The Looming Catastrophe in the Middle East (w/ Gideon Levy) | The Chris Hedges Report

“Violent and reckless,” 5 things you need to know about Israel and Lebanon

Israel is once again rejecting global calls for a ceasefire. But this time, they’re not for Gaza. They’re for Lebanon – where Israel has now launched a violent and reckless escalation in their almost year-long cross-fire battle with Hezbollah.

Israel of course took that cross-fire to a whole new level last week, when they made hundreds of pagers suddenly explode across Lebanon after planting explosives in them, injuring thousands and killing a dozen people, including two children and four healthcare workers.

Not only did Israel then continue to set off even more explosives in Lebanon, in what they claimed was the targeting of Hezbollah fighters, they went even further, launching the most horrific and deadly airstrikes in Lebanon yet, killing even more civilians and overwhelming the country’s hospitals. As Israel engages in a new wave of blatant propaganda to try and justify the spilling of even more Arab blood, Mehdi unpacks Israel’s “violent and reckless” assault on Lebanon and the false propaganda behind it.

Here are the five things that they’re not telling you about their horrific assault on Lebanon; the five things you need to know to cut through the B.S.

Finally Isreal done something right and nabbed someone significant. Pity they had to flatten half of Beirut and south Lebanon to get it done.

Israel has gotten many significant people. Assasination of Mohammed Deif (killing 90+ civilians in a tent strike), assassination of Haniyeh in Iran (political leader of Hamas outside Gaza doing the negotiations), and now I see Nasrallah. Will it matter, probably not.

You don't kill a resistance movement by killing the leaders. New ones will replace them as we've seen with Hamas over and over. (Israel has been assassinating Hamas leaders for a long time) And the new ones will be more radical, less restrained, with more support :/

So no, Israel didn't do something right, just made it worse again. All they do is make sure there can't be negotiations. Can't negotiate with a dead leader and the next one in line will be looking for revenge rather than negotiate.

Same as assassination Netanyahu won't solve anything. Plenty worse people, even less restrained people in line to take over. Like the ones calling for total starvation of Gaza or even a nuclear option, next to those calling for resettlement of Gaza.

There is actually Isreally higher ups calling for use of nukes? Ya can't be serious. I wonder would there be nukes sent back, Iran doesn't have any but Pakistan does, right? I wonder what that looks like, would it give us a nuclear winter...I gotta investigate.

Beirut attacked after Netanyahu’s UN speech shows ‘disdain for international law’: Analyst

Mohamad Bazzi, director of the Centre for Near Eastern Studies at New York University, told Al Jazeera the attack on Beirut is the expansion of Israel’s “brutal tactics that it used in Gaza”.

“Massive bombardment. Massive displacement of civilians. These so-called warnings that are sent out to people an hour or two before the massive aerial bombardment. These warnings that are intended to get people out in a panic and spread panic through the streets and through all of Beirut and Lebanon,” Bazzi told Al Jazeera.

It timing of the attack is also deeply significant, coming after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a defiant speech to the UN, which he accused of being a “swamp of anti-Semitic bile” and said Israel’s attacks on Lebanon would continue.

“The timing shouldn’t be lost on anyone of this tremendously huge attack on Dahiyeh today, happening soon after Netanyahu spoke at the UN General Assembly. It just showed tremendous disdain for international law and the UN,” Bazzi said.

Israeli blitz on Beirut designed to bomb Lebanon’s ‘population into submission’: Analyst

Beirut-based Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of The Public Source publication, said the attacks on Lebanon’s capital have been indiscriminate and designed to “terrorise the Lebanese population into submission”.

“It’s been a relentless night of indiscriminate bombings not only targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs but targeting many different parts of the country, including the Bekaa, the Chouf, of course, the southern parts of the country,” Bitar told Al Jazeera.

“This is intended to terrorise the Lebanese population into submission and to force the resistance group Hezbollah to abandon the Palestinian people in Gaza who have been facing a genocide over the past 11 months as the world looks on, as the world watches and the world does absolutely nothing,” Bitar said.

“This is the goal of these indiscriminate bombing campaigns that are targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure,” she said.

“Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen ambulances targeted and roads to hospitals. If Gaza is anything to look [towards] to guide us, this is expected to deteriorate very severely and to become, potentially, a catastrophe,” she added.

_{Lebanese civil defence teams conduct search and rescue operations following the Israeli attacks in the southern area of ​​the capital Beirut, Lebanon, on Friday night}

EU foreign affairs chief laments that ‘nobody’ can ‘stop’ Netanyahu

Speaking to journalists at the UN General Assembly, Josep Borrell said Prime Minister Netanyahu had made clear that Israel won’t “stop until Hezbollah is destroyed”.

