On 5 June, during a visit to the town of Kiryat Shmona, near the Lebanese border of northern occupied Palestine, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel was prepared for “very intense action” to “restore security” for the settlers who have been evacuated.
“Whoever thinks that they can hurt us and that we will sit idly by is making a big mistake,” he said. “One way or another, we will restore security to the north.”
To all non-western ears, that sounded like bluff and bravado. The military battle being waged in and around Palestine has by no means been dominated by Israel and its western backers. Quite the reverse. The combined forces of zionism and imperialism have been taking a battering and imperialist firepower has been exposed as being far weaker than previously assumed.
In the air, on the land and in the sea
The Lebanese resistance forces of Hezbollah are wreaking havoc on Israeli (ie, on occupied Palestinian) soil. In recent weeks, salvos of missiles launched from southern Lebanon have been taking the fight against the zionists to new levels.
Following Israel’s use of banned chemical weapon white phosphorous, which set fire to great swathes of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah responded by bombarding Israeli settlements with incendiary explosives, penetrating Israel’s Iron Dome defence system and rendering it ineffective, and by bombing Israeli bases in the Golan Heights.
For months there has been a steady escalation in Israeli rhetoric regarding an allegedly ‘imminent’ invasion of Lebanon. But with Hezbollah’s demonstration of its military prowess (most recently with the release of impressive drone footage showing sensitive Israeli military and economic sites) and its declaration that it is completely ready to wage a full-scale war if forced to do so, the zionist entity has fallen somewhat silent.
On land in Palestine, meanwhile, the resistance forces are winning their fight. In the battle of Jabaliya refugee camp for instance, an Israeli general has admitted that Israeli forces suffered a total defeat despite sending a division (10-20,000 soldiers) against a brigade (1,000 soldiers).
In a David versus Goliath battle (just to avoid confusion, the plucky, oppressed but righteous figure is today represented by the Palestinian people and their heroic resistance, while Goliath is the monster of Anglo-American imperialism and its Israeli proxy), the Palestinian forces used their creative intelligence and knowledge of the ground to wage a battle of manoeuvre, rather than a war of position.
“Instead of concluding an unfinished battle in Jabaliya, Israel once more demonstrated that a military victory is not possible, neither eight months after the start of the war, nor at any point in the future.
“For Israel, Jabaliya, the largest refugee camp in Gaza, was an outright defeat, albeit one that politicians have tried to spin as a ‘tactical victory’.” (An outright Israeli defeat or ‘tactical victory’ in Jabaliya? – Analysis, Palestine Chronicle, 31 May 2024)
Former Israeli minister Haim Ramon said in a recent interview that Israel has failed to subdue what he described as “the weakest enemy of Israel” (ie, the Palestinian resistance). In the same interview, with the Israeli newspaper Maariv, Ramon said that Israel is on the brink of an unprecedented strategic defeat in Gaza.
Alongside all this, the Ansarullah resistance forces of Yemen continue to block shipping from the Red Sea and to taunt the USA, showing what can be done to thwart the imperialists’ intentions and how they will be made to suffer should they continue to support Israel.
In a 24-hour period in recent weeks, Yemeni forces twice hit the US aircraft carrier Eisenhower, damaging its runway. A message from the carrier’s captain was released to world media to prove that planes were still landing, but further investigation suggested that this clip was 12 months old.
Meanwhile, two Israeli merchant ships were hit in the Mediterranean, far from Yemen’s own borders, and an advanced US drone was downed without damage, allowing resistance forces to reverse engineer it and take advantage of any new technologies it contains.
The paper tiger is being exposed
The possibility of success for all the peoples of the world currently thirsting for freedom from US imperialist domination is tangible. People everywhere are watching what has unfolded since the Al-Aqsa Flood operation of 7 October with growing confidence.
The realisation that the puffed-up bravado of the west, led by US imperialism, is nothing more than the paper tiger once described by Mao Zedong, should give the oppressed peoples of the world the conviction to challenge its authority. Invulnerability is not an inherent quality of powerful weapons; it is a perception cultivated by those who wield them – and that facade is fading fast.
If power lies solely in tangible and destructive weapons, then US imperialism would never have been defeated. Yet again and again in Vietnam, north Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and now Palestine, forces with a tiny fraction of the imperialists’ military power have been victorious.
Superior weaponry has proven impotent in the face of true resilience, determination and creative intelligence. What the resistance forces of Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen show us is that true power doesn’t lie in the ability to inflict destruction; it lies in the capacity to withstand it.
Resilience is not derived from physical might; it comes from a commitment to freedom that enables persecuted and battered people to withstand challenging circumstances, undeterred by the spectre of imminent danger. The Palestinians and the Yemenis have shown this to the world.
Gaza has been the recipient of ten Hiroshimas’ worth of bombs. More bombs have been rained down on this tiny strip of land than were dropped on Dresden, London and Leningrad combined during WW2. Yet zionist Israel and its western partners are being defeated. Despite their incredible arsenal of death, they are losing the land battle with the Palestinian resistance, the air battle with Hezbollah and the sea battle with the Yemenis, all of whom have spent decades studying the weaknesses in the imperialist arsenals and working out how to overcome them.
A false sense of security is created when a nation depends on military might and propaganda narratives to uphold its domination. Before our very eyes, although largely undocumented in western media, non-state actors are facilitating the collapse of western military technology and doctrine.
The US empire has lost its intimidation factor. The forces of resistance are multiplying. They are sharing experience and technology, and they are no longer scared or daunted. They are ready to stand up and fight, and they are fighting to win.
The defeat of the imperialist powers is now a realisable goal within our lifetimes.
