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Israel Denounced for 'Killing Spree' of Rescue Workers in Lebanon
"Israel’s wanton killing of rescue workers and targeting of medical infrastructure in Lebanon has been one of this war’s most brazen features," Drop Site News noted.
May 22, 2026
Israeli attacks killed at least seven rescue workers in southern Lebanon on Thursday and Friday in violation of a US-brokered ceasefire, part of what critics say is a pattern of deliberate targeted murders of first responders that mirror the genocidal massacres committed in Gaza.
On Friday, paramedics from the al-Risala Association rushed to the site of an Israeli strike in Deir Qanun al-Nah, Tyre district, that reportedly killed a young girl and the village barber, identified by L'Orient Today as Ali Allameh. As they arrived on the scene, the paramedics were hit by a so-called "double-tap" strike—a follow-up bombing meant to eliminate survivors and first responders—that killed would-be rescuers Ali Abboud, Hussein Kassir, and Ahmad Hariri.
Hariri was also a well-known photojournalist who earlier this week documented an Israeli massacre of 14 people—including four children and 11 members of one family—in Deir Qanun al-Nah.
L'Orient Today reported that Israeli forces bombed two Islamic Health Committee centers in Hanouiyeh overnight Thursday, killing four rescue workers and wounding two others. Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli airstrike near the Tebnine Hospital reportedly killed two people and injured another while damaging all three floors of the facility.
Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health said more than 3,100 people have been killed by Israeli attacks since March 2, in addition to the more than 4,000 people, including nearly 800 women and over 300 children, slain in Israel’s 2023-25 attacks on its northern neighbor, where the militant resistance group Hezbollah is based. The dead from the current round of Israeli attacks include nearly 300 women, more than 210 children, and 123 medical and healthcare workers.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says 15 media professionals have also been killed in Lebanon since October 2023. One of them, Al-Akhbar correspondent Amal Khalil, was wounded last month by an Israeli strike while reporting on a previous bombing. Khalil was trapped under rubble, and as Red Cross workers attempted to extricate her, Israeli forces dropped a stun grenade on them as a warning to disperse. They were unable to rescue Khalil, who later died.
As in Gaza—where Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 250,000 Palestinians since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023—attacks by Israel have devastated Lebanon's healthcare infrastructure.
Israel's continued slaughter of Lebanese first responders comes as World Health Organization (WHO) member states gathered this week in Geneva, where they overwhelmingly backed a declaration of alarm over “the impact of the ongoing war on the Lebanese health systems, including attacks on health facilities and health workers, and the closure of dozens of primary healthcare centers and hospitals."
The measure, which also called on the WHO to "scale up" support for Lebanon's health system, passed by a vote of 95-2—with Israel and Honduras against—and 18 abstentions.
"Israeli military action has had unacceptable impacts on civilians and medical care," the United Kingdom said in an explanation of its vote in favor of the declaration. "The conflict has led to the displacement of over 1 million people and the closure of several hospitals and health facilities. The WHO has reported over 150 verified attacks against healthcare, with over 100 healthcare workers killed."
As Drop Site News reported Friday:
Israel’s wanton killing of rescue workers and targeting of medical infrastructure in Lebanon has been one of this war’s most brazen features. For the past five weeks, the relentless Israeli aerial and ground assault has continued despite a nominal ceasefire being announced by President Donald Trump on April 16. Last week, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a 45-day extension of the “ceasefire” after holding their third round of direct talks in Washington, of which Hezbollah is not a part. The declaration of a ceasefire has not stopped the Israeli military from continuing its bombardment of Lebanon, mostly in the south and the eastern Bekka Valley.
Rescue teams describe a pattern of repeated Israeli attacks directly targeting their members, often in double—or triple-tap strikes—where after a site is struck, it is struck a second or even third time as emergency crews arrive on the scene.
“We try to be careful and take safety precautions before interventions, like waiting 10 minutes to avoid the double taps,” Abdullah Halal, who leads a Civil Defense rescue team in Nabatiyeh, told Drop Site News.
"But," the outlet noted, "even those precautions have not always been enough. Last week, Halal lost two of his two colleagues in a double-tap strike."
Ali Saad, who is with the Lebanese Red Cross, told UN News on Wednesday that his colleagues share coordinates with Israeli forces and other belligerents, but rescue workers are still being targeted.
“This is why the Red Cross volunteers hug each other and say goodbye before every mission,” he said.
