Reuters reports: “Israeli warplanes carried out late on Thursday their most intense strikes on southern Lebanon in nearly a year of war, heightening the conflict between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah amid calls for restraint. … The intense barrage followed attacks earlier in the week attributed by Lebanon and Hezbollah to Israel that blew up Hezbollah radios and pagers, killing 37 people and wounding about 3,000 in Lebanon.”

MOHAMAD BAZZI, mohamad.bazzi@nyu.edu, @BazziNYU
Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University. He recently wrote the pieces “The war in the Middle East is escalating fast — and Biden has squandered too many chances to stop it” and “Kamala Harris should do what Joe Biden won’t: commit to actually reining in Israel” for the Guardian.

Bazzi posted on X on Wednesday: “I did another round of phone calls today to check on family and friends across Beirut and the Dahiyeh [a suburb]. On almost every call, I could hear ambulance sirens wailing in the background.”

He recently wrote: “One of the Biden administration’s biggest mistakes over the past few months has been to frame the protracted ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel as only focused on Gaza, without recognizing that all of Iran’s allies in the region, especially Hezbollah and the Houthis, have made clear that they too would stand down once the fighting stops in Gaza.”

Dave DeCamp at AntiWar.com just published the piece “U.S. Officials Say There Will Be No Gaza Ceasefire Deal Before Biden’s Term Ends.” See his news summary.

UN whistleblower Craig Mokhiber posted on X: “If a mass terrorist attack like that perpetrated by Israel in Lebanon occurred in any western country, western leaders would be marching arm-in-arm through the streets of Paris, western media would provide non-stop, tearful coverage, the UK flag would be at half-staff for weeks, and the U.S. Air Force would be bombing the perpetrators (and several other countries). But this is Israel, the country above all law.”

Bazzi has also written that Harris should “declare that she will suspend arms shipments to Israel because American law requires the U.S. to halt weapons transfers to militaries that are committing human rights violations. … A majority of Americans have told public opinion polls that they are opposed to arming Israel indefinitely, as Biden is doing.”