Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
We seek peace in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Sudan, the DRC and elsewhere, but we’re ignored. History will damn the warmongers
“The protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world.”
Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers retells the story of the outbreak of the first world war. Mapping a multipolar world enthralled by imperialism and paranoia, Clark refuses to pin the blame on a single power. Instead, he explains how political leaders narrowed the prospects for peace one misstep at a time, and sleepwalked into a global catastrophe that left around 20 million people dead.
Today, once more, our political leaders are stumbling through crisis after crisis to convince themselves that war is the only solution. The principal difference is that this time they are not sleepwalking into war. They are doing so with their eyes wide open.
For months, millions of us have demonstrated for a ceasefire in Gaza to stop the loss of life, end the perpetual cycle of violence and prevent a wider escalation. We have been ignored, maligned and demonised. Last week, Israel conducted missile strikes against Iran in a fast-widening conflict across the Middle East. Even without the involvement of more global players, the human, economic and environmental consequences of all-out war with Iran would be catastrophic for the entire world.
We need not imagine the worst-case scenario in order to put the brakes on. As the Israeli government weighed up its options in response to Iran’s attack on 14 April,bombs continued to fall on Palestinians in Gaza. Over the past few months, human beings have been forced to endure a level of horror that should haunt us for ever. Entire families have been wiped out – and survivors will face lifelong mental health consequences for generations to come. Neighbourhoods have been completely obliterated, strewn with corpses and limbs. Doctors are performing amputations without anaesthesia. Children are gathering sticks and leaves from the ground and fashioning “bread” from animal feed to stay alive. If the unfolding genocide of the Palestinian people does not already constitute a worst-case scenario, what does?
David Cameron stumbles while defending Israel on Sky News
The West jumps through rhetorical hoops to defend Israel and condemn Iran after Iranians respond to attack on diplomatic premises in Syria
It is difficult to dispute the major escalation that Israel undertook on April 1 when it bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, assassinating a top Iranian Commander. This was a major escalation that the West—namely, the US, UK, and France—failed to condemn during an April 2 UN Security Council meeting.
On April 13, after multiple warnings, Iran retaliated—becoming the first country to directly attack Israel in 33 years—launching “extensive” missiles and drone strikes at military targets within historic Palestine.
The attack did not result in any casualties. No hospital attacks, no mass graves, no thousands of women and children dead. Iran showed no intention of creating a mass casualty event, and predictably, many of the dozens of Iranian missiles were intercepted.
Although to some, this is a sign of Iranian weakness, not restraint. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes, Iran’s attack “showed the whole world that Israel and its Western allies have far superior anti-missile capabilities than Iran has missile capabilities.” Friedman also claims that Iran revealed “that President Biden was able to predict almost the exact hour of attack over a day in advance,” citing that fact that Biden warned Iran not to attack the day prior. Friedman does not take into account that Iranian officials had been openly stating their intention to retaliate against the Zionist state since the embassy attack in Damascus.
This is a point of view seemingly shared by Biden, who said shortly after the attack that “Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks—sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel.” It is unclear how the attacks were unprecedented, however, given that following the embassy attack, Iran’s Ambassador to Damascus Hossein Akbari, whose residence was bombed in the strike, said, “We will give a decisive response to this action.”
It is international relations common sense that the bombing of an embassy is a major escalation. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, following Iran’s striking of Israel, that “the principle of inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and personnel must be respected in all cases in accordance with international law, as I stated when condemning the 1 April attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.”
David Cameron, British Foreign Secretary, went on Sky News to denounce the Iranian attack on Israel, but was thrown off guard when a journalist asked, “What would Britain do if a hostile nation flattened one of our consulates?”
Cameron stuttered through his response, “Well, we would take very strong action.”
David Cameron: Iran attacking Israel was "reckless"
Journalist: What would Britain do if our consulate was flattened?
David Cameron: Well, w-we would take very strong action…
Israel has been attacking both Iran and Iranian targets for years. On January 20, Israel killed five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Damascus. At the time, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian claimed that, “although the Zionist enemy has destroyed Gaza on a large scale and martyred tens of thousands of people, it has not achieved any of its goals, so it is trying to make up for its defeat by resorting to blind terrorism.”
