THE WAR IN LEBANON IS A WAR AGAINST THE PROLETARIAT

Beyond the fact that it is a war to provide a security zone in the north, or
to control water which the state of Israel needs again and again,

Beyond the local and global media propaganda which presents this war through
the exclusive angle of the state of Israel's need to defend itself against
ongoing attacks from the outside.

In a word, beyond the particular interest which one or another local or
global bourgeois fraction may have, the war that Israel has waged against
Lebanon since the summer of 2006 was and still is done under the auspices of
the UN : it is a war directly aimed at the region's proletariat!

The state of Israel is the state which polices the whole Middle East region.
For dozens of years its fundamental task has been to maintain a sufficient
level of social peace for the capitalist economy to function well. As such
it represses any inclination to struggle, any place of unrest, any
organization of the proletariat as a force, be it in Lebanon or in the
occupied territories.

THIS POLICE OPERATION TAKES PLACE IN TWO STAGES

In the first stage the state of Israel, openly supported by the United
States, and implicitly supported by France, has intervened since July sowing
desolation and massacres in its way.

Proletarians resisted falling into the trap of national union and their
division into different "confessional" groups. The guerrilla framed in by
Hezbollah caused heavy losses to the Israeli army which despite its arrogance
and the quantity of its material was ill adapted for this sort of fighting.
And so in the second stage it's the UN, that gang of imperialist thugs, under
the leadership of the French state, which was called upon to continue and
complete this enormous police operation.

And during this same period let's not forget that repression had never caused
so many deaths in the occupied territories. Israel's direct intervention
shows to what degree the different bourgeois fractions, like Hamas and Fatah,
are incapable of keeping down the proletariat whose living conditions are
getting worse and worse as the years go by and who today go on strike so as
to demand the payment of their wages, which have been unpaid for months.

THE JULY-AUGUST MILITARY OFFENSIVE

The so-called "precision" strikes (reputed to have within a meter of
precision) especially hit proletarians, be it directly by killing them or by
the destruction of villages and neighborhoods, making life all the more
unbearable (900,000 refugees). Massive bombing took place in areas where
there were no Hezbollah fighters and "forbidden" fragmentation bombs were
used in civilian areas. Tsahal dropped thousands of these bombs (over 1,2
million small bombs and shells in the south of Lebanon). Of these about 30 %
(that is 350,000!) did not explode right away. But they may explode in the
months and years to come, either because they are touched, or worse still,
unpredictably. Tsahal found a pretext in the objective of preventing
Hezbollah and their missile launchers from getting within firing range of
Israeli cities. And it rained terror from the sky onto zones to which the
civilian population was to return, and in doing so prevented these
proletarians from returning to their fields and activities, and so worsening
their conditions of survival. Ever since this lethal rain at least three
people a day are wounded or killed.

The bombing of Lebanon's economic infrastructure - dairies, petrol tanks,
powerplants - could only bring about a rapid shortage as well as a rise in
prices. And let's not forget the black tide caused by the the unleashing of
15,000 tons of fuel and the all of the polluting particles in the destroyed
powerplants. Like always it's the proletariat who will pay by having to
tighten the belt a little more, by dying slowly of cancer and other
sicknesses due to this pollution! The blockade of the sea (lifted September
8th) which was allegedly to prevent the arrival of arms to Hezbollah -
although 90% of the arms come across the Lebanese-Syrian border - also hit
proletarians first, as they were forbidden to go to the sea to fish.

Hezbollah's bombing the north of Israel also affects the proletarians of this
area (Haifa, bordering with Lebanon). The state of Israel, despite its
tremendous logistical means, left its own proletarians on their own to find
shelter (300,000 refugees). It's capitalist economic logic which "took care"
of them : by tripling the prices at hotels in the north of the county, for
example. May this bourgeois reality bring these proletarians to break with
national unity! That holy union which the state of Israel needs so badly to
continue its repressive policies!

States go to war in the name of security, to do away with "evil" and so
justify blows against the population. The "evil" they're talking about is
the proletariat because it is in the proletariat that lies the danger for
capitalism's ongoing functioning once it is no longer entirely submitted to
capitalism's logic. The proletariat's being weakened implies it has been
submitted. This is brought about not only through bombing but also by the
various calls to national unity put out by different states. States always
try to get us to adhere to their policies through the slogan of "national
unity". Their policies serve only their class interests and their deadly
economy which leads us to tightening our belts, rolling up our sleeves to
work for miserable wages, and in the end getting bombed to death.

