Israeli airstrike on the Cola area in West Beirut which killed 3 leaders from the PFLP. Photo: via Telegram
Israel intensified assassinations of top leaders of the Axis of Resistance, ahead of the Israeli ground invasion into Lebanon
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) assassinated five resistance leaders of groups affiliated with or supporting the Axis of Resistance in different parts of Lebanon within the last 48 hours. Three of the leaders were affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), while the fourth leader was affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas. The fifth was a top scholar and leader in Hezbollah.
The PFLP announced on Monday, September 30, that Israeli warplanes launched an airstrike near Kola intersection at the center of the Lebanese capital Beirut in the early hours of Monday morning killing three of its top leaders. PFLP identified the assassinated leaders as Imad Odeh, who was a PFLP military commander in Lebanon, along with Mohammad Abdel Aal and Abdul Rahman Abdel Aal, who were members of the movement’s political bureau in Lebanon. The Palestinian resistance group mourned its slain leaders in a statement vowing to “continue the path of struggle and resistance until the occupation will be swept away no matter how long it takes, and no matter how great the sacrifices.” Many have pointed out that the PFLP has not been involved in any of the strikes against Israel from Lebanese territory, making their assassination in this context even more concerning.
Meanwhile Hamas announced in a statement on Monday that Fateh Sharif Abu al-Amine, one of the movement’s leaders abroad, was killed along with his wife, son, and daughter, in an airstrike that targeted their house in the al-Buss refugee camp in South Lebanon. The movement mourned Abu al-Amin describing him as “active and vibrant” in addition to being “brave and courageous”. Hamas also pledged to remain steadfast “on the path of all Palestinian martyrs until the Israeli occupation is defeated and expelled from Palestine, and until Al-Quds and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are liberated.”
On Sunday, September 29, Hezbollah announced that a member of its central council, Sheikh Nabil Qawouk was killed in an Israeli airstrike south of Beirut a day earlier. The Lebanese resistance group mourned Qawouk in a statement saying: “His Eminence Sheikh assumed many organizational responsibilities in the various units of Hezbollah, worthy of the trust he carried, a great scholar and fighter. Martyr Sheikh Nabil was always present in the arenas of Jihad, close to the fighters on the front lines, and spent his honorable life in the fields of Jihad and sacrifice.”
The Israeli army intensified its attacks to assassinate top resistance leaders in the region as it is prepared to launch an impending ground incursion in Lebanon which began in the early hours of Tuesday October 1.
Israeli tanks were pictured near the Israel-Lebanon border on September 28, 2024. (Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
“Despite the Israeli government’s serious escalation in Lebanon and indiscriminate bombings in Gaza and the West Bank, President Biden continues to funnel billions in lethal military aid.”
Israeli forces appear poised to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon within days following a sustained bombing campaign that has killed more than a thousand people—including dozens of children—and displaced more than a million, heightening fears of a large-scale humanitarian disaster and a wider war that could consumer the entire region.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has already carried out what were described as “limited ground incursions” across the Lebanese border, but a larger invasion could be imminent given the positioning of Israeli troops and rhetoric from top Israeli officials.
“We will use all the means that may be required—your forces, other forces, from the air, from the sea, and on land,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Israeli troops on Monday.
The mayor of a Christian-majority Lebanese village located roughly six miles from the Lebanon-Israel border toldReuters that locals “had received calls apparently from the Israeli army telling them to evacuate the area as soon as possible.”
Humanitarian groups have warned that a full-scale ground invasion would be a disaster for the Lebanese people, many of whom have seen their lives upended by Israeli attacks over the past two weeks.
“We are gravely concerned about the possibility of an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon,” said Julie Mehigan, Christian Aid’s head of Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. “The patterns we’re seeing from the attacks of the last few days are reminiscent of what we’ve seen in Gaza these last few months. Massive displacement and killing of civilians, whole families killed in their homes, and schools converted into shelters. All the while Gaza is continually being bombed from land, air, and sea.”
“We are on the precipice of yet another humanitarian calamity in the region,” Mehigan added.
“Not only is this administration sending more bombs aimed at them and other civilians, they’re also helping Netanyahu cover up his crimes. It’s despicable.”
The Biden administration, which provided the 2,000-pound bombs that Israel used to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and dozens of civilians in an attack on Beirut late Friday, is reportedly prepared to give Israel approval to move troops into Lebanon as long as the invasion is “limited.”
