Facts For Working People

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Future of Lebanon after years of war

Large swathes of Lebanon have been reduced to rubble during Israel’s war with Hezbollah. But that isn’t stopping people from returning to their homes, writes Secunder Kermani.

Secunder Kermani

June 17

The highway leading south from Beirut teemed with traffic: cars carrying families displaced by the war returning home, vans with mattresses piled on their roofs.

A few waved Hezbollah or even Iranian flags, others just wanted to get back as quickly as possible.

The agreement between the US and Iran has brought a cautious sense of relief to Lebanon, bringing with it a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, even if no-one seems clear yet on its full terms or how long it will last. It already appears to be fraying with allegations that Israeli troops have killed several people in a number of strikes, amid claims Hezbollah fired at them.

You’re reading the latest edition of FourGround, a bespoke newsletter brought to you by Channel 4 News’ experienced journalists reporting on the ground from locations across the world.

Déjà vu

I witnessed almost identical scenes alongside the same stretch of road in late 2024, following another devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah.

That round of the conflict was followed by a ceasefire, in which Israel continued carrying out what it claimed was “targeted” strikes in southern Lebanon, killing at least 400 people. Israel says it was preventing Hezbollah rearming in the region in 2024. The victims included around 50 women and children.

Hezbollah did not strike back until Israel, alongside the US, began attacking the group’s sponsor Iran in February. Many in Lebanon accused Hezbollah of dragging the entire country into a war they wanted no part of.

2026 conflict

When I spoke with one of Hezbollah’s members of the Lebanese Parliament, Hussein Hajj Hassan last week, he rejected that, insisting the group entered the war to try and improve the situation in southern Lebanon and put an end to the Israeli attacks that had continued throughout the “ceasefire” period.

Hezbollah can point to some battlefield achievements: It has killed a few dozen Israeli soldiers and, despite Israel’s heavy airstrikes, its army has been unable to come anywhere close to eradicating Hezbollah’s capabilities.

The group has made effective use of new fibre-optic drones, complete with videos released on social media showing them crashing into their Israeli targets.

However, the toll on Lebanon as a nation has been far greater. Around 3,800 people have been killed in the country since the conflict began, and Israel now controls significantly more territory in southern Lebanon than it previously did.

What next?

Even the Hezbollah MP I spoke with, Hussein Hajj Hassan, said the situation in southern Lebanon had only deteriorated further following the war. But he insisted Iran would help press for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops and an end to the attacks.

Iran’s Foreign Minister has said a full peace deal with the US would require Israeli troops to leave. Israel’s Prime Minister however, has announced its army will not pull back from the areas it currently occupies. Many people believe that means the conflict in Lebanon could still have the potential to derail the fragile US-Iran negotiations.

President Donald Trump, pictured above, is growing ever-more frustrated with Israeli actions in the country, but it’s not clear how much he is willing to lean on Netanyahu, who is himself facing significant internal criticism for not having made further progress in fighting Hezbollah and preventing the group from being able to fire across the border into northern Israel.

Opinion on the war in southern Lebanon can be hard to truly gauge for outsiders, with public criticism of Hezbollah rare.

But it’s clear from my time here that the group still enjoys significant support.

In the city of Nabatieh, where the historic central market now looks as if it’s been flattened by an earthquake, such has been the ferocity of Israel’s airstrikes, many we met proclaimed their continued support for the “resistance”, as Hezbollah is often referred to locally.

“If it weren’t for Hezbollah, Israel would have taken control of the city,” one woman told me as she began assessing the damage done to her home and watering the houseplants she had to leave behind when fleeing the war.

Martyrdom and sacrifice

Paramedics who had been allegedly repeatedly targeted by Israeli “double tap” and even “triple tap” strikes were now busy raising a banner ahead of Ashura, the annual, deeply emotive commemoration of the 7th century martyrdom of Hussain ibn Ali, a foundational figure in Shia Islam whose followers dominate southern Lebanon.

