Simone McDonnell

Israel’s war on Lebanon: ‘a mortal threat to the whole region’

The United States has sent Israel at least US$17.9 billion worth of military support since October 2023, according to a <a>report</a> from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the US.
The report outlines the known arms deliveries to Israel between 7 October 2023 and September 2024. These include: 20,000 M4A1 rifles, 14,100 2,000-pound bombs, 3,000 laser-guided Hellfire missiles and over 4 million kilograms of jet fuel. This list is likely longer—many of the details of US military exports are not public.
It’s safe to assume these weapons are not sitting in warehouses gathering dust. They were provided with the full knowledge that they would be used to murder Palestinians.
This staggering amount of material support makes the 2024 fiscal year the biggest on record for US military aid to Israel.
Also noted in the report is US$20.3 billion in newly approved weapons sales, reaffirming US backing of Israel in the form of F-15 fighter jets, tank cartridges and mortar rounds.
The US is not only acting as a patron. It directly intervened in April and October to shoot down Iranian missiles bound for Israel, and since January has been striking Houthi targets in Yemen. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the US secretly expanded its intelligence sharing with Israel after 7 October.
This reality is at odds with the narrative in the mainstream media that the US is trying, or at least threatening, to hold Israel back.
On 13 October, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent Israel’s defence minister and minister of strategic affairs a letter giving Israel 30 days to increase the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza. If Israel doesn’t comply, the letter implies that unwavering US support for the genocide may be reconsidered.
The letter was described as an “ultimatum” by the <a>ABC</a>, <a>Telegraph</a> and <a>Politico</a>. This is at best misleading, and at worst a lie.
Far from threatening a “halt to arms transfers” as the <a>Guardian</a> reported, the letter merely says that a failure on Israel’s part to improve the catastrophic conditions in Gaza “may have implications for US policy” with regard to weapons supplies. America is asking Israel to be a bit nicer while it commits genocide, and if it doesn’t comply then the US might consider not helping so much—hardly an ultimatum.
In April, <a>Reuters</a> reported on an “ultimatum” US President Joe Biden issued to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza or risk losing US support. Nineteen days later, the US Department of Defense <a>announced</a>
that Congress had signed off on US$14.1 billion of military aid to Israel, despite there being no evidence that Israel had made any provisions to avoid civilian deaths.
On 13 October, the same day that Blinken’s most recent “ultimatum” was sent to Israel, the Pentagon <a>announced</a>
that it would send a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence battery to Israel, along with almost 100 soldiers to operate it. 
The liberal media’s spin absolves the US (and its allies like Australia) of Israel’s crimes, washing clean the hands of the so-called “free world” from the blood of the Palestinians shot, bombed, incinerated and starved by Israel.
Make no mistake, the US-Israel alliance is rock solid. Israel needs American weapons, and America needs its attack dog in the Middle East. Without Israel on its side, the US would have a much harder time keeping the region—with its oil reserves and vital trade routes—under its own influence and not that of its rivals.
That the US is willing to sacrifice the lives of tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people to maintain its dominance should come as no surprise. Poverty contributes to hundreds of thousands of American deaths each year, making it the fourth biggest killer, according to a recent American Medical Association study. More than 300 lives were lost to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, after little was done to mitigate the environmental risk. The US government doesn’t care about its own civilians, let alone those on the other side of the world.
As Israel expands its campaign of terror into Lebanon and Iran, the US has very possibly realised that this is an opportune moment. It’s certainly not mad that a severe blow has been inflicted on Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia allied with Iran—a long-term US foe. Israel crushing, or at least weakening, these enemies could help to entrench US hegemony in the region.
The US is arming Israel because it is in its perverse interest to do so. The idea that Biden is pulling out all the stops to end Netanyahu’s genocide could not be further from the truth—the weapons speak for themselves.

