Israel dismisses global calls for a ceasefire with Hezbollah and continues a bombing campaign in Lebanon that has far killed more than 700 people since Monday, September 23.

About 500 were killed in just a single day as Israel started a bombing campaign in Lebanon

Before the bombing campaign that reminds the scenes of the Israeli carnage in Gaza, Israel detonated communication devices – pagers and walkie-talkies - on Sept. 17-18 that shook the world by surprise. The detonations killed 39 people and injured about 3,500 people.

The explosions were described as war crimes.  Many lost limbs or eyes.

World Health Organization has also said 37 out of 317 government-run hospitals in Lebanon have had to close. Most of those hospitals are near the border with Israel.

The director of Bint Jbeil Hospital said they had to shut down because the air strikes were simply coming too close.

Al Jazeera reports these hospitals may have remained open, but everyone is looking at the pictures coming out of Gaza.

Everybody’s looking at the fact that Israel regularly hits hospitals – that has shifted the decision-making. The hospitals may have well stayed open – they’ve certainly stayed open during all of this escalation – but now they’re shutting down and it’s likely to be because of what Israel has done in Gaza. There’s simply no trust.

Anger against Israel among Lebanese Americans

Lebanese Americans have been struggling for the past 12 months with “work-life-genocide” balance as tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

But now, with the Israeli military unleashing its firepower on Lebanon over the past week, the community is at a “boiling point”.

Israel’s large-scale bombing campaign in Lebanon has hit close to home for Ali Dabaja, a Detroit-area physician. His cousin, Batoul Dabaja-Saad, was killed along with her husband and three children in an Israeli air strike on their home in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil.

“There is disbelief. There is anger, and there is the feeling of loss – tremendous loss,” Dabaja told Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera reported earlier that nine members of the same family were killed in an overnight strike in Lebanon’s southeastern town of Shebaa.

The town’s mayor now says four of those victims were children, according to Reuters news agency.

“The women and children [killed] figure is rising rapidly,” reports Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan from southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese foreign minister says Israeli occupation is the root cause of the current crisis.

“There will be instability and there will be war” as long as the Israeli occupation continues, Abdallah Bou Habib said in an address at the UN General Assembly on Thursday.

Lebanon’s foreign minister also said he welcomed the US-led 21-day ceasefire proposal across the Israel-Lebanon border.