No war but the class war
Israel : Ireland : War
OK, one cry I've heard over t'interweb has been: What choice did Israel have, it had its soldiers kidnapped, its towns recketted - Shirley, it has a duty to defend itself and its citizens.
This is, relatively, a strong argument - Hizbullah must stop or be stopped, and are viscious and dangerous bone-headed twats.
The problem lies with the face of a counter-example. For all its cruelties and visciousness, Britain during the northern Irish troubles never reacted in this way. the parrallels are instructive. The IRA ran it's attacks across the border, Amargh bandit country. Most of their weapons were in the republic. Carrying a bomb across a border is much the same as rocketting it over, after all.
Ireland had government ministers, like Charles Haughey who sympathised with the IRA's cause. Its courts dragged their feet over extradition to the UK - and the US still doesn't wan t IRA suspects there to be extradited to the UK (Of course, many in the US joined the Libyeans in supplying the IRA).
Yet Britain weathered the attacks, took the casualties, and despite the odd mistake, resolved the situation through collaboration with the Irish government, rather than by a total reinvasion of Ireland.
What stopped Israel orking with Lebanon, and trying to secure a long-term mutual peace? The Irish only gave up their claim with the six counties very late in the game, surely Israel could live with whatever formal political stance LLabanon took in favour of practical solutions on the ground to deal with hizbollah.
posted by Bill at 08:57
2 Comments:
"A strong argument" - really? Even in bourgeois terms this is nonsense. Israel attacks Hisbollah because it captures some Israeli soldiers - as if this was something new. Isn't this the Israel which regularly assassinates Palestinian and Hizbollah leaders and has thousands of "captured" Palestinians in concentration camps already? Why are Israel's two prisoners any different from the Palestinians they have "captured"? And please don't give me any crap about them being terrorists - as if Israel wasn't just as big a bunch of terrorists as Hizbollah. And why have Israel got all these Palestinians behind barbed wire - why, at root because these people are fighting back against Israel's determination to hold on to all the land thay have taken from the Palestinians and hope to steal even more.
Thats how a bourgeois leftists might approach the question. But you are supposed to be a communist! You are supposed to be able to know and say that workers of both sides have been bamboozled into a war BETWEEN terrorist states and wannabe states. We aren't here to pick sides and or be 'understanding' about 'poor Israel's'plight. You should be denouncing the Israeli government as point man for American imperialism in the Middle East, their gendarme being used once again to discipline and terrorise the arabs. Yes, denounce Hizbollah as the reactionary gangsters they are but lets be even handed about it. Remember the communist position - a plague on both their houses - turn this capitalist war into civil war!
I said relatively strong argument. On the face of it, within bourgeois norms, Israel's case for national self defence (a concept I've questioned on this blog before, anyway) is quite strong.
The point of my post was to weaken that case by demonstrating that there are, or at least were, non-military options available to Israel.
Until there is a working class ready to make communist revolution or able to stop war, the best we can hope for is some sort of bourgeois peace. Hamas and Hizbollah seem to have deliberately set out to provoke this fight, as I've repeatedly said.
Shirley, our immediate aim is to end the fighting and build the peaceful conditions in swhich teh socialist movement can build itself.
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