By Sue Harris
March 26, 2026
Israel has carried out at least five “double-tap strikes” in March in Lebanon, a tactic in which an initial strike is followed by a pause, allowing medical workers to arrive before the area is bombed for a second time. According to The Guardian, “Lebanese health care workers and officials say Israeli bombings have deliberately targeted medical workers and facilities in south Lebanon … in what they describe as a systematic effort to make the area unlivable.” (March 21)
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that in Gaza between Oct. 7, 2023, and Sept. 19, 2024, there were 492 Israeli military attacks on health care workers or medical facilities, with 492 individuals killed. No hospital in Gaza is fully functioning, only 17 of 36 hospitals are partially functioning, and the remaining 19 are completely out of service.
The WHO media team stated: “With each hospital forced out of service, patients lose access to health care, and WHO and partners’ efforts to sustain Gaza’s health system are undone. The destruction is systematic. Hospitals are rehabilitated and resupplied only to be exposed to hostilities or attacked again.” (May 22, 2025)
In the current attacks on Lebanon by Israeli forces, the pattern is similar. Lebanese health officials reported that between March 2 and March 16 of this year, some 40 health workers were killed and 96 injured in Israeli strikes. As of March 16, five hospitals and 49 health centers have been forced to close due to Israeli military strikes, damage or safety risks. (The Guardian, March 16)
Dozens of health care facilities in Iran and Lebanon have been attacked or forced to close because of the U.S. and Israel’s bombing campaign. (WHO, March 2026)
Even Amnesty International — no friend of West Asian resistance — has stated that, regardless of political affiliation, medical workers are considered civilians, and targeting them is unlawful. Israel’s answer is that the hospitals were struck because they were harboring Hezbollah operatives. This is the same bogus justification the Zionists gave for destroying hospitals in Gaza, i.e., the hospitals were shielding Hamas. No evidence supports these allegations.
The real reason Israel strikes health facilities might be to kill as many people as possible, to depopulate the area, make the area unlivable and force those remaining to flee. Or, as in the assassination of leaders such as Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with many of their relatives and co-workers (in Iran, the U.S. struck an entire girls’ elementary school), the goal seems to be to demoralize the liberation forces — which has clearly not taken place!
Resistance, in contrast, attacks military targets
In contrast, when we look at the Resistance, be it the Iranian government, Hezbollah or Hamas, we see a different pattern. The targets are primarily military: bases, invading armed units, battleships, arms factories or communications networks. The attacks are, as Hezbollah so often says, “in defense of Lebanon and its people.” (Resistance News Mirror Network)
Hezbollah reports that its fighters in Lebanon hit 10 invading Israeli Merkava tanks on March 25. The liberation fighters strike military targets, not schools.
Hezbollah has been falsely described as a terrorist group, primarily in the West. “Its armed wing is now considered stronger than the Lebanese Armed Forces, making it one of the most powerful non-state actors in the world,” and Hezbollah “also provides basic services to those living in the areas it controls, which would normally be provided by the national government. In effect, the group operates as a state within a state.” (Foreign Affairs, July 12, 2024)
Hezbollah is the authority in much of southern Lebanon, whose population is primarily Shiite Muslims. The people of the region are protected by Hezbollah and receive medical and other basic services from that party. They do not consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization. More likely, they and increasingly other Lebanese people see Hezbollah as a resistance organization, protecting Lebanon from incursions by Israel, which is backed by the United States.
However, Hezbollah is often vilified by pro-imperialist and pro-Zionist media. The Times of Israel routinely slanders Hezbollah, calling it a “terror group.”
On the other hand, many people in Lebanon, Iran and Palestine see Israel and the United States as imperialist forces, moving over national boundaries, seeking to ethnically cleanse Lebanon the same way they do in Palestine. The U.S.-Israeli genocidal tactics include not only killing civilians but killing the medical workers who try to save them.
