With US arms continuing to flow to Israel as it slaughtered more than 500 people in Lebanon since yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have few qualms about igniting a full-blown regional war — and US officials aren’t stopping him.
Paramedics working through the night to rescue people from under rubble after the Israeli attack in Beirut, Lebanon, on September 20, 2024. (Courtney Bonneau / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)
Israel has unleashed hell in Lebanon.
On Monday, waves of Israeli air strikes that by Tuesday morning had killed 558 people in southern and eastern Lebanon, including women and children, while displacing thousands others who fled north for safety following Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) warnings to evacuate. At least 1,835 civilians have been reported wounded.
Footage shows Israeli forces carpet-bombing civilian homes across Southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, hitting at least fifty-eight towns and villages. According to Lebanon’s health ministry, the Israeli bombing has targeted homes, medical centers, ambulances, and the cars of people trying to flee. Entire Lebanese families have been wiped out. Horrific footage shows children trapped under the rubble.
This is a blatant war crime.
The assault on Monday comes amid fears of a looming Israeli ground invasion in Lebanon, which threatens to escalate into a full-blown regional war. In a CNN interview on Sunday, UN secretary-general António Guterres warned that all-out war would risk “the possibility of transforming Lebanon into another Gaza,” which he said would be “a devastating tragedy for the world.”
But a regional war is precisely what Israel wants. Armed with a bottomless supply of US weapons, Israel is extending its genocidal war to Lebanon with clear intent on a regional escalation that could directly implicate the United States. Following the Monday massacre, the Pentagon dispatched additional troops to the region in anticipation of a wider conflict. The assault also comes just hours after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed his “support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Lebanese Hezbollah attacks.”
Taking a page from its Gaza script, the Israeli military has characterized the massacre as an “extensive” assault on Hezbollah, while parroting the genocidal logic that there are no civilians in Lebanon. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled on Sunday that the IDF assault on Lebanon is just beginning, boasting that “over the past few days, we hit Hezbollah with a series of blows it hadn’t imagined.” In a video posted to social media that Monday, an IDF spokesperson described the bombing as a preemptive attack launched amid “indications that Hezbollah was preparing to fire towards Israeli territory.” Another Israeli official described the assault as “de-escalation through escalation.”
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati on Monday called Israel’s wave of air strikes an act of genocide, declaring: “The continued Israeli aggression on Lebanon is a WAR of GENOCIDE in every sense of the word, and its goal is to DESTROY Lebanese VILLAGES!” Meanwhile, the Lebanese government has requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council following the latest Israeli strike in Beirut, accusing Israel of carrying out acts “akin to genocide” on Lebanese soil.
Israeli ministers themselves have been openly calling for genocide in Lebanon, while others are now calling on the IDF to “take over” and establish a “buffer zone” in Southern Lebanon.
In response to the Israeli attacks, Hezbollah has fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel, which have been mostly intercepted and caused no casualties. (Hezbollah has repeatedly pledged to stop its attacks on Israel if there is a cease-fire in Gaza.)
The Monday massacre comes shortly after Israeli intelligence services launched a mass terrorist attack inside Lebanon, causing thousands of electronic devices to detonate remotely, killing at least forty and wounding and maiming thousands of others, while “unleashing widespread fear, panic, and horror among people in Lebanon,” to cite a top UN official. It follows the deadly Israeli air strike in Lebanon on Friday, which killed over thirty civilians, along with a high-ranking Hezbollah commander.
Israel has a long history of carrying out civilian massacres in Lebanon. The Monday massacre coincides with the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila massacre. In September 1982, IDF forces invaded the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, allowing Maronite Phalangists to enter the camp and massacre thousands of defenseless Palestinian refugees in cold blood, mostly women and children. The massacre took place even after the camp had surrendered to the Israeli forces and Palestine Liberation Organization members had left Beirut.
On April 18, 1996, Israel carried out a horrific massacre near Qana, a village in then Israeli-occupied Southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military bombarded a United Nations compound, which was sheltering over 800 Lebanese civilians, killing at least 106. An Amnesty International report later concluded that “the IDF intentionally attacked the UN compound.” The Qana massacre was hailed by Israel as “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” in reference to the novel by US author John Steinbeck.
Under the guise of fighting terrorism, Israel continues to act with impunity in the region, emboldened by US unconditional support and unceasing flow of arms shipments. For twelve months, the United States has manufactured and shipped while Israel delivered the bombs that have massacred over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and nearly one thousand civilians in Lebanon. (According to the nonprofit organization Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), Israel has launched over 8,000 attacks in Lebanon since last October.) Since the start of its genocidal war in Gaza, Israel has committed war crimes nearly every day, and every war crime bears the undeniable imprints of US complicity.
Following the Monday massacre in Lebanon, a group of US lawmakers have urged the Biden administration to halt arms supplies to Israel. Rep. Rashida Tlaib wrote on social media: “It’s easier to stop sending Israel government weapons to conduct its genocidal wars than it is to evacuate every American in Lebanon.”
Without an immediate halt to US arms to Israel, it’s hard to see why Israel should stop slaughtering civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, while threatening to ignite a full-blown regional war that would be “a devastating tragedy for the world.”