Lebanon’s Resistance Defies U.S./Israel Genocide and Bombardment

by the Resist US-Led War Movement

After 15 months of daily violations of the so-called ceasefire between "Israel" and Hezbollah, on March 2nd Israel began an intensified bombardment campaign against the Lebanese people.Through "evacuation orders," bombardment, and attempts at ground invasion, the Israeli military has expanded its assault to more Beirut neighborhoods as well as a much larger portion of southern Lebanon and eastern Lebanon, displacing over 700,000 and killing an estimated 886 people including 111 children, 67 women, and 38 medical workers as of March 16th, mimicking strategies used during the Palestinian Nakba.

In the past weeks, the popular resistance forces in Lebanon have opened a new front to defend against the brutal Zionist and US war of aggression that currently targets Iran but ultimately seeks to plunder and dominate all of West Asia. Hezbollah and other national liberation movements in Lebanon, Iraq, and beyond are fighting not only in defense of Iran but, more importantly, in defense of their land and for the liberation of their people.

As history has shown, imperialist powers, from France and Britain to the United States, as well as the Zionist project, have brought only destruction and suffering to the people of Lebanon and West Asia. The division of the Arab world under the Sykes-Picot agreement between imperialists in 1916 to carve up the region, British colonization of Palestine, and French colonization of Lebanon directly paved the way for the Balfour Declaration, in which the British promised the land of the indigenous Palestinian people to the European colonialist Zionist movement.

Throughout this history, the Lebanese people never accepted foreign domination. Their struggle for self-determination culminated in Lebanon asserting its independence on November 22, 1943, leading to the formal end of the French mandate. Yet despite achieving political independence, Lebanon remained burdened by the sectarian power-sharing system imposed by France, and by borders drawn by colonial powers to divide and weaken Arab nationalist sentiment. These artificial borders were meant to fragment a population united by language, culture, and anti-colonial aspirations.

Today’s resistance is a continuation of that brave, decades-long anti-colonial struggle.

From its inception, "Israel" has targeted the Lebanese people

With a long shared border, Israel has repeatedly bombed, invaded, and displaced the people of Lebanon throughout the years. In 1948, when the Arab-Israeli war led to the creation of "Israel" and the Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes, with over 100,000 Palestinians seeking refuge in neighboring Lebanon. Today, approximately 479,000 Palestinian refugees are registered with the UN in Lebanon, with approximately 45% living in the country’s 12 refugee camps. Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid has to this day denied Palestinian refugees worldwide their UN stipulated right of return and reparations under UN Resolution 194.

In 1982, Israel conducted an invasion and the brutal siege of Beirut. For nearly three months, Israeli forces relentlessly bombed the city, cutting off food, water, and electricity to hundreds of thousands of civilians. An estimated 17,000 to 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed, the vast majority civilians, with entire neighborhoods leveled. During this invasion, Israeli-allied militias, with direct IOF support, committed the Sabra and Shatila massacre, slaughtering up to 3,500 Palestinian refugees in just three days.

Though the resistance forced Israel to withdraw to a self-declared "security zone" in the south in 1985, the Zionist occupation continued for 15 years. During this period, Israel maintained the prison camp at Khiam where thousands were tortured, subjected border villages to daily raids and shelling, and killed over 1,500 Lebanese. The resistance finally forced a full and historic Israeli withdrawal in 2000, bringing hundreds of thousands of displaced people back to their lands.

However, Israel continued to violate Lebanese sovereignty with constant overflights and border provocations, leading to the July War in 2006. This 34-day conflict killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, a third of them children, and displaced nearly one million. Under the newly applied Dahiya doctrine, Israel deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure across the entire country, bombing Beirut's airport, ports, roads, bridges, fuel storage tanks, factories, and entire neighborhoods in the southern suburbs. In the south, 300 buildings were destroyed and 130,000 people displaced overnight. Villages were systematically reduced to rubble, and cluster munitions dropped in the war's final hours left millions of unexploded bombs that continue to kill farmers and children to this day.

As puppet governments and international institutions fail the Lebanese people, the popular resistance defends its land and sovereignty

While the people of Lebanon have borne the weight of Zionist aggression for decades, international bodies and puppet governments have proven to be agents of imperialist and Zionist interests in the region. In 1983 for example, the May 17 Agreement, a US-brokered deal signed under Lebanese President Amine Gemayel, would have established full diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for a partial withdrawal, but popular pressure from the Lebanese National Movement and the resistance forced the agreement's collapse, breaking with the comprador desire for normalization.

