South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) is devastated, though not surprised, to see Israel carry out the same kind of genocidal actions that it has in Gaza, this time against the people of Lebanon.
In a single day of Israeli strikes across Lebanon, the deadliest since the war on Iran began, over 254 people have been killed and more than 1,165 wounded. Israel targeted more than 100 areas in what has been described as “the deadliest ten minutes in decades”. Entire neighbourhoods in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and southern Lebanon have been devastated. Hospitals are overwhelmed. The United Nations has called the casualty figures “appalling,” and Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker has labelled these attacks on densely populated areas a “full-fledged war crime.” We mourn every lost life. We hold Israel’s Zionist, settler-colonial regime fully accountable for this despicable bloodshed.
What we are witnessing in Lebanon is not a new war, it is the same genocidal script Israel first tested and refined in Gaza, now being enacted on another front. The pattern is unmistakable: mass aerial bombardment of residential areas, deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, vague claims of targeting “military infrastructure” without evidence, the displacement of millions of people, and a total disregard for international law and human life.
Israel’s destruction of Lebanon is also nothing new, and Hezbollah, like Hamas in Gaza, is used as an excuse for the pursuit of the colonial project of a Greater Israel, which can only be achieved through land theft, and the quest for Israeli regional dominance. When Israel began bombing Lebanon in 1982, Hezbollah did not yet exist.
Beyond the relentless destruction, Israel’s actions also display a staggering impunity that jeopardises the safety of the entire world. Just hours before these strikes, a US-Iran ceasefire was announced, brokered by Pakistan, with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif stating clearly that the agreement included “an immediate ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon.” Iran has affirmed this position. Yet Israel, backed by the US, continues to insist that Lebanon is “a separate skirmish.” This is not confusion. It is deliberate sabotage of a fragile diplomatic process by a state that prefers endless war. Israel is willing to risk a regional (and potentially global) catastrophe to continue its killing.
We call on the international community to see clearly: Israel’s endless bloodlust is not a product of “self-defence.” It is enabled, funded, and armed by the world’s most powerful nations, chief among them the United States. Every bomb dropped on Beirut, every home flattened, every family buried under rubble carries American taxpayer dollars and European political and financial cover. And still the world hesitates. Still the condemnations come without consequences. Still the support flows. The question we must all ask, and demand an answer to, is simple: When will this support for Israel end? How many more schools, how many more hospitals, how many more children must be brutalised before the world says “enough”?
SAJFP stands in unconditional solidarity with the people of Lebanon. We say to the families mourning in Beirut and the Bekaa: we see you. We mourn with you. We will not look away. And we say to Israel and its enablers: your genocide in Gaza will not be forgotten, and your attempts to do the same to Lebanon will not be forgiven.
Not in our name. Never again for anyone. Free Palestine. Solidarity with Lebanon. End all support for Israel now.