ON THURSDAY, the Israeli Defence Ministry in a statement revealed that the US had given $8.7 billion of military aid to the Zionist state to fund the ongoing genocidal war in Gaza and provide the military weapons required by Israel to carry on with its war on Hezbollah and the Lebanese people.
The Israeli military statement released details of this massive cash payment, the majority of which will be used to top up Israel’s depleted air defence stocks.
While the Israelis were eager to trumpet the latest billions of dollars pumped into their murderous war machine the, US kept silent.
Hardly surprising, as less than a day before this announcement, the US, UK and Australia had issued a joint call for a 21 day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
Speaking of this call, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said: ‘We now face the risk of an all-out war, another full-scale war, which could be devastating for both Israel and Lebanon.’
On the one hand, the US and its faithful imperialist allies issue pleas for a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, while simultaneously releasing $8.7 billion from the $14.5 billion US President Joe Biden had already allocated to keep the Israeli war machine from collapse.
In his address to the UN General Assembly, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas called on the US to end military aid to Israel, accusing the US of providing it with ‘deadly weapons that it used to kill thousands of innocent civilians, children and women’.
Abbas’s words fell on deaf ears, just as the call for a temporary ceasefire was dismissed with contempt by Israeli prime minister Netanyahu.
Netanyahu and his Zionist regime are continuing the carpet bombing of Lebanon and boasting of its preparations for a ground invasion, confident that they will have all the arms they need from the US and its allies in the UK.
The US is sending more troops to the Middle East region to bolster the 40,000 already stationed there.
No details have been provided about what role they will play, but it is clear that the US is preparing for a military intervention if Israel’s invasion comes ‘unstuck’.
This is the fear that is haunting the imperialist powers, namely that Israel has failed to crush Hamas in Gaza, and in Hezbollah, they face 100,000 well-prepared and trained fighters equipped with modern weapons and missiles that have proved capable of penetrating Israeli defence systems.
Even the right-wing press is feeling the pressure, with the Daily Telegraph editorial on Friday insisting ‘Israel has every right to defend its borders’ while in the same edition it contained a report, including a picture of a vast Hezbollah tunnel – part of a huge network throughout Lebanon – that emphasised the very real prospect that any ground invasion by Israeli forces would end in disaster for the Zionists.
With the US and its allies ‘iron-clad’ in their determination to save Israel from defeat, the prospect of direct military intervention by the imperialist powers has never been greater.
Defeat would deliver a massive blow to imperialist domination and exploitation of the oil-rich and strategically vital Middle East region.
There will be no ‘peace deals’ issuing from the UN meeting, no ending of the money and weapons used to wage genocide and imperialist war – the only force that can end arming Israel is the working class taking action.
The overwhelming support of workers and youth was demonstrated at the recent TUC annual congress, which voted unanimously for an immediate ceasefire, an end to Britain’s support for genocide in Gaza and the escalation towards a wider war in the Middle East, and called for a UK-wide ‘workplace day of action’ on Thursday 10th October.
One-day actions are not enough to put an end to genocide or the headlong plunge into war – a war that the working class at home will be expected to pay for.
What is required is for this one-day action to be the start of an indefinite general strike to bring down the Starmer government and for the working class to seize power by going forward to a workers government and socialism.
This will inspire workers and young people across the world to take action and go forward to the victory of the World Socialist Revolution.