Israel is massively and relentlessly bombing Lebanon. On one day this past week, it launched 50 air strikes on the suburbs of the capital city of Beirut alone. On most days over the last two months, Israel has carried out 100 to 200 air strikes across the country. In one week alone, Israel has killed nearly 200 people and wounded over 750. 

Israel says it is only targeting the forces of Hezbollah, a reactionary Islamic fundamentalist organization backed by Iran.¹  It claims it tries very hard to avoid killing civilians, including by giving advanced warnings when it’s going to strike. 

These are lies. Yes, Israel is targeting Hezbollah, and attempting to destroy it. But it is doing so indiscriminately, killing or wounding civilians who may be in the way. And it’s also striking broad sections of Lebanon’s five plus million people. So Israel’s U.S.-backed war is killing civilians, children, healthcare workers, ambulance drivers, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and more. 

Israel is doing so as part of an overall U.S. imperialist effort to maintain its grip on the Middle East region. Israel is a Zionist (Jewish-supremacist) outpost of imperialism in the Middle East founded in 1948. It is based on brutally oppressing and ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people. It has repeatedly clashed—and waged wars—with neighboring states, including Lebanon, to establish its dominance. In recent decades it has battled with Hezbollah, one of the forces allied with Iran which the U.S. imperialists see as a major obstacle to their continued control of the Middle East. 

On October 7, 2023, the reactionary fundamentalist group Hamas launched an attack from Gaza into Israel. Israel has used this attack to go all out to decimate Gaza and to come out on top in the wider region. Since then, Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, have engaged in low-level military clashes. But this past September, Israel, with U.S. backing, launched all-out war against Hezbollah, seeking to destroy it and maintain its regional dominance, while striking a major blow against Hezbollah’s patron Iran in the process. These are the imperialist interests driving Israel’s wanton slaughter in Lebanon.

Devastating Cities and Towns, Killing Civilians, Children and Medical Workers

This past week Israel continued to escalate this U.S.-backed slaughter. It launched intense waves of air attacks against the capital Beirut—a densely populated city of 2.4 million—along with its suburbs. It bombed cities and towns across the country. Israel’s troops drove deeper into southern Lebanon, destroying whole villages—some established centuries ago. Israel also attacked in Syria, which borders Lebanon to the east, killing some 36 people.

• Israel has killed more than 3,640 people and wounded 15,350 more in the last year, the great majority in the last nine weeks. Most are civilians, not Hezbollah fighters.²
• Israel has killed over 231 children and injured 1,100. Children!³

• Israel has killed some 226 health workers and patients and injured 199 others. On Friday, November 22, Israel murdered Dr. Ali Allam, the director of the largest hospital in northeast Lebanon. He was bombed in his own home, without any warning!⁴ The same day Israel killed five paramedics with Hezbollah's medical arm in southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s Health Ministry called it a “war crime.”

• The World Health Organization reports that nearly half of the attacks on Lebanese medical personnel are fatal. This is a far higher fatality rate than in any other conflict in the world. Israel is deliberately targeting Lebanon’s healthcare system!⁵
• Israel is using massive U.S.-supplied bombs that don’t discriminate between civilians and military fighters. The 2,000-pound bombs it has used have a lethal blast radius of nearly 1,200 feet; anyone inside this area—the size of 58 soccer fields—can be killed or injured.⁶
• Israel often attacks with little or no warning. And what right does Israel have to threaten people with death if they don’t flee their homes, often with nowhere to go? 

Here is what this looks like on the ground—nearly every day: 

On November 18, Israel destroyed an entire apartment building in central Beirut, killing five and wounding 31. One survivor said, 

At the time of the explosion, there was a lot of screaming, I mean, to the point that I could hear my little daughter, who is 7 years old, calling me, 'Dad! Dad! Dad!' Because of the smoke, they could not breathe. I don’t know how I went up. The gate that I was opening was on fire. It was burning. I don’t know how I opened it. I went up and pulled them from the rubble. Thank God it went well.⁷

On Thursday, November 21, Israel killed 47 people in northeast Lebanon alone and destroyed many buildings. A survivor talked about one of them: “I passed by it almost every day. It’s a business center, as far as I know. Doctors. Lawyers. Travel agencies.”⁸ 

In southern Beirut an Israeli strike hit a building housing a gym and medical and beauty clinics. “What is there in the building to target? This attack they carried out on us in this building is a criminal and vile act,” one resident said. “Because if their intention is targeting Hezbollah, this building has nothing to do with Hezbollah.”⁹

Israel’s attacks have forced nearly 1.5 million people—a quarter of Lebanon’s population—to flee from their homes. People say there’s no safe place left in the country. 

The System of Capitalism Imperialism Is Responsible for These Crimes

Israel and the U.S. are trying to devastate, possibly even wipe out Hezbollah, including its infrastructure and to terrorize and beat down the people of Lebanon. It is doing all this to maintain its stranglehold on the Middle East, with its vast oil resources, key trade routes and militarily strategic location. Why? Because controlling this region is crucial to dominating the world, and to the operation and stability of its capitalist-imperialist system.¹⁰

Israel’s depraved, U.S.-backed slaughter in Lebanon is heartbreaking, infuriating, and intolerable! 

It is intensifying the conflicts threatening the peoples of the Middle East—including the intense face-off between Israel and the U.S. on one side and Iran on the other. This is a tinderbox—one that could easily explode. As Bob Avakian has stated:

We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They must be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that humanity does not have to live this way.