“The only mission is to continue the destruction”: Israeli Fascist Imperialism in Lebanon

It is not simply Gaza that is subjected to Israel’s expansionist aims and ruthless ways of war. A similar script plays out in Lebanon. A “ceasefire” was reached between Israel and the Lebanon-based armed group, Hezbollah, in November of 2024, and lasted for 18 months until Israel launched its war of aggression with the United States against Iran at the end of February 2026. In that time, a period of roughly 15 months, Israel violated the ceasefire more than 15,400 times, killing over 370 people, displacing countless others, targeting civilian infrastructure, and engaging in ethnic cleansing by expelling populations and refusing them the right to return. Again, what kind of meaning can the word ceasefire have when that is how Israel behaves during its supposed implementation? Additionally, during the official “war” (when Hezbollah was fighting back), Israel had moved in to occupy southern Lebanon and destroyed virtually everything in its wake. According to satellite imagery analysis by the Financial Times roughly a month into the two-month war in 2024, Israel had damaged or demolished 30 ancient towns and villages in Lebanon near the southern border with Israel. It was creating a 3km-wide “buffer zone” or “belt” along the border, which was in actual fact a process of scorched earth destruction and ethnic cleansing: the Israelis are expelling the population of southern Lebanon through copious amounts of state terror and destroying their homes and villages so there is nothing to return to.

When Orwell wrote about such tactics, he described them in terms of “defenseless villages” being “bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets,” which in political language was described as “pacification.” He further described a circumstance where “millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry,” which in political language was described as “transfer of population” or “rectification of frontiers.” This is perfectly applicable in relation to Israel and its war in Lebanon. As in Gaza, Israel builds its machine language around concepts of security and defense, so instead of pacification, rectification, and transfer, they opt for the euphemisms of self-defense, buffer zones, and evacuation. Though the specific euphemisms may change, the actual policy in effect – the reality on the ground – is no different than it was when described by Orwell in 1946, some eighty years ago: villages bombed, populations expelled, and homes destroyed so they have nothing to return to. In 19^th and early 20^th century Czarist Russia, these policies were carried out against Jews and known as pogroms, many of which were justified by the authorities at the time as acts of “self-defense, a reasonable response to a pariah people, capable of any and all transgressions,” explained one historian of anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia.

In late November 2024, right after the “ceasefire” was reached in Lebanon, and Israel had to pull back closer to its border, many Lebanese sought to return to their homes in the south. Here is how the Financial Times reported it: “What they found was a sobering trail of destruction. Entire neighbourhoods obliterated. Water and electrical infrastructure destroyed. Medical clinics damaged. Mosques and churches reduced to rubble. Historic markets razed. Cemeteries overflowing.” Israel claims that this deliberate policy of destruction and expulsion is actually a targeted policy against Hezbollah and its “terrorist” infrastructure. They blame all civilian casualties on the opponent, accusing them of using “human shields,” without evidence.

Several months into the ceasefire, Israel announced that it would not fully retreat from Lebanese territory. Instead, an Israeli military spokesperson affirmed, Israel would remain at five key “strategic” locations in southern Lebanon. In other words, Israel would maintain military outposts on occupied territory, seeking to once again alter its borders through force, a grave international crime. Israel has entrenched its occupation of southern Lebanon and consolidated the process of ethnic cleansing of certain towns and villages through a dual policy of mass displacement and mass destruction, including during a period of so-called ceasefire. The more direct language of mass displacement, destruction of civilian infrastructure, ethnic cleansing, and controlled demolitions of entire neighbourhoods and villages is simply too evocative and accurate in its imagery: it conveys the images of what is actually taking place (i.e., war crimes and crimes against humanity). To avoid evoking such images, Israel employs the language of machines through the paradigm of security and defense, which we could also understand as issues of empire and nation. Security has to do with the establishment and maintenance of control over other peoples and lands – about managing an empire; while defense has to do with protecting the nation from the consequences of maintaining its empire.

Additionally, Israel justifies and frames everything it is doing as targeting terrorist infrastructure (while broadening that definition to basically include every building, home, bridge and road in every village and town in southern Lebanon). The language of anti-terrorism is broadly understood and widely used in Israeli society, as it also is in the United States and other western nations. It is an effective tool when it comes to demonizing marginalized or repressed populations, justifying war and occupation, and subsequently destroying entire societies. So long as the use of political language can maintain these fantasies (Israel is defending itself; they are only targeting terrorists; they are building a buffer zone), the policies – and language – will continue. Add fascism into the mix, and there is an accelerant to the violence and destruction.

