Having not used its considerable leverage to bring Israel’s gleeful slaughter of Arabs to heel,1 the Biden Administration late in the game is trying to Do Something as Israel escalates and Hezbollah ratchets up its responses by what it deems to be a corresponding amount. That “Something” is the bankrupt and too-obviously Democratic-Party-serving idea of a 21-day ceasefire.
Since even in the unlikely event it were to get done, it would be a bridge to nowhere, or more accurately Son of Gaza Floating Pier, this looks like a gimmick to get a hotter war in the Middle East out of the headlines for a smidge, and hope that the pace of the resumed fighting was not so precipitous as to demand that the Administration Do Something More, as in support Israel’s campaign in a bigger way than it is now.
Perhaps the Administration should have gotten some “kick the can” lessons from the EU, which has had way more practice than the US.
In fact, this idea seems to be dying the fast death it deserves. Less than 24 hours after briefly being a prominent news story (the Financial Times had it as its lead item; interestingly, by contrast, the Wall Street Journal had it below the fold), the updated story at the Wall Street Journal carries the headline, Israel Casts Doubt on Hezbollah Cease-Fire as It Launches More Airstrikes. One must point out (and this may not be deliberate) that “Hezbollah Cease-Fire” could be read as something Hezbollah, as opposed to the US and the 12 countries it got to go along, wanted.
We’ll still poke what is probably a warm course for edification value. An overview from the Financial Times’ initial account:
The US and France have led international calls for a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, hours after an Israeli military chief told troops to prepare for a potential ground offensive in Lebanon.
The initiative, backed by the G7, EU, Australia and three Arab nations, on Wednesday called for a swift endorsement of the truce, in a statement issued on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York….
One senior US administration official said a temporary ceasefire could “shake things up” and create space for a longer-term resolution to the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militant group along their shared border, while helping avert the threat of a wider regional war.
And this part was rich:
US officials said they hoped the pause in hostilities would also put pressure on Hamas to accept the terms of a ceasefire-for-hostages deal in Gaza, which has eluded the US for months.
We can stop here. This Administration loves the idea of ceasefires as opposed to solutions. Recall that there was no ceasefire when the US negotiated its withdrawal from the Vietnam War; the fighting among the remaining belligerents continued. In a more positive example, Russia did not stop prosecuting its fighting with Ukraine when the two parties agreed on a detailed but still preliminary set of terms in Istanbul in March-April 2022.
To restate what ought to be obvious: a big reason for Biden fixation with ceasefires, at least with Israel’s genocide campaigns, is to get them out of US headlines and try to appease US Muslims and other Zionism opponents.
And “genocide campaigns” is no typo:
"There is no difference between Hezbollah and Lebanon. Lebanon will be annihilated. It will cease to exist."
— Israel's Minister of Education
pic.twitter.com/y461oY1YbH— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) September 21, 2024
Your humble blogger is not alone in reaching this conclusion:
"Lebanon is at the brink.
The world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.
The level of impunity is morally intolerable."
Said today UN SG @antonioguterres to the world leaders.
Will they hear? Will they act? #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/qZTZ775SKb— Fadi Daou (@fdaoulb) September 24, 2024
The President of Honduras accuses Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people and urges that ‘Lebanon must not become another Gaza Strip.’ pic.twitter.com/jplNUZ4izQ
— Esmail (@Esmail490292289) September 26, 2024
Having said all of that, there might have been reasons for Israel to go along, but they would have been nefarious. Perhaps they could have gotten logistical support better in place for the ground invasion Netanyahu insists he intends to make (recall that Hezbollah leader Hassam Nasrallah recently begged for Israel to do precisely that), or perhaps also called up more reservists. And Netanyahu could have further surmised that 3 weeks would take Israel up till the third week of October, which could still be enough time for Israel to then deke Hezbollah into a forceful enough response for Israel to go crying to the US for backing. Many commentators see Netanyahu as taking advantage of the “No one in charge” status of the Administration to force a crisis. Perhaps a smidge closer to the election could work as well?
But many experts, and Netanyahu’s own apparent sense of urgency, suggest he sees the “Is anyone minding the store?” phase of the Biden Administration as Israel’s best opportunity evah to get Hezbollah or maybe even Iran to act in way that Israel can depict as an outrage and demand the US throw full military support behind Israel. More time betters the odds of pulling that off before there is an adult again in charge.
