Deja Vu: Israel Wages Another War on Lebanon

Sonya Meyerson-Knox spent 16 years in Beirut, Lebanon working as a journalist and for U.N. agencies. She discusses the new war in Lebanon that began after the United States and Israel attacked Iran February 28, 2026, describing the war within the context of previous Israeli wars on Lebanon. She views Israel's current scorched-earth campaign as not only an attack on Hezbollah but also an attempt to destroy Lebanon's pluralistic social fabric. She says Israel has long coveted Lebanon's land and resources and seen Lebanon as part of a vision of a Greater Israel that goes back to the early founders of Zionism.

Transcript

Q. My guest today is Sonya Myerson Knox, now the communications director for Jewish Voice for Peace. She joined JVP after 16 years in Beirut, Lebanon, where she worked as a journalist, as well as in humanitarian relief and international development. During her years in Lebanon, she worked with several UN agencies and in Palestinian refugee camps. She has a master's degree from the American University of Beirut. She's appeared most recently on CNN and Al Jazeera. 

Sonya, welcome to Understanding Israel Palestine. 

A. Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

Q.  Sonya, this must be a wrenching time for you hearing and reading about the devastation going on in Lebanon where Israel is applying the same scorched earth tactics it's used in Gaza. We'll talk about the war, but first, would you share how you happen to go to Beirut and what kept you there for 16 years?

A.  It's absolutely a heart-wrenching time for anyone who has people or loved ones in Lebanon right now. I was lucky enough to be able to spend 16 years there because I went there first during my junior year abroad, which I spent in Cairo, and a friend and I spent some time traveling around the Middle East. The US State Department had just re-allowed Americans to get visas to Lebanon, and we went to a country that was just coming out of the bitter dregs of a 15-year civil war and discovered a society that was gripping life with both hands and utterly un intimidated and refusing to be dominated by the fact that it had an Israeli occupation in the south, by the fact that it had foreign soldiers as well from Syria, at various points in time had other Arab armies in it, by the horrors of an internal civil war, the economic hardships. All of that was visible. And yet this was a society and this was a people all across the country that was just like, we are back and we are going to live our lives to our fullest capacity. And it was absolutely captivating. 

So after I graduated from college and worked a little, I was able to get a job as a journalist at the local English language newspaper, The Daily Star, which then was actually even being distributed by The International Herald Tribune back when that was a newspaper. So that's what brought me there. And, I stayed because I was lucky enough to be welcomed and embraced by so many people --Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, everyone that was in Lebanon -- and because it was a place that I always felt like I was learning. Every time I went to a different city or a village, every time I met somebody, I was hearing another layer of what their life and existence had been. It was eye-opening. It was captivating. I was treated with incredible kindness and generosity that my own government's actions certainly didn't warrant. I remain incredibly lucky and blessed and heartbroken over what's happening to Lebanon right now. 

Q. Most Americans don't know much about Lebanon. Its government and its unique sectarian power-sharing system. It's a parliamentary republic that divides political power among 18 religious communities. The president of Lebanon is always a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of Parliament Shia Muslim. How has the confessional nature of the state worked out for Lebanon? How does it reflect Lebanese society? How does it affect politics and Lebanon in general? 

A. The confessional structure of the Lebanese government is both a powerful reflection of Lebanese society, which is and has been for hundreds of years, if not longer, always a pluralistic society. Lebanon has been the heart of trade roots from the Phoenician and the Roman culture in Romans' empire onward. And has always had, whether it was the Crusades coming through or the tail end of the Silk Trade, et cetera,  it's always had a pluralistic society with multi confessions, multi-religious beliefs and ethnicities. 

The Lebanese governmental system, the sectarian balance was the creation of the French mandate and the remnants of the colonial power. When France left, it set this up. And it is both a rigid power-sharing structure that attempts to formalize the inherent pluralistic nature of Lebanese society and it's based on a population census that wasn't even accurate when it was taken almost a hundred years ago, I believe. And there hasn't been one since. And the fact that cements power structures allegedly based on a demographic reality that is not the truth. And that like in every country in the world, political power is balanced by economic power and economic interests, and of course, military and geopolitical interests. The sectarian power sharing works in Lebanon until it doesn't. And so that was of course what led to the civil war along with many other events and influences, including having to have an expansionist Israeli state on its southern border.  I will say that It is not a perfect system -- I don't think almost any government is. But that it is an attempt to ensure that every religious and ethnic community, no matter how small  --Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, at one time, Jews were listed in that when there was a Lebanese Jewish population that was sizable, all the Druze, et cetera --  all of the different pieces of Lebanese social fabric have a vote, have a seat, have a voice. That matters. And that matters quite a lot in a society that is in its coorest existence, I would argue pluralistic in ways that are not related to power sharing. 

