Nearly one in five people in Lebanon have been displaced as a result of Israel’s Gaza-style scorched earth tactics, and more people have died in the capital after another attack.

Israel continued to bomb Lebanon on 18 March while the New Arab reported that 12 people have been killed in Beirut.

Its reporters wrote:

Lebanon said two Israeli strikes on central Beirut early Wednesday killed at least six people, with local media also reporting raids on Iran-backed Hezbollah’s stronghold in the city’s southern suburbs.

Local media reported one strike hit an apartment in the central Zuqaq al-Blat neighbourhood, where the Israeli military last week hit a Beirut branch of the Hezbollah-linked financial firm Al-Qard Al-Hassan.

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The densely populated area is close to the government’s headquarters and several embassies.

Figures reported from Lebanon’s Disaster Risk Management Unit say 1,049,328 people have registered as displaced while 132,742 people are being housed in official shelters.

Separately, the Lebanese Ministry of Health stated the overall death toll since 2 March has reached 886, with 2,141 injured.

Lebanon attacked by Israel more than 15,000 times

In theory, Hezbollah breached a US-brokered ‘ceasefire’ with Israel which had held up since their last war in 2024. In practice, the US gave Israel carte blanche to strike Lebanon, which it has done constantly since the deal was struck. During that period Israel attacked southern Lebanon about 15,400 times.

If you watch Israel repeat in Lebanon the same genocidal playbook from Gaza and still see this “state” as an “ally” then there’s something deeply wrong with you; minimum, you’re racist.

Israel must be disarmed, its leaders jailed, and vast reparations paid across the region.

— Philip Proudfoot (@PhilipProudfoot) March 18, 2026

You can read about the secretive Israel-US ‘side letter’ pact here and our extensive coverage of Israel’s ceasefire breaches and the new invasion so far here.

Nearly one in five people in Lebanon have been forced from their homes as Israel launches new ‘ground operations.’

We map Israel’s attacks and the forced displacement of one million people in Lebanon https://t.co/flmTWJvwlj pic.twitter.com/T7pAx6rjcM

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 17, 2026

International campaign group, No Cold War, made the comparison between Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its new attack on Lebanon.

Israel is pursuing ethnic cleansing in Lebanon – similar tactics as in Gaza. https://t.co/TUv7XIAa0Y

— No Cold War (@NoColdWar) March 18, 2026

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Israel told reporters it had fired on a UN position, injuring two Ghanaian peacekeepers. Al Jazeera reported:

Israel’s army acknowledged its troops were behind the incident on March 6 in which shells were fired on UNIFIL personnel at the al-Qawzah base, and said it had apologised to Ghana and the United Nations.

It said the Israeli forces had been responding to antitank missile fire from Hezbollah, which had moderately wounded two of their soldiers, and mistakenly fired at UNIFIL troops instead.

The channel also quoted the IDF:

The IDF [Israeli army] regrets the incident and has conveyed its apologies through the appropriate channels to Ghana and the United Nations. The findings of the investigations have been disseminated within the IDF to prevent recurrence of similar incidents.

Adding:

UNIFIL, which told Reuters its investigation into the incident was not yet complete, has called the incident “unacceptable”.

UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, released a statement on the war this week. She attacked Hezbollah while mildly criticising Israeli “operations”.

Civilians, densely populated areas and UN peacekeepers, are all grist to the mill of Israel’s colonial aggression. And — as in Gaza and Iran — the IDF has no problem with hitting civilians and key infrastructure along the way.

As the war intensifies, despite warnings from humanitarian organisations, displacement is likely to accelerate.

Featured image via the Canary

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It Girls and It Boys alike are wearing the staple accessory your stylish granny was probably addicted to – that’s right, the not-so-humble brooch has hit it big in 2026.

From Zendaya back at the Louis Vuitton SS25 Paris show to the likes of Hudson Williams and Damson Idris at the 2026 Oscars, statement brooches rumbled on to become one of the biggest accessory trends of the year so far.

