Sir, – Lebanon is paying a terrible price for the failure of the international community to prevent Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As Sally Hayden makes clear, the “Gaza playbook” is being cruelly implemented in Lebanon including the targeting of hospitals, health centres, medical teams, water sources, first responders and aid workers (“On the front line, medics count their dead and keep going”, World, March 28th).
The impunity Israel enjoyed in Gaza as it targeted civilian infrastructure is evident in how Israel is conducting its war on Lebanon including the forced evacuation of more than a million citizens and killing of 1,100 people. All of this in a country with the world’s highest ratio of refugees per capita and seven years into a crippling economic crisis.
UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese has warned that “genocidal violence has expanded and metastasised”, and the war crimes being committed in Lebanon are clear evidence of that. This slide to barbarism will only stop when international law is respected and enforced.
The Irish Government continues to stall enactment of the long-promised Occupied Territories Bill, a modest first step toward sanctioning Israel. Unless and until Israel is sanctioned, its war crimes will continue. – Yours, etc,
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Stephen McCloskey,
Director,
Centre for Global Education,
Belfast.