This year the paramedic teams will no doubt be commemorating their colleagues’ own sacrifices too, killed in attacks human rights groups describe as clear war crimes. Israel has offered no meaningful justification for claims it carried out double tap strikes, but has accused ambulances of transporting weapons and fighters.

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Hussain is believed to have been killed on the battlefield, fighting against a far more powerful and tyrannical leader. His refusal to submit to injustice, even though it would cost him his life, is considered an example to aspire to by all Shia Muslims, and is routinely cited by those supportive of Hezbollah’s fight against Israel.

At the funeral of a paramedic in earlier Beirut last week, one of the victim’s grieving friends referenced the Battle of Karbala, in which Hussain was killed, before turning to the contemporary conflict in Lebanon in poetic terms laden with spiritual symbolism.

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“This land must be irrigated with blood,” he said. “It is never satiated… We must keep sacrificing until it is liberated.”

‘We are so tired’

Others within the community are exhausted by the bloodshed and multiple rounds of conflict.

“We can’t blame them,” one man told me, referring to Hezbollah, at another funeral ceremony. “But we are tired, so tired.”

And not everyone from southern Lebanon is yet able to return home. Israeli soldiers are still occupying Shia villages along the border, razing many of them completely to the ground, explicitly following similar tactics to those carried out in Gaza.

Rabeeh and his young children live in a flimsy tent, under the baking sun and overshadowed by some of Beirut’s most expensive property. They come from Khiam, a village that has been largely demolished.

“I feel like stepping in front of an Israeli tank that’s on my land and telling them: ‘Shoot me, do whatever you want with me’,” he told me.

He vents his ire in all directions: “I place my fate and my children’s fate on the responsibility of those in charge, whose children stay in the most luxurious hotels whilst my children suffer here.”

Life under Israeli control in southern Lebanon’s ‘buffer zone’

The Labour MPs determined to show they represent Israel, not the British people

Labour wants the repression of Palestine Action to serve as a blueprint for politics. Why not lock up opposition party leaders and any constituents who protest government policy?

Johnathan Cook, June 17, 2026

Mike Tapp, a minister in the Home Office, recently posted on X a “gotcha” response to Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s criticism of the Labour government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action.

In the wake of the Court of Appeal ruling this week to uphold proscription, Polanski noted the government’s authoritarian assault on civil liberties. Thousands of grandparents –retired lawyers, doctors, vicars, army veterans – he pointed out, had been arrested on terrorism charges simply for holding a placard saying: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

In response, Tapp asked Polanski: “Do you support the Palestine Action group?”

This was Tapp’s attempt at entrapment. If Polanski answered in the affirmative, he could be jailed for up to 14 years – because of the unprecedented decision Tapp’s own Home Office took to declare Palestine Action a terrorist organisation.

No direct action group in the UK’s history has ever before been designated a terrorist group, on a par with al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

Tapp clearly thought he was being clever. But all he was really doing was further exposing the ugly, patently authoritarian nature of the government he serves in and its complicity in Israel’s endless atrocities in Gaza.

Tapp is not some disinterested party in all this. He is a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel, the genocide-compatible wing of the Labour party that dominates the cabinet.

Investigative journalist Paul Holden noted on X:

Tapp has taken money and benefits from Labour Together, Labour Friends of Israel and Stuart Roden, who founded the Israeli-based VC company Hetz Ventures with Judah Taub. Taub is a former IDF Special Forces operative who served as an IDF reservist in Gaza.

The Labour government is stuffed with compromised individuals like Mike Tapp, who serve as Israel’s cheerleaders in the UK.

In addition, or more likely as a consequence, many of these ministers, from Keir Starmer down, receive large donations from the Israel lobby.

Polanski replied to Tapp: “The fact that your government has made it illegal for me to answer yes is a damning testament to your flagrant disregard for civil liberties.”

