Israel rejects temporary ceasefire and prepares to invade Lebanon
Our leaders are still pretending this is self-defence
When I began writing this article, the media was reporting a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was expected in the next couple of hours. However, I took this with a pinch of salt because it’s Israel we’re talking about. Israel’s idea of a ceasefire with Hezbollah is about as sincere at its idea of a ceasefire with Hamas. I saw one report Israel is likely to reject the ceasefire and many other reports the ceasefire was likely to go ahead.
By the time I was ready to publish, Israel had rejected the proposal put forward by the US, UK and France, but, of course, we’re still pretending Hezbollah is the aggressor. The talk was of a 21-day pause in fighting while the sides negotiated a peaceful resolution, but that resolution should be simple: Israel needs to stop doing genocide.
A temporary ceasefire would hardly have been cause for celebration, but anything that stopped the killing for even a moment and enabled the wounded to get treatment and foreigners to flee would be better than nothing.
Flights in Lebanon are currently cancelled and it looks like westerners are going to be militarily evacuated while rockets manufactured by their own countries rain down. From an optics point of view, it would be terrible for the empire if Israel’s bombing resulted in civilian casualties for the US and UK, but that could well happen.
A joint statement was issued by 12 countries, including the US and UK, calling for a ceasefire in both Lebanon and Gaza, and while those were welcome words, our leaders could - and it’s so exhausting to keep saying this - end the fighting right now by stopping arms to Israel. Instead, they will order our troops to fight for Israel if it’s getting its arse kicked. And that may well be what happens.
Israel has a TikTok army that records its own war crimes and runs away from real soldiers. They are not capable of winning a war without help.
IDF chief Herzi Halevi has foolishly told his troops to prepare for a ground invasion of Lebanon which is expected in the next two to three days. Iran has made clear it will stand with Lebanon by any means necessary. If anyone is deluded enough to think Hezbollah is just a ramshackle bunch of angry orphans like Hamas, take a look at this graphic from the Daily Mail:
Amal Saad, a researcher from Cardiff University, said of Hezbollah: “It is extremely capable - and I would say more effective than Israel - when it comes to ground war, underground offensive, and we've seen this historically, particularly in 2006.”
Hezbollah is saying that not only would it be capable of fending off Israel in southern Lebanon, but simultaneously bombarding Israel with rockets. It has been suggested Israel would need to enter the heavily populated northern Lebanon to have a hope of achieving victory. Given that it called off its 2006 invasion after incurring heavy losses, this would seem idiotic.
Hezbollah has been preparing for this moment for 18 years and will have set traps to give the IDF hell. A Lebanese security source told Middle East Eye that if Israel launches a ground invasion, the Lebanese army will join forces with Hezbollah. Israel can hardly fight three armies at once when it can’t even defeat Hamas. I mean it can try, but however this thing ends, it will not feel like a victory for anyone.
If you’re one of those weirdos who thinks destroying Lebanon sounds like a brilliant idea, understand that escalation in the Middle East means global recession as a bare minimum. Even if you’re a shitty genocidal person, you should oppose escalation for purely selfish reasons. If you’re the biggest Zionist going, the fact much of Israel would be left in ruins should give you pause. Israel doesn’t have the excuse of the hostages to justify the inevitable heavy losses. It would be self-defeating barbarism in a push to establish a greater Israel.
While Israeli soldiers have shown they will run away from a real fight, like they do when they encounter well-prepared Hamas fighters, their leaders are fanatics who will feed them into a meat grinder.
The Israeli government is convinced the West won’t leave the IDF to fight alone. Sadly, they are right, but this does not mean Israelis won’t pay a huge price. The iron dome has been failing and rockets are raining down on Israel. If this thing goes to all-out war, expect many times more rockets than we’ve seen so far. Expect large numbers of civilian casualties on both sides, but the Lebanese will surely pay the heaviest price.
As Philip Proudfoot highlighted on Twitter, the UK foreign office has told civilians to leave Lebanon but not Israel. In other words, they fully recognise that Israel is doing much more to harm civilians than Hezbollah is, yet they’re still pretending Israel is acting in self-defence.
Israel is using the same strategy it employed in Gaza, eradicating entire neighbourhoods, and it did not take long in Gaza for those neighbourhoods to become entire cities.
While all this is going on, Israel is currently destroying the West Bank which is not controlled by Hamas. If left unchecked, it will soon have destroyed not one but two countries. The question we have to ask is how many countries must be destroyed for the sake of Israel? The answer is supposed to be zero.
