Israel is not in a position to talk about ‘red lines’ | Opinions

On Saturday, July 27, at least 12 children from the Druze community were killed in a rocket attack on the town of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

Israel blamed Hezbollah for the attack, declaring it constituted “the crossing of all red lines.” Hezbollah, which generally has no qualms about taking on its work, vehemently denied the accusation.

Regardless of who is responsible, it is nothing short of ridiculously obscene that Israel considers itself qualified to talk about “red lines” when the Israeli army is currently perpetrating direct genocide in the Gaza Strip. Since October 7, almost 40,000 Palestinians have been officially killed in Gaza. A recent Lancet study suggests the true death toll may exceed 186,000.

Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch called on his government to respond “with full force” to the Majdal Shams attack and threatened the possibility of an “all-out war” with Hezbollah. Once again, it takes special logic to threaten war in retaliation for an attack on territory you are illegally occupying.

But hey, that’s how Israel works. The aggressor becomes the victim, the occupant becomes the rightful owner, genocide becomes self-defense.

As for the threat of “all-out war” in Lebanon, it is worth mentioning that Israel has killed more than 500 people in the country since October, including more than 100 civilians. It already looks quite “total”.

Not that this is the first time that Israel has embarked on a mass killing spree in Lebanon. Let us remember the 34-day Israeli war against Lebanon, in July and August 2006, which reduced the country’s population by approximately 1,200 people and produced the so-called “Dahiyeh Doctrine”, defined by the Times of Israel as a “military strategy that defends the use of disproportionate force against a militant entity, destroying civilian infrastructure.”

In other words, international law and things known as the Geneva Conventions don’t matter.

The doctrine was named after the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, an area that Western media is happy to define as a “Hezbollah stronghold.” Hitchhiking around Lebanon after the 2006 war, I myself witnessed the result of “disproportionate force” used in Dahiyeh and other parts of the country. I saw apartment blocks converted into craters and villages reduced to rubble.

We can only assume that in any future conflict, the Dahiyeh Doctrine will be the name of the game.

In addition to leveling civilian infrastructure in 2006, Israel also committed to saturating areas of Lebanon with millions of cluster bombs, many of which failed to explode on impact and which continue to kill and maim even in the absence of, um, “ an all-out attack.” war”.

Then there were incidents like the Marwahin massacre in 2006, in which 23 people – most of them children – were massacred at close range by an Israeli helicopter while obeying evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army.

That sounds like a “red line” if there ever was one.

Or turn the clock back to 1996 and Israel’s delightfully titled “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” in which the Israeli army massacred 106 civilians taking refuge in a United Nations compound in the southern Lebanese city of Qana.

Go back even further and you’ll find the same event that spawned Hezbollah: the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which killed tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians. This coincided with the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which lasted 22 years, subject to torture, and which came to an ignominious end in May 2000, thanks to the Lebanese resistance led by Hezbollah.

Now, Israel’s bellicose speech in response to the Majdal Shams incident has fueled fears of a major regional escalation. Governments have warned their citizens against traveling to Lebanon and several airlines have canceled flights in and out of Beirut – a fair precaution given that Israel repeatedly bombed Beirut airport in 2006. On Monday, Israeli drone strikes on southern Lebanon killed two people and injured a child.

In its statement on Hezbollah’s alleged “crossing of all red lines” in Israeli-occupied Majdal Shams, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared: “This is not an army fighting another army, but rather a terrorist organization that deliberately shoots at civilians.” If we didn’t know who uttered these words or the context, we might think they were referring to Israel’s own behavior in Gaza.

Which brings us to the rhetorical question: if Israel cares so much about the civilians who inhabit the territories it occupies, why is it massacring Palestinians?

In June 2006, the Israeli army launched its romantic “Operation Summer Showers” ​​in the Gaza Strip, an attack that American academic Noam Chomsky and Israeli historian Ilan Pappé described as a “systematic massacre” and the “most brutal attack on Gaza since 1967.” A few weeks later, the Israelis decided that Lebanon also needed some rain, and – voilà – the July War was born.

As they say, when it rains genocide, it rains. And Israel may have found a convenient pretext to move the storm to Lebanon as well.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.