How about the Lebanon side? First, there is absolutely zero reason for Lebanon or Hezbollah to trust any US-orchestrated process. The US is again putting forward the discredited (in the eyes of much of the Arab world) Amos Hochstein, a dual Israeli-US citizen who has been leading the failed feeble negotiation attempts with Lebanon.2 Hochstein is seen as the opposite of a fair broker and out to secure US and Israel interests.
Second, a tacit assumption is that Hezbollah has been seriously weakened by the Israel pager/walkie talkie terrorist attacks, then targeted air strikes that killed two senior Hezbollah officials, then the heavy bombing that so far has killed nearly over 500:
#BREAKING from @AP Death toll from two days of #Israeli strikes in #Lebanon reaches 558, Lebanon's Health Ministry says. That is nearly half the number of people killed during the 34-day war in summer 2006 that left about 1,200 dead in Lebanon
— Bassem Mroue باسم مروه (@bmroue) September 24, 2024
But that is not so clear. The problem is that Hezbollah is well bunkered but civilians are not. And Israel as we have seen in Gaza has no compunctions about slaughtering civilians with thin pretexts. Consider the claim that Hezbollah has gotten civilians to hide missiles in their homes. From Middle East Eye:
Israel’s former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is facing a fierce backlash and accusations of spreading “propaganda” to legitimise attacks on civilians after alleging that Lebanese households are being used to hide rocket launchers for Hezbollah.
“Many Shiites in Lebanon have a unique revenue stream. In their home, they have a special ‘Rocket Launcher Room’. They’re paid monthly rent by Hezbollah to host this launcher and be prepared to shoot rockets at Israel communities on demand,” Naftali Bennett claimed on Monday in a post on X, without providing evidence.
“The IDF [Israeli army] is now systematically destroying these death machines. Anyone man who turns his home into a death launch pad puts his family in severe danger, and only he is responsible for the consequences,” he continued.
One of the tweets included in that article:
By his own logic Bennett is defining Israeli households as 'death machines', since most Israelis have to fight in or have fought with the IDF. Saying this kind of thing is all just human shield propaganda designed to legitimise killing of civilians, it's reprehensible https://t.co/9rcT3oObj9
— Marc Owen Jones (@marcowenjones) September 24, 2024
And the IDF is working hard to legitimate this fabrication. Note all the evidence is mere mock-ups:
Notice also how Netanayahu is retailing this fabrication. This story can’t be playing in Lebanon despite that being his pretended audience; the targets are presumably citizens in Israel and Israel-friendly communities:
Netanyahu in direct message to the Lebanese people:
“I urge you – take this warning seriously. Don't let Hezbollah endanger your lives and the lives of your loved ones. Don't let Hezbollah endanger Lebanon. Please, get out of harm's way now.” pic.twitter.com/REb0hAUVnr
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) September 23, 2024
Alastair Crooke, who has visited Hezbollah rocket-launching facilities, says they are all underground. Crooke also has repeatedly said that Hezbollah has also created a lot of decoys and ghosts to keep the IDF busy. So the reports in the Western media that Israel strikes have been degrading Hezbollah capabilities by destroying rocket launchers are yet another fabrication. Crooke did say that Israel uses AI to try to find places in the valleys and the forests where it thinks launchers may be. But this is garbage in, garbage out, since movement tracking seems to be a major detection device. So Israel may somewhat reduce Hezbollah’s strike capabilities if they bomb a location where a buried rocket exit point is located. How often do you think that is likely to happen?
A second issue, which we discussed long form in an earlier post, is the pager/walkie talkie terrorism did not harm Hezbollah’s military operations much if at all. They don’t use either device for their comms; they were distributed to members of the civilian units, such as doctors, nurses, teachers, and social workers. Hezbollah fighters probably were in proximity of some of the explosions and injured or even killed. But is is more likely that the big impact was psychological: both the extent and viciousness of the maiming, and that Hezbollah forces probably have more family member in Hezbollah civilian service than the population as a whole.