In February of last year, Iran accused Israel of attacking a military workshop complex in Isfahan. Iranian oil tankers carrying oil to Lebanon through Syria were attacked late on November 8. According to IRIB, Iran’s state news source, the attacks were carried out using “Israeli drones.” Israel has openly boasted about committing covert operations against Iran, including the assassination of a nuclear scientist in 2020.
Biden reiterated the US’s “ironclad” support for Israel, promising a Group of Seven (G7) diplomatic response. However, following a similar pattern of recent Biden administration responses to Israeli aggression, a Biden official leaked to Axios that the president privately warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US would not support a counterattack against Iran. Biden has severaltimesexpressed private frustrations with Netanyahu as the genocide against Gaza continues to unfold, but continues to send massive weapons shipments to Israel and provide unconditional support in public.
Israel’s war cabinet is now meeting to discuss potential responses. According to a source communicating with NBC News, an Israeli counterattack could be imminent.
The Biden administration’s declaration of ‘ironclad support’ for Israel threatens to drive a wedge between the president and progressive voters, a potential electoral gift for Trump. In this photo, a woman walks by an election campaign billboard in Tel Aviv for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party that shows the Israeli leader with Donald Trump, Sept 15, 2019. Hebrew on billboard reads: ‘Netanyahu, in another league.’ | Oded Balilty / AP
President Joe Biden declared Saturday that U.S. support for Israel is “ironclad” as more than 300 slow-moving Iranian drones and missiles meandered across the sky toward Israeli military installations. With assistance from the U.S., Britain, France, and Jordan, it’s estimated that 99% of the weapons were destroyed in the air before reaching their targets. There were zero people killed.
As Biden’s declaration was being reported, the Pentagon issued a statement saying that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had spoken with his Israeli counterpart “and made clear that Israel could count on full U.S. support.”
On television, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu peddled the image of a besieged Israel fighting for its life. Wearing a stern face, he said, “We will defend ourselves against any threat and will do so level-headedly and with determination.”
Of course, once the cameras were off, the Israeli leader was no doubt smiling. That’s because the pledges from Biden and Austin guaranteed that U.S. weapons will keep flowing his way and that Western leaders’ criticism of his genocidal war in Gaza—which has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians—will be tamped down.
It wasn’t just Netanyahu celebrating this weekend, though. Here in the U.S., ex-President Donald Trump and his allies were also beaming. The militaristic neocons and religious extremists that make up different wings of the Republican coalition were united in cheering for a bigger war and blaming Biden for disaster.
They sense a moment of opportunity to divide anti-MAGA forces, and the policy being pursued by the White House is unfortunately aiding them in their effort. All these developments combine to make the demand for an immediate arms embargo on Israel all the more urgent.
Settler rampage: A Palestinian woman attacked by illegal Israeli settlers arrives at the Palestine Medical Complex in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Friday, April 12, 2024. While the world was consumed with the Iranian attack on Israel, dozens of Israeli settlers rampaged through a Palestinian village, killing Palestinians and destroying property. In Gaza, meanwhile, the genocidal destruction also continued unabated. | Nasser Nasser / AP
Netanyahu’s partial victory
The U.S. response to the Iranian attack was a partial victory for Netanyahu.
The weekend assault by Tehran was the result of Israel’s April 1 bombing of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria. That last part is worth stating again—the Iranian attack this weekend was not some unprovoked incident; it was retaliation for an Israeli action that killed 13 people at an Iranian diplomatic outpost two weeks ago.
If one were only getting their news from the mainstream corporate media in the U.S. or listening to the words of many political leaders in Washington, they would probably never know that it was Israel that had provoked Iran.
That doesn’t make the latter part of some anti-imperialist alliance nor necessarily a friend of the Palestinians, but it is a context that is inconvenient for the narrative of an innocent Israel alone against aggressive neighbors.