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When Refuge Is Rescinded: Hypocrisy and Our American Dream
The United States cutting off refugee resettlement domestically while waging a war that forces people to flee their homes abroad is a flagrant act of hypocrisy that is incompatible with the American Dream.
May 19, 2026
“Hip hip, hypocrisy! Hip hip, hypocrisy!” My teenage son pumped his fist in the air. I can’t remember the chain of conversation that ultimately produced this sardonic version of “hip hip, hooray!”, but the phrase has quickly become a way to get each other to smile or self-reflect, and it often leads to a bout of shared laughter. But recently, this chant has also allowed me to reflect on the fraught crossroads of my homeland and my emerging life’s work; specifically, the troubling hypocrisy of the United States’ recent actions on two interconnected global issues—forced migration and war.
I grew up in small-town Virginia, in a family that nurtured an honorable form of gratitude-based patriotism. As a doctoral student who studies refugee issues and forced migration, I have long been proud of the United States’ global leadership in refugee resettlement (while also believing that we should do more to support refugees). From the 1980s to early 2000s, the US routinelyresettled more refugees annually than all other nations combined. While this began to shift following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, there were only four years between 2002 and 2022 in which the US did not resettle the most refugees of any country in the world, coming in second to Canada in each of those four years. In 2023, our nation welcomed more than double the number of refugees resettled the previous year, and in 2024, we resettled over 100,000 refugees for the first time in 30 years. But unfortunately, US resettlement took an abrupt turn in 2025.
In an executive order issued on January 20th, 2025—the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term—the Trump presidency announced the suspension of the US refugee resettlement program. Another executive order followed on February 7, identifying South African Afrikaners as a group worthy of resettlement despite unverified claims of race-based persecution and misalignment with the globally recognized definition of refugeehood. Since October 2025, approximately 4,500 Afrikaners and three refugees from Afghanistan have been admitted under the US refugee resettlement program.
At the same time, our country’s leaders have waged war in the Middle East, creating “a new cycle of displacement” that continues to worsen. Whether or not you agree with the rationale behind this war, our country’s actions are increasing forced displacement on a global scale. Recent estimates project that this war has already forced up to 3.2 million Iranians and 1.3 million Lebanese citizens to flee their homes, and this number will almost certainly increase as the conflict continues. Furthermore, areas of the Middle East affected by the current war already host 24.3 million forcibly displaced people. As a scholar-in-training who cares deeply about both forced migrants and the United States, the hypocrisy of cutting off refugee resettlement domestically while acting in ways that force people to flee their homes abroad is excruciating.
The United States is simultaneously closing our doors to refugees and actively increasing the number of forcibly displaced people in the world.
But there’s also a double hypocrisy here, a vocal hypocrisy layered on top of this more tacit one. For years, President Trump has complained that other countries don’t pull their weight in NATO and the US shoulders an oversized portion of defense spending among the alliance. By the same logic, the US should pull our weight in supporting refugees, period—and especially when we are contributing to increases in global forced displacement. “Hip hip, hypocrisy.”
I hear you—don’t we have enough unmet needs among US citizens? Shouldn’t we fix everything in this country before we offer others permanent protection here? While there are many responses to these questions, for me the most compelling is summed up by Rabbi Sharon Braus, who maintains that “ultimately, the problem of the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.”
The figures I’ve presented here are so much more than numbers—each one is a living, breathing person who has loved ones and a favorite color, and who also happens to have survived the harrowing experience of being forced to flee their home due to circumstances entirely outside of their control. Refugees are exceptionally resilient and resourceful people who contribute strength, wisdom, talent, tenacity, (and yes, taxes) to our society, helping us to address our collective needs together. Refugees are part of “we” and “our”—part of [the] “US.”
And yet, the United States is simultaneously closing our doors to refugees and actively increasing the number of forcibly displaced people in the world. The promise of America is not zero-sum—it is generative and generous and transformative. The American Dream I believe in includes not only those of us who were born in the US and have benefited from living here through no virtue of our own, but those who were born elsewhere and have been displaced from their home nations through no fault of their own.
As a future forced migration scholar, a deep longing for my homeland to treat refugees and other forced migrants with compassion, respect, and dignity has become a central feature of my own personal American Dream. Join me and make it an indispensable part of our collective American Dream!
Together, let’s not shy away from this needed and worthy work. Stand with me by imagining what it would be like to start over in a new place, talking about refugees and other migrants in humanizing ways, befriending a newcomer who might benefit from connection, or sharing this op-ed with a friend or loved one who might need to read it. The circle of our family grows as we expand it together, until the day we reach a full-throated “hip hip, hooray!”
