September 19, 2024
Statement on the Pager Terrorist Attack
On September 17th, in a continuation of its campaign of psychological warfare against the Lebanese people, Israel carried out another series of terrorist attacks on radio and communication devices across the country. At least 26 martyrs have been confirmed in the past three days, with over 3,275 people injured: many with lifelong and debilitating injuries. Targeting health care workers, civil servants, and children as young as 10, Israel continues to demonstrate its unwillingness to abide by any rules of engagement or laws of war. Already over capacity, Lebanon’s fragile healthcare system is bracing to absorb numbers of emergency patients not seen since 2006.
Developments over the last three days are a sobering reminder that Zionism is a regional project not confined to the borders of 1948 Palestine. As a settler-colony, Israel has never defined its national boundaries, and maintains expansionist ambitions in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Israel’s current attempt to provoke a regional war is part of a century-long campaign to dominate and ultimately seize land in our region, expelling our people and clearing more territory for settlement.
Minister of “Defense” Yoav Gallant’s announcement that the IOF will shift troops from Gaza to the Lebanese border indicates that an all-out war with Lebanon may be imminent. But it is also, more conclusively, a testament to Israel’s failure to neutralize the resistance in Gaza and deliver any of its war objectives, even after waging one year of genocide and destroying nearly all of Gaza’s infrastructure. With Gaza’s territorial sovereignty preserved, Palestinians in Gaza have shown the world the lengths they will go to defend our land and ensure our people’s victory.
Today, the official Israeli Broadcasting Authority Kan confirmed what the US itself has so far denied: that there was advance knowledge and coordination between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Israeli “Defense” Minister Yoav Gallant, as demonstrated by their exchanged phone calls minutes before each wave of mass detonations.
Antony Blinken, Matthew Miller, and other faces of the US war machine continue to lie to the broader public about the lack of US knowledge or involvement in the terror attacks, all while maintaining a direct line of communication with those greenlighting and carrying out the attacks over the 3 days they unfolded. As US officials feign innocence, the media mouthpieces of empire, including the New York Times, all but applaud the “creativity” and “ingenuity” of the terror attacks, and brag about the “precision” of strikes that saw the severing of limbs, eyes, hands, and legs from thousands of Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians as they went about their days at school, work, and running errands.
The contamination of the supply chain with small amounts of controlled explosives in thousands of imported devices is, by design, intended to guarantee maximum terror and injury to the market where goods are to be distributed. We declare that if such a plot is not terrorism, the word terrorism has no meaning. It remains to be seen what will unfold in the days and weeks to come. But whatever shape developments take, our responsibility in the diaspora remains the same: to create crisis from within the belly of this empire, and to stop the Zionist, imperialist death machine in its tracks.
We demand politicians across North America stop providing political cover for Israel’s war crimes. The struggle continues for an arms embargo, an end to all imperialist aggression and foreign occupation of our lands, and our people’s full liberation and return.