At any rate, Netanyahu managed to prompt Iran to elevate the war danger. That will get him his weapons and temporarily hush the increasingly critical voices of allies skeptical of his execution of the war in Gaza. But the Iran provocation was not quite the complete win he’d hoped for.
The bigger goal was to escalate the war against Gaza into a wider regional war that would include direct U.S. involvement in the fighting. He wants to make U.S. imperialism not just his accomplice but his direct partner in waging war in the Middle East.
Why? The reasons are many.
So far, the Gaza genocide is not achieving many of its declared aims. Hamas has not been smashed. The hostages have not been freed. Gaza has been destroyed and tens of thousands have been killed, but the plan to completely eradicate the Palestinian presence there hasn’t materialized. That’s the case thanks to both Palestinian resistance and the refusal of Israel’s neighboring states to transform themselves into permanent refugee camps.
Meanwhile, the war is increasingly unpopular at home, and hundreds of thousands are demanding elections in Israel—elections which would certainly result in Netanyahu’s removal from office and the resumption of a long-delayed corruption trial that could send him to prison.
Clearly, he needs and wants this war to drag on as long as possible and to become as big and involve as many countries as possible, particularly one country—the United States.
To Netanyahu’s disappointment, however, Biden told him to consider the shootdown of all the Iranian missiles “a win” and close the book for now: Don’t expect U.S. help in any follow-up attacks on Iran.
The coalition for war
But there are other forces coalescing to give Israel the bigger war it wants.
John Bolton—former Trump cabinet member and one of the architects of the U.S. war in Iraq—is rallying neocons in the U.S. to squeeze Biden. Ever since President George W. Bush declared Iran to be part of the “Axis of Evil” over 20 years ago, Bolton and his allies have been angling for a fight with that country.
In January this year, he was already telegraphing the message that the U.S. has “no option but to attack Iran.” This weekend, he said “passivity…would be a big mistake” and said Biden was “an embarrassment” for urging Israel not to attack Iran (again).
The Evangelical Christian leaders who command major swathes of the Trump MAGA coalition, meanwhile, are revving up their followers for war, as well.
Televangelist Pastor John Hagee, founder of the lobbyist group Christians United for Israel, characterized the Iranian attack as the fulfillment of prophecy, the beginning of the “Gog and Magog war” predicted in the Bible. Demonizing those who advocate a ceasefire in Gaza, Hagee said on Sunday that “the word de-escalate is music to the ears of Hamas and Iran.”
He and other pro-war Christian leaders will be going to Congress “like a bulldozer” in the coming days, he said, ordering lawmakers to “bless Israel” with more U.S. taxpayer-funded weaponry. In the meantime, he urged the faithful to bless the ministry run by him and his son with their hard-earned money.
Then, turning to the 2024 U.S. elections, Hagee indirectly endorsed Donald Trump when he called the Iranian attack on Israel “a tribute to the weak and pathetic leadership of Joe Biden.”
Fascist threat, imperialist strategy
Although Hagee’s remarks are often dismissed as the ravings of a conman cult leader, he illuminates the class and democratic contradictions that define U.S. capitalism and an electoral contest that is forcing voters to choose between two varieties of imperialism.
The absurdity of the moment was perhaps best illustrated when the red-hatted legions at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday broke into chants of “Genocide Joe,” and their leader responded, “They’re not wrong!”
Trump paired his apparent acknowledgement that Israel was committing genocide with U.S. complicity with a “God bless Israel” platitude and an affirmation that the Iranian attack wouldn’t have happened if he was president.
Follow the logic (if there is such a thing with Trump), and you get a pledge that he will do an even better job at assisting in genocide and supporting the Israeli military if he is re-elected.
An open fascist who has already tried to overthrow the U.S. government before and is working tirelessly with Republican officials across the country to destroy democracy is openly and cynically attempting to drive a wedge between the Democratic nominee and anti-war voters with a pro-war message.
