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Europe would have more if a leg to stand on here re Russia’s terrible actions if they held countries like the US and Israel to the same standards
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The Israeli military’s extensive and deliberate destruction of civilian property and agricultural land across southern Lebanon must be investigated as war crimes, Amnesty International said in a new briefing.
- Homes and buildings destroyed by explosives and bulldozers
- More than 10,000 structures heavily damaged or destroyed, even after ceasefire declared
- “Israeli troops deliberately left a trail of devastation as they moved through the region” – Erika Guevara Rosas
Nowhere To Return: Israel’s Extensive Destruction of Southern Lebanon documents how Israeli forces used manually laid explosives and bulldozers to devastate civilian structures, including homes, mosques, cemeteries, roads, parks and soccer pitches, across 24 municipalities.
The briefing analyses the period from the start of Israel’s ground invasion into Lebanon on 1 October 2024 until 26 January 2025 and reveals that more than 10,000 structures were heavily damaged or destroyed during that time. Much of the destruction took place after 27 November 2024, after a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect.
The destruction was carried out by the Israeli military after it had secured control of the areas, meaning outside of combat action. In such a context, international humanitarian law (IHL) prohibits the destruction of civilian property unless required by imperative military necessity. Amnesty International’s investigation found that in many cases the extensive destruction of civilian structures was carried out by the Israeli military in apparent absence of imperative military necessity and in violation of IHL.
“The Israeli military’s destruction of civilian homes, property and land in southern Lebanon rendered entire areas uninhabitable and ruined countless lives,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.
“The evidence we have analysed clearly shows that Israeli troops deliberately left a trail of devastation as they moved through the region. Their blatant disregard for the communities they have destroyed is abhorrent.
“Where these acts of destruction were committed intentionally or recklessly, they must be investigated as war crimes.”
The map above shows the percentage of buildings heavily damaged or destroyed in each Lebanese municipality along the Israeli border documented between 26 September 2024 and 30 January 2025.
Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab used a wealth of visual evidence – including 77 verified videos and photographs, and satellite imagery – to investigate the damage and quantify the buildings heavily damaged or destroyed. The evidence included videos showing Israeli soldiers manually laying explosives inside homes, ripping up roads and football pitches, and bulldozing parks and religious sites. In some videos, soldiers filmed themselves celebrating the destruction by singing and cheering.
The Crisis Evidence Lab also gathered statements shared by the Israeli military and Hezbollah on their official channels, and analysed news reports and data collected by other organizations to develop a timeline and conduct a contextual analysis. Amnesty International also interviewed 11 residents of southern Lebanon’s border villages.
The Israeli military stated that some destruction of civilian structures was intended to prevent future attacks, and that some of the structures had previously been used by Hezbollah fighters, stored weapons, or stood above tunnels. However, in Amnesty International’s view, extensive destruction of civilian property in order to prevent an opposing party from launching attacks in the future does not meet the imperative military necessity standard under IHL. The previous use of a civilian building by a party to the conflict does not automatically render it a military objective.
Amnesty International sent questions regarding the destruction to the Israeli authorities on 27 June 2025. At the time of publication, no response had been received.
When the Israeli military began its ground invasion in Lebanon on 1 October 2024, it stated it was “conducting localized, limited, targeted raids based on precise intelligence against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure”. Yet Amnesty International’s analysis reveals vast destruction across almost the entire 120km-long southern border with Israel.
A map showing the resulting building damage assessment of heavily damaged or destroyed structures in red between late September 2024 and late January 2025. The yellow polygons show the areas of Israeli advances on the ground up to late January 2025.
Satellite imagery shows the municipalities of Yarin, Dhayra and Boustane in Tyre district were most affected, with more than 70 per cent of their buildings destroyed in the analysed time frame. Seven other municipalities had more than half of their structures destroyed.
While Amnesty International is unable to assess if each and every one of the more than 10,000 structures was damaged or destroyed unlawfully, the organization conducted a detailed analysis of the damage and destruction Israeli forces inflicted on five villages: Kfar Kila, Maroun el Ras, Odeisseh, Aita Ash-Shaab and Dhayra.
