Escalating terror in Gaza and Lebanon only serves one purpose: bloody war

The latest escalation by Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet appears to be another fatal blow, not just for the prospects of peace, but for innocent people across the Middle East

Residents and rescuers gather at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Picture: AP Photo/Bilal Hussein

This afternoon, Israeli airstrikes hit the densely populated neighbourhood of Dahiyeh in Lebanon’s capital Beirut, reportedly targeting a senior Hezbollah commander. 

At least a dozen people are reported dead, five children amongst them. It marks the third straight day of devastating attacks on the Lebanese capital and its population. It also makes the likelihood of a regional war much more likely. 

The latest escalation by Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet appears to be another fatal blow, not just for the prospects of peace (always remote under his command), but for innocent people across the Middle East. 

Israel - as a country, a project, and a people – has finally imploded, like a star in the night sky we can still see, but has already died. A black hole utterly intent on taking everything in its path. The escalating terror in Gaza, the Occupied West Bank and Lebanon this week only serves one purpose: bloody war.

Rescuers work at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday. Picture: AP Photo/Hassan Ammar

The inevitability of that outcome is beyond depressing, and completely avoidable. Inaction and obfuscation by Netanyahu’s chief backers, the US and EU, has enabled a dynamic whereby it was not a matter of if Israel would target Beirut and bait Hezbollah, but when. 

Of all the reactions to Mossad’s targeting of party members across Lebanon by detonating explosives inside their pagers, mobile phones, and hand held walkie-talkies over this past week, the fetishization of these acts of terror by media and commentators – a potential war crime that killed at least 37 people, as well as seriously injuring thousands of innocent people – is depressingly indicative of the hypocrisy with which we view and treat brown, black and Muslim people in the West. 

Even the most progressive of news agencies struggled to hide their awe at the “audacity” and “daring” of Israel’s execution of a mass-casualty, precision bombing of people, many of them civilians, in a foreign country. “Straight from Hollywood!” was the tenor of much of the commentary from those clueless to the implications of the act. 

As the masses fawned, a Lebanese surgeon told Sky News that many patients had “life changing injuries,” before adding “It’s a massacre. Whoever did this is a criminal.” The same news station then carried a report from its correspondent in the Jerusalem who described the event, not in terms of the horror perpetrated, but rather, as “particularly innovative.” 

A photo taken on September 18 in Beirut's southern suburbs shows the remains of exploded pagers on display at an undisclosed location. Hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon on September 17, killing at least nine people and wounding around 2,800 others. Picture: AFP via Getty Images

Within hours of those first devastating explosions, self-described “serious” news outlets published their first round of investigative, highbrow think-pieces on the superior advancement of Israeli-tech. It was as if Mossad had in fact found a cure for cancer, not a crude, violent method of blowing hands from children's arms and eyes form their heads. There was little or no mention of the many potential violations of humanitarian law the detonations represented. 

Article 7 of the Genevea Convention clearly states, “It is prohibited to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.” In the aftermath of the devastating explosions, there was no mention of Article 7 on any news outlet west of Palestine. Most were too busy saying “Wow!” 

"Straight from Hollywood!" was the tenor of much of the commentary from those clueless to the implications of the act. 

Which brings us to Hezbollah. Designated a terrorist organisation by the United States, Germany, the UK and Australia, defenders of Israel's violence will see any member of the military or political wing of the party as a legitimate target, which is dangerously absurd, and a contributing factor to the one-size-fits-all style of justice Israel has long practiced with impunity. 

Hezbollah members carry the coffins of two of their comrades who were killed on Wednesday when a handheld device exploded, during a funeral procession in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Picture: AP Photo/Hussein Malla

Hezbollah is undeniably as divisive and feared within Lebanon as it is elsewhere in the region, but it remains the most efficient actor in a country beset by corruption and the nefarious influence of external actors, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the US. 

The thuggish rejection by party members of the Peoples Protest in 2019, as well as the lack of accountability following the murders of activist and critic Lokman Slim in 2021 and Irish peacekeeper Private Sean Rooney in December 2022 – both in Hezbollah controlled territory in the south of Lebanon – only served to reinforce the reach and influence of the militant group across the country. 

While many Lebanese despise the group, the contrived ineptitude of consecutive governments has insured Lebanon's only feasible resistance to the constant threat and actual aggression from Israel is Hezbollah, and not its army, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). 

Ergo, Israel may erroneously claim its war is with Hezbollah, but they fully understand it is the Lebanese people who will pay the brutal price.

That is way they conducted their terror operations in the manner they did this week, hoping to taunt the group's leader Hasan Nasrallah into an inevitable retaliation few in Beirut will want. That retaliation will, in turn, allow Israel to revisit its campaign of unholy war upon Lebanon, a country it illegally occupied for nearly twenty years, while it simultaneously armed and supported Christian militias during a civil war so brutal the country has never recovered from it. All with the help of a compliant West.

This week, the city should have marked the forty second anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, where, in September 1982, between 1,300 and 3,500 people—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias— were slaughtered by those very same Israeli backed, Christian militias. With fresh terror to endure, there was no time to remember.

We've seen it all before. So familiar are we with the sight of Beirut exploding, what’s another dozen dead? Another thousand casualties crippling an already crippled healthcare system. Another mother screaming in Arabic as she carries her maimed daughter from a wreckage after a mobile phone blew up in her tiny hand.

What does it matter, so long as its Arabic she’s screaming, right? If you’re marveling at the “audacity” of a terror state’s ability to indiscriminately kill, you should not be surprised when that indiscriminate violence is reciprocated. You might feel differently when the bloodied children are not black, brown, or Muslim.