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Israel is dropping toxic chemicals on farmland in South Lebanon

πŸ“Ί The Canary πŸ• June 18, 2026 at 8:28 AM

Israel has sprayed toxic cancer-linked chemicals on agricultural land in Southern Lebanon, in yet another attempt to ethnically cleanse Lebanese people from their native land.

Israel act with impunity

Israeli planes sprayed what they described as a β€˜non-toxic substance’ across whole swathes of agricultural land. However, an initial laboratory analysis has identified the substance as glyphosate – a herbicide that Lebanon and at least 32 other countries have banned. The World Health Organisation has previously said that glyphosate increases cancer risk.

The chemical damages vegetation cover, and has direct repercussions on agricultural production, soil fertility, and ecological balance.

The concentration of the herbicide sprayed poses a β€œserious threat to farmland”.

Lab tests from Aita al-Shaab, Naqoura, and Dhaira all confirmed catastrophic levels of glyphosate in agricultural soil.

Normal farming levels would show 0.5 to 2 mcg/g. However, tests show 22,750 mcg/g, which is 11,000 times the safe level. Of course, Israel is aiming to permanently displace and destroy farmland.

The Lebanese Foreign Ministry announced on June 14 that it had filed a complaint with the UN. This was over Israel’s spraying of the herbicide glyphosate as a method of war in Lebanese territory near the border earlier this year. However, the IOF has continued spraying it.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor labelled it as a deliberate war crime, and said that:

The deliberate targeting of civilian farmland violates international humanitarian law, particularly the prohibition on attacking or destroying objects indispensable to civilian survival.

Large-scale destruction of private property without specific military necessity amounts to a war crime and undermines food security and basic livelihoods in the affected areas.

Chemical warfare

This is not the first instance of Israel using dangerous chemicals or biological weapons illegally.

Israel has repeatedly dropped white phosphorus – an illegal incendiary weapon – on both Lebanon and Gaza. It is illegal under international law when used, on purpose, as an incendiary weapon directly against humans in a civilian setting.

Israel’s use of illegal chemical warfare goes as far back as 1948. In 2022, historians uncovered official documentation which proved that the IOF poisoned the drinking water of non-Jewish communities during the Nakba to prevent Palestinians from returning to their villages.

It also guaranteed that Palestinian families couldn’t access clean water – a basic human necessity. According to the United Nations (UN), poisoning water sources is a direct violation of human rights.

The poison was produced in a unit in the army’s Science Corps that dealt with biological warfare. Dozens of people fell ill because of the poisoning.

But that absurd, and highly illegal behaviour is not in the past. Only last week, Palestinians recorded illegal Israeli settlers deliberately polluting water wells in the occupied West Bank.

Abhorrent tactics

No one native to the land would ever drop toxic chemicals on themselves.

Maybe Hezbollah is hiding in the crops?

Maybe some Western countries will send a strongly worded letter of condemnation.

Or maybe it will finally sanction Israel and uphold the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants.

Because Israel is an illegal terrorist state, and for far too long the world has let it get away with war crime after war crime.

Featured image via Al Jazeera English/YouTube

By HG

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