THE POLITICS OF GENOCIDE

Attention to the strategic constraints faced by Hezbollah, as well as its political limitations, should not, however, prevent socialists from maintaining that Palestinians and Lebanese have a right to resist Israel’s racist, colonial, apartheid state violence, including through military resistance. This includes defending the right of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, which are the main actors involved in the armed confrontation with Israel’s occupation army, to resist. Israel’s war against Palestinians and Lebanese is part of its attempt to pursue its historical objectives as a settler-colonial state serving Western imperialism. Central to this project is the elimination of the Palestinian populations through a continued Nakba and the consolidation of a regional order serving US imperial interests. These objectives are, without exception, a mortal threat to the whole region. Defending the right of people to resist oppression should not however be confused with political support for the specific political projects of Hamas or Hezbollah in their respective societies, or lead us to imagine these parties will be able to deliver Palestinian liberation or that they have a strategy that could lead to it. Finally, socialists must continue to denounce the complicit role of Western ruling classes in supporting not only the racist, settler-colonial, apartheid state of Israel and its genocidal war against the Palestinians but also the Israeli war against Lebanon. They must participate in movements pressuring those ruling classes to break off any political, economic, and military relations with Tel Aviv. No one should expect Western ruling classes to easily change their political positions regarding Israel. But never in history have the ruling classes granted genuine democracy or justice except under pressure from working-class mobilization from below.