LOS ANGELES — “Yesterday and last night Tehran launched 320 drones, ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel. Almost all of them were shot down,” said Socialist Workers Party National Committee member Norton Sandler to an April 14 meeting here. Sandler presented opening remarks to a previously planned Militant Labor Forum.
In face of that massive onslaught, Israel’s government is now considering what to do to defend itself from even more far-reaching assaults on its right to exist as a refuge for Jews, Sandler said.
But President Joseph Biden had a different take, based on Washington’s imperialist interests. He called the shooting down of Tehran’s barrage a “great victory” for Israel. “We’ve got your back,” he claimed.
Just don’t do anything, Biden warned the Israeli government.
“But this isn’t a great victory,” Sandler said. “It’s a challenge to Israel and to Jews by the reactionary regime in Iran, which admits it was centrally involved in orchestrating the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom that killed 1,200 Jews, wounded over 5,000 and kidnapped over 240 to torture, rape and use for extortion.
The aim of Tehran and its so-called axis of resistance — Hamas, Hezbollah, militia forces in Iraq and Syria and the Houthis — is to make Israel “unlivable for Jews,” said Sandler. “Already 60,000 Israelis in the northern part of the country have had to abandon their homes and relocate.
“And keep in mind,” he said, “that the missiles and drones were fired by a rising nuclear power.”
Following the Oct. 7 pogrom, Sandler continued, “Washington stated repeatedly they had no evidence that the Iranian regime had anything to do with it. That was a lie. The Iranian general Israel killed in Syria — the pretext for Tehran’s aerial onslaught — was intimately tied up with planning and executing Hamas’ pogrom, Tehran now admits.
“Washington’s attempt to impose marching orders on Israel is a continuation of the treacherous role played by the Biden administration in demanding that the Israeli armed forces not carry out military operations to defeat Hamas in Rafah, where the Jew-hating terrorist group has its last stronghold. If Hamas survives, it will fulfill its promise to launch pogrom after pogrom to kill Jews.”
Sandler noted that the entire pro-Hamas mob that has been condemning Israel in the U.S. and around the world — claiming to be fighting for a cease-fire — is now celebrating the armada of missiles and drones launched by Tehran on Israeli soil.
During the discussion, a participant asked, why did Iran tell the U.S. government ahead of time about their attack? Why would they do that?
Sandler responded that Iran had been announcing for days they were going to retaliate. It was no secret. “U.S. and Israeli intelligence were well aware of their preparations to launch the assault,” he said. “The Iranian regime is trying to advance its position while avoiding direct conflict with the U.S.”
Another participant pointed out that just because there was minimal damage this time, it doesn’t mean the result will be the same next time.
The dictates to Israel by the U.S. rulers and Biden White House, Sandler said, simply embolden Iran’s rulers and their proxy forces to launch further, more murderous assaults on Jews in Israel.
Oakland forum
SWP members in Oakland had planned a forum that same day to launch the campaign of Eric Simpson as Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Congress there. After Tehran’s aerial assault on Israel, organizers asked Betsey Stone, a member of the party’s National Committee and organizer of the Oakland party branch, to open the meeting by outlining the party’s response.
Simpson also addressed the unfolding developments. “Iran’s assault on Israel was deadly serious. It comes from a capitalist regime whose rallying cry is destruction of Israel, driving out and killing Jews,” Simpson said. “This is the regime that helped organize the Oct. 7 slaughter of Jews in Israel by Hamas, that is organizing proxy forces throughout the Middle East to attack Israel, that is developing nuclear weapons, and that carries out brutal exploitation and repression on workers, oppressed nationalities, and women in Iran itself.”
Simpson held up “The Opening Guns of World War III,” a book featuring a talk given by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes in 1991 on what Washington’s war on Iraq foretold for future conflict.
“You saw the face of U.S. imperialism in that war, the massive carnage, the destruction of Iraq, the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed in one of the most cold-blooded slaughters in modern history, with millions left homeless, starving and vulnerable to cholera,” Simpson said.
“The Socialist Workers Party campaign explains the U.S. government bears the responsibility for the escalation of attacks against Israel,” he said. “The U.S. rulers don’t care if Hamas continues to exist to plan more killings, if Hezbollah continues to lob missiles, making normal life in northern Israel impossible. They don’t care about protecting Jews. What they do care about is protecting U.S. imperialist economic and political interests in the Middle East and beyond.
“And they’re prepared to do whatever it takes to do so.”
Betsey Stone contributed to this article.