Middle East Eye reports: “Hezbollah denies responsibility for attack in occupied Golan Heights, but Israeli officials insist on retaliation. … Israeli and American officials said that Hezbollah was responsible for the attack. The Lebanese armed group has denied involvement. … Israel has killed 527 people in Lebanon since [October], according to an AFP tally, including at least 104 civilians. …
“In Majdal Shams, the Syrian Druze town under Israeli occupation since 1967, some reports have cast doubt over the [Israeli] army’s claim of a Hezbollah attack. Al Araby TV’s correspondent says she has spoken to an Israeli rescuer, who told her eyewitnesses believe the rocket came from Israel’s Iron Dome system rather than Hezbollah. …
“Residents of the town, many of whom have refused Israeli citizenship, kicked out several Israeli politicians from the funeral, including members of the Israeli parliament and far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.” [See video from The Cradle.]
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that “every indication is that indeed the rocket was from Hezbollah,” and that Washington stood by “Israel’s right to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks.”
Similarly, Vice President Kamala Harris’s National Security Advisor Phil Gordon said she “has been briefed and is closely monitoring Hezbollah’s horrific attack on a soccer field in Majdal Shams in northern Israel yesterday which killed a number of children and teenagers. She condemns this horrific attack and mourns for all those killed and wounded.”
As’ad AbuKhalil said: “Imagine a state slaughtering children on a daily basis for over nine months while pretending to care about children in Majdal Shams. You have to be a fraud to believe the pretension.”
Available for interviews:
SAREE MAKDISI, [currently in Lebanon] sareemakdisi@proton.me, @sareemakdisi
Makdisi is professor of English at UCLA. His books include Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial and Reading William Blake.
BASHIR SAADE, bashir.saade@stir.ac.uk, @bashir_saade
Saade is author of Hizbullah and the Politics of Remembrance (Cambridge University Press).