After 15 months of occupying stolen land, violating the ceasefire over 15,000 times and killing over 370 people in Lebanon, Israel then launched a war of aggression against Iran (with the United States) at the end of February 2026, immediately killing the Iranian leadership. Hezbollah sent a few rockets over the Israeli border as an act of “revenge” for the killing of Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the first time they had fired rockets into northern Israel since the ceasefire was reached in late November 2024, when Hezbollah ceased and Israel kept firing. The IDF reported that it had intercepted one of the rockets and allowed the remainder to fall into open spaces, reporting no injuries or damage. In response to this rather meagre military action, Israel launched a full-scale war and invasion of Lebanon, dwarfing the previous one in its intensity.

As with the start of the war on Gaza in October of 2023, an eruption of bellicose rhetoric and brutality spewed forth from the mouths of Israeli leaders. The oscillation between a euphemistic political language and a language of brutality – and the combination of both simultaneously – particularly at the start of a new and expanded war, reflects the normalization of fascist language and politics in Israeli society, and its fusion into a form of fascist imperialism: an imperialism that seeks rapid expansion, colonial occupation, expulsion or elimination of ‘undesirables’, settlement and annexation of new territories, and ruthless defeat of all enemies. Fascist imperialism is colonial imperialism without restraints, aiming to make deranged fantasies into a reality, and fuelled by a popular base of fanatics. Fascist imperialism is both the engine for the rapid growth and radicalization of fascism at home and abroad, and the source of its own destruction, for it produces countless enemies while establishing no legitimacy except that which results from fear and terror, which cannot sustain itself over the long-term. Thus, imperialism is both the expansionary and radicalizing phase of fascism, while it also represents its overextension, hubris, collapse and failure. Fascist imperialism allows the fascist fanatics to attempt to create in reality their most deranged fantasies in the newly conquered and colonized lands, where they are unrestrained by any laws, rules, or norms that may exist in their home countries. At home, they are citizens of the ‘great nation;’ in the occupied territories and colonies, each individual fascist can be like a king and conqueror.

A week into the March 2026 war, with Israel invading Lebanon, Israeli finance minister and settler leader, Bezalel Smotrich, threatened, “You wanted to bring hell on us, we are bringing hell on you,” adding, in reference to the southern area of Beirut where Hezbollah is based (Dahiyeh) and a city in Gaza that was wiped off the map, “Dahiyeh will look like Khan Younis, and our citizens of the north will live in peace and quiet.” In other words, Beirut will look like Gaza. Another senior Israeli official said, “We are going to do [in Lebanon] what we did in Gaza.” The official explained: “The goal is to take over territory, push Hezbollah’s forces north and away from the border, and dismantle its military positions and weapons depots in the villages.” The defense minister warned that Lebanon would face a “loss of territory.” He threatened to destroy villages in southern Lebanon, again invoking Gaza as the prototype, saying they would apply to Lebanon “the model we applied in Gaza’s Rafah and Beit Hanoun,” citing two cities that were completely destroyed by Israel. The defense minister added that the hundreds of thousands of Shiite Lebanese who had been displaced from the south “will not return to their homes.” Smotrich declared that the Litani river, roughly 30km north of the border with Israel, “must become our new border with the state of Lebanon.” Citing the “buffer zones” in Syria and the “yellow line” in Gaza, Smotrich said that a new border along the Litani river would represent “a radical change” far beyond defeating Hezbollah, that Israel will push its enemies “away on all fronts and create a sterile security cordon that will separate the enemy from our citizens.”

