Israel Accused Of Dropping Bombs On Lebanon Concealed In Children’s Toys

Palestinian resistance fighters led by Hamas launched an unprecedented military offensive out of the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.
The immediate goal was to inflict a shattering blow against Israel’s army bases and militarised settlements which have besieged Gaza’s inhabitants for decades – all of which are built on land that Palestinian families were expelled from in 1948.
The bigger goal was to shatter a status quo in which Israel, the United States and their accomplices believed they had effectively sidelined the Palestinian cause, and to bring that struggle for liberation back to the forefront of world attention.

Covered from the air by armed drones and a barrage of rockets – which opened the offensive at 06:26 – Palestinian fighters launched a lightning raid over the Gaza boundary line.
The Israeli army bases were conquered for hours.
Some of the settlements still had an armed Palestinian presence two days later.
The military communications infrastructure was instantly smashed.
Simultaneous attacks took place by land, air and sea.
Palestinian drones took out tanks, guard posts and watchtowers.

Caught completely unprepared, most of the soldiers manning the bases were either killed or captured and taken back to Gaza as prisoners of war.
A reported 255 Israelis were captured, including soldiers and civilians.
Since then, 154 of them have been released, mostly by Hamas in November 2023 prisoner exchange.
However, the figure of those released also includes some bodies of dead captives, mostly killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza.
Of the remaining 101 prisoners, 35 have been officially declared dead by Israel.
The real number is likely much higher.
Many have been killed by Israeli carpet bombing, and three escaped prisoners were shot dead by Israeli ground troops in Gaza City in December 2023.

This was the first time in history that Palestinian armed groups were able to retake Palestinian territories lost since 1948, however briefly.
Israel’s response was also unprecedented, if not in its nature then undoubtedly in its scale – an undisguised genocide against the population of Gaza.
One “conservative” estimate, published by the British medical journal The Lancet in July 2024, stated that as many as 186,000 Palestinians are likely to have been killed by Israel so far – almost 10% of Gaza’s population.
The UN says that 90% of people in Gaza have been driven out of their homes by Israel and that about a quarter of all structures in the strip have been destroyed.
The Western press took its lead from official Israeli disinformation, and was soon awash with lurid atrocity propaganda.

The lies about rape and beheaded babies were swiftly debunked by The Electronic Intifada and a small group of other independent media – often at the cost of being smeared by mainstream media and banned or censored by social media giants like YouTube.
Trying to paper over the cracks of its military and intelligence defeat, Israel has also been desperate to cover up another major scandal.
That Israel killed hundreds of its own people between October 7&9, 2023.
The regime ideologically justified this within Israeli society using a well-established national murder-suicide pact known in Israel as the “Hannibal Directive.”
The Electronic Intifada presents a full overview of how Israel killed so many of its own people during the Palestinian offensive.
This article is based on a year’s worth of The Electronic Intifada’s investigative reporting, extensive monitoring and translation of the Hebrew-language Israeli media, independent examination of hundreds of videos, a recent pro-Israel film broadcast by the BBC and Paramount+ about the Supernova rave, official Israeli figures of the dead and a little-read UN Human Rights Council report.

We can conclude that during the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive (as Hamas called it):
•Israel expanded the use of its murderous “Hannibal Directive” – designed to prevent soldiers from being taken alive as prisoners of war – by killing many of its own civilians.
•The use of such “Hannibal” strikes are confirmed in a UN report published in June 2024.
•Fire from Israeli helicopters, drones, tanks and even ground troops was deliberately undertaken in order to prevent Palestinian fighters from taking live Israeli captives who could be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
•At the initiative of the local Gaza Division, “Hannibal” was carried out right away: less than an hour after the Palestinian offensive began.
•“Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza,” the division was ordered at 11:22 am.
•By midday, an unambiguous order was given from the high command of the Israeli military (the so-called “Pit” headquarters, deep under Israel’s Hakirya building in downtown Tel Aviv) to invoke the Hannibal Directive throughout the entire region, “even if this means the endangerment or harming of the lives of civilians in the region, including the captives themselves.”
•This bombing of Israeli captives by Israel continues in Gaza even today.
•Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in a December 2023 meeting with released captives and families of captives that they had been “under our bombardments” in Gaza.
•Hundreds of Israelis were likely killed by Israel itself in “Hannibal” targeting incidents as well as unintentional crossfire.
•Israel has been engaged in an aggressive cover-up of its crimes against its own people.