Israel is pretending it’s only targeting Hezbollah, but it’s been killing UN staff, journalists and school teachers. It’s bombed at least one ambulance as well as the grounds of a hospital that presumably hid a secret underground base. I guess everyone in the hospital counts as a human shield and the doctors are Hezbollah fighters, right?
By the way, Netanyahu is hiding in an underground base from the onslaught of rockets, but apparently, it’s only cowardly when Hamas does that. Israel put its military infrastructure and intelligence HQ in civilian areas, but this definitely doesn’t count as using human shields. These arguments are only valid when we’re justifying the murder of Arab civilians.
Israeli media is calling for the total destruction of Lebanon and Israeli groups are talking of building new settlements in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, so we can see where this is going. Zionists think all this land belongs to Israel and they are comfortable exterminating the natives to get what they want.
Even though over 80% of rocket fire has come from Israel, the BBC and other media outlets are framing this as “Hezbollah fires at population centres” when it attacks Mossad HQ. The implication being the far larger number of rockets fired by Israel count as self-defence.
From a legal perspective, Mossad HQ would count as a legitimate military target, following its pager terror attack, but we long ago decided Arabs have no right to self-defence.
Israel is not even hiding its genocidal intent, it’s now boasting of bombarding Lebanese cities with rockets. Well, it’s pretending it’s targeting Hezbollah weapons as it wipes entire neighbourhoods off the map, but its evidence is as credible as it was for hospitals in Gaza. It’s basically, “Hey, we somehow magically obtained a picture of a missile hidden in someone’s garage!”
Even if a picture was real, it would not justify wiping an entire village off a map. Israel’s actions are so disproportionate that even a Sky journalist was calling it out.
Alex Crawford reported:
“The Israeli forces say they are targeting Hezbollah positions: weapons stores, fighters, commanders, but the evidence is there are many, many civilian areas which are also being heavily impacted, including large numbers of civilians, women and children who are being killed or injured, and of course, this is on top of tens of thousands of those who’ve been forced to flee their homes and are now living in shelters or living rough. Many of the human rights organisations are insisting this is in contravention of international humanitarian law.”
Israel said it was seeking “de-escalation through escalation” and then prepared its troops for a ground invasion of Lebanon. The US is sending troops to Israel and it appears the Democrats could be willing to sacrifice Kamala’s election chances in order to help Netanyahu do another genocide. Election results are irrelevant, all that matters is the war machine chugs on. And chug on it will, no matter who wins.
Terrifyingly, Donald Trump is pretending Iran was behind the assassination attempt against him. He is telling us he will leave Iranian cities in ruins, openly boasting of his genocidal intent. “We are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens,” he said.
As well as being horrifying, Trump’s words are idiotic because he has put Iran on notice and the Revolutionary Guard will be making preparations to do the same to Israel’s cities. You don’t need nukes for mutually assured destruction.
If western politicians are this crazy, it’s not just a moral duty to stop them, it’s self-preservation. They’re a danger not just to the countries they would attack, but potentially all of us. Regional war would leave everyone on earth significantly less safe.
It’s shameful the world failed to stop the destruction that took place in Gaza. It will be doubly so if we allow the same to happen in Lebanon, and if we then let it happen to Iran, we will have failed humanity so catastrophically, we might never come back from this as a species.
Israel’s neighbours can see what is happening and they know if Israel gets away with another genocide, it will not stop there. Israel is incentivising its neighbours to take military action against it. We have heard President Erdogan of Turkey and King Abdullah of Jordan condemning Israel at the UN.
President Erdogan said:
“Just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity 70 years ago, Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped by an alliance of humanity. The UN General Assembly's authority to recommend use of force should be considered.”
Obviously, the UN will never authorise military action against Israel, but its neighbours might feel forced to act. If Israel gets attacked from its neighbours, British and American troops will be sent to fight and die for Zionism, regardless of what the public wants. That’s the insanity of the situation. Our soldiers are, for some inexplicable reason, expected to defend a genocidal state. Just know that if this thing escalates into regional war, or world war, we will be the genocidal ones. We will be the Nazis. We should all take some to time to think about that.
You know what? The more they keep going the more Netanyahu's actions seal the fate of Israel! Israel cannot exist under these circumstances that everyone in the world knows he is a bigger racist than even Adolf Hitler was--so we know it won't last. Israel will be no more--frankly-- I cannot wait. Who would ever want to live next to those perverse, murdering creeps? Zionists are war mongers and expansionist nation! Look they are going into Lebanon! They cannot tough Hezbollah--but look at them--they merely want to justify continuation of Netanyahu's genocidal regime. Genocide is genocide! There is no mistaking this!
We should all dispense with calling it "Israel" for the most part. It's the Zionism Terrorist Organization.