Since Monday, 1,645 people have been injured and at least 492 people have died as a result of Israeli airstrikes into southern and eastern Lebanon, including 35 children.
UN special envoy on Palestine Francesca Albanese harshly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon were directed only at Hezbollah, deeming the declaration to be untrue.
In a social media post on Monday, Albanese wrote, “Like the Palestinians, the Lebanese know that you are lying” and accused Israel’s leadership of being “unscrupulous” and of using violence to uphold authority and forward a “settler-colonial agenda.”
It could be that Israeli society is “too hurt, traumatized, or indoctrinated” to see anything but non-stop fighting.
Inquiring as to why Netanyahu has not yet been brought to justice for war crimes, Albanese said that Lebanese and Palestinians might be asking “why you are not in the Hague yet,” alluding to the Dutch city that is home to the International Criminal Court and Justice.
Since the commencement of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has claimed over 41,400 lives—the bulk of them women and children—following a cross-border onslaught by the Palestinian organization Hamas on October 7 of last year, Hezbollah and Israel have been fighting across international borders.