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Robin Andersen Informed Comment
As Israel destroys villages in Southern Lebanon committing crimes of war, US media use the same Gaza genocide playbook. Hezbollah is simply being substituted for Hamas.
Israel has become a master at twisting international law to its own purposes. It continues to successfully sell its distortions justifying ethnically cleansing in Southern Lebanon, as the US press relentlessly parrot IDF talking points, just like they did in Gaza.
On April 28, a videotape of Benjamine Netanyahu was posted on Instagram as he proclaimed “Today, we blew up a massive Hezbollah terrorist tunnel. We are destroying their terrorist infrastructure, we are killing scores of terrorists, and we are not done yet.” He continued stating they still needed to destroy the drone threat, so the killing would continue. Yet the following day Haaretz published the words of an Israeli soldier who admitted that their mission in Southern Lebanon is not about targeting Hezbollah’s infrastructure, it is “to destroy villages and prevent inhabitants from returning home.” As AJ+ reported, they are “systematically destroying everything, including civilian areas.” The soldier admitted that “the only mission is to continue the destruction…there is no other mission.” Haaretz added “The IDF believes this systematic destruction of Shi’ite villages will prevent villagers from returning home.” But the New York Times has chosen to follow Israeli talking points, consistently reporting the illegal invasion of Lebanon as a mission to create a security “buffer zone,” not to kill civilians. For example, on March 22, the paper reported that “Israel Katz, the defense minister, said he ordered troops to destroy more bridges and buildings in southern Lebanon, stoking worries that Israel was widening a military-controlled buffer zone there.”
Though the article was ostensibly about Isreal’s demolition of civilian infrastructure, the Times was not worried about ethnic cleansing, which Israel is clearly doing in Lebanon. As Mint Press News wrote, even as the New York Times acknowledged that a deliberate targeted campaign had been launched against Lebanese Shi’ite Muslims, the Times continued with the lexicon calling it “Israel’s buffer zone & security barrier.”
How Israeli Distorts International Law with Security Discourses
Israel’s “right to exist” is an ironclad assertion, even as the county has no distinct, yet ever- expanding boundaries, and is continuing its landgrabs to Lebanon to fulfill its prophecy of a “Greater Israel.” Security has become the buzz word, just as it was used to destroyed Gaza by calling it self-defense and employing the logic of strategic necessity. They were only targeting Hamas “terrorist” when killing Palestinian civilians. Hezbollah is simply being substituted for Hamas.
They get away with this by what we might call a “loophole” in the Geneva Conventions. The main stumbling block is a key word used to define genocide, the word “intent.”
The definition of genocide, developed after WWII and over the latter half of the twentieth century, was formulated precisely to ensure that attempts to exterminate an entire people would never happen again. Yet the world, or what we have come to call the “international rules-based order,” (and now the Epstein Class) have failed to stop it. Frustrated by the many blocks preventing the use of the word genocide, and therefore the actions needed to stop it, humanitarian actors have been clarifying its definition. Genocide is defined as acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The vexing word here is “intent.” As Francesca Albanese has said, “it’s difficult to prove intent,” but most importantly, it’s not necessary. People have asked her, “why don’t you go with war crimes and crimes against humanity” instead. Albanese explained because “It’s not just a collection of war crimes and crimes against humanity they [Gazans] are experiencing.” This is an entire people being destroyed, people who are tied to the land, who have an identify, and have been displaced from their homeland now for 77 years.
The problem is genocidal “intent” has been confused with a requirement to prove “criminal motives.” But genocide was never about proving “motives,” Albanese rightly said. Asserting the need to prove “intent” allowed Israeli propagandists to design messaging claiming Israeli bombs were not “intended” to target civilians but rather were motivated by their goal to kill Hamas fighters or “commanders,” and destroy Hamas “headquarters.” But as scholars and critics are now pointing out, the intent to commit genocide is simpler than that; it is the “the determination to destroy,” which is fully evident in Gaza, and has become so in Lebanon. When Israel dropped massive bombs in densely populated areas, the intent was to destroy. The so-called “motive”—to kill Hamas fighters—was a deliberate distraction designed to instill doubt, just like questioning the Gaza body counts, nothing more. Doctors Against Genocide agree, adding that genocide can be identified without having to discuss “intention,” because genocide is evident when doctors treat patients. “A doctor knows mass murder when they see it.”
If we are to draw out Israel’s logic of the absurd, largely adopted by the establishment press, it goes like this: Because Hamas was “embedded” in every building, refugee camp, hospital, school, humanitarian safe zone, heritage site and mosque, the Israeli military was forced to destroy, starve, torture, kill in great numbers, or assassinate individually, any civilian in Gaza as a security necessity. This was because, according to Israel, “terrorists” were implanted in every aspect of civilian infrastructures, from doctors, medical staff, teachers, aid workers, and journalists—they are all “terrorists.” Israel got away with destroying Al Shifa hospital, then Gaza’s entire health care system, by falsely claiming that terrorist Hamas fighters had a headquarters in the tunnel beneath the hospitals, just like Hezbollah now has tunnels in Lebanon, that Netanyahu claims as “motives” for his ethnic cleaning. Few in the press have tried to untangle Israeli fabrications about targeting Hamas or Hezbollah. At every juncture Israel’s genocidal violence is enclosed in this discourse of false strategic necessity.
Destroying civilian infrastructure by mandate could not have been more explicit when in January 2025, eight members of Israel’s Knesset demanded that the IDF destroy all energy sources, including fuel, solar systems, generators, and power lines. They demanded that Israeli forces destroy all food sources, including warehouses, water, and water pumps. By early March 2025, Netanyahu would order a complete blockade of all aid into Gaza. Early on it was clear the Irael’s only motivation has been to kill Gazans.
Portraying Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Lebanon as a fight against Hezbollah, worked so well in Gaza that media are using it again in Lebanon to deny its crimes of war.
Robin Andersen is Professor Emerita in the Department of is Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza (Orbooks, 2026).
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