.”

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Israel’s ground assault is now so widespread that Palestinians have no escape from the front line. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout

August 22, 2024

The Allon Plan was a proposal drawn up by then-Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon after the 1967 war to annex Gaza, forcibly transfer Palestinians, and partition the West Bank. As part of the plan, corridors would be built to connect the areas partitioned to Israel and Jordan. The plan was never put in place, but experts have noted that its principles of annexation and forcible transfers have echoed across decades of Zionist policy.

Indeed, over the past months, Israel has built two corridors in Gaza that analysts say indicate their intention for a permanent military occupation. According to Forensic Architecture, as well as the Netzarim Corridor, Israel has been building a road that gives Israeli forces direct access to Gaza City. The construction of these two corridors are “infrastructural indications of an intended military presence” in north Gaza, the group said.

At the same time, a permanent Israeli takeover of the Philadelphi corridor — a major sticking point for Netanyahu in negotiations — would mean that Israel gets to control the entirety of Gaza’s border, as its border with Egypt is the only side of Gaza not surrounded by Israel. Hamas has been strongly opposed to Israel’s occupation of the two corridors in negotiations.

In essence, Israel’s position in the ceasefire talks is for there to be no ceasefire — for Israel to be allowed to continue its genocide for as long as Israeli leaders desire — and for mediators to give Israel permission to expand its occupation of Palestine. This means that, if U.S. officials agree to an Israeli “ceasefire” plan, they are not only giving the green light to the genocide, but also for Israel to take steps toward annexing Gaza.

Corporate media outlets have covered the ceasefire talks with abandon, willingly repeating U.S. officials’ claims that Hamas, not Israel, is opposed to a ceasefire — despite Hamas leaders’ clear acceptance of President Joe Biden’s three-phase ceasefire deal.

These outlets seemingly seek to obfuscate the truth of the negotiations and run endless cover for Israel; in fact, perhaps sensing Israel’s positioning in the talks, The Atlantic published a much-criticized article recently essentially seeking to redefine the entire concept of settler colonialism in order to absolve Israel of the bloody practice.

Experts and commentators have noted that the true purpose of the ceasefire talks and the U.S.’s participation in them, is to give license for the genocide to continue.

Like the Oslo process in the 1990s, analyst Mouin Rabbani said recently, the ceasefire talks serve as a way to “buy time” for Israel’s genocide. “[T]heir purpose is process, and their objective has therefore been to avoid reaching a ceasefire agreement rather than concluding one,” Rabbani wrote.

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Sharon Zhang

Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter: @zhang_sharon.

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𝐁𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐧 ‘𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡’ 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐚𝐡𝐮

 Sources told 𝑌𝑛𝑒𝑡 that Blinken’s remarks about the negotiations indicate his ‘amateurism, naivety, and lack of understanding’

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, August 22, 2024

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s comments about Gaza ceasefire talks this week sentenced the negotiations to death, Middle East Eye reported Thursday, citing Israeli media.

After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Blinken said the Israeli leader agreed to a new US proposal and that it was now up to Hamas to agree to the deal. However, the US proposal included new demands from Netanyahu that Hamas considers unacceptable. Israeli, US, and Arab sources have all said Netanyahu’s demands are too hardline and will prevent a deal.

Sources speaking to Ynet slammed Blinken for making the comments that portrayed Hamas as the obstacle to a deal. “Blinken made a very serious foul here that indicates innocence, amateurism, naivety, and lack of understanding,” a source said.

They added that Blinken’s positive spin on the ceasefire negotiations was likely an effort to prevent the situation from overshadowing the Democratic National Convention.

“He broadcast optimism from intra-American political considerations, so that the Democratic convention in Chicago would go smoothly, but senior officials of the Israeli negotiating team who listened to his press conference wanted to dispel the speculations,” the source said.

The sources called Blinken’s comments a “gift” to Netanyahu and said the Israeli leader’s continued insistence that Israel must maintain control of the Gaza-Egypt border, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, will prevent a deal.

