By Leandro Albani on September 25, 2024 from Argentina
protests around the world against Israeli attacks on Lebanon, photo: Bill Hackwell
The Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has begun the mobilization of its genocide operation against Lebanon. And the question is how far will he go. After almost a year of systematically destroying the Gaza Strip and leaving more than 40,000 Palestinians killed (mostly women and minors), the military power of the Israeli State is now striking another neighboring country. The results are plain to see: in barely 24 hours, Israel is responsible for the death of 500 people on Lebanese territory.
The justification for this new massacre – bearing the handwritten signature of the Israeli Prime Minister – is Hezbollah, the Lebanese political-military organization. The Israeli regime always has excuses at its fingertips to give the green light to operations where ethnic cleansing, impunity and a sustained disregard for international law, which, with difficulty, still governs diplomatic, political and defense relations on the planet. That doesn’t matter to Israel. But there is more: Netanyahu and his ministers boast of the genocide they commit in Gaza. Cruelty and impunity, in the Israeli case, go hand in hand. So far, the United Nations and most governments (mainly the international powers) maintain either a position of shameless alliance with the State of Israel or a worrying impotence in the face of a genocide that is being broadcast live and direct.
Now it is Lebanon’s turn. And I say Lebanon, because the military attacks against that country are focused on the inhabitants of the once small Switzerland of the Middle East. Although, these days, we will hear again and again that Hezbollah is responsible for the attacks. Again and again, we will hear this mantra in the mainstream media, coming from the mouths of “analysts” and “political scientists” of various stripes and from a political leadership surrendered to the feet of Netanyahu. Take for examplet Argentine case; perhaps the most notorious, where the government of Javier Milei repeatedly expresses its support for the genocide committed by Israel in Gaza and showed a contempt rarely seen towards the Palestinian victims.
Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization, being depicted by Israel and its allies: it is a political party, with a military wing that emerged in the heat of the resistance to the Israeli invasion of the country between the 1980s and 2000s. Hezbollah participates in Lebanese public policy, has legislative representatives elected in different elections and is part, through several ministers, of the central government in Beirut. Whatever we think of its ideology, we cannot deny its roots in large sectors of the Lebanese people, nor ignore the social work it carries out (in a nation in permanent economic crisis for many years) and its military weight in the Lebanese defense system.
But we can be sure that we will hear again and again that Hezbollah is responsible for the ongoing massacre, that the party led by Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah is the incarnation of the devil on earth and that every civilian killed by Israel is either a militant of the organization or is “potentially” a future militant. The latter is not an exaggeration, but the great justification used by the Israeli leadership to commit all kinds of atrocities against the Palestinians and, to a lesser extent, against the Lebanese people (this “lesser extent”, in the case of Lebanon, is not at all minor, but, next to the human and material destruction in Gaza, appears as terrifyingly small at this point).
History demonstrates – with concrete and reliable evidence – that the Israeli state has as its main target Arab civilians, whether Muslim or Christian. In Israel’s military strategy, the mass murder of populations is the central axis of its military doctrine. To that, forced displacement, the application of economic blockade policies, targeted assassinations and a propaganda system at the international level loaded with public or judicial threats against those who criticize its criminal methodology are added.
demonstration in San Francisco condemning Israel. photo: Bill Hackwell
At present, Israel’s impunity seems armored. But, all over the world, massive mobilizations against the genocide committed by Netanyahu’s government in Gaza are multiplying. The big problem is the political class (with honorable exceptions), which is totally disconnected from these demands, which have their epicenter in the United States and Europe. For the White House and the presidents of the European powers, what Israel does in Gaza and the West Bank is of no concern to them. Beyond public statements and lukewarm calls for a cease-fire, political support and tons of armaments continue to flow to Tel Aviv.
The State of Israel has long since become a machine that only produces death and despises the diversity that shapes us as humanity. Days ago, Mikel Ayestarán, Basque journalist and Middle East correspondent, reflected the following in his account on the social network X: “The extreme brutality of the operation in #Gaza has anesthetized us and 500 dead in one day in #Lebanon for many people is already as if nothing… Where are we going to place the threshold of pain?”.
That question is the one we as peoples must answer urgently and not leave for tomorrow the denunciations of an ongoing genocide that seems to have no end.
Source: La Tinta, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English