Danica Rachel

The US is spending billions to fuel Israel’s genocide

Israel’s US-sponsored genocide in Palestine has now brought the Middle East to the brink of regional catastrophe. But if you open up a newspaper in the West, you’ll read that the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East is the victim of aggression from its neighbours, including one it has just invaded for the fourth time. And while Israel is doing nothing but “defending itself”, its regional rival Iran is being painted as enemy number one. 
The irony is that Iran was once a vital US ally in the Middle East. The post-WW2 period was a golden age of US influence in Iran, during which control over the spigot of Iranian oil was transferred from the British to the US empire. 
In 1953, the US sponsored a coup against progressive nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh to prevent the nationalisation of Iranian oilfields. In the following decade, Iran became increasingly authoritarian. The anti-communist and pro-Western king, or shah, was a welcome friend to the US in an era when pan-Arab nationalism was threatening US interests in the Arab states. 
In 1979, a revolution swept aside the hated shah. The revolution, which had opened up the possibility of liberation for workers, women and oppressed minorities, was ultimately hijacked by the clerics, who implemented a new authoritarian state, the Islamic Republic. Unlike the previous autocracy, this regime did not ally with US imperialism, instead presenting itself as intractably hostile to US influence in the Middle East. 
Iran’s anti-Western posture has given a measure of popularity to an otherwise despised regime. And no wonder, given the US has long been the greatest purveyor of violence and instability in the Middle East. 
As a rival capitalist power, Iran has benefited from anti-US feeling and from the US’s strategic failures in the region, particularly during the “War on Terror”. Iran’s major rival, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, was removed from power by the US in 2003, and Iran was able to take advantage of the power vacuum created when the US proved unable to establish a pro-Western government. 
Iran’s regional influence was also boosted by the defeat of Israel in Lebanon by Hezbollah, an independent militia strategically allied to Iran, following Israel’s invasion in 2006. In the wake of the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011, Iran also carried out military interventions to prop up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad with the support of Hezbollah, and sponsored the Houthis in Yemen against local forces and a Saudi-led coalition of Gulf states. 
Renewed Iranian influence has presented a strategic dilemma for US imperialism. In the last 15 years, there has been debate in the US ruling class about whether confrontation or containment is the best approach. The Obama-era Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015 represented a pragmatic response to the failure of US occupations in the Middle East. The deal sought to balance overwhelming US military superiority and deterrence with a partial loosening of sanctions on Iran in exchange for a commitment to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The motivation for the deal was hardly peacenik: Obama was attempting to tie up loose ends in the Middle East the better to carry out a “pivot to Asia” and prepare for war with China. 
In the intervening years, Trump tore up the nuclear deal and carried out the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Aside from plying their ally Israel with weapons and levelling ever greater sanctions on Iran’s economy, the US has not had a coherent strategy for confronting or containing Iran. 
There is no shortage of anti-Iranian hawks in the US today. When asked in an interview with 60 Minutes what country represents the “greatest adversary” to the US, Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris claimed that Iran was the “obvious” answer. At a campaign event in North Carolina, Donald Trump encouraged Israel to strike Iranian territory to “hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later”.
And while there are no doubt differences of opinion in the US elite about Israeli strikes on Iran—whether to avoid hitting oil infrastructure, which would risk destabilising oil prices, and whether to avoid attacks on nuclear facilities, for example—if Israel decides to strike, the US will back it. 
It is absurd to suggest today, as so many in Israel and the West do, that Iran is an existential threat to Israel. The opposite is true. Israel has never been more secure. The Gulf states have all but normalised relations, Egypt maintains the barbaric blockade on the Rafah crossing into Gaza, and Jordan shoots down Iranian rockets to defend Israel. Israel, on the other hand, poses an existential threat to any neighbour that finds itself at odds with US imperialism. 
A comparison of their military capacities and security alliances shows a stark gulf between them. Israel is a rich, nuclear-armed power with the backing of US imperialism and spends nearly three times Iran’s annual military budget. Iran is a relatively weak power, strained under the weight of crippling US sanctions. This is not the clashing of two comparable powers but an attempt to assert full spectrum US and Israeli dominance in the Middle East, which should be resolutely opposed. If war emerges between Israel, backed by the US, and Iran, socialists should be for Israel’s defeat.
Iran’s government is an authoritarian capitalist regime that brutally oppresses its own population. Animosity from the US and Israel does not make it progressive. The anti-government protests and strikes that accompanied the Women, Life, Freedom movement in 2022 were a positive development that required solidarity. Opposition to an attack on Iran, and the desire to see Israel roundly defeated, does not reflect political support for the Iranian regime, just as opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 did not imply support for Saddam Hussein. 
Now as then, anti-war activists in the West have a responsibility to reject the lies and expose the hypocrisy of Israel and the West’s wars—current and threatened—in the Middle East.

Chloe Rafferty

How Iran became Western enemy number one

Jerome Small

What’s driving Israel’s wars?

