Since the start of December, the people of southern Lebanon have endured a familiar, brutal rhythm of violence. Despite the empty diplomatic theater around a UN-monitored ceasefire, U.S.-backed Israeli forces have continued their campaign of destruction against southern Lebanese towns and villages. This latest phase confirms a grim, long-known truth: U.S. imperialism, regardless of the party in the White House, demands the subjugation of West Asia at the hands of its Zionist proxy, the terror state known as “Israel.”
The so-called “ceasefire” announced over a year ago by then-President Joe Biden was always a fraud — a public relations stunt for a Western audience that allowed the grinding war of attrition to continue. That attrition escalated into a concentrated assault. Israeli warplanes and artillery have struck over 120 confirmed targets in southern Lebanon. The targets, as always, are described by the occupation’s spokespeople as “Hezbollah military infrastructure.” The reality on the ground tells a different story.
Three towns were subjected to severe Zionist airstrikes in early December of 2025. On Jan. 3, a series of strikes leveled six residential buildings in the town of Blida — the same town where Zionist troops murdered municipal worker Ibrahim Salameh in his sleep just months ago. Jan. 11 saw another round of brutal strikes against southern Lebanon, targeting the town of Kfar Hatta. The strikes killed several people and damaged multiple buildings.
The fascist logic is clear: Depopulate the south through terror, making life unsustainable for those who dare to remain on their ancestral land. Farmlands, olive groves, and livestock have been systematically targeted, a deliberate strategy of economic and environmental warfare designed to break the will of the people.
In early December, the Trump administration fast-tracked an emergency shipment of 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs and dozens of new combat drones to the Israeli military, weapons explicitly suited for the type of deep-strike operations being conducted in Lebanon and previous strikes on Iran.
The manufactured narrative to justify military action in the region has also shifted. No longer are there feigned concerns about a “regional war.” Instead, Trump’s special envoy, Tom Barrack, has been publicly pressuring the Lebanese government to accept a “new security reality” — a euphemism for the permanent disarmament of Hezbollah and the effective surrender of Lebanese sovereignty to the U.S. and Israel. The carrot of $230 million in “military assistance” is dangled alongside the stick of continued bombardment, an attempt to bribe the Lebanese state into becoming an enforcer of its own occupation. U.S. imperialism offers only two choices: collaboration or collective punishment.
The path forward is not through concessions to the U.S. war machine or its European junior partners, who are complicit in this slaughter through their silence and arms sales. The path forward is through unwavering global solidarity with the Lebanese people and their right to defend their land.
Every bomb that falls on southern Lebanon is made in the U.S., funded by U.S. dollars, and dropped with the full political approval of the U.S. ruling class and military industrial complex.
The blood of Lebanese children is on the hands of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump, and the capitalist arms dealers whose stock prices soar with each explosion. To stand against this war is to stand against U.S. imperialism itself.
Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist.