The McCarthy-emulating Tapp is not some outlier in the Labour party. He is its beating heart. It was his wing of the party, at the behest of the Israel lobby and working covertly through the unlawful activities of Labour Together, that helped confect an imaginary “antisemitism crisis” in the party in the second half of the 2010s.

Their goal was to use anti-democratic means to drive Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters out of the Labour party and put corporate donors and the Israel lobby firmly back in charge of policy.

While Tapp was seeking to jail the only Jewish leader of a major British political party this week, it emerged that another Labour MP, Peter Kyle, had reported a female constituent of his in Brighton to the police. She was arrested and charged after writing to him in protest at the government’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Kyle apparently believed that, in writing to him, her MP, the woman had committed a crime under the Communications Act by “causing him annoyance”. Presumably, Kyle finds it annoying to be reminded of his party’s collusion in genocide.

And presumably he imagines too that, in his version of democracy, MPs should never be questioned by those they represent on ethical issues, such as complicity in a genocide.

Shockingly the Crown Prosecution Service agreed to pursue Kyle’s case through the courts, proving once again that it is nothing more than an adjunct of the executive branch.

In a rare sign of the independence of the judiciary – at least at its lowest levels – a local magistrate threw the case out this week.

There is, of course, a connecting thread in these two cases: both Labour MPs hoped to use the law to crush criticism of their party’s continuing support for Israel’s genocide.

They imagine their authoritarian repression of Palestine Action can serve as a blueprint for British politics. Why not lock up opposition party leaders and any constituent who dares to write protesting at their criminal behaviour?

This is how Starmer’s Labour party conducts its politics: through intimidation, disinformation and show trials.

And they do it not for our benefit or, as they keep proclaiming, in the interests of “national security”.

No, they do it for the benefit of a foreign government viewed, even in Israel, as the most extreme in its history, one that includes self-declared fascists who Israel’s former top general, Moshe Yaalon, this week compared to the Nazis.

The Starmer government is tapping deep into its own fascist instincts. And with Nigel Farage’s Reform party nipping at its heels, there is little hope that the situation is going to improve any time soon.

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

If The Iran/US Deal is Signed. It's A Humiliating Defeat For US Imperialism. Are the Democrats Pleased?

Richard Mellor

According to reports in the mass media, the US and Iran have agreed to a ceasefire and what is being described as a Memorandum of Understanding will be signed this Friday in Geneva.

If the last three months or so have taught us anything with regards to the illegal and unprovoked war waged on Iran by the US and its settler colony in the region, it’s that we should take these pronouncements with caution.

But for now, they have an agreement and you can read the man points below.

The significance of this defeat cannot be underestimated and it’s important to recognize the extent of the damage to US military equipment (from a helpless opponent) that has cost the US taxpayers billions of dollars. When we add the cost of constructing US bases that were supposed to protect the despotic semi-feudal Arab regimes in the region, we are talking about trillions. And the failure of the US to defend these corrupt regimes has changed the balance of forces in the region permanently.

But the responses from the politicians of both capitalist parties are something to behold. They reflect on the one hand the sheer arrogance of an imperial power, in this case the world’s hegemon, and also the embarrassment at what is a major defeat for US imperialism in West Asia by an adversary with no air force no navy etc. And it comes after the endless boasting of the US president who thought the war would be over in a few days after the US assassinated the head of state in Iran and numerous government officials.

Naturally, many Republicans are livid. Florida Sen. Rick Scott is opposed to Iran’s frozen assets (their own money) being returned to them; “….if we have any of their money, they ought to pay for what costs us to do this, to try to bring them to their senses, to stop killing us.", he says. He’s been reading Golda Meir who famously blamed the Palestinians for forcing the Zionists to kill them.

Lindsey Graham, generously states that if the Iranians behave, "If they become normal, they'll get relief. The question is, are these people in charge of Iran capable of acting normal? Have they abandoned their goal of creating a master religion for the world? I don't know."

Lindsey Graham is normal?

