Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 2,083 people and wounded 9,869 others since October 8, 2023, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Monday.
The majority of the deaths occurred since mid-September, when Israel dramatically escalated its attacks on Lebanon, first by blowing up Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies, then by ramping up airstrikes.
The Health Ministry said since September 23, Israel has killed 1,251 people in Lebanon. The exact breakdown is unclear, but the casualties include many civilians, and over 100 children have been killed since September.
Al Jazeera reported Monday that Israel expanded its attacks on southern Lebanon and Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut that has been heavily targeted. One Israeli strike killed 10 fire fighters in the southern Lebanon town of Baraachit.
Hezbollah also fired a barrage of rockets into Israel on Monday, hitting an area near the port city of Haifa. At least 10 people were wounded by the Hezbollah attack, which marked the first strike on Haifa since Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire across the border last year.
Ground fighting between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters continues in south Lebanon. So far, Israel has confirmed that 11 of its soldiers have been killed on the ground.
Israel’s assault on Lebanon has put Irish soldiers stationed as part of the UN’s peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, in a dangerous situation. Reports say fighting between Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops took place just two kilometers from the Irish peacekeepers’ outpost, known as Post 6-52. Both the UN and Ireland have rejected an Israeli request to remove the peace keepers from the area.
Here comes the "genocide" chants. Of course the fact that Lebanon started fired on Israel "in support of Gaza" is not important.
You deny that Israel is committing genocide (as Amos Goldberg described it several months ago)? Pictures are not enough? The open letter from doctors who volunteered to treat the maimed and wounded in Gaza did not influence you? They said that to their estimation, 118,000 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF. Netanyahu has said that extermination of all Palestinians is the plan.
Here is that letter: https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2024/10/03/open-letter-from-american-healthcare-workers-who-volunteered-in-gaza/#gsc.tab=0
The word “genocide” was coined in 1941 by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer from a Polish family, who combined the Greek word for a people (genos) and the Latin translation for killing (cide). At its most basic, genocide meant systematically destroying another group. Lemkin laid it out as a two-phase, often colonial process in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: First, the oppressor erases the “national pattern” of the victim. Then, it imposes its own. Genocide stretched from antiquity (Carthage) to modern times (Ireland).
The term does not necessarily signify mass killings although it may mean that,” Lemkin explained in a 1945 article. “More often it refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations”—cultural institutions, physical structures, the economy—“of the life of national groups.” The “machine gun” was merely a “last resort.”
Lemkin was a lawyer, not a sociologist. By birthing the term “genocide,” he was not trying to taxonomize the horrors of war. Instead, Lemkin—who lost 49 family members in the Holocaust—hoped that he could identify a crime to stop it. Nazi terror could not simply be Germany’s “internal problem.” With genocide, Lemkin hoped to give legal and moral weight to international intervention. He hoped to bring into being an offense that could be policed and, in turn, stopped in a new and supposedly civilized world.
Today, as Israel stands accused by South Africa of genocide before the International Court of Justice for the methods used in its war on Gaza, it is worth recalling Lemkin’s arguments. The question of Israel’s actions has been a narrow one: Has the killing met the criteria for genocide under current international law? But Lemkin’s broader conception of the term—though it has been chipped away at by courts and has faded from public memory—has been less discussed.
The sad reality is that Israel’s actions likely met Lemkin’s original definition long before the war on Gaza. Starting in 1947, roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled by Israel and barred from returning. After the 1967 war, Israel began occupying the remainder of what was once Palestine. It has since settled hundreds of thousands of people on that land, while subjecting Palestinians to what international human rights groups increasingly consider to be a system of apartheid. The goal of its settlement policy has been clear: to replace one cultural fabric with another.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/06/israel-palestine-gaza-genocide-war-crimes-icj-south-africa-raphael-lemkin/
The genocide chants will happen if Israel does to Lebanon what they did to Gaza. And it won't be important "that Lebanon started fired on Israel" (Jesus, learn how to write) if the Israel attack on Lebanon does turn genocidal in nature like the one in Gaza. Genocide is NEVER acceptable.
Some people are hopelessly clueless. Mainly Israel "supporters".