Smoke rises over Beirut’s southern suburbs from a generator that caught fire, according to residents, as seen from Baabda, Beirut, on Oct. 12, 2024. (Reuters)
The ministry reported “nine dead and 15 wounded” in an “Israeli enemy strike“
Updated 12 October 2024
AFP
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said Saturday that at least 15 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on three areas considered outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds, updating earlier tolls.
The ministry reported “nine dead and 15 wounded” in an “Israeli enemy strike” on the village of Maaysra north of Beirut, raising an earlier toll of five dead.
It also reported two dead, four wounded and unidentified “body parts” in a Israeli strike on Deir Billa, near the northern town of Batroun, and said four people were killed and 18 wounded in a strike on Barja, raising an earlier toll of 14 wounded for the raid in the Shouf district south of the capital.
Israel’s airstrike warnings terrify and confuse Lebanese civilians
The Lebanese government says at least 1.2 million people have been displaced by the war, the vast majority since Israel ramped up airstrikes across the country last month
Updated 1 min 44 sec ago
AP
BEIRUT: As the war between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies, Lebanese civilians are increasingly paying the price – and this dangerous reality often becomes clear in the middle of the night: That’s when the Israeli military typically warns people to evacuate buildings or neighborhoods to avoid airstrikes.
Moein Shreif was recently awakened at 3 a.m. by a neighbor calling to alert him that Israel planned to strike a nearby building in his middle-class suburb south of Beirut where Hezbollah has a strong presence.
Shreif, his wife and their three children quickly fled their multi-story apartment building and drove away. Within minutes, explosions rang out, he said later that day upon returning to see the smoldering ruins of his building and the one next door.
“I didn’t even have time to dress properly, as you can see,” said Shreif, a well-known Lebanese folk and pop singer who was still wearing his pajamas from the night before. “I didn’t take anything out of the house.”
Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging strikes nearly every day since the start of the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it will fire rockets into Israel until there’s a ceasefire in Gaza; Israel says its fighting to stop those attacks, which have forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes.
But it wasn’t until late last month, when Israel dramatically expanded its aerial campaign against Hezbollah, that Lebanese people began receiving regular warnings about upcoming airstrikes. Human rights groups say Israel’s warnings — which aren’t issued before many airstrikes — are inadequate and sometimes misleading.
On Sept. 23, Israel made 80,000 calls into Lebanon, according to Imad Kreidieh, head of the country’s telecommunications company – presumably recorded warnings about upcoming airstrikes.
The calls caused panic. Schools shut down. People rushed home early from work. It ended up being the deadliest day of airstrikes in Lebanon in decades, with over 500 people killed — roughly one quarter of all those killed in Lebanon the past year, according to the country’s Health Ministry. Women and children make up one quarter of all the deaths, the ministry says.
Israel has issued warnings on social media nearly every day since then.
On Oct. 1, 27 villages in southern Lebanon were told to evacuate to the north of the Awali River, dozens of kilometers (miles) away. “Save your lives,” the instructions said.
That is when Salam, a 42-year-old mother of two, fled the village of Ain Ebel. She and her family are now staying with relatives in Beirut. Salam refused to give her full name for fear of reprisals.
So far, Ain Ebel – a mostly Christian village – hasn’t been bombarded, although surrounding villages whose residents are predominantly Shiite Muslims have been. Salam’s teenage children are terrified of going home, especially since Israel launched a ground invasion.
Salam is still baffled and angry that her village was evacuated.
So far, evacuation notices in Lebanon have been far more limited than in Gaza, but the messages in both places have a common theme. In Gaza, Israel says it is targeting Hamas militants embedded among Gaza’s civilians. In Lebanon, it warns of similar behavior by Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.
Most of the Israeli military’s warnings first appear on the social media accounts of its Arabic spokesperson. They are then amplified by the Lebanese media.
The warnings instruct people to vacate homes “immediately,” and they are usually followed by a series of overnight strikes that often cause damage in areas beyond those that were warned. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah fighters, weapons or other assets belonging to the group. Warnings are rarely issued before daytime strikes.
