In Lebanon carnage, Biden deepens US ‘obligation’ to Israeli aggression

Israel has killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, emboldening a US-backed war for hegemony in which Arab civilians are an open Israeli target.

Aaron Maté

Sep 28, 2024

https://www.aaronmate.net/p/in-lebanon-carnage-biden-deepens

One week after Israel began its US-backed rampage in Gaza last October, President Biden was asked by CBS News if fueling a Middle East conflict on top of the proxy war in Ukraine was “more than the United States can take on at the same time.”

“No,” Biden shot back with indignation. “We're the United States of America for God's sake, the most powerful nation in the history -- not in the world, in the history of the world.” Not only does the US “have the capacity to do this,” Biden intoned, “we have an obligation to. We are the ‘essential nation’... And if [we] don’t, then who does?”

In an overlooked comment, Biden gave his blessing not only to an Israeli scorched-earth campaign in Gaza, but Lebanon as well. For Israel, Biden said, “going in” and “taking out the extremists” in “Hezbollah... up north” along with “Hamas down south... is a necessary requirement.”

As the first anniversary of Biden’s hegemonic démarche approaches next month, the US is playing the “essential” role that he envisioned. Israel’s current bombardment of Lebanon, which has killed (at least) hundreds of people -- including Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah -- and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, is the direct result of Biden’s self-conceived “obligation” to Israeli aggression.

Since it began launching rockets at the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms on Oct. 8^th and then expanded its targets to within Israel itself, Hezbollah has stressed that its goal is to pressure Israel into a permanent Gaza ceasefire. Just as Biden proclaims an “obligation” to fuel two regional conflicts, Hezbollah -- a group founded in response to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon -- proclaims the same duty to resist Israeli hegemony, which has killed tens of thousands of Lebanese in the last 42 years. Hezbollah’s intervention for Gaza, which displaced tens of thousands in Israel, has been limited in scale. Of more than 10,200 cross-border attacks in the last year, about 81 percent were carried out by Israel.

During this period, the Biden administration has adopted a strategy of pretending to pressure Israel all while offering it the weaponry and diplomatic cover to kill tens of thousands of people in Gaza and make it unlivable for survivors; expand its long-running terror and land theft in the West Bank; regularly bomb Syria; and now pursue its longstanding intent to destroy Hezbollah, the main force in the region that can significantly fight back.

As in Gaza, Israel is pursuing its goals by terrorizing Lebanon’s civilian population, and not for the first time. It was in Lebanon where Israel formalized a policy of deliberately targeting civilians known as the “Dahiya Doctrine”, named after the Beirut suburb pulverized by Israel during its 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

“What happened in the Dahiya district of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is shot at,” IDF chief of general staff Gadi Eizenkot, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet until recently, explained in a 2008 interview. “We will subject it to disproportionate force and cause enormous damage and destruction. We don’t consider them to be civilian villages but military bases.”

Major General Giora Eiland, the influential former head of Israel’s National Security Council, later explained that in future conflicts, “the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are the things that can have the most effect on the conduct of Hezbollah.” Accordingly, Eiland advised, the next Israeli assault on Lebanon should “bring about the elimination of the Lebanese military, destruction of infrastructure, and extreme suffering to the civilian population.” In 2006, he noted, “[t]he only good thing that happened...was the relative damage caused to Lebanon’s population,” because the “destruction of thousands of homes ‘innocents’ preserved some of Israel’s deterrent power.”

On Friday, Israel continued its assault on Lebanon’s population by dropping US-made 2,000-pound bombs on at least six residential buildings in Dahiya, killing an unknown number of civilians along with Nasrallah himself.

In a statement, Biden welcomed Israel’s assassination of the Hezbollah leader as “a measure of justice for his many victims.” Biden made no mention of the many Lebanese civilian victims killed alongside Nasrallah during Israel’s ongoing, US-armed campaign. Biden also affirmed that he “fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups,” and has ordered the Pentagon to “further enhance the defense posture of U.S. military forces in the Middle East region.” Along with deploying more troops to safeguard Israeli aggression, the US this week handed the Israeli military an additional $8.7 billion in weapons. These US weapons supplies, a grateful Israeli Defense Ministry noted last month, “are crucial for sustaining the IDF’s operational capabilities during the ongoing war.”

