Israel's campaign of terror in Lebanon takes another psychopathic turn

On 8 April, Israel’s military launched the psychopathically titled Operation Eternal Darkness against Lebanon, with predictably macabre results. In the span of a mere 10 minutes, Israel struck more than 100 sites across the country, killing more than 300 people and wounding at least 1,150.

The killing spree took place amid the regional ceasefire that had ostensibly taken hold after five weeks of cataclysmic war unleashed on Iran by the US and Israel.

Of course, Israel is not much one for ceasefires – and especially not when it comes to Lebanon. In just seven months following the so-called ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in November 2024, Israel not only continued to occupy territory in southern Lebanon but also kept up regular air strikes on the country, killing no fewer than 250 people. And things only went downhill from there.

Since yet another Israeli-Lebanese ceasefire was declared on 16 April, this time for 10 days, the Israelis – true to form – wasted no time in violating it by shelling various Lebanese villages in the south.

In its diabolical display last week, Israel switched up its usual modus operandi by carpet bombing Lebanon rather than semi-restricting its destruction to specific sectarian geographies – namely Shia-majority areas dehumanised as “Hezbollah strongholds” in the reductionist US-Israeli lexicon.

Consider the case of a Lebanese-Palestinian friend of mine who resides in an apartment building not far from the American University of Beirut. In times of normal Israeli savagery, the demographic makeup of his neighbourhood would have essentially rendered it off-limits to attack.

On “Black Wednesday”, however, the building became a target of “Eternal Darkness”, reportedly killing one child and five women, among them a Sri Lankan housekeeper.

Since yet another Israeli-Lebanese ceasefire was declared on 16 April, this time for 10 days, the Israelis – true to form – wasted no time in violating it by shelling various Lebanese villages in the south

According to my friend, the victims had moved into the building after fleeing their home in south Lebanon on account of the Israeli assault in 2024.

Israel has made no secret of its goal of fomenting sectarian strife in Lebanon and terrorising Lebanese communities into expelling Shia refugees of Israeli terror – and the attack on my friend’s building would seem to align pretty solidly with that strategy.

Not that Israeli terrorism in Lebanon is anything new.

Recall Israel’s 1978 invasion of its northern neighbour, which bore the far less dramatic title Operation Litani but killed more than 1,000 people in just a few days, in addition to kicking off a barbaric 22-year occupation of the southern section of the country.

Then came the 1982 invasion, which killed tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians and gave rise to Hezbollah, whose resistance to Israel was promptly branded as “terrorism” and would serve to justify Israel’s own terrorisation of Lebanon forevermore.

A prelude to ‘darkness’

In her Lebanese civil war memoir Beirut Fragments, Jean Said Makdisi – a Palestinian scholar and the sister of the late Edward Said – describes Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Beirut on 12 August 1982, in spite of the ceasefire that had officially gone into effect that very day: “It was as though the Israelis had … achieved a paroxysm of violent hatred; a lunatic, destructive urge to kill, to blot out every living thing, to leave nothing standing, to eradicate the city.”

A prelude, perhaps, to Eternal Darkness.

The list of lunatic paroxysms goes on. There was the 1996 Israeli massacre of 106 civilians sheltering at a United Nations compound in the village of Qana – not to be confused with the 2006 Israeli massacre of civilians in the same village.

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The latter episode occurred in the context of Israel’s 34-day war, in July and August of that year, which killed an estimated 1,200 people. Aside from bombing Beirut’s airport and major bridges and highways, the Israeli military confined most of its lunacy to the “Hezbollah strongholds”, razing many south Lebanese villages to the ground and turning the southern Beirut neighbourhood of Dahiyeh into a vast crater-scape.

Reflecting on the panorama, Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury echoed Said Makdisi’s troubled awe at Israel’s capacity for eradication: “It is devastation. It is a pure devastation that is like nothing you have ever seen … Ruins stretching to the horizon, challenging the sky. Stars are trembling, and so also are people’s eyes. Everything is tremulous and shimmering, everything is in suspension.”

A month after the war’s end, a female friend and I hitchhiked from Turkey through Syria to Lebanon, where we then spent months moving in and out of the rubble.

In accordance with the Lebanese tradition of warm hospitality, we were continuously picked up, driven around, carted back to people’s homes to be fed by their mothers and put up for the night, and regaled with all manner of gifts – including a giant wall clock emblazoned with the Hezbollah logo, which proved an interesting prop with which to hitchhike back to Turkey.

Twenty years later, Lebanon once again finds itself at the mercy of Israel’s quest for pure devastation, this time emboldened by its genocidal exploits in the Gaza Strip, where the slaughter proceeds apace despite the supposed ceasefire brokered last October.

Following the recent paroxysm of violent hatred, it remains to be seen what other terror tricks Israel has up its sleeve. After all, you don’t name an operation Eternal Darkness if you plan on wrapping it up any time soon.

Add to all this Israel’s eternal habit of deploying warplanes and drones to violate Lebanese airspace – even during periods of relative “peace” – and its regular production of sonic booms in Lebanese skies as a means of keeping the population terrorised.

Now, with an untold number of casualties still under the rubble, well over a million people displaced, and a land grab taking place in South Lebanon, the future looks dark indeed.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.