How U.S.-Israel-France Lie About Their War Against Lebanon

25 November 2024, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

On November 25th, Reuters headlined “Lebanese sources: Biden, Macron set to announce Israel-Hezbollah truce”, and opened:

U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron are expected to announce a ceasefire in Lebanon between armed group Hezbollah and Israel within 36 hours, four senior Lebanese sources said on Monday.

In Washington, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said, "We're close" but "nothing is done until everything is done".

The French presidency said discussions on a ceasefire had made significant progress. In Jerusalem, a senior Israeli official said Israel's cabinet would meet on Tuesday to approve a truce deal with Hezbollah.

Signs of a diplomatic breakthrough were accompanied by heavy Israeli airstrikes on Beirut's Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, as Israel pressed on with the offensive it launched in September …

Though this sounds optimistic, it’s actually optimistic only for the aggressors: Israel, U.S., and possibly also France (which is likewise an imperialistic regime with long involvement in Lebanon).

The renegade former UK Ambassador, and current great investigative journalist, Craig Murray, has, on November 25th, three news-reports from Lebanon, where he now is.

On November 17th, he headlined “USA Tries to Pound Lebanon Into Submission”, and opened:

Israel has intensified its air strikes on Lebanon and in particular on Beirut, ahead of a visit on Tuesday or Wednesday by US envoy Hochstein, at which he will press Lebanon to accept a US/Israeli ceasefire plan.

This plan is touted as being based on UNSCR 1701, but in fact represents its abnegation.

You may have noted that neoliberal politicians and media pundits, who ignore and denigrate every other UN Resolution on the Middle East, are suddenly very enthusiastic about UNSCR 1701. This is because it mandates withdrawal of Hezbollah forces to the north of the river Litani.

But it also mandates, at operative paragraph 3, that the Government of Lebanon must have full sovereignty over Southern Lebanon and that only the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL might operate there.

“3. Emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) and resolution 1680 (2006), and of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon.”

The US/Israeli ceasefire proposal directly contradicts this, by giving Israel the right to invade Southern Lebanon with ground forces whenever Israel considers it necessary, and by giving Israel permanent military overflight rights.

The US/Israeli proposal is therefore incompatible with UNSCR 1701.

These are direct intrusions on the sovereignty emphasised by UNSCR 1701. They are of course terms no self-respecting nation could possibly accept.

In order to try to force Lebanon to accept these humiliating terms, Israel has substantially intensified its bombing campaign throughout Lebanon these last two days. Yesterday in Beirut alone there were nineteen waves of airstrikes, in addition to airstrikes in Tyre, Baalbek and throughout the South.

On November 20th, he headlined “The Effects of Israeli Barbarity”, and reported:

I could not tell the easy, comforting lie.

“No”, I told the woman, her traumatised children clinging to her legs, “I can’t say you are safe here; not one of us is safe. The Israelis are genocidal. But in Lebanon so far, I don’t think they have bombed a school”.

I was with one of 67 families, with 215 children, living as refugees in a small school at Ain Rumaila in Southern Beirut. The area borders the evacuated suburb of Dahiya which the Israelis are systematically demolishing, and bombings rattle the windows of the school every day.

This woman is a school teacher when at home in Southern Lebanon, and her husband a retired soldier. They had to leave their small town with no notice, through an intense air raid, as Israeli bombs destroyed buildings and killed and maimed people all round them.

They got out only with what they could carry. Their home was destroyed behind them.

Israel has targeted refugees all over Lebanon. Just the day before, we had been at the site of a refugee aid centre in central Beirut, which had been targeted for missile attack. The death toll on that attack has now risen to five, with seventeen seriously injured.

I reached that site before I could establish exactly what the target was. …

Yesterday Amos Hochstein, the US Middle Eastern Envoy, flew in to Beirut to “negotiate” a peace deal between Lebanon and Israel.

Over 3,500 Lebanese have been killed, the majority of them women and children. The bombs that killed them were not only made in the USA, they were supplied by the USA for the purpose. As were the aircraft that dropped them. …

Should Lebanon accept the deal in the interest of preserving unity, as the US connive, then I have no doubt whatsoever that this deal will shortly be understood to have been a key step on the path to Israeli annexation of Southern Lebanon.

Because it is essential to understand that Greater Israel has been the goal all along of both Israel and the United States.

If you have not by now seen through the Biden administration’s pretence of “trying to restrain” Israel, whilst providing ever greater funding and weapons for the genocide, then you are such a fool that I cannot help you.

On November 25th, he headlined “Four Gentlemen Tour the Bekaa Valley”, and opened:

On Thursday evening news came through that we had at long last gained the full list of approvals required to travel to report outside Beirut; we were cleared by the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Defence, and the local authorities.

Laith Marouf of Free Palestine TV called me and suggested we go down together on Friday to the southern capital of Nabatieh, which has been enduring heavy bombing.

I asked Laith to give me half an hour, and did some quick research. Nabatieh is about 12 miles from the Israeli border and has been devastated by Israeli bombing attacks. In the South of the country some 70,000 homes have been destroyed. Following the Gaza model, hospitals, schools, mosques, waterworks, churches, bakeries have all been systematically taken out. In brief occupations Israel has demolished entire villages.

Israel has also deliberately destroyed the crops and livestock.

I read this brilliant article by Hanna Davis for Middle East Eye ten days earlier, which describes Nabatieh in apocalyptic terms. It is centred on interviews with the heroic civil defence workers, who are especially targeted by Israel.

Back at the hilltop, Fakih’s colleagues also spoke about the immense stress and psychological pressure they were under.

“Mentally, we are all struggling,” Hussein Jaber, 30, from Nabatieh’s civil defence, told MEE.

“We are struggling with the lack of stability. We are always on the move, can’t sleep well, and are being put in intense situations,” he said.

“We have to pull out the dead bodies of people we love, friends and families we know, neighbours, people from our own area.”

Since then, the situation had deteriorated even further. 100 people had been reported dead in Nabatieh in a fresh wave of airstrikes the day before.

It had not been exactly safe in Beirut since I had arrived, but now Laith had faced me with the inevitable question. Did I really have the courage to do what I had come to Lebanon in order to do? That is why I had asked for half an hour to research and think it over.

Well, I phoned Laith back and asked him what time we could start. …

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He’s now in the belly of the beast, reporting what ‘news’-media such as Reuters won’t.

PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.