But the Israeli government, headed by far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly disregarded the Biden administration’s stated conditions. As The New York Times observed Monday, the administration wanted the Israeli military to “eschew major combat operations” in the southern Gaza city of Rafah earlier this year. The IDF went on to launch a massive assault on the city, rendering it uninhabitable.
Akbar Shahid Ahmed, HuffPost‘s senior diplomatic correspondent, reported Monday that the Biden administration is unlikely to “veto” Israeli plans for a ground invasion of Lebanon and noted he is hearing a “growing sense” that “an Israeli invasion of Lebanon with U.S. backing (based on the idea it will be limited) is coming.”
Spoke with several sources in the last ~ hour who did not believe a decision has been made on an Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
But clear all around a US veto is unlikely.
A career US official working on the ME told me Washington's permitting "a nihilistic regional murder spree."
The possibility of an imminent Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon has heightened concerns of a full-blown regional war with potentially devastating global implications. Hezbollah has pledged to retaliate against Israel for the assassination of Nasrallah, and Iran—which has thus far acted with restraint—could also decide to intervene as Lebanon’s government works to prevent the military conflict from spiraling.
Craig Mokhiber, a human rights attorney and former director of the New York office of the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, wrote on social media Monday that “as Israel continues its genocide in Palestine, expands its murderous rampage into Lebanon (perhaps even launching a ground invasion to ethnically cleanse the south) the West cheers and arms them, Arab governments sleep, the U.N. looks the other way, the [International Criminal Court] stalls, the Global South offers only symbolic objections, and the world is dragged passively toward WWIII.”
Israel’s intensifying assault on Lebanon has sparked fresh calls for a halt to U.S. arms transfers to the Israeli military, which relies heavily on American-made weaponry.
Maurice Mitchell, national director of the U.S.-based Working Families Party, said in a statement Monday that Israel’s ongoing attacks on Lebanon “mark an extreme escalation that further threatens the stability of the region” and expressed support for an effort led by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to block recently approved arms sales.
“Despite the Israeli government’s serious escalation in Lebanon and indiscriminate bombings in Gaza and the West Bank, President Biden continues to funnel billions in lethal military aid to the Israeli government without conditions, including $8.7 billion last week,” said Mitchell. “This coupled with new reports that the Israeli government violated international law by deliberately blocking humanitarian aid to families in Gaza underscores the urgent need to stop the flow of offensive weapons to the Israeli government.”
Abbas Alawieh, a Lebanese American from Michigan and a co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement, said Monday that “every hour, I get messages from my family in Lebanon, asking when the American-funded bombs will stop.”
“Not only is this administration sending more bombs aimed at them and other civilians, they’re also helping Netanyahu cover up his crimes,” said Alawieh. “It’s despicable.”
People gather with banners and flags to protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for not signing the cease-fire agreement in Tel Aviv, Israel on September 28, 2024. (Photo: Nir Keidar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Furtively booby-trapping a consumer product like a pager or two-way radio opens a new phase of warfare.
Israel’s Biden-backed war machine is once again bearing down on defenseless Lebanese people. Hostilities on the Israel-Lebanon border have been occurring since the establishment of Israel and the dispossession of Palestinians and their land in 1948. But last week’s war-crime-laden escalation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stunned the world.
It started with bombings followed by the simultaneous booby-trapped “red button” explosion of thousands of pagers and two-way radios inside Lebanon on September 17, 2024, and September 18, 2024, held by or near Lebanese militants, and civilian men, women, children, health workers, storekeepers, etc. Thirty-seven people were killed and 3,700 others were injured—losing hands, eyes, and fingers. Many also suffered internal organ damage.
Such an attack at this scale is unprecedented in human history. While the ambulances and overwhelmed hospitals were taking in the casualties, Israeli F-16s (provided by the U.S.) struck throughout Lebanon, killing over 700 people and injuring thousands, many of them women and children—a staggering total of 1,600 targets in two days.
Computers, motor vehicles, smartphones, and many other electronic products could become weapons of war.
International law experts condemned the mega-raid. They pointed to the war crime of booby-trapping a product, and the vast disproportionate harm to innocent civilians compared to Israel’s military objective to destroy Hezbollah’s militia that has been exchanging unequal missiles with Israel since October 8, 2023.
As has been the case for decades, Lebanese casualties were vastly greater than Israeli casualties. Israel has a modern air defense system that shuts down most of the incoming missiles. Hezbollah’s military might has been long exaggerated by its Israeli adversary to justify regularly bombing Syria, attacking Iran, and getting more weapons from the U.S.
In reality, Hezbollah—a political party and social service organization—has a militia greatly outnumbered and overpowered by the Israeli military in soldiers, destructive weaponry, and money from the U.S.
Furtively booby-trapping a consumer product like a pager or two-way radio opens a new phase of warfare. This savagery prompted Leon Panetta, former director of the CIA and former secretary of defense, in an interview on the CBS “Sunday Morning” news show to charge Israel with “terrorism.” No prominent national security figure has ever assailed Israel this way. Herewith his words:
“The ability to be able to place an explosive in technology that is very prevalent these days. And turn it into a war of terror. Really, a war of terror. This is something new,” said Panetta.
“I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism…This is going right into the supply chain, right into the supply chain. And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question, what the hell is next?” added Panetta.
Panetta would never have uttered these words without the concurrence of the CIA and the Department of Defense. Still no consequences for Netanyahu by the U.S. government.
These officials now fear a new booby-trap era of warfare. Computers, motor vehicles, smartphones, and many other electronic products could become weapons of war. People all over the world now have this Israeli-triggered anxiety, dread, and fear. Netanyahu has made the push button a trigger for mayhem and murder—acts of large-scale terrorism. He and his predecessors have always characterized offensive acts violating the laws of war as “acceptable” defensive tactics. The supine Congress and White House regularly rubber-stamp their violations of several U.S. laws on behalf of the Israeli government. (See the letter sent to John Kirby on September 12, 2024).
Consider the aftermath. No denunciation by U.S. President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, or Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. No condemnation or calls for public hearings by leading Republicans, or leading Democrats in Congress. The Hill reported that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said, “This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines US efforts to prevent a wider conflict… Congress needs a full accounting of the attack, including an answer from the State Department as to whether any U.S. assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology,” she added. Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) were also critical of the attack.
Alarmingly, there were no editorials in the following week criticizing Netanyahu in The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Imagine if Hezbollah did this to Israeli society. The devaluation of Palestinian and Lebanese lives can only be called racist.
Biden’s forked-tongue address to the United Nations this week touted peace and democracy while his autocracy funds war.
Biden’s forked-tongue address to the United Nations this week touted peace and democracy while his autocracy funds war. Not a word against what his friend Leon Panetta called Israeli terrorism. Just another feeble fig leaf call for a 21-day truce mocked by the extreme genocidal Israeli regime, funded by coerced American taxpayers.
Hezbollah emerged after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which lasted 18 years with the Israeli army occupying south Lebanon (and its coveted Litani River) where millions of historically downtrodden Lebanese Shia Muslims lived. They were abused by the Israeli army. Hezbollah was formed in 1982 to defend these impoverished, subjugated people.
In an ocean of lies, starting with his mysterious, still officially uninvestigated collapse of the multi-tiered border security system on October 7, 2023, which opened the door to the Hamas attack, Netanyahu has uttered one truth: “Nothing will stop us.” The nuclear-equipped Israeli regional empire dominates the Middle East. But it always needs an enemy for its internal domestic politics and for expanding its very advantageous alliance with the United States empire. Netanyahu is despised by 3 out of 4 Israelis but the next election is not until October 2026. Some in the pages of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz have argued that Netanyahu may be scuttling talk of a cease-fire to avoid his pending criminal trial for corruption.
Iran, a poor nation with about 91 million people and a GDP considerably smaller than the GDP of Massachusetts, has been a target of the U.S. since the CIA overthrew the popularly elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. His crime: he wanted to take control of Iranian oil from the foreign Anglo-Iranian oil company.
It was the U.S. government that supported then-Iraq ally Saddam Hussein to invade Iran in 1980, which cost Iran hundreds of thousands of lives. It was former President George W. Bush who called Iran one of the countries making up the Axis of Evil and proceeded to encircle it with the U.S. military from Iraq to the Afghanistan borders. Do you wonder why Iran’s rulers are freaked out over its national security and build allies in the face of both punishing U.S. sanctions harming civilian lives and recurrent Israeli sabotage and killings inside Iran?
Violently messing around in other weak countries’ backyards, and backing dictators and coups are the touchstones of empire. Eventually, all empires devour themselves.
In the meantime, are you surprised that the CIA and Department of Defense have teams studying what they call “blowback”—a term they coined before 9/11? You know how that attack convulsed our country, deprived our domestic needs, and intensified Bush/Dick Cheney’s fury into even more countries (e.g., invading Iraq) pushing ever bigger, draining military budgets?
U.S. blowback analysts are apprehensive about the spread of Israeli-style “red button” explosives and the ingenious, and ever-cheaper armed drones. They see such technologies as potential threats within the U.S.
Such is the peril of nations whose leaders wage constant profitable, preventable wars and decline to wage muscular peace with comparable determination.
Smoke rises above Beirut’s southern suburbs during an Israeli strike on Lebanese residential buildings on September 27, 2024. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)
While Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah reportedly survived the attack on the densely populated area of Lebanon’s capitol, one observer warned that Israel may still “get the regional war it has sought.”
Israel’s dropping of massive bombs in Beirut on Friday sparked a fresh wave of global condemnation against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with critics accusing him of trying to drag the Middle East into an even bloodier conflict that could engulf the entire region.
The Israeli attack supposedly targeted Hassan Nasrallah, head of the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah. Multiple media outlets reported that the leader survived, though hundreds of others are feared dead in the “complete carnage” from the bombing that leveled several buildings. While the death toll from Friday is not yet clear, over 700 people have been killed in Israel’s strikes in Lebanon since Monday.
Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said that there had been a “complete decimation” of four to six residential buildings as a result of the Israeli strikes. He said that the number of casualties in hospitals was low so far because people were still trapped under the rubble. “They are residential buildings. They were filled with people,” Mr. Abiad said. “Whoever is in those buildings is now under the rubble.”
Social media and news sites quickly filled with photos and videos of massive plumes of smoke and smoldering rubble.
While attention fixates on the fate of #Hezbollah leader Hassan #Nasrallah, bear in mind that flattening 6+ high-rise apartment buildings, without prior notice/evacuation, means 100s of casualties.
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon, said Friday that she was “deeply alarmed and profoundly worried about the potential civilian impact of tonight’s massive strikes on Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs. The city is still shaking with fear and panic widespread. All must urgently cease fire.”
However, the bombing is widely expected to worsen this week’s escalation, which came after nearly a year of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) trading strikes with Hezbollah over the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 41,000 Palestinians.
“For Israel, it may not matter if Nasrallah was killed. Either way, it believes it’ll get the regional war it has sought,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said of the Friday attack.
Citing an unnamed Israeli official, NBC News reported that “Israel expects Hezbollah will attempt to mount a major retaliatory attack” in response to Friday’s bombing of the group’s command center.
Israel has struck the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, four times over the last week, killing at least three senior Hezbollah military commanders.
But Friday’s attack was far more powerful, with multiple blasts shaking windows across the city, recalling Israeli airstrikes during the war it fought with Hezbollah in 2006.
In a video posted on social media, IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari described the Friday attack as “a precise strike” on what “served as the epicenter of Hezbollah’s terror,” adding that the group’s headquarters “was intentionally built under residential buildings.”
During Netanyahu’s United Nations General Assembly speech on Friday—which was met with a walkout from several diplomats and other officials—the prime minister said that Hezbollah has stored rockets “in schools, in hospitals, in apartment buildings, and in the private homes of the citizens of Lebanon. They endanger their own people. They put a missile in every kitchen, a rocket in every garage.”
In response, Middle East expert Assal Rad said, “So he’s claiming there’s no civilian spaces in Lebanon and Israel has a right to destroy all of it.”
Jason Hickel, who has positions at multiple European universities, also sounded the alarm over those lines from the Israeli leader’s speech.
Netanyahu is “effectively arguing all homes are a military target,” he said. “This is 100% genocidal and this maniac must be stopped.”
The US was reportedly informed of this mass Israeli attack on Beirut in Lebanon shortly beforehand. Comes just one day after US released $8.7 billion more in aid to Israel & hours after Netanyahu told the UN “Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace.”pic.twitter.com/LW2ST4DixB
Hours before the attack in suburban Beirut, the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) strongly condemned “Israel’s brutal bombardment of Lebanon, another reckless escalation in the Middle East on behalf of the Benjamin Netanyahu regime that risks further destabilization in an already fragile region.”
“The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon is the latest dark chapter in a series of disproportionate displays of force. Its ongoing genocide in Palestine over the last year has proven beyond any doubt that its willingness to commit horrific acts knows no bounds,” DiEM25 said. “Rather than seeking a peaceful and just resolution, Israel’s government has consistently chosen the path of militarism, often with international support from the European Union and the United States.”
