A bizarre headline in quotations. It seems to me that Israel is all in on provoking a war with Hezbollah. Starting with the pager explosions leading up to the massive air strikes Israel has launched against Lebanon- There was an Israeli official that said Lebanon is not a real country, anyway. That type of talk is to be expected as war time propaganda.
The media is presenting this as Israel vs Hezbollah in the same way it was Israel vs Hamas. This is actually, Israel attacking Lebanon as it was Israel attacking Gaza. When the media presents, with the intent to manage minds, the unwitting specifically believe – Israel against terrorists vs Israel attacking nation state or regions and their civilians.
The original headline was Can Israel pull off it’s attempt to cow Hezbollah? You can see this in the url
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/can-israel-pull-of-its-attempt-to-cow-hezbollah/
Israel has carried out its largest-scale operation against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon since the summer war of 2006. Wave after wave of Israeli aircraft struck at 1,600 targets across Lebanon yesterday with the aim of targeting Hezbollah weapons stores. Nearly 500 people were killed, according to figures issued by the Lebanese authorities. After nearly twelve months of controlled escalation on Israel’s northern border, we are now potentially on the cusp of all-out war.
Despite the severity of the Israeli (attacks, not really a) response in recent days, Hezbollah has yet to carry out the kind of action that would make all-out war an inevitability. Its target area is creeping southwards. On Sunday, its missiles struck at Kiryat Bialik, a town just north of Haifa. But despite its losses, the movement has not yet, for example, launched its precision-guided ordnance in a large-scale attack on Tel Aviv. Such a move would certainly result in all-out war.
Hezbollah and its patrons like the strategy of a long, drawn-out war of attrition against Israel, intended according to their theories to end in its implosion. Iran still doesn’t want to spend its 40 year investment in Hezbollah on protecting a junior client in Gaza. For this reason it is at present absorbing the losses, seeking neither to climb up, nor climb down the escalation ladder.
The immensely fragile remaining edifice of mutual deterrence is now teetering on the brink. It will hold until such time as Israel decides that only ground action can bring about its desired goal, or Hezbollah calculates that it has nothing left to lose from a broader response, which will itself make such a ground incursion inevitable. We will soon know.
At the very least it’s good to read the acknowledgment that Israeli is the aggressor. Vox is reporting that Lebanon is being attacked, opting at least in the piece, to not spin Israel vs Hezbollah.
Vox– The Israeli attacks in Lebanon could lead to the wider war we’ve been fearing
More than 450 people were killed and 1,500 injured in Israeli airstrikes targeting southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as the country’s capital, Beirut, on Monday. The airstrikes mark a significant and threatening escalation of hostilities following an apparent Israeli attack that used explosive pagers (and other electronic devices) to kill members of the Shia militant and political group Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon.
Concerns that the conflict in Gaza would spark a full war between Israel, Hezbollah, and their allies have existed for the entirety of the nearly year-long conflict. But the latest rounds of Israeli attacks are a provocative escalation that could threaten the fragile balance of more measured tit-for-tat missile strikes that had become fairly routine for Israel and Hezbollah.
8 replies on ““Can Israel avoid provoking all-out war with Hezbollah?”: Do they want to?”
We have to be careful not to compartmentalize the conflict in Palestine and Lebanon by accepting MSM statements like “… provoking a war with Hezbollah. Starting with the pager explosions leading up to the massive air strikes Israel has launched against Lebanon ” – or – ” Concerns that the conflict in Gaza would spark a full war between Israel, Hezbollah, and their allies have existed for the entirety of the nearly year-long conflict.” This type of spin seeks to minimize the nature of the long decades of fighting and ethnic cleansing inflicted on Palestinians. This war started in 1948 with the imposition of the Zionist state.
Your right on that Mark. It does minimize the ongoing fighting, ethnic cleansing and land grabbing. I’ve been around long enough, and have written enough on the region to know this has been ongoing.
Penny,
I want to apologize for the accusatory tone in my last comment above. I did not mean to imply that you were unaware of the actual extent of this conflict. I just get so frustrated sometimes hearing all the BS spewed in the media that it leaves me feeling isolated and petulant. Your writing here helps me with that sense of isolation and shows me that we are are not alone in our humanitarian approach to geo-politics. I feel there is a growing feeling of powerlessness in society amongst all of us from every variant of political opinion. Our political and cultural “leaders” have failed us in a big way. Maybe they have always failed us when it comes to empathy and compassion.
Hi Mark
I didn’t feel you had used an accusatory tone, at all. It’s hard to put things in print, when their are feelings involved that can be misunderstood, but, I feel as if you’ve left enough comments here for me to get a sense of your view point etc. Not entirely but enough anyway
I get the frustration, believe me! And the sense of isolation.
” Our political and cultural “leaders” have failed us in a big way. ”
Yes. they have. In some ways we have allowed for this and in other ways we’ve been manipulated into accepting their failure/evil ways. And much of it is pure evil.
The entire political class is degenerate, particularly in the West. So disheartening.
Briefly, by all accounts Israel has upped the strikes against Lebanon
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/24/lebanon-israel-hezbollah-conflict/
“Israel unleashed another wave of airstrikes across Lebanon on Tuesday — including in a Beirut suburb — vowing to press ahead with its offensive against the militant group Hezbollah, as airlines canceled flights, the death toll soared above 500, and thousands of civilians fled southern Lebanese regions close to the Israeli border.”
Israel is targeting civilians to draw Hezbollah fighters out- they are doing what they can to hopefully draw Iran and the US in. This has long been their goal, their plan.
I’d be lying if I said, I’m not scared. Because I am. This is very worrisome. Very worrisome… More frightening then Ukraine/Russia because there has been restraint in that conflict.
But for Israel there is no restraint- That’s clear
Just wondering are also factoring in the “evangelicals”, Because they are enabling this absence of human decency
yes, the evangelicals are most definitely enabling this lack of human decency- it’s funny too that “we” opt to call them evangelicals when, truly, they are fanatical and extremist in their views.
They seem obsessed with end times (mass death) and this idea of rapture-
I may start calling them Christian extremists because that’s more accurate
want to add for clarity
one definition of evangelical is
“zealous in advocating something”
and zealous/zealot is really about fervor and fanaticism- extreme devotion- so it can really be seen as another flavour of religious extremism
The reason I use evangelical is that they reject themselves as Christians and say that they are evangelicals and the Christians also seem to be disgusted by them that they want no association with them.