“There is no deal and there is no summit if the Israeli insistence on deploying forces along the Philadelphi axis continues,” the source said. “What was implied in Blinken’s words is that the US is giving Netanyahu support for IDF forces to remain in Philadelphi, while both the Egyptians refuse and Hamas refuses.”

US and Israeli officials are due to meet again in Cairo this week to discuss the ceasefire, but Arab mediators have said there’s no point in holding talks unless the US puts significant pressure on Netanyahu to back down from his demands and agree to a deal.

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Biden’s Convention Speech Made Absurd Claims About His Gaza Policy

 by Norman Solomon, Antiwar. com, posted on August 21, 2024

An observation from George Orwell – “those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” – is acutely relevant to how President Biden talked about Gaza during his speech at the Democratic convention Monday night. His words fit into a messaging template now in its eleventh month, depicting the U.S. government as tirelessly seeking peace, while supplying the weapons and bombs that have enabled Israel’s continual slaughter of civilians.

“We’ll keep working, to bring hostages home, and end the war in Gaza, and bring peace and security to the Middle East,” Biden told the cheering delegates. “As you know, I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza. A few days ago I put forward a proposal that brought us closer to doing that than we’ve done since October 7th.”

It was a journey into an alternative universe of political guile from a president who just six days earlier had approved sending $20 billion worth of more weapons to Israel. Yet the Biden delegates in the convention hall responded with a crescendo of roaring admiration.

Applause swelled as Biden continued: “We’re working around-the-clock, my secretary of state, to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families, and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war.”

In Chicago’s United Center, the president basked in adulation while claiming to be a peacemaker despite a record of literally making possible the methodical massacres of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Orwell would have understood. A political reflex has been in motion from top U.S. leaders, claiming to be peace seekers while aiding and abetting the slaughter. Normalizing deception about the past sets a pattern for perpetrating such deception in the future.

And so, working inside the paradigm that Orwell described, Biden exerts control over the present, strives to control narratives about the past, and seeks to make it all seem normal, prefiguring the future.

The eagerness of delegates to cheer for Biden’s mendaciously absurd narrative about his administration’s policies toward Gaza was in a broader context – the convention’s lovefest for the lame-duck president.

Hours before the convention opened, Peter Beinart released a short video essay anticipating the fervent adulation. “I just don’t think when you’re analyzing a presidency or a person, you sequester what’s happened in Gaza,” he said. “I mean, if you’re a liberal-minded person, you believe that genocide is just about the worst thing that a country can do, and it’s just about the worst thing that your country can do if your country is arming a genocide.”

Beinart continued: “And it’s really not that controversial anymore that this qualifies as a genocide. I read the academic writing on this. I don’t see any genuine scholars of human rights international law who are saying it’s not indeed there… If you’re gonna say something about Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, you have to factor in what Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, has done, vis-à-vis Gaza. It’s central to his legacy. It’s central to his character. And if you don’t, then you’re saying that Palestinian lives just don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter this particular day, and I think that’s inhumane. I don’t think we can ever say that some group of people’s lives simply don’t matter because it’s inconvenient for us to talk about them at a particular moment.”

Underscoring the grotesque moral obtuseness from the convention stage was the joyful display of generations as the president praised and embraced his offspring. Joe Biden walked off stage holding the hand of his cute little grandson, a precious child no more precious than any one of the many thousands of children the president has helped Israel to kill.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in 2023 by The New Press.

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The ICJ finds that BDS is not merely a right, but an obligation

 The ICJ’s authoritative ruling on the Israeli occupation makes clear that boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli occupation, colonization, and apartheid are not only a moral imperative but also a legal obligation.

By Craig Mokhiber, Mondoweiss, August 13, 2024

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BDS activists in New York City (Photo: Joe Catron)

Israel and its lobby have, for years now, been engaged in a frenzy of activity to further insulate Israel from accountability by using their influence in the West to effectively outlaw organized opposition to Israel. Foremost among these efforts has been the Israeli campaign to penalize calls to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel for its gross violations of human rights. As a result, countless laws and policies are now on the books across the U.S. and the broader West, trampling on core constitutional principles and internationally guaranteed human rights in defense of Israeli impunity. But an advisory opinion issued last month by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) should help to turn that around.

