Hezbollah fired over 100 rockets across northern Israel on Sunday, with the group's deputy leader calling the retaliatory attack the start of an "open-ended battle" with Israel.
This, after Israel launched two days of terror attack in Lebanon that left dozens dead and thousands injured, after pagers and other devices exploded across the country, followed by two days of airstrikes that included the assassination of Hezbollah's military commander and the killing of dozens of civilians as Israel bombed a residential neighborhood in Beirut.
It is September 22nd, 2024, and Hezbollah is now responding after enduring a week of terror attacks carried out by Israel, with some reports saying Israel has been planning these unprecedented attacks for more than a decade. So, what happened and where could the conflict go from here?
It sounded like gunshots were ringing out on Tuesday, when a series of pagers began exploding across Lebanon. By Wednesday, it wasn’t just the pagers, but also handheld radios and other devices. Nearly 40 people were killed in the attack, and more than 3,000 injured, as explosions were reported across Lebanon and into Syria.
The first question wasn’t “Who did this?” it was “How did Israel do this?” and in the days that have followed, the picture has become increasingly clear, thanks to anonymous intelligence officials who have been all too eager to brag about the hand Washington’s closest ally had in the attack.
The New York Times described it in a report titled “How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse,” in which they said:
“By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.”
But those pagers were never in Hungary, with the company only acting as “a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site” in the country, a spokesperson for the Hungarian government told ABC News.
The outlet also reported that, according to U.S. intelligence sources, this terror attack was at least 15 years in the making. They claimed the CIA was hesitant to carry out such an attack against one of its enemies, because it was worried that the risk of collateral damage was too high. You know, what the U.S. Government calls civilian causalities when they illegally carry out drone strikes in a foreign nation that they’re not at war with?
Well, clearly, if Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza is any indication… it does not lose any sleep over the loss of civilian lives.
In fact, as 972 Magazine revealed in an investigative report published back in November, Israel knows exactly how many civilians they are going to kill before every attack they carry out. And they are more than willing to murder hundreds of civilians, if they think they can claim that they killed a single Hamas commander in the Gaza Strip.
We saw that kind of bloodlust on full display in Lebanon this week, where the pagers that were reportedly shipped to Hezbollah within the last 6 months, accompanied by just a few ounces of an explosive compound following the Israeli intelligence-led operation, began to explode. In schools. In hospitals. In homes.
The first day of attacks began at 3:30pm in the afternoon. During rush-hour. When children getting home from school. That included 9-year-old girl Fatima Abdullah, who had just completed her first day of fourth grade. She heard her dad’s pager beeping on the kitchen table, and went to retrieve it for him, when it exploded.
Her aunt told the New York Times, “Fatima was trying to take courses in English. She loved English.”
But if that wasn’t bad enough… the second day of explosions came. And they targeted a funeral for one of the victims from the day before.
To refuse to call this a terror attack—or to claim that Israel was only targeting the members of Hezbollah who owned the pages and other devices, while they were in their homes with their families, or at work in their communities—is to ignore the basic facts of this situation.
But does the U.S. call it what it is? Do they condemn their close ally in any way, or admit that they had prior knowledge of the terror attack Israel was planning to commit?
The short answer is no. Or as State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller said on Tuesday: “We are gathering information on this incident. I can tell you that the U.S. was not involved. The U.S. was not aware of this incident in advance, and at this point, we’re gathering information.”
So, if the U.S. wasn’t aware, and as Miller is trying so hard to imply, wasn’t complicit in this attack—then why not condemn it?
In the days since, as we saw another round of explosions, followed by the Israeli bombing of southern Lebanon and the nation’s capital of Beirut, Miller and his colleagues within the Biden Administration have continued to try to provide cover for their ally. They insist that we look at the border clashes that have been ongoing between Israel and Lebanon since October of last year, as if the civilians in Lebanon deserved to be targeted in an unprecedented terror attack.
As a reminder, those border clashes haven’t stopped because Israel’s genocidal bombardment and blockade of the Palestinian people hasn’t stopped. Hezbollah has made it clear that it stands with the Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation, and that as soon as there is peace for the Palestinians… there will also be peace for Israelis in the north.
But as Israel has made clear over and over again: it is not choosing peace.
So, what does that mean for a group like Hezbollah, who just lost another military commander, as he was killed along with dozens of civilians, in the Israeli bombing of a heavily populated residential neighborhood in Beirut?
Well, Hezbollah Chief Hasan Nasrallah gave a speech on Thursday, in which he said that with this week’s terror attacks, Israel had “crossed all rules, laws and red lines.”
Nasrallah on to say, “This is massacre, a major aggression against Lebanon, its people, its resistance, its sovereignty, and its security. It can be called war crimes or a declaration of war - whatever you choose to name it, it is deserving and fits the description. This was the enemy's intention.”
The tensions between Israel and Hezbollah remain extremely high, and as of Sunday morning, reports noted that Hezbollah launched more than 100 rockets across northern Israel, with some landing near the city of Haifa, as Israel launched hundreds of strikes on Lebanon in return.
As for the international reaction… UN human rights commissioner Volker Turk released a statement condemning this week’s attacks, in which he said:
“Simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location and their surroundings at the time of the attack, violates international human rights law and, to the extent applicable, international humanitarian law.”
Both Russia and China condemned the attacks, with Beijing’s UN representative calling it a “grave violation of international humanitarian law,” and Moscow’s foreign ministry spokeswoman calling it an act of “monstrous terrorism.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. and its western allies are just calling on everyone in the region not to escalate tensions… as if all of this could have avoided if their close ally Israel hadn’t been the one to escalate tensions on its end in the first place.
And I know I will get comments with some version of “But October 7th” as if everything started on October 7 of last year. But if you’ve paid any attention to history, you know that’s not the case.
I would also remind you think of what happened one year ago today on September 22nd, 2023. That’s when Netanyahu addressed the United Nations with a map of what he called the “New Middle East” in which normalization with Israel in the region was abundant, AND Palestine had been completely erased from the map.
That’s the topic of the first edition of the new series I’m launching for my paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack called “SANCTIONED w/ Rachel Blevins”
Each episode will focus in on an event or story that has shaped today’s world, and explore the context and timing surrounding it—whether it was one year ago, a decade ago, or yesterday. Thanks to the West, sanctions are running rampant, and censorship is everywhere, so I wanted to create a series for my paid subscribers (without having to worry about whether YouTube approves of the content).
These are uncertain times we’re living in, and I’m so grateful for all of you who make my work possible! Thank you so much for your support, and I’ll see you next time!
Terror in Lebanon: Hezbollah Fights Back After Week of Israeli Attacks Targeting Civilians