Words kill – Why Israel escapes killings in Gaza and Lebanon

The Israeli military’s official version of why it targeted civilian areas during the intense and deadly September 20 bombardment in southern Lebanon is that the Lebanese are hiding long-range missile launchers in their own homes.

This official explanation from the Israeli army was intended to justify the deaths of 492 people and 1,645 injured in a single day of Israeli strikes.

This ready-made explanation will accompany us throughout the Israeli war in Lebanon, however long it may be. Israeli media now cite these claims extensively and, by extension, American and Western media are following suit.

Keep this in mind as you reflect on earlier statements made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog on October 13, when he asserted that there were no civilians in Gaza and that “there was an entire nation there.” -low who was responsible for it.”

Israel does this in every war it launches against a Palestinian or Arab nation. Instead of removing civilians and civilian infrastructure from its target bank, it immediately makes the civilian population the primary target of its war.

A quick glance at the number of civilians killed in the ongoing war and genocide in Gaza should be enough to demonstrate that Israel naturally targets ordinary people.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, children and women make up the largest percentage of war victims, 69 percent. If we take into account the number of adult men who have been killed – a number that includes doctors, nurses, civil defense workers and many other categories – it will become clear that the vast majority of all victims of Gaza are civilians.

Only the Israeli media and their Western allies continue to find justifications for why Palestinian civilians, and now Lebanese, are being killed in large numbers.

Compare the following two statements, which received a lot of media attention, from Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari, regarding both Gaza and Lebanon.

“Hamas systematically uses hospitals to wage war and systematically uses the population of Gaza as human shields,” Hagari said on March 25.

Then, “Hezbollah’s terrorist headquarters was intentionally built under residential buildings in the heart of Beirut, as part of Hezbollah’s strategy of using human shields,” he said on September 27.

For those who give Hagari the benefit of the doubt, one need only recall what happened in Gaza last year.

For example, Israel claimed that the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital massacre was not its fault and that it was a Palestinian rocket that killed nearly 500 displaced refugees and injured hundreds more on October 17.

All the evidence, including investigations by well-respected rights groups, has concluded to the contrary. However, the false Israeli claims nevertheless received widespread media coverage.

The episode at the Baptist hospital was repeated several times. In fact, the lies started on October 7, not October 17, when Israel reported decapitated babies and mass rapes. Although many of these claims have been proven false, some in the media and pro-Israeli officials continue to report them as fact.

And although no Hamas headquarters has ever been discovered beneath Al-Shifa Hospital, unsubstantiated Israeli claims continue to be repeated as if they were the whole truth.

The same logic is now being applied to Lebanon, where Israel claims not to target civilians and, when civilians are killed, it is the Lebanese themselves who should be blamed for allegedly using civilians as human shields.

The Gaza model is now the Lebanon model. Of course, many play along, not because they are irrational or incapable of drawing appropriate conclusions based on clear evidence. They do it because they are part of the Israeli narrative, not because they are neutral storytellers or honest journalists.

Even the BBC is part of this narrative, as it uses Israeli claims as the starting point for any conversation about Palestine or Lebanon. For example, “Israel said it carried out a wave of pre-emptive strikes in southern Lebanon to thwart a large-scale Hezbollah rocket and drone attack,” the BBC reported on August 26.

Israel gets away with its lies about the massacres in Gaza, and now unfortunately in Lebanon, because Israeli propaganda is actually welcomed and embraced by Western officials and journalists.

So when U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called the September 20 airstrikes on Lebanon “justice served,” he signaled to mainstream media outlets that their coverage should remain faithful to that official assessment.

Imagine the outrage if the situation were reversed, as if thousands of Israeli civilians were massacred in their own homes by Lebanese bombs. There is no need to elaborate further on the reactions of the American or Western media, as this should be obvious to anyone paying attention.

Lebanon is a sovereign Arab state. Gaza is occupied territory and its population is protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention. Neither the lives of the Lebanese nor those of the Palestinians are worthless, and their massacres should not be allowed for any reason, including on the basis of absolute lies communicated by an Israeli army spokesperson.

Perpetuating Israeli lies is dangerous, not only because telling the truth is a virtue, but also because words kill and dishonest reporting can, in fact, succeed in justifying genocide.