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Amnesty Calls for War Crimes Probe After Israel 'Obliterated Entire Families' in Lebanon
"How many more families will have to pull the body parts of their children from the rubble before this devastating cycle of war crimes ends?"
Jul 09, 2026
Amnesty International on Thursday demanded a war crimes investigation into Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, which the human rights watchdog described as "wiping out families."
The strikes in question took place in March and killed 24 civilians, including 12 children, in neighborhoods in the cities of Tyre, Saida, and Nabatieh.
Amnesty said it has gathered enough evidence to reasonably conclude that Israeli forces violated international law by failing to distinguish between civilian and military targets when conducting the campaign.
The human rights group said it reached these conclusions after conducting more than a dozen on-the-ground interviews with survivors, relatives of victims, and paramedics who were called to the scene after the strikes. Additionally, the group analyzed satellite photos along with videos of the strikes posted on social media.
One survivor, a retired Lebanese man named Hussein Saleh, said that the strike in his neighborhood in Tyre killed his wife, their two children, his sister-in-law and her five-year-old daughter, and two other relatives.
Moussa Chaalan, a paramedic who arrived on the scene after the attack, told Amnesty "there was nothing left of the house" when they got there.
"The body parts were scattered as far as 200 meters away from the impact site," Chaalan added.
Mohamad Taqi, 54, told Amnesty that Israel's strike in the Saida district killed seven family members, including his 78-year-old mother, Zeinab Nasser, and his 12-year-old daughter Zahraa.
"In the bedroom where the missile hit, I couldn’t find a trace of Zeinab and Zahraa," Taqi said. "The paramedics later found their body parts and they gathered them. When I lost hope of finding them alive, I went to the hospital. I was injured in my head, eye, and face."
Kristine Beckerle, deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said the international community needed to impose consequences on Israel for what she described as "a callous disregard for civilian lives."
"Within the space of just a week, the Israeli military obliterated entire families, including a dozen children, in Lebanon," said Beckerle. "How many more families will have to pull the body parts of their children from the rubble before this devastating cycle of war crimes ends? The international community must act now: states must impose an immediate comprehensive arms embargo on Israel and use universal and extraterritorial jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute those responsible."
Beckerle added that the three attacks investigated by Amnesty "are part of a well-documented pattern of unlawful Israeli attacks carried out in Lebanon, amidst a total vacuum of accountability."
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22 Democrats Join GOP to Block Lebanon War Powers Resolution, Enabling Netanyahu's Sabotage of US-Iran Ceasefire
"The United States is not a bystander to these war crimes. It's an active participant," said the resolutions sponsor Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
Jun 30, 2026
Nearly two dozen Democrats joined almost every Republican on Tuesday to vote down a war powers resolution that would have halted US military participation in Israel's assault on Lebanon, which is threatening to derail President Donald Trump's peace negotiations with Iran.
"More than 1.3 million people have already been forced to leave their homes or be killed, with the Israeli military telling them they will not be allowed to return," said the resolution's sponsor, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), on the House floor Tuesday. "Eighty-one Lebanese neighborhoods have been violently depopulated and demolished—erased from the map entirely."
Along with Republican Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.), the resolution received support from 187 Democrats on Tuesday, more than double the number who supported a similar resolution introduced by Tlaib earlier this month.
Despite top House Democrats, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) and Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (NY), giving rhetorical backing to the resolution this time around, The Intercept reported that they did not formally whip the vote.
Twenty-two Democratic hawks joined the GOP to vote against ending cooperation with Israel's war, which has killed more than 4,000 people since March.
Among them were a clique of Democrats who have signed on to the centrist "Promise to America" aimed at countering the momentum of progressive and democratic socialist candidates within the party—including Reps. Donald Davis (NC), Laura Gillen (NY), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Adam Gray (Calif.), Susie Lee (Nev.), and Tom Suozzi (NY).
Others include favorites of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), including Reps. George Latimer (NY), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), and Brad Schneider (Ill.), who have each received over a million dollars from it and other pro-Israel lobbying groups over their careers, according to FEC reports reviewed by Track AIPAC.
Other Democratic opponents include Reps. Steny Hoyer (Md.), Greg Landsman (Ohio), Jared Moskowitz (Fla.), Donald Norcross (NJ), Jimmy Panetta (Calif.), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Brad Sherman (Calif.), Darren Soto (Fla.), Norma Torres (Calif.), Juan Vargas (Calif.), and Marc Veasey (Texas), many of whom have also received extensive support from the lobby.
As voting began on Tuesday afternoon, Lebanese-American journalist Rania Khalek said that "how people vote on this is a big indicator of who is bought and paid for by the war machine and Israel lobby."
In a comment to Axios, the staunch pro-Israel centrist Golden justified his vote against the measure by claiming that "to the best of my knowledge, we're not engaged in a conflict with Lebanon."
Latimer made a similar statement on social media, claiming that the resolution was only good for "messaging" since the US did not have any active troops in Lebanon.
But Tlaib argued on the House floor that "the United States is not a bystander to these war crimes. It's an active participant."
"The United States is currently engaged in illegal and unauthorized hostilities supporting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in violation of the War Powers Act," she said. "The Trump administration is providing intelligence, coordinating strikes, demonstrating overt command over the Israeli military decisions, including greenlighting specific Israeli attacks and operations."
Other supporters of the resolution emphasized that ending Israel's occupation of Lebanon is a precondition for ending Trump's war with Iran.