For the umpteenth time, Biden paid to lip service to a negotiated ceasefire, claiming that his “aim is to de-escalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means.” Concurrently, maintaining a year-long performance in which the president pretends to be “frustrated” with Israel while giving it carte blanche to commit mass murder, anonymous Biden aides claimed that he was privately “expressing increased frustration” about being “humiliated” by Netanyahu, who had just abandoned a US-French proposal for a 21-day ceasefire on the Israel-Lebanon border.

Beyond these ritual face-saving gestures, the Biden administration’s real outlook was quietly relayed to the New York Times. In an article headlined “Strike on Hezbollah Deepens Disconnect Between Biden and Netanyahu,” US officials acknowledged that there is in fact no disconnect at all.

Deep into the article, the Times cited Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called on the White House to “end its counterproductive calls for a cease-fire” and welcomed Nasrallah’s death as “a major step forward for the Middle East.” Inside the Biden administration, the Times reported, “there were some... who agreed with the latter assessment.” Killing Nasrallah and “wiping out much of Hezbollah’s war-making capacity, could present a once-in-a-generation opportunity to finally break the Iran-backed terrorist group’s stranglehold on Lebanon, some U.S. officials reasoned.” As a result, “a cease-fire deal... could be reached now on more advantageous terms.”

When it comes to weakening Hezbollah, these opportunity seizing US officials have ample grounds to be optimistic. Israel’s ability to assassinate Nasrallah and many top deputies in recent weeks, along with the indiscriminate “pager” attacks that wounded and maimed thousands, underscored that Israel has penetrated Hezbollah in unprecedented fashion, with devastating results. Hezbollah’s top ally, Iran, has so far given every indication that it wants to avoid a regional war. And Syria, another key ally in the “axis of resistance”, has been decimated by a decade-long, CIA-led dirty war and an ongoing US military occupation/sanctions regime that preserves the suffering.

But Hezbollah’s supposed “stranglehold on Lebanon” is not the sole product of military power. In a deeply divided country, Hezbollah enjoys a base of support because it has long resisted Israeli aggression against both Lebanon and the Palestinian people. Undoubtedly, there are Lebanese who question Hezbollah’s post-Oct. 7^th decision to intervene on Gaza’s behalf. This intervention has not only failed to deter the Israeli assault on the people of Gaza, but has now culminated in Israel expanding its terror campaign deeper into Lebanon.

Just as Israel and its US sponsor used the Oct. 7^th attack to destroy Gaza and restore Israel’s shaken “aura of power”, they now hope to use Hezbollah’s intervention to wipe it out for good. The calculation in Washington and Tel Aviv is that their joint commitment to aggression against civilians will re-establish “deterrence” and a ceasefire “on more advantageous terms.” Those terms mean a region wherein Hezbollah no longer resists Israeli-US dominance, and ordinary civilians have been sufficiently terrorized into submission.

Apologists for US-Israeli aggression will argue, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken did Friday, that Israel has the iron-clad “right to deal with existential threats to its security and enemies across its borders with the avowed intent to destroy Israel.” Yet as Hezbollah exemplified in intervening for Gaza, Israel only faces security threats because of its foundational commitment to destroying Palestinians’ right to self-determination and stealing their land. Rather than allow for Palestine’s existence, Israel has opted to ignore countless UN resolutions, international legal opinions, and Arab League peace offers to enforce the world’s longest-running military occupation and assault any force that stands in the way.

If the US had an obligation to genuine security for everyone, it would join the rest of the world and cease its support for Israeli aggression and occupation. Instead, indifferent to – if not emboldened by – the sight of countless more Arab civilians murdered with US-made bombs, Biden has opted to deepen his government’s essential role.

Heavy bombardment hits Israel from Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen

A Hezbollah missile struck the vicinity of Jerusalem, resulting in a large blast and causing a blackout in several settlements.

News Desk

SEP 29, 2024

https://thecradle.co/articles/heavy-bombardment-hits-israel-from-lebanon-iraq-yemen

Israel came under attack from several fronts late on 28 September, including a Hezbollah missile strike that hit the vicinity of occupied Jerusalem. 

Fires erupted at the Mitzpe Hagit settlement outpost near the settlements of Maale Adumim and Maale Mikhmas after the Hezbollah operation.

The attack resulted in a power outage in several settlements. Video footage showed the blast when the missile made an impact. 