“The international community, including the E.U., has a critical role to play in promoting peace rather than enabling violence,” the group added. “Peace and security in the Middle East will not come through bombs and military strength. It will come through diplomacy. We remain committed to working towards that aim and stand in solidarity with the Lebanese people, as well as all others suffering from this violent escalation.”
Tensions in the Middle East have reached a new high after thousands of pagers and radios used by members of Hezbollah exploded across various cities in Lebanon and Syria over September 17 and 18. The attacks – which have widely been attributed to Israel, which has not commented – have resulted in at least 30 people killed and more than 3,000 wounded.
Many analysts and politicians are now speculating that the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which has been simmering during the 11-month conflict in Gaza, will spiral into open warfare.
Far from taking place in a legal vacuum, the attacks are governed by international humanitarian law (IHL). This is the international legal regime that regulates the conduct of hostilities in situations of armed conflict.
Since the Hamas attacks on October 7 provoked Israel’s ferocious response in Gaza, Israel and Hezbollah have been involved in a series of cross-border hostilities. These qualify as what is called a “non-international armed conflict”, to which IHL applies. This includes the rules set out in, among other instruments, the Geneva conventions.
In pursuing the objective of protecting civilians in wartime, the Geneva conventions rely on the fundamental principles of “distinction” and “proportionality”.
What international law says
The principle of distinction essentially requires belligerents to distinguish at all times between the civilian population and combatants.
Combatants are lawful targets and can be attacked at all times. But intentionally attacking civilians is prohibited and constitutes a war crime under the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court. To this end, military commanders are under an obligation to do everything feasible to verify that the target of an attack is not a civilian.
Even assuming that only Hezbollah members were using the radios and pagers at the moment of the attacks, that does not mean that they shall be presumed to be combatants (and, therefore, lawful targets). Under IHL, a combatant is a “member of the armed forces of a party to the conflict”. This comprises “all organized forces, groups and units which are under a command responsible to that party for the conduct of its subordinates”.
By contrast, whoever is not a member of the armed forces of a party to the conflict is a civilian and subject to the protection of IHL.
There is no doubt that members of the military wings of Hezbollah are “members of the armed forces”, so they qualify as combatants. But those members of Hezbollah’s political wing who are not combatants should be considered as civilians and accordingly, are protected from attack.
Civilians may lose protection from attack for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities. This includes conduct like the intentional killing of civilians and carrying out acts which adversely affect the military capacity of a party to an armed conflict – for example, the planning of attacks against Israel.
The pagers were detonated at 3:30, on September 17 in hundreds of locations in Beirut and other Lebanese cities. Abaca Press / Alamy Stock Photo
What about the attacks against members of Hezbollah’s military wing?
In this case, complying with the principle of distinction does not suffice, since the attack must also respect the principle of proportionality. This requires that the expected “collateral damage” (that is, the incidental killing or wounding of civilians) should not be excessive to the “concreted and direct military advantage” anticipated from the attacks.
Launching an attack with the knowledge that it would cause excessive collateral damage also constitutes a war crime.
Collateral damage
In this case, the attacks killed several civilians. These included the nine-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member, an 11-year-old boy and at least two health workers. Moreover, the attacks injured thousands more, including Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon.
Although we do not know how many of those killed or injured were civilians, it seems logical that the level of collateral damage to be expected from the attacks would be substantial. After all, the pagers and radios were remotely detonated at the same time, exploding in crowded places such as markets and funerals. In these situations, the likelihood of killing and wounding civilians is extremely high.
These elements suggest that the expected incidental damage is excessive to the military advantage anticipated from the pager attacks – which, at the time of writing, remains unclear.
But it’s important to note that what amounts to “excessive” incidental damage is subject to disagreement. On the one hand there are those who, like the International Committee of the Red Cross, believe that extensive incidental damage is always excessive. Others – including the Israeli government – consider that even extensive incidental damage is allowed if the attack results in a high amount of military advantage.
In my opinion, Israel’s interpretation should be rejected. It turns IHL’s aims of protecting the civilian population on its head and allows for unrestricted warfare.
My conclusion, based on the available information, appears to be that the pager and walkie-talkie attacks purportedly carried out by Israel against Hezbollah members appear to violate the principles of distinction and proportionality. In other words, they could well amount to war crimes.
