The Israel-Hezbollah War
I really want to write about anything other than Israel. But here we are.
Here are some things to retain while reading about the war.
1. The war began 8 October, when Hezbollah began bombarding Israel. It has been firing rockets and launching drones incessantly since then. While there have been few Israeli casualties, Hezbollah successfully has displaced tens of thousands of Israelis from northern Israel, effectively shrinking Israel’s territory. Its missiles can go a lot further than northern Israel, putting much of Israeli territory and most of its people at risk.
2. Hezbollah appears to enjoy the same blanket absolution as Palestinians, whereby they are denied any agency. Nothing is their responsibility, as if they did not exercise free will the day they chose to begin bombarding Israel and every day thereafter that they have elected to keep up the barrage. They could stop at any moment. No one is compelling them.
3. Hezbollah has NO legitimate grievances with Israel other than that Israel exists, and that Jews have any sovereignty over any part of lands many Arabs and Muslims believe to be exclusively theirs. Of course, Hezbollah also serves Iran’s interests. Iran, besides hating Israel purely because of its anti-Jewish bigotry, uses Hezbollah to try to assert a leadership position in the anti-Israel movement. Think of it as a pissing contest to see who can hate Israel more and hurt it more.
4. Hezbollah is, fundamentally, an anti-Jewish hate group. Want proof? AMIA. Hezbollah in 1994 bombed the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 85. What does this have to do with the Middle East? That’s a very good question. Hezbollah seems to have thought Argentine Jews were fair game. Because they were Jews. People who side with Hezbollah might not be antisemites, but they are siding with an antisemitic hate group. Which kinda makes them antisemites, no? We learned this in school: If A = B, and B = C, then A = C. As the kids say, QED.
The scene of Hezbollah’s mass murder of Argentine Jews, 1994
5. Hezbollah has killed more Americans than any terrorist group second only to Al Qaeda, which on 11 September 2001 grabbed the first-place prize. The numbers I came up with added up to 261.
One of the lucky ones: a US Marine pulled out of the wreckage of a barracks bombed by Hezbollah
Let’s not, of course forget the Americans Hezbollah took hostage, tortured, and sometimes executed. Like this guy, William Buckley:
Buckley was CIA so maybe a fair target. But he was tortured along with this guy, David Jacobsen, who ran the American University of Beirut Medical Center:
Jacobsen fortunately survived the ordeal, released after President Ronald Reagan paid ransom in the form of supplying Hezbollah with arms. Yeah, Reagan.
6. Hezbollah has NO interest in a “two-state solution.” For Hezbollah, the “occupation” refers to all of Israel and not just the West Bank and Gaza. Anyone who says that Israel can end the Hezbollah threat “peacefully” by ending the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza are full of shit. Hezbollah does not care.
7. Everything I’ve read about contemporary Lebanon (and I’m not talking about the Israeli press or necessarily pro-Israel analysis) agrees that Hezbollah has destroyed Lebanon and its economy. That was before 7 October. Remember that big Beirut warehouse explosion in 2020 that killed over 200 people, wounded thousands, and displaced hundreds of thousands? Much of the available evidence points to Hezbollah, which notably has worked to block an investigation. Point being: Lebanon would be far better off without Hezbollah.
Of course, in the next few days and weeks or however long this takes, you’re going to hear lots of nonsense about how Israeli strikes are “indiscriminate” and that Israel’s killing innocent civilians. These people, too, are full of shit. For one thing, they complained that the beeper attacks were indiscriminate, when it is very clear that the only people with the exploding beepers in their possession were Hezbollah members who had been issued them for the purpose of internal Hezbollah communications. Complaints that maybe some innocent bystanders were hurt appear to be arguing that any act of violence by Israel that maybe possibly could hurt any unintended targets—and I’ve seen plenty of such rhetoric—have set the bar for “acceptable” military action so high as to be impossible for any country to comply. But that’s the point: People who say such things do not think that any act by Israel to defend itself is illegitimate, because Israel’s existence is illegitimate, and Israelis should just apologize to the world and die. People love dead Jews.
The Biden Administration predictably seeks only to “get off the X,” as I’ve discussed here. What it should be doing is assisting in the effort to destroy Hezbollah and, with it, Iranian influence. THAT would vastly improve the overall situation in the Middle East. “De-escalation” means kicking the can down the road and forcing Israel to accept daily bombardments and the displacement of its northern citizens.
So yeah, I support Israeli actions, and I also endorse any moves Israel makes to do as much harm to Hezbollah as it can. Lebanese will suffer, of course, but that should be the concern of the Lebanese government, which for 30+ years has stood by while Iran hijacks its country and built a “militia” more power than the Lebanese military. Max Weber famously defined a state as enjoying a “monopoly over the legitimate use of violence.” By that standard, Lebanon is not a state. That really is too bad, for everyone—Israelis and Lebanese included—would be better off if it was.