The blast was heard by residents in the occupied West Bank. According to unconfirmed reports, the missile hit a gathering of Israeli military leaders near Jerusalem. 

Hezbollah drones also made impact in settlements near Nahariya. Strict Israeli army censorship has been imposed on both incidents. 

The Lebanese resistance has yet to announce the operations. It said on Sunday morning in a statement that it hit the Ofek military camp with a barrage of Fadi-1 rockets. 

The Yemeni Armed Forces targeted Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport with the Palestine-2 ballistic missile on Saturday evening.

“The missile force of the Yemeni armed forces launched an operation targeting Jaffa Airport, known in Israel as Ben Gurion, during the arrival of the criminal Benjamin Netanyahu,” the Yemeni army said in a statement on 28 September. 

The Israeli military said it shot down the missile outside its airspace. 

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) also announced several attacks against Israeli targets on Saturday.

“The Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq attacked today, Saturday 9/28/2024, a vital target in Umm al-Rashrash (Eilat) in our occupied territories, using drones,” IRI said. 

Earlier, IRI announced drone attacks targeting Tel Aviv and the occupied Golan Heights. 

Saturday’s Resistance Axis operations came hours after Hezbollah confirmed the assassination of its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in a brutal Israeli airstrike that leveled several buildings in Beirut’s southern suburb the day before. The assassination has sent shockwaves throughout the region.

 

Thanks to Biden, Lebanon Is Burning

by Daniel Larison 

Posted on September 27, 2024

https://original.antiwar.com/Daniel_Larison/2024/09/26/thanks-to-biden-lebanon-is-burning/

The Biden administration claims to be pushing for a “temporary ceasefire” between Israel and Hezbollah to avert a larger conflict, but this is very late in the day and it is not a serious effort to prevent a new war in Lebanon. It is at best a desperate, last-minute exercise in going through the motions of diplomacy. The administration would like to pretend that it is a passive bystander pleading from the sidelines instead of the chief patron and arms supplier of the main belligerent in the conflict, and it designs its entreaties to be toothless so that Israel can safely ignore them.

The US has refused to exert any pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for the last eleven months, and it has continued supplying Israel with weapons no matter how those weapons have been used to commit war crimes against Palestinians. Now US officials say that they don’t want further escalation in Lebanon, but once again the administration won’t back up those words with action. The US could use its leverage to rein Israel in and insist on the de-escalation that the administration says that it wants, but the president has shown that he has no interest in doing that.

The empty Gaza ceasefire negotiations prove as much. The Gaza ceasefire talks have become an interminable process designed to lead nowhere. The administration has catered to the Netanyahu government’s preferences at every turn. Each time that Netanyahu adds new deal-breakers or otherwise seeks to derail negotiations with new attacks, the administration has dutifully taken his side and pretended that Hamas is the sole obstacle to securing an agreement. The US cannot be a credible diplomatic actor in the region when its primary role is acting as Netanyahu’s PR agent.

The Israeli government assumes that the US won’t withhold weapons, diplomatic support, or military protection under any circumstances, and that has encouraged Netanyahu to pursue increasingly aggressive goals. Because the US shields Israel from military reprisals, as it did earlier this year during Iran’s missile and drone strikes, it has given Netanyahu free rein to lash out whenever and wherever he wants. The administration has dressed all of this up as preventing a wider regional war, but the reality is that they have simply delayed the conflagration while making it more likely that it will be even more destructive when it occurs.

The total failure of the administration’s policy is there for all to see. The region is likely facing a new Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and that invasion will have serious destabilizing effects on the wider region. This is the disaster that the US has claimed to oppose all along, but in practice it has done nothing to stop it. Had the US truly wanted the war in Gaza not to spread, it would have demanded a lasting ceasefire months ago. Had the US wanted to prevent escalation in Lebanon, it would be cutting off arms transfers and pulling back its forces from the region rather than rushing more troops to the Middle East. Instead the US has done everything that one would expect it to do if it wished to set the region ablaze.

The US is at great risk of being ensnared in this larger war. It is imperative that the US avoid direct involvement in Israel’s conflicts. The US has no vital interests at stake in these fights. The president has no authority to involve US forces directly. It is not the responsibility of the United States to bail out a reckless client state when it gets in over its head. The quickest way to force the Israeli government to deescalate is to deprive it of the support and protection that it takes for granted.