If Israel were a person, they would combine the worst traits of Donald Trump, George W. Bush and a bloviating campus progressive: a pathological liar with a penchant for mass murder who weaponises the politics of identity to shut down political challenges. 
Yet arguably worse than Israel is its friendship circle, which repeats every lie as truth and defends, excuses or enables every act of depravity on the part of its obnoxious pal.
In Gaza, more than 41,000 people are confirmed killed, more than 10,000 are missing and presumed dead, and nearly 100,000 have been injured. And now Lebanon is being hammered as well.
The crushing <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/eyewitness-to-genocide">testimony of Dr Mohammed Mustafa in the latest issue of Red Flag</a>, describing the mounting toll of malnutrition and hepatitis A on children, is yet another reminder of the barbarity Israel is inflicting in the territory.
One year into the genocidal offensive, the figures indicate clearly that the entire Gaza Strip is being made uninhabitable.
Most of the 2.2 million residents have now been herded into just 11 percent of the territory—roughly 39 square kilometres. 
Ninety-six percent of the population—2.15 million people—are facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. Almost half a million are in what the World Food Programme defines as “catastrophic conditions”. 
More than two-thirds of permanent crop fields have been significantly degraded or destroyed.
Two in every three buildings are damaged or destroyed.
Two-thirds of the road network has been damaged, and nearly 1,200 kilometres of roads have been destroyed.
Almost 93 percent of schools have been damaged, and 85 percent need “full reconstruction or major rehabilitation work” to be used again, according to a research group led by the UN and British charity Save the Children.
The United Nations and aid agencies have labelled the situation “beyond catastrophic”. In May, the International Criminal Court prosecutor applied for arrest warrants to try Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in August that blocking humanitarian aid is “justified and moral” even if it wipes out the entire population of Gaza.
Yet not only have Israel’s friends stood by this rogue state, not only have they continued to provide military and diplomatic support (US President Joe Biden denounced the request for arrest warrants as “outrageous”), but they have routinely smeared opponents of genocide as antisemites.
On one level, it’s an indication that Israel and its Western backers have lost the argument. If a position cannot prevail through reason, bring in the censors and try to silence the critics through force. 
Yet it exposes more than a failure of the “Enlightenment values” routinely invoked as the reason for the West’s need to prepare for and wage war. 
As Israel expands its offensive into Lebanon, predictably with zero threat of sanctions from its friends, the true nature of global capitalism has again been revealed: the “rules-based order” is a fig leaf under which economic competition for profits and state competition for territorial influence regularly spill over into conflicts with few rules—just the exercise of brute force until someone emerges victorious.
“It is no longer the liberty, unity, and state-independence of each nation that is the ideal of capitalism, but the subjugation of millions of members of foreign peoples to the rule of one’s own nation”, Otto Bauer wrote in his 1907 work The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy. 
“Each nation is to arm itself to the teeth in order to be able to maintain its oppression of the subjugated peoples at all times and to keep foreign rivals away from its own sphere of exploitation.”
It is the age of criminals parading as saviours: permanent war, unpunished mass murder and permanent hypocrisy. 
In the competition for power, Israel today is the pre-eminent rogue state. But it would be nothing without its friends.