If Hamas made a miscalculation in the planning of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, it was perhaps to overestimate the value Israeli planners assigned to the lives of their own people.
Overestimating Israel’s humanity, Hamas may have been ignorant of this possibility in its two-year preparation and training for the offensive.
Within the first hour of the offensive, Israeli forces began shooting and bombing Israeli captives on their way to Gaza.
Over the past year, the group has repeatedly agreed to exchange Israeli prisoners for Palestinian prisoners.
But aside from the Israeli captives released during the four-day pause in November 2023 (including the children and non-combatant captives) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has adamantly refused to make a deal.
Instead, Israel has systematically bombed every part of the Gaza Strip – including areas where the Israeli captives are being held.
Israelis released in the November 2023 prisoner exchange have told the media that the main threat to their lives while they were held in Gaza was not Hamas, but Israeli attacks.

An investigation by Israeli newspaper Haaretz based on documents and testimonies of soldiers found evidence that these Hannibal attacks came at least as early as 7:18 am – only 52 minutes after the start of the offensive.
The Haaretz piece was published in English in July 2024.
But the paper lagged six months behind its competitor, Yedioth Ahronoth.
In January 2024, Yedioth’s weekend supplement ‘7 Days’ ran a landmark investigative piece laying out a timeline of the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive from the Israeli military perspective.
The paper has never published an official English translation of the article.
The Electronic Intifada remains the only publication in the world to release a full professional translation.
( Asa Winstanley, 07.10.2024 )  ..  electronicintifada.net 

The U.S. Is Using A British Airbase To Deliver Weapons To Israel.
U.S. special forces flights to Israel from a British airbase have doubled in frequency since Keir Starmer took over from Rishi Sunak as prime minister.
At least 13 U.S. planes used by special forces, nearly all of them unmarked, have gone from Britain’s sprawling airbase on Cyprus to Israel since Labour took office on July 5. 2024.
This works out at an average of one a week since Starmer won the election.
During Labour’s first month in office four CN-235 planes made the 340km journey from RAF Akrotiri to Tel Aviv.
In August 2024, five made the 50 minute flight.
The majority of flights stayed in Israel for around two hours before flying back to Akrotiri.
It is not known what they were dropping off or picking up.
It has, however, previously been revealed that the U.S. is using Akrotiri to deliver weapons to Israel.
The UK government has long refused to give any details of U.S. use of British territory to support the Israeli assault on Gaza.
( Matt Kennard, 10.10.2024 )  ..  declassifieduk.org

Israel Accused Of Dropping Bombs On Lebanon Concealed In Children’s Toys.
More than a million cluster bombs have been littered across southern Lebanon as a result of Israeli assaults on the territory over the years.
Since the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which saw unprecedented use of the widely banned weaponry, scores have been killed in Lebanon after coming across them.
Many children playing in the region have found these unexploded munitions.
Both Lebanon and Israel are among the 33 countries that have not signed the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (APMBC).
Israel occupied southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000 and during that period planted hundreds of thousands of landmines.
By the time they left, roughly 37,000 acres of Lebanon were thought to be contaminated with unexploded mines and improvised explosives planted by different parties to Lebanon’s civil war.
As of 2023, mine-clearing activities had cleared about 80% of this area of explosives.
However, according to Mine Action Review, work on clearing mines has been suspended as a result of the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon since October 2023.

But a much more sinister accusation has also circulated since the 1990s – that of bombs being dropped by Israeli aircraft in southern Lebanon intentionally concealed in children’s toys.
Lebanese newspaper L’Orient-Le Jour reported on the phenomenon in 1997, citing a number of examples including a nine-year-old girl who had her right hand shredded after finding a “big apple-green plastic jeep, with six big black wheels” that blew up in her hand after finding it near her village.
They also mentioned the example of a child who was left with severe burns after finding a booby-trapped flashlight and another girl who was killed after exclaiming “I found a doll!” before being blown up.
An officer of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) confirmed to AFP at the time that the objects were mainly dropped by helicopter.

