Israel did not stop at killing journalists in southern Lebanon. It went further: it boasted about it.
At least eight tweets were posted by the Arabic-language spokesperson of the Israeli army, Avichay Adraee, to justify or gloat over the killing of Al-Manar correspondent Ali Shoeib and Al-Mayadeen reporter Fatima Ftouni, along with their colleagues. Adraee announced the targeting of Ali Shoeib and presented it as an achievement. He treated the killing of Fatima Ftouni within the same framework. Here, we enter a dangerous phase of openly legitimizing killing.
This shift is extremely dangerous: Israel is turning civilians, including journalists and paramedics, into “targets,” then boasting and showcasing it.
This escalation cannot be understood without examining the battlefield of narratives. The open exchange between Avichay Adraee and journalists affiliated with Hezbollah, including Hussein Mortada, is no longer merely a media back-and-forth. It has become a stark display of the degradation of discourse in wartime. On one side, Israeli messaging is delivered in a sarcastic and demeaning tone. On the other hand, narratives of “victory” are constructed that do not reflect the balance of power or the scale of losses.
In this context, Adraee’s gloating over the killing of Ali Shoeib becomes part of this battle over narrative. Killing is no longer just a tool of war. It has become propaganda material used to score points in an ongoing media confrontation. Here, propaganda intersects with violence: the strike is justified, then celebrated, then exploited for media gain.
This is a direct extension of what Israel has done in Gaza. In the war on Gaza, Israel did not only target journalists, where an unprecedented number have been killed in any contemporary conflict. It also developed a parallel discourse to justify this, accusing them of ties to Hamas or participation in “propaganda.” As if that, even if proven, grants the right to try and execute them, sometimes along with their families. In the absence of real international accountability, this discourse has turned into an openly practiced policy, without fear of consequences.
What we are witnessing in Lebanon today appears to be a repetition of this model, but with greater confidence. Boasting about the killing of a journalist, or placing them on a target list and using phrases like “eliminated,” reflects a growing sense of impunity. In other words, what happened in Gaza has not remained confined there. It has become a precedent that can be replicated, and Lebanon is now experiencing it firsthand.
More dangerously, this pattern is not limited to targeting individuals. It extends to the very structure of the war itself. In Gaza, the strategy relied on large-scale destruction, the targeting of civilian infrastructure, and the forced displacement of populations under continuous military pressure. In southern Lebanon, troubling signs point to a similar trajectory, as footage released by the Israeli army itself shows intense bombardment of border villages, systematic destruction of homes, some of which are burned or looted.
In the south, Israel is reshaping the demographic geography by imposing a depopulated zone under the banner of “security.”
Justifying the Killing from Within
What makes the killing of fellow journalists even more brutal is what followed inside Lebanon. Fatima Ftouni’s death was not met with unified condemnation. Instead, it quickly became an occasion to put her on trial after her death.
In the hours following her killing, her tweets were dug up, and her political positions were brought back into the spotlight, particularly those related to the Syrian war and the role of Hezbollah in it. Before her body was even buried, a public sorting had already begun: did she deserve sympathy or not? In this way, the issue was no longer a clear violation of the right to life, but a political test for the victim.
This parallel between an occupying power that justifies killing and a divided Lebanese society that re-evaluates the victim reveals the depth of the collapse. In both cases, a fundamental principle is being undermined: the right to life is not granted based on political position. This is a logic previously practiced by Hezbollah and its supporters, and today, their opponents are falling into the same trap.
Domestically, there is little indication that what happened will lead to reflection. Instead, it is pushing toward deeper division. Rather than even a minimal moment of human solidarity grounded in rejecting killing, a different trajectory is taking hold: the reproduction of a discourse of accusation and treason. It is a discourse that Lebanon has already experienced as a pathway to killing and assassination. Voices aligned with Hezbollah have already begun using threatening language internally.
This trajectory is no longer confined to political rhetoric. It is beginning to materialize on the streets. During a protest in downtown Beirut following the killing of the journalists, slogans were raised accusing Prime Minister Nawaf Salam of being “Zionist” and a traitor. These accusations drew on a prior exchange between him and journalist Fatima Ftouni during his visit to the south weeks earlier, intensifying incitement against him. Reviving that exchange and presenting it as an implicit piece of evidence in the context of her killing reflects a dangerous attempt to shift responsibility from the direct perpetrator, Israel, to an internal “opponent.”
The use of the term “Zionist” was not incidental. It was a concentrated expression of the level of tension. More tellingly, Ibrahim Moussawi, a member of Hezbollah, attempted to dissuade protesters from chanting it, arguing that it “harms the المقاومة (resistance),” but he failed and later apologized for his attempt.
What this moment reveals goes beyond the slogan itself. A party that, over the years, has built a discourse of accusation and demonization now finds itself facing a street that has adopted this discourse and pushed it to its extreme, to a point it can no longer control. Moussawi’s objection was less a defense of Nawaf Salam than it was a delayed recognition of the dangers of this unchecked rhetoric, especially as it threatens to deepen the divide with a broad segment of Lebanese society that views the monopoly of arms by the state as a legitimate demand.
Here, one of the most dangerous dynamics of this phase becomes clear: mobilizing rhetoric gradually turns into a force independent of its creator. What begins as a political tool evolves into a broader climate that becomes difficult to control. When this climate reaches the point of threatening the entire Lebanese internal landscape, or large segments of it, political debate has fully shifted into a logic of exclusion.
What is missing in this loud confrontation, however, is the real cost. Wars of narratives are not decided on screens, but on the ground. In Gaza, we have already seen this: competing mobilizing rhetoric, claims of victory, and mutual justifications, while the outcome was widespread destruction, massive human loss, and social collapse. And after all that, Hamas remained, albeit weakened, present as a “resistance” on the ruins of a devastated society.
This model now looms over Lebanon, making the moment even more dangerous. Between Israel’s narrative, which justifies killing and expands its targets, and Hezbollah’s narrative, which exaggerates achievements, the country is being pushed toward a harsh equation: expanding destruction, a weakening state, and an exhausted society.
More dangerously, this reality finds those who cheer for it, not despite its cost, but sometimes because of it. The more Israel’s brutality escalates, the more capable this narrative becomes of reproducing itself, even at the expense of the country.
To complete the picture, a counter-Lebanese discourse is also intensifying, at times taking on a sharp right-wing tone. It does not stop at criticizing Hezbollah, but goes as far as invoking Israel’s power and openly calling for the continuation of its war, ignoring the catastrophic cost to the country. Even at a conference by the Lebanese Forces, demands were raised to prosecute Hezbollah without any reference to Israel’s actions. This discourse, despite positioning itself as opposition, mirrors the very logic it claims to challenge: stripping the opponent of humanity and turning the conflict into an existential confrontation.
In light of all this, Lebanon appears trapped between two parallel trajectories: an Israeli path that legitimizes killing by redefining the civilian as a potential target, and an internal path that legitimizes exclusion by redefining the opponent as a threat that must be silenced. Between these two, the space for politics shrinks, and the public sphere as a space for disagreement recedes, as if society has already entered a phase of deep fragmentation, the consequences of which may long outlast the war itself.