The Lebanese government says at least 1.2 million people have been displaced by the war, the vast majority since Israel ramped up airstrikes across the country last month. Over 800 of some 1,000 shelters are over capacity.
One quarter of Lebanese territory is now under Israeli military displacement orders, according to the UN’s human rights division.
“Calling on residents of nearly 30 villages to leave ‘immediately’ is not effective and unlawfully suggests that civilians who do not leave an area will be deemed to be combatants,” said Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Beirut.
Kaiss said Israel — which usually issues warnings 30 to 90 minutes ahead of airstrikes — is obligated to protect civilians who refuse to evacuate, or who are physically unable to.
Amnesty International is also critical of Israel’s practice of warning entire towns and villages to evacuate. It “raises questions around whether this is intended to create the conditions for mass displacement,” Agnes Callamard, the group’s secretary general said in a statement on Thursday.
The Israeli military didn’t respond to a request for comment. It has previously said it makes a significant effort to save civilian lives with its warnings.
For almost a year, Israel’s strikes were mostly concentrated in communities along the border, far from the capital and its populous suburbs. But now people who once felt relatively safe in the outskirts of Beirut are increasingly at risk, and their neighborhoods are receiving a small but growing share of airstrike warnings.
In Shreif’s case, he said his neighbor called about five minutes after the Israeli military issued a warning on the social media platform X.
Shreif considers himself lucky: If it wasn’t for that wake-up call, his family might not be alive. The AP could not determine whether any people were killed or injured in the strike that destroyed Shreif’s building or the one next door.
To the northeast of Beirut, in the Bekaa Valley, Israel recently issued a warning to people to stay at least 1,000 meters (yards) away from their town or village if they are in or a near a home that has weapons belonging to Hezbollah.
Some of the warnings have come in the form of animated videos. One shows an elderly woman in a kitchen, suggesting she is unaware of hidden rooms and compartments in her own house that contain weapons for Hezbollah.
“Didn’t you know?” the narrator says in Arabic, as the elderly woman discovers rockets under the couch, behind the shower curtains and elsewhere. The video warns viewers to leave their homes immediately if they – or their neighbors – discover weapons.
But in many cases there are no warnings at all.
Last month, in Ain el-Delb near the southern city of Sidon, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building, burying about 70 people under the rubble.
Achraf Ramadan, 34, and his father were among the lucky one who rescue workers were able to pull out alive. His mother was taken to the hospital alive, but she later died from her wounds. His younger sister Julia, a public relations professional in her late 20s, was found dead. Achraf and Julia together had been leading initiatives to support displaced Lebanese families in and around Sidon.
“This is a nice and peaceful neighborhood,” Ramadan said, sounding dejected. “The international community is asleep and not taking initiative. On the contrary, I think it’s giving Israel an excuse for its barbarity on the pretext of self-defense.”
As Hezbollah and Israel battle on the border, Lebanon’s army watches from the sidelines
Analysts familiar with the army’s workings said that, should the Israeli incursion reach the current army positions, Lebanese troops would put up a fight — but a limited one
Updated 16 min 11 sec ago
AP
BEIRUT: Since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have clashed along the border while the Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines.
It’s not the first time the national army has found itself watching war at home from the discomfiting position of bystander.
Lebanon’s widely beloved army is one of the few institutions that bridge the country’s sectarian and political divides. Several army commanders have become president, and the current commander, Gen. Joseph Aoun, is widely regarded as one of the front-runners to step in when the deadlocked parliament fills a two-year vacuum and names a president.
But with an aging arsenal and no air defenses, and battered by five years of economic crisis, the national army is ill-prepared to defend Lebanon against either aerial bombardment or a ground offensive by a well-equipped modern army like Israel’s.
The army is militarily overshadowed by Hezbollah. The Lebanese army has about 80,000 troops, with around 5,000 of them deployed in the south. Hezbollah has more than 100,000 fighters, according to the militant group’s late leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Its arsenal — built with support from Iran — is also more advanced. A cautious initial response
Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters have been clashing since Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets over the border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza.
