THE anti-war movement has been warning of this for 12 months. Now, it is happening. Israel’s aggression is plunging the Middle East into a regional war. And Western leaders are waving it on.
 
Iran’s ballistic missile attack is being treated as a standalone provocation. It is as if the genocide in Gaza, the bombing of Lebanon, the assassination of Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh in Tehran, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and many others hadn’t happened. In the last few days, Israel has been bombing Yemen, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. Over the last few months, it has attacked all its neighbours.
 
Its claim, dutifully repeated by news outlets across the Western world, that it is “targeting terrorists” is demonstrably, blatantly untrue.
 
Half of the population of Gaza, one million people, have lost their homes. The health and education systems have been destroyed; 45,000 people are confirmed dead, almost certainly badly underestimating the death toll.

Just a week of attacks on Lebanon have displaced one million people. Education has been suspended in schools as they are needed to shelter a terrified population.
 
These are punishment attacks. Punishment attacks are illegal in international law. There is a grim logic behind this kind of systemised killing. It is that Hamas and Hezbollah have widespread popular support. Israel is out to demoralise, terrorise, and, if necessary, decimate and disperse whole populations.
 
This barbarity is not simply a response to Hamas’s attacks one year ago. The commentators and experts, the politicians and the news anchors try to pretend otherwise, but they and everyone else knows this conflict didn’t begin on October 7 2023. Israel has attacked Gaza or Palestinian organisations in Gaza 15 times since 1947. In this century alone, it assaulted Gaza in 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021.
 
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 when Iran was still under the murderous control of the US-backed Shah. They invaded and occupied again in 1982 before Hezbollah existed in pursuit of Palestinian freedom fighters and again in the 34-day war in 2006 when it was driven out.
 
This relentless aggression is the logic of a state based on the expulsion or repression of a whole people. The Israeli state has effectively been at war with the Palestinians and its supporters ever since it was established by the Nakba in 1947.
 
Since the so-called international community abandoned even the pretence of trying to find a diplomatic solution, Israel’s only real strategy has been a military one.

In 2004, during the brutal occupation of Iraq, US secretary of state Donald Rumsfeld accepted that the peace process was over, and green-lighted the settlement of the West Bank and the transformation of Gaza into an open prison.
 
Netanyahu’s current posture is the fruit of that decision. The Israeli cabinet is clearly intent on drawing the US into a massive military reorganisation of the Middle East, reflected in the shocking fact that its operation to kill Nasrallah was dubbed “new order.”

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This is a project that clearly has the potential to precipitate a world war. What is particularly shocking in this desperate situation is that the Western powers are going along for the ride.

Western double standards are becoming more and more blatant: Israel has the right to defend itself, the Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians don’t; Israel’s barbaric attacks are praised as being “audacious” examples of “tradecraft” — all military action by Palestinians or their supporters are acts of terrorism.
 
President Biden welcomed the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah. The US warned Iran of “severe consequences” if it retaliated for the killing of Haniyeh on their soil. US and British planes were scrambled to intercept Iranian missiles on Tuesday, and after the attack by Iran, all talk of “urging restraint” seems to have been dropped. In Britain, Keir Starmer broadcast to the nation pledging full support for Israel.
 
It is not that the West wants a wider war. Behind the scenes, Antony Blinken has been trying to persuade Israel to limit its operations. Nor can Western support for Israel be put down to the actions of an Israeli lobby, though there is a lot of lobbying going on.

The problem for the West is that it needs Israel as its most reliable military ally in the Middle East, still among the biggest sources of oil and gas anywhere in the world.
 
The US administration could end Israeli aggression by withdrawing US military aid. Without the huge sums that the US pumps into the Israeli military, Israel would have to change its behaviour overnight. In current circumstances, this will not happen because the US needs Israel and because Israel knows that the US position is becoming weaker on the global stage.
 
Netanyahu’s military gamble is desperate as well as terrifyingly dangerous. Israel’s adoption of brute force without any political strategy has alienated most governments across the world, enraged the Arab populations of the Middle East and sparked mass solidarity movements around the world.

Public opinion is on the side of those of us calling for peace and justice for the Palestinians. This Saturday’s demonstration must mark an escalation of a movement to stop Israel’s drive to a wider war.

Chris Nineham is national officer of the Stop the War Coalition.