Editors

Israel: a rogue state with many friends

Israel’s latest murderous assault on Lebanon is part of a recurring pattern of imperialist aggression. Israel has invaded Lebanon three times previously—in 1978, 1982 and 2006. On each occasion, Israel inflicted horrific death and misery as well as destroying vital infrastructure and forcing thousands of people from their homes. 
The three previous invasions are, however, only part of the story of Israel’s concerted aggression against the Lebanese people. For well over 50 years, there have been repeated Israeli air raids, sabotage operations, naval attacks, border raids and the funding of the military operations of Lebanese fascist forces. And for many years, Israel maintained an occupation of south Lebanon.
After the defeat of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Jordan in 1971, Lebanon became the main centre of the Palestinian resistance to the Zionist occupation. To counter the Palestinian forces, Israel attacked Lebanon more than 6,200 times between 1968 and 1975.
As a consequence of the Israeli aerial attacks, some of the Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon were totally levelled. By October 1977, about 300,000 refugees—mainly Lebanese Shia Muslims—had fled southern Lebanon.
These attacks provoked mass popular opposition amongst workers and the poor in Lebanon. After the Israelis assassinated three Palestinian leaders in Beirut in 1973, 250,000 demonstrators, roughly a tenth of the population of Lebanon, marched in protest. The Lebanese army, however, refused to lift a finger to fight Israel and instead tried to crush the resistance.
The ongoing raids into south Lebanon radicalised the predominantly Shiite population of the south and led to the rapid growth of the Lebanese Communist Party, the Organization of Communist Action and other socialist groups. These groups organised armed militias to repel Israeli attacks.
Israel in turn armed and trained fascist militias in Lebanon. The largest militia, the Kataeb or Phalange, had been directly inspired by General Franco’s Spanish fascists of the 1930s.
In March 1978, Israel invaded southern Lebanon up to the Litani River in an attempt to crush the PLO’s guerrilla forces. The Israel Defence Force unleashed cluster bombs provided by the United States against the civilian population, killing between 1,100 and 2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians and forcing 100,000 to 250,000 to flee as refugees.
Israel installed their far-right ally, the South Lebanon Army militia, to preside over Lebanese territory south of the Litani River. During its long years of military rule, the South Lebanon Army, which was cohered, armed and trained by Israel, became notorious for its sheer brutality. In 1985, it set up the Khiam detention centre, where torture was carried out on a large scale against its popular opponents.
In 1982, Israel invaded again. This time, Israeli troops advanced all the way to the Lebanese capital Beirut. They laid siege to the city for nearly two months to starve the population into submission. They then unleashed their fascist Lebanese allies to carry out a horrific massacre of the population of the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.
In some areas of southern Lebanon, the Islamist organisation Amal was able to mobilise sections of the Shiite population against the Palestinians and the left, who they blamed for the devastation wreaked by Israel. Amal aped the fascist Phalange with its own massacres of Palestinians. Nonetheless, over the next few years a concerted struggle by left-wing and Arab nationalist forces managed to drive the Israelis out of all but a small strip of southern Lebanon.
By 2006, Hezbollah had established itself as a powerful force in Lebanon, both politically and militarily. So Israel again invaded, determined to take out Hezbollah and thus severely weaken the strategic position of Hezbollah’s ally Iran.
As is invariably the case, Israel was backed by the US, which vetoed a UN ceasefire resolution. Initially, most of the surrounding Sunni Arab states were happy to see Israel take on their regional rival.
But this time the Israeli steamroller was stopped in its tracks as Hezbollah was able to galvanise widespread popular support from outside its core Shia communal base. After 33 days of intense fighting, the Israel Defence Force was forced to retreat with its tail between its legs.
Israel has long held plans for another assault on Hezbollah to make amends for its defeat in 2006. Israel’s public justification this time is that it is simply responding to rocket attacks by Hezbollah, a listed terrorist organisation.
But the Israeli state and, notoriously, its security apparatus Mossad have long been among the most proficient and blatant exponents of terrorism—car bombings, individual assassinations, poisonings and sabotage operations—all around the world. The recent coordinated Israeli attack on pagers and walkie-talkies is just their latest terrorist atrocity.
Yet again Israel’s war drive is backed by the US and other Western powers such as Australia. The US administration doesn’t relish the prospect of a war with Iran, which Israel’s assault on Hezbollah opens up. Nonetheless, the US continues to pour in the weaponry that Israel vitally depends on to carry out its assault on Lebanon and is sending more warships and troops to the Middle East to back Israel. Why?
Because whatever its “excesses”, Israel is a key strategic force defending the interests of US imperialism in the Middle East. With its enormous oil wealth and its strategic location, including the vital international trade route the Suez Canal, the region is of vital importance to world capitalism.
Consequently, the US establishment, including both major political parties, continues to provide the political support and the enormous military hardware necessary for Israel to wage its repeated wars and to carry out its genocide in Gaza.
The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz summed up the relation of Israel to Western imperialism as early as September 1951: “Israel has been given a role not unlike that of a watchdog ... Should the West prefer for one reason or another to close its eyes it can rely on Israel punishing severely those of the neighbouring states whose lack of manners towards the West has exceeded the proper limits”.
Indeed, most of Israel’s innumerable wars have been waged, not against the Palestinians, but against the neighbouring Arab states. As far back as 1956, Israel made clear its role as a protector of Western imperialist interests by joining the old imperial powers of France and Britain in a war on Egypt. The war was in response to the nationalisation of the Suez Canal by Egypt’s new nationalist government led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. 
Since then, Israel has waged war after war against the surrounding Arab states. It was Israel’s lightning military victory in 1967 over Egypt, Syria and Jordan that really demonstrated Israel’s worth to the US as a power in the region.
In the wake of the 1967 war, the US began to throw its full weight behind Israel with much greater political, financial and military support. It became the key defender of Western imperialist interests in a volatile region. Israel’s latest war is no exception to this pattern. 
There has been much hypocritical hand-wringing in the West, including by the Albanese government, over the devastation being inflicted on Lebanon. But the Western leaders’ calls for a ceasefire and “restraint” by Israel are nothing more than a show.
The rich and powerful in the US, Britain and Australia know on which side their bread is buttered. A victory for Israel very much serves their rapacious capitalist interests. We must stridently oppose this war.

