Tag: lebanon

With One Strike, Netanyahu Tries To Kill Two Peace Deals

It’s important to understand that, contrary to Donald Trump’s quip to Barak Ravid that Netanyahu has “no f***ing judgment,” the Israeli Prime Minister knows exactly what he is doing: With a set of strikes at the Dahiyeh neighborhood in Beirut, he is trying to kill both the pending US-Iran peace deal and the fragile peace between Israel and Lebanon that would come with it.

There is a further strategic dividend. Netanyahu is also seeking to preempt Iran’s attempt to establish a new regional deterrence equation – one in which attacks on Beirut, and potentially on Lebanon more broadly, would trigger a direct Iranian response against Israel. By striking now, he is not merely targeting an adversary; he is challenging the emergence of a regional order that would constrain Israel’s freedom of military action.

Netanyahu even posted a video on his Twitter bragging about the attack.

The exchange of fire between Israel and Iran last week was about far more than retaliation. After Israel defied President Trump and struck Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood, Iran responded by attacking Israel directly – the first time Tehran had launched strikes on Israel in response to an Israeli attack on Lebanon. Israel defied Trump once more and retaliated against Iran, prompting another Iranian response, after which Israel confined its next strike to southern Lebanon rather than Beirut.

The cycle reflected Iran’s attempt to establish a new regional equation: that attacks on Lebanon would no longer be cost-free for Israel, but would carry the risk of direct Iranian retaliation. For the first time in decades, a major regional power was seeking to place hard-power constraints on Israel’s freedom of military action beyond its borders.

Having reestablished its own deterrence, Tehran was now attempting to establish extended deterrence to its partners as part of a broader effort to rebuild its forward-defense posture. Israel, unsurprisingly, viewed this as a direct challenge to its long-standing freedom of maneuver and moved quickly to prevent the new doctrine from taking hold.

Of course, extended deterrence can not be established through a single exchange of fire. At a minimum, it would require several rounds of action and reaction before either side accepted it as a new reality. And even then, it would never be foolproof. Tehran understands that its purpose cannot simply be to eliminate Israeli strikes on Lebanon, but to force Israeli leaders to think twice before authorizing them by attaching a new and significant cost: the likelihood of direct Iranian retaliation.

It was therefore clear that Netanyahu had not abandoned the fight. Yet for several days, even as Hezbollah and Israel continued to exchange fire, he refrained from striking Beirut’s southern suburbs and testing Iran’s new red line.

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Western Media Normalize Ethnic Cleansing of Lebanon by Viewing It Through Israel’s Eyes

In October 2024, one year into Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and attendant assault on Lebanon, the Israeli army did a thing. It invited journalists from major Western corporate media outlets on an incursion into Lebanon’s ravaged south, accompanied by Israeli military personnel who would interpret the wreckage in Israel’s favor—not that the Western media have ever required much assistance in this regard.

Reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, Fox News and a handful of other special guests signed up for the cross-border sortie. It was, as Habib Battah and Christina Cavalcanti note in an investigation for the Public Source (8/27/25), an “awkward hybrid between a traditional embed and the kind of all-expense-paid publicity trip that journalists refer to as junkets, freebies and dog-and-pony shows.”

Never mind that it is entirely illegal for journalists or anyone else to enter Lebanon from Israel—what’s one more illegal invasion from a country that has been invading Lebanon pretty much since its founding? As Battah and Cavalcanti emphasize, these media professionals were also embedding themselves “within a national project of extraordinary transnational violence,” hosted by an “extrajudicial occupying military power—a critical point that all of them would fail to mention in their coverage.”

The Israelis certainly hit the jackpot with the coverage, as reporters excitedly discovered boots and helmets allegedly belonging to Hezbollah—clear proof that the group had been plotting a nefarious attack on Israel. New York Times Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner, an old pro at conducting preemptive journalistic strikes on Lebanon, did not disappoint with her dispatch (10/13/24), “Just Over the Border From Israel, a Hezbollah Cache of Explosives and Mines.”

