You half-waken up in the morning and wonder: is this just a bad dream? But by the time you’re fully awake, you remember that it is all far too real – and need to know what new outrage has been perpetrated overnight.  And, inevitably, there is more.

The news today is that Israel has butchered 492 people, and injured over 1,200, in Lebanon. Just… like... that.

Israel claimed that the murderous airstrikes were on Hezbollah targets. No one in their right mind would believe them. It is a lying mantra that we are all far too familiar with at this stage.

“We are carrying out surgical strikes on known Hamas command posts,” they say. Hundreds of civilians are added to the death toll in Gaza. “We are engaged in precise strikes on Hezbollah arms depots,” they insist. Hundreds of innocent people are killed or injured in Lebanon.

Though they haven’t yet admitted responsibility, everyone knows that Israel was behind the attack on Lebanese men, women and children last week, in which pagers and walkie-talkies were booby-trapped and triggered to explode simultaneously, killing 42 people and wounding over 3,000 across Lebanon, some losing hands and arms. Their primary targets here, it’s true, were people connected to Hezbollah. But it would have been quite clear, in advance, to anyone with an ounce of intelligence, that the number of innocent people injured or killed would be huge. They didn’t give shit.

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IMMUNE FROM REPERCUSSIONS

The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Hasrallah said that a red line had been crossed with the pager assault. He has since been killed in an Israeli strike.

Most observers accept that the pager attack was potentially a breach of humanitarian law, and a violation of prohibitions on indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks. How would US politicians react if the mobile phones of American citizens were hacked and used by Russia as a means of blowing up members of the army – and they took thousands of civilians with them? And besides: what is Vladimir Putin thinking as he watches from afar? Memo to self, he writes: “Just witnessed an even more effective form of hybrid warfare. Must get tech team working on it.”

Right now, armed only with grim realism, we can say for sure that Israel has been playing the US for fools, feigning that they have been genuinely considering ceasefire proposals. Instead, they have upped the ante enormously, attacking Hezbollah in Yemen and moving towards a ground invasion of Lebanon. The logical conclusion is that the unconscionable barbarism will likely continue at least until the US Presidential election has taken place in November. If Trump wins, all bets are off. No one can forecast what even more grotesque insanity might ensue. But even if Kamala Harris comes out on top, while the tone might shift, there is no guarantee that things will change in any meaningful way.

Which makes the consistency of the position Ireland has adopted on the one-sided war both remarkable and impressive. In many ways President Michael D. Higgins has led the way. But the Taoiseach Simon Harris and the Tánaiste Micheál Martin have both spoken passionately and well on the issue. An immediate ceasefire is needed in Gaza and now Lebanon. The return of any remaining hostages being held by Hamas must be an essential part of any agreement (which, by the way, begs the question: what about the 3,360 Palestinians being held illegally by Israel under so called “administrative detention”?). So too is an Israeli commitment  that their murderous military campaign will not be restarted.

Aid trucks must be given unfettered access. Food is badly needed to fend off starvation. Medical facilities must be reinstated as quickly as possible to enable the treatment of injuries and illness. Children have to be cared for, supported and protected. There must be no room allowed for the brutal disregard for human life and human rights that we have seen over the past year.

In moments like this, in Ireland, we think of the famine and the devastation that was wrought on an entire country in the middle of the 19th Century, peaking in what became known as Black ‘47. Over a million people died in Ireland. Another million emigrated. The damage and destruction inflicted by the British government and landlord class, compounded by the impact of the potato blight, led to a period of long decline during which the population of the island of Ireland more or less halved, plummeting from 8.5million to 4.2million. As a result, Ireland is the only country in the world where the population is lower now than it was in the middle of the 19th Century.

We know what it is to be crushed under the brutal heel of a ruthless oppressor. We carry within us the memory of what it is to see our people die in vast numbers. Perhaps this is why our hearts scream at the injustice being visited on the people of Gaza and the West Bank – and now Lebanon. Or perhaps it is just common decency, and a refusal to conveniently look the other way...

But the Israeli Prime Minister, the utterly hypocritical and amoral Benjamin Netanyahu, will keep the murder machine going because it enables him to retain power. He needs the war to stay out of jail. He will stop at nothing – until he is stopped.

And so it goes on... and on. As of Monday evening last, the Israelis were ordering Lebanese citizens to leave their homes to “get out of harm’s way.” We knew then that they were not done with the butchery yet, instead promising that they would “speed up” the operation. Already over 100,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced. That figure is multiplying very quickly. And how many will be killed? In government circles in Givat Ram, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv they think: “The more the better.”

