One Year On, Resist the Genocide and the Brutal Zionist Invasion
“I am alone. The stress I am experiencing is hard to describe. Honestly, I don’t see a future right now. We are starting to accept that we could die at any moment.”
—Nancy, a Lebanese refugee.
The Zionist invasion of Lebanon is a criminal war of aggression, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in the service of imperialism. This attack is a war crime that must be condemned by all the peoples of the world. Despite statements from the bourgeois ruling politicians in the U.S. that a broader regional war would be avoided, they have once again proven themselves to be genocidal liars. Just as the U.S. Government claimed they would prevent Israel from a ground invasion of Rafah, yet continued arming Israel as they bombed refugee camp after refugee camp, the U.S. imperialists will continue to send billions of dollars of aid to Israel for Zionist expansion into Lebanon. Our rulers blatantly display their own hypocrisy and their true pro-war interests when they make braggadocious proclamations as Kamala Harris did at the 2024 Democratic National Convention: “As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
This brutal ground invasion and bombing campaign is an extension of the latest Zionist tactics—the explosion of telecommunications devices, which was done through an alliance with private capital and resulted in enormous civilian loss of life. Israel showed its thirst for blood with this attack, which signaled its declaration of war against the sovereign country of Lebanon. This telecommunications attack is far from the “precision” strike that Israel and its allies purport it to be, instead killing dozens of people and injuring over 3,000, leaving some 300 in critical condition.
Thousands of Lebanese civilians are dead at the hands of the U.S.-made weapons wielded by the Israeli occupation forces since the start of the assault on Gaza, with orders of magnitude more Lebanese people being made refugees in their own home nation.
The genocide in Gaza and the current offensive on Lebanon are a culmination of decades of American empire expansion, which has armed Israel with all the tools it needs to commit mass murder without significant international consequence. Already, this year has seen the killing of almost 42,000 people according to the official count by the Palestinian Health Ministry, with the majority being women and children, amounting to ten times the losses from all other conflicts in Gaza since 2008.
Without support from the U.S., the Zionist regime would have been overthrown and left to the dustbin of history by the Palestinian resistance long ago. Instead, the strongest imperialist power the world has ever seen props up Israel as an outpost for American interests in the region, with no regard for the freedom and livelihood which is the right of Palestinians. Gaza is in rubble and ruin, with two-thirds of its buildings destroyed by bombs manufactured in the USA and signed by sadistic bourgeois politicians eager for a photo-op.
We demand an end to the Zionist wars of aggression against Lebanon, Iran, and Palestine.
U.S. aid to the Israeli apartheid state must immediately cease. Weapons manufacturers which have been supplying the United States Department of Defense and the Israeli Defense Forces should be held accountable for perpetuating genocide and subsequently shut down. Further, institutions which financially support these weapons manufacturers must immediately divest from and boycott them.
We condemn sanctions placed on Iran by the United States and its allied economic powers, as sanctions only serve as collective punishment—a war crime under the Geneva Convention—for the people of the country upon which they are placed.
We call on all the progressive forces in the heart of imperialism to uphold the Palestinian resistance, and to honor it by continuing the struggle against support for Zionism and escalations of imperialist war. This is a material fight that all peoples of conscience have a responsibility to partake in, whether by divestment campaigns, fundraising for Gaza, direct action, or any other way in which you can exercise your voice.
The only viable answer to the question of Palestine is a one-state solution: a unitary secular and socialist state in which all religious and ethnic groups have equal rights, along with the right of return for Palestinians ethnically cleansed since 1948, and reparations to the Palestinian people for development and for the economic losses they have suffered under Zionist genocide and occupation.
The Secretariat of the American Party of Labor
October 7, 2024