Mick Armstrong

Israel’s history of aggression against Lebanon

September marked the 25th anniversary of Australia’s military intervention in East Timor (Timor-Leste). Official commemorations tell a story of Australian sacrifice in the service of peace and humanitarianism. The grubby details of how Australia deprived one of the world’s poorest countries of billions of dollars in revenue from oil and gas royalties are missing from this narrative. 
In 2002, East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri sat down with Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to renegotiate revenue-sharing arrangements previously agreed with Indonesia when it occupied East Timor. Keeping those prior agreements in place would leave the world’s newest nation with, as Alkatiri put it, “scrapings off a plate”. Securing a decent new deal was vital to the financial future of the world’s newest nation. However, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/opinion/how-they-fooled-us-on-east-timor-20030311-gdvctw.html">as reported in the Age</a>, decency was not on Downer’s agenda. 
“We are not going to negotiate the Timor Sea Treaty—understand that”, he told Alkatiri. “It doesn’t matter what your Western advisers say ... There will be no new joint development area for [oil and gas field] Greater Sunrise ... We are very tough. We will not care if you give information to the media. Let me give you a tutorial in politics—not a chance.” 
Downer’s arrogance and bullying are typical of how Australian imperialism has treated East Timor over many years.
When Indonesia’s General Suharto established his dictatorship in 1965, up to a million Indonesian citizens were murdered due to their actual or alleged involvement in left-wing politics. Suharto also invaded East Timor in 1975, as it was on the brink of gaining independence from Portuguese colonial rule. An estimated 200,000 East Timorese were killed as a result of the invasion, around a third of the population. 
In 1998, Suharto was forced from power by a mass democracy movement. In East Timor, the liberation struggle gathered renewed strength, with strikes and demonstrations challenging Indonesian rule. With his government near bankruptcy following the 1997 Asian economic crisis and dependent on international aid, new Indonesian president B.J. Habibie viewed East Timor as a financial and political liability. So he agreed to hold a referendum in August 1999, offering a choice between regional autonomy within Indonesia and complete independence.
The vote was overwhelmingly for independence, despite a campaign of violent intimidation waged by armed militias organised by the Indonesian military. When their defeat was confirmed, the Indonesian forces went on a rampage as they withdrew from the territory. They killed as many as 1,200 East Timorese, looted whatever they could carry away and burned anything they could not. As many as 400,000 civilians, half the population, were displaced. Up to 250,000 were transported into West Timor, most forcibly. It was both brutal retribution and a warning to those favouring independence in other Indonesian provinces, such as Aceh and West Papua.
At this point, the Australian government sent in its military to restore order. This was not due to a deeply held concern for human rights. Despite its genocidal crimes, or rather because of them, the Suharto regime had no better friend internationally than Australia. Successive governments, both Liberal and Labor, had been happy to have the threat of communism or a “South-East Asian Cuba” removed from Australia’s doorstep. But East Timorese independence was now an unavoidable reality. The transition needed to be managed so that it went as smoothly as possible, preventing the “regional instability” that Australian governments have obsessed over for decades.
Naturally, the military intervention was spearheaded by elite soldiers of the Special Air Service (SAS). These units have since gained infamy due to alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan. But ABC investigative journalist Mark Willacy argues that the pattern of SAS brutality and lawlessness actually began in East Timor.
Reporting for Four Corners in 2022, Willacy <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-04/ghosts-of-timor:-the-dark-stain-on-australias/13826106">uncovered allegations</a> from New Zealand SAS troops that their Australian counterparts had illegally killed members of a pro-Indonesian militia or, at the very least, desecrated the bodies of combatants after they were killed. This occurred after two Australian soldiers were wounded near the town of Suai in October 1999, the SAS reportedly keen on delivering payback.
The SAS is also alleged to have <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-11/ghosts-of-timor/13836288">operated a clandestine interrogation facility</a> at Dili’s heliport. Here, detainees were tortured, including by beatings, the use of stress positions and food and water deprivation. Even the military’s own legal advisers were denied access to the facility. In one incident, Australian soldiers thought they had captured an Indonesian special forces operative—because he would not answer questions despite being tortured. In reality, he was an East Timorese civilian who suffered from hearing impairment. No Australian personnel were ever punished over these incidents, despite lengthy investigations by military police.
Beyond the actions of frontline soldiers, Australia’s whole approach was to treat East Timor as primarily a security problem, not a humanitarian crisis. Of the $3.9 billion Australia spent on the East Timor intervention between 1999 and 2004, only $225 million was spent on aid. Most of the remaining funds went towards Australia’s military and police deployment. 
