Israel’s obsession with Lebanon’s Litani river
JVL Introduction
There is a settler movement in Israel called Uri Tzafon. Its vision?
“What is ‘south Lebanon’ actually? It is simply the Northern Galilee. The clear natural border between Israel and the Lebanon Mountains runs along the Litani River, Lebanon’s greatest river, an area about which Moses said: ‘a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills.’”
And if the Litani is not mentioned in the Bible, no matter: “many researchers estimate, based on geographical data, that today’s Litani River is a continuation of the biblical Euphrates.”
So that’s all right then.
A consensus is emerging in Israel that there is no choice. We must have the Litani!
No matter that it was tried a number of times without success in various wars on Lebanon.
No matter as geographer Amnon Kartin points out: “These are messianic fantasies. From a geographical perspective, there is no such thing as a ‘natural border.’”
Since when has reality impinged on the messianic consciousness that now rules Israel?
RK
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Thu 9 Apr 2026. Read the original here.
'The nakba Is being recreated': the Israeli obsession with Lebanon's Litani river
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There is no doubt that Israel has used the illegal war (crime) against Iran as a means to capturing the land upto the Litani River to expand Greater Israel. Hizbollah, the resistance movement created during Israel’s occupation in 1982 to fight against Israel’ encroachment, and who fought off Israel in another invasion in 2006, would obviously join Iran’s Axis of Resistance in sending bombs into Northern Israel. Israel uses the excuse of removing Hizbollah from its solidly supporting communities as it did with Hamas in Gaza, to bomb Lebanon into another Gaza. The Nakba tactics of 1948 in demolishing villages and expelling the population are being used here this time with real determination, with the intention it wished accomplish in Iran, and as done with the genocide in Gaza, to reduce it to rubble and back to the stone age. It has done much of what Trump’s much condemned genocidal rant intended. It is all evil, psychopathic, totally illegal and will continue Israel’s only modus vivendi, which totally delegitmises this rogue Zionist entity.
“… (the Shi’ite communities in southern Lebanon were not hostile to us.) We managed to turn them against us, and we are very effective at consolidating opposition.;
never was a truer word spoken
except in the unlikely environment of the home terraces at Millwall F.C.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_one_likes_us,_we_don%27t_care#Lyrics
No one likes us, no one likes us
No one likes us, we don’t care!
…
(Maccabi Tel Aviv, anyone?)
“At the end of the 19th century around the time Millwall F.C. was formed, middle-class journalists used to descend on the area like Baudelaireian flaneurs, to report on the urban working class as though they were discovering natives from the remote islands of the Empire”
The logic of creating a new ‘security zone’ up to the Litani, is to protect Israelis by moving the threat further away from where they live. The trouble is, that people tend to fill a vacuum. If there is good land in the security zone, Israelis will move there. Then they will still be within range of Hizballah, north of the new border. Then what: move the border yet again, this time without the smallest trace of biblical justification for it?
Having destroyed life in Gaza, with total impunity, Israel is massacring and pushing away from their homes and land thousands of Lebanese people. They are constantly and daily violating international law, and they are doing it with impunity. NO ONE has the chutzpah to stop them. That is why it has become normalised in Israeli discourse. All the members of the United Nations who want to see international human rights law respected and to stop both the genocide in Gaza, which is ongoing, and now the mass murder and destruction in Lebanon, which will also become genocide if it is allowed to continue, need to agree to stop Israel and support the International Criminal Court to arrest and prosecute Israel’s leaders, starting with Netanyahu, who are the 21st century equivalent of the Nazis in 20th century Germany. The impunity to date is appalling, and it is unacceptable to allow it to continue because of guilt over the 20th century Holocaust. What is taking place is a 21st century holocaust and it must be stopped; otherwise, Israel has made it clear they will just go on and on and on and on. And the hidden support of leaders and countries who are helping Israel publicly, like the USA, or pretending they are not helping Israel, like the UK, must be exposed, and they too should be held accountable by the Criminal Court. Otherwise, the United Nations is at risk of becoming irrelevant, a disaster the world cannot afford. Replacing the United Nations with King Donald Trump is also not an answer anyone with a brain would agree with. Ten million US citizens protested against this very recently. Millions more of us worldwide agree with them. The question is: who can ensure this happens before any more time passes and how.
The BBC’s archives contain a discussion, which includes Maxime Rodinson, discussing Zionist aspirations to expand its border to the Litani. Could that discussion be replicated today?
The REAL international rule is: you attack a neighbour, and lose the fight, you repossess their property as your own. Simple!