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UNICEF Decries 'Intolerable' Israeli Killing of Lebanese, Palestinian Children
Despite promised ceasefires, ongoing Israeli attacks "are killing and injuring children, deepening their exposure to trauma, and leaving devastating consequences that could last a lifetime."
May 14, 2026
Officials at the United Nations Children's Fund this week condemned Israel's killing, maiming, and traumatization of children in Lebanon—where there is ostensibly a ceasefire in effect—the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine, and Gaza.
UNICEF said Wednesday that at least 59 children in Lebanon have reportedly been killed or wounded by Israeli forces over the past week, despite a nearly monthlong truce between Israel and the militant resistance group Hezbollah.
“Children are being killed and injured when they should be returning to classrooms, playing with friends, and recovering from months of fear and upheaval,” UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement.
“Nearly a month ago, an agreement was reached to silence the weapons and stop the violence," Beigbeder added. "Reality is proving to be very different. Continued attacks are killing and injuring children, deepening their exposure to trauma, and leaving devastating consequences that could last a lifetime.”
According to Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health, at least 23 children have been killed and 93 wounded during the ceasefire. Since March 2—when Israel renewed attacks on its northern neighbor amid the nascent US-Israeli war on Iran—at least 200 children have been killed and over 800 others injured.
The ministry said six people—including two women and a child—were killed and 12 people wounded Wednesday evening when Israel bombed the village of Arab Salim in Nabatieh district. Separately on Wednesday, Israeli strikes on the village of Harouf killed one child, while two children were among three people killed by an Israeli strike on Roumine.
Lebanese officials say at least 2,896 people have been killed and 8,824 others wounded by Israeli attacks in Lebanon since March 2.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said Monday in Geneva that “children are paying an intolerable price for escalating militarized operations and settler attacks across the occupied West Bank of Palestine, including East Jerusalem," as part of Israel's accelerating ethnic cleansing and colonization of the Palestinian territory.
“We're seeing attacks become increasingly coordinated,” Elder noted. "Documented incidents include children shot, stabbed, children beaten, and children pepper-sprayed.”
Elder continued:
Between January 2025 and today, at least one Palestinian child has been killed, on average, every week. That is, 70 Palestinian children killed in this timeframe. Ninety-three percent of these were killed by Israeli forces. A further 850 children were injured. Most of those children killed or wounded were by live ammunition. All this comes amid historic levels of settler attacks. [The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] said last month that March 2026 saw the highest number of Palestinians injured by settler attacks in the past 20 years.
“These are not isolated incidents—they point to a sustained pattern of the worst kinds of violations of children’s rights, as well as attacks on children’s homes, on their schools, and on the water they rely on," Elder stressed. "What is unfolding is not only an escalation in violence against Palestinian children; it is the steady dismantling of the conditions children need to survive and grow."
On Wednesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that Israeli occupation forces fatally shot 16-year-old Youssef Ali Youssef Kaabneh near Jaljulia, north of Ramallah, amid sweeping raids across the West Bank.
Elder said that in Gaza, at least 229 children have been killed and 260 others wounded by Israeli forces since the October 2025 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack—took effect. Since October 2023, more than 64,000 children and 250,000 Palestinians of all ages have been killed or wounded by Israel's Gaza onslaught, which a panel of UN experts last year called a genocide. UNICEF has called Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child."
Dr. Reinhilde Van de Weerdt, the UN World Health Organization representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, drew attention this week to the 10,000 Gazan children "with life-changing injuries." Treatment for these wounds is often difficult to impossible due to Israel's ongoing siege of the coastal strip.
"Every day that rehabilitation services in Gaza remain underresourced is a day that preventable disability risks becoming permanent," said Van de Weerdt. "Gaza does not need stopgap measures, it needs sustained investment in the health workforce, in equipment, and in the systems and environment that allow people to recover, rebuild, and return to life."
Thousands of Gazan children have lost at least one limb, tens of thousands have lost their parents, and hundreds of thousands have lost their homes due to mass forced displacement.
All that trauma and more is fueling a mental health crisis among children in Palestine and Lebanon.
“The impact of repeated exposure to conflict on children’s mental health can be profound and long-lasting,” said Beigbeder. “Children in Lebanon have endured waves of violence, displacement, and uncertainty, often with little or no time to recover. Without urgent support, the psychological scars of this compounded crisis may stay with them for years, affecting not only their well-being, but their future and the future of the country.”
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