In recent weeks, Israel has conducted a major aerial bombardment of Lebanon and a ground invasion that it says aims to push Hezbollah back from the border and allow displaced residents of northern Israel to return.
As Israeli troops made their first forays across the border and Hezbollah responded with rocket fire, Lebanese soldiers withdrew from observation posts along the frontier and repositioned about 5 kilometers (3 miles) back.
So far, Israeli forces have not advanced that far. The only direct clashes between the two national armies were on Oct. 3, when Israeli tank fire hit a Lebanese army position in the area of Bint Jbeil, killing a soldier, and on Friday, when two soldiers were killed in an airstrike in the same area. The Lebanese army said it returned fire both times.
Lebanon’s army declined to comment on how it will react if Israeli ground forces advance farther.
Analysts familiar with the army’s workings said that, should the Israeli incursion reach the current army positions, Lebanese troops would put up a fight — but a limited one.
The army’s “natural and automatic mission is to defend Lebanon against any army that may enter Lebanese territory,” said former Lebanese Army Gen. Hassan Jouni. “Of course, if the Israeli enemy enters, it will defend, but within the available capabilities … without going to the point of recklessness or suicide.” Israeli and Lebanese armies are ‘a total overmatch’
The current Israeli invasion of Lebanon is its fourth into the neighboring country in the past 50 years. In most of the previous invasions, the Lebanese army played a similarly peripheral role.
The one exception, said Aram Nerguizian, a senior associate with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, was in 1972, when Israel attempted to create a 20-kilometer (12-mile) buffer zone to push back Palestinian Liberation Organization fighters.
At that time, Nerguizian said, the Lebanese army successfully slowed the pace of the Israeli advance and “bought time for political leadership in Beirut to seek the intervention of the international community to pressure Israel for a ceasefire.”
But the internal situation in Lebanon — and the army’s capabilities — deteriorated with the outbreak of a 15-year civil war in 1975, during which both Israeli and Syrian forces occupied parts of the country.
Hezbollah was the only faction that was allowed to keep its weapons after the civil war, for the stated goal of resisting Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon — which ended in 2000.
By 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel fought a bruising monthlong war, the Lebanese army “had not been able to invest in any real-world post-war modernization, had no ability to deter Israeli air power” and “was left completely exposed,” Nerguizian said. “The few times that the (Lebanese army) and Israeli forces did engage militarily, there was total overmatch.”
International aid has been a mixed blessing
After the 2011 outbreak of civil war in neighboring Syria and the rise of the Islamic State militant group there, the Lebanese army saw a new influx of military aid. It successfully battled against IS on Lebanon’s border in 2017, although not alone — Hezbollah was simultaneously attacking the group on the other side of the border.
When Lebanon’s financial system and currency collapsed in 2019, the army took a hit. It had no budget to buy weapons and maintain its existing supplies, vehicles and aircraft. An average soldier’s salary is now worth around $220 per month, and many resorted to working second jobs. At one point, the United States and Qatar both gave a monthly subsidy for soldiers’ salaries.
The US had been a primary funder of the Lebanese army before the crisis. It has given some $3 billion in military aid since 2006, according to the State Department, which said in a statement that it aims “to enable the Lebanese military to be a stabilizing force against regional threats” and “strengthen Lebanon’s sovereignty, secure its borders, counter internal threats, and disrupt terrorist facilitation.”
President Joe Biden’s administration has also touted the Lebanese army as a key part of any diplomatic solution to the current war, with hopes that an increased deployment of its forces would supplant Hezbollah in the border area.
But that support has limits. Aid to the Lebanese army has sometimes been politically controversial within the US, with some legislators arguing that it could fall into the hands of Hezbollah, although there is no evidence that has happened.
In Lebanon, many believe that the US has blocked the army from obtaining more advanced weaponry that might allow it to defend against Israel — America’s strongest ally in the region and the recipient of at least $17.9 billion in US military aid in the year since the war in Gaza began.
