Israel’s Defense Minister Gantz Offers Humanitarian Aid to Lebanon

[duluxe]

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/d...oposal-for-humanitarian-aid-to-lebanon-673008

Defense Minister Benny Gantz has sent a proposal for humanitarian aid to Lebanon through UNIFIL, his ministry announced on Tuesday.
The move comes after Gantz has repeated several times in recent weeks that Israel is willing to offer assistance to its northeastern neighbor, which is suffering from a worsening economic crisis, with the World Bank calling it one of the world’s worst financial crises since the 1850s.
Violence and protests have been breaking out around the country as basic services collapse.
According to an assessment released by UNICEF on Monday, 77% of Lebanese households don’t have enough money to buy food. The country’s medicine importers have warned they have run out of hundreds of essential drugs. Electricity outages and gas shortages are commonplace and the Lebanese Armed Forces announced it is offering tourists helicopter rides for $150 to make money.

Lebanon’s current impoverishment is the result of many years of mismanagement and corruption by a succession of governments, now kept in power by Hezbollah, whose members are in both the cabinet and in the Lebanese Parliament; the Maronite President, Michel Aoun, is also a willing collaborator with the terror group.

Gantz tweeted on Sunday: “As an Israeli, as a Jew and as a human being, my heart aches seeing the images of people going hungry on the streets of Lebanon. Israel has offered assistance to Lebanon in the past, and even today we are ready to act and to encourage other countries to extend a helping hand to Lebanon so that it will once again flourish and emerge from its state of crisis.”…

Israel has no quarrel with the country of Lebanon, but only with Hezbollah. In the past it helped the Christians of Lebanon, by supporting the Army of South Lebanon against Hezbollah. More recently, Israel offered humanitarian aid to Lebanon after the huge explosion at the Port of Beirut last August (an explosion for which Hezbollah was responsible). That offer of aid was turned down; the Lebanese government was more concerned with angering Hezbollah than it was in helping its own people.

In a speech on Sunday marking the opening of Israel’s first monument to the Southern Lebanon Army, which fought alongside the IDF during Israel’s presence in southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, Gantz offered assistance.

Lebanon has not responded to Gantz’s offers or the proposal sent to UNIFIL, but due to the long-standing enmity between the two sides, Beirut is expected to refuse the help.
After a huge explosion devastated Beirut last August, killing dozens and injuring thousands, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved humanitarian and medical assistance to Lebanon instructing the National Security Council to contact former UN special envoy for the Middle East peace process Nickolay Mladenov to find out how Israel could help.
Gantz and other Israeli officials reiterated Jerusalem’s offer for aid at the time, with hospitals in Haifa and the North saying they were ready to provide assistance, but Lebanon refused.

After the Beirut explosion in August 2020 left 200 dead and 6,000 wounded, Israel offered the Lebanese humanitarian aid, including medicine, and also declared its readiness to treat in its own hospitals some of the 6,000 Lebanese wounded in the blast. The Lebanese government, in thrall to Hezbollah, refused the offer. And the world’s media mostly ignored the Israeli offer, not wanting to report anything that might make the Jewish state look good. Nor would the international media have wanted to report on how Hezbollah made the Lebanese government turn down the offer of Israeli aid, which showed clearly how Hezbollah was determined to have no dealings with Israel, even at the expense of severely wounded Lebanese.

Now Gantz has made a new offer to Lebanon, during its crisis of impoverishment, this time of unspecified aid – “Israel has offered to help Lebanon in the past, and today as well, we are prepared to work to help it grow and get out of this crisis.” Food shipments? Medicines? Financial aid? All of the above? Whatever Lebanon needs, Israel stands ready to help, so far the only country to make such an offer.

And whatever help Israel offers, Hezbollah will make sure the Lebanese government turns it down flat or, more likely, ignores it altogether..

You won’t read or see many stories about Gantz’s good-samaritan offer, and Lebanon’s certain refusal of it, because it doesn’t fit the narrative of the wicked “colonial settler” state of Israel mistreating the Palestinians and other Arabs. That’s why I decided to post news of that Israeli offer here. Feel free to spread the word.