Parallel to the necessity of making us adhere to the lie of "national unity"
the Israeli state tried to divide the proletariat and to break the dynamic of
solidarity which rapidly came about. For example everybody helped one
another to look for the wounded and dead in the ruins whether they were
Christian, Shia, Druze...Tsahal chose its targets very carefully : Beirut's
Christian neighborhoods, the "Voice of Peace" radio, which had been calling
for solidarity with "Shia" proletarians, and the bombing of many refugees on
the roads in the north of Lebanon, far from the Hezbollah's stronghold, which
had long since been moved south.

Yet the different attempts to break these movements of solidarity failed.
And fleeing proletarians found lodgings even in the Palestinian refugee
camps.

However the state forces present in the region which thy claim are there to
protect people protected private property instead. For example the Lebanese
army prevented proletarians looking for a little shelter from death from
occupying empty government buildings. And FINUL soldiers used dogs to keep
proletarians away from their camp.

TODAY

The central objective for the world State, through the Israeli, the UN, the
French state, the state of the United States, the Italian state, the Turkish
state, and all of the other bourgeois frameworks such as Hezbollah and local
militias is the pacification of the proletariat in this region. That is the
case despite all of the different imperialist objectives shown by different
states such as the French state's will to firmly establish itself in Lebanon.
It's the same policy as always which aims at doing away with any inclination
to struggle, to resist, and to impose ever more democracy as a way of life,
and so destroying forever any communitarian, human reflex, even in the
simplest of things like when proletarians help one another be it in Haiti, in
Ivory Coast, in Iraq...where each time the military troops of different
countries are sent. Unsurprisingly they are troops specialized in the
repression of riots, strikes, and guerilla fighting.

In this region the proletariat led important struggles in the 1970s, 1980s
and despite the repression led by the Syrian, Israelian, or UNian
state,...depsite many bloody defeats, it continues to agitate, to organize,
to resist. What we have seen lately shows that traditions of proletarians
helping one another have not been destroyed and that the policy of "divide
and conquer" and the different wars between rival bourgeois fractions were
not enough to transform the proletariat into a submissive mass, ready to tear
itself apart.

As to Hezbollah, which different leftist groups in Europe and elsewhere
support, it is an organization which gives a framework to proletarians and
which by no means questions the foundations of capitalist society : respect
for and defense of private property, money, and the State. Through its
framework in different fields such as education, health centers,...this
organization seeks to control proletarians' strength, their combativeness,
and use it to their sole advantage. The particular fate of women - obliged
to dress in black, to not do belly dancing, to stay in the kitchen, and so on
- lets us say, without any quibbling that this organization is AGAINST the
proletariat : the debasement of women is a characteristic trait of bourgeois
civilization, which doesn't forget that women are often in the front line of
struggle!

During the general strike against the high cost of living in May 2004
Hezbollah, all worked up in its defense of the functionning of the economy,
denounced proletarian strikers as having been manipulated by the United
States. At the same time proletarians were being repressed and killed by the
Lebanese state.

Hezbollah's leader Nasrallah, declared to UN soldiers that should they
disarm people they meet along a path it would not be a problem. It is clear
to us that by this declaration he was not referring to Hezbollah fighters.
Once more we can watch as the interests of different bourgeois fractions
converge. Each of them, whatever may be their rivalry in trying to get a
bigger piece of the pie, wants to disarm the proletariat and keep the control
of weapons for themselves.

OUR RESPONSIBILITY

Faced with this situation the proletariat's responsibility, and that of its
organized groups, is important. The defeat and relative framing in of
proletarians by bourgeois groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon or islamist
groups in Iraq can be explained by the isolation of our class in one or
another region of the world.

The first step is understanding that it's our class who is fighting "over
there". The first step is to fight against the bourgeois vision centered on
the particular interests of one or another state fraction, which sees the
recent war as a confrontation between an imperialist State and guerilla
groups (which are to be supported), or as an interimperialist war in which
the proletariat is strangely absent, totally submitted to social peace.

Other steps are to be taken to understand that the best way to support our
class brothers "over there" is to deepen the class ruptures already present
"over here", such as in the struggle in the suburbs of France for those of us
who live in France. We can already strengthen the struggle against "our"
State, sabotaging this deadly economy, right where we are. The action of a
few proletarians in Scotland is one of the many paths to be taken, and of
course, transformed, generalized, radicalized : they managed to get into an
airplane full of munitions coming from the US and by their occupation were
able to make some trouble for the Israeli army's provision.

We have a great responsibility in paralyzing the international repressive
forces which intervene throughout the world, where local bourgeois fractions
have been overwhelmed by the force of our struggle.

Proletarian solidarity with the stuggle of the proletariat in Lebanon, Iraq,
throughout the world!

Let's struggle uncompromisingly wherever we are!

Internationalist Proletarians

 proletairesenavant@hotmail.fr