More than 1,300 structures and 133 acres of orchards were heavily damaged or destroyed in Kfar Kila between 26 September 2024 and 27 January 2025, according to satellite imagery. Most of the structures within 500 metres of the border have been heavily damaged or destroyed.
On 28 October, the Israeli military published a compilation of videos filmed in the town, including demolitions through manually laid explosives showing soldiers at ease and in apparent control of the area. This was followed by a video on 14 November showing evidence of tunnels and weapons allegedly found, with an accompanying infographic of the town “depicting the locations of Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure”.
Visual analysis of the infographic and a comparison with ground footage and satellite imagery clearly show the destruction of civilian structures went far beyond the buildings alleged to have housed Hezbollah infrastructure. Amnesty International’s analysis shows that the Israeli military had at least partial control of the area by the 28 October, as evidenced by journalists visiting the town. The destruction continued also after the ceasefire went into effect on the 27 November 2024.
An infographic of alleged “terrorist infrastructure” located in Kfar Kila published by the Israeli military (top) and satellite imagery showing the heavily damaged or destroyed buildings data in red (bottom). Source: IDF via YouTube and Google Earth
Amnesty International also documented the destruction of a soccer field in early November 2024. As they were destroying the field with an excavator, the Israeli military also carved a Star of David, a Jewish symbol, into a parking area, in further evidence of the unnecessary nature of the destruction.
Zeinab*, who left Kfar Kila in late 2023 following Israeli air strikes, returned in November 2024 for the first time since fleeing. She said: “I can’t describe the massive destruction, the total devastation… I couldn’t find my house, or any houses. I found rubble, destruction, and rocks on the ground.”
In total, 700 structures were destroyed or heavily damaged in Maroun el Ras between 29 September 2024 and 30 January 2025. The Israeli military continued to destroy parts of Maroun el Ras into late January 2025, two months after a ceasefire agreement went into effect.
Among the structures unlawfully destroyed was the “Iranian garden”, which included a soccer field and a playground. One video published on social media on 8 October 2024 showed soldiers raising the Israeli flag on the garden’s ruins. Videos published in the following days showed a bulldozer running over the garden’s vegetation and lighting poles, and an excavator destroying a statue.
Frames of videos published on social media show Israeli soldiers raising the Israeli flag and destroying vegetation, infrastructure and a statue at the Iranian Garden, in Maroun el Ras
More than 580 structures were heavily damaged or destroyed between 26 September 2024 and 27 January 2025, including a mosque and a cemetery. The Israeli military continued to destroy parts of Odeisseh into mid-January 2025, while it was in full control of the area.
Eight videos were published on social media on 27 November showing the demolition of dozens of buildings through manually laid explosives, including the Baalbaki family home. Satellite imagery shows that the house was destroyed between 21 and 23 October, along with a dozen other structures and more than five acres of surrounding orchards.
The Israeli military destroyed 1,000 buildings between 26 September 2024 and 30 January 2025, many of them through manually laid explosives and bulldozers.
Vast areas of the village appear to have been razed between 13 and 25 October, including four mosques. One video, published on a soldier’s private social media account on 23 October 2024, showed troops jumping and singing “may your village burn” in Hebrew as excavators tore down buildings.
Frames of videos published on social media show excavators destroying buildings and the Israeli flag raised on a water tank in Aita Ash Shaab
On 29 October, the Israeli military published a map of Aita Ash-Shaab that showed several sites it referred to as “terrorist locations” marked by red dots, without specifying what each dot meant. The destruction extended far beyond the red dots marked on the map. The demolitions continued in waves, with the latest destruction happening between 14 and 18 January 2025, during the agreed ceasefire period.
Hajj Muhammad Srour, Aita Ash-Shaab’s mayor, said: “The destruction today is indescribable and unparalleled…You feel that there is no purpose for it other than creating great damage, like someone trying to wreak havoc… We lost all civilian property, [which] consists of homes, agricultural land, people’s livelihoods, shops, restaurants… The public squares, the places where people would meet in front of shops in every neighbourhood, the football playground for the kids and youth… They’re all gone.”