And in report after embedded report, Israel’s chosen journalists faithfully transmitted the tiresome and counter-logical notion that Hezbollah was somehow the aggressor in the arrangement—as opposed to the army that was busily slaughtering thousands of people in Lebanon while implementing a scorched-earth strategy.

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Catholic Nuncio Visits Lebanese Christians Defying Israel Evacuation Orders

Apostolic Nuncio Paolo Borgia on Monday visited several villages in southeastern Lebanon whose residents have refused to leave, despite the ongoing battle between Israeli forces and the Iran-backed terrorists of Hezbollah.

Borgia has visited the region several times during the current conflict, which Hezbollah launched by attacking Israel from Lebanese soil in March. The nuncio does not limit his visits to majority-Christian communities.

“The war has severe consequences for villages — whether Christian, mixed, or Muslim. Many people have been forced to leave their homes,” the archbishop noted when visiting the conflict zone in March.

“There is much suffering in the Beirut area with all the displaced people, especially Shiites, who are in a very difficult situation. Many Christians are also displaced in Beirut or in the north,” he said after another tour in April. 

“It is certainly hard because they leave everything behind, and there is also a major economic problem, as activities cease when villages in the south are abandoned,” he observed.

“They feel they are carrying a burden alone. That is why we go to visit them: they must feel the presence of the universal and Lebanese Church, especially the presence of the Holy Father, as well as many people of goodwill who help and support those living through these tragedies,” he stressed.

As with his previous visits, Borgia brought humanitarian supplies to the villages he visited, provided by relief organizations such as Caritas-Lebanon, whose president Father Samir Ghaoui traveled with the nuncio.

Community leaders said these humanitarian deliveries were crucial because the conflict has cut them off from the rest of Lebanon. Local farmers said they were worried about the security situation preventing them from working their fields in the upcoming harvest season, which could lead to a devastating loss of income for already impoverished communities.

The Israeli military continues to issue evacuation orders for areas across Lebanon, which some villagers refuse to obey. Civilians and members of the Lebanese army have reportedly been hit by Israeli strikes against Hezbollah.

On Tuesday, the Israeli army published photos of a large Hezbollah weapons stockpile seized from a nominally civilian residence in the village of Zawtar Sharqieh, located north of the Litani River, the boundary between north and south Lebanon.

“The combat weapons found in the buildings include Kalashnikov-type rifles, missiles and anti-tank rocket launchers, magazines, grenades, communication devices, drones and other combat equipment,” the Israeli statement said, citing the raid as the latest evidence that Hezbollah deliberately uses “civilian infrastructure” in its operations.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said several more Hezbollah weapons depots have been found in civilian structures in Zawtar Sharqieh and other towns over the past few days.

On Monday night, a suspected Hezbollah fighter slipped into northern Israel from Lebanon and fired on Israeli troops, who returned fire and killed him. Local community leader David Azoulay said the incident was “further proof that there is no security even after almost three years of war in the north, even when the IDF created a sort of security zone.”

Azoulay said Israel should “charge Hezbollah a price for its audacity and attempt to penetrate Israeli territory and make it clear that these events will not pass as if nothing had happened.”

Israel launched airstrikes on the major Lebanese city of Tyre on Tuesday and warned the entire city to evacuate, including the Christian quarter of the Old City, which has previously been exempted from evacuation warnings. The IDF said last week that it has reason to believe Hezbollah fighters are operating out of the Christian quarter in Tyre because they thought it was safe from attack.

The Lebanese health ministry said the strikes conducted before the evacuation warning killed at least eight people and wounded 32.

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A Regional Crisis or a Protracted International Disorder?

On May 31, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam gave a televised address in which he condemned Israel’s invasion and intensified attacks on southern Lebanon as a dangerous escalation, warning that a “scorched-earth policy” will never bring security to Tel Aviv: “Israel must understand that with its scorched-earth policy, collective punishment, and the bulldozing of villages and towns, it will gain neither security nor stability.”

