Israel is bombing Lebanon in open defiance of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire, and its own cabinet ministers are bragging about it — all while American taxpayers keep footing the bill.

Here's the deal Washington cut: on Wednesday, the United States and Iran signed an agreement requiring military operations to cease across all fronts. By Friday, Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to a ceasefire. Then the bombs kept falling. Israeli strikes killed 16 people and wounded 12 more in the city of Nabatieh and surrounding villages, according to the Lebanese Civil Defense. The Israeli military claims it was responding after Hezbollah "launched more than 50 projectiles at Israeli forces."

So much for peace. A U.S. intelligence assessment, reported by the New York Times, already concluded that Israel is likely to keep operating against Hezbollah regardless of any agreement, because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces domestic pressure. In other words, Washington knew the deal wouldn't hold — and signed it anyway.

But the real story isn't the ceasefire collapsing. It's that Israeli officials are saying the quiet part out loud: they don't answer to America, and they want total war.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted that "all of Lebanon must burn" and that "for every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep." He explicitly rejected the U.S.-Iran agreement, declaring "Israel is not subordinate to the United States" and called for Lebanon to be "obliterated." Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded "opening the gates of hell" in Lebanon — language he previously used regarding Gaza. Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that 200,000 displaced residents of southern Lebanon "will not return. None of them will return."

That's three senior Israeli officials calling for obliteration, hellfire, and permanent displacement — on the same weekend U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Switzerland to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for talks. Araghchi responded to Ben-Gvir by calling his comments proof of a "genocidal death cult headquartered in Tel Aviv" whose "only interest is permanent war."

The British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper condemned Ben-Gvir's remarks as "horrendous and abhorrent." Notice who's missing from that list of critics: anyone in Washington with the power to actually do something about it.

Since Israel's offensive against Hezbollah began on March 2, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced and over 1,200 killed in Lebanon, per Lebanese authorities. Politico.eu framed the continued strikes as a complication for the U.S.-Iran deal; Al Jazeera led with Ben-Gvir's incendiary rhetoric and the mass displacement orders. Both are true. Neither outlet asked the question that matters most to Americans: why are we still paying for this?

Ben-Gvir says Israel isn't subordinate to the United States. Fair enough. Then let's act like it. No more blank checks. No more weapons. No more diplomatic cover. If Israel wants to reject a U.S.-brokered ceasefire and burn Lebanon on its own dime, that's its sovereign decision. But a sovereign nation funds its own wars.

The question isn't whether the ceasefire holds. The question is how long American taxpayers keep funding a war their own government can't stop.