More evidence that Guardian readers’ demands for new anti-Israel libels continues to greatly outstrip supply can be found in an article published at the outlet earlier this year accusing Israel of intentionally using a cancer causing chemical in South Lebanon in order to render the area uninhabitable.
The piece (“Israel accused of spraying a cancer-linked herbicide on farms in South Lebanon,” Feb. 5) is co-written by environment correspondent Damien Gayle and their Beirut-based reporter William Christou. The herbicide in question, glyphosate, has been used since the mid-1970s to kill weeds and grasses that compete with crops.
The article cites allegations by Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, that Israel’s use of glyphosate is “an environmental and health crime” and a “violation of Lebanese sovereignty.” The Guardian co-authors then write, in their own voice, that the allegation “bolsters accusations that its military is carrying out a campaign of ecocide with the aim of making southern Lebanon uninhabitable.”
They then write that glyphosate “was in 2015 classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as probably carcinogenic to humans.”
However, The Guardian neglects to mention that a subsequent study the following year, by a joint expert group under the WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), concluded that the herbicide is, in fact, unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.
This omission is especially egregious given that The Guardian itself covered that study in a 2016 article, which reported that “glyphosate…has been given a clean bill of health by the UN’s joint meeting on pesticides residues,” and that the “finding flatly contradicts an assessment by the WHO’s cancer agency last year that the herbicide solution was probably carcinogenic to humans.”
Guardian headline, May 16, 2026
Also, and quite tellingly, The Guardian acknowledges, midway through the article, that glyphosate is “one of the world’s most widely used herbicides.” This, in itself, undermines the desired narrative of the piece that Israel’s use of the chemical is unique and malicious.
Moreover, the article doesn’t tell readers that the IDF uses glyphosate for a specific military function – for deforesting areas in southern Lebanon which Hezbollah uses to hide troops and weapons.
Additional evidence, ignored by The Guardian, that the herbicide is safe comes from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which concluded that glyphosate is NOT likely to cause cancer in humans. Also, the European Commission renewed the approval for glyphosate through Dec. 15, 2033, backed by safety evaluations from the European Food Safety Authority.
So, the IDF's use of one of the most widely used herbicides in the world - deemed safe by WHO and the European Commission - to prevent Hezbollah from hiding within dense vegetation was twisted to support the libel that Israel is intentionally using a cancer causing chemical as part of its malevolent ecocidal campaign to reign death and destruction upon Lebanon.
As we've observed previously, the pervasiveness of such easily disproven propaganda at The Guardian demonstrates why they should be viewed as more akin to Al Jazeera than a serious Western news outlet.
For the Hebrew version of this article, please see CAMERA Hebrew.