Last Friday, Israel attacked a meeting of Hezbollah leaders in the southern Beirut neighborhood of al-Qaem. It was an assassination operation following the detonation, days before, of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies that had been packed with explosives.
In al-Qaem, the Israeli military boasted of a “precise strike” in the “heart of Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut.” The language conjured images of a brazen operation against a well-protected military compound, a Pentagon of its kind, a wholly valiant endeavor.
In reality, this was a massive strike that completely leveled a residential building, one that killed Hezbollah leaders just as much as it did countless families inside. Many of those families remain under the rubble, with others still missing. ….more