The language above reflects how fascist language has been integrated with Israel’s more euphemistic political language of machines, reflecting the closer integration of fascist politics and parties into the ruling system, accelerated through expansionary wars of fascist imperialism.  They explicitly threatened to turn villages into rubble, openly demanded the expulsion of over a million Lebanese, and announced their intentions to seize new territory and change Israel’s borders. The Israelis were thus being quite open about their intentions to ethnically cleanse southern Lebanon and expand Israel’s border into occupied territory, a major international war crime. Yet these clear calls for and justifications of brutality are still ensnared in the wider web of euphemistic political language, particularly that of the lexicon of security and defense. Thus, such clear examples of brutal language and threats are justified and mystified through a language of “buffer zones,” “yellow lines,” and creating “a sterile security cordon.” Even Bezalel Smotrich, an extremist, right-wing settler, religious fanatic who wants to turn Israel into a kind of authoritarian religious theocracy (sort of like the Jewish supremacist version of the Islamic Republic of Iran), has learned to articulate his desires through the political language of security. Thus, while Smotrich makes open threats and statements of brutality such as, “We are bringing hell on you,” and brazenly calls for Israel to seize southern Lebanon, altering its borders by force, all of which is brazenly criminal, he frames it through the language all Israelis understand, that of security and defense: Israel would “not return to the October 6 situation, where the enemy is on our fences,” he said. Israel will push them back “and create a sterile security cordon that will separate the enemy from our citizens.”

In late April 2026, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a report noting how Israeli destruction of southern Lebanon was continuing during the ‘ceasefire.’ One Israeli military officer in Lebanon told the paper that in the southern part of the occupied country, they weren’t even really fighting Hezbollah, instead affirming: “The only mission is to continue the destruction… There is no other mission.” Another IDF commander said that despite claims by the IDF that Israel was just targeting “terrorist infrastructure,” the truth was different: “It isn’t terrorist infrastructure; we’re destroying everything.” The name of the IDF operation to destroy villages and communities across southern Lebanon was Operation Silver Plow. Another IDF officer commented that, “At the end of every day, there’s a report on how many homes were destroyed,” with civilian contractors getting paid based upon the number of homes they demolish, while Israeli soldiers watch over them.

In late May, another report in Haaretz detailed the experiences of Israeli soldiers that had been operating inside occupied southern Lebanon, where looting by soldiers was rampant and systematic. One soldier described their experience in a wealthy Lebanese village, when after walking into homes “shooting everywhere,” then “the real mission would begin – to find the valuable stuff.” The soldiers wouldn’t just ransack homes, but shops as well. “At any given time, you could see soldiers walking around the village with civilians’ stuff on them; it felt like the main mission,” recounted one soldier, adding that, “Most senior commanders didn’t care.” The only concern appeared to be to demand that as they loot, soldiers should shoot when entering new buildings, in case there were “dirty ones” that were “hiding.” A soldier reflected: “The feeling is that the IDF has become like an army of Vikings – they let soldiers loot to they’ll be happy and keep fighting.”

Another soldier noted, “In the village we entered there were no terrorists; the houses were empty. There was no fighting there, only operations to flatten the houses.” The soldier added: “This is the IDF of the last two years – the Israel Defense Forces for destroying houses. The news will report on fierce battles and the destruction of terrorist infrastructure, but our mission was one thing – to leave no structure standing, to destroy everything.” They even stopped using explosives to destroy villages and homes, instead bringing in civilian contractors with bulldozers and excavators, “They were all either extremist settlers or Bedouin and Druze,” while the role of soldiers “was to protect them.” Every day, noted the reservist, “each company was assigned a new compound in the village. It felt like we were in a race against time, trying to demolish as much as possible. Every evening the officers had to report how many houses each company had demolished. They called it ‘achievement assessment’.” Only in Israel could the physical process of ethnic cleansing and mass destruction be referred to as “achievement assessment.”

A reservist commented: “For many of the religious guys with me, this was a supreme mission. The battalion commander was the worst extremist. He refused to go home; the smile never left his face. He was euphoric.” They added: “Most of the people with me didn’t care. They’d go in and look for things to steal, to loot… Others enjoyed the destruction, the vandalism. They’d take a hammer and smash things, or just open cabinets and shatter cups and plates. The only reason was revenge.” Another reservist commented that, “I felt that there, over the border [in Lebanon], it was somehow okay to be crazy.” This latter point reminds one of the descriptions of fascist imperialism that we addressed in earlier parts of this essay, where it is in the conquered, occupied territories that fascist fantasies are able to play out, away from the gaze and laws of domestic society, in a world without rules and restrictions.