Even aid spending was geared towards strengthening the East Timorese state, training for the local army and police force being prioritised above providing health services, clean water or education. East Timorese NGOs that questioned these priorities risked Australia cutting their funding. At least one organisation suffered this fate in 2004 after signing a statement criticising Australia’s stance on border negotiations.
It is, above all, the oil and gas revenues that have fuelled East Timorese anger towards Australia since its independence. In 2016, thousands of East Timorese <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/big-protest-confronts-australian-embassy-dili">protested outside the Australian embassy in Dili</a>, chanting: “Long Live East Timor! Down with Australia!” Two years earlier, activists graffitied the embassy walls with an image of a kangaroo and an emu greedily sucking up a pot full of East Timor’s oil. It is a far cry from Australia’s self-image as liberators.
The border issue originated in a 1972 treaty in which Australia secured highly advantageous terms from Indonesia. Rather than drawing the border midway between the two countries’ land masses, it was placed at the edge of Australia’s sea-floor continental shelf, which extends far closer to the Indonesian side of the Timor Sea. This agreement left what was known as the “Timor Gap” along the stretch of coastline then controlled by Portugal.
After Indonesia’s invasion, the substantial oil and gas deposits in the Timor Sea were up for grabs. Australia and Indonesia agreed to divide these spoils without finalising a formal international border. Labor’s Gareth Evans and Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alitas famously signed the Timor Gap Treaty in 1989 while sipping champagne on a jet flying over the Timor Sea. Far below, out of sight and out of mind, the East Timorese continued to suffer under occupation.
This was the treaty Alkatiri wanted to renegotiate in 2002, based on the basic principle that the border, and hence division of revenues, should follow the median line between the two countries. This would put most, if not all, of the oil and gas on East Timor’s side of the border. It was a position backed up by international maritime law. So Australia simply withdrew from the international court that arbitrates maritime border disputes.
That left East Timor in a weak negotiating position, given its desperate need for finances to rebuild the country. Its government accepted treaties in 2002 and 2006 that, although granting some concessions, allowed Australia to continue extracting billions of dollars in revenue that rightfully belonged to East Timor. In particular, Australia kept hold of the bulk of future royalties expected from the unexploited Greater Sunrise gas field. 
But there was a further twist to come. In 2012, a former Australian spy, known only as “Witness K”, publicly revealed that he had been part of an operation to plant listening devices in offices of the East Timorese government during the negotiations, using the cover of an aid project. He was prompted to speak out when Alexander Downer was appointed to a lucrative position as adviser to Woodside Petroleum, which has a major stake in oil and gas developments in the Timor Sea. 
For revealing Australia’s crime, Witness K faced years of legal persecution and eventually pleaded guilty to national security offences. Even his lawyer, former ACT Attorney-General Bernard Collaery, was pursued through the courts for years before charges against him were eventually dropped. 
The spy operation gave Australia detailed information about East Timor’s negotiating position on the border dispute. It was clearly illegal and violated East Timor’s sovereignty. Yet Labor’s Julia Gillard, who was prime minister when the spying was revealed, refused to renegotiate the revenue-sharing agreement. When East Timor referred the matter to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, Australia prevented Witness K or Collaery from travelling overseas to give evidence.
The ongoing court cases and international attention were deeply embarrassing for Australia, which likes to lecture other countries about the importance of the “rule of law”, not least in relation to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The legal uncertainties were also delaying the development of the Greater Sunrise field. So eventually, in 2018, a new border was agreed upon, which mostly follows the line of median distance between Australia and East Timor.
The catch? The oil and gas fields were already mostly exhausted. Only Greater Sunrise still contains major unexploited deposits, and Australia will continue to take a sizeable chunk of those royalties. Australia will not repay the billions of dollars in extra revenue that would have gone to East Timor had a fair border been established in 2002. And so the grotesque situation continues of one of the richest countries on earth draining resources from one of the poorest.
The East Timor intervention was Australia’s largest deployment of troops since the Vietnam War, heralding a new era of “regional interventionism”. Over the next decade, Australia sent military, police and government administrators to the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Tonga, Nauru and once again East Timor. These neo-colonial adventures were used to justify major increases in Australia’s military budget. But they have done nothing to solve the underlying poverty and underdevelopment in Pacific island nations.
Today, Australia competes intensely with China for influence within the south-west Pacific region. Australian diplomacy makes much of China’s supposed threat to the sovereignty of smaller countries and its desire to exploit the region’s natural resources. Australia, in contrast, boasts of belonging to the “Pacific family” and is motivated only by a desire to help its neighbours. It’s hard to reconcile this rosy self-image with Australia’s history of bullying, espionage and greed in East Timor.

