By Robert Inlakesh

What is remarkable is that Israel has now murdered more than double the number of people in Lebanon than it had in 2006, inflicting countless massacres across the country

On Tuesday, the Israeli military launched a series of airstrikes against the village of Qana in southern Lebanon, inflicting what is now being labeled the third Qana Massacre. 

At least 10 are said to have been killed, while 15 others were wounded. Although this was by no means the worst massacre Lebanon has suffered over the past few weeks, Qana’s significance cannot be undermined.

Israel has a long history of inflicting civilian massacres across Lebanon and making up excuses about them. The worst atrocities committed occurred during and after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when Israel murdered around 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese, the majority of whom were civilians. 

Yet, the most egregious atrocity, wedged into the minds of the entire Arab World until this day, was the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacre. 

Another Front – Israel’s Attacks on United Nations are Tantamount to War

After Israel had forced the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) fighters to flee Lebanon to Tunisia, the refugee camps across the country were left defenseless and were largely composed of women and children. 

It was then that under the supervision of the Israeli military, who looked on from watchtowers, their allied fascist Phalange militia set upon Sabra and Shatila, mass murdering up to 3,500 innocent people. 

Israel lied about its knowledge of the event, prior to evidence emerging that its soldiers looked on and that they may have even opened fire into the camp, calling the allegations of their involvement “blood libel” and “anti-semitism”.

However, in more recent memory, another massacre is also wedged in the minds of the Lebanese and Arab peoples, that is the legacy of the Qana massacres.

In 1996, Israeli artillery fire directly targeted a United Nations compound in the village Qana, a site where some 800 Lebanese displaced civilians were sheltering. The attack murdered at least 106 Lebanese civilians, along with four UN peacekeepers, injuring around 120 others. 

This attack came at a time when Israeli forces, along with their proxy force known as the South Lebanon Army (SLA) illegally occupied southern Lebanon and gave them full knowledge of the area. Israel then lied about the presence of Hezbollah forces at the UN compound, which was later debunked.

Sheikh Naim Qassem – Who is Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary General?

Then, in 2006, Israel committed what is known as the Second Qana massacre. The airstrikes killed at least 31 civilians, almost half of whom were children. Despite this massacre not being the most horrifying in terms of the scale of the dead, the images of the mutilated slain children stirred international outrage. What happened next was, however, the reason why the massacre is still wedged into people’s minds.

Not only did Israel again falsely claim that Hezbollah fighters were present at the site they targeted, an allegation that later fell apart, but they went a step further. Israel officially claimed that the bodies of the children who were displayed on live TV, by the media who arrived at the scene of the massacre, were perhaps dug up from a local graveyard and placed there to make Israel look bad. Evidently, this was an outrageous lie and an insult to the wound inflicted upon the people of Qana.

What is remarkable is that Israel has now murdered more than double the number of people in Lebanon than it had in 2006, inflicting countless massacres across the country, yet none of these massacres are even making it to the front pages/top stories of the international media. 

In fact, the coverage given to four Israeli soldiers, who were killed by a Hezbollah precision drone strike on a military base, considered to be one of the most legitimate targets during war, has far exceeded the coverage given to any civilian massacre in Lebanon. 

The somber tone to Western media stories on the incident, combined with the displaying of the soldiers’ photos and reading out their names on air, begs the question as to why these media outlets don’t put a disclaimer that they are a corporate public relations wing of the Israeli army.

To Understand Israel’s Ambitions, You Need Only Listen To Netanyahu’s UN Speeches

Outlets from Sky News to Canada’s National Post, described the soldiers as “teenagers”, despite them being legally defined as adults due to them all being 19 years of age and members of what is considered to be an elite Israeli military brigade.

While Israel argues that it is legal for them to drop hundreds of tonnes of explosives on densely populated civilian neighborhoods in Lebanon, without providing proof of any Hezbollah presence, the Western corporate media gives legitimacy to their claims and undermines the reports of civilian deaths in Lebanon. 

The third Qana Massacre may have been headline news if it happened during any other conflict, yet the genocide in Gaza has almost made the global public immune to seeing a daily stream of dead, dismembered, burned and decapitated babies. 

So, the Western corporate media acts according to what we could call its “Arab Standard”, which has been set at around 17,000 murdered children in Gaza. The “Israeli Standard” is to report in a somber way the deaths of soldiers at military bases. 

At this point, it is clear that Western corporate media is racist to its core and clearly views the lives of Israelis as valuable, while its view of Arabs is that they are non-humans that only deserve coverage when their death tolls break new records.

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.