{"id":315867,"date":"2026-05-11T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=315867"},"modified":"2026-05-06T08:32:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T07:32:28","slug":"as-israel-continues-to-destroy-lebanons-south-locals-are-turning-to-hezbollah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/05\/as-israel-continues-to-destroy-lebanons-south-locals-are-turning-to-hezbollah\/","title":{"rendered":"As Israel Continues to Destroy Lebanon\u2019s South, Locals Are Turning to Hezbollah"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s policy in Lebanon closely mirrors devastation in Gaza.<\/em><\/p>\n

1 May 2026 –\u00a0<\/em>With US and Israeli officials constantly insisting everything that is happening in southern Lebanon is Hezbollah\u2019s fault, there was an underlying assumption that there would be a public backlash against Hezbollah as locals lives got progressively worse. While there\u00a0were early reports that people resented<\/a>\u00a0Hezbollah\u2019s role in the war during the early days, that view seems to be shifting as the destruction continues to scale.<\/p>\n

Occupied by Israel, and watching Israeli military bulldozers destroy their homes and villages, many have less and less time to hold Hezbollah responsible, and are\u00a0instead turning to Hezbollah for protection<\/a>, as the only faction that is in any way resisting the ongoing attacks.<\/p>\n

This should come as no surprise, as making the local population desperate and leaving them with only one group to turn to has continually ended with the locals, whether they want to or not, becoming more reliant on that group.<\/i><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s narrative likely isn\u2019t helping matters in this case, as they continue to\u00a0insist everything<\/a>\u00a0they\u2019re destroying is Hezbollah infrastructure, and that it\u2019s all \u201cterror sites<\/a>,\u201d its increasingly apparent that the IDF is destroying everything in its path, including large numbers of civilian homes. IDF commanders even admitted earlier this week that the\u00a0de facto policy is to destroy Shi\u2019ite village<\/a>s.<\/p>\n

While the Lebanese government is talking\u00a0about eventually \u201creclaiming\u201d the lost territory<\/a>\u00a0from Israel, they continue to engage in talks that end in \u201cceasefires\u201d that don\u2019t actually end Israeli attacks on the south, so when Hezbollah politicians say they is\u00a0no real ceasefire<\/a>\u00a0in place, it rings true.<\/p>\n

That ceasefire continues to accomplish very little, and Israel\u2019s strategy within the \u201cbuffer zone\u201d closely\u00a0mirrors what Israel has done in the Gaza Strip<\/a>\u00a0in recent years. Earlier this week, Defense Minister Israel Katz\u00a0even made that comparison<\/a>, saying governing the buffer zone was like governing Gaza.<\/p>\n

For those living inside the buffer zone, this sense of\u00a0constant intermittent displacement<\/a>, threatened by permanent displacement if Israel follows through on plans to erase their villages, this is just a continuation of a long problem. As Israeli strikes on paramedics and civilian homes full of women and children continue apace, the idea that they were going to blame Hezbollah for everything was simply unrealistic.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for <\/em>Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in <\/em>The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and<\/em> the Detroit Free Press.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – defenddemocracy.press<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 May 2026 – Occupied by Israel, and watching Israeli military bulldozers destroy their homes and villages, many have less and less time to hold Hezbollah responsible, and are\u00a0instead turning to Hezbollah for protection, as the only faction that is in any way resisting the ongoing attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":315868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[3287,417,1854,100,3339,487,88,2097,767,2571,880,99,70,965],"class_list":["post-315867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa","tag-anti-zionism","tag-bullying","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-direct-violence","tag-hezbollah","tag-human-rights","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-middle-east","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-state-terrorism","tag-structural-violence","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315867","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=315867"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315872,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315867\/revisions\/315872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}