David Peterson

Guns, espionage and oil: the Australian intervention in East Timor 25 years on

Israel has declared war on the people of Lebanon. Overnight, it launched 1,600 airstrikes on Lebanese towns and villages, killing approximately 500 people—including at least 35 children. This comes just days after it unleashed indiscriminate terror across the country by exploding thousands of pagers and walkie talkies used by Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party and militia allied with Iran. One of the victims was Fatima Abdullah, a nine-year-old girl who had just started the fourth grade.
Clearly, the far-right Israeli government is not satisfied with annihilating the Gaza Strip and expanding the illegal occupation of the West Bank. It demands yet more destruction and devastation, and is prepared to terrorise the entire Lebanese population. 
This act of aggression against Lebanon opens a new and dangerous chapter in Israel’s war on the people of the Levant. It will have huge ramifications for global politics and risks a spiralling regional conflict that could even develop into nuclear war.
Of course, the most immediate impact will be felt by the people of Lebanon. In 2006, the last time Israel waged war on Hezbollah, the death toll for the whole affair was, at most, 3,000 people. It is certain that the casualties this time will be far higher. A year of atrocities in Gaza means that the international media and diplomatic class are even more desensitised to the sight of dead Arab bodies than usual. 
Already, tens of thousands of people are fleeing Lebanon’s south, looking for sanctuary. The school year has been delayed, with many schools transforming into makeshift refugee camps. There are already hundreds of thousands of Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Lebanon—it will be a huge challenge to feed and shelter so many additional people.
Lebanon is entirely unprepared for war and its consequent devastation. In the last decade it has suffered through an unprecedented economic crisis, with a currency and banking collapse leading to the mass impoverishment of its population. In a society with no functioning state institutions, people have been left to fend for themselves. While the wealthy have used these crises to enrich themselves, the working poor of the country’s many sects and ethnicities have suffered like never before. The catastrophe has driven another generation of Lebanon’s youth to flee the country, seeking work and any sort of future. 
Indeed, part of the reason Hezbollah has been fairly restrained in its clashes with Israel—despite numerous provocations—is that many Lebanese people rightly hold it responsible for the terrible social and economic conditions they face and are unwilling to lend it political support. Its leading figures have long been part of the ruling elite that has run the country into the ground, doing sordid deals to ensure that nothing changes. This explains the popularity of the anti-establishment chant in the country’s ill-fated revolution back in 2019: “All of them means all of them, and Nasrallah is one of them” (Hassan Nasrallah is Hezbollah’s leader). It’s impossible to know whether this war will rebuild some of Hezbollah’s reputation or if it will merely exacerbate these preexisting fissures and lead to further social explosions. 
Beyond the suffering and internal dynamics of Lebanon, this war opens whole new vistas of regional bloodshed. Let’s be clear, Israel has been looking to open a new front in its war to its north for months. It has assassinated key figures in Hezbollah, Hamas and the Iranian government anywhere and everywhere, hoping to provoke a response that would justify a more serious confrontation. Failing to get the reaction it hoped for, Israel has decided to unilaterally start the war.
But now there is a real risk that Israel gets the regional conflagration they want. That in turn could draw in the Americans, who have made it clear that they are not fundamentally opposed to anything Israel does and will keep providing weapons with no strings attached. 
The obvious question is why the West, including Australia, continues to give Israel the license to kill so freely. Many turn to conspiracy theories or vaguely antisemitic ideas that Israel somehow controls the US. Western institutions don’t offer much in the way of an explanation, spending more time hurling ridiculous accusations of antisemitism at Palestine solidarity activists, as they have no other way of defending their support for Israel’s crimes.
But the real explanation for the US-Israel alliance is that the Americans know they need strong allies in an important region. And nobody could have any doubts about Israel’s murderous capacities.
The sickening reports in the imperialist media following each of Israel’s provocative actions is proof of this. After every Israeli atrocity we are subjected to earnest statements by US and Australian politicians saying that they are “deeply concerned about regional escalation”, as if Israel’s atrocities aren’t already a huge escalation. As if those who respond to Israel’s aggression are the escalators. 
Many have tried to explain away Israel’s lack of restraint as an unfortunate outcome of Netanyahu’s extremist coalition. The liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz
has consistently put forward this line, arguing that the war is irrational and causing irreparable damage to Israel’s international reputation. The liberal wing of the international capitalist press often parrots these arguments after an episode of inexcusable Israeli behaviour, hoping to convince critics of the war that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Israel itself.
But while Israeli society is divided in many ways, it is not divided in unleashing brutality on the workers, students and poor of Palestine and the wider Middle East. When Netanyahu began the latest round of attacks on Lebanon in late August, multiple figures on what passes for the political centre in Israel criticised him for being too restrained. Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi are often presented as more moderate and rational figures in the Israeli state. Both have recently criticised Netanyahu for being too mild in response to Hezbollah, with the latter making direct preparations for a ground invasion before it was raised as an option by the government. Benny Gantz, leader of the main opposition coalition, has regularly attacked the government for failing to address the “threat” of Hezbollah.
This means we need to look elsewhere for an explanation of Israel’s atrocious new war on Hezbollah and Lebanon. 
The first is that for all its destruction and killing, Israel will not be able to claim a meaningful victory in Gaza. This is not because Hamas has successfully resisted the brutal occupation of the strip, but because they have managed to simply survive. This will be seen as a failure in Israel. So the government must look elsewhere for a win. It is feasible—though not at all guaranteed—that they could push Hezbollah back a few kilometres north of the Israel/Lebanon border and weaken its military apparatus for the future. This would require a huge amount of violence, but that’s never been an issue for Israel. Scoring some sort of victory and returning Israeli citizens to the abandoned settlements in Israel’s north would be a victory and allow Israel to reestablish its deterrence threat viz its neighbours. 
Second, an attack on Hezbollah is a chance to take a serious enemy down a peg or three. Hezbollah is a well-armed, well-funded and well-established political entity on Israel’s border. It has a loyal following among a large section of the Shi’a community in Lebanon and is central to the function (and disfunction) of Lebanon as a whole. The political and economic cost of extending the current war to a new front is less than the disruption that would be caused by starting a fresh one in a few years. When life gives you lemons, might as well start all the wars you’ve ever dreamt of.
Finally, Netanyahu needs a political victory. He will not destroy Hamas, but achieving the above would be something he could sell to the Israeli public. As well, Netanyahu needs the war to continue for as long as possible to hold together his governing coalition. There’s not much left to destroy in Gaza, so a war on Lebanon allows him to maintain his fragile hold on power by surfing the intense waves of patriotism that a new war with a more serious opponent inevitably entails. This high-risk strategy could backfire, but the people of Lebanon or Gaza will be the biggest losers regardless of whether Netanyahu survives or not.
It is vital that the global movement in solidarity with Palestine responds to Israel’s new act of aggression. Nothing Israel does would be possible without the blank cheque, and endless weaponry, it gets from countries like Australia and the US. That means activists in the West can make a serious contribution to ending Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon by building mass movements that force our governments to cut all ties to Israel.