In its historic ruling, the ICJ found that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is entirely unlawful, that Israel practices apartheid and racial segregation, and that all states are under a duty to help bring this to an end, including by cutting off all economic, trade and investment relations with Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In other words, as a matter of international law, all countries are obliged to participate in an economic boycott of Israel’s activities in the occupied Palestinian territory and to divest from any existing economic relations there. 

Because the court was bound by the parameters of the request from the UN General Assembly that triggered its findings, it did not address duties and obligations relating to activities inside the 1948 Green Line. However, the court’s authoritative statement of the requirements of international law makes clear that proponents of BDS have not only the moral high ground but also a firm grounding in international law. 

The court’s advisory opinion in July comes on the heels of the commencement of genocide proceedings against Israel in the ICJ last December, and a request in May by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and the Defense Minister for crimes against humanity, including extermination. Together, they represent a historic shift away from 76 years of Western-sponsored Israeli exceptionalism and impunity, feeding hope of a new era of accountability.  

Recognizing this, Israel, as well as its Western allies accused of complicity in Israel’s international crimes (chief among them, the U.S., UK, and Germany) have been scrambling to oppose, delay, and obstruct action by these courts, both by intervening in court proceedings and, in some cases, by threatening court officials. And indeed, the ICC warrant process has already been inordinately delayed when compared to previous cases. Nevertheless, for its part, the ICJ advisory opinion was both timely and uncompromising in its application of international law to Israel. 

Israel and its allies also defensively claim that advisory opinions of the ICJ are “non-binding” and, indeed, the court cannot compel a state to comply with its findings. But what this tactic ignores is that the laws to which the court refers in its authoritative opinion are, in fact, binding on all states. For example, the court observed that the right of the Palestinians to self-determination, their rights under international human rights and humanitarian law, and the prohibition of Israel’s acquisition of territory by force impose so-called “erga omnes” obligations, that is, binding obligations that apply to all countries. 

Among these obligations are the duty not to recognize or assist the occupation in any way, and the duty to take action to realize the equal rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people. It follows that any policies or acts by a Western country that in any way recognize Israel’s occupation, assist Israel in that occupation (economically, militarily, diplomatically, etc.), or prohibit persons under its jurisdiction from respecting international law by boycotting or divesting from Israel’s illegal occupation, would be unlawful. 

Of course, the U.S., which has long ignored the constraints of international law and invested decades of effort in carving out an exception for Israeli impunity, is likely to reject the court’s findings and oppose the implementing resolution of the UN General Assembly, which is expected to follow. Some other Western states invested in the Israeli axis, like the UK and Germany, may follow suit. But it is likely that most countries, including other Western states, will adjust their policies to ensure legal compliance. 

Groups and individuals targeted by efforts to penalize BDS or to compel people to reject it will now have an important new tool in their legal arsenal as they assert their rights either administratively or judicially. They can now invoke the authoritative ruling of the World Court to credibly assert that participating in boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli occupation, colonization, and apartheid is not only a moral imperative and constitutional and human right, but also an international legal obligation. 

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Haaretz Editorial: Don’t Buy the Lie That Israeli Settler Violence Is the Exception. It’s the Rule

Three of the women who were attacked, in their house in Rahat, on Sunday.Credit: Eliyahu Hershkovitz

Editorial of Israeli Newspaper Haaretz, Aug 13, 2024 12:23 am IDT

In the land of the “wild weeds” of the West Bank, the Jews are above the law and Arabs may be killed with impunity. Four Bedouin women and a 2-year-old girl – Israeli citizens from the city of Rahat – entered the Givat Ronen settlement outpost by mistake on Friday evening. A navigational error nearly cost them their lives. They were beaten, their car was torched and according to one of the women, one of the assailants put a rifle to the toddler’s head.

We must look squarely at the dangerous ultranationalist violence from the breeding ground of the Jewish supremacy enterprise. “We wanted to go toward Nablus, and [the navigation app] Waze misled us,” one of the women related. “We accidentally entered some place and then people started running after the vehicle, throwing rocks from the hill. After they broke all the windows, they sprayed tear gas. What they threw wasn’t stones, but rather [concrete] blocks, big rocks. They all had weapons, there were a lot of them,” she said. “They told us to get out of the car. We told them that we were Israeli citizens, that we didn’t do anything, we just got confused with Waze – and they didn’t even hear us.”