That does not mean, however, that Hezbollah is not hurting, just not in the way many assume. The Lebanese economy is in disastrously bad shape. Hezbollah is a political party, not just a military group. It risks losing its legitimacy and the support of Lebanese society if the cost of fighting Israel is perceived to be too high.
However, the flip side that air bombing campaigns tend to solidify opposition to the enemy rather than create new schisms. Israeli officials stating flat out that the intend to ethnically cleanse (intially only part of) Lebanon makes clear the stakes are existential. But is that view widely shared within Lebanon?
Let’s look at the Israel side. Media reporting is very skewed thanks to the major media being able to report on the damage inflicted on Lebanon, while Israel has impose a strict and so far pretty well observed press blackout from Haifa and parts of the country to the east all the way to the northern border. The metro area of Haifa has close to 1.2 million residents.
In response to the Israel escalation, Hezbollah is engaging in what one might call a demarcated escalation (on this I am recapping various accounts, many of which are on YouTube and therefore hard to track down exact references in a reasonable time frame). They are striking at military targets at what seems to be 80 miles from the Lebanon border, which is a big increment in their fire range.3 Despite the press embargo, it’s been widely reported that Hezbollah did enough damage to the Ramat David airbase near Haifa, one of Israel’s three major airbases, that military planes had to be diverted to Cyprus. Hezbollah also hit production facilities of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, one of Israel’s three biggest arms makers, again near Haifa.
If you take the media blackout area, which presumably represents the new Hezbollah attack area, its population is reportedly 2 million, as compared with the 60,000 to 100,000 settlers in the northern border that were displaced by Hezbollah shelling. Even if Hezbollah is only attacking military targets, civilians are still exposed since air defense missiles can fall anywhere, as can successfully downed offensive missiles. So a much larger proportion of the total population will be subjected to having to hide in safe rooms or going to shelters every time they get missile attack warnings.
So Hezbollah has a path to victory, and Larry Wilkerson set it out a few months ago. All Hezbollah has to do is fire 100-150 rockets a day into Israel, every day. Israel would exhaust its Iron Dome defenses in somewhere between six weeks to at the very outside a few months. Wilkerson, in keeping with Finkelstein in our first footnote, does not see Israelis as willing to take much punishment. The exodus from the country would accelerate. The premise of Israel was safety for Jews and a European standard of living. An open-ended rocket campaign would severely undermine that.
But even though Israel has a glass jaw, Lebanon as a country is debilitated. Can it take a sustained air campaign by Israel while Hezbollah wears it down? Could its new friend China, which said it was going to stand with its Arab brothers after the pager attacks, provide a substantive boost, say by promising to help fund reconstruction?
In other words, this escalation is more evenly matched than it appears.
So back to the news trigger, the US ceasefire gambit. Even the initial report at the Financial Times was skeptical:
However, a western diplomat in the region said there was scepticism about the diplomatic initiative.
The conditions that have led to a stalemate in the hostages-for-ceasefire talks over Gaza still exist, so “why would you think you can push Israel and [the Palestinian militant group] Hamas to accept one now. What changed?” the diplomat added.
“Netanyahu will never agree to linking the two fronts,” the diplomat added, saying this was exactly what Hizbollah and its main backer, Iran, “had been attempting to do for 12 months”.
“Hizbollah is very slowly and carefully calculating every next move. They were hit very bad but they are not defeated,” the diplomat said.
By that the source means that Hezbollah started its strikes into Israel over the Gaza genocide and Nasrallah has repeatedly affirmed that Hezbollah will not stop until Israel ends its war in Gaza.
And from the updated Wall Street Journal story:
Israel launched more strikes it said targeted Hezbollah on Thursday, including in Beirut’s southern suburbs, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling troops to fight at full force even as diplomats raced to establish a temporary cease-fire along the border and head off a possible Israeli ground invasion.
“Diplomats raced”? This is comical. Diplomats do not “establish” ceasefires. Principals do. There is no evidence either side is receptive (admittedly, Lebanon did make some minimally polite noises). This looks like an echo of the pattern we described with respect to Ukraine peace efforts and Alexander Mercouris has gracious highlighted: the Western side (here with Arab friendlies, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and I assume captured Jordan as the third) all negotiating a scheme among themselves without taking the stated interests of the key parties into account. Of course if they did, they would be forced to admit there was no overlap in positions.