Does Trump actually expect to win the votes of many pro-Palestinian voters? No, most of them wouldn’t give him the time of day, and he knows it. The goal is to demobilize progressive voters and stoke discontent toward Biden. Trump’s team has done its calculations, and it knows that getting Democratic-leaning voters to stay home in a few key states could be enough for him to win. And the threat extends down-ballot, because it’s not just Biden who’d be in trouble but other progressive candidates running on the Democratic ticket at the state and local levels, as well.
Unfortunately, the imperialist strategy being pursued by the Biden administration is making Trump’s task easier. The unity that’s needed to block fascism at the polls in November is jeopardized every time the president approves another weapons shipment to Israel or reaffirms his “ironclad” support of the government in Tel Aviv.
Ceasefire alone cannot be the demand of the peace movement in our country. A total and complete arms embargo on Israel is an absolute necessity—not just for saving the lives of the Palestinian people and preventing a wider Middle East war, but for saving U.S. democracy from a fascist takeover.
Many organizations and leaders are already making that call, including Jewish Voice for Peace, which on Sunday issued yet another call for the U.S. to end all military funding and weapons sales.
Rep. Cori Bush again reiterated the demand she and other lawmakers have made for an end to the “shameful and unconditional” arming of the Israeli government as it commits war crimes. “The people of our country do not want war,” she said.
There are a million reasons to vote against Trump in November, and almost everyone who is a part of or connected to the mass labor, anti-war, African-American, Latino, immigrant rights, LGBTQ, and other democratic movements know them by heart. But the Democratic National Committee and the Biden campaign cannot simply rely on the bogeyman of Trump to motivate voters. The administration’s Gaza policy must change.
Every dollar for Israel’s war is another crack in the anti-MAGA coalition that’s needed to stop fascism in November.
As with all news-analytical and op-ed articles published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.
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Iranians gather in support of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ retaliatory attack on Israel on April 14, 2024 in Tehran. (Photo: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
“Now is the time for restraint and diplomacy, not more unconditional support for military escalation,” said one advocate.
Since Iran on Saturday sent hundreds of drones and missiles—which were mostly shot down—toward Israel to retaliate for an Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria, anti-war voices around the world have called for de-escalation efforts.
“We are deeply concerned that Iranian retaliatory strikes following Israel’s April 1 attack on its diplomatic compound in Damascus will move the region even further from the path to peace and security,” said Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council. “The launch of a significant attack on Israeli territory from Iran is without recent precedent and, unless there is a serious effort towards deconfliction, may confirm that Iran, Israel, and the United States are in the midst of the regional war that so many have feared.”
“We call on the Biden administration to exercise the United States’ considerable diplomatic leverage to restrain Israel and Iran to ensure this conflict does not spiral further out of control,” he continued. “Far too many innocents have already suffered in the war that began October 7, and the cycle of violence and inhumanity must be broken.”
“What’s at stake is nothing less than stopping a regionwide war in the Middle East, which the United States would surely be drawn into.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel with an assault of the Gaza Strip called plausibly genocidal by the International Court of Justice. Israeli forces have killed at least 33,729 people, wounded 76,371 more, and obliterated civilian infrastructure, displacing most of the 2.3 million Palestinians who live in the besieged enclave.
Blasting Iran’s Saturday attack on Israel as “another unacceptable turn in a dangerous escalation spiral,” Win Without War executive director Sara Haghdoosti said that and U.S. President Joe Biden and senior administration officials “must use all their diplomatic heft and leverage to prevent further violence.”
“What’s at stake is nothing less than stopping a regionwide war in the Middle East, which the United States would surely be drawn into. There are no military solutions to this crisis—only diplomatic ones,” she stressed. “The Israeli government’s destructive and failing campaign in Gaza has driven violent instability throughout the Middle East, which was further exacerbated by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reckless attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus. And the Iranian government’s own inexcusable retaliation, which we utterly condemn, has put the lives of people across the region—including communities in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran—at terrible risk.”
While repeatedly urging the the Israel Defense Forces to more precisely target militants in Gaza over the past six months, the Biden administration has also opposed multiple United Nations cease-fire resolution and sent more weapons to Israeli troops while pushing for a support package worth more than $14 billion—on top of the $3.8 billion in annual military aid that the United States gives to Netanyahu’s government.
