It only took 24 hours for Israel to break the ceasefire agreement painstakingly conceived by the US, Iran and the Pakistani mediators. After it was supposed to have commenced, the IDF unleashed its most devastating attack on Lebanon since the war began. It boasted that it struck 1,000 targets on ten minutes. Nearly 400 died. Afterward, Trump called it “a skirmish.”
The term “war crimes” has been uttered perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of times in the media concerning atrocities like this, and those threatened by Trump. Do we say it so often that it empties the term of meaning? Yes, but we must do it regardless. The souls of the slaughtered demand it.
This is wanton killing solely to benefit one megalomaniacal monster, whose military takes orders without moral or even legal consideration. This is also state sponsored terrorism. But in this case, the state in question has a powerful ally who joins in the crime. So there is impunity for all. Except the victims. They appear to be guilty of their own deaths.
There can be no justification for the slaughter. Israel hardly offers one except to repeat endlessly: Hezbollah, Hezbollah, Hezbollah. Rocket, rockets and more rockets. It mumbles these phrases repeatedly, ad nauseam.
Sabotaging the ceasefire
There is clear precedent for Bibi Netanyahu’s sabotaging ceasefires. He agreed to two in Gaza. Then ignored the first and continued the genocide. He more or less agreed to the second which finally paused the killing, at least partially: 1,000 Gazans have been killed since that final October ceasefire. Earlier, he’d rejected numerous other opportunities to end the fighting and win release of Israeli hostages. He refused repeatedly because war served his interest more than peace. Killing Palestinians was good for him, as is killing Lebanese. He never met a ceasefire he didn’t break.
Yesterday’s Lebanon slaughter was clearly Netanyahu’s “fuck you” to Trump for being excluded from the negotiations–certainly because he opposed them from the start and would have done his best to wreck them had he been included.
The Israeli leader seems to have succeeded–for now. The US is furiously backpedaling–claiming Lebanon was never part of the deal. Karoline “the Nitwit” Leavitt, Trump’s mouthpiece, claimed that he had “thrown into the garbage” the original 10-point peace plan proposed by Iran–which the president had previously called a “workable” document. Who are you going to believe? The president or your own lying spokesperson?
After the Israeli attack and Iran’s warning that it would withdraw from the ceasefire unless Israel honored the clause calling for ending such strikes, Trump once again threatened Iran with “lethal prosecution and destruction” if it didn’t honor his (and Israel’s) version of the ceasefire. He warned that US forces remained in the region ready to return to the battlefield, thundering if the agreement is “not fully complied with…then the shootin’ starts, bigger and better than anyone has ever seen before.” Though he didn’t mention Lebanon, he was clearly siding with Israel’s claim that it was not bound by the ceasefire and would continue its attacks there. In effect, he was sabotaging his own agreement by catering to Netanyahu.
So now we have gone within 36 hours from preparing to destroy a civilization, to a ceasefire, to a crisis and mutual recriminations–a gray zone of neither resumed war nor cessation of the fighting. We are on the brink of returning to a disastrous war damaging virtually the entire world.
After the Israeli attack on Lebanon, Iran delivered an outraged statement attesting that the ceasefire called for ending attacks on its Hezbollah and Houthi allies. It placed blame squarely on Israel for violating it. Netanyahu, in prime fuck you mode, declared he knew nothing about it and wasn’t bound by any agreement he had no part in conceiving. Iran threatened to withdraw from the deal and close the Strait of Hormuz, which it had just reopened after weeks of blockade. When Trump declared (falsely) that the agreement did not cover Lebanon, Iran did just that.
The Strait is now closed and Trump has been denied the most important “get” of reopening it and getting the world’s shipping and oil shipments back on track. If he’s not back at square one, he’s pretty near close to it. Leavitt of course, in her own inimitable fashion, blithely declared the media got it all wrong, and that shipping was passing freely through the Strait. All she would have had to do is look at any navigation website to see that nothing was moving through it. But why let facts get in your way when fantasy is so much more appealing?
Now, a deal painstakingly cobbled together over weeks of shuttle talks among the US, Iran and the Pakistanis, teeters on the brink. Netanyahu would like nothing more than to push it over the edge and into the abyss. If Trump doesn’t pull a rabbit out of his hat, the war promises to resume in two weeks, which is his fourth-delayed deadline for civilisational erasure.
So, let’s see if I got the timeline of events correct.