Once the current crisis is over, US foreign policy in the region has to be radically overhauled. To avoid future entanglements in the wars of client states, the US should downgrade its relationships with the Middle Eastern governments that rely heavily on US weapons supplies and protection. The US has no formal commitments to defend these states, and it should not extend security guarantees to any of them. The US also needs to reduce its military presence in the region to the bare minimum required to secure our embassies. Decades of extensive US military involvement in this part of the world have been ruinous for the countries of the region and for American interests, and it is in the best interests of all concerned for the US to get out.

Media Complicit in the Crimes of Israel

by Jonathan Cook Posted on September 27, 2024

https://original.antiwar.com/cook/2024/09/26/media-complicit-in-the-crimes-of-israel/

The coverage of Israeli soldiers pushing three Palestinians off a roof in the West Bank town of Qabatiya – it’s unclear whether the men are dead or near-dead – is being barely reported by the western media, even though it was videoed from at least three different angles and a reporter from the main US news agency Associated Press witnessed it.

AP reported on this incident. Its news feed is accessed by all western establishment media, so they all know.

Yet again, the media has chosen to ignore Israeli war crimes, even when there is definitive proof that they occurred. (Or perhaps more accurately: even more so when there is definitive proof they occurred.)

Remember, that same media never fails to highlight – or simply makes up – any crime Palestinians are accused of, such as those non-existent “beheaded babies”.

AP itself treats this latest atrocity in the West Bank as no big deal. It reports simply that it may be part of a “pattern of excessive force” by Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians.

That comment, without quote marks and ascribed to a human rights group, is almost certainly AP’s preferred characterization of the group’s reference to a pattern not of “excessive force” but of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

AP makes sure to give Israel’s pretext for why it is committing war crimes: “Israel says the raids are necessary to stamp out militancy.”

But it forgets yet again to mention why that “militancy” exists: because Israel has been violently enforcing an illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories for many decades, in which it – once again illegally – has drafted in an army of settler militias to drive out the native Palestinian population.

AP also forgets to mention that, under international law, the Palestinians have every right to resist Israel’s occupying soldiers, including “militantly”.

Western governments might characterize Palestinians shooting at Israeli soldiers as “terrorism”, but that’s not how it is seen in the international law codes that western states drafted decades ago and that they claim to uphold.

It’s also worth noting that the local Palestinian reporter who witnessed this crime had his report rewritten by “Julia Frankel, an Associated Press reporter in Jerusalem”.

As is true with many other western outlets, AP copy is editorially overseen from Jerusalem, where its office is staffed mostly with Israeli Jews.

Western news outlets doubtless privately rationalize this to themselves as a wise precaution, making sure copy is “sensitive” to Israel’s perspective and less likely to incur the wrath of the Israeli government and Israel lobby.

Which is precisely the problem. The bias in western reporting is baked in. It is designed not to upset Israel – in the midst of a “plausible genocide”, according to the World Court – which means it’s entirely skewed and completely untrustworthy.

It makes our media utterly complicit in Israel’s war crimes, including when Israeli soldiers throw Palestinians off a roof.

UPDATE:

Very belatedly, the BBC has reported this on one of its news channels. Note, it adds an entirely unnecessary disclaimer that the footage hasn’t been “independently verified” – whatever that means. There are now at least three separate videos, all taken from different angles, showing the same war crime. Even the Israeli military has confirmed the incident happened.

The BBC also assumes the three Palestinians are dead. There is absolutely no reason to make that assumption: it violates the most basic rules of reporting.

And the anchor, clearly nervous about how she should refer to the men being pushed off a roof, ends by observing that the footage is “another example of the tensions and the many fronts on which we see Israel fighting”. No, it’s another example of Israeli soldiers committing war crimes, and the media trying to deflect attention from that fact.

Biden Is Sleepwalking Toward War in Ukraine and Middle East

By Justin Logan

September 24, 2024

https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-sleepwalking-toward-war-ukraine-middle-east

Without US military support, neither Ukraine nor Israel could sustain the wars they are fighting at present. From the first day Russia invaded, Ukraine has relied heavily on US arms, intelligence, and even targeting to defend itself. Similarly, Israel has relied on billions of dollars of American weapons to wage its massive campaign in Gaza. An Israeli war with Hezbollah would rely on even more extensive US assistance in defending Israel from rockets and other ordnance, as well as trying to deter Iran.

