Israel has entered the airspace beyond the Lebanon border with impunity, yet is in uproar over the existence of Ayoub.
by
Belen FernandezBelen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine
Beirut, Lebanon – Driving in south Lebanon last week, I stopped at the former United Nations compound in the village of Qana where 106 people perished under Israeli military attack in April of 1996.
An area resident offered me a small photograph album to peruse, containing relevant scenes from the massacre. First came pre-attack images of civilian families that had sought refuge in the compound from Israeli shelling; next came images of buildings on fire, followed by charred corpses and headless babies.
As The Independent’s Robert Fisk revealed at the time, the operation was facilitated by an Israeli surveillance drone, captured in video footage recorded by a UN soldier. The presence of the drone naturally nullified Israel’s argument that the massacre had been a mistake.
Introducing Ayoub
There has now been cross-border drone movement in the opposite direction, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah confirming responsibility for the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) shot down earlier this month over Israel’s Negev desert. According to Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, the drone was an Iranian model assembled in Lebanon and was called Ayoub after one of the organisation’s martyrs.
Of course, Ayoub’s flight resulted in nothing as nefarious as headless babies. Israeli officials speculated that the drone may have been dispatched to photograph the Dimona nuclear research centre, the euphemism for Israel’s illicit nuclear arsenal. It also enabled Nasrallah to deliver one of his signature lengthy speeches about the capabilities of Hezbollah and the vulnerabilities of the enemy, and provided fodder for those in Israel preparing for the next war with Lebanon.
As the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported in August of this year, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has warned Lebanon that any provocation by Hezbollah against the Jewish state will now merit retaliation against the nation as a whole. Given Israel’s horrific track record with regard to distinguishing between civilians and combatants – and its habit of directly targeting civilian infrastructure – we might be forgiven for failing to discern how Netanyahu’s warning constitutes an updated policy rather than a reiteration of business as usual.
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Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, released by Verso in 2011. She is a member of the Jacobin Magazine editorial board, and her articles have appeared in the London Review of Books blog, AlterNet and many other publications.