Between 4 October 2024 and 30 January 2025, 264 buildings – or 71 per cent of all the municipality’s structures – were destroyed. Almost 45 acres of agricultural land was also razed. Israeli forces continued to destroy parts of Dhayra into mid-January 2025.
On 13 October 2024, an Israeli journalist published a video showing the use of manually laid explosives to destroy the Ahel El-Quran mosque on the outskirts of the town of Dhayra. Satellite imagery confirmed that the mosque and several structures nearby were destroyed between 11 and 13 October.
A frame of a video published on social media shows Israeli soldiers watching the destruction by manually laid explosives of a large section of Dhayra, in southern Lebanon
The homes of Adiba Finsh, 66, and her six sons were destroyed. She told Amnesty International: “Israel blew it up. All of it. And they filmed the explosion. Even the houses …they made a video of themselves counting from five to one, and when the explosion happened, they shouted: ‘Wow! Yay!’. I watch this video every day. And each time, I tell the man ‘yaying’: ‘Yes, what an accomplishment’.”
“Given the scale of destruction carried out by the Israeli military, many residents of southern Lebanon have nothing to return to,” said Erika Guevara Rosas.
“The Israeli authorities must provide prompt, full and adequate reparations to all victims of violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes, both individuals and entire communities These reparations must extend to the families of those harmed by Israel’s unlawful conduct.”
Lebanon’s government should immediately explore all possible legal routes, including establishing a domestic reparation mechanism and demanding reparation from parties to the conflict. The government should also reconsider providing the International Criminal Court with jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute crimes under the Rome Statute committed on Lebanese territory.
All states should immediately suspend all arms transfers and other forms of military assistance to Israel due to the significant risk that these weapons could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international law.
Note: *Names have been changed.
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In light of this, why is it only now that the silence in the American Jewish community over Gaza has at last broken? And what should those of us who were against the war on October 8th expect from those who have taken almost two years—in which we have seen entire families disappeared under the rubble, entire cities reduced to ghost towns, and now an entire civilian population wasting to the bone—to voice their concern?
The most generous explanation for what has taken these Jewish leaders so long is that many American Jews were shocked and horrified by the violence of the October 7th attacks, and subsequently felt it was their duty to stand shoulder to shoulder with Israeli society—95% of which supported the Israeli government’s war, declared in the name of defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages. But Israelis’ understandable grief was immediately sharpened into a monstrous call for revenge, which emanated directly from the Knesset. Mainstream American Jewry rushed to offer their unconditional solidarity and to take on the trauma of the October 7th attacks as their own, bolstered by a media echo chamber rife with misinformation, atrocity propaganda, and fearmongering. In the coming months, as the Israeli military flattened Gaza, American Jews remained stuck in the story of October 7th. They learned the names of every Israeli hostage, but nothing of Khalil Abu Yahia, Hind Rajab, Hossam Shabat, or Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan. Synagogues hosted speakers representing the 115 Israelis who lost both parents on October 7th, and sent solidarity delegations to the kibbutzim, while remaining willfully ignorant of the fact that doctors in Gaza had coined the term WCNSF, for “wounded child no surviving family,” due to the thousands of children they treated whose entire families had been killed. When information about the genocide did break through, it was brushed aside as blood libel and slander, the result of a scourge of rising antisemitism, on campuses and in the streets.
In part, mainstream American Jewish leaders have justified their refusal to face the facts of Gaza’s mass graves, barely functioning hospitals, and flattened universities via a dangerous, self-soothing Jewish exceptionalism—the belief that Jews are guided by a superior ethical code and that Israel as a Jewish state is, too. Speaking on For Heaven’s Sake in December 2023, Hartman declared, “I don’t believe . . . and nobody in Israel believes, that Israel’s targeting civilians. It’s not in our ethos. We know our army. We know our soldiers. That’s not what we do.” At that point, South Africa had detailed ample evidence to the contrary in their application to the International Court of Justice alleging genocide, including reports of summary executions of multiple members of a single family, the murders of unarmed civilians fleeing on designated “safe routes,” and the dropping of 2,000 pound “dumb” bombs which killed indiscriminately within a 1,000-foot radius. Hartman and his co-host Yossi Klein Halevi, both American émigrés to Israel, brushed off the indictment as antisemitism. Others acknowledged the damage but insisted it was a necessary cost of the war. Hartman and Klein Halevi’s colleague across the ocean, Hartman Institute President Yehuda Kurtzer, has made the case repeatedly since October 2023 that “Israel is fighting a just war based on a just cause.” In January 2024 he responded to American Jews growing uneasy with the carnage in Gaza by saying that he still believed there was no “moral imperative” to oppose the war and that he could not identify a clear “limit to the blood sacrifice we must demand or endure” in pursuing ends he believed in.
Watching the persistence of such arguments well into 2025, it’s hard not to conclude that the simplest reason why most American Jewish leaders didn’t speak out sooner is because they weren’t actually opposed to what was happening for most of the last 22 months. For Israel’s liberal defenders, the country’s show of dominance against Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran was necessary to restore Israeli deterrence against future attacks, even if it may have gone a bit too far. In May of this year, on his own Hartman podcast Identity/Crisis, Kurtzer discussed the destroyed buildings, the massacred families, and the campaign of starvation and concluded that he had not changed his opinion that Israel’s fight was just. And yet, where “I was willing to endure the costs to my enemies, to civilians, and even to my own moral fiber in that process,” he said, “I just am not willing to endure it anymore.” In other words, he is satisfied with the damage. Now that it’s done, it’s safe to be uncomfortable with it. In July, Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director emerita of the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council, took a moment to praise Israel’s “brilliant strategic operation against Hezbollah and against Iran” as he implored the country to use its supposed military ingenuity to “find a way to end the humanitarian nightmare that exists in Gaza.”
All of this rhetoric betrays the clear hierarchy of the value of human life endemic to Zionism. Only the logic that Jewish death is unacceptable and Palestinian death is a tragic necessity can explain the way these leaders remained ensconced in a story about Jewish victimhood as Gaza burned. In fact, even within that very first week after October 7th, there was no way to tell a story exclusively about Jewish victimhood unless you simply did not value Palestinian lives. For one thing, over 200 Palestinians had already been killed in the West Bank in 2023, before the Hamas incursion took place. But for another, Israel’s retaliatory bombing began almost immediately, raining death on the neighborhoods of Gaza, while settler violence spread like wildfire across the West Bank. The Palestinian death toll far surpassed that of October 7th within a single week, hitting 2,300 people by October 15th. Early warnings from Palestinian analysts, journalists, and doctors, as well as genocide scholars, human rights organizations, and international bodies about where Israel’s campaign was headed were all ignored. Even now, as some admit aloud to the horrors they’ve long suppressed, most American Zionists frame the end to the war primarily in terms of the benefit to Israel. In articles and statements from conservative columnist Bret Stephens to the Reform movement, Israel’s self-interest and public image remain front and center, and harm to Palestinians remains a footnote.
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Every year the winter cold brings an ambient haze of wood heater smoke to the suburbs, streets and houses of southern Australia.
This smoke can aggravate asthma, divide neighbours and drive people inside.
Now, new modelling gives a clearer picture of its toll on the nation's health.
The Centre for Safe Air at the University of Tasmania estimates long-term exposure to particles in wood-heater smoke causes more than 720 premature deaths every year in Australia, which is more than the deaths attributable to the same type of emissions from the national fleet of 20 million vehicles, or from energy generation, or even bushfires.
Along with this figure, the Centre has built the first national map of wood-heater emissions and deaths attributable to these emissions, with a resolution that can pick out clusters of suburbs most at risk.
Cost-of-living pressures, power price hikes and a wood-heater sales boom during COVID may mean more houses are burning wood than ever before.
Meanwhile, Australians are increasingly aware the smoke is a risk to their health.
Neighbourly bust-ups over the issue appear to be on the rise.
Here's where the smoke is worst, and where long-term exposure is costing the most lives.
A national map of wood heater pollution
The Centre for Safe Air combined particulate pollution readings from around Australia with surveys of wood heater use to generate its national map of wood heater pollution.
Let's focus on the cities in the south-east corner of Australia, which has the highest concentration of wood heaters.
The map below shows total wood heater emissions by kilograms per year in 2015.