The United States has interests in Ukraine and Israel, but that interest is not identical with either country’s interest in itself. Still, the Biden administration has seemed incapable of speaking up for American interests where they differ from those of its partners. Washington seems like a passive spectator of escalation in both conflicts, despite the implications for Americans.

In Ukraine, early on in the war National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan pronounced, “[O]ur job is to support the Ukrainians. They will set the military objectives. They will set the objectives at the bargaining table.” He added that “we are not going to define the outcome of this for the Ukrainians. That is up for them to define and us to support them in.”

Initially, the administration did not follow this principle. They declined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s repeated requests for the United States to enter the war via a no-fly zone. Similarly, when Zelensky blamed Russia for an errant missile that killed Polish citizens, the Biden administration publicly made clear that it was a Ukrainian air-defense missile that killed the Poles, again declining the opportunity to escalate the conflict. And when Ukrainians planned a massive attack in Moscow on the first anniversary of the war, the Americans told them not to.

More recently, Kyiv has decided to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. When Zelensky decided to strike Russian early warning radars that detect incoming nuclear strikes last spring, there is no indication they let the Americans know in advance, leaving an anonymous US official to worry to the Washington Post that the strikes could lead Russia to “think it has a diminished ability to detect early nuclear activity against it.” Similarly with Ukraine’s ground invasion of Russia. Apparently afraid the Americans would either say no or leak the plan, Kyiv did not notify Washington it was about to invade Russian territory.

A similar dynamic has taken place during Israel’s war in Gaza. The invasion of Rafah was the one instance where the administration did something material to try to constrain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it didn’t work. The administration delayed a shipment of bombs to convey its opposition to the campaign. Israel invaded anyway, and the Biden administration ultimately released part of the delayed shipment.

But Israel, too, has learned not to ask when you fear you may hear “no.” When it came to Israel’s exploding pager operation in Lebanon, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant only told his American counterpart beforehand “about an imminent operation without divulging details,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Similarly, Israel did not notify the Americans at all about their decision to begin bombing Beirut on September 20.

This is despite the escalatory potential, and despite the fact that the Biden administration made clear its opposition to expanding the war into Lebanon just a day before Israel launched the pager operation. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff C.Q. Brown remarked this summer, such a conflict could well pull in both Iran and the United States, and even if it remained limited to Hezbollah, there were limits to the amount of protection the US military could provide Israel. The costs would be much higher for Israelis.

In both Ukraine and Israel, American partners are leading the United States toward outcomes it says it does not want, often doing so without notifying the US administration of escalatory decisions.

American policy should be working to extricate Americans from these conflicts. To the extent American aid matters to Ukraine and Israel, American advice—and American interests—must be made to count in equal measure. Whether the sleepwalk toward war in the Middle East and Ukraine is due primarily to the somnolent US president’s inattention, the hawkish prerogatives of the advisers who are running the government, or some other factor, American interests need someone to defend them in both countries. Present policies in both capitals risk entangling Americans in their wars.

If the Biden administration cannot or will not defend US interests, someone else should.

The repentant and the accomplices

There are many who repent and some who are accomplices, who today prefer to find a way to join and integrate, because there is nothing worse than living outside the Budget.

Leonardo Kourchenko

septiembre 26, 2024

https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/opinion/leonardo-kourchenko-la-aldea/2024/09/26/los-arrepentidos-y-los-complices/

In these days of fawning farewells and tearful tributes — Mexico is full of melodrama — the balance sheets, as objective as they are brutal, of the economy, democracy, security, health and education appear.

 

I am not going to bore you with numbers. There are many timely and precise reports that point with transparency the six-year term that is ending as the one with the lowest growth in the last 36 years; as the lowest GDP per capita in three decades and many other figures.

 

The opportunities that this country missed due to bad government decisions, repeated whims, lavish works that wasted resources uselessly.

 

If you are interested, I recommend the report ‘6 years of government: 2018-2024′ by Integralia, or the analysis of Mexico, how are we doing?

 

No one must pretend anymore or pretend that we had a great President who brought down corruption—the primary promise of his candidate speech—or who eliminated poverty.

 

None of that is true. Corruption remains and, in the opinion of some experts, it has worsened, although in different ways.

 

Poverty did decrease by 5 percent in average poverty; extreme poverty sadly remained and in some areas of the country grew.