If you had called for a ceasefire and used American leverage to force Israel to end its war months ago, than Israel would not have been emboldened to assassinate the Iranian general two weeks ago, and Iran would not feel pressure to respond.
“Preventing a regional war must be the top imperative and this may mean that Joe Biden must finally say ‘no’ to Israel and Netanyahu,” argued Abdi. “Biden’s bearhug approach towards Israel has completely failed and has put the U.S. at the risk of entering a war of choice—Netanyahu’s choice. Israel launched a military attack on a diplomatic compound, violating international law and all but guaranteeing an Iranian response.”
“Netanyahu appears eager to extend and expand the disastrous war in Gaza and draw the U.S. into a regional war and, by continually abetting the war and enabling Israel’s worst instincts, Biden may have granted Netanyahu’s wish,” he said. “Now is the time for restraint and diplomacy, not more unconditional support for military escalation. President Biden must put his foot down to do what’s necessary to prevent further military engagement between Israel and Iran and to demand a cease-fire to end the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza.”
Israel this weekend fended off most of the Iranian drones and missiles with help from Jordan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Benny Gantz—a member of the Israeli War Cabinet with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—said Sunday that his nation now intends to “build a regional coalition and exact a price from Iran, in a way and at a time that suits us.”
Biden publicly reaffirmed “America’s ironclad commitment to the security of Israel” but a White House official also confirmed to Reuters that during a call with Netanyahu, the president made clear the U.S. will not join any military offensives against Iran.
Denouncing the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ retaliation against Israel, Center for International Policy president and CEO Nancy Okail said Sunday that “escalatory actions by both countries threaten to fan the flames of conflict throughout the region, endangering the lives of millions.”
“We appreciate the apparent advance diplomatic efforts by the United States and others behind the scenes—as well U.S., U.K., and Jordanian participation in air defense measures—to minimize the impact of Iran’s attack,” she continued. “Prioritizing civilian protection and de-escalation was clearly the right approach and should continue to serve as the international community’s objectives in the critical days and weeks ahead.”
Okail emphasized that “achieving those goals requires not only arresting the escalation of violence between Israel and Iran, but securing a cease-fire in Gaza that halts the killing of civilians, releases the hostages, allows vital humanitarian aid to actually reach those who need it, and lowers tensions in the region. The continued unconditional supply to the Netanyahu government of the arms it is using in Gaza undermines those objectives, as well as U.S. and international law.”
“Netanyahu’s repeated disregard of U.S. red lines in Gaza, moves to deepen permanent occupation in the Palestinian territory, and escalation with Iran are destabilizing the entire region,” she added. “With American forces already drawn into hostilities with the Iranian-backed Houthis and actively engaging Iranian missiles and drones, President Biden cannot afford to let the extremist prime minister continue to have a harmful, undue influence on the course of events. Hopefully, the president’s efforts have averted a wider regional war with Iran; we urge him to bring that same level of effort to save the people of Gaza.”
Trita Parsi, an expert on Iran and the Middle East and EVP at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said that “if you give Biden (deservingly) credit for having helped prevent the region from falling off the cliff last night, you must also give him credit for helping bring the region to the edge of the cliff in the first place by refusing to restrain Israel and blocking a cease-fire.”
People take part in a pro-Palestine march in central London organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, April 13, 2024
THE British government dragged the nation a step closer to war in the Middle East after the Prime Minister admitted today it had sent RAF fighter jets to shoot down Iranian drones and missiles.
The escalation of the Iranian and Israeli tensions over the weekend prompted calls for “a halt to this terrifying slide to wider conflict” in addition to the continuing demands by tens of thousands of protesters for a ceasefire in Gaza.
But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said that while supporting “all measures designed to restore calm” and prevent a wider regional war, “we continue to stand up for Israel’s security and that of our other partners in the region.”
And shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper supported the government’s decision to involve the RAF.
