Whenever I attend a protest or a rally, it has always been because my heart led me there. When I watch a video of a seven year old child, bleeding from the ear, hair white, covered in rubble, mumbling “where is my mommy?” I think about my own seven year old brother and wonder what kind of world I want him to grow up in. So when a columnist claims that anyone rallying for Lebanon must be doing so because they are in support of Hezbollah or because of their “thinly disguised antisemitism and hate for Israel,” it annoys me. While I find that accusation to be an overused trope and in many ways ahistorical, my annoyance stems more from the increasing normalization of ignorance in journalism. We must rally for Lebanon.
The war on Gaza continues to set new (devastating) precedents for modern warfare. According to CNN , over the course of Sept. 24 and 25, Israel pummeled southern Lebanon with 2,000 munitions and 3,000 airstrikes. Perhaps, we must congratulate Israel for achieving, in two days in Lebanon, what took the US a year to accomplish in Afghanistan. Whenever Israel attacks, it permits itself to forgo all rules of modern methods of warfare: principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack. Israeli leadership uses 2,000 pound bombs in capital cities despite it being unlawful. That country really is its own role-model, spreading terror, displacement and death in the Middle East.
On Jul. 19, for the first time since the Israeli occupation began in 1967, the International Court of Justice released a ruling, accusing Israel of practicing separation in the Palestinian occupied territories. This means Israel has officially been found, by international law, to be a state that practices illegal “separation, differentiation of treatment and systemic discrimination.” As an international community, is this not enough grounds to condemn Israel the same way our University leadership has condemned other nations in the past? Fellow Cornellians, the contradictions are clear. Let us rally for Lebanon because we stand in solidarity with the over 1,000 civilians and 1 million displaced whose lives were forever changed by an illegal occupying state.
– Kingsley Onyedikachi Aaron-Onuigbo ’27