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4 min read53 min

The Labour government has brought forward the Representation of the People Bill to the House of Commons. In doing so, it will add itself to a proud lineage of predecessors who have passed Representation of the People Acts that have extended the franchise, building our political system into the democracy we know today.

This new Bill is a welcome stride forward in enhancing our democracy, including more of our own citizens through automated voter registration and shutting out malign foreign actors. But to truly live up to this legacy, secure our democracy and tackle political inequality at the ballot box, the government must be bolder. To become a modern representative democracy, Westminster needs proportional representation (PR).

As I argued in the House of Commons in January last year, PR is a necessary reform to ensure that our increasingly multi-party politics translates into a representative parliament. Fragmentation has only accelerated since the last general election, with five parties now receiving more than 10 per cent of the projected national vote share – more than ever before. It’s no longer inconceivable for a historic landslide to be won with barely over a quarter of the vote. We must recognise that it is unfair to voters and wrong for any party to have total control over the levers of power of the British state for a five-year term when three in four voters have explicitly voted against them.

As PoliticsHome reported, over 50 constitutional experts have sounded the alarm that first-past-the-post (FPTP) risks “random and arbitrary” results. Among them is Sir Vernon Bogdanor, who has branded Westminster’s voting system “a serious threat to the quality of British democracy”. Meanwhile, the Institute for Government has said that the Gorton and Denton byelection shows that FPTP “is creaking at the seams”. I am pleased the government has already recognised the need for electoral reform by removing FPTP in mayoral elections. We should expect the same strong representative standards for our MPs.

Electoral reform need not threaten the vital constituency link. As an MP, I know this is key to grounding my work as a representative in and of my community. A mixed-member proportional system, as used in the modern parliaments of Germany or New Zealand, and throughout the UK in Scotland, London, and, until recently, Wales, delivers both local and national representation. It’s also worth noting that internationally, the only countries with high and rising public satisfaction with democracy all use PR. Meanwhile, in the UK, public trust is at rock bottom, with NatCen research last year showing that just 12 per cent of people trusted governments to put the interests of the nation above those of their own party.

Foundational reform of our democracy can under no circumstances be done on a whim. Electoral reform must be carried out not because it may benefit any particular party or ideology, but because it puts power back into the hands of the British people. Support for change is strong among Labour MPs – I note with interest excellent interventions from my colleagues Tim Roca, Beccy Cooper, Jenny Riddell-Carptenter, Sean Woodcock and Jo Platt in recent weeks, and many speeches in favour at the Representation of the People Bill’s Second Reading. This is a chance for the government to listen and lead. The cost of inaction could not be higher – chaos for our democracy means chaos for our politics and all those who depend on it.

I was not elected by my constituents to idly stand by and defend a broken political system and failed status quo. Fifty-three per cent of the public want to change our voting system. Electoral reform would go a long way to restore faith in politics. I am proud to be an MP representing a Labour government that is taking the next steps forward to build the modern, secure and representative democracy every elected representative should demand.

I urge the government to go further. It’s time for a national commission on electoral reform.

Luke Akehurst is Labour MP for North Durham

As Skwawkbox reported on Tuesday 17 March 2026, Israeli government minister’s daughter Shoshana Strook has been found dead in suspicious circumstances. She had just appointed lawyers to pursue justice for the crimes against her. Strook had spent months speaking publicly about allegations of physical and sexual abuse. In several social media posts she outlined how her mother, father, and brother had abused her since childhood. Authorities in Israel have claimed to be investigating the circumstances of her death.

However, Strook’s own words before she died are extremely worrying, to say the least. But the evidence may have already started to be erased.

“If they tell you I committed suicide – don’t believe it”

Strook had accused her mother, far-right settlements minister Orit Strook, along with her father and one of her brothers, of raping her for years during her childhood and filming it. In December 2025, Shoshana Strook warned her Facebook followers that she was in danger of murder to silence her. And she told them not to believe a word of it if she was found dead and it was called suicide, or an ‘accident’. A screenshot of the post, translated from Hebrew, is below in case the original is scrubbed:

Strook/Strock

That Facebook post still – at the time of writing – exists. However, Shoshana’s name on that page is “Strock”, rather than “Strook”. However, the two are interchangeable in Hebrew, which does not use vowels in the same way as European languages – and “Strock” is even Orit’s name on her official Knesset profile.