• ‘We can’t compromise’: Far-right MK defends settler attack on Arab-Israeli women
• Israeli forces detain two suspects for assaulting Arab-Israeli women at West Bank outpost
• Arab Israeli women attacked by settlers after they mistakenly entered a West Bank outpost

They got out of the car and fled for their lives as the settlers set their car on fire. The women called the police, which was slow to arrive, and it was the army that eventually rescued them. They were admitted to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva and discharged about two hours later; two of the women had rib and shoulder fractures.

Two suspects in the attack were arrested by the Shin Bet security service and the police on Monday. We must hope that this time, by virtue of the victims being Israeli, the hateful criminals from the territories will be brought to justice. But we must not be deluded into thinking that this will solve the problem of violence in the territories. After all, there are lawmakers who justify it. MK Limor Son Har-Melech did exactly that, claiming that the settlers feared “an incident of espionage, intelligence-gathering.” This is the same Knesset member who, two weeks ago, demonstrated alongside members of the far right who broke into the Sde Teiman base and who attacked and threatened the military advocate general.

“Violence eats away at the foundations of democracy. It must be condemned, denounced, isolated,” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said just moments before he was murdered for political reasons. We must not turn a blind eye to the winds of lynches and pogroms blowing here. The denial mechanism must not be allowed to label this case as an exception that proves the rule. It’s not just a “handful” of people, they aren’t “wild weeds” and it’s not that settlers occasionally slip up and lynch someone. Enough with this lie.

In the absence of a government that wants to deal with this menace, law enforcement and the courts must treat settler violence with the utmost severity. At the same time, the Israeli public must awaken from its moral coma regarding the barbarization of Jewish ultranationalism, which has long since crossed the Green Line into Israel proper.

The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel

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https://archive.is/LMush

Washington intensifies preparations for Middle East war with $20 billion arms sale to Israel

 Jordan Shilton, WSWS. org, Aug 15, 2024

The decision by the United States to supply arms worth $20 billion to Israel one day after announcing the deployment of a second aircraft carrier strike group to the region marks a further step towards a Middle East war. Backed by the entire ruling class, the Biden administration is determined to wage a catastrophic conflict targeting Iran, which it views as one front in a global eruption of imperialist violence against its rivals, which can only be stopped by the independent political mobilisation of the international working class.

With destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip behind him, an Israeli soldier waves from a tank, near the Israel-Gaza border in southern Israel, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024. [AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov]

This is the inescapable conclusion that must be drawn from a review of the contents of the arms sale. After facilitating Israel’s genocide in Gaza for over 10 months, the Biden administration plans to deliver over 50 F-15 fighter jets, advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, 120mm tank ammunition, high explosive mortars and tactical vehicles. The delivery of the full fleet of jets is anticipated to take five years to complete.

From the purely military point of view, there is no conceivable use for such a vast arsenal in Gaza, which has already been bombed to smithereens and where Hamas fighters possess at most rudimentary short-range rockets that rarely endanger any target inside Israel. Israel’s urgent need for such weaponry only makes sense in the context of advanced preparations against more sophisticated opponents, such as the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and Iran itself, which have the capacity to shoot down Israeli aircraft and strike the country directly with long-range missiles.

As Socialist Equality Party (SEP) presidential candidate Joseph Kishore explained in a statement condemning the arms sale,

There is a sinister subtext to the Pentagon announcement. Israel already has unquestioned air superiority in the region. The sole purpose of this weapons sale is to replace anticipated losses in a war with Iran and its allies, which could erupt at any moment. The Biden-Harris administration wants to ensure that Israel can continue pulverizing the people of the Middle East without missing a beat.

The latest arms sale was preceded by unmistakable signs that Washington wants a region-wide war. From the outset of Israel’s genocide last October, US government officials have made clear that their endorsement of the “final solution” of the Palestinian question is bound up with plans to fight Iran, a key ally of Russia and China in the Middle East.