As you might expect, the wood smoke is generally thickest in regional areas.
Towns like Armidale in NSW or Devonport in Tasmania have well-documented smoke problems.
"In small communities where every second person has a wood heater, you do get that pall of smoke and it's really dense," said Fay Johnston, lead investigator at the centre.
But wood heater smoke is not solely a regional issue.
In fact, when we look at its public health impact, or how wood smoke affects the population as a whole, we find wood smoke causes more harm in capital cities than in regional areas.
How does wood smoke affect health?
Every morning, Lisa checks her neighbour's chimney for white smoke.
The young mother, who asked to remain anonymous, realised there was a wood-smoke problem soon after moving with her family to Sydney's Sutherland Shire.
"[The neighbour] runs the wood heater most weekday evenings and throughout the weekend, so we can't open our windows, can't access our backyard," she said.
"Our other neighbour says their cat smells of smoke."
She said she was forced to keep her toddler inside on bad smoke days, worried about his health.
When she politely raised the issue with the wood-burning neighbours, she said they responded defensively: "They said 'We've been doing this for 20 years and no-one else has complained.'"
Wood smoke contains tiny airborne particles that can be trapped in our lungs. Long-term exposure can cause heart and lung disease.
Short-term exposure can aggravate asthma or worsen pre-existing heart conditions.
Even a low background exposure to wood smoke can have a measurable public health impact.
Wood smoke a killer in biggest cities
Wood heaters are so polluting, it only takes a relatively small number of homes burning wood to expose millions of people in a city to pollution, said Professor Johnston from the Centre for Safe Air.
"You don't necessarily see or smell a thick blanket of smoke, but the fact it's increasing the background pollution every winter means we can measure the effect on the health of the population."
By combining this measured effect of wood smoke on health with the estimate of wood heater emissions in different parts of the country, the centre created a second national map, showing the public health impact of wood smoke.
The map below shows estimated earlier-than-expected deaths per 100,000 people due to exposure to wood-heater smoke. The top regions are in south-east Australia.
The public health impact of wood smoke squarely falls hardest on the relatively heavily populated cities, even though the concentration of wood smoke may be lower than in some regional towns.
And there's one city where the public health impact is greatest.
Perhaps surprisingly, given their cooler climates, it is not Hobart or Melbourne.
Which city has the most deaths from wood smoke?
A higher proportion of people die earlier in Lisa's home city of Sydney than expected due to wood-heater pollution than other parts of south-east Australia.
This is partly due to its topography, with the harbour and surrounding land forming a bowl that traps smoke.
"Our topography definitely lends itself to trapping air pollutants within the Sydney basin," said Peter Irga, an expert in air quality at the University of Technology Sydney.
"Other than Launceston, the other major cities don't have that basin topography."
Within this bowl, "middle suburbs" such as Parramatta or Marrickville have a combination of high population density, freestanding homes with chimneys, and access to relatively cheap firewood.
About 5 per cent of homes in Sydney own a wood heater, but the Centre for Safe Air's modelling suggests these relatively few emitters cause more than 300 earlier-than-expected deaths in the city every year.
"The modelled estimate of deaths attributable to wood heater particulate pollution are higher than those attributable to motor vehicle particulate pollution," Professor Johnston said.
"Wood heaters really punch above their weight when it comes to putting pollution into the atmosphere, relative to the benefit they give us in terms of heat.
"We pay a big price in air quality for that heat."
But these maps don't tell the full story.
The modelling relies on air-quality measurement stations dotted around the country that don't capture the emissions for those directly downwind of wood heater chimneys.
It's here, at the very local scale, that smoke can be thickest.
And where there's smoke, there's often angry neighbours.
Neighbours clash over smoke pollution
Arabella Daniel, a Melbourne-based community organiser against wood smoke pollution, said it was "a neighbour against neighbour issue".
Ms Daniel, who once took legal action against her council in response to smoke coming from a neighbour's fire pit, runs the My Air Quality Australia Facebook page, which has 3,000 members.
"We've really had a surge in members in the last 12 months," she said.
About 10 per cent of households use wood heaters as their primary source of heat, but millions breathe the smoke these heaters produce.