For example, the most desirable neighborhoods in Beirut to live in are invariably mixed neighborhoods. They are not neighborhoods that are only Christian or only Muslim. It was famous for people to hold giant Ramadan iftars when they end their fasting at the end of the day. And you always invite your non-Muslim friends to that. Christmas. I was astounded my first couple years there because Christmas was celebrated everywhere and every neighborhood.  You walk into what you would think would be a traditional. Muslim neighborhood and there's a Christmas tree in the window and stuff. People were like doing secret Santas in workplaces and I was like, but you are veiled and clearly an observant Muslim woman and you're doing a secret Santa trade with me. So there's a lot going on.

Q. I was interested that you said in this brief exchange of emails we had setting up this conversation that you thought Israel was trying to destroy Lebanon's social fabric. Could you talk about that?

A.  I deeply believe that is part of the Israeli military and government's agenda. I'm not original in thinking that, and that's not the first time. But before I explain to you why I think that's what's happening right now, I want to take a half step back into history if that's okay. I would argue that the founders of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement that was behind it, has always been threatened by Lebanon and has always wanted Lebanese land. Theodore Herzl and the first World Zionist Conference were distributing maps that show Israel's borders going well into Lebanese territory above the Latin River. During 1948 into 1949, when the Nakba happened and the state of Israel iestablished, it immediately sends its paramilitary and then military, the Israeli military, across Lebanese borders, occupies 15 Lebanese villages, commits the Hula massacre in one of the villages where entire families are herded into houses that are set on fire. And stays there for six months until the international pressure forced a withdrawal to the previously understood demarcation line. T his is not a new thing and then has continued, as we know, to occupy Lebanese land multiple times and to bomb Lebanon constantly.

 And obviously there's a tit for tat and there's a back and forth, and whether it's Palestinian fighters or Hezbollah fighters or communist fighters doing cross-border raids and Israel responding. And it is a back and forth across the border. But I will argue though, that one of the main, and to me the most deeply ingrained foundational reasons why the state of Israel is interested in not just claiming Lebanese territory but tearing up Lebanese social fabric, is because Zionism is inherently anti-pluralistic. The way that Zionism, at least as it has been interpreted by the founders of the state of Israel and by the current government.  Zionism is the excuse for which we have in Israel an apartheid regime that legally, in the highest law of the land in Israel, places Jews over other religions, places the language of Hebrew over other languages. We see this in the treatment of Palestinians, both citizens of Israel and those living in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

 But it also flattens out Jewish identity to be only Jewish, so Arab Jews, when they come to Israel, are second-class citizens unless they drop all of that and just become Israelis. This argument that Zionism is predicated on is that we as Jews are all alone, can trust no one and therefore have to be on top by ourselves. And that means everyone's the same. You look at Lebanon, which is the exact opposite. It's pluralistic, it's messy, it's a thriving democracy that's constantly struggling and constantly in crisis and where people have voices and the press is free and massively different identities are all functioning the same place. This is almost antithetical to what Zionism is saying and to have so close an alternate state with an alternate model, I think is incredibly threatening to the Israeli government, let alone that it wants Lebanese water and it wants Lebanese agrarian land, and it wants Lebanese offshore gas reserves. 

Israel, the Israeli government at least, is well aware that when the state of Israel is founded, Lebanese Jews didn't leave. In fact, the Lebanese Jewish population between 1948 and 1950 doubled because the Jews that were being terrorized out of living in Egypt or in Baghdad and in Iraq for a variety of reasons didn't want to go to Israell, so they went to Lebanon. The Lebanese Jewish population only started decreasing in the '60s, and then during the civil war. 

Q. I want to ask you about the Palestinian community in Lebanon. You mentioned that you worked in Palestinian refugee camps. How have the Palestinians been treated in Lebanon? What's been their status?

A.  That is a heartbreaking story. Some Palestinians were embraced immediately, particularly if they were a Palestinian Christian, because the Christian denomination has been continually trying to shore up its numbers to justify its political power. Obviously when Palestinians were forced to flee in the Nakba, if they were able to hold onto any aspect of their economic wealth, that made it much easier to enter Lebanese society. And some of them also gained citizenship. But the vast majority of the a hundred thousand Palestinian refugees who were forced into Lebanon fleeing the Israeli paramilitaries never receive citizenship and still are not citizens. What that means is for a long time there were certain professions, particularly white collar professions, that they were not able to access because they could not get membership in the guilds or the professional unions like lawyers or whatever that was required. That law has changed, but it's still an ongoing process. It's meant that they don't have anyone representing them in the seats of power. It's also meant that they were originally settled as it were by the burgeoning U.N. humanitarian response. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is the United Nations' very first attempt at a humanitarian response. And the rest of the UN's humanitarian response, whether it's the UNHCR or the World Food Program, et cetera, doesn't cover Palestinians. Only unrecovered Palestinians to put into these special camps in Lebanon. They don't receive government services, and so they struggle, and some of them are able to take advantage of the extent to which there is economic and societal fluidity in Lebanon and achieve great, wonderful things and many others are forced to scrape by in ways that are incorrigible.