 

We have been hearing for more than three and even four years the confessions of those who repent, who say, “I thought he was going to be different”; “I really believed him, I always thought he was honest and authentic,” and so on. I heard one recently that borders on naivety: “Andrés acts out of good will.” Tell that to the judges and magistrates, to the destroyed judicial career that the new reform has just been buried.

The repentant ones look for a corner and shelter, lower their heads, admit frustration and anger. They did not think that their beloved leader would do such serious and profound damage to the nascent Mexican democracy. But today there is no turning back, or at least not in the immediate future.

 

Andrés Manuel (López Obrador) built a popular and electoral political movement, strengthened with huge amounts of public money—his and mine—to consolidate a machinery of control and manipulation of the vote.

 

The foundations are laid for a regime of several decades, as his hegemony has dreamed.

 

All those repentant ones who today walk and go aside hide in the face of abundant evidence of the facts, that their sympathy and support at the polls led the country to a condition of democratic regression, with diminished or co-opted institutions.

 

The degradation of democratic quality is perhaps the greatest damage of this pseudo-progressive whirlwind called Morena.

 

Along with those who repented, there are the accomplices, those who consciously, out of ambition or interest, expressed their support from the business community, from academia, from professional associations, unions and multiple groups that were seriously affected, damaged and beaten.

Mexico will have a special place in its history for those who applauded Andrés Manuel in the victory of 2018, and then, silent and cowardly, relegated themselves to the shadows when they recognized the size of the tyranny they had supported.

 

There are overwhelming results: loss of educational levels, lag in learning, demolition of the public health system, criminal shortage of medicines, protection and shelter for cartels and murderers who have now taken over entire territories.

 

There are the undoubted, applaudable merits, such as the significant increase in the minimum wage, such as the growth of social programs.

 

Mexico will begin a new stage next Tuesday, October 1, amid international diatribes and unnecessary grievances.

 

There remains the hope for a better government, for a leader centered and focused on the well-being of the country, not guided by the quarrels, resentments and complexes of the past.

 

Will it be possible? Today the future seems doubtful, and hope weakened, in the face of the insistent discourse of the 'second floor of transformation'.

 

We have returned to the accommodating fever, the anxiety of groups and officials to 'stay', 'be included, called, incorporated' into the machinery of power and government.

Convictions are of little value. Connections are more powerful.

 

A wise old politician told me a few days ago: “they have rewarded their enemies with positions and appointments and despised their friends,” displaying the traffic of appointments for all those who have joined ‘the movement.’

 

The shadow of the leader will be more vivid than ever after decades of the stinging text of Martín Luis Guzmán, who ended his days as an excellent PRI member, integrated into the current movement of those years, the revolutionary one.

 

Many are the repentant and some more the accomplices, who today prefer to find a way to join and integrate, because there is nothing worse —says the popular slogan— than living outside the Budget.

Lebanon Health Minister: ‘Majority, If Not All’ of 558 Killed by Israel Were Civilians

Experts say the scale of the Israeli bombardment in Lebanon on Monday is unprecedented in 21st-century conflicts

by Dave DeCamp September 24, 2024

https://news.antiwar.com/2024/09/24/lebanon-health-minister-majority-if-not-all-of-558-killed-by-israel-were-civilians/#gsc.tab=0

Lebanese Health Minister Dr. Firass Abiad told The New York Times on Tuesday that the “overwhelming majority, if not all,” of the people killed and wounded by Israel’s bombardment in Lebanon on Monday were civilians.

The death toll from Lebanon’s Health Ministry puts the number of killed by the Monday bombing at 558, which includes 50 children and 94 women. Nearly 2,000 were wounded in the attack.

The Times notes that Lebanon’s Health Ministry’s figures have historically been viewed as reliable. The ministry is not run by Hezbollah but is overseen by the Lebanese government and collects its data using an emergency operations center that gathers casualty figures from private and state-run hospitals.

Israel targeted residential areas of southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday, claiming Hezbollah missiles were being hidden inside houses. The Israeli military said that it hit more than 1,600 targets, and experts say it’s one of the heaviest single-day bombings in modern warfare. The toll in Israel’s bombardment is about half of the toll for the entire 2006 Lebanon War, which lasted 34 days.

“Prior to the Gaza war, munitions deployed with this intensity and with this frequency would have been almost unheard-of,” Emily Tripp, director of the monitoring group Airwars, told the Times. “There is no comparison in terms of death toll or munitions use with previous 21st-century air campaigns of this nature, as far as we know.”

