The United Nations said on Wednesday that just over 90,000 people had been displaced in Lebanon this week. Israel is continuing to pound what it says are Hezbollah targets. Plainly, however, Israel is once again attacking civilians indiscriminately and with impunity.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration has recorded “90,530 newly displaced persons.” A statement from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs added that among the displaced people”
many of the more than 111,000 people displaced since October… are likely to have been secondarily displaced.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said Tuesday that the number of displaced in Lebanon was:
now probably… approaching half a million.
Lebanon: at “grave risk”
Israeli raids on Lebanon on Monday killed at least 558 people. That marks the deadliest day of violence since Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war. Human Rights Watch (HRW) have warned that Israeli strikes on Lebanon were putting civillians:
at grave risk of harm.
HRW also urged an international investigation into hostilities in the country and in northern Israel. A statement from the group read:
Human Rights Watch has called on Israel’s key allies to suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel, given the real risk that they will be used to commit grave abuses.
Lamia Fakih, HRW’s Middle East and North Africa director said that United Nations:
member states should take urgent action to establish an independent inquiry into violations during the current hostilities. It is paramount for Israel and Hezbollah to comply with the laws of war to minimise civilian harm.
Fakih continued that:
The presence of a Hezbollah commander, rocket launcher, or other military facility in a populated area does not justify attacking the area without regard to the civilian population.
Israel raining terror down
However, that’s exactly what Israel are doing to Lebanon. And, as Professor Asad Abukhalil explained:
I was born when there was no Hizbullah, Hamas or even PLO. Yet, I grew up in Lebanon suffering regular Israeli murders, invasions, bombings, kidnappings, all over the country. You can only believe that this is really about Hamas or Hizbullah if you know nothing about our history.
— asad abukhalil أسعد أبو خليل (@asadabukhalil) September 25, 2024
Israel’s current insistence that it’s targeting Hamas and Hezbollah is a well-worn settler colonial tactic that presumes killing and disabling civilians and forcing mass displacement is an acceptable price to pay for the possibility of perhaps destabilising Hamas and Hezbollah.
One lawyer took issue with the characterisation of Lebanese people as “evacuating”:
Stop using the word “evacuate.” Lebanese ppl are not “evacuating” their homes, they’re being expelled. Palestinians in Gaza aren’t “evacuating” to “safe zones” israel is expelling them to a sandy ghetto. Palestinians didn’t “evacuate” their villages in 1948, they were expelled.
— هناء (@hanoooonz) September 24, 2024
Just as Palestinians have been expelled into so-called humanitarian zones (which Israel then bombs anyway), Lebanese people are now being expelled from their homes by Israel.
Just as social media feeds have been full of people torn about by bombs in Palestine, Israel is now doing the same in Lebanon:
Saw an image of a shredded human body atop a car. It was Beirut – 550 killed, including 50 children, in 24 hours. Absolute horror.
— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) September 24, 2024
And yet, despite wave after wave of Israeli attacks in both Palestine and Lebanon, nobody in the international community is doing anything:
Which is it?
Electronic Intifada director Ali Abunimah asked the question that should already be haunting American politicians:
Poor hapless United States. Couldn’t prevent genocide in Gaza, couldn’t prevent invasion of Rafah, couldn’t prevent massacre in Lebanon, won’t prevent invasion of Lebanon, can’t stop itself sending 2000lbs bombs. What a weak, helpless nation, like a kitten. pic.twitter.com/EPIIrMSaks
— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) September 24, 2024
As Abunimah says, which is it? Is America the centre of democracy and freedom, a world leader in diplomacy and geopolitics, the most powerful nation in the world? Or is it helpless, its hands tied by a situation so complex they can do nothing but watch? For a nation so trigger happy with its own Black citizens, so eager to bomb Middle East countries to democracy, to so generously share its freedom through torturing and detaining people in the Global South, it’s difficult to stomach.
Powerless to help you, but not powerless to kill you.