Now to the money quote:
Netanyahu’s office pushed back on the idea that a cease-fire might be close at hand, saying he has yet to respond to the proposal circulated by the U.S. and France and that he has told the military not to let up with its fighting in Lebanon.
_____
1 This characterization comes from Norman Finkelstein in a recent interview with Glenn Greenwald:
However, Israel loses hands down in a ground invasion, and Israel dreads a ground invasion for the very simple reason that, believe it or not, Israelis don’t want to die. They like to kill. It’s fun to kill Arabs. It’s more fun than shooting fish in a barrel. They are positively exhilarated and euphoric at the prospect of killing Arabs, including children. They like to shoot children in the skull, as was fairly common according to physicians who served in the hospitals in Gaza the past year. They said children came in without any shrapnel on their body, just bullets to their head. And during the Great March of Return in 2018, as the UN report—an exhaustive 250-page single-spaced report—said, Israel targeted children. And in particular, when it didn’t kill them—because killing too many unarmed children doesn’t fly too well in the press, to the extent that it’s covered—they targeted their kneecaps and below their kneecaps to inflict what are called life-changing injuries.
In any event, Israelis like to kill Arabs, humiliate Arabs, degrade Arabs, torture Arabs, but they don’t like to fight them.
.2 This is not just my view. Former Lt. Colonel and State Department official Larry Wilkerson regularly gets exercised when Hochstein’s name comes up. He sees Hochstein as a living, breathing example of how much the US has subordinated its interests to those of Israel.
3 Search engines say that at its shortest distance, Haifa is 85 miles from the Lebanon border, but perhaps the Ramat David air base and the Raphael facilities were closer. The Cradle says only 50 km, but perhaps they confused the new increment from the old targeting range with the total distance from Lebanon. I am excepting a bit heavily since the piece confirms that Hezbollah is far from bowed:
Hezbollah has not concealed that Israel’s terror and assassination attacks last week, which continue heavily today in Lebanon’s south, where hundreds of civilians have been killed since the morning, have had a chilling and demoralizing effect. However, several indicators show that the Lebanese resistance has been able to absorb these blows and adapt rapidly without impacting its structure or operations capabilities…
Hezbollah continues to firmly maintain its position on Israel ending its military assault on Gaza and has quickly rearranged its internal affairs to retaliate against the occupation state – even launching a new phase of the conflict, which it calls the “open-ended battle of reckoning,” as announced by Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem during the funeral of Commander Ibrahim Aqil in Beirut….
Through its initial retaliation and declaration of the new battle phase, Hezbollah is sending the following messages:
First, the resistance’s command-and-control system was not damaged or exposed to failure.
Second, Hezbollah responded to Israel’s massive expansion of strikes by immediately deepening its retaliatory strikes to over 50 kilometers inside the occupation state. This is part of the resistance’s deterrence formula imposed on Tel Aviv: an “expansion for expansion.”
Third, Hezbollah will meet Israeli gradualism with gradualism to shuffle the military cards constantly and push the enemy to change many of its calculations.
Fourth, it will not just launch minimal retaliations to disrupt the enemy’s goals, but will meet it with forceful and demoralizing strikes as well.
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If there was ever a right time for massive, violence-be-damned, demonstrations outside, or inside, the UN buildings this is it. Easy for me to say being a couple thousand miles away.
Why the UN? That doesn’t really make sense to me. To protest the UN rather Israel, the US or other complicit governments?
The UN needs to protest by departing the US, though. If ever there was a clear conflict of interest, the UN residing on the same soil as the country committing a genocide would be exactly that. It makes as much sense as the UN building being in Israel.
Because the Nutty yahoo is going to make a speach there, no?
after what happened to the Franco-German-US-guaranteed Minsk agreements and the incredibly kid gloves that trans-Atlantic media and the US government treats Israel (eg, blatant violations of prior safe-passage-guarantees for civilian Gazans), why would any Arab agree to western terms for a ceasefire?
Too much blood has been spilled. De facto unconditional surrender of Israel ( Palestine independence) or bust. The Arab Street has decided it (all too reasonably, I would insist on the same too if I was in their shoes).