Omar Hassan

By attacking Lebanon, Israel seeks to expand its genocidal war

More civilian deaths due to armed conflict were recorded in 2023 than for more than a decade, according to Action on Armed Conflict. Doctors in Gaza coined the devastating new term WCNSF (wounded child, no surviving family) at the end of that year to categorise many of the victims of Israel’s genocide.
For the people of Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan and many other regions of the world, the price of war is incalculable. For the weapons industry, it’s $52 billion.
That’s how much the top fifteen defence contractors are expected to earn in 2026, according to analysis by Vertical Research Partners for the Financial Times. Like all good entrepreneurs, they know never to waste a good crisis.
Lockheed Martin—suppliers of the F-16 and F-35 fighter jets that Israel uses to drop bombs on Gaza—increased its profits to $8.5 billion in 2023. CEO James Taiclet is proud of his community spirit. In 2021 he told reporters, “There’s no better way to get a tighter bond with an ally than to sell them jet fighter aircraft”.
RTX (formerly known as Raytheon) made a profit of $12 billion in 2023, thanks in no small part to increased demand for the bombs and missiles it sells to the Israeli military. Like all good corporate minds, RTX CEO Greg Hayes is always thinking ahead. “Peace is not going to break out in the Middle East anytime soon”, he said in 2021. “I think it remains an area where we’ll continue to see solid growth.”
Solid growth in death translates to solid growth in defence industry profits. The fact that an industry as fundamentally anti-human as the weapons industry is allowed to exist, let alone thrive, tells you everything you need to know about the moral compass of capitalism.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists who calculate the risk of human-caused apocalypse with the Doomsday Clock, say we’re closer to midnight than ever before. Defence industry profits are also higher than ever. 
Sixty years ago, as the Cold War nuclear arms race heated up, Bob Dylan described defence industry leaders as “masters of war”. The relevance of his lyrics, sadly, hasn’t aged:
You hide in your mansion
While the young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
…
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins

Lucas Brunning-Halsall

Defence industry profits soar as death and destruction increase

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.

Israel’s war on Lebanon: ‘a mortal threat to the whole region’

The US is spending billions to fuel Israel’s genocide

How Iran became Western enemy number one

What’s driving Israel’s wars?

Israel: a rogue state with many friends

Israel’s history of aggression against Lebanon

Guns, espionage and oil: the Australian intervention in East Timor 25 years on

By attacking Lebanon, Israel seeks to expand its genocidal war

Defence industry profits soar as death and destruction increase

Oppose Israeli escalation, build a political alternative

Other Media

Shop

Conferences

Manage Your Subscription

Contact Us