In 1998 a letter from the Permanent Mission of Lebanon to the United Nations addressed to the secretary-general also repeated the claim that Israeli fighter planes had “attempted to kill children by dropping thousands of booby-trapped toys on Lebanese villages and towns”.
“The Israeli occupying forces have used this method through the years and continue to do so, the most recent example being when booby-trapped toys were dropped on the town of Nabatiyah, killing and injuring children and permanently disfiguring others,” he said.
For their part, Hezbollah at the time said among the items they found were a golden egg, fluorescent yellow cones, a Snoopy dog and a talking doll they said was set to explode when the cord was pulled.
A report by the UK Foreign Affairs Committee in 2000 warned of the dangers of unexploded bombs in southern Lebanon, mentioning the use of “booby-trapped toys, allegedly dropped by the Israeli airforce near Lebanese villages adjacent to the so-called security zone”.
( Alex MacDonald, 19.09.2024 )  ..  middleeasteye.net

Israeli Soldier Says His Unit Used Palestinians As Human Shields In Gaza.
The Israeli military has forced Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped houses and tunnels in Gaza to avoid putting its troops in harm’s way, according to an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldier and five former detainees who said they were victims of the practice.
The soldier, who said his unit held two Palestinian prisoners for the explicit purpose of using them as human shields to probe dangerous places, said the practice was prevalent among Israeli units in Gaza.
The soldier said: “We told them to enter the building before us. If there are any booby traps, they will explode and not us.”
It was so common in the Israeli military that it had a name: “mosquito protocol.”
The exact scale and scope of the practice by the Israeli military is not known.
But the testimony of both the soldier and five civilians shows that it was widespread across the territory: in northern Gaza, Gaza City, Khan Younis, and Rafah.
( CNN World, 24.10.2024 )  ..  edition.cnn.com

An Israeli Military Bulldozer Operator Admitted To Running Over The Bodies Of Palestinians Both Dead And Alive.
An Israeli soldier who likely committed atrocities in Gaza was so traumatised by his actions against Palestinians that he can no longer eat meat, CNN has reported.
In an interview with CNN, Guy Zaken, a military bulldozer operator, admitted to running over the bodies of Palestinians both dead and alive, causing him PTSD and bloody flashbacks.
However, the CNN report, which chose to highlight the ‘suffering’ of Israeli potential war criminals rather than victims, and failed to challenge the soldiers’ accounts of only killing ‘terrorists’, drew immediate outrage among media watchers who have long accused Western media of dehumanising Palestinians and only foregrounding the experiences of Israelis, including those who are likely committing mass murder.
Zaken’s colleague Eliran Mizrahi,, another operator of an Israeli army bulldozer, took his own life after participating in the atrocities in Gaza, according to the CNN report.
In a testimony to the Knesset, Zaken had earlier said that on many occasions, soldiers had to “run over terrorists, dead and alive, in the hundreds.”
Zaken told CNN he can no longer eat meat, as it reminds him of the gruesome scenes he witnessed from his bulldozer in Gaza, and struggles to sleep at night, the sound of explosions ringing in his head.
In April 2024, hundreds of bodies, including children, were discovered in a mass grave in Gaza’s Nasser hospital likely dug by Israeli bulldozers of the likes operated by Zaken and Mizrahi.
( The New Arab, 22.10.2024 )  ..  newarab.com

Journalist Disappeared From The Airwaves After Interviewing Israeli Spokesman.
Sangita Myska is a well-respected journalist, most recently winning Radio Presenter of the Year at the Asian Media Awards in 2023.
Until 24 April 2024, she was also a regular host on LBC.
Then she disappeared from the airwaves without explanation.
In the UK, we celebrate having a free press.
News that is fettered to a particular view point is more accurately considered propaganda.
In this respect, we may consider our press is superior and more trustworthy than news organisations in more autocratic countries.
Most readers would be horrified to think that our news outlets are censored if they stray from a particular line, especially if the line to be taken is dictated by a foreign state

In the middle of April 2024, Myska interviewed an Israeli Government Spokesman, Avi Hyman.
Many news sources had reported that Israel had attacked Iran’s consulate in Syria and, two weeks later, that Iran had launched 200 drones and missiles at Israel in retaliation.
Myska referred to the convention that consulates and embassies are considered sovereign territories of their Government, and asked Hyman whether Israel’s actions had therefore escalated an already fragile situation.
Hyman took issue with the question, specifically Myska’s use of the term consulate, despite her simply referring to what had been reported widely elsewhere.
Following that interview, Myska has not been on air.
( Jacqie Kohler, 30.05.2024 )  ..  sussexbylines.co.uk