Or it was, early on Tuesday evening. By the time of writing, that profile has been deleted or otherwise made inaccessible:

As such, so have any records of the same page on the Wayback Machine archive and archive.li.

But too late – Skwawkbox had already saved a screenshot of the Knesset page proof:

Strock has not, at the time of writing, announced her resignation from her ministerial post or her position as a member of the Knesset, so that potential excuse for deleting her page doesn’t apply. And the scrubbing of the Strook-Strock interchangeability hasn’t – at least yet – been thorough enough. Orit Strock is still demonstrably named in coverage of Shoshana’s ‘suicide’ (archive) by the Times of Israel:

She is also named as “Strock” by the Jewish News Syndicate, Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post and others. Shoshana Strock’s Facebook page is that of Shoshana Strook and vice versa, as also shown by the numerous videos she uploaded straight to it.

Israel has a paedophile problem

As Skwawkbox said in its first report of Shoshana Strock’s death, the issue of child rape among Zionists is not limited to Israelis or the Israeli extreme right. The Netanyahu regime is currently ignoring well over 2,000 extradition requests for alleged and convicted paedophiles who fled there from other countries. Others have been convicted in the US, while the Zionist UK Labour party right also has a long record of paedophiles and other sex offenders.

Israeli psychotherapist and trauma expert Dr Anat Gur, head of the Bar-Ilan University trauma therapy program, has said that she believes organised child rape in Israel is widespread:

Organized child rape is one of the most horrific things I’ve encountered. It’s likely much more widespread than we think. It’s happening in places we least expect.

Strook’s death mirrors the long list of suspicious deaths among victims and associates of serial child-rapist and Israeli spy Jeffrey Epstein. These deaths include that of Virginia Giuffre, Epstein’s most well-known victim – who was also found dead after saying she would not. Jean-Luc Brunel, the French ‘modelling agent’ accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein, was found dead of supposed suicide in a French prison in 2022.

If Shoshana Strock’s death is suspicious because of her recent comment that claims of her suicide would be false, then the disappearance of her mother’s official “Strock” page does nothing to dispel those suspicions.

Featured image via the Canary

The founders of the Boycott Water Bills movement are holding a protest in Margate on Thursday 19 March. It comes ahead of long-time boycotter Julie Wassmer’s showdown with Southern Water.

Kent-based author and environmental campaigner Wassmer faces imminent court action for her four year payment boycott of Southern Water bills. She has maintained this in protest at the company’s unacceptable sewage pollution record.

Wassmer, a co-founder of award-winning campaign group Boycott Water Bills, said:

Southern Water is a criminal company – a serious serial offender regarding sewage pollution and I aim to highlight how UK water companies are evading responsibility for poor service via a selective use of the Water Industry Act 1991.

Fellow Boycott Water Bills co-founder Katy Colley says the website has seen a flood of new sign-ups following the screening of the Channel 4 drama Dirty Business.

The three-part series exposes the collusion between water companies and regulators at the heart of the current sewage crisis.

Colley, from Hastings, said:

Every day people from all over the country are getting in touch to say they will join the boycott.

We should be pursing the criminal polluters who poison our waters with impunity instead of weaponising the law against a few brave individuals in the interests of big business.

Wassmer will be joined by Kent and Sussex boycotters and Green councillors, as well as local clean water campaign groups.

Mark Hood, Green group leader on Kent county council, said:

We fully support Julie Wassmer who has bravely stood up to the water companies whose monopoly has been a disaster for Kent and our environment and who have consistently put profit before tackling pollution.

Nonpayment isn’t a course of action which people take lightly but when Julie became aware of Southern Water’s record of sewage pollution to the beaches and seas she loves, she decided that she had no other choice.

The water industry needs to be returned to public ownership so that every penny of profit can be used to improve infrastructure instead of paying shareholders.

Featured image via the Canary