A New York Times investigation from early May 2026 found that in southern Lebanon, “Israel has razed border villages as part of an effort to lay the groundwork for a larger occupation.” Defense minister Katz even stated it was built on tactics used in Gaza. The investigation found that, “Widespread demolitions have flattened expanses of at least two dozen towns and villages near the border, with damage to government offices as well as civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and mosques.” The IDF was also building new outposts across southern Lebanon, suggesting it was preparing for a long-term occupation. One IDF soldier in Lebanon told Haaretz that, “These are permanent outposts that will be manned for a long time.” Another army source told the newspaper: “We’re behaving just like we did in Gaza… There’s a list of homes to be demolished, and we measure success based on the number of buildings destroyed in a day. It’s not clear why so many troops are need[ed] to protect these activities, or what the broader goal beyond this is.” As one senior officer in the IDF told Haaretz in early May: “I’ve learned that defending from the line of the gate [the border] and sometimes from the line of the community isn’t enough, and we must not allow big problems to only get bigger… As long as this is what we’re told to do, this is what we’ll continue to do… As a senior officer, I feel great value in our presence here, holding this zone, pushing back the enemy, holding the territory and destroying infrastructure.”

IDF military commanders told Haaretz that they were destroying schools, infrastructure and homes in order to “clear the area.” Defense minister Katz stated, “all houses in villages near the Lebanese border will be demolished according to the model of Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza.” He said the IDF would remain “positioned in a security zone inside Lebanon” and “will maintain security control over the entire area up to the Litani” river. The IDF established a new “yellow line” (much like in Gaza) which was about 10km north of the Israeli border and 20km south of the Litani, and was “clearing” all homes and infrastructure south of that “yellow line,” representing an unofficial new border. Mass destruction, displacement, occupation and ethnic cleansing are all made vague and banal through the language of machines: to clear the area (displace and destroy), build a security zone (occupy), and establish a yellow line (to change the border by force). It was the lower-rank IDF soldiers and officers who were more honest with their descriptions of what was taking place, untrained in the arts of political language, when they acknowledged that, “The only mission is to continue the destruction,” and that, “It isn’t terrorist infrastructure; we’re destroying everything.” These statements are, in effect, accurate translations of the machine language of clearing and building security zones.  But the problem with the honest descriptions is that they reveal a level of brutality that is not consistent with popular perceptions of a civilized or democratic society. Honest descriptions convey the reality of monstrous policies. No army or state making claims to be moral or righteous can pursue a policy of destroying everything. So, they hide their monstrous actions with their emotionally detached machine language.

The language of fascist imperialism is to talk like monsters and machines, interchangeably and simultaneously. The language of fascism – the language of monsters – is used to incite emotions, inspire supporters, and strike fear among enemies. Israel intends to destroy the villages, expel the population, and occupy the territory of southern Lebanon. In stating this clearly, Israeli officials are able to rally the fanatical support of their base, and strike fear among their ‘enemies’ and intended victims. Stating such clear intentions can also help actually implement the policies without having to do anything concrete; as in, by saying that you will destroy everything and kill anyone, you are encouraging people to flee without having yet to do anything on the ground. For a fanatic base of extremists who dream of settling in southern Lebanon and realizing their fantasies of a ‘Greater Israel’, such a language of monsters arouses their greatest emotional desires and political objectives, and assures them that their leaders have not been led astray by the ‘moderating’ influence of establishment politicians and structures. Such a language of monsters, then, clearly serves several objectives in war and empire.

But the vague euphemisms of political language – the language of machines – still has the central role to play. While the language of brutality conveys objectives and tactics, the language of machines – of banality, as Hannah Arendt might put it, justifies and obscures this brutality from the wider public and the ‘international community.’ The combined vote share of the parties of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the two most extreme right (and fascistic) political leaders in the Israeli government, was approximately 11 percent of the national vote in 2022. Their extreme language may rally their base and the settler movement (which itself comprises about ten percent of Israel’s Jewish population), but euphemistic political language allows them to embed their brutality in the wider political system, normalizing and legitimizing their language (and politics) while also dampening and obscuring its true violence. In short, by integrating the language of monsters and machines, the monsters (the fascists) are able to both legitimize and sanitize their language and politics within the establishment and popular culture. Thus, Smotrich can declare both his intent to bring “hell on you” while justifying and softening that violent language by saying it is done to “create a sterile security cordon.” To be “bringing hell” evokes images of fire, destruction and death, but a “sterile security cordon” evokes barely any images at all, just vague concepts of ‘emptiness’ and ‘cleanliness.’