The French and Germans did not guarantee the Minsk agreements, as has been made clear many times, although the Russians, as co-signatories could be said implicitly to have done so.
Exactly, France and Germany were part of the ruse. See: What’s her name and the little french guy. World leaders both :)
No, France and Germany did not. But this person did (on both accords)
“Swiss diplomat and OSCE representative Heidi Tagliavini”
And if the defense is “but that is not the same”, then no one should be surprised when other nations look at the current crop of western world leaders and are reluctant to trust them.
The French and Germans may not have “technically” guaranteed the Minsk agreements but they sure as hell were part of the negotiations as “mediators.” Then they admitted years later that they lied their faces off in those negotiations to stop the Ukrainians getting hammered by the Donbass militias so that they could rearm and reorganize. In short, France and the UK were up to their necks in this extended con job and to this day they are at the forefront of this war in the Ukraine.
You may want to glance at my essay of 20 September last year (kindly picked up by Yves subsequently) which among other things analysed the Minsk agreements in detail.
Briefly, these were not legal agreements, but memoranda of discussions between the Ukrainian parties in the presence of the Russians, the French and the Germans. They were a mixture of detailed technical steps to remove weapons, and vague undertakings of reform by the Ukrainian government. Nothing was said about the future of the UAF, or the involvement of any other country in the future.
At the time, as was made clear in the media, the western view was that the fighting in the East of Ukraine represented a serious effort by Russia to conquer the country and restore the old Soviet Union. Minsk was thus an attempt to stop the fighting, to enable Ukrainian defences to be built up to a point where the Russians would, with luck, be deterred from invading “again” or failing that the invasion would be unsuccessful. (Needless to say the Russians see, and saw, the issue quite differently.) The West believed that then and believes it now, and unless you understand this simple fact you will never understand the bitterness of western hostility to Russia, which (they believe) did invade in the end in spite of their best efforts at deterrence
Technically, it could be argued (and I think it has been) that the West did not do enough to push the Ukrainians to carry out the reforms discussed at Minsk. That’s probably fair, but the western view, of course, is that the Russians themselves did not play fair either. This is politics and everyone puts forward the interpretation that suits them.
‘Minsk was thus an attempt to stop the fighting, to enable Ukrainian defences to be built up to a point where the Russians would, with luck, be deterred from invading “again” or failing that the invasion would be unsuccessful.’
Yeah, I am going to have to disagree right there. It was not the Russians that were about to overrun the Ukraine but the Ukraine that wanted to crush the Donbass Republics. Even before the start of the war the UN reported the deaths of some 14,000 people on those borderlands as the Ukrainians were constantly shelling the civilian population. Twice the Ukrainians invaded the Donbass Republics but were defeated so the west each time negotiated a Minsk agreement to stop the Ukrainians losing. So the west trained basically a NATO army to attack and destroy the Donbass and I think about five battalions of Ukrainians were being trained up by them each and every year. A massive set of fortifications was also built up along the contact line and you can be certain that it was with NATO expertise – along with a boat load of concrete. In short, the invasion was going the other way. At the Minsk negotiations there were several parties taking part like the French and the Germans and going by historical records, it was only the Russians which were negotiating in good faith. And because of this, there is ZERO trust in negotiations with the west. Nada. The west has proven again and again that they will not keep any agreements that they make. Their word is worthless.
If you have the text of any undertakings given by the French, Germans or Russians at Minsk, or anything they signed, I’d be happy to see it because I have never seen one, nor heard mention of it. Otherwise you just have to accept that the West said what it said and thought what it thought, no matter how unlikely that may seem to you
Both the French and the Germans are now on public record saying that the Minsk 2 agreements were just a scam to fool the Russians and the actual intent was to re-arm the Ukraine so that they could have another go at invading the Donbass. Third time lucky?
“At the time, as was made clear in the media, the western view was that the fighting in the East of Ukraine represented a serious effort by Russia to conquer the country and restore the old Soviet Union.”