Similar to the puppet governments, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), initially established in the 1970s during the brutal Lebanese Civil War, has sided with the Zionists and US imperialist interests while presenting itself as a neutral actor. By equating Lebanese and Palestinian national liberation forces with the fascist paramilitaries backed by the US, France, and Israel, the latter were able to operate with impunity and terrorize the people using weapons provided by the same foreign powers that armed UNIFIL itself. The result was that the genuine forces fighting for peace through national liberation were directly attacked and blamed for disrupting the UN's so-called "peace" mission. This travesty is being repeated today with the Lebanese governments own call to spark internal conflict against and disarm Hezbollah.

It was the military operations of the resistance, a campaign of ambushes, tunnel networks, and direct military action, that in 2000 finally forced the Israeli occupation to withdraw from Lebanese land it had been holding since the 1980s. This historic victory was only possible because of the broad support of the masses of Lebanese people that are part of and support the resistance groups in Lebanon. These operations forced Israel to surrender occupied land without a single concession, exposing the fragility of the so-called "military superiority" and "invincible army" of Israel and sending it into forced retreat. When Israel launched its full-scale war and invasion in July 2006, expecting a swift and decisive campaign, the Zionists encountered Merkava tanks destroyed in the streets and villages of Lebanon as the resistance launched rockets that hit deep inside occupied Palestine. By the end of the July war, the Israeli Zionist military had failed to achieve a single one of its political and military objectives.

Beyond the battlefield, the resistance operates a comprehensive social welfare network across Lebanon, including hospitals, schools, and the Jihad al-Binaa reconstruction foundation. In recent years, as Lebanon has been crushed by an economic collapse that international institutions have done little to alleviate, the resistance's role has expanded to providing subsidized bread, medicine, and fuel to families abandoned by a failing puppet state.

The new Israeli offensive is another chapter of this settler colonial project

The latest aggression by Israel is already one of the most brutal chapters in the long history of aggression against the Lebanese people. The Israeli army committed a massacre in the heart of Beirut early on 12 March, targeting a group of displaced Lebanese with drones and killing eight in the Ramlet al-Bayda beach area. A drone fired missiles near the sidewalks where scores of families displaced from various parts of the country had set up tents.

The IOF has ordered the forced displacement of residents in almost the entire southern suburb of Beirut, as well as everywhere south of Al-Zahrani River. The area that Israel is attempting to forcibly expel of all residents now covers over 20% of Lebanon’s territory. Israel continues to use white phosphorus in residential areas in Lebanon. The toxic substance is used militarily to create smoke screens or illuminate targets. Its use in civilian areas is prohibited by international law because it causes severe injuries and fires difficult to control.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that tens of thousands of people from more than 100 towns and villages have received evacuation orders from Israel, which could constitute forced displacement prohibited by international law. "Collective shelters are filling rapidly, essential services are under pressure, and thousands of people remain on the move without adequate protection or assistance... Forced displacement may also amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes under international law," the statement said.

Instead of fighting for its people, the Lebanese government issued a decision to ban the military activities of Hezbollah. The government added that any military activity by Hezbollah "no longer has legal coverage, and those participating in such activities will be in violation of the law," and called for immediate resumption of talks with Israel.

The people must stand with the Lebanese masses striking at the heart of the Zionist occupation

Once again, the Lebanese people and their resistance are taking the fight against settler colonialism and imperialism into their own hands. As rockets strike US-Israeli bases in occupied Palestine and fighters prevent Zionist helicopters from landing on their territory, they are not only targeting IOF units, they are confronting the entire Zionist project and the imperialist structure that sustains it.

Just as the resistance dealt a historic blow to the Zionist entity in 2000 by forcing occupiers out of the self-declared "security zone," Iran and the resistance forces in Lebanon and Iraq are now legitimately targeting the network of US military bases across West Asia used to destabilize and launch wars on the whole region. This includes Israel itself, which functions as a de facto US military base and a launching pad for Washington's wars of aggression in West Asia. These bases have brought nothing but destruction and destabilization to the region, not the security that the US promised countries hosting them.

For this reason, the resistance forces in Lebanon, opposing Israel's renewed offensive on their people, stand at the forefront of the struggle against the greatest enemy of peace in the world today: the United States and its imperialist ruling class.

It is imperative that peace-loving people around the world reject these Zionist attacks in all their forms and build the broadest possible support for the Lebanese popular mass movement. In its many multitudes and tactics, this movement represents a genuine struggle for liberation, sovereignty, and a future free from US imperialist domination.