The US supported the Israeli bombardment despite previously claiming it opposed escalation and is sending more troops to the region as a show of support. Israeli strikes continue to hit Lebanon on Tuesday, and Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel in response. 

Washington’s Ukraine Obsession Is Going to Get Us All Killed!

by Ron Paul

Posted on September 24, 2024

https://original.antiwar.com/paul/2024/09/23/washingtons-ukraine-obsession-is-going-to-get-us-all-killed/

Last week the world narrowly escaped likely nuclear destruction, as the Biden Administration considered Ukraine’s request to allow US missiles to strike deeply into Russian territory. Russian president Vladimir Putin warned, as the request was being considered, that because these missiles could not be launched without the active participation of the US military and NATO, Russia would consider itself in a state of war with both NATO and the US should they be launched. It was a Cuban Missile Crisis on a massive scale.

Thankfully, permission was reportedly not granted by Washington to hit deep inside Russia, but as we have seen throughout this war, a weapons system is often first denied and then eventually granted to Washington’s proxies in Kiev. We should not rest easy even if nuclear war has been temporarily averted.

Would missile strikes deep inside Russia win the war for Ukraine? Not even the Pentagon thinks so. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin himself said earlier this month that granting Ukraine permission to launch missiles into Russia would not be a “game-changer” in the two-and-a-half-year war.

Risking nuclear destruction for no tangible purpose? Have these people gone insane?

Even the “game-changers” have changed little in this war. How many times has the pro-war mainstream media told us a weapons system would be a “game-changer” for Ukraine? Remember Javelin missiles? Leopard tanks? HIMARS? And as each one of them fails to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor, the neocons and their friends in the media only demand more.

The fact is that Russia is winning the war despite hundreds of billions of dollars and the best weapons systems from the US and NATO countries. Each new shipment of increasingly sophisticated weapons does not produce battlefield victories for Ukraine. It only produces more dead Ukrainian soldiers and more profits for the weapons manufacturers.

Even the mainstream media – which has solidly supported the Ukraine war – has begun to report on Ukraine’s huge losses and hopeless situation. Yet as more and more start to wake up about the disastrous proxy war, Washington only knows one direction when it comes to war: forward. Just over a week ago the Pentagon announced another $250 million arms package for Ukraine. Nobody believes that is going to reverse the steady gains made by Russia on the battlefield, but it will generate more profits for the US arms manufacturers who are the real force behind our hyper-interventionist foreign policy.

The unlikely duo of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Donald Trump, Jr., said it best in a recent editorial in The Hill: “We cannot get any closer to the brink than this. And for what? To ‘weaken Russia’? To control Ukraine’s minerals? No vital American interest is at stake. To risk nuclear conflict for the sake of the neoconservative fantasy of global ‘full-spectrum dominance’ is madness.”

They are right, it is madness to risk the future of our country and our children and grandchildren for wars that have nothing to do with us and serve no national interest of the United States. This is certainly true for the Ukraine war, and it is also true for the wars the US is supporting in the Middle East. When will the madness end? When the people speak up and demand a change.

Israel kills at least 356 in Lebanon and orders thousands to flee their homes

Israeli strikes pummel south and Beqaa as security source tells MEE Lebanese army will fight alongside Hezbollah if invaded

By Josephine Deeb and Nader Durgham in Beirut and Rayhan Uddin in London

Published date: 23 September 2024

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-orders-residents-lebanon-leave-homes-air-strikes

Massive Israeli air strikes on residential towns in southern and eastern Lebanon killed at least 356 people on Monday, in what has been Lebanon's bloodiest day for decades.

At least 24 children, 42 women and two emergency responders were among the dead, Lebanon's health minister said, adding that more than 1,246 others were wounded.

An air strike on southern Beirut targeted Ali Karaki, the head of Hezbollah's southern command, in the parking of his building, security sources told Middle East Eye. His fate remains unclear.

The attacks on Lebanon and Hezbollah forced tens of thousands to flee north to find safety, with air strikes leaving smoking ruins on the roadside as Lebanese sought safety.

People across the country were contacted by Israel by phone and ordered to leave their homes.

In response to the bombardment, Hezbollah fired rockets at military targets in northern Israel and illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there would be “complicated” days ahead and that he sought to “change the balance of power”.