I don’t believe this for a second. This was the *propaganda* line, and perhaps it is actually believed by some of our imbecile “Russia experts” whom the media rely on for said propaganda. But as has been emphasized over and over again, both Russia and knowledgeable Western diplomatic and intelligence sources have been warning for *decades* about Russian concerns. I doubt if any serious military analysts (as opposed to propagandists) actually believed the original Russian feint toward Kyiv in February 2022 was an attempt to “conquer Ukraine.” Russian concerns have been known for a long time. And if they weren’t, they were laid out clearly many times, including by Putin himself from at least 2007 on. Russia practically pleaded with the West for an agreement; aside from Crimea (which they were not going to lose), they did *not* originally want to invade the Donbass.
This war was *provoked*. Its purpose was to force Russia to act so as to sever its relations with Europe. The West – and by “West” I mean the US and its increasingly subservient NATO lackeys in Europre – knew exactly what they were doing. This does not mean that an increasing number of useful idiots in official positions actually believed the Red Menace was being reactivated to march toward Berlin. But I guarantee you there were plenty of actual experts in the West who did not. They’ve been talking about this for nearly 30 years.
The cognitive dissonance is very, very entrenched in the West. They see it as righteous to intervene in Serbia and “free” Kosovo of Serbian persecution, but cannot be made to understand the position of ethnic Russians in Donbas.
And the pretzel of contortions made by the West in trying to explain the difference is a challange for any mathematician trained in topology.
Ukrainians and Israelis trying to ethnically clense the Russians and Arabs is ok for the West. It is an impossible possition to defend and anyone presenting West’s points of view need to clear this major point.
Zakharchenko did sign yet suffered the same fate as Hamas negotiators or that poor s%d who signed the Ukrainian consent in Istanbul in 2022
What’s more pathetic, the impotence of Biden and Blinken in the face of Bibi’s triumphalism, or watching Trump completely fail to take advantage of it?
He ought to at least run a few ads showing how bankrupt this whole charade is.
Trump is still Trump. The only ad the GOP would run is images of the Democrats saying ‘hey lets not kill all the children” while superimposing burkas on them.
My tin foil hat theory is Mossad told the campaign “it was Iran” knowing full well that would be an answer Trump would love.
The us reserves the right to attack anybody at any time on any pretext. The us was at the brink vs Iran during trump’s term, and he stepped back. Imo he appreciates the results of the us vs Iran war games while the dem warmongers don’t. Plus it’s likely Saudi oil fields would burn and/or Hormuz would close, hardly good for Harris’ election chances.
I assume israel has been receiving replacement missiles from us, tho us has also been burning them up in Red Sea. Wonder how long that can go on.
Beirut and Tel Aviv are somewhat off-setting hostages. Hezbollah would be in a much better position if Beirut had decent AA defenses, or if Russia provided that. Interesting times.
I will be surprised if israel invades Lebanon by land, just too costly. More likely they expand bombing Beirut at least for a while.
I was wondering about that. Also just saw this Axios article
Netanyahu distances himself from U.S.-led proposal for ceasefire in Lebanon
Would Trump let Netanyahu walk all over him like that? Though $100m Adelson money is a lot.
Right – Trump doesn’t need to run ads with an ominous voice saying “This is America’s Diplomat” with Antony Blinken strumming the guitar in a Hawaiian shirt while images of kids starving/ Gaza burning run in the background. He just needs some Trumpian bluster:
“If I were President, I’d have a deal between Israel and Hamas/Hez in 24 hours. Guaranteed … it would be beautiful! ”
Of course, he’d leave out the part about Netanyahu being part of the problem and AIPAC owning Congress. Netanyahu seems to want Trump to win, because his support would be even more solid than Bidens, if that is even possible.
From the article:
When and from where does this adult U.S. leadership emerge? The current crop all look like rough beasts slouching toward Bethlehem to me.
