In the midst of the Israel-U.S. war with Iran, Israel is battling Lebanon to destroy bases of Iran’s ally Hezbollah. The Israeli Defense Forces began their brutal air and ground operations in Lebanon in mid-March. The cumulative human toll from this aggression had risen to more than 2,700 killed and 8,300 wounded by early May.
A Trump-brokered ceasefire was announced in mid-April and immediately broken, with the carnage continuing. Israeli aircraft killed 380 people and destroyed hundreds of residential units and critical infrastructure in the border cities of southern Lebanon and in the Beqaa Valley. Right-wing members of Israel’s Knesset are calling for Israeli occupation of territory 12 miles into southern Lebanon.
Trump agreed to a pause in hostilities only to meet one of Iran’s conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. But, with his poll numbers dropping, Trump-as-politician may be eager to end a war that even his base opposes.
Trump-as-top-imperialist, however, needs to maintain both U.S. dominance in the region and its mutually protective relationship with Zionist sidekick Israel. This contradiction partly explains why pronouncements about the war zigzag hourly. Meanwhile, U.S. bombs kill and maim, and Netanyahu continues his deadly quest to establish a “Greater Israel.”