After Israel bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus in April, killing seven senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps members, American and other NATO military assets helped ward off Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel with drones and missiles. Israel’s latest outrageous provocation, the assassination of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran within hours of each other in late July, prompted Washington to announce the $20 billion arms deal and grant Israel $3.5 billion from the $14 billion aid package passed by Congress in April to purchase US-made weaponry immediately. In addition, the Biden administration lifted a three-year arms embargo on Saudi Arabia, Iran’s arch rival in the region.

With Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, having reaffirmed their right to retaliate against Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh, the Biden administration is goading Tehran into launching a strike that can then be used to justify further escalation.

American and Israeli politicians no longer make any secret about the fact that Iran is a target for attack. During his address to a joint session of Congress in July, Netanyahu openly proclaimed his intention to wage war in alliance with US imperialism against Iran, for which he received bipartisan standing ovations. “If you remember one thing, one thing from this speech, remember this: Our enemies are your enemies, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory,” he declared to rousing cheers. “Iran understands that to truly challenge America, it must first conquer the Middle East … Yet in the heart of the Middle East, standing in Iran’s way, is … the State of Israel.”

Netanyahu discussed a war throughout the Middle East in a closed-door meeting the following day with Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who opened her briefing to the press afterward with the statement, “So, I just had a frank and constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I told him that I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.”

American imperialist strategists hope through war to fundamentally restructure the Middle East in Washington’s interests at the expense of its rivals. Eliminating Tehran-aligned Hezbollah in Lebanon and Pushing Iranian forces out of neighbouring Syria would undermine the pro-Iranian Assad regime and open up Russian forces at their only Mediterranean naval base in Tartus to direct attack. Washington also hopes through war to undermine China’s increasing influence in the region, as shown by its brokering of a truce between Iran and Saudi Arabia last year, and its growing economic presence.

But these hopes are delusional. American imperialism has already killed millions of people across the Middle East and Central Asia during three decades of uninterrupted war, and laid waste to entire societies. The devastation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria did nothing to reverse American imperialism’s precipitous economic decline vis-a-vis its competitors but exacerbated great power conflicts. A new war would therefore quickly spiral into a direct clash between the major powers on a global scale.

These past disasters act as an accelerant rather than a brake on American imperialism’s unleashing of new military adventures. Washington’s determination to provoke all-out war with Iran is inseparable from its global strategy of world war, which it views as the only viable means to retain its hegemony against rivals and nominal “allies” alike.

In addition to the Middle East, which is seen as a critical front in this war due to the region’s high concentration of energy resources and its geostrategic significance for control over Europe and Asia, Washington is at war with Russia in Ukraine and preparing for one with China in the Indo-Pacific.

Explaining at an earlier stage in this process that “no part of the globe is outside the interest of American capitalism,” the International Committee of the Fourth International wrote in its 2016 statement Socialism and the Fight against War, “Every continent and every country is viewed through the prism of US imperialism’s economic and geopolitical interests. The American ruling class is focused on developing a strategy to counter every real and potential challenge.”

This redivision of the world involves all of the imperialist powers of North America, Europe, and Japan. It arises from the intractable contradictions of world capitalism: between globalised production and the division of the world into antagonistic nation states, and between the mass social character of production and its concentration in a few private hands. The only resolution open to the imperialists is to plunge humanity into the barbarism of a global conflagration, even though this raises the prospect of nuclear armageddon.

The same capitalist contradictions are propelling the working class into revolutionary struggle. Workers around the world are outraged by the barbarism of the Gaza genocide and the hypocrisy of its imperialist defenders, and by the drive of the ruling class to place the full weight of militarism and war on the backs of workers through wage cuts and austerity. The urgent task is to unify these struggles into a global anti-war movement led by the working class on the basis of the programme of world socialist revolution since imperialist war can only be stopped by ending the capitalist system in which it is rooted.

This necessitates the construction of a mass socialist and internationalist party of the working class. That party is the Socialist Equality Party in the US and other national sections of the ICFI throughout the world.