With many dead and 2800 injured in Lebanon as a result of exploding pagers is Israel now just a full blown terrorist state ?
On Tuesday, many handheld pagers utilized by members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah exploded simultaneously around Lebanon, killing at least 20 people, including two children. Over 3,000 others were injured, many of which were severe.
No party has taken credit for the operation; yet, it is not difficult to deduce the perpetrator: Israel, a nation adept at terrorizing specific Arab civilian communities under the guise of combating ''terrorism.'' Since October of the previous year, this nation has engaged in genocide in the Gaza Strip, where officially over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed, though the actual death toll is likely significantly higher.
The apparent targets of Tuesday's assault were Hezbollah members equipped with pagers, executed with the awareness that the fallout would be indiscriminate, resulting in significant civilian casualties. But that is the whole point of terrorism, is it not?
Hezbollah's creation is fundamentally attributable to the terroristic 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which resulted in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians. Israel’s torture-happy occupation of southern Lebanon, continued until May 2000, when the Israeli military was compelled to run away by the Hezbollah-led Lebanese resistance.
In 2006, Israel launched a 34-day offensive on Lebanon, resulting in the destruction of infrastructure and the killing of over 1,200 people, predominantly civilians. After all, a nation that thrives on perpetual war and terrorism cannot afford to let too much time elapse in between blowing things up.
Israel consistently claims that it is acting in ‘’self-defense’’, and the indiscriminate detonation of pagers throughout Lebanon has seemingly been incorporated into its "defensive" strategy. However, a review of history indicates that, similar to Palestine, Israeli actions in Lebanon have typically been motivated by overtly predatory intentions.
Moshe Sharett, Israel's second prime minister, detailed then-Israeli Army Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan's plan to find a Lebanese army officer, "even just a Major," who could support the Israeli agenda in a 1955 diary entry:
“We should either win his heart or buy him with money, to make him agree to declare himself the savior of [Lebanon’s] Maronite population”.
Afterwards, events will quickly fall into place:
“Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon, will occupy the necessary territory, and will create a Christian regime which will ally itself with Israel. The territory from the Litani [River] southward will be totally annexed to Israel and everything will be all right”.
Admittedly, events did not unfold exactly as Dayan had intended. However, annexation may take time.
This specific diary entry, translated in English, is featured in a 1980 book entitled Israel’s Sacred Terrorism: A Study Based on Moshe Sharett’s Personal Diary and Other Documents. The manuscript's author is Livia Rokach, the daughter of former Israeli Interior Minister Israel Rokach.
A 1985 review of the book noted that David Ben Gurion (born David Grün), Israel's first prime minister who relinquished the premiership to Sharett, had “carried out a policy he described as 'retaliation’ which Sharett perceived as a series of systematic provocations intended to instigate a new war, allowing Israel to acquire additional territory from the Arabs in Gaza, the West Bank, Sinai, Syria, and Lebanon.
Nearly seventy years after the 1955 diary entry, provocation—excuse me, "retaliation" —remains the central strategy of Israel.
Since the start of the widespread genocide in Gaza in October, Israel has launched a concurrent war in Lebanon that has resulted in nearly 600 Lebanese killed. Israel also carried out the assassination of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut in July, an attack that killed three civilians, including two children, and injured 74 others.
However, the extensive slaughter resulting from exploding pagers elevates provocation to an unprecedented level. Lebanese hospitals are flooded, and the health ministry is urgently seeking blood donations for the injured. Meanwhile, the United States is, as always, standing by to keep the situation as flammable as possible.
Following the pager attack on Tuesday, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller responded to a journalist's question about "reports that Israel will soon declare that the northern front [with Lebanon] is the main front in this war" and the US's ability to prevent the conflict from "exploding into a regional war".
Miller articulated that the US would “continue to push for a diplomatic resolution” while talking to its “partners in the region about the need to do—to avoid any type of steps that would avoid escalation of the conflict." Ultimately, he emphasized that “this is a question for parties in the region and what kind of world and what kind—they want to live in—and what kind of future that they want to have.”.
It is rather difficult to advocate for a diplomatic resolution while also providing billions of dollars and various weaponry to a regional ally engaged in acts of genocide.
Regardless of Hezbollah's response to Israel's recent provocation, rest assured that the Israeli military will carry out another brutal "retaliation." This is, frankly, not the type of world anyone should like to live in.