Statement on Israel’s Targeting of Health Care Workers in Lebanon & Palestine

The Lemkin institute for Genocide Prevention and Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) are horrified by Israel’s unrelenting and systematic attacks against healthcare workers in Lebanon, which are occurring against the backdrop of Israel’s continued genocide in Gaza, including its ongoing decimation of the healthcare infrastructure there. According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, since 16 April 2026 at least 116 healthcare workers have been killed in Lebanon, 16 hospitals have been damaged, and 147 ambulances have been attacked. We remind leaders that deliberate attacks on healthcare workers constitute war crimes and can be evidence of crimes against humanity and genocide. Given Israel's treatment of healthcare workers during its genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, we believe Israel is conducting a genocidal policy of absolute destruction in Lebanon as well, targeting the essential foundations of life of Lebanon’s Shia communities.

The current assaults against healthcare workers in both countries are occurring despite a formal ceasefire in both Lebanon and Gaza. The ceasefire in Lebanon was concluded between Lebanon and Israel on 16 April 2026, after Israel took the opportunity provided by its illegal war against Iran to massacre hundreds of Lebanese civilians on April 9. Not surprisingly, the declaration of a ceasefire did not stop the Israeli military from continuing its bombardment of Lebanon, mostly in the south of the country and in the eastern Bekka Valley. One of the most brazen features of Israel’s continued attacks has been the systematic targeting of healthcare workers and medical infrastructure.

These attacks are not isolated incidents. They reflect a sustained pattern of violence directed against the very systems necessary for civilian survival. By targeting medical workers, destroying hospitals, attacking ambulances, and killing first responders, Israel is rendering entire regions increasingly uninhabitable, undermining the last remaining structures capable of sustaining life. In southern Lebanon as in Gaza medical care represents the final thread between life and death for civilian populations trapped under bombardment.

Israel’s pattern of attack in Lebanon makes clear that the very act of saving lives has become a target in this theater of war as in others. This pattern is consistent with tactics documented during the 2024 Hezbollah-Israel war, during which Israeli forces killed nearly 230 medical workers. It also mirrors the genocidal massacres committed in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed at least 1,722 healthcare workers since October of 2023, an average of more than two killed every day.

Israel’s continued slaughter of Lebanese and Palestinian first responders comes as World Health Organization (WHO) member states gathered on 19 May in Geneva, where they overwhelmingly backed a declaration of alarm over “the impact of the ongoing war on the Lebanese health systems, including attacks on health facilities and health workers, and the closure of dozens of primary healthcare centers and hospitals.” The declaration passed by a vote of 95-2 with Israel and Honduras against and 18 abstentions.

The number of documented cases involving the killing of paramedics and healthcare workers in Lebanon has become so extensive that it is impossible to capture them all in a single statement. In one of the latest wave of attacks targeting healthcare workers on 22 May, six Lebanese paramedics were killed in two Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon within a span of 24 hours. An Israeli strike carried out overnight from 21-22 May in the southern Lebanese town of Hanaway killed four paramedics affiliated with the Islamic Health Association. On the morning of 22 May another Israeli strike killed two medics from the Al-Rissala Scouts Association in Deir Qanoun En-Nahr. The Lebanese Ministry of Health, which condemned the attacks as violations of international law, released a video that it said was filmed in Deir Qanoun En-Nahr. The footage shows two men wearing yellow emergency vests tending to an injured person on the side of a road. As an ambulance approaches the scene, a sudden flash appears followed by a loud explosion. Moments later, the same men are seen lying motionless on the ground.

According to the ministry, the strike in Deir Qanoun En-Nahr killed six people in total, including the two medics and a Syrian child. We encourage everyone to watch the video, as the reality captured in images can convey the gravity of these attacks more powerfully than words ever could.

The Israeli attacks on paramedics in Deir Qanoun En-Nah was a “double tap” strike, a tactic widely used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in which an initial strike is followed by a deliberate pause – allowing medical personnel and first responders to arrive – before the IDF targets the area a second time.

Reports have also documented “triple tap” and “quadruple tap” strikes, in which successive waves of paramedics responding in ambulances are targeted after earlier rescue teams have already been hit. The repeated targeting of paramedics has become so widespread that it is no longer uncommon for medical workers attending the funeral of colleagues killed in previous attacks to themselves be killed days or even hours later. Several journalists have reported cases in which they interviewed paramedics mourning a slain colleague, only to learn shortly afterward that those same individuals had themselves been killed. “This is why Red Cross volunteers hug each other and say goodbye before every mission,” said Ali Saad, a Lebanese Red Cross volunteer.

To mitigate risks, first responders have been adhering to specific war protocols. They avoid gathering in groups, remove clearly marked Red Cross and Red Crescent emblems from ambulances — symbols that no longer guarantee protection and may instead increase the risk of attack – and share their coordinates with Israeli forces and other belligerents in an attempt to secure safe passage. Many now wait ten minutes before responding to a strike, fearing that immediate intervention could make them the target of a follow-up attack.

The symbols of the Red Cross and Red Crescent were invented in the 19th century to serve as protection for medical workers on battlefields. They have always been meant to signal to armed forces that those wearing or displaying them should under no circumstances be military targets. Any deliberate attack on a person, building, or piece of equipment displaying this symbol is a war crime. Systematically treating the Red Cross and Crescent as targets is yet another example of Israel’s brazen defiance of international humanitarian law. For years now, Israel has been acting as if it is not beholden to the most fundamental international legal constraints. It cannot be allowed to set a trend whereby basic protections for medical workers are no longer guaranteed.

In the context of bombardments of civilian infrastructure, the only purpose of targeting health care facilities and workers, including first responders, is to undermine the ability of a community to survive on its land. As Israel pushes ever further into Lebanon, the goal is clear: to completely remove the Shia population from southern Lebanon and prepare the land for permanent Israeli occupation, similar to Israel’s plans for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The war against Hezbollah is just a pretext for this aggressive expansion and the creation of “Greater Israel.”

The world has been shockingly passive over two and a half years of genocide, despite ever greater numbers of experts and humanitarians concluding that Israel is committing that crime. Israel’s tactics have been laid bare, so it should not be difficult to see that the country is applying the Gaza doctrine to Lebanon. It is unclear what Israel’s allies expect to achieve by allowing the country to commit atrocities across the Middle East. Even if they do not “agree with” the expert opinion of scholars and jurists that Israel is committing genocide, we cannot imagine what benefits they enjoy by allowing an out-of-control state to continue to commit crimes against humanity and/or war crimes across so many borders.

Genocidal states that are given such astonishing impunity will only continue to radicalize. Israel, like all genocidal states, is insatiable in its reiteration of genocidal atrocities. We call on Israel’s allies to stand up and defend Lebanon’s sovereignty as well as the right of Palestinians to exercise control over their own land and demand redress for land taken from them since 1947. A strong stand should include a withdrawal of all military aid, sanctions against Israeli leaders, and the diplomatic isolation of Israel. Israel’s flagrant disregard for international law must be brought to an end one and for all. A political solution must be found and Israel must be held accountable for its crimes.