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Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Sept. 29, 2025. [Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
US intelligence agencies have warned the Trump administration that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to take actions that could undermine President Donald Trump’s efforts to secure a lasting peace agreement with Iran, according to a report on Friday.
Citing current and former US officials familiar with intelligence assessments, The Washington Post reported that Israel appears determined to continue military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon despite provisions in the recently signed US-Iran memorandum of understanding calling for an end to military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon.
Even short of escalation, Israel’s refusal to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon is likely to doom the fragile accord, a US official told the Post.
“Continuing to occupy part of Lebanon is a recipe for disaster,” the official said. “Without a full Israeli withdrawal, the likelihood of resumed hostilities between the (Israeli military) and Hezbollah is all but certain.”
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday warned Israel against alienating its “only powerful ally,” saying Trump “is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.”
Separately, a US official confirmed to Anadolu Agency that Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire to take effect at 4 pm local time (1300GMT) Friday.
Earlier Friday, at least 31 people were killed and several others injured in a series of Israeli attacks on southern and eastern Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s official National News Agency.
According to the latest official figures, Israel’s military offensive in Lebanon, which began on March 2, has killed 3,912 people, injured 11,873 others, and displaced more than one million residents.
Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide. He berates Palestine Action for upholding international law and prevent his – Labour and Israel’s – Gaza genocide. Starmer says that that they’ve got a genocide to achieve, forced marches like the Nazis did, hospitals to bomb into obliteration, journalists, healthcare workers and starving people queuing for food to mass-murder and that they have to murder all Gazans for Zionism.Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says Sundown Syndrome is a dead givaway and he wishes someone would Lock Him Up
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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a press briefing at the White House on current issues in Washington DC, United States on May 5, 2026. [Fatih Aktaş – Anadolu Agency]
The US reaffirmed its support for Lebanon during a Friday phone call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Anadolu Agency reports.
The two discussed the current situation in Lebanon and the wider region in light of recent developments, the presidency said in a statement.
During the call, Rubio stressed that the US “stands with Lebanon” and said Washington would work to achieve “security and stability” in the country, ensure “the extension of state authority over all its territory,” and support Lebanon’s legitimate political, security and military institutions, “foremost among them the army.”
Aoun thanked Rubio for US support for Lebanon and stressed the need to halt Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory through a “comprehensive ceasefire.”
He said such a comprehensive ceasefire is “what Lebanon considers a cornerstone” for progress in Lebanese-US-Israeli negotiations scheduled to take place in Washington next week.
According to the presidency, Aoun said the talks aim to achieve Lebanon’s “constant objectives” of restoring the country’s “security, stability, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide. He berates Palestine Action for upholding international law and prevent his – Labour and Israel’s – Gaza genocide. Starmer says that that they’ve got a genocide to achieve, forced marches like the Nazis did, hospitals to bomb into obliteration, journalists, healthcare workers and starving people queuing for food to mass-murder and that they have to murder all Gazans for Zionism.Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says Sundown Syndrome is a dead givaway and he wishes someone would Lock Him Up
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People attend funeral ceremony for journalist Amal Khalil, who was killed in an Israeli military strike targeting the village of Tayri, in Nabatieh, Lebanon on April 23, 2026. [Elif Öztürk – Anadolu Agency]
There is a particular cruelty in silencing those whose sole weapon is a camera, a notebook, or a voice. The killing of Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil in southern Lebanon is not an isolated tragedy; it is part of a pattern that is becoming impossible to ignore, and even harder to explain away. In a war already saturated with grief, the deliberate or reckless targeting of journalists signals something deeper than battlefield error. It suggests an erosion of the very rules that once attempted to civilise conflict.
On 22nd April 2026, during what was meant to be a brief, US-mediated ceasefire, Israeli strikes hit a civilian vehicle near al-Tayri. When Khalil and her colleague Zeinab Faraj moved to report on the aftermath, a second strike hit the building where they had taken shelter. Rescue teams attempting to reach them were themselves targeted, delaying aid for hours. By the time access was finally granted, Khalil was dead beneath the rubble.
She became the fourth Lebanese journalist killed in just weeks. The sequence—strike, response, second strike—has been described by observers as a ‘double tap’, a tactic that raises serious legal and moral questions.
The outrage from Lebanese officials was immediate and justified. The language used—“flagrant violation”, “brazen crime”—was not diplomatic excess; it reflected a growing consensus among legal experts and press-freedom organisations that such incidents may constitute grave breaches of international humanitarian law.
Journalists are civilians. That principle is not ambiguous. The Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute are explicit: targeting civilians, including media workers, is a war crime.
Yet the facts on the ground continue to collide with official denials. Israel maintains that it does not target journalists and often asserts that strikes are aimed at militants. In some cases, it has posthumously alleged links between slain reporters and armed groups. These claims, frequently unsubstantiated, have been repeatedly challenged by organisations such as Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists, which point to video evidence and patterns of strikes on clearly marked media personnel. The dissonance between assertion and evidence is widening, and with it, the credibility gap.
The scale of the violence underscores the urgency. As of March 2026, more than 2,400 people have reportedly been killed in Lebanon, with over a million displaced. Across the broader conflict landscape, including Gaza and the West Bank, dozens of journalists have lost their lives since late 2023. One investigation counted at least 61 journalists killed in that period alone, making it one of the deadliest eras for the profession in modern history. These are not incidental losses; they represent a systemic threat to the flow of information itself.
What is unfolding in Lebanon cannot be disentangled from a far larger and more troubling pattern that has already taken shape in Gaza, where the scale of journalist killings has reached historic proportions.
By late 2025, nearly 250 journalists had been killed since October 2023—more than in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine combined, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists and United Nations assessments.
Gaza has, in effect, become the deadliest environment for media workers ever recorded, a distinction that should unsettle any government that claims allegiance to international humanitarian law. The killing of figures such as Abed Shaat, a clearly identified cameraman struck while documenting an aid convoy, underscores how ambiguity has replaced accountability, and how denial has become routine rather than exceptional. experts warn that this erosion is not contained; it is setting precedent, normalising impunity, and accelerating a global decline in journalist safety, with UNESCO reporting a 67 per cent increase in deaths in conflict zones in recent years.
In this light, the strike that killed Amal Khalil does not stand alone as an aberration—it sits within an emerging doctrine of war in which the elimination of witnesses risks becoming tacitly permissible. For policymakers, the implication is stark: when the systematic silencing of journalists is absorbed into the background of conflict, the collapse is not only operational but normative, corroding the credibility of the very international order that depends on the visibility of truth.
What is at stake extends beyond individual lives. When journalists are killed, the immediate effect is silence. Stories go untold, evidence goes unrecorded, and accountability becomes more elusive. In conflicts where narratives are fiercely contested, controlling information can be as strategically valuable as controlling territory. Analysts have noted that targeting journalists reflects a shift towards ‘information warfare’, where the aim is not only to defeat an opponent but to shape the story that reaches the outside world.
This dynamic is not unique to Lebanon, but the current context is particularly stark. The perception—widely held in Beirut and increasingly echoed in international circles—is that impunity persists. Despite repeated condemnations from the United Nations, UNESCO, and global NGOs, meaningful accountability remains elusive. The continued military support provided to Israel by key allies, including the United States and several European nations, complicates efforts to enforce compliance with international norms.
It raises uncomfortable questions about whether the so-called rules-based order applies equally to all, or only to those without powerful backers.
For policymakers everywhere, this is no longer a distant or containable crisis but a direct test of the integrity of the international system itself. States that claim fidelity to international law, press freedom and a rules-based order cannot afford the luxury of selective consistency without paying a strategic price.
When the killing of journalists provokes outrage in one theatre yet equivocation in another, the signal sent is not nuance but hierarchy—of whose lives, whose truths, and whose laws matter.
That inconsistency does more than weaken moral authority; it actively erodes deterrence, inviting repetition by those who see that consequences are negotiable. In such an environment, silence is not restraint but complicity, and credibility—once fractured—rarely returns intact.
There is also a strategic dimension. Erosion of international norms does not occur in isolation; it invites replication. If one state can target journalists without consequence, others may follow. The result is a more dangerous world for reporters, and by extension, for anyone who relies on accurate information to make decisions—governments included. Intelligence, diplomacy, and humanitarian response all depend on credible reporting from conflict zones.
The human dimension, however, remains central. Amal Khalil was not a statistic. She was a witness, a storyteller, and a participant in the essential democratic function of informing the public. Her death resonates not only in Lebanon but across a global community of journalists who increasingly find themselves on the front lines. The message her killing sends—to hesitate, to withdraw, to remain silent—is precisely the message that must be resisted.
There are practical steps that can and should be taken. Ceasefire agreements must include explicit protections for journalists and humanitarian workers, with mechanisms for real-time coordination and verification. Independent investigations into alleged violations must be supported, not obstructed. Military aid and cooperation should be conditioned on adherence to international humanitarian law, with clear consequences for breaches. These measures are not radical; they are the minimum required to preserve a semblance of order in war.
Ultimately, the question is not only about legality but about values. The protection of journalists is a proxy for the protection of truth itself. When that protection erodes, so too does the capacity of the international community to respond effectively to crises. Decisions become less informed, debates more polarised, and solutions more elusive.
The killing of Amal Khalil is a warning. It signals that the boundaries of acceptable conduct in war are being tested, and perhaps redrawn. Whether those boundaries hold will depend on the willingness of states—large and small—to insist that they matter. Silence, in this context, is not neutrality. It is acquiescence.
In the end, wars are remembered not only for their outcomes but for the principles they uphold or abandon. The fate of journalists in Lebanon will be one measure of that legacy.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
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The flowers on the chair, where Halil’s photo, press vest, and helmet were placed, is seen during funeral ceremony for journalist Emel Halil, who was killed in an Israeli military strike targeting the village of Tayri, in Nabatieh, Lebanon on April 23, 2026. [Elif Öztürk – Anadolu Agency]
Lebanon has called on the United Nations to take urgent action to halt Israel’s targeting of journalists, following the reported deaths of 28 media workers since October 2023.
In a letter addressed to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, Lebanon’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Caroline Ziadeh, raised concerns over what she characterised as repeated attacks on journalists operating in Lebanon.
According to a statement, Ziadeh said the Lebanese Ministry of Information had documented a series of incidents involving Israeli strikes targeting media personnel since early 2023. Among those named were journalist and radio presenter Ghada Dayekh of Sawt Al Farah radio, and Suzanne Khalil, who worked with Al Nour radio and Al Manar TV.
Ziadeh said that Israeli military operations since mid-October 2023 had resulted in the deaths of 28 Lebanese journalists, including reporters and photographers, “without any accountability to date”.
She described the killings as “grave violations of international humanitarian law”, stressing the obligation to protect journalists during armed conflict.
Calling for UN intervention, Ziadeh urged Türk to take steps to reinforce legal protections and support investigations that could lead to accountability. She also called for pressure on Israel to cease such actions and comply fully with its obligations under international law.
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Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
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People attend funeral ceremony for journalist Amal Khalil, who was killed in an Israeli military strike targeting the village of Tayri, in Nabatieh, Lebanon on April 23, 2026. [Elif Öztürk – Anadolu Agency]
At least 27 journalists have been killed in Israeli attacks in Lebanon since March 2, along with many others wounded, the Lebanese Press Syndicate Editors said Thursday.
In a statement, the syndicate condemned Israel’s targeting of a group of journalists in the southern town of Tayri on Wednesday, in which reporter Amal Khalil was killed and her colleague Zeinab Faraj was wounded.
The syndicate said Khalil had previously received death threats from the Israeli army.
“With her killing, the number of journalists and media workers killed has risen to 27, in addition to a large number of injured,” the statement said.
The syndicate called on the Federation of Arab Journalists to work with international and Arab press unions to support Lebanese journalists amid deliberate Israeli attacks.
It also urged journalists working in the field in Lebanon to exercise caution, avoid high-risk areas and coordinate with the Lebanese army and other official security forces in areas exposed to Israeli attacks, including UNIFIL, the Lebanese Red Cross and local relief teams, “to avoid any unexpected fatal risk.”
The syndicate said Israel’s actions against Lebanese civilians, particularly journalists, “have exceeded all limits,” calling on the Lebanese government to take urgent action at international bodies and file a legal case against Israel.
During Wednesday’s attack, Israeli forces prevented the Red Cross and Lebanese army forces from reaching the two journalists and targeted a road linking Tayri and Haddatha to block rescue teams, according to the state news agency NNA.
Since March 2, Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed 2,475 people, wounded 7,696 and displaced more than 1.6 million, according to official figures.
A 10-day ceasefire announced by the US on April 16 is set to expire Sunday and has been violated daily by Israel.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
