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Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon is shattering young lives as conflict spreads in the Middle East
Bekaa Valley, Lebanon — The carnage of Israel’s war with Hezbollah — a conflict playing out in parallel and with direct links to the devastating war in the Gaza Strip — continued over the weekend, with lives lost on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border. In Gaza, health officials said Monday that the toll from the war sparked by the Palestinian enclave’s Hamas rulers, with their Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, had reached almost 42,300, with nearly 99,000 others wounded.
But while fighting in the decimated Gaza Strip continues, the Israeli military made a determined shift to what it calls the northern front in its broader war with Iran-backed groups in the region about a month ago. Since then, Lebanese officials say more than 2300 people have been killed in the country, and almost 10,700 others wounded. The country’s health ministry says 51 people were killed on Sunday alone.
Much of Israel’s firepower has been directed at Hezbollah’s longtime strongholds in Beirut’s southern suburbs and across the south of Lebanon. Major Israeli ground operations in the south have also put United Nations peacekeepers in the line of fire. But airstrikes have also pummelled Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley — often with no warning.
Last week, CBS News visited the region’s Rayak Hospital, which has been treating some of the youngest victims of the expanding war, including 16-year-old Ali Jaddouh.
CBS News/Agnes Reau
He recently had at least one badly damaged kidney and his colon at least partially removed, as well as his right leg above the knee. He was in critical condition, with a dialysis machine doing the job of his shattered organs. He told us he was in pain, and his haunted eyes suggested it was more than just physical.
The teenager said he was at home with his family late in the morning when an Israeli airstrike slammed into their town of Shmustar. He said the missile could only have struck about 10 yards from where they were sitting.
“I wanted to run and help my mother, but I saw my leg was cut. I lost consciousness and I don’t recall what happened next,” he said.
He woke up in the hospital to find he’d lost most of his leg.
“I was told that my father might be dead. My mother can’t walk anymore — she lost her leg and had some damage in her back, and my eldest brother’s face is burned.”
Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Iran-backed, U.S. and Israeli-designated terrorist group that’s fired thousands of rockets and drones at Israel since Oct. 8, 2023. That ongoing barrage, said by Hezbollah to be in support of the Palestinian people and Iran’s other allies, Hamas, includes the deadly drone attack over the weekend that killed four Israeli troops at a base in central Israel and wounded scores of other people.
Rayak Hospital’s director told CBS News that over the past two weeks, the facility had treated only civilians. While our team was there over the weekend, there was another Israeli strike nearby. The agonising screams of two wounded girls who’d been rushed onto the emergency ward echoed through the halls.
CBS News/Agnes Reau
Nurse Mountaha Mkahal has been so busy looking after patients that, like many of the staff at Rayak, she’s been sleeping at the hospital.
“It’s very hard and unsettling,” she told CBS News. “I am morally obliged to be here in war time – not only to do my job when there is safety and peace. This is the crucial time.”
She knows that with airstrikes coming often and without warning, members of her own young family could come through the emergency room doors any time.
Mkahal said seeing children suffer was the hardest part of her job. Children like six-year-old Sawsan, who was brought in with six fractures to her skull. Doctors had to remove shrapnel from her brain. The little girl was in so much pain that not even her mother’s loving touch could ease the hurt or erase the horror.
CBS News/Agnes Reau
“It’s very hard to see a child suffering, and it reminds me of my own children, but I am hopefull those children and people will recover and go back to normal. We have to do our best to help them recover, regardless of whether they can recover completely or not,” said the nurse.
Recovery will feel a long way off for many of the young patients at Rayak and, for some, fear and pain are already being supplanted by other emotions inflicted by a war they didn’t help create, and cannot help to stop.
Asked what he would say about the people who tore his village and his family apart, Ali Jaddouh told CBS News: “May God take revenge.”
contributed to this report.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters says workers at seven Amazon facilities will begin a strike Thursday morning in an effort by the union to pressure the e-commerce giant for a labor agreement during a key shopping period.
The Teamsters say the workers, who authorized walkouts in the past few days, are joining the picket line after Amazon ignored a Dec. 15 deadline the union set for contract negotiations. Amazon says it doesn’t expect any impact on its operations during what the union calls the largest strike against the company in U.S. history.
The Teamsters say they represent nearly 10,000 workers at 10 Amazon facilities, a small portion of the 1.5 million people Amazon employs in its warehouses and corporate offices.
Amazon is ranked No. 2 on the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest companies.
At a warehouse in the New York City borough of Staten Island, thousands of workers who voted for the Amazon Labor Union in 2022 and have since affiliated with the Teamsters. At the other facilities, employees – including many delivery drivers – have unionized with them by demonstrating majority support but without holding government-administered elections.
The strikes happening Thursday are taking place at an Amazon warehouse in San Francisco and six delivery stations in southern California, New York City, Atlanta and the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, according to the union’s announcement. Amazon workers at the other facilities are “prepared to join” them, the union said.
“Amazon is pushing its workers closer to the picket line by failing to show them the respect they have earned,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” he said.
The Seattle-based online retailer has been seeking to re-do the election that led to the union victory at the warehouse on Staten Island, which the Teamsters now represent. In the process, the company has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.
Meanwhile, Amazon says the delivery drivers, which the Teamsters have organized for more than a year, aren’t its employees. Under its business model, the drivers work for third-party businesses, called Delivery Service Partners, who drop off millions of packages to customers everyday.
“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement. “The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union.“
The Teamsters have argued Amazon essentially controls everything the drivers do and should be classified as an employer.
Some U.S. labor regulators have sided with the union in filings made before the NLRB. In September, Amazon boosted pay for the drivers amid the growing pressure.
NEW YORK — The Teamsters union is launching a strike against Amazon at numerous locations across the country, including in Maspeth, Queens.
The Teamsters are calling it the largest strike against Amazon in United States history, and it’s set to begin at 6 a.m. Thursday. In addition to New York City, workers will be joining picket lines in Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco and Illinois.
In a video announcement released Wednesday night, workers voiced their frustrations.
“Us being strike ready means we’re fed up, and Amazon is clearly ignoring us and we want to be heard,” one worker says in the video.
“It’s really exciting. We’re taking steps for ourselves to win better conditions, better benefits, better wages,” another worker in the video says.
The union says it represents about 10,000 Amazon employees and that Amazon ignored a deadline to come to the table and negotiate. The $2 trillion company doesn’t pay employees enough to make ends meet, the union asserts.
At the height of the holiday season, many are wondering what this means for packages currently in transit.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said, “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed.”
Amazon says Teamsters are misleading the public
An Amazon spokesperson says the Teamsters are misleading the public and do not represent any Amazon employees, despite any claims.
“The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
An Amazon representative says the company doesn’t expect operations to be impacted.
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