What is the reason behind Israels conflict with Lebanon and its people ?
The extensive military assault by Israel against Lebanon, resulting in the greatest daily toll rate of any conflict since 1982, is not the fault of Hezbollah. The background, coupled with international law and a fundamental examination of the numbers, indicates that the Israelis are definitely the aggressors.
If you receive information about the ongoing conflict between Lebanon and Israel from Western corporate media, it may lead one to believe that Israel is conducting strikes on "Hezbollah targets," portraying the group as a ''terrorist'' organization that has been assaulting Israel since October 8, while suggesting that the Lebanese populace is being used as ''human shields.''
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Addressing the first concern of 'Hezbollah targets', the statistics speak for themselves.
In just forty-eight hours, Israeli airstrikes resulted in killing about 700 people and over 2,000 injuries in Lebanon, as reported by the Lebanese Health Ministry; a significant portion of those killed were women and children.
Additionally, the destruction or damage of thousands of homes has spread throughout Lebanon, from the southern villages near the border to the capital, Beirut, and reaching the northern Bekaa Valley.
Israeli officials who have openly commented on their operations do not conceal that they are targeting civilian infrastructure.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu distributed a video message to the Lebanese populace, asserting that
“Hezbollah has been using you as human shields...they’ve placed rockets in your living rooms and missiles in your garage”.
The allegations are ludicrous, as they lack evidence and rely on previously false, repeated arguments to justify the attack on Gaza. Furthermore, the message is conveyed in English rather than Arabic, indicating that it is directed towards the West rather than the Lebanese populace.
Furthermore, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari made the claim about "missiles in civilian homes," using a CGI movie to illustrate the storage of rockets and cruise missiles, which defies logic.
Even the most uninformed individual regarding military matters can refute such videos by using common sense. Storing highly explosive, precise missiles, which are several meters in length, in family homes is impractical and poses such significant danger that accidents would likely have occurred by now.
In reality, Hezbollah conceals its weapons within an intricate network of underground tunnels.
Both examples are crucial for grasping that Israel is not denying its targeting of civilian homes; rather, it is formulating a rationale to explain its bombing campaign aimed at civilian infrastructure.
Moreover, they are not instructing certain individuals to leave their homes through text messages or flyer drops; instead, they are issuing threats of airstrikes against anyone residing in areas selected for indiscriminate bombing.
The bombing of Lebanon closely mirrors the Israeli air force's bombardment of Gaza during the opening stages of their war, preceding the ground invasion of the occupied enclave.
The civilian death toll has been substantial, paralleling the displacement rate, which has reached hundreds of thousands.
Consequently, to define Israel's assault on Lebanon as specifically directed at Hezbollah, one must unconditionally accept the Israeli claim that missiles are extensively stockpiled in civilian living rooms and garages throughout Lebanon. One must also accept that this has been a meticulously guarded secret for years, with no evidence ever disclosed by anyone from Lebanon's civilian population.
The corporate media's headlines and reporting claiming that Israel is merely targeting Hezbollah imply that these news outlets are either lying or staffed by journalists with the cognitive abilities of chimpanzees.
The next aspect of this conflict's framing relates to its origin and underlying motivations. Once more, if one were to engage with Western mainstream broadcasting, radio, or written media, one may conclude that Hezbollah commenced the indiscriminate launch of thousands of rockets at Israel on October 8 without justification.
Then, typically, someone asks, "What would you do?"
This is the actual context that no Western corporate media outlets will tell you.
Israel is currently illegally occupying two areas of Lebanese territory, in violation of international law. Both the Lebanese and Syrian governments claim the Shebaa Farms area, situated in the Golan Heights, and have a genuine legal dispute regarding the precise delineation of their respective borders in this area.
Nonetheless, Israel possesses no valid claim to the area it occupied during the June 1967 war and subsequently re-occupied in 1973.
In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights, including the Shebaa Farms, in violation of international law, resulting in United Nations Security Council resolution 497, which declared the annexation illegal.
The Ghajjar village area, located within the internationally recognized Blue Line and acknowledged as Lebanese territory, is currently under illegal occupation. Israel not only occupies this territory in violation of international law but also infringes upon Lebanese territory thousands of times on a yearly basis, including by land, air, and sea. According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, an occupied population possesses the right to resist. A state also has the right to regain land that was stolen via warfare. This brings us to the next crucial point.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, claiming that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) constituted a terrorist entity responsible for launching rockets and engaging in shooting at Israel.
Note that the PLO subsequently signed the Oslo Accords with Israel, during which both the United States and Israelis removed the designation of terrorism against them. In the 1982 conflict, Israel invaded Lebanon, killed around 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, mainly civilians, and compelled the PLO to relocate to Tunisia.
