The Lebanon pager attack: Israel’s terror playbook strikes again

 Al Jazeera English

On Tuesday, hundreds of handheld pagers used by members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah simultaneously exploded across Lebanon, killing at least 12 people, including two children. Nearly 3,000 others were wounded, many of them critically.

No one has claimed responsibility for the operation, but it is not hard to guess who is behind it: Israel, a nation that specialises in terrorising selected Arab civilian populations under the pretence of fighting terror. Since October of last year, this same nation has busied itself carrying out genocide in the Gaza Strip, where officially more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed but the true death toll is likely many times higher.

And while the ostensible targets of Tuesday’s attack were pager-wielding Hezbollah members, it was carried out with the full knowledge that the fallout would be indiscriminate and that massive civilian casualties would ensue. But that is the whole point of terrorism, is it not? READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Netanyahu and the Israeli protesters are on the same genocidal page

 Al Jazeera English

In July 2014, shortly after the kickoff of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” in the Gaza Strip – a 51-day affair that ultimately killed 2,251 Palestinians, including 551 children – Danish journalist Nikolaj Krak penned a dispatch from Israel for the Copenhagen-based Kristeligt Dagblad newspaper.

Describing the scene on a hill on the outskirts of the Israeli city of Sderot near the Gaza border, Krak noted that the area had been “transformed into something that most closely resembles the front row of a reality war theatre”. Israelis had “dragged camping chairs and sofas” to the hilltop, where some spectators sat “with crackling bags of popcorn”, while others partook of hookahs and cheerful banter. Fiery, earth-shaking air strikes on Gaza across the way were met with cheers and “solid applause”.

To be sure, Israelis have always enjoyed a good murderous spectacle – which is hardly surprising for a nation whose very existence is predicated on mass slaughter. But as it turns out, the applause is not quite so solid when Israeli lives are caught up in the explosive apocalyptic display.

For the past 11 months, Israel’s “reality war theatre” has offered a view of all-out genocide in the Gaza Strip, where the official death toll has reached nearly 41,000. A July Lancet study found that the true number of deaths may well top 186,000 – and that is only if the killing ends soon.

Now, massive protests have broken out across Israel demanding that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enact a ceasefire and hostage deal to free the remaining 100 or so Israeli captives held in Gaza. On Sunday, when the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six captives, CNN reported that some 700,000 protesters had taken to the streets across the country. And on Monday, a general strike spearheaded by Israel’s primary labour union succeeded in shutting much of the economy down for several hours.

Although certain wannabe peaceniks among the international commentariat have blindly attributed the protests to a desire to end the bloodshed, the fact of the matter is that Palestinian blood is not high on the list of concerns. Rather, the only lives that matter in the besieged, pulverised, and genocide-stricken Gaza Strip are the lives of the captives – whose captivity, it bears underscoring, is entirely a result of Israeli policy and Israel’s unceasing sadistic treatment of Palestinians.  READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.