Oppose Israeli escalation, build a political alternative

Israel’s brutal war against Gaza has cost at least 40,000 Palestinian lives, most likely many more. Nearly 2 million have been forced to flee their homes and are targeted even in declared safe zones. Israeli forces have flattened vital infrastructure such as hospitals, schools and water supplies. Such is the devastation in the territory that polio and other deadly infectious diseases now threaten even more lives.

Now, with the assassinations of senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the situation could escalate into a regional war. Israel has already done its best to bring such a war closer since 7 October, carrying out more than 6,000 attacks on Lebanon, 144 attacks on Syria and further attacks on Yemen and Iran.

Feda Abdelhady Nasser, a Palestinian representative to the United Nations, was absolutely right when she said on 1 August: “Violence and terror are Israel’s main and only currency. There is no red line for Israel, no law it will not breach, no norm it will not trample, no act too depraved or barbaric”.

The United States has backed Israel in all international forums and provides the weapons to massacre the Palestinians. It claims that it was given no warning of Israel’s assassinations, but it gives Israel vital intelligence that enables it to carry out these deadly acts.

Any regional escalation could draw America into direct military engagement. The consequences would be devastating for the oppressed working classes of the region—particularly those in Iran and Lebanon, who already suffer greatly under the authoritarian and reactionary rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hezbollah, respectively.

The US talks about furthering the “peace process” in Qatar, but nothing is on the table that will bring justice to Palestine. Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh and the US’s refusal to condemn it shows their attitude to these negotiations. The peace process is simply a fig leaf the US and the Arab leaders have adopted to cover their betrayal of the Palestinians.

The real attitude of many US leaders was shown by the 50 standing ovations Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received when he addressed a joint sitting of the US Congress last month. US politicians, who lecture other nations about the need to abide by the “international rules-based order”, cheer to the rafters a man facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court.

The US itself is ramping up military spending. Last year, the government spent nearly US$1 trillion on its military, almost 40 percent of the world’s total. Adding in its NATO allies along with South Korea, Japan and Australia, the US-led bloc of states spent $1.5 trillion in 2023, 60 percent of the global total. All of this is in readiness for a war with China and potentially Russia, which themselves are rapidly building their military forces.

With the death count increasing daily in Palestine, the media are fixated on the medal tally in the Olympics circus. While Gazans line up for rations, hoping to receive even half a serve of rice for the day, as starvation grips the territory, every Australian news site and news bulletin begins with a recapping of just how many ceremonial necklaces have now been handed out in Paris, often accompanied with sympathetic stories about the adults who cried because they failed to secure one.

While Palestinians desperately try to cheat death one more time, we are told about the horror of potential cheating in “the games”, be it by Chinese swimmers or Algerian boxers. The horror that adults who have dedicated their lives to the noblest of causes, such as swimming in a pool, might be cheated out of a ceremonial necklace.

All the while, the purported grown-ups who sit in parliaments and editorial offices still can’t agree that the mass murder of 40,000 people, the destruction of a whole society, is a horror.

The overwhelming tenor of the moment is that Australians should identify with Australian athletes in their struggle for supremacy—not with Palestinian children and families in their struggle for survival. The latter proposition is “divisive”, “controversial”. The former is supposedly “unifying”.

What a farce. What an indictment of what passes for public commentary.

One of Australia’s chief allies, Israel, has spent ten months carrying out a genocidal campaign to wipe out an entire nation, and it is this cashed-up circus on the Seine that dominates the media.

Any system that elevates the trials and tribulations of pampered, government-funded athletes above the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding in Gaza is morally bankrupt and has to go.

One that allows trillions to be spent on weapons of destruction and that keeps the world on the edge of devastating conflicts year in and year out is not worthy of the name “civilisation”.

We need to build an alternative to the capitalist system of perpetual conflict. That begins with fighting against Israel's war on Palestine, the government’s drive to increase military spending, the mindless jingoism fostered by the Olympic coverage and the entire capitalist agenda that is taking the world to the precipice.

We need to build a socialist alternative.