"Ending Israeli military action in Lebanon is a key part of ensuring that the negotiation process with Iran continues and peace prevails in the Middle East," said Rep. Betty McCullom (D-Minn.).
The memorandum of understanding signed by the US and Iran earlier this month states that, for peace to be achieved, it must be implemented on "all fronts," including in Lebanon.
Iranian negotiators have repeatedly emphasized that they will not allow Trump to pull back from the war he's desperate to end unless Israel fully withdraws troops from Lebanon, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has emphatically refused to do.
Janet Abou-Elias, a researcher at the Democratizing Foreign Policy Project at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Common Dreams earlier this month that without US military participation, Israel could likely continue its occupation “only for a limited period of time."
Just Foreign Policy, an anti-war group that has agitated for the passage of Tlaib's war powers resolution, lambasted the 22 Democrats who voted against it.
"These 22 fringe House Democratic hawks revealed today that they don't actually want the Iran War to end," the group wrote in a post to social media. "By failing to end US participation in the Israeli war in Lebanon, they are undermining a peace deal."
Noting that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused oil prices to spike and inflation to ripple across the economy, the group said these Democrats were "keeping prices high for Americans."
Just Foreign Policy's executive director Erik Sperling told The Intercept that although the resolution did not pass, the vote signaled that things were moving in the right direction.
“Democrats have been pretty unified about speaking out against the killing of innocents and all of the harm by the Iran War, but there has been less vocal outrage about the mass killing and occupation in Lebanon,” Sperling said. “This is just an important signal that Democrats are aware of the way the Lebanon war is a humanitarian crisis and is the key roadblock to ending this war and delivering the peace that Americans are demanding.”
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Congress to Vote on New Lebanon War Powers Resolution as Israel's Occupation Threatens to Blow Up Iran-US Peace Deal
"This vote is effectively a proxy vote on the Iran deal," an anti-war activist told Common Dreams. "Members who vote no are functionally prioritizing continued Israeli operations in Lebanon over the prospects of a deal."
Jun 29, 2026
As Israel's continued assault on Lebanon threatens to derail peace negotiations between the Trump administration and Iran, the US House of Representatives is expected to hold another vote on Tuesday on a war powers resolution that could halt American support for Israel's attacks.
H.Con.Res. 108, introduced in early June by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), would direct President Donald Trump to halt US military involvement in "hostilities" connected to Israel's attacks on Lebanon, which have killed more than 4,000 people and led to the forced displacement of more than 1.2 million residents.
It is the second such resolution to be put to a vote in the House this month. H.Con.Res. 84, also introduced by Tlaib, was shot down after Democratic leadership declined to endorse it—since it did not include a carve-out allowing the US to continue coordinating actions against Hezbollah with the Lebanese military—but still received support from 91 Democrats, plus Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
The new resolution, which has the support of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), is expected to fare even better. The anti-war group Just Foreign Policy told Common Dreams that between 160 and 210 Democrats could now vote in favor of the measure.
Even in the best-case scenario, this would still require at least seven GOP defectors in addition to Massie. But Erik Sperling, Just Foreign Policy's executive director, said the fact that the vote was happening at all was still tremendously significant.
"This is only the second vote [to halt US military action in] Lebanon on the floor of Congress in history," he said. "It was already one of the most significant things imaginable that we'd even have a vote on it, much less have two in a month."
Adding to the significance is the fact that Israel's actions in Lebanon have become the primary obstacle to Trump's efforts to end the war in Iran.
The memorandum of understanding signed earlier this month calls for a halt to military operations "on all fronts," including Lebanon, and the Iranian delegation has repeatedly insisted that there is no deal without an Israeli withdrawal.
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on his defiance of the agreement, stating that Israel would not withdraw "as long as I am prime minister." Defense Minister Israel Katz added there had been "no American demand for Israel to withdraw."
This is despite Trump's public and private fuming at Israel for derailing his desperate efforts to back out of the conflict, which is deathly unpopular among the American public and which he has warned will cause "global economic catastrophe" if allowed to drag on much longer.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to another US-brokered framework on Friday that is supposed to set up a path for the Lebanese army to take over so-called "pilot zones" in southern Lebanon that are currently controlled by Israel. But in order for Israel to fully withdraw, it has demanded that Hezbollah fully disarm, which the group has said it will not do.
On the ground, there is little sign the deal is being implemented. Since Friday, Israel has conducted several strikes both inside the occupation zone and outside of it against what it said were Hezbollah militants.
While members of House Democratic leadership have said that the US is "not currently engaged in hostilities in Lebanon," supporters of Tlaib's measure have noted that even without boots on the ground, the US is intimately involved in Israel's attacks. Trump has reportedly given a "green light" to multiple operations, and Israel has extensively relied on US intelligence.
Janet Abou-Elias, a researcher at the Democratizing Foreign Policy Project at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Common Dreams earlier this month that ending US coordination with Israel would significantly hamper its ability to continue its occupation of Lebanon.
With Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei reiterating on Monday that an end to Israel's occupation of Lebanon was an “essential prerequisite” for an end to the war with the US, the anti-war coalition on Capitol Hill has said the urgency of passing Tlaib's resolution is only continuing to grow.
"This vote is effectively a proxy vote on the Iran deal," Sperling said. "Any member who genuinely wants a negotiated end to the Iran conflict should be voting yes. Members who vote no are functionally prioritizing continued Israeli operations in Lebanon over the prospects of a deal."
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