AFTER the chaos unleashed by last week’s pager and walkie-talkie bombings in Lebanon, Israel has now returned to one of its more conventional methods of spreading death and terror.
Israeli airstrikes across eastern and southern Lebanon killed at least 247 people and left more than 1,000 wounded yesterday. Among the dead, said Lebanon’s health ministry, were 21 children and 39 women.
It’s the latest violent escalation in Israel’s campaign against its enemies - Hezbollah is the target of its Lebanon attacks - and is an attempt to repeat the pattern of the pitiless invasion of Gaza.
As has been the case since he ordered tanks into Gaza following the appalling October 7 attacks, it is clear that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Nethanyahu does not care how many are killed.
The Gaza death toll is estimated at 41,455, according to the latest figures from the Hamas-run health ministry. And however dreadful that number is, it barely hints at the devastation, the disease and famine, the sheer grinding-into-the-dust that has been wrought on Gaza and its people.
Not content with engineering one apocalypse, Israel seems to now be seeking to provoke a second.
Although Israel has yet to admit it was behind the pager and walkie-talkie attacks in Lebanon, no serious observers believe anyone else was responsible for bombings which were as indiscriminate and deadly as they were ingenious and dystopian.
That Israel feels emboldened to open up a new front speaks of just how hopelessly ineffective the international community has been in reining in its excesses. US President Joe Biden, a near-invisible figure since he shuffled out of the contest against Donald Trump, could once have done something, but his record is one of doing next to nothing.
Yesterday, 24 Palestinians were killed and 60 wounded, with a mother and four of her children among the dead. And so it goes on.
In Lebanon, homes, medical centres, ambulances and the cars of people attempting to flee were targeted, said health minister Firass Abiad. It’s the same modus operandi that Israel deployed in Gaza. Hezbollah has retaliated to these most recent attacks by firing rockets across the border into Israel. It’s all grimly predictable.
The US, once again, seems impotent to drag Mr Netanyahu and his allies to their senses. Iran, Hezbollah’s backer, has talked darkly of the “dangerous consequences of Israel’s new adventure”.
As the spectre of the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks comes into view, the region has become even more unstable. Cool heads and diplomatic efforts must prevail, for the sake of the innocents, especially the children put in danger by warmongering men.