Biden-Blinken are not impotent. An arms embargo would exhaust Israel in the near term. But they will not do that. Why? Foolish old Joe is a well-compensated “Zionist”… no space between him and Israel. Blinken went to Israel in October 2023 and said to Bibi , IIRC, I come to you not as a US official but as a Jew. Not his exact words but close. What are we to conclude from that and from Biden’s embracing Bibi immediately after October 7? I am not accusing either man of disloyalty to the US. I am stating that their actions have not been in the national interest. I am stating that the US policy of allowing Israel carte blanche to do as it will has made the US complicit in genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Calling for cease fires and hostage deals etc. is pusillanimous. Bibi and his gang have their program. They know exactly what they want to do. From the statements I have read, their “program” is one that has been the goal of Zionism as a movement and the state of Israel since its founding: dispossess by whatever means necessary the inhabitants of the land from “the river to the sea”, the ancient Kingdom of Israel of 3,000 years ago. Look at what has been happening for the last year. Q.E.D. For the Biden administration and those who support it not to be horrified by indiscriminate destruction and genocide boggles the mind. For the administration not to see Bibi’s utter contempt and disdain is incomprehensible. Yes, incomprehensible until you look at the long arm of AIPAC and the billionaire supporters of Israel who have the US government in their pocket. Nothing new to see here. That does not make in less painful to watch.
I do accuse all of them to disloyalty to this country. No, I will up it to Treason and make sure Schumer is included.
Trump? Forget it,he even pimped his whore daughter out to them.
This is how it is, isn’t it? If you challenge power, you will invest blood. Hamas and Hezbollah have incredible nerve, in the face of epic tragedy. Salaam alaykum.
Alexander Mercouris has recently expressed the view that a major IDF ground incursion into Lebanon may be time constrained by the looming rainy season, which he reckons would hinder air operations over Lebanon; it needs to either happen soon or wait until dryer conditions in late Winter next year. If that’s right and if the 3-week proposal is serious and not just “look busy” posturing by JRB admin, it might be intended to cool things until the window for ground invasion has temporarily closed. AM thinks that Netanyahoo feels pressured to act before weather conditions deteriorate and that is related to the recent ISR escalation.
I forgot to include that in why Bibi won’t pay attention to ceasefire prattle.
However, experts don’t understand the talk of an invasion. The IDF ground forces are very tired. As Scott Ritter put it, they are optimized for breaking the arms of Palestinian teenagers. They did not do well versus Hamas and Hezbollah is way tougher, having fought well in Syria. Plus Israel is low on tanks and ammo: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-army-admits-it-suffers-shortage-of-tanks-ammunition-amid-gaza-war/3276115. Admittedly it may have somewhat replenished its ammo since then but the tank problem could not have been solved quickly.
So this must be a delusion that the US not only would come in but come in bigly with ground troops. But it takes 6 months to get them in by sea. Our army is way smaller and weaker than in the Gulf War. And with China now believed to be the supplier of the missile the Houthis used to strike well inside Israel, and China now officially declaring for the Arabs, think there won’t be a lot more where that came from? China would LOVE to humiliate the US and Israel through the Houthis if that could be arranged.
So this all looks seriously deranged. Netanyahu may bloody Hezbollah and beat up Lebanon, but a winning ground invasion is widely seen as beyond his reach.
Yes, seriously deranged, but we’ve seen how deranged American FP leadership and experts are, and how uninformed/misinformed (let’s just call it what it is – BOUGHT and STUPID) our Congress and Senate remain. Publicly deploying any American troops in a “fighting” role in support of Israel means politically they can NEVER LEAVE. (Well, obviously they will, but it wrecks a political party for an election cycle.)
Just think about what happens in America when our “elites” decide the DOD needs 100% of the budget. It’s AMAZING how we hear that Russia’s economy is on a “full war” footing when the actual reality is America spends more than half of it’s budget on the DOD (and has for decades), but is not considered on a “full war” footing.
So I hope you are right, but having watched our elites make very bad wrong decisions for over three decades, I’m think the trend line here is not good.
Russia just allocated 50% of the state budget to defense in 2025 (that is 6.2% of GDP).
The US is planning to directly spend 12.25% of the budget for defense (3% of GDP). With the hidden costs (nukes, veterans, etc) adding at most 50% (do note that this is an exaggeration of the true hidden costs) of that increasing the total to 18.4% (4.5% of GDP) of the budget. And those numbers have been fairly stable since the end of the cold war.
Thank you! That’s some great data!
Now, how do we analyze this to get something equivalent to GDP (PPP)? Because I suspect America’s quite literal bang for our bucks is slipping compared to our multipolar peers.
You don’t.
Everything is different, from the philosophy on what is the correct remuneration for building gear, to having spare capacity, ability to convert civilian production lines to military, the type of gear produced, and more.