As Salam said, this process is now advancing. “Israel is practicing mass displacement that amounts to collective punishment. It no longer targets only specific locations or areas, but has adopted a policy of comprehensive destruction of cities, towns, and all aspects of life within them.”

Tactical wins, strategic devastation

Israel’s Obliteration Doctrine is a lethal mix of scorched earth policy, collective punishment and civilian victimization, coupled with massive indiscriminate bombardment and systematic use of artificial intelligence (AI), as I have demonstrated in The Obliteration Doctrine (2025) and The Fall of Israel (2024).

This doctrine often goes hand in hand with ecocide, which Israel has committed in Gaza and is committing in Lebanon. The net effect is ethnic cleansing and, given continued and unhindered escalation, genocidal atrocities.

Whether Prime Minister Netanyahu, former PM Naftali Bennett or former head of the Israeli defense forces Gadi Eisenkot will win the 2026 Israeli legislative election is effectively immaterial. With or without Netanyahu, the Obliteration Doctrine will prevail.

Netanyahu brought to power the most far-right Messianic government in Israeli history. Naftali Bennett is a millionaire politician and the ex-leader of a religious Zionist far-right party. Ironically, the more “moderate” of the three is the ex-military chief Gadi Eisenkot who first tested the Obliteration Doctrine in Dahiya, a Shia enclave in Beirut in 2006.

The greatest threat to Israel’s long-term future is not external enemies alone, but the transformation of military escalation into a permanent governing principle. Once security policy becomes inseparable from territorial expansion, ethnic cleansing and perpetual warfare, the consequences extend far beyond the battlefield.

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Far-Left Media Claims Trump Unloaded on Netanyahu During Heated Call Over Lebanon Conflict

President Donald Trump is once again demonstrating that he is the only world leader capable of preventing a wider Middle East war while simultaneously protecting America’s interests and maintaining peace through strength.

On Monday, President Trump announced that he personally intervened to stop a major Israeli operation targeting Beirut, Lebanon, stating that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to reverse course after a direct conversation between the two leaders.

Trump announced on Truth Social:

“I had a conversation with Bibi Netanyahu today, asking him not to go into a major raid of Beirut, Lebanon. He turned his Troops around. Thank you Bibi! I also had a conversation with Representatives of the Leaders of Hezbollah, and they agreed to stop shooting at Israel, and its soldiers. Likewise, Israel agreed to stop shooting at them. Let’s see how long that lasts — Hopefully it will be for ETERNITY!”

The president’s remarks came amid rapidly escalating tensions along Israel’s northern border after renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah threatened to derail ongoing diplomatic efforts in the region. Reuters, CBS News, and other outlets reported that Trump publicly claimed Israel had turned back troops heading toward Beirut following his conversation with Netanyahu.

But while Trump publicly celebrated a temporary de-escalation, Netanyahu made clear that Israel’s military posture has not fundamentally changed.

In a statement posted on X, Netanyahu said:

“Tonight, I spoke with President Trump and told him that if Hezbollah does not cease attacking our cities and citizens—Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut. This stance of ours remains unchanged. In parallel, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.”

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Nothing more dangerous than a Netanyahu scorned

The emerging deal between the United States and Iran represents an existential danger to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future.

With his coalition fracturing and elections approaching, Netanyahu can’t survive a peace that leaves Hezbollah intact and Iran’s nuclear program deferred. The only path that may keep his future viable now runs through Lebanon.

This may help explain why, just hours after President Donald Trump announced that a deal with Iran was “largely negotiated” through talks that excluded Israel, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to “increase the blows” against Hezbollah, adding on Monday that “we are deepening our operation in Lebanon.”

Israel has now issued evacuation orders for two of southern Lebanon’s biggest cities, and Israeli aircraft have struck over 100 sites in southern Lebanon, adding to a death toll that has now surpassed 3,000 since the latest escalation in March, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. This comes as Lebanese and Israeli officials are engaged in historic, U.S.-brokered talks in Washington, including a security track that was due to be launched on May 29.

When the U.S. and Israel initiated strikes on Iran in late February, Netanyau framed the aims of the campaign in maximalist terms: destroy Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capacity, sever Tehran’s support for regional proxies, and, most ambitiously, overthrow the Islamic Republic.

Three months later, Iran is still standing. The deal taking shape between the Trump administration and the Islamic Republic addresses almost none of these objectives in the preliminary phase, focusing instead on restarting maritime shipping and bringing an end to direct U.S.-Iran hostilities.

The blowback from Israeli politicians and commentators has been fierce. Israeli opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid said the deal was “bad for Israel, bad for the region, bad for the people of Iran.” Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister and a key coalition partner in Netanyahu’s government, framed the proposal in similar terms, calling it “an agreement that can harm the State of Israel.”

Against this background, Netanyahu’s predicament is especially acute. He co-launched a war that degraded Iran’s capabilities but failed to bring Tehran to heel. He has been excluded from negotiations on the conflict’s outcome and now faces an electorate that is expected to hit the polls as early as September. With these elections looming, only 10% of Israelis viewed the Iran campaign as a significant success when polled in mid-April.

The dominant analysis holds that Netanyahu is trying to drag out the election timeline, hoping to buy more time to achieve something he can market to voters on the security and diplomatic fronts. Lebanon is a key part of that calculation.

The immediate trigger for the escalation in Lebanon has a tactical dimension distinct from the emerging Iran deal. Hezbollah has deployed fiber-optic drones against Israeli troops occupying a self-declared buffer zone or “Yellow Line” in southern Lebanon. These cheap drones are unjammable because they avoid radio frequencies. Multiple Israeli soldiers have been killed or severely wounded by these drones, and some have struck civilian homes within Israel.

In response, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, approved a $700 million budget for counter-drone operations and added that playing defense was insufficient. “For every explosive drone, ten buildings in Beirut should fall,” Smotrich said. The Israeli military’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, agreed that Beirut should be struck. Ben-Gvir went furthest: “It is time for the Prime Minister to knock on Trump’s desk and inform him that we are returning to war in Lebanon. We need to cut off the electricity in Lebanon..and return to a fierce war.”

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Missiles Rain Down On Northern Israel In Large Hezbollah ‘Revenge’ Operation

Northern Israel has come under heavy attack from Hezbollah on Saturday, after this past week a full-scale war has resumed in southern Lebanon, which even saw the resumption of Israeli airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, much further to the north.

Even while Tel Aviv maintains the illusion of a ceasefire with Lebanon (as in, its government and national army), there is no ceasefire with Iran-linked Hezbollah, following weeks of sporadic drones being sent on northern Israel, as well as troop positions of invading IDF forces.

The Saturday drone and missile waves hit multiple locations in and around the Galilee area, with regional media reporting that at least eight missiles were launched at Israeli positions in the initial salvo, one of which struck a site in Kiryat Shmona city.

Hezbollah subsequently announced it had carried out 22 military operations against Israeli army positions and equipment within the prior 24 hours. It framed this as a revenge operation for Israeli attacks on civilian centers in Lebanon.

Times of Israel has cited IDF statements saying Israel is bracing for more attacks out of Lebanon. “Hezbollah launched several rockets from Lebanon at the Western Galilee a short while ago,” it said in a late in the day Saturday (local time) update. “The IDF says some of the rockets were intercepted and others struck open areas, causing no injuries.”

Sirens across several towns and cities were activated, and there were scenes of coastal locales being impacted, with throngs of people scrambling for bomb shelters.

Starting early last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that he instructed his military to “press the pedal even harder” against Hezbollah, reportedly upon a greenlight being given by Washington, following increased drone attacks from the Shia paramilitary group backed by Iran on northern Israel.

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Beirut Rocked By Israeli Airstrikes After Month Of Quiet, 14 Dead

For several days, the Israelis have been warning of new military strikes on Lebanon’s capital. People have been seen flooding out of the southern suburbs which have been a historic stronghold of Hezbollah support.

