It’s raining bombs in a city by the sea

 Al Jazeera English

On Monday, the Israeli military set about maniacally bombarding the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre, striking residential buildings left and right and converting the scene into a typical Israeli-induced horrorscape. Since the beginning of the genocide in neighbouring Palestine in October last year, Israel has killed more than 2,700 people in Lebanon, the majority of them over the past month and a half.

An ancient Phoenician port sacked by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, Tyre is of course no stranger to destruction. The city bears three sets of Roman and Byzantine ruins – one of which incidentally played host to a more unique form of destruction in 2013 when the convoy belonging to then-United States ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly managed to damage the historical site while inexplicably driving over it. This particular episode prompted the Jadaliyya headline: “Tires over Tyre: US Ambassador Ruins Ruins.”

Given its fierce partnership with the state of Israel, the US has certainly had an outsized hand in ruining Lebanon over the course of contemporary history. In 1982, for example, the US greenlit the Israeli invasion that killed tens of thousands of people in the country. And during Israel’s 34-day war on Lebanon in 2006, which killed approximately 1,200 people, the US expedited bomb deliveries to the Israeli military while agitating to delay a ceasefire – an approach the Joe Biden administration has now basically supercharged to accommodate the genocide in Gaza. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH. 

In Midst of Palestinian Geocide, Late Hamas Leader Scolded for ‘Eradicating’ Israel

 FAIR

The Israeli military killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip on October 17, and it didn’t take long for the usual media suspects to line up with their anti-eulogies.

Reuters (10/18/24), for example, produced an obituary headlined “Yahya Sinwar: The Hamas Leader Committed to Eradicating Israel Is Dead”—a less than charming use of terminology in light of the genocide Israel is currently perpetrating in Gaza.

Since last October, more than 42,000 Palestinians have officially been, um, eradicated—although according to a Lancet study (7/20/24; Al Jazeera, 7/8/24) published in July, the true death toll could well exceed 186,000. Per the view of Reuters, this is really the fault of Sinwar, a “ruthless enforcer” ... 

Never mind that Sinwar’s elimination will have no impact on the genocide, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear: “Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a blow, but our task has still  not been completed.” READ MORE AT FAIR.

Yahya Sinwar may be dead, but there is no end in sight to this genocide

 Al Jazeera English

On Thursday, October 17, Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip – the latest “high-value target” in a genocidal war that has dispensed with more than 42,000 Palestinian lives in just over a year and that has now spread to Lebanon.

Of course, the elimination of Sinwar hardly spells the end of genocide, as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear in his post-assassination announcement: “Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a blow, but our task has still not been completed.”

Fortunately for the powers that be in a nation whose very existence is predicated on perpetual slaughter, the Israeli “task” will never be fully completed – at least as long as there are still Palestinians and fellow Arabs committed to resisting Israel’s bloodthirsty efforts.

And yet Sinwar’s killing will make it ever more difficult for Israel to continue to justify its current war on Gaza, not that justification ever really matters to Israel’s primary international backer, the United States of America. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The United States is already at war

 Al Jazeera  English

Yesterday, Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s assassination in Beirut of Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah last week and its assassination in Tehran of Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh in July.

United States President Joe Biden instructed the US military to assist Israel in neutralising the missiles – not that Israel is not already equipped with various layers of ultra-sophisticated protection against incoming projectiles, which permit it to go about slaughtering folks left and right while suffering minimal damage in return. . . .

Of course, not once has it occurred to the Biden administration to meticulously thwart Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where officially more than 41,000 people have been killed in less than a year although the true death toll is without a doubt exorbitantly higher. Nor has the oh-so-skilled US military deemed it necessary to interfere in the wanton butchery currently going down in Lebanon, where Israel just killed more than 700 people in less than a week. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.