{"id":275594,"date":"2024-09-30T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=275594"},"modified":"2024-09-26T05:12:18","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T04:12:18","slug":"the-deadliest-day-in-lebanon-in-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/09\/the-deadliest-day-in-lebanon-in-decades\/","title":{"rendered":"The Deadliest Day in Lebanon in Decades"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A site targeted by Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon on 23 Sep 2024.
Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

25 Sep 2024 <\/em>– Monday [23 Sep] was the deadliest day in Lebanon in decades.<\/p>\n

In a single day, Israeli strikes in Beirut and across south Lebanon killed over 500 people, including at least 50 children, with countless more buried under the rubble. Tens of thousands have been forced to flee their homes as the death toll continues to rise.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen this before. Nearly a year into the genocide in Gaza, Israel\u2019s fanatical government is barreling towards the total decimation and ethnic cleansing of south Lebanon. Beirut is not Gaza \u2014 but in a matter of days, entire neighborhoods have already been destroyed.<\/p>\n

The Pager Attacks Were the Beginning<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Last week, pagers and walkie talkies were detonated across Lebanon, killing at least 70 and maiming thousands of people.<\/p>\n

Only a few days after the attacks, Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes, killing over 500 people in a single day \u2014 one of the highest daily death tolls of any war<\/strong><\/a> in recent history \u2014 and injuring another 1,600.<\/p>\n

This was intentional: The pager and walkie talkie attacks were undoubtedly meant to exhaust Lebanon\u2019s emergency services and overwhelm its hospitals right before the Israeli government\u2019s bombardment of south Lebanon commenced.<\/p>\n

Between the massive explosion at the port of Beirut in 2020 and years of severe economic turmoil, Lebanon was already a country teetering on the brink of collapse. Now, still reeling from the pager attacks, Lebanon\u2019s hospitals are too overwhelmed to cope with the Israeli military\u2019s assault.<\/p>\n

Since then, hundreds of people have been killed and thousands injured as tens of thousands of Lebanese flee the south. They were expelled from communities which have already witnessed mass displacement in the last 11 months as a result of repeated Israeli attacks.<\/p>\n

Those fleeing Israel\u2019s bombardment have nowhere to go: There aren\u2019t bomb shelters, and Lebanese schools don\u2019t have enough resources to house tens of thousands of people. Instead, people across Beirut are opening their homes to the displaced.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve Seen This Before<\/h3>\n

For the last year, the U.S. has sent billions of dollars worth of weapons and military funding to the Israeli military while it slaughtered and starved Palestinians. More emboldened than ever, Israel is now gearing up for a repeat of Gaza in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel\u2019s \u201cwar\u201d is with Hezbollah, not the Lebanese people. That claim comes in stark contrast with what Israeli Cabinet Minister Amichai Chikli wrote<\/strong><\/a> on X over the weekend: that Lebanon \u201cdoes not meet the definition of a country,\u201d and that Israel should create a buffer zone in South Lebanon \u2014 one \u201cfree\u201d of the \u201cShi\u2019a enemy population.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early on Monday, residents of parts of Beirut and in villages in the south received text messages and phone calls ordering them to flee \u201cHezbollah strongholds.\u201d These mass expulsion orders aren\u2019t about minimizing harm to civilians, because the Israeli government isn\u2019t interested in sparing civilians\u2019 lives. This is psychological warfare<\/strong><\/a>. For Palestinians and Lebanese, the message is clear: The Israeli government knows exactly where you are, and it can kill you at any time.<\/p>\n

In just a few days, entire blocks<\/strong><\/a> have already been reduced to rubble<\/strong><\/a> and tens of thousands have fled their homes. If all of this sounds familiar, it\u2019s because this is exactly how the genocide in Gaza began.<\/p>\n

This Is Where Impunity Leads<\/h3>\n

Israel\u2019s genocidal, apartheid regime has been allowed to kill Palestinians, Lebanese, and other people in the region with impunity for decades.<\/p>\n

Now, even as Israel\u2019s brutal assault in Lebanon threatens to drag the entire region into war, Netanyahu is dodging accountability. The U.S. government has tacitly endorsed Israel\u2019s nonsensical \u201cstrategy\u201d of de-escalation through escalation: a thinly veiled ruse to justify its war of annihilation against the people of south Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Instead of doing anything to hold Netanyahu\u2019s feet to the fire to force a ceasefire in Gaza \u2014 something the Biden administration claims it wants \u2014 the U.S. is sending more troops to the region in anticipation of a wider war.<\/p>\n

It is precisely because of this climate of impunity that the Israeli government is as emboldened as it is today. It is because of U.S. support that Israel has been able to commit genocide in Gaza for 11 months, and if the Israeli government invades Lebanon, it will do so using U.S. weapons. The only way to end the genocide in Gaza and prevent that genocide from being expanded to Lebanon is for the U.S. to stop arming Israel.<\/p>\n

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__________________________________<\/p>\n

Jewish Voice for Peace is the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews into solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. We envision a world where all people live in freedom, justice, equality, and dignity and believe that through organizing, we can and will dismantle the institutions and structures that sustain injustice.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jewishvoiceforpeace.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday [23 Sep] was the deadliest day in Lebanon in decades. In a single day, Israeli strikes in Beirut and across south Lebanon killed over 500 people, including at least 50 children, with countless more buried under the rubble. Tens of thousands have been forced to flee their homes as the death toll continues to rise.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[3300,417,1854,87,865,3339,3264,88,2097,715,767,427,2159,880,70,965],"class_list":["post-275594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa","tag-asymmetric-warfare","tag-bullying","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-hezbollah","tag-idf","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-massacre","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine","tag-rogue-states","tag-state-terrorism","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275594"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275600,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275594\/revisions\/275600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}