A good example would be the French Caesar howitzer. A high quality product that is made to exacting specifications. Good enough that it provides some extra kilometers distance to how far it can toss a 155mm shell. Something Ukraine used to great effect when they started shelling Snake Island. The downside is that it takes months (down to 6 IIRC from 15) to produce one and replacement barrels are finicky to make (the main reason they stopped using the surviving Caesars, no more replacement barrels).
Russian philosophy still is that in a war of attrition the well trained troops will have suffered enough casualties that that farmer over there with a week training should be able to drive a tank since there are no other drivers available.
What that means is that a NATO army is setup to fight a short (a few weeks to at most a month or three) high intensity war followed by a brushfire war/insurgency hunting and a slow replenishment of lost/used materiel.
Russia on the other hand has setup their armies for attrition warfare where preservation of soldiers takes precedence since you are going to need them in a years time but also with the expectation that the experienced soldiers die faster then adequate replacements can be trained. Which means mass production of simpler materiel (for the most part, a fighter jet stays a complex piece of equipment requiring a well trained pilot to fully utilize for example), since you can afford to lose gear if it keeps the users fit enough to use replacements.
Mercouris is no military strategist nor does he understand the Ben Gvir mindset.
Ad hominem and off base. Mercouris cited experts, and separately, at least Scott Ritter and Crooke have pointed out that starting in November though at least Feb, air operations are impeded by weather. I assume that means fog but it might also mean unpredictable high winds.
The point is IDF is a very airpower biased military and it would require consistent air cover for any ground operation.
This kind of initiative will only work if the two sides have a common interest in a cease-fire, or at least de-escalation. If that’s so, then almost any deal will do, provided that each side can claim victory, or the avoidance of defeat. But there is no possibility of putting pressure on the two sides to come to an agreement that doesn’t suit them.
There’s no doubt that a ratcheting down of the situation along the border would suit both sides. The IDF very publicly does not want to carry out the operation. The terrain down there is hopeless for their style of mechanised warfare and Hezbollah, although hurting, has enough capability remaining to stop them short of the Litani River. In addition, the consequences of such a campaign, which would certainly provoke an all-out missile attack on Israel, are unforeseeable but uniformly bad. But they can’t be seen to back down.
Likewise, Hezbollah has been hurt over the last year less by attacks on its facilities than by targeting of its commanders (as in Beirut recently) and its headquarters. The IDF has made a lot of use of drones and technical means of locating commanders. Hezbollah had lost some of its most experienced leaders in Syria, and such people take time to train and to acquire operational experience. There seems to be no shortage of basic recruits, but they are losing specialists and leaders. Moreover, Hezbollah sees itself first of all as a Lebanese organisation, and does not want to bring the country down with it For their part, the Iranians don’t want things to get out of control either. But neither they nor Hezbollah can be seen to back down.
This is the Middle East, where violence is a form of communication and a certain level of violence is accepted as normal. A cease-fire need not be complete, and it might not even be formally written down, if both sides agree that they have a common interest in de-escalation. The problem is, the sides cannot negotiate. The Lebanese government (and Lebanon is not of course a party to the conflict) cannot speak for Hezbollah, who are only one of the governing parties and have their own parallel state anyway. Nobody is prepared to speak to the Iranians, who do have influence over them. The only way this could conceivably work is if a state in the region is prepared to carry messages between Israel and Hezbollah which would lead to a de facto unwritten agreement to tone down the violence.
If the Israelis actually think the US would come in on their side I think they are dreaming. At a stroke, and for no conceivable benefit, they would trash twenty years of US policy in the region, not to mention completely destroying Lebanon as a country.
I tend not to think of the Israelis, or at least the Israeli leadership, as part of the Middle East.
Netanyahu being a case in point – his being Ashkenazi or Sephardic (his last name is really Mileikowsky) rather than Mizrahim. The former are the cause of the current shitshow, the latter are related by blood, culture, history, family, tradition and language to the very people Israel is currently bombing. The former invaded, the latter had lived peacefully alongside the Palestinians for most of the history of Palestine. The Mizrahi are the Hebrew peoples mentioned throughout the Torah, the Ashkenazi and Sephardic are not, are European through and through, converted at much later dates.
‘The only way this could conