As the world entered the 11th week of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, President Trump rejected Iran’s response to the latest U.S. peace proposal, acknowledging that the ceasefire is “on life support.” Iran’s counteroffer had demanded the release of frozen assets and an end to the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports. The failure of peace talks increased oil prices with little hope the Strait of Hormuz would soon reopen to oil tankers and commercial shipping.
Just days after the U.S. and Israel launched their Feb. 28 war on Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah. Although the two countries reached a temporary ceasefire agreement in mid-April, Israel continues to launch deadly airstrikes on Beirut and occupy southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s health ministry reports that since March 2, Israeli strikes have killed nearly 3,000 people across Lebanon and displaced 1.2 million.
In the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military and radical Jewish settlers have killed over 1,000 Palestinians since October 2023, in a campaign of ethnic cleansing and violent land takeovers. Despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Gaza that took effect in October last year, Israel has conducted near-daily attacks killing 850 Palestinians in addition to more than 72,000 killed there since Oct. 7, 2023. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with James Zogby, co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute, who examines the dire situation in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza under continuing Israeli attack—horrific violence that is largely ignored by U.S. corporate media.
JAMES ZOGBY: I call it an Israeli definition of ceasefire as “You cease and we fire” and that’s how they’ve been operating. There’s supposed to be a ceasefire in Lebanon since October. Every day, there were bombings or military assaults on different Lebanese targets. The new ceasefire after the most current round of fighting has actually been more devastating. Hundreds have died. Entire Lebanese villages have been leveled.
The New York Times has a very powerful photo presentation of the villages before and after—12 of them that have been pretty much demolished. They’ve done to Lebanon in the south what they did to Gaza. A million people have been expelled from their homes and like I said, the home is being destroyed and hundreds are being killed and there’s no attention paid.
And part of the problem is a racism that exists still in the American mind where Israelis are human beings and Arabs are objects. They’re not personalities. They’re not people with families and people who love them and personalities that have to be attended to. So an Israeli hostage gets sympathy. A hundred Palestinians dying in a building is just a body count.
It’s not unlike the way we had Vietnam, where American soldiers were people. We knew their families, we knew their mothers, we saw the families cry. Vietnamese were like 10,000 a week being killed. Who cared? And it’s pretty much that way. Israelis are human beings and Palestinians are objects and Lebanese are in the same way. Actually, it’s been disturbing to me because I have long been on the left of American politics from my Jackson days through my Bernie days and I see the left finally understanding Palestinians, but not appreciating the loss of life and the loss of the properties of the Lebanese. They just aren’t seen in the same way.
SCOTT HARRIS: James, the Lebanese health ministry said just this past Sunday, Israeli attacks over just 24 hours killed 51 people, including two medical workers. Since March 2nd, Israeli strikes have killed nearly 3,000 people across Lebanon and 1.2 million people have been displaced. These stats are just horrifying. And I wonder if you feel that the impunity with which Israel operated under on Gaza—judged by many international jurists as a genocide—that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been given the green light, you think, to commit similar crimes in Lebanon because they weren’t held accountable for what took place in Gaza?
JAMES ZOGBY: Of course. And basically, look, while successive American administrations have been responsible for this impunity, Biden administration really upped the ante on that. They turned a complete blind eye to what Israel was doing. They gave them the go-ahead. I had meetings with the secretary of state, meetings with the National Security Council adviser. They were all unwilling—not only to condemn—but they didn’t see anything wrong with what Israel was doing.
And they continued to say, Israel’s got to finish the job. What does “finish the job” mean? When you’re talking about an occupied people who are being strangled to death in a situation in Gaza that was itself genocidal even before the Israeli assault, it was an open-air prison camp. People couldn’t get out, nothing could come in unless the Israelis let it in. They were limited to the amount of caloric intake that Israel deemed was necessary for survival. And those conditions existed for 20 years.
And then you know, the Biden administration let Israel have its way completely in what they did in Gaza and never a critical word other than a kind of a cautionary note. But not a condemnation, not a stopping of aid, not a “distancing ourselves” or saying, “We’re going to either take punitive measures or distance ourselves from you.” We didn’t do it.
Trump inherited it and of course he has no compassion for anybody. He let it happen and Israel went full throttle. So yeah, the ground was laid for Lebanon, was prepared for Lebanon by what happened in Gaza. And that sense of impunity is the fault of American policy and it’s actually had devastating consequences. If the last couple of administrations have done anything, they’ve made international law irrelevant. It no longer exists. This is the law of the jungle. Power wins, rights lose. And we’ve seen it operating now for many years, but it’s now with the Biden administration and with the Trump administration. It’s been consolidated into a fact.
For more information, visit the American Arab Institute at aaiusa.org and James Zogby’s website at jameszogby.com.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with James Zogby (24:80) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. To subscribe to our podcasts, email newsletters, our Trump authoritarian playbook Substack or social media, subscribe here.
Subscribe to our Weekly Summary