What accusations did the PLO face? The PLO faced accusations of being terrorists, launching rockets, using human shields, and hiding in tunnels. Following Israel's defeat of the PLO and associated Leftist Lebanese factions, the Israeli force did not withdraw from Lebanon as initially promised, instead opting to occupy southern Lebanon.
This battle led to Hezbollah's emergence as the principal resistance group that would launch a prolonged military campaign against their occupiers. Hezbollah sprang from the mostly Shia demographic that Israel had occupied.
In 2000, Hezbollah's resistance operations rendered the Israeli occupation too costly, compelling a withdrawal. In 2006, Hezbollah executed a cross-border raid that resulted in the deaths and abduction of Israeli troops, aiming to liberate Lebanese and Palestinian political prisoners, which precipitated a war and an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanese territory.
Hezbollah triumphed in this conflict, which resulted in the deaths of 1,200 individuals in Lebanon, predominantly civilians. Since that time, Israel has executed assassinations of Hezbollah officials and combatants, primarily in Syria, while also conducting sabotage operations within the country that have resulted in civilian casualties and has consistently infringed upon Lebanese sovereignty every year.
Hezbollah is Lebanon's dominant political party; it is part of the Lebanese government. The designation of terrorism is predominantly ascribed to it by Western governments and their allies, whereas the remainder of the world recognizes Hezbollah as a legitimate party within Lebanese politics.
Hezbollah, for example, collaborated with the Lebanese Army to combat Daesh (ISIS) terrorists that threatened Lebanese sovereignty. It has offered assistance and safeguarded Syrian and Lebanese Christians against Daesh and Al-Qaeda. Therefore, efforts to categorize them as a group akin to Al-Qaeda or Daesh are entirely wrong.
On October 8, Hezbollah commenced daily military actions along the Lebanese border, especially targeting Israeli army installations and equipment. It acted in solidarity with the Palestinian populace in Gaza, who had already suffered since the onset of Israel's extensive bombing assault, resulting in the killings of hundreds of civilians within the first day.
In October, Hezbollah's Secretary General, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, delivered a speech delineating the specific nature of his organization's operations, explicitly indicating that the limited military efforts will persist to compel Israel to agree to a ceasefire and prisoner swap.
Since then, Hezbollah has executed thousands of attacks, primarily targeting military installations, but some have impacted Israeli settlement areas. Nonetheless, 80% of the attacks between the two sides were executed by the Israeli military targeting Lebanon.
Moreover, Hezbollah's attacks resulted in the deaths of only a few Israeli non-combatants, whereas Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon claimed the lives of approximately 200 civilians. Israel targeted and killed journalists, medical personnel, women, children, and the elderly in Lebanon; several of these cases were investigated by international media and human rights organizations, who classified these activities as war crimes.
Hezbollah's attacks have expanded to target settlement regions with rocket fire, following Israeli bombings aimed at civilians in Lebanon. Additionally, Hezbollah has suffered significant assaults that have even struck the Lebanese capital, Beirut, as early as January.
However, each time such provocations transpired, Hezbollah retaliated with limited attacks on Israeli military targets. For example, following Israel's bombing of a civilian structure in southern Beirut in late July, which resulted in the death of Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr as well as women and children and injured almost 90 civilians, a limited retaliation was executed, aimed at Israeli military sites.
Whenever Israel has conducted significant military operations against Lebanon, Hezbollah has emphasized its commitment to supporting Gaza and attaining a ceasefire. Despite the mass pager detonation attack that resulted in thousands of injuries and killed dozens, predominantly innocent civilians, Hezbollah reiterated its intention to manage the crisis and avoid a full-scale war. Subsequently, Israel opted to detonate numerous walkie-talkie devices during the funerals of victims from the pager attack, followed by a comprehensive bombing campaign targeting Lebanese civilian areas.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) asserts that Israel is perpetrating a plausible genocide in Gaza. Hezbollah, along with Iraqi factions under Baghdad's security framework and Yemen's Ansarallah, has been the only ones globally to engage militarily to compel Israel to negotiate a ceasefire agreement.
It is merely propagandistic nonsense to argue that Hezbollah is the aggressor, having launched an unprovoked attack on Israel, and that its irrational conduct demands its destruction. Lebanon and Israel have been in a state of war for decades.
Since 2006, Israel has violated UN resolution 1701 thousands of times, during which it has also stolen further Lebanese land through the construction of a security fence/wall.
Unless one is disingenuous and ideologically committed to justifying Israel's actions no matter what, one cannot interpret Israel's latest assaults on Lebanon over the past week as self-defense.
Disregarding this context constitutes a flagrant breach of fundamental journalistic norms. Moreover, it is particularly egregious when Western media sources claim the absence of a pro-Israel bias, thereby rendering their propaganda even more disgusting.