September 28, 2024

The Dahiye Doctrine

As Zionist aggression across Lebanon and the region continues, we recall Israel’s official military policy of genocide, the “Dahiye Doctrine.” At its core, what Israel calls the Dahiye Doctrine is a euphemism for war crimes masquerading as military strategy. The “strategy” consists of refusing to distinguish between civilian and military targets, in a  futile attempt to punish the civilian population, in an effort to have them turn against the resistance that defends  them.

The Dahye Doctrine is named after a southern suburb of Beirut where Israel extensively damaged civilian housing and infrastructure in 2006, and where it is currently wreaking catastrophic damage again. Since 2006, the Zionist entity has repeatedly but unsuccessfully  deployed the Dahiye Doctrine across the region, from Gaza to Lebanon.

The Dahiye Doctrine reflects Israel’s repeated misunderstanding of the fact that our people—the people of the land—know how to identify their own enemy. Their enemy is the one who bombs them indiscriminately with billions of dollars worth of U.S.-made weapons, not the neighbor who is willing to defend them.

At the same time, the Zionist state’s current deployment of the Dahiye Doctrine in Lebanon has catastrophic implications, for the region and for the world. In the immediate moment, this open and brazen commitment of war crimes promises to continue extending Gaza’s genocide to Lebanon.

We will never forgive the Zionist U.S. military outpost masquerading as a nation, neither for this escalation nor the years of escalations that have preceded this moment. There can be no solution but the end of the colonial state altogether and the emergence of something new, built on our people’s dignity and not our dehumanization.

Glory to every martyr, from Gaza to the villages of South Lebanon to Beirut to the Beqaa. May tomorrow’s sun dawn on our collective freedom.