Lebanese security sources believe that the situation will likely escalate in the coming days, but the military and other security services do not predict an Israeli ground invasion, despite the massing of troops near the border.

“Israel knows that if it infiltrates Lebanon, the Lebanese army and Hezbollah will have military superiority on the ground,” one source told Middle East Eye.

“If the Israeli army carries out a ground invasion, the Lebanese army will participate with Hezbollah in confronting and defending.”

A source close to Hezbollah believes the Israeli attacks are aimed at displacing the population of south Lebanon in retaliation for the way the movement’s attacks on northern Israel have forced evacuations there.

Over the weekend, an Israeli minister called for the “Shia enemy population” of south Lebanon to be expelled and a buffer zone created on the border.

Forced to flee

As Israel targeted locations across the south, including the outskirts of major cities like Tyre, residents of Beirut and southern Lebanon told MEE that they were called on their phones and ordered to move to 1km away from alleged Hezbollah sites. 

Some residents also received calls and text messages in Beirut from a Lebanese number ordering them to leave immediately.

Lebanon’s information minister, Ziad Makary, described the orders as “a psychological war”. 

More than 80,000 call attempts to Lebanese people telling them to flee their homes were made, according to the head of the telecoms company Ogero. 

Avichay Adraee, Israel’s spokesperson for Arabic-speaking media, posted an animated video on X alleging that Lebanese people know there are Hezbollah weapons in their homes. The allegation was made with no evidence and was accompanied by more warnings to flee.

By the afternoon, the roads out of the south were rammed with families trying to move north to apparent safety. Local media reported chaotic scenes in the city of Saida, where roads were blocked as residents scrambled to leave.

Lebanon’s interior ministry said it had opened schools in Beirut, Tripoli and eastern and southern parts of the country as shelters amid “heavy displacement”.

Amal Sabbah fled Nabatieh with her family for shelter just outside Saida. 

“We feel heartbroken,” she told MEE. “One moment we’re in our home, the next we are leaving it while feeling like we left half our belongings behind.”

One man in Beirut was anxiously waiting for his wife and four children to escape the south.

“I did not want them to leave at first, but the strikes intensified and they hit our neighbourhood. They got in the car and left,” said the man, who did not want to be identified.

“I was not expecting the strikes and barbarism to reach this point. They started hitting homes,” he added.

“I have a childhood friend who had a car mechanic shop near his home. Warplanes bombed his home and his shop, killing him.”

Wave of Israeli attacks

As Israel stepped up its raids on Monday morning, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, said: “We are deepening our attacks in Lebanon.” He told the Israeli public they “will have to show composure”.

Israeli troops have not invaded Lebanon since it fought a disastrous month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006, which was widely perceived as a strategic defeat for Israel. Since then, Hezbollah has grown in strength, size and experience.

When asked about a possible ground invasion, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said: “We will do whatever is needed”.

The source close to Hezbollah told MEE it is clear the Israelis are trying to push the conflict to the widest extent without provoking a war on the scale of 2006.

“It is not yet clear whether the Israelis want to expand the operation towards Beirut because they know that this would make Haifa and Tel Aviv a target,” the source said.

Hezbollah responded to Monday’s attacks by targeting military positions in northern Israel.

The movement, which was born out of resistance to Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation of south Lebanon, says it is not seeking a wide-scale war with Israel and is fighting in solidarity with the Palestinians under attack in Gaza.

The source close to Hezbollah said it will maintain its strategy of responding to Israeli attacks in kind, explaining “its escalation will match Israel’s level of escalation”.

However, he noted, the party has recently shown a degree of flexibility. Hezbollah has long maintained that its current conflict with Israel, which began when Israel’s war on Gaza broke out, will end when Hamas and the Israeli government reach a ceasefire.

More recently, though, Hezbollah has said it is prepared to cease hostilities if attacks in Gaza end without a long-term truce agreed.

The past week has witnessed the largest round of Israeli attacks in the current conflict so far.

On Friday, an Israeli air strike on a densely populated suburb in southern Beirut killed 45 people, including several children and women. 

Hezbollah said 16 of its members were killed by the attack, including senior leader Ibrahim Aqil and top commander Ahmed Wahbi. 

It came days after two days of Israeli attacks detonating booby-trapped pagers and radios belonging to Hezbollah members. 

At least 39 people were killed in those attacks, and over 3,000 wounded.