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The Blood-Drenched U.S.-Israeli “Ceasefire” in Lebanon

Displaced residents return to destruction in Dahiyeh, in Beirut, Lebanon, November 27, 2024.

 

Displaced residents return to destruction in Dahiyeh, in Beirut, Lebanon, November 27, 2024.    Photo: AP

“While denouncing ‘terrorists,’ the rulers of this country openly support terrorism.”

            Bob Avakian, REVOLUTION #99

On Wednesday, November 27, Israel’s massive bombs may have stopped falling on Lebanon, and Hezbollah rockets on northern Israel, at least for now. But this did nothing to erase or repair the enormous devastation, bring back the 3,961 Lebanese slaughtered, or heal the 16,520 wounded by Israeli bombs and missiles. As our accompanying article shows, this U.S.-Israeli orchestrated ceasefire is about legitimizing this criminal slaughter, and locking in Israel’s battlefield gains. 

The numbers don’t begin to tell the whole story of the terror and suffering rained down, not just on the Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure Israel claimed to target, but on millions of ordinary Lebanese as well.1 

In his ceasefire announcement, Biden praised Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s leaders. But he didn’t talk about what these attacks on heavily populated areas with 500-pound, 1,000-pound or even 2,000-pound bombs did to thousands of people in Lebanon.

Biden Upholds Indiscriminate Carpet-Bombing of Beirut

Displaced people hug each other in front of the rubble of their destroyed house in Baalbek, eastern Lebanon, November 28, 2024.

 

Displaced people in front of the rubble of their destroyed house in Baalbek, eastern Lebanon, November 28, 2024.    Photo: AP

Imagine you, your husband, and your three children were cooking dinner at your home on Beirut’s southside, like hundreds of other families. Suddenly, without warning, your whole 10-story apartment building is rocked by a shattering explosion. Seconds later, the floor of your fourth-floor flat buckles, and your ceiling and all those above it collapse. Seemingly endless moments later, you’re able to climb out of the debris and stagger into the street, your whole apartment building turned to rubble and rebar. You and at least one of your children are alive, but you can’t find the others. You soon find out they’re gone forever.

This isn’t imaginary. It happened in one form or another to many of the 1.4 million Lebanese who were forced to flee from their homes. And it happened to the 248 children who were killed and the 1,436 who were wounded in the Israeli attacks. 

“I mean, they were essentially carpet-bombing the south and Beirut and hitting all kinds of targets, and, you know, absolutely indiscriminately,” Lebanese writer and editor Lina Mounzer told Democracy Now!.2 “People were terrified. People were running on foot. There was absolutely no safe place to hide. It was truly like, you know, 24 hours that were just condensed horror. And it is absolute terrorism. It is barbarism. I don’t have any other words to describe it.”

Biden Praises Demolishing Homes and Razing Towns and Villages 

Biden also praised Israel for destroying “Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon.” But he didn’t tell you that doing this meant creating a vast zone of destruction, leveling whole villages and destroying 5,624 buildings there—and now warning Lebanese that they can’t come back to many of these villages, which many have called home for generations.3 

What does this look like? 

“[P]eople are coming back not just to devastated homes and devastated lands in the south, but they’re picking up the pieces of their lost families.” Mounzer says. “There are a lot of people now who are going to be able to have funerals that they weren’t able to have, memorials that they weren’t able to have. You know, the grieving process begins now, not just for the country at large, but specifically for so many families who have lost their loved ones, including up until these final 24 hours.” 

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We are at a turning point in history. The capitalist-imperialist system is a horror for billions of people here and around the world and threatening the very fabric of life on earth. Now the election of fascist Trump poses even more extreme dangers for humanity—and underscores the total illegitimacy of this system, and the urgent need for a radically different system.

The website Revcom.us follows the revolutionary leadership of Bob Avakian (BA), the author of the new communism. Bob Avakian has scientifically analyzed that we are in a rare time when an actual revolution has become more possible in the U.S. He’s charted a strategy for making that revolution, and laid out a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for “what comes next” in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

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