Q. Israel has invaded Lebanon seven times, you said. Four times since 1978. I want to ask you later if there's time to, to talk about,what commonalities exist in those wars, , but set the scene,if you would, for this particular war beginning, perhaps with the Israeli war on Gaza that followed the Hama attacks. Do you want to start it there? Or I'll leave it to you where you choose to start that because how wars begin is always a little tricky. 

A. Where does one start the clock? I would actually like to start the clock slightly further back. During the Lebanese civil war, Israel occupied southern Lebanon. It laid siege to Beirut for over two months, I believe. And when it left Beirut, when it left much of the inner fighting of the civil car, it laid siege and occupied the Latani River south. So a large chunk of southern Lebanon was completely under Israeli control. They had their own prisons there. They had a proxy militia in there, et cetera. That ends in 2000 in May, in large part because of local resistance of which Hezbollah played a notable role and in large part because the Israeli public was no longer willing to tolerate the extensive losses that were being inflicted on Israeli soldiers. It was a popular uprising. There is footage of Lebanese families in their flip flops running at the prison. The famous and notorious Israeli prison PM in southern Lebanon and liberating it themselves. So it is the Lebanese people that push Israel out.

 From that point on, we have UN based along the border between Israel and Lebanon, and it is not a quiet border. There was tit for tot back and forth. Dispute over exactly how much Israel has left and what it still occupies. There is a war that starts in 2006 from a cross- border raid gone wrong in which Israel develops the doctrine of mass bombing urban city streets that it then deployed in Gaza over and through the genocide. That's still ongoing. That war though is widely considered to be a defeat by Israel. It comes into Lebanon. It is fought off largely by Hezbollah, and it is seen as the first time that Israel has faced that level of military defeat. However, the remnants of that was an established no-go zone between Israel and Lebanon that was largely on Lebanese territory. Following the Hamas attacks of October 7th, following Israel's genocidal declarations the same day and its immediate assault on Gaza and its immediate commitments not just to free the hostages but to decimate Gazan society, to decimate Palestinian families and the immediate wave of terror that is unleashed, Hezbollah says, no actually. You want a no-go zone? That's fine. It's not on Lebanese territory anymore. It's going to be on the other side of the border, on Israeli territory, and so begins launching low level attacks right across the border. Israel responds in kind, immediately killing Lebanese journalists, dropping phosphorous bombs.

 And this continues at a low simmer until October of 2024, which is when Israel launches its pager attack. Hundreds of pagers that are alleged to have been used by Hezbollah operatives are detonated, killing civilians nearby, killing their family members, killing whoever happens to be near these people. Maiming thousands, killing hundreds. And then from there, proceeds to carpet bomb chunks of the southern suburbs of Beirut and decimate villages. That's a war that continues in 2024. It ends with an agreed-upon ceasefire. Israel violated that ceasefire over 1,500 times. 

And then we come to this war now. And what we're seeing in this war is basically everything that Israel tried out in Gaza being applied at a fast-forward rate in Lebanon. The accusations that hospitals aren't hospitals and ambulances aren't ambulances and schools aren't  schools, and anybody and anyone must be a terrorist. We're not even seeing the Israeli military even try to pretend otherwise. They're just saying, no, we claim a terrorist there. We have the right to decimate this neighborhood. But in particular, it's also saying that anyone who is Shia Muslim, which is the version of Islam that Hezbollah adheres to, is a target , which is atrocious and a war crime. But in doing so, it is saying that anyone who is allowing a displaced family, whether from the 20% of Lebanese territory that Israel has demanded to be evacuated between south Lebanon, the Becca, and parts of Beirut. The 1.2 million people that have been displaced wherever they shelter, whoever welcomes them is equal targets, and that is why we saw on Wednesday hours after the ceasefire between the US and Iran,  Israel's military and government say, no, the ceasefire does not apply to Lebanon be'cause we're not done devastating it yet. And dropping, what was it? A hundred airstrikes in 10 minutes, killing over 300 people arbitrarily across Beirut. They blew up one of the largest depots in Beirut that held items like food and blankets and medicines for the displaced families. They hit next to churches. They hit in front of hospitals. Every single ambulance that the Red Cross had was employed at the same time because of the numbers of casualties and injured. Hospitals were putting out calls for anyone with any medical information, a doctor, a nurse, a medic, to just show up at the hospitals because they needed help with the triage. The need was so great. It was utterly catastrophic. This is the Israeli military doing to Lebanon what it has done to Gaza. And waiting to see if the international community, if the US, is going to say that might be too much. And so far the US hasn't.

