‘Israel Has Turned South Lebanon Into Gaza’

Breakthrough News’s Rania Khalek tears apart Netanyahu’s “security” strategy that’s killed 27 people in Lebanon over the last three days, with relentless Israeli attacks on the country’s south designed to render entire villages unreturnable – paving the way for future annexation and “Greater Israel” expansion. Lebanon’s government provides the political cover, with President Joseph Aoun condemning Israel’s strikes while remaining committed to the US-brokered framework that cements its occupation.

The so-called November 2024 “ceasefire” has never functioned as one: Israel violated it more than 15,000 times before Hezbollah entered the US-Israeli war on Iran in March, at which point Israel ramped up its attacks, killing over 4,300 people in Lebanon since then and occupying 600 square kilometers of the country, according to Israel’s own figures. Meanwhile new data shows 65% of the destruction in the south occurred after April. And, Khalek says, Hezbollah has barely responded: “It’s totally one-sided at this point.”

Over the weekend, Israel leveled a hospital in Nabatieh al-Fawqa, then tweeted, without evidence, that it was a Hezbollah “command and control center” — the same justification used repeatedly for now-normalized hospital strikes in Gaza. And Israeli forces have pushed into Sunni-majority Kfar Shuba, in a pattern Khalek compares to West Bank-style occupation. She also draws a direct line to Syria, where Israel continues striking a country that has never once fired on it.

“Israel is completely out of control,” Khalek says — and still faces no real consequences for it.

“Whether or not Hezbollah fires almost doesn’t matter. Look at Syria: #Israel is still bombing #Syria while openly stating interest in its land.”

@RaniaKhalek : Israeli bulldozers, artillery don’t discriminate between resistance & capitulation.