Israel has pounded Lebanon with bombs, just days after targeting communications devices in a series of deadly explosions. 37 people have been killed, and thousands more wounded. Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, called the attacks a “massacre” and a possible “act of war.”
Nasrallah said Israel would face “just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not”. As he delivered his address, Israeli fighter jets roared over Beirut, their sonic booms shaking buildings and sending residents scrambling for cover.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Israel struck the south at least 52 times. It was one of the heaviest Israeli bombardments of south Lebanon since the border exchanges erupted last October.
Hezbollah meanwhile said it launched at least 17 attacks on military sites in northern Israel.
Professor Jason Hickel used a BBC graphic to show the scale of Israeli attacks on Lebanon:
People need to see this. Israel has perpetrated over 80% of the cross-border attacks with Lebanon during the past year. Hezbollah has shown remarkable restraint. pic.twitter.com/iu9JB0oaYr
— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) September 20, 2024
Lebanese foreign minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war”.
Speaking ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on the attacks, he said Lebanon had filed a complaint against “Israel’s cyber-terrorist aggression that amounts to a war crime”.
Israel’s terrorist device blasts
The device blasts and Thursday’s barrage of air strikes came after Israel announced it was shifting its war objectives to its northern border with Lebanon where it has been trading fire with Hezbollah.
For nearly a year, Israel’s firepower has been focused on Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza, but its troops have also been engaged in near-daily exchanges with Hezbollah fighters. Hezbollah maintains that its fight is in support of Hamas, and Nasrallah vowed the attacks on Israel will continue as long as the war in Gaza lasts.
The preliminary findings of a Lebanese investigation found the pagers had been booby-trapped, a security official said. Once pagers were detonated, the resulting blasts caused chaos and bloody destruction at a number of sites.
The country’s mission to the United Nations concurred, saying in a letter that the probe showed “the targeted devices were professionally booby-trapped… before arriving in Lebanon, and were detonated by sending emails to the devices”.
A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, said the pagers were recently imported and appeared to have been “sabotaged at source”.
A key horrifying element of the attacks is their indiscriminate nature.
Jessica Peake, an international law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, told The Intercept:
I think detonating pagers in people’s pockets without any knowledge of where those are, in that moment, is a pretty evident indiscriminate attack.
I think this seems to be quite blatant, both violations of both proportionality and indiscriminate attacks.
Of course, the implication here is that the apparently sabotaged devices are used by doctors, restaurant staff, and more – civilians, in other words. After the initial wave of attacks via paging devices, walkie talkie devices were also detonated.
Living in terror in Lebanon
For people in Lebanon, many are living in terror unsure which everyday devices may explode next.
Lina Ismail spoke to Agence France-Presse (AFP) by phone from the eastern city of Baalbek and said:
What happened in the last two days is so frightening. It’s terrifying.
I took away my daughter’s power bank and we even sleep with our mobile phones in a separate room.
Horrifyingly, mainstream media in the West has followed a familiar playbook: absolve Israel above all:
These headlines are ridiculous. Pagers and walkie-talkies are not attacking Lebanon, Israel is pic.twitter.com/MQxpQm5Yig
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) September 19, 2024
Once again, the Israeli perspective appears to be that they are targeting Hezbollah for supporting Hamas – did they get Hezbollah? Children with eyes blown out of their heads, has that stopped Hezbollah?
Fatima Abdullah is laid to rest in Lebanon.
Abdullah was killed in the Israeli intelligence pager attack yesterday.
She was nine years old and had just started fourth grade. pic.twitter.com/Q8tB2Q6NIf
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 18, 2024
In typically racist fashion, the New York Times contorted itself linguistically to avoid saying the word ‘civilians’:
“Noncombatants were also drawn into the fray.”
NYT is trying really hard to avoid saying Israel killed civilians in Lebanon attack. pic.twitter.com/wY2719aZfT
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) September 19, 2024
Disgustingly, the technological skill required to sabotage and detonate devices has been celebrated by some on social media:
Had the terrorist attack witnessed in Lebanon in the past 48hrs occurred in Europe, western media would be following victims, telling the story of a boy who lost an eye, a girl who lost her life… but these are only brown people, so they celebrate Israel's ingenuity. Repulsive.
— Mona Fawaz (@mona_fawaz) September 19, 2024
Brown, Arab, and Muslim lives are more disposable than white lives. This white supremacist logic is precisely what allows people to consider the technological implications over and above the chaos and terror Israel has spread in Lebanon.
Disposability
The fact that 9 year old Fatima’s funeral was disrupted with yet another wave of blasts should turn anyone’s stomach:
Fatima was killed in the pager attack. She was 9 years old. Then during her funeral, Israel set off another explosion killing mourners. Textbook terrorism. https://t.co/gsFMxQ4d85
— Ali A Olomi (@aaolomi) September 19, 2024
Meanwhile, Western media can’t even bring itself to state clearly who is carrying out these attacks. These pagers and walkie talkies did not spontaneously detonate on their own, killing and wounding many.
Israel is responsible, and the media’s detachment of accountability is cruel and commonplace.
The killing of these people in Lebanon is the very definition of spreading terror. Some were shopping, some were in their homes, some with children. Israel’s impunity clearly knows no bounds.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/MSNBC