And the pathetic excuse for an opposition party, (opposed to having a king in the White House) the Democrats never fail to offer no serious responses. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) says we should be “glad” about a ceasefire but that it’s “essentially surrender”, and we all know that this contradicts our most famous slogan, “these colors don’t run”. How will Hollywood make a Fallujah moment out of this one?

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) thinks the agreement is, “a terrible deal” and “basically a surrender document from Donald Trump to the Supreme Leader of Iran.”

Cory Booker calls it a “utter disaster” the US “releasing billions of dollars” to an “enemy”

An opposition party that claimed any allegiance to the working class at all would support Iran's side here. The support has been there for the Israeli gen*cide in Ga*za.

The Iranian people are the victims here, not the aggressors. Given, the US and its proxy, Israel, bombed a sovereign nation, assassinated its leadership and destroyed as much of its infrastructure as possible, Iran owes no concessions to the US at all. It is demanding what is its right. An end to the aggression by the US and its proxy on Iran and Lebanon.

It is demanding its own money that has been frozen and an end to the crippling sanctions the US has imposed on the country for decades. Recent reports have been published about the actual cost of US sanctions which deprive poorer countries in particular of medicine, food, and other necessities. Millions die.

The compensation, a suggested $300 billion, to Iran for the damage the war has caused to its infrastructure aside from the human toll, should not be borne by the US taxpayer but by those that have supported and promoted this aggression including US billionaires, Zionists that have personally funded the Israeli genocide and its war machine and others complicit in this crime; perhaps the Christian Zionist organizations can cough up some dough. The vast majority of people in the US were opposed to this war and were not consulted about it either directly or though their political representatives. They should not pay for the damage.

Those families and loved ones of the Americans that have died through this adventure that we never voted for, should also receive compensation for their losses. Again, not from the working men and women of America in the form of taxes but from the billionaires, arms investors and dealers and others that promoted this crime.

As I write I see that Trump has openly stated at the G7 a truth that needs to be heard, that Israel’s violent aggressive behaviour could not have been possible without the United States backing. The tail does not wag the dog in this relationship.

What will happen now is difficult to say. It is clear that this defeat for US imperialism reflects a change in the relationship between the great powers as the likes of China, Russia, India and the Brics are pulling for a multi-polar world at the expense of US hegemony, and its unipolar mission.

Whether the toothless UN can be rebuilt is another matter. Like most people, I have more questions than answers. The only thing I can say with certainty is that capitalism cannot overcome its inherent contradictions that inevitably lead it to war and destruction.

Capitalism will, if it is not cast in to the history books like so many civilizations past, destroy life as we know it. Only the working class internationally building a new global society with the formation of a global federation of democratic socialist states can provide a future for humanity.

Here are the points of the Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran. Source is I24tv News Israel

Points of the Memorandum of Understanding

1. Iran and the US declare an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and will not launch any hostile action against each other and will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other.

2. The two countries will respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity and refrain from interfering in each other's internal affairs.

3. There will be a negotiation to reach a final agreement within a maximum period of 60 days, extendable by mutual consent

4. Immediately upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding (which has already happened), the US will lift its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and prevent any interference against Iranian shipping. Traffic is to be restored within a maximum of 30 days to its full capacity and shall be proportional to the pre-war volume on the part of Iran. The US will also withdraw its forces from the surrounding areas within 30 days.

5. Iran will immediately take steps to ensure that the movement of merchant ships from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa is resumed within 30 days to the pre-war volume, taking into account the need for the removal of technical obstacles and the neutralization of mines.

6. Together with regional partners, the US will create a comprehensive plan to rehabilitate and assist in the economic development of Iran. It will also ensure financing of at least $300 billion. The implementation mechanism of this plan, as part of the final agreement, will be formulated within 60 days.

7. The US will commit to ending all types of sanctions currently facing Iran, including resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and all unilateral US sanctions, both primary and secondary.