Q.  Let's talk a little bit more about Hezbollah because I don't think many Americans know very much about Hezbollah. The United States and many Western countries consider it a terrorist group and treat it as such. That view is not universal and it's not true in the Arab world where many countries regard it as a resistance group. Could you talk about the roots of Hezbollah and then how it's regarded by others within Lebanon?

A.  The U.S. government does place Hezbollah on the U.S. terrorist group list along with many other groups and individuals. And it's important to remind your listeners that at one point in time, Nelson Mandela was on the U.S. terrorist list. That being said, Hezbollah is a military-political group inside of Lebanon. They have elected members of Parliament. They have a military wing for which they are most known for. They also have a social welfare wing that provides health services and even organic farming. They are viewed by different Lebanese people differently at different times. They have been around since the civil var. They were one of the groups that splintered off from another Shia group in the civil war. The Lebanese civil war largely comes to an end because the three main religious denominations of Lebanon --  the Maronite Christians, the Sunnis, and the Shia --are all splintering and fighting each other. Hezbollah is one of the groups to come out of that, then continues to maintain a military presence, especially insSouth Lebanon, fighting against, like I discussed earlier, the Israeli military occupation of South Lebanon for 20 years. 

Q. Hezbollah is militarily stronger than the Lebanese state.  I recently read something in The Palestine Chronicle -- it was the opinion of, I think, Ramzy Baroud -- that Israel is trying to force Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah. And that was in a ceasefire agreement that was reached in November of 2024. Israel was supposed to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah was supposed to be disarmed. Neither of those things happened. The demand that Lebanon disarm Hezbollah, does the state have the resources to do that? What could be the effects of it if it tries? 

A. That's outside of my area of expertise. What I will say is that the international community has never provided the Lebanese state with the support that the U.S. by itself provides to Israel, whether it's in terms of international support and cover for war crimes or just literally in terms of funding and military support. So if the international community were interested in Lebanon adhering to various requirements of these proposed ceasefires, it would need to actually provide not just in words but indeed support so that the Israeli state was not kept in perpetual vulnerability to what has clearly been shown to be an internationally rogue state.

Q. Seven wars on Lebanon.  How do the Lebanese, regard Israel?

A.  The Lebanese regard Israel as a country which has done nothing but wreak incredible havoc and horror upon it continuously for reasons that make no sense to most people. That are unjustifiable. Lebanon's power supply, its electricity grid, has never functioned since the 1990s with any consistency because the Israeli air airstrikes are continuous on it, whether there is cease fire or not, whether there is a peace or not. The Israeli military has been allowed to operate with utter impunity for as long as the Israeli state has been around across Lebanon. And the only times that has ever paid a price for that sort of action has come from militia groups operating inside of Lebanon. And the general understanding that I had when I was in Lebanon from the people that I talked to and I met, whether they were Lebanese or Palestinian or Syrian refugees, et cetera was invariably, oh, do you know so and her cousinsis a Lebanese Jew. He had to go to France, but they're still lovely and they're great but what is going on with the Israeli government? Why do they treat everybody so cruelly? Why are they so intent on taking our land and just killing? Don't, they know that they can coexist? It's been this utter shock and confusion. Before the state of Israel existed, there was a train line that went from Beirut to Haifa. There were trade routes. There were entire cities and villages that lost their entire economic and social structure when an artificial border was carved across Israel's war on Lebanon.

Q.  Do you see this as an extension and really a continuation of its war on Gaza? And do you see the war on Iran as all part of that or do you regard them as somewhat different conflicts? 

A. It's very hard for me to understand the logic of the Israeli government right now except to take them at their word. So the Israeli government, especially under Netanyahu for all these years, has been obsessed with trying to destabilize/create regime change in Iran. And the Israeli government has talked blatantly about annexing, not just permanently occupying part of south Lebanon right now, but annexing it. Taking it over. And they've talked about doing the same thing in more of the Syrian Golan Heights, where there's, again, more water supplies. The Israeli government talks about needing, claiming, desiring a much larger footprint than the current state of Israel. And one of the main obstacles to that have been the people who are already. And what we've seen in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is that the Israeli government is willing to do whatever it takes to force these people to stop existing, whether they leave that land or they are killed on it. 

Q. Sonya, Meyerson-Knox, thank you so much for talking to us today. 

A. Thank you so much.