“If the interpretation of being destroyed is the same as with Hamas, then we are going to go for a long war,” Borrell lamented. “What we do is to put all diplomatic pressure to a ceasefire, but nobody seems to be able to stop Netanyahu, neither in Gaza nor in the West Bank,” he said.

Borrell said he backed a US- and France-led ceasefire proposal for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon, which Israel has so far ignored as it carries out a deadly bombing campaign that has killed more than 700 people since Monday.

Israeli strikes targeted residential buildings, not Hezbollah ‘command centre’

More from Beirut-based journalist Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of The Public Source publication, who spoke to Al Jazeera earlier:

“There is no such thing as a Hezbollah ‘command centre’. There is also no such thing as a Hezbollah headquarters. Hezbollah doesn’t have bureaus and offices where they meet that are known.”

“These are residential buildings. Six or seven multistorey buildings were targeted and these buildings were inhabited by civilians who might or might not be affiliated to the party. But for the most part, they are civilians.”

“When these air strikes take place, they impact, obviously, not just the building that is targeted but all of the surroundings. So you can imagine the death toll every time one of these strikes takes place.”

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-02-28/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israeli-calls-to-nuke-gaza-are-undermining-the-nuclear-ambiguity-doctrine/0000018d-f13c-d1e0-a1dd-f1fd746b0000

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240124-israel-minister-renews-call-for-striking-gaza-with-nuclear-bomb/

Netanyahu won't do it, don't worry. My point was that that could be on the table after assassinating Netanyahu. Like assassinating Nasrallah will only make things worse, not end the resistance.

Pakistan is not going to nuke Israel for Iran.

Israel’s ‘ultimate target’ is Iran, drawing US into ‘direct military confrontation’: Analyst

Mouin Rabbani, non-resident fellow at the Centre for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, said the attack on Beirut is the latest Israeli move designed to reshape power in the region, and if possible draw the US into direct confrontation with Iran.

“I think Israel has taken a strategic decision that it wants to fundamentally alter the shape of the Middle East. And a key element of that is crushing Hezbollah and removing it as a significant military factor in the Middle East,” Rabbani told Al Jazeera.

“I think its ultimate target is to weaken Iran and, if possible during the remaining months of the Biden administration, to implicate the United States in a direct military confrontation with it,” Rabbani said.

“That’s why Israel has absolutely no time for diplomacy. That’s why its attacks go well and far beyond anything that could be interpreted within the more narrow objectives that Israel has announced” in terms of its own security, he said.

‘Long arm of Israel’ can reach anywhere in Iran, Netanyahu tells UNGA

The “long arm of Israel” can reach the “tyrants of Tehran” anywhere in Iran and the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a fiery speech at the UN General Assembly on Friday.

‘Everything under pressure’ in Lebanon after another night of attacks

There’s been absolutely no letup in Israeli air strikes. We’ve heard several explosions overnight in the area that I’m in, which is Nabatieh governorate.

We’ve seen explosions in Tyre, which was supposed to be one of the safe places that people could flee to from here, and that’s now under intense bombardment.

The Israeli military has said they’re attacking weapons launchers and Hezbollah’s military buildings in Lebanon, but civilians keep dying. All of the towns, all of the villages, even the little hamlets, are all emptying out. People are just fleeing.

There’s a lot of pressure on emergency services, too. This is a very foresty area, and so you get forest fires. Somebody told me from the civil defence that they’ve been battling three or four or five fires a day.

Thirty-seven hospitals have been shuttered because medical staff are scared that Israel will do what did in Gaza and go after medical infrastructure and bomb hospitals.

Everything is under pressure right now, and whether it gets to breaking point remains to be seen.

US diplomacy a ‘charade’ to conceal direct support for Israel: Analyst

Mouin Rabbani, non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, spoke to Al Jazeera earlier about Israel’s attack on Beirut and the role of the United States.

Rabbani said the claim by US officials that they did not know in advance of Israel’s attack on Beirut was not plausible given its close intelligence ties to Israel.

“What we have here is the United States repeatedly claiming that it had absolutely no idea of the latest developments until it was informed by the Israelis,” Rabbani said.

“This is the same government that spent months warning the world about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And despite its exceptionally close intelligence relationship with Israel, and intelligence sharing and all the rest of it, now claims it had absolutely no clue that any of this was happening.”

Rabbani said current US diplomacy “is an exercise in smoke and mirrors”.

