An Israeli False Flag To Justify Attacking Lebanon?

Written by Robert Inlakesh

Last month, a missile exploded at a football game in the Syrian Druze town of Majdal Shams, which is located in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. Horrifying images soon emerged of children scattered across the floor, causing outrage, as Israel accused Hezbollah of launching a missile at the village. It wasn't long before the Israeli media, labelling the event a massacre of "Israelis" used this to drum up support for what they have declared will be an attack on Lebanon.

At least 12 were left dead and around 30 others were injured in the horrifying missile strike on the town of Majdal Shams -- almost all of them children. The scenes were shocking, resembling the kinds of images we have seen on a daily basis coming out of the Gaza Strip and were quickly weaponized by Israel. The Israeli Hebrew media quickly jumped on the story and presented it as an attack on Israelis, causing shock and prompting calls for retaliation, as the strike was blamed on Lebanese Hezbollah.

Hezbollah responded by emphatically denying that they had attacked Majdal Shams, stating that they had no connection to the attack whatsoever. Yet, despite this, the Israeli military and political elitists quickly came out claiming to have evidence that it was a Hezbollah-launched Falaq-1 missile. A report published by the Associated Press then claimed to have been informed by an unnamed US intelligence official that Hezbollah was guilty.

Much of the Western corporate media have presented the victims as being from an Israeli-controlled village, the Golan Heights, or even northern Israel. They failed to mention that Majdal Shams in a town located on the Eastern side of the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, on the Israeli controlled side of the separation barrier with Syria and not next to Lebanon. In 1981, Israel illegally annexed the territory, a move rejected unanimously by the United Nations, with the US government under the former Trump administration being the first to recognize it as Israeli; a move that violated international law and went against the view of the international community.

The residents of Majdal Shams are Syrian-Druze, most of whom are loyal to the government of Syria and many of whom have rejected Israeli citizenship. Under Israeli control, the indigenous Syrians have endured violent crackdowns, intimidation, discrimination, and attempts to force them into isolated enclaves surrounded by illegal Israeli settlers.

According to al-Arshad human rights group:

"Israel has expropriated over 95 percent of the available land under its control while refusing to acknowledge the vast majority of Syrian public or private ownership..."

"...within the framework of settling the newly occupied territories and after the seizure of the Syrian land, the Israeli occupation authorities have established water complexes/reservoirs in the occupied Golan since 1968. The motivating goal was to provide the crucial infrastructure for establishing the settler-colonial entities, where irrigated agriculture is the main component of the settlements’ economies."

In its theft of water resources, Syrians are charged higher prices than Israeli settlers and this has crushed the Syrian agricultural sector there, clearly by design. On top of this, Israel has seized territory for setting up "environmentally friendly" energy projects (like massive wind turbines) right next to Syrian villages. They also seek to exploit what are potentially billions of barrels of oil, discovered in the territory back in 2015.

Did Hezbollah Do It?

Since October 8, Hezbollah have launched thousands of strikes against Israeli military facilities, rocket attacks on Israeli settlements, and taken out key military infrastructure. In response, Israel has repeatedly bombarded Lebanese civilian infrastructure, killing women and children, targeting journalists with missile strikes directly, while massacring medical workers. Israeli strikes have struck as far as Ba'albek in the north of the Lebanese Beka'a valley and even carried out an assassination attack in Beirut.

During this time, Hezbollah have fired low impact rockets at Israeli settlements along the Lebanese border area, but refrained from ever targeting civilians, which is reflected in the Israeli death toll -- even the official one -- which shows that the majority of the dead on Israel's side are soldiers. Not once has Hezbollah targeted any Syrian Druze community in the occupied Golan Heights and have even released extensive drone reconnaissance footage of the area to demonstrate that they have located all Israel's military positions there.

On top of this, the Lebanese political party/armed-group understands well the realities of the Syrian Druze communities living in the Golan Heights, most of which are pro-Syrian government and even pro-Hezbollah. In Lebanon there is a substantial Druze community who find a natural affinity with their fellow Syrian Druze and who are understandably concerned with issues to do with their own people. So, if Hezbollah were to even fire heavy missiles in the vicinity of a Druze town, without any clear justification, it would cause major divisions in Lebanon.

In order to believe that Hezbollah carried out this strike purposefully, you have to believe that the group chose not to target Israeli settlers in its first attack of this kind since October 8, but instead opted to murder people in an area where there are only Syrian Druze -- people who are actually sympathetic to them. If you think that this seems plausible and that the Lebanese group are this incompetent, then why would they deny the attack? On a strategic level, it would make no sense for Hezbollah to carry out such an attack. On a moral level it also makes no sense. It would also be a massive contradiction of the historical record of Hezbollah's careful approach to keep civilians out of harms way.

Then there is the argument that maybe it was Hezbollah, but it was a mistake. Well, for this we would have to solely rely upon the word of the Israeli military and an unnamed US official, which is the combination that gave us the "intelligence information" that "confirmed" Hamas were using Gaza City's al-Shifa Hospital as a military base. Just looking at this case alone, is enough reason to doubt such conclusions. Also, Hezbollah has historically apologized when mistakenly hitting civilians.