One of the most sickening elements in this increasingly one-sided series of bloody assaults, is that at every stage, Western governments have been warned about, or should have foreseen, what was going to happen – and done nothing.

“Residential areas and densely populated neighbourhoods were bombed, which means the human toll will be immense,” the Norwegian Refugee Council said in an emergency statement, about Israel’s attack on Lebanon. The release went on to reveal that families were given only a couple of hours to leave home.

“We urgently appeal for immediate de-escalation by all parties to the conflict,” the NRC added, “and for an end to indiscriminate attacks that destroy civilian homes and infrastructure…”

Like Ireland, they are a voice in the wilderness.

And what is the likelihood of that de-escalation happening? It is a big, fat, round nil, zero, nada, no chance. Having been given a pretext, Israel is now embarked on a new round of maximum destruction in Lebanon, representing the kind of collective punishment of innocent people that clearly falls into the category of war crime. But the Israeli government and army have committed so many war crimes at this stage – and patted themselves on the back, as the US, and its President Joe Biden, stood idly by – that they don’t care. They truly believe they are immune from any potential future repercussions.

GENOCIDAL CAMPAIGN IN GAZA

Let’s be clear about one thing: the Israel government is not the only despicable regime in the region. The poison of fundamentalist religion is everywhere. Hamas is a rotten, violent, racist, sexist, patriarchal, anti-woman organisation that was guilty of genocidal intent in the slaughter of innocent civilians in Israel on October 7. Hezbollah is no different. Both outfits believe that they are on God’s mission.

The sad and stupid thing is that the Zionists of Israel go to the same well for justification of their genocidal hatred, laying claim to the land – including Gaza and the West Bank – on the basis of the myths propagated in the Bible. And so the combatants in this crazily destructive conflict are effectively like two sides of the same twisted coin.

There is an extent to which you might sympathise with Hezbollah feeling that they could not stand idly by, watching the abominable scale of Israel’s murderous vengefulness in Gaza. And observing too the outrageous theft of land that is happening even as I write in the West Bank, with the full backing of the Israeli army. But that does not make their worldview any sweeter or more palatable. Nor does it mitigate the sheer stupidity of their militarily actions. Hezbollah has played its own sickening part in the escalating madness.

“The targeting of civilian areas in southern and eastern Lebanon and northern Israel escalates hostilities to a new and incredibly dangerous level,” the NRC statement continued. “Further escalation will drive violence and destruction at an immense scale and risk a full-scale regional conflict. It has never been more critical to agree on a ceasefire in Gaza, as well as for Lebanon and Israel to spare civilians across the region from further suffering and loss.”

None of this will happen. Israel is the country-scale equivalent now of a lunatic running loose in an American school armed with a machine gun and endless ammunition. Their firepower and defences – delivered religiously by the United States of America – are so vastly superior that they can rain bombs down on their enemies and acquire more at the drop of a hat.

To appeal to Benjamin Netanyahu on humanitarian grounds is completely and utterly beside the point. Make no mistake: he and his fellow racist, supremacist, fascistic, far right Cabinet colleagues actually want to inflict as much human carnage on those living in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon as possible. They have already deliberately carried out a genocidal campaign in Gaza, and they are flexing their muscles now to see how far they can extend it.

It isn’t just about people. They have also, in an concerted act of ruthless military vindictiveness against an entire people, damaged or wiped out almost the entire infrastructure of civilisation in Gaza, including hospitals (66%), medical care facilities (70%), schools (87.7%), libraries, housing units (62%), shops, bakeries, mosques, the electricity grid, and lots more besides.

“The productive basis of the economy has been destroyed,” a UN report published in May said. It estimated that the reconstruction of Gaza would cost between $40billion and $50billion. With the annihilation that has taken place since, the cost is now surely over $60billion – and rising. But with Netanyahu in power, things can only get worse.

And they will. I hope I am wrong but I see no light at the end of this tunnel of monstrousness. It is, however, essential that we put these realities down, for posterity to judge how world leaders failed to stop genocide. Again.

* Minor edits have been made to bring this article up date, since it was written, with events unfolding in Lebanon, and the wider region.

Illustration: David Rooney

• The Story of the Great Irish Famine by David Rooney is published by Gill Books. David Rooney is a regular contributor to Hot Press. He specialises in scraperboard illustrations. There is a permanent exhibition of Famine Artworks by David at the Irish Workhouse Centre, Portumna, Co. Galway.