Trump wants deal. Trump doesn’t get deal. Trump gets mad. Trump threatens war crimes on Easter, and also joins the Muslim religion in the same Tweet, though that last part is not quite as important. Trump threatens to end Iranian civilization. Iran announces end to all diplomatic ties.
Cease fire!
Oh man, 2 weeks to hash out a plan and-
Israel proceeds to conduct strikes on Lebanon in 10 minutes almost as much as it did throughout its entire Lebanese campaign, 14 hours after the ceasefire, because…”Hezbollah fired rockets at us a month ago.”
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…Why not do an operation like that at…the beginning of its Lebanon campaign? You know, if you were serious about the Hezbollah thing, and not right after a ceasefire started…
Israel’s pager operation, which had some civilian casualty issues, has demonstrated that Israel very much can conduct operations that avoid this sort of wanton destruction. The reason why it looks like Israel isn’t trying, is because they aren’t.
…And Israel proved it with that pager episode.
Ukraine has fought Russia for years, and has not stooped to the barbarism that Russia has. Almost like this sort of stuff actually is a choice.
But, throw this incident onto the pile of reasons for why Israel sucks and cannot be trusted.
If Israel is one of the main participants in the conflict then why isn’t it involved in the negotiation for a ceasefire? Whether one is an Israel supporter or not, surely one cannot claim that Israel is commited to anything it was not party to and when its arguements were not put forward in the negotiations (Trump’s interests do not concur with Israel’s on many points so cannot be treated as its representative).
You may not see eye to eye on this but Hizbollah (as opposed to Lebanon) is an existential threat to Israel, and it ought to be in the Lebonese government’s best interest to disarm Hizbollah who do nothing for the Lebanese people. I cannot see any senario where it is in the interest of Lebanon to bomb Israel, Israel has no territorial claims there but would sign a (cold) peace agreement with them like Egypt and Jordan were it not for Iran meddling with Lebanese true interests. Just remember Lebanon in the 70s before Lebanon was by civil war due to outside intervention – it was the Mecca of the Middle East, so much so that Yassir Arafat famously said in 1975 that his solution for the I-P conflict was the Lebanese model.
Hezbollah are Lebanese resistence from in 1984 as result of the 1982 invasion and occupation, it is their land and they have the right to defend it from Israeli’s endless attack, you need to stop peddling complete nonsense
@Shmuel:
Read the post again. I answered your question. How has Israel earned the right to sit at the negotiating table? Because it would participate in good faith? Because it wants a ceasefire to work? Or because it would destroy any and every chance for agreement. Trump & his negotiators may be useless POS, but even they know to exclude Bibi. He’s a megalomaniacal killer. Not a serious constructive interlocutor.
And yes, Israel is a party to the ceasefire. But only if Trump forces it to be. Which he’s refused to do (so far). But if Iran continues to balk (as it will) & Trump wants a deal badly enough, he will bring down the hammer on Bibi & Israel will stop the slaughter.
But there is another unspoken issue with your comment: the assumption that there is a reason to murder 1,000 Lebanese in the span of 10 minutes. Regardless of what you may think of Hezbollah rockets singing a few hairs on Israelis. The argument that Hezbollah is an existential threat to Israel is no more true than Iran is. Neither have the capability of destroying Israel or even damaging it in any serious way. You have drunk the Koolaid & lost track of reality. You are bathed in nationalist propaganda.
I wouldn’t expect you to see anything related to Iran or Lebanon as its residents see it. That’s by the way, the reason Israel is committing this carnage. Hezbollah is attacking Israel in retaliation for the latter’s attack on Iran. Just as the Houthis are. What did the US do when Israel was attacked? It supplied $22-billion in weapons. Hezbollah is doing precisely the same.
And you, an Israeli, know what Lebanon’s “true interests are?” Howso? Because you are Lebanese? Because you have any true sympathy or even knowledge of Lebanon? Because you advocate for Israel to engage contstructively with Lebanon?
You have a bad case of historical amnesia. Do you know what Israel did in Lebanon in the 1970s? Do you know not just about the repeated Israeli bombings and assassinations, but the false flag attacks in which the Mossad concealed its involvement behind invented Lebanese militant groups. Here’s an article which documents Israel’s grisly crimes there. It’s convenient to forget/ignore your own country’s intervention and sabotage of Lebanon going back 50 years or more. Israel is one of the prime reasons Lebanon is a failed state (there are others of course).