Israeli Evidence

Israeli media claimed, within hours, that the munition used in the attack on Majdal Shams, was an Iranian made Falaq-1. To begin with, how they would know what the munition was and where it was made this quickly is questionable, but let's assume it to be true for sake of investigation.

The Israeli military, after being pressured to publish their alleged "evidence", released a combination of three cropped photos showing what they call an older Falaq-1 munition and comparing it to two edited photos of the alleged shrapnel, to "confirm" their allegations. Together with this, they presented a map that showed a straight line from Lebanon to Majdal Shams, claiming this was the tracked route of the munition. Although Israel presents this as its proof, it isn't anything beyond unconfirmed photos of shrapnel that does not match photos of the Falaq-1 munitions that Hezbollah has been filming themselves firing, combined with a photo of an old unexploded munition. If these photos are genuine, why not take photos of them at the site, or at least photos that show they are actually from the area you claim? Why present them in this way? As for Israel's map, any child with a laptop could put a straight line on a map, it means absolutely nothing. 

What Israel did not present as its evidence is an analysis of the blast site, photos from the scene, injuries and what they are consistent with, or video footage capturing the rocket in the air. Nothing to do with the trajectory of the strike, nothing to do with injuries, nothing to do with the blast site, no analysis of the scene, nothing. Just two photos of shrapnel which could have come from anywhere and another older munition that could even be the same rocket for all we know. If anything, this "evidence" only raises more questions as to why they are being so careful not to actually release something that actually substantiates their claims. Also, the Israeli army's photos were contradicted by an anonymous Israeli paramedic who said that the shrapnel was from an Iron Dome missile and that he would be imprisoned if he revealed his identity.

It has been widely speculated that instead of the munition being a Falaq-1 that hit Majdal Shams, it was more than likely that an Israeli Iron Dome missile could have misfired and caused the blast we saw, although this has not been confirmed. The blast site at Majdal Shams was not consistent with what is generally caused by a Falaq-1. Take the following two examples of the Majdal Shams blast site and a Falaq-1's impact in the Kiryat Shmona settlement. Also, a Falaq-1 depletes its propellant fuel within seconds of takeoff, which means that when it lands there isn't a fuel explosion, this especially wouldn't have been the case when fired at long distances, such as Majdal Shams. Yet in the video we have of the explosion in Majdal Shams, there is a massive fireball that emerges, which isn't supposed to happen with a Falaq-1. It has also been pointed out that Tamir missiles, from the Iron Dome System, would have fuel that could explode in this way, if it is launched from a nearby location and that the blast site is more consistent with this kind of munition.

While the Israeli media went out of its way to claim that bystanders did not see Iron Dome work in the area, there are videos of the Iron Dome system reportedly misfiring, which has happened in this area in the past, once such example is from March of this year. On top of this, the Israeli military spokesperson originally identified the Syrian victims as Israel citizens, which he was corrected on.

A video from March shows the village of Majdal Shams and the activity of the Iron Dome at the base behind this mountain. 🏔️

At that time, several Iron Dome rockets failed and fell inside the village and nearby. 🤦‍♂️ #IronDomeFail #Oops pic.twitter.com/kYdcUBG4uj

— 🔻Firstblood🔻 (@FirstbloodH) July 27, 2024

Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, as well as his PM Benjamin Netanyahu, attempted to attend the funerals of the killed children in Majdal Shams, but were met with protests and accused of trying to use the blood of their children.

People in the occupied Syrian #Golan prevent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from entering Majdal Shams, calling him a fascist and criminal.

In a similar incident, the residents kicked out Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Economy Nir Barakat,… pic.twitter.com/V5gslxYhly

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) July 29, 2024

Israel instantly began using this incident to justify a large-scale attack on Lebanon, which gives it motive to lie about the incident. In fact, the Israeli government and military have already been called out for their manipulation of the facts surrounding the event, down to the very identities of those killed and injured. There is clearly a motive for Israel to have either purposefully carried out the attack, or simply twisted events in order to justify what they were already planning anyway.

As of now, it is not clear whether this was intentional and there is simply not enough evidence to determine this. However, the evidence seems to point in the direction of an Israeli munition causing the devastating incident. Regardless, the Israeli government used this event in order to justify a massacre which they certainly did commit in Southern Beirut, which killed 7 civilians, a Hezbollah official, and injured around 80 other civilians. Then, in what appeared to have been carried out in coordinated fashion, the Israelis assassinated the leader of Hamas Ismail Hanniyeh in Iran's Capital city Tehran. There can be no doubt at this point, that at the very least, the incident was used maliciously in order to justify two assassination attacks that recklessly put the entire Middle East on a slippery slope toward regional conflagration. On top of this, Majdal Shams is located in internationally recognized Syrian territory, so Israel had no legitimate claim to cite article 51 of the United Nations Charter that stipulates all nation's right to self defense when their sovereign territory is attacked.