“A diversionary charade to conceal the direct support the United States has been providing Israel throughout the past year,” he said.

Sirens triggered in Upper Galilee following rocket launches

The Israeli military said the sirens were sounded in the Upper Galilee area of north Israel after it detected 10 rockets launched from southern Lebanon. Not all of the rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system, the Israeli military said, but there have been no reports of damage or injuries.

Hezbollah is yet to confirm the rocket launches.

Bombing of Beirut adds to Lebanon’s ‘mass displacement crisis’

We just heard a huge explosion. We are at one of the entrances to Beirut’s southern suburbs. Neighbourhoods of Beirut’s southern suburbs came under heavy fire late yesterday. Twelve hours of intense bombardments.

We can see some people making their way back inside. These are people who left their homes in a hurry last night and who are now returning to retrieve whatever they can get from their homes.

There is a lot of fear here. The roads are nearly empty. This area on a normal day would be packed with cars and a lot of traffic because this is a densely populated area.

We’ve been driving around the Lebanese capital for the past two hours and you see people in parks, in public squares and along the beach, and even on the side of the roads. They have nowhere to go.

This is a mass displacement crisis already since Monday when Israel began its intensive and extensive air strikes targeting Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds in the east and south of the country. It displaced more than 100,000 people. That’s added to the 110,000 who were already displaced in 11 months of fighting.

Now this is a new wave of displacement that is causing more strain on a nearly cash-strapped government.

Multiple explosions heard in Tel Aviv: Report

There are reports of explosions heard in Tel Aviv, according to Israeli news outlet Ynet.

Meanwhile, a surface-to-surface missile fired from Lebanon towards central Israel fell in an open area, the Israeli army said. The army added that no sirens were sounded and that the incident was under review.

Israeli army claims Hamas commander in southern Syria killed

The Israeli army is claiming that it killed the head of the Hamas network in southern Syria, Ahmad Muhammad Fahd, overnight on Friday. Fahd was “eliminated” before he carried out another operation against Israel, the Israeli army claimed in a post on X.

Syria denounces Israeli attacks in Beirut

The Syrian Foreign Ministry has called the latest Israeli attacks in Lebanon’s capital “a new crime against humanity”.

“The Syrian Arab Republic strongly condemns all these continuous crimes, and renews its affirmation that the Israeli terrorist entity’s insistence on shedding blood and committing all kinds of war crimes and crimes against humanity that are blasphemy, will lead the region to a dangerous acceleration that is impossible to predict its consequences,” it said in a statement.

Israel’s targeting of Hezbollah leader in Beirut bombing a ‘very dangerous turning point'

There seems to be a lot of confidence within the Israeli establishment that the leader of Hezbollah, the secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, was at the location.

The message that is coming out in Israeli media in leaks is that it’s very difficult to see how he would have survived this attack. This is from the Israelis. We’ve heard nothing from Hezbollah. The message from the Israelis now is that they are checking whether the strike – in their words – has been “successful”.

All of this is speculation but certainly the feeling from Israel is that he was there. It’s extraordinary really. We are at a very dangerous turning point when it comes to what happened yesterday in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Civilians killed as Israel targets sites in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley

The focus is in the Bekaa Valley because parts of it are considered Hezbollah strongholds.

The Bekaa Valley lies between the eastern mountain range and the western mountain range and behind the eastern mountain range is Syria and many believe there are roots from Syria to Hezbollah strongholds. That they can get weapons into the country and also Israel believes that there are weapons storage sites here in Bekaa Valley.

Ultimately we have seen civilians being killed.

Yesterday there was a funeral for 15 people – members of the same family that were killed here in Bekaa Valley.

Hezbollah continues limited strikes on Israel

As Lebanon endures a morning of heavy bombardment by Israeli warplanes, Hezbollah has announced two attacks via statements on its official Telegram channel.

Most recently, it said that it unleashed a salvo of Fadi-3 missiles against Israel’s Ramat David Airbase about 20km (about 12.5 miles) southeast of the city of Haifa.  Israeli media reported that air raid sirens sounded in towns surrounding Haifa, but did not report any casualties from the attack.

Earlier, the group said that it launched a barrage of Fadi-1 missiles at the town of Kabri.

Israeli Air Force pounds targets in Bekaa Valley

Israel’s military said jet fighters have attacked “dozens” of Hezbollah targets in the Bekaa Valley and various areas of southern Lebanon and the attacks are continuing. Buildings were targeted in the strikes where weapons were stored and sites where rockets were launched into Israel, the military said.

The was no mention made of the number of casualties from the attacks.