For Israel, ‘eradicating Hezbollah’ means community erasure for Lebanese Shia

On September 17, Israel detonated thousands of pagers across Lebanon in public spaces, private workplaces, and homes, marking one of the biggest criminal attacks in recent Lebanese history.

Before this attack, Israel focused its efforts on a policy of “slow killing” and collective punishment in South Lebanon following Hezbollah’s announcement of the “Support Front” on October 8 2023. 

Nevertheless, events following the attack marked the beginning of a new dangerous stage of Israel’s escalations in Lebanon: “community erasure”. Yes, our families are facing erasure. It doesn’t matter how Israel frames it. This “conflict” ought to be framed from the perspective of its immediate victims, the bodies subjected to Israel’s genocidal violence.

Not only was the September 17 attack the start of a brutal aggression with the potential intent of murdering thousands of people, including many civilians, but also it proved to the world Netanyahu’s impunity. He is, for the time being, untouchable.

By managing to launch a country-wide attack which injured thousands and killed children and health workers, Netanyahu set the stage for a theatre of mass murder in Lebanon. 

What came next was nothing short of massacres and war crimes across the country, this time further away from the borders and targeted at civilians, city and rural infrastructure, and hospitals and general health facilities.

Villages near the borders have been levelled to the ground. They are being obliterated, as showcased by videos released by the Israeli military itself.

Weapons flagged by international committees continue to be used. Community institutions have been bombed and disabled. Hospitals have shut down. Ambulances have been targeted. Journalists have been murdered. Governmental municipalities have been destroyed and city mayors killed, all in the name of “self-defence”. 

This policy of so-called “self-defence” mainly targets those who remain in their villages, refusing to leave their crops, cattle, and basic sources of income, comfort, and residence.

It is a policy of chasing down and targeting displaced persons due to so-called “affiliations” with Hezbollah of any kind, interpreted and understood only by Israel’s racist stereotyping of an entire group of people.

Israel is waging war on Lebanon's Shia community

What Israel is doing and what its sponsors are actively supporting and arming is a new innovative addition to its legacy of ethnic cleansing, this time of an entire community of people in South Lebanon, Bekaa, and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

While this community is to some extent diverse, there is a clear language of incitement targeting the Shia community found in the voices of many top officials, including former Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett. 

In early October, Netanyahu cautiously announced that Israel is upgrading its objective to “eradicating Hezbollah”. Aside from agreed-upon conceptions of countries’ sovereignty and democracy, which naturally forbid such foreign impositions, Israel’s project almost necessarily harms, in a targeted malicious fashion, Lebanon’s Shia community. 

It is no surprise that the vast majority of Hezbollah's base stems from the Shia sect, and it goes without saying that Hezbollah is not merely a militant group. Like many political forces internationally, Hezbollah is a complex network of social institutions, schools, and charities which concern hundreds of thousands.

The idea that every one of these people is a target is not the rule; it's an Israeli game which justifies mass murder. The idea that a party is to be "eliminated" is never applied, for instance, to the Likud party, responsible now for a genocide which claimed the lives of over 40,000 people. "Eliminating political forces" entails targeting everyone affiliated with their social institutions.

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In other words, this community in Lebanon, like many others, has primarily resided in certain geographical settings within the country for decades and, via Hezbollah and other political, religious, and organisational vehicles, has built and used specific services in proximity to their residencies, such as schools, hospitals, financial institutions, and businesses.

For instance, the targeted and openly proclaimed bombing on Qard Al-Hasan, an Islamic financial institution considered part of Hezbollah's network, was rightly considered in violation of international law by several international human rights organisations. This is a direct hit on this community’s financial and economic livelihood. 

Today, this constituency of dehumanised human beings is almost entirely displaced, with no guarantees that they will be able to revisit their homes. Economic effects include the complete disruption of education, jobs, and key businesses and industries, obstructing the development and human capital of the community.

According to a report released by the Independent Task Force for Lebanon on October 21, approximately 1.2 million people have been displaced as of mid-October, most of them from the southern suburbs of Beirut, the governorates of Baalbek-Hermel, South Lebanon, and certain parts of the Beqaa governorate.

“Before the current Israeli war on Lebanon, these areas had about 50,000 registered businesses (equivalent to 60% of the total companies in Lebanon) and more than 70,000 agricultural holdings (40% of the total in Lebanon), all of which have been either destroyed or completely disrupted.”

The evacuation of areas in the north of Palestine and near the Gaza Strip, accompanied by the hostage situation, put Netanyahu in a difficult situation of having to achieve his political and military objectives in both cases, while not succumbing to the conditions laid out by Hamas and Hezbollah.

Given the multiple headlines insinuating Israel’s increasing international isolation, highlighted most recently by Macron’s call to end arms exports to Israel and the ICC’s investigation of Israel’s crimes, Netanyahu’s response comes in the form of discontent and “genocidal rage”, taken out on the most defenceless and helpless groups of people in the Levant region.  

What happens next is a mere tableau of connecting the dots: who has the power to stop this? When does it serve particular imperial and global powers to put an end to a bloodbath reshaping the demographic and ethnosectarian distribution of power in the region? What will this bloodbath inspire for future states and dictators using mass murder to achieve a political objective?

Karim Safieddine is a political writer based in Lebanon.

Follow him on Twitter: @safieddine00

Dima El-Ayache is a political organiser based in Lebanon

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.