Amid ongoing ground fighting between IDF and Hezbollah forces in the south, Thursday finally saw heavy airstrikes on the capital. “An Israeli strike hit a building in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital on Thursday, killing at least 14 people, the first strike to hit near Beirut in weeks amid a ceasefire that has failed to halt fighting between Israeli troops and Hezbollah in south Lebanon,” Reuters reports.

Follow-up reporting indicates the death toll across the nation amid the flare-up in bombing raids is at 16 and counting, amid emergency crews picking through the rubble:

At least 16 people have been killed and 58 wounded in Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanese health authorities, as Israel intensifies its assault and issues mass displacement orders across the region.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported on Thursday that six of the victims belonged to the same family. They were killed in an Israeli drone strike while trying to flee at dawn along the Adloun Highway, a key route linking Sidon and Tyre, it said.

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The mainstream media is ignoring Israel’s role in the killing of journalist Amal Khalil

Amal Khalil was a brave Lebanese reporter who for the past two decades has reported from the often dangerous southern part of her country for the Al-Akhbar daily newspaper. On April 22, while doing her job, she died in agony — and there is compelling evidence that the Israeli military murdered her. She was 43 years old.

But once again, the mainstream U.S. media is guilty of sickening malpractice. Journalists are supposed to make special efforts to follow the story when their colleagues are killed in action, but the leading American cable news networks, so far, have mostly not reported her death at all. On MS NOW, the more progressive outlet, nothing on air. Ditto for CNN, (although the network’s “CNN International” subdivision did air a 2:16 report — which most American subscribers will have missed). Neither did the major legacy TV networks cover the story: nothing on ABC, NBC, or CBS.

(There was one honorable exception, on the PBS News Hour. Geoff Bennett raised the killing of Amal Khalil in an interview with Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, and pressed Danon hard.)

Here’s what actually happened. Back in 2024, Amal Khalil had already received death threats from an Israeli media commentator with close ties to the military, who warned her to leave southern Lebanon. On April 22, 2026 she was reporting near the village of al-Tiri when an Israeli air strike hit the vehicle in front of her. As usual, she had been wearing protective equipment that clearly identified her as a journalist. She and a fellow reporter took refuge in a nearby home. That reporter, Zeinab Faraj, told the Associated Press “Amal was crawling, she was wounded — her nose and head and shoulder and leg.” Both women were able to speak by phone to family and other colleagues. 

Then, a second Israeli air strike hit their refuge. Rescue workers got to her colleague, but the Union of Journalists in Lebanon charges that Israeli forces used stun grenades to prevent further efforts to free Amal. She continued to lay in that rubble for hours, surely in pain. Six hours later, the rescuers finally got through. But she had already died.

Back to the mainstream U.S. media. Unlike television news, newspapers did not entirely ignore the killing of Amal Khalil, but their coverage was mostly minimal, with — so far — little or no follow-up. One New York Times report especially stood out for its grotesque contortions to try and hide the compelling evidence that the Israeli military had prevented her rescuers from saving her. 

The sub-headline to Max Bearak’s April 23 report telegraphed the paper’s concealment strategy. “Mourners paid respects to Amal Khalil, who remained trapped under rubble for hours before emergency medics recovered her body.” You had to read all the way down to the 7th paragraph to learn who had actually “trapped” her, and was stopping those “emergency medics.” And, astonishingly, here was the explanatory sentence: “The Israeli military denied in a statement that it had prevented rescuers from reaching the injured journalists, and said the incident was under investigation.”

This is quite extraordinary. The New York Times is reporting Israel’s denial before it even bothers to tell you what the charge is. 

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Residents flee southern Beirut after Netanyahu orders escalation against Hezbollah

Following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for escalation in strikes against Hezbollah, an AFP correspondent reports residents fleeing the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold.

Lebanese security sources also tell Reuters that residents are evacuating.

Except for a strike targeting a Hezbollah commander in the area earlier this month, there have been no strikes on Beirut or its surroundings since the April 16 truce.

Netanyahu did not say in his video message whether Israel planned to resume broader attacks in Beirut.

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