Those who are the targets of the brutal language (whether the base of support or the enemies under threat) understand that that language is for them – the settler extremists hear “bringing hell” to be the promise of a Biblical fantasy realized, while the Lebanese hear “bringing hell” to be a violent and destructive threat. When the extremist base hears their leaders use vague and empty language like “sterile security cordon,” they accept it as the price to gaining power, that their leaders must, to a degree, play the game of politics in order to gain and exercise political power. They might therefore view their leaders’ use of such machine language to be part of a deliberate effort to deceive the establishment and wider society. Conversely, those who are the targets of the political language of machines, the wider public and establishment, believe that the use of the extremist language of brutality is designed to placate “the base,” and may even accept it as a necessary amount of bravado to strike fear among their shared enemies. To them, the use of vague terms like “sterile security cordon” reflects a moderating impulse among the extreme right, their possible “maturing” by accepting the established political discourse of security and defense, a paradigm which most Israelis can accept and support. They believe that it represents the extremist leadership accepting that shared reality (by speaking its language), while interpreting the “bringing hell” rhetoric to be fantasy consumption for the extremist base, not necessarily a statement of policy. After all, to most Israelis, Israel doesn’t destroy and ethnically cleanse or “bring hell,” it pursues security interests through acts of self-defense, regardless of what the “fringe” says (even when the fringe is now centered squarely in power). Thus, all sides acknowledge that the use of political language – both brutal and banal (monsters and machines) – is inherently deceptive, they just don’t agree about who is being deceived and for what purpose.

What Smotrich and other right-wing extremists in Israel and the United States have done is to legitimize those with a more violent and explicitly racist language by integrating it with the common euphemisms of political and security discourse. This does not challenge, but supports Orwell’s overall thesis on political language: that it consists primarily of “the defense of the indefensible” in order to avoid arguments that were “too brutal for most people to face,” and therefore, “political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” When the Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon acknowledged that, “we’re destroying everything,” and, “The only mission is to continue the destruction,” they were describing an indefensible policy, as Orwell would put it, something which was “too brutal for most people to face.” Thus, the monstrous reality of destroying everything was translated into the stated objective of creating a sterile security cordon, a term Orwell would certainly have agreed constituted “sheer cloudy vagueness.”

One notable difference with Israel is that brutal language is more common than elsewhere, so while euphemisms are still widely used, the language of monsters – let alone its politics – does not provoke a significant backlash as it might in other countries. Israeli political language has introduced more openly racist and violent language because the Israeli leadership and society have become more openly racist and violent, or at least more openly supportive of those ideas and actions. Most societies are likely to view such statements and arguments as being “too brutal for most people to face,” but Israeli society has to a significant extent become more brutal, and therefore such statements appear more normal within the Israeli political context. That this more explicitly fascist language has integrated itself with the common machine language of Israeli security and defense reflects how Israeli fascists themselves have become more integrated with the Israeli political and security establishment and society at large. Even if the actual popular support base for figures like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are relatively low, their politics and language are now mainstream and cut across the spectrum.

The interaction between language and politics is neither exact nor immediate. It is an evolutionary process, complete with successes and failures, advances and declines. Decades of brutality, apartheid, colonialism, killing and control over Palestinian life and land, justified through the euphemistic language of security and defense, has contributed to making Israel a more brutal, racist, and violent society. Decades of justifying or erasing Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestinians (in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza) through the use of political language has helped to create fascist and religious extremist movements, which have unsurprisingly emerged out of the settler-colonies in the West Bank, and took power in Israel itself, reshaping both it and the wider region according to their dangerous fantasies of a ‘Greater Israel.’

And of course, those fantasies – and Israel’s current stage of fascist imperialism – does not stop at Gaza or Lebanon. It even extends into Syria. But it is also dramatically realized in the apartheid hell-hole of the Israeli occupied West Bank, where Israeli settlers run rampant and terrorize Palestinian communities. It is in the occupied West Bank where Israel’s modern fascist movement was born and from which it came to seize power in Israel itself. It is to the West Bank where the fascists return to make their deadly fantasies a reality.

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Andrew Gavin Marshall is a writer and researcher of politics, history, and economics based in Toronto, Canada. His website is Empire and Economics, he hosts the podcast ‘In This Mad World.’ You can subscribe to his Substack and follow him on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and be sure to subscribe to his bi-weekly News Junkies newsletter.