It's this disparity that makes wood-heater smoke a prime source of neighbourly conflict.
Members of the Facebook group share stories of complaints to councils and heated arguments with neighbours.
"There's a lot of suffering. People are silent because to complain about wood smoke means you're dobbing in your neighbour," Ms Daniel said.
"People contact us silently, anonymously. They're in utter despair."
Members of the group who spoke to the ABC asked to remain anonymous.
Max in Thirroul, just south of Sydney, has sealed windows and doorways and installed air purifiers to protect his 11-year-old asthmatic son from wood smoke.
"Soon as it gets cold, around 4pm, the wood smoke becomes so bad you can't go outside."
He said his air-quality monitors regularly clocked particulate readings of more than 50 micrograms per cubic meter, which was considered unhealthy with prolonged exposure.
Amber, in Canberra, fell out with neighbours over wood smoke she said was giving her and her family sinus headaches.
"We were initially really good friends with them … Our whole roof is covered in soot from their chimney."
Several members feared a complaint would lead to their neighbour burning more wood — a practice known in the group as "revenge burning".
Many said complaints to local and state governments had gone nowhere.
These were common stories, Professor Johnston from the Centre for Safe Air said.
"It's a really knotty neighbourhood problem for which we don't have particularly good tools."
Wood smoke pollution was the responsibility of local councils, which were either reluctant to deal with the problem or not resourced to police chimney smoke, she said.
"It really does arouse passions. There's a strong love of wood heaters and a belief in the right to light your own fire."
Wood heater sales (which don't include open fireplaces, fire pits, pizza ovens or other outdoor wood-burners) increased 40 per cent between 2008 and 2021, according to industry group, the Home Heating Association.
Sales dropped after the pandemic, but there's no sign of a long-term decline.
Dr Irga from UTS said cost-of-living pressures and higher electricity prices were driving more Australians to burn wood for heat, including — in some cases — toxic construction materials.
Meanwhile, new air quality monitoring and mapping technologies are making wood smoke harder to ignore.
Keeping track of wood smoke
On July 6, 2025, a combination of cold and calm weekend weather in Melbourne saw wood smoke emissions spike in some areas of the city.
LoadingThe night-time event was captured by a relatively new network of low-cost, real-time air quality monitors, many of them privately owned by households.
Called "Purple Air", the data from these monitors is shared to a publicly accessible online database.
On July 6, around 7:30pm, Purple Air sensors around Melbourne showed levels of particulate pollution considered unhealthy for sensitive groups, even for short-term exposure.
As the night wore on, pollution readings peaked. Heater-owners preparing for bed often close heater vents to stop oxygen flow, leading to incomplete combustion causing wood to smoulder, and produces large amounts of smoke that spreads into the surrounding properties.
The pollution spike was also visible on Google Maps, which introduced an air quality overlay this year based on data from government monitoring stations.
New maps may be helping some groups like My Air Quality Australia keep tabs on pollution, but there's little sign they're changing attitudes more widely.
Surveys show Australians are fairly relaxed about wood smoke, despite having one of the highest asthma rates in the world.
Health bodies such as Asthma Australia and the Australian Medical Assocation want state and territory governments to ban new wood heater installs and phase out the existing ones in residential areas.
But governments appear reluctant to impose such a ban.
On Facebook pages like My Air Quality Australia, there's a mounting sense of outrage.
Even as Australia leads the world in rooftop solar uptake, many rooftops continue to host a much less advanced technology: the smoky chimney.
After the July 6 pollution spike, one user observed that about 10 per cent of the 5 million people who live in Melbourne suffer from asthma, which is aggravated by wood smoke.
"That's 500,000 people and it still feels like no-one cares. How is that even possible?"
Editor's note 1/8/25: Reference to Ms Daniel's background as a smoke pollution campaigner has been updated in light of more information.
Editor's note 6/8/25: Reference to deaths attributable to traffic pollution has been updated to clarify the estimate relates to particulate traffic pollution. Vehicles also emit NOx and other gases, which, combined with vehicle particulate pollution, are estimated to account for more premature deaths than wood-heater smoke pollution.
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