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