“It is my personal opinion that the United States does not allow the (Lebanese) military to have advanced air defense equipment, and this matter is related to Israel,” said Walid Aoun, a retired Lebanese army general and military analyst.
Nerguizian said the perception is “not some conspiracy or half-truth,” noting that the US has enacted a legal requirement to support Israel’s qualitative military edge relative to all other militaries in the region.
40 nations contributing to UN Lebanon peacekeeping force condemn ‘attacks’
At least five peacekeepers were wounded by Israeli fire in the past 48 hours as Israel takes its fight against Hezbollah into southern Lebanon
UNIFIL, which involves about 9,500 troops of some 50 nationalities, is tasked with monitoring a ceasefire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah
Updated 54 min 36 sec ago
AFP
UNITED NATIONS, United States: Forty nations that contribute to the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon said Saturday that they “strongly condemn recent attacks” on the peacekeepers.
“Such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated,” said the joint statement, posted on X by the Polish UN mission and signed by nations including leading contributors Indonesia, Italy and India.
Other signatories include Ghana, Nepal, Malaysia, Spain, France and China — all countries that have contributed several hundred troops to the force.
At least five peacekeepers have been wounded in recent days as Israel takes its fight against Hezbollah into southern Lebanon.
The peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, has accused the Israeli military of “deliberately” firing on its positions.
The 40 contributing countries “reaffirm our full support for UNIFIL’s mission and activities, whose principal aim is to bring stabilization and lasting peace in South Lebanon as well as in the Middle East,” the statement read.
“We urge the parties of the conflict to respect UNIFIL’s presence, which entails the obligation to guarantee the safety and security of its personnel at all times,” it added.
UNIFIL, which involves about 9,500 troops of some 50 nationalities, is tasked with monitoring a ceasefire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.
Its role was bolstered by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of that year, which stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.
At a summit on Friday, French, Italian and Spanish leaders said the “attacks” on UNIFIL peacekeepers violated Resolution 1701 and must end.
UNIFIL said that, in recent days, its forces have “repeatedly” come under fire in the Lebanese town of Naqura where it is headquartered, as well as in other positions.
The mission said that Israeli tank fire on Thursday caused two Indonesian peacekeepers to fall off a watch tower in Naqura.
The following day it said explosions close to an observation tower in Naqura wounded two Sri Lankan Blue Helmets, while Israel said it had responded to an “immediate threat” near a UN peacekeeping position.
On Saturday UNIFIL said a peacekeeper in Naqura “was hit by gunfire” on Friday night.
UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti told AFP the peacekeeping mission’s work had become “very difficult because there is a lot of damage, even inside the bases.”
’Very challenging’: Israel faces Hezbollah in tricky terrain
After “Operation Litani” against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1978, Israeli troops invaded four years later for the wider-ranging “Peace for Galilee” operation, again targeting the PLO
Mounir Shehadeh, a former Lebanese government coordinator for the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL, told AFP that Hezbollah had a substantial stockpile of anti-tank missiles and other weapons
Updated 12 October 2024
AFP
PARIS: As Israel undertakes its fourth ground offensive in southern Lebanon in 50 years, its troops again face rocky terrain mined with explosives and full of hiding places that previous generations of soldiers have battled over.
After pounding Gaza for nearly a year, Israeli forces began “targeted” ground raids on September 30 intended to push back Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon who have been bombarding northern Israel over the last year.
The decision has sparked a debate about the wisdom of opening up a second front and presents Israeli soldiers with a different challenge to the flat, densely packed urban environment of Gaza.
Jonathan Conricus, who fought in Lebanon and served as an Israeli liaison officer to United Nations peacekeepers from 2009-2013, said the terrain was “vastly different” and forms a combat zone that is “many times larger.”
“The topography is very challenging for an invading force and convenient for an enemy like Hezbollah,” Conricus, a former military spokesman who now works for the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, told AFP.
“The terrain also allows multiple ways for a defending enemy to use anti-tank missiles and IEDs against a conventional army,” he added, referring to improvised explosive devices.
Miri Eisen, who served as an Israeli intelligence officer in Lebanon, remembers the steep hills and ravines she encountered during Israel’s 1978 invasion.
“As soon as you cross the border, you go down drastically and up drastically,” Eisen, who now works at the Institute for Counter Terrorism at Israel’s Reichman University, told AFP.
“There are boulders that can be used as hiding places and there are areas that you can’t just drive through with vehicles. It is also hard to walk through,” she recalled.
Analysts believe Hezbollah constructed an intricate network of underground tunnels cut deep into the hills, with openings hidden inside homes among other locations.
Israel’s multiple wars in Lebanon have always had the same objective — dealing with a security threat on its northern border — but have produced highly contested results.
After “Operation Litani” against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1978, Israeli troops invaded four years later for the wider-ranging “Peace for Galilee” operation, again targeting the PLO.
That invasion saw Israel briefly lay siege to Beirut, and left about 20,000 people killed by the end of the same year. Israeli troops ended up occupying the south of the country for 18 years.
During this period, the Shiite Islam Hezbollah group emerged under the supervision of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
After Israel’s withdrawal, a series of violent incidents involving Hezbollah followed, culminating in another ground offensive and war in 2006.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated in an air strike on September 27, proclaimed a “divine victory” in that 2006 war which was widely seen as a failure for Israel at a cost of 160 lives, mostly soldiers.
The 33-day war also killed 1,200 mostly civilian Lebanese people.
In his final speech days before his killing, Nasrallah warned his arch-enemy about the dangers of trying to create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.
“This security belt will turn into a quagmire, a trap, an ambush, an abyss, and hell for your army if you want to come to our land,” he warned on September 19.
So far, after nearly two weeks of combat, 14 Israeli soldiers have died, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Experts say both the Israeli army and Hezbollah have transformed since their last open confrontation.
Israeli military planners pored over the setbacks of 2006 to learn lessons.
“The IDF has been following the threat from Hezbollah for many years and it has had the additional past 11 months to prepare while they were fighting Hamas (in Gaza) before turning to Hezbollah,” said Eisen.
Israel escalated an air campaign against Hezbollah on September 23, targeting senior figures and weapons dumps as it sought to degrade the organization before the ground offensive.
The escalation came just after booby trapped communication devices used by Hezbollah detonated, wounding thousands.
The bombardment has killed more than 1,200 people, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, while the International Organization for Migration says it has verified around 690,000 internally displaced people.
Since 2006, Hezbollah is known to have benefitted from years of weapons transfers from Iran, including ballistic missiles, while many of its troops are battle-hardened after fighting in Syria to support the regime of President Bashar Assad.
Rabha Allam from the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, an Egyptian research institute, stressed that Hezbollah operated in “a decentralized way” like a guerilla army, enabling it to fight back in the south.
“The assumption that striking the (group’s) leadership and communications would paralyze the movement was wrong,” she told AFP.
Mounir Shehadeh, a former Lebanese government coordinator for the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL, told AFP that Hezbollah had a substantial stockpile of anti-tank missiles and other weapons.
“This is what it is heavily depending on to stem the advance of (Israeli) tanks. It is not using them yet. It is relying on ambushes, traps and explosives against advancing forces,” he said.
Is Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal to drag the US into war with Iran?
Ithaca College Professor Jeff Cohen says Israeli PM is ‘close to succeeding’ in drawing the US into a full-scale conflict with Iran
‘Intentional’ targeting of medical professionals will set healthcare in Gaza and Lebanon ‘way back,’ says Dr. Zaher Sahloul
Updated 12 October 2024
Arab News
CHICAGO: A prominent American academic with decades of expertise in Israeli politics believes the year of violence in Gaza and the expansion of the conflict into Lebanon are designed to pull the US into a direct war with Iran.
During a taping of “The Ray Hanania Radio Show” on Thursday, former Ithaca College Professor Jeff Cohen said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intentions have been evident for some time, even suggesting that if Hamas had not attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Netanyahu would have found another pretext to blame Iran, in an effort to draw the US into a broader regional conflict with Israel’s longstanding adversary.
“It’s this one-sidedness that empowers the right wing in Israel. We (the US) are not arming Hamas, we are not arming Iran. We arm Israel. And no matter what they do with those weapons, in violation of US law, they just keep getting more weapons and more ammunition and more bombs to kill innocent civilians,” Cohen said.
In this file photo, an Israeli artillery crew prepares shells at a position near the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. (AFP)
The US has been Israel’s primary military backer in the ongoing conflict, with nearly $23 billion spent in support of its war on Gaza and operations against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, according to a report by Brown University’s Watson Institute. When adjusted for inflation, total economic and military aid to Israel since its founding in 1946 rises to $310 billion.
Cohen, who is Jewish, highlighted the deeply entrenched relationship between the US and Israel.
“We have to stop arming Israel. And there needs to be a solution from the Palestinian leadership and the Israeli leadership. There has to be equality on both sides,” Cohen said, adding that “what we’re moving toward” is the opposite of what should be pursued and would eventually lead to the US being dragged into a wider, regional conflict.
Israeli army soldiers sit by a deployed infantry-fighting vehicle (IFV) at a position along the border with Lebanon in northern Israel on October 1, 2024. (AFP)
On Oct. 7, people around the world held vigils and protests to mark first anniversary of a Hamas-led attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza. The Palestinian militant group and its allies killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages to then Hamas-controlled Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed so far and most of the 2.3-million-strong population displaced by Israel’s retaliatory attacks, according to Gaza health authorities.
Cohen argued that Netanyahu, who has repeatedly claimed that Iran funded and coordinated the Hamas-led assault of Oct. 7 and Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, has long sought to push the US into a war with Iran.
“He’s very close to succeeding,” he said, noting that Iran is often portrayed as the root of all regional problems.
On Friday, the Biden administration announced fresh sanctions targeting Iran’s energy trade following an attack on Oct. 1 launched by the country against Israel, involving nearly 200 ballistic missiles. It was Iran’s second such attack on Israel this year, after it launched about 300 missiles and drones in April, both conducted in response to killings of high-level Iranian, Hamas and Hezbollah officials thought to have been carried out by Israel.
Cohen, the founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, argues that “bias” in the mainstream American media has heavily influenced coverage of the conflict, reinforcing US support for Israel regardless of its military actions, while marginalizing Palestinian voices.
Jeff Chen, retired associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College in New York. (Supplied)
“My main message as someone who worked in mainstream media and taught journalism at college is we have to, as journalists, understand that all lives matter. That Palestinian lives are as important as Israeli lives,” said Cohen, referencing the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza.
“You don’t get that from the US news media. You get it in a lot of other countries that all lives matter including Palestinians. In our country (the US), it’s just Israeli lives. Israeli suffering. Israeli deaths. Israeli hostages.
“There are far more Palestinian detainees who are in many ways ‘hostages.’ They aren’t charged. They’re tortured. They’re abused. There’s thousands and thousands of them, including children.”
Caption
Cohen argued that while violence is often attributed solely to groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, with Israeli victims predominantly highlighted by mainstream media, the history of terrorism in the Middle East traces back to Zionist extremists operating before the founding of the State of Israel.
“We have to understand, and any historian of Israel knows, there were Israeli terrorists, before the State of Israel, trying to bring a state into existence. They bombed the King David hotel. They killed civilians. They killed British civilians,” said Cohen, citing Jewish extremist groups from the 1940s led by future Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, who opposed Palestinian statehood.
“If you’re an oppressed group and you’re a stateless group, there will be people within your community turning to violence. The only way to prevent that is peace and justice for all sides,” he said.
Hezbollah, which began firing rockets into Israeli cities from Lebanon on Oct. 8 last year in solidarity with Palestinian militant groups, and Hamas, which Israel is still fighting in Gaza, are two members of an alliance of Iran-funded militias that also operate in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
The Houthis have targeted more than 80 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza erupted last October. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign that also killed four sailors. Similarly, Iraqi militias vowed since October 7 to support Hamas’s war effort and have launched hundreds of rocket and drone attacks at Israeli cities and US military bases in the region.
Indiscriminate violence against civilians, as well as targeted attacks on media workers and medical professionals, have become a central issue in protests and discussions surrounding the conflict. These groups, often viewed as “intentional targets,” are seen as part of a broader strategy to force civilian displacement in both Gaza and Lebanon.
Dr. Zaher Sahloul, founder of the non-profit MedGlobal. (AFP)
In a separate segment of the “The Ray Hanania Radio Show,” Dr. Zaher Sahloul, founder of the non-profit MedGlobal, which provides medical support to civilians caught up in conflicts in the Middle East, South America, and Ukraine, remarked that the number of medical professionals killed and hospitals destroyed by Israeli bombings has reached “unprecedented levels.”
“There are new norms, if we can call it that way, that are now being created, especially in Gaza and now in Lebanon,” said Sahloul. “And we’ve seen that in Syria and a little bit in Ukraine, where you have hospitals, doctors and ambulances targeted intentionally to cause displacement and deprive communities of healthcare.”
According to UN statistics, more than 600 medical professionals, including doctors, nurses, and first responders, have been killed in Gaza, while 39 hospitals have been bombed and 97 medics killed in Lebanon over the last two weeks.
A man pushes an injured boy in a wheelchair past the destroyed al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on September 17, 2024. Once the crown jewel of Gaza's proud medical community, the Palestinian territory's main Al-Shifa hospital has become a stark symbol of the utter devastation wrought by the Israel-Hamas war. (AFP)
“You didn’t see these numbers in previous conflicts,” Sahloul said. If Israel is not held to account for violations of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law, he said such war crimes would only persist.
“It looks like it’s becoming the norm. There is no accountability. When there is no accountability, murderers tend to repeat the crime,” he said. “These attacks on healthcare in Gaza and Lebanon are not just collateral damage. They are intentional. And they are causing more harm and, of course, displacement of the population.”
Both Article 9 of the Geneva Convention and the statutes of the International Committee of the Red Cross classify the killing of medical personnel as a war crime. Sahloul argued that Israel’s current operations in Gaza, and similar tactics being employed in Lebanon, exceed what is justified, designed to hasten the displacement of civilians.
Israel has denied deliberately targeting medical facilities, but has accused both Hamas and Hezbollah of commandeering civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, schools and residential buildings to coordinate attacks and store weapons, using their occupants as human shields.
A man looks at destroyed buildings hit by Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, on Oct. 7, 2024. (AP)
The Israeli military has released photos and videos purporting to show these weapons depots as well as underground tunnels since it launched its military operations last year.
Sahloul, who has led numerous medical missions to conflict zones, pointed out the devastating long-term impact of losing key medical professionals.
“It is not normal. And imagine how long it will take to get a doctor, to become a physician. You know, it takes 30 years of education and then specialization. If you remove a surgeon or a head of department in Gaza or in Lebanon, it’s very difficult to replace them. It takes years and generations to replace these doctors.
“And if you bomb their hospitals and universities, that means this will set healthcare in Gaza and other places way, way back.”
A man standing atop a heavily damaged building views other destroyed buildings in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7, 2024 on the first anniversary of the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
He also criticized the mainstream media for its lack of coverage on this aspect of the conflict.
“The media, of course, is not giving justice to this,” he said. “There were bits and pieces, especially at the beginning of the war in Gaza. But after that the media, for some reason, turned away from what’s going on in Gaza. It is inhumane. It is immoral. It’s unethical to ignore this, but for some reason, the media is not paying attention.”
“The Ray Hanania Radio Show” is broadcast every Thursday on the US Arab Radio Network on WNZK AM 690 Radio in Michigan Thursday at 5 PM EST, and again the following Monday at 5 PM. The show is sponsored by Arab News and is available by podcast at ArabNews.com.rayradioshow or at Facebook.com/ArabNews.