8. Iran reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons, with the fate of enriched material and all other mutually agreed nuclear-related issues, including Iran’s nuclear needs, being addressed in a final agreement.

9. Pending a final agreement, they will maintain the status quo: Iran will maintain the status quo on its nuclear program, and the United States will not impose new sanctions on Iran or strengthen its forces in the region.

10. The United States Treasury Department will issue waivers for exports of Iranian crude oil, petrochemical products and their derivatives, and all related services, including banking, insurance, transportation, and the like.

1. Frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be released and made fully available. These funds, whether held in the master account or transferred, will be used for any final beneficiary payment determined by the Central Bank of Iran and will be fully available for use. The US will also issue all necessary permits and licenses on this basis.

12. A mechanism will be established to oversee the successful implementation of and future commitment to the final agreement.

13. Upon receipt of assurances regarding the commencement of implementation of Articles 4, 5, 10, and 11, Iran and the US will enter into negotiations for a Final Agreement solely with respect to the remaining Articles.

14. The final agreement will be approved through a binding resolution of the UN Security Council. Source I24 Israeli News

Monday, June 15, 2026

Prof Yakov Rabkin: Israel Shocks Everyone, Destroys Jewish Scripture, Synagogue.

Richard Mellor

I urge those interested in the subject of Israel, Zionism, and the hatred of Jews or anti-Semitism to watch this interview with Yakov Rabkin. I think it is a very good and important explanation of Zionism and its origins. Zionism, had no following to count of among working class Eastern European Jews who belonged overwhelmingly to the socialist or communist parties and particularly the Jewish Labor Bund. Zionism in its early stages was an attractive alternative primarily for the European Jewish middle and upper classes always hostile to their minority status; a solution would be a state of their own, a state in which they would be the ruling class.

The betrayal of Stalinism and the Nazi Holocaust and murder of some 6 million Jews that followed, changed things entirely as there was a genuine concern among many Jews that only a state of their own could protect them from a repeat of the extermination policies of the Nazi’s. But we can see what a disaster Zionism and the Israeli settler colonial project has been.

Here’s a clip from the transcript in the video. You can also get his most recent book as he explains at the end.

“It's totally wrong to present history of Jews, even in Europe, as an acrimonious history, as someone put it. So, yes, there was violence and the pogroms became better known because they were happening at the turn of the 20th century when many Europeans believed that they had become enlightened, and all of a sudden they see that these things have happened.

This history is presented as an uninterrupted chain. In other words, Jews were always maltreated. And anti-Semitism or hatred of Jews, I'm not going to go into the difference between the two, is eternal and it's impossible to uproot.

These are the cardinal articles of faith for the Zionist.

Antisemitism is eternal, it's impossible to uproot, and therefore the only solution is for all the Jews to live in their own state, which is not very different from ethnic nationalism in Eastern Europe. So it comes from the same root.

And that's why you had fascist regimes between the wars in practically all of the ethnic national states created after Versailles Treaty. Baltic Republics, Poland, Hungary, they all ended up having fascist regimes. Well before the Nazis.

New Military Recruitment Ad's Hidden Message

"War Department's" first recruitment ad debuts tonight

Ken Klippenstein June 15, 2026

From Ken Klippenstein on Substack.

Tonight, during a UFC fight staged on the South Lawn of the White House, the Pentagon is debuting its first TV recruitment ad since rebranding itself the “Department of War.”

I didn’t think a written article would have as much explanatory power as a video, so I filmed one. (It’s embedded above, but you can also find the video here on YouTube.)

The ad really gives a sense of how much the military and “national security” tower over American life. Small surprise that the military remains almost the only institutions in the country that Americans still have faith in, as poll after poll shows. Try to imagine that kind of civic pride in literally any other federal agency, like the Department of Health and Human Services, or the DMV. It’s comical to even think about.

Let me know what you think and if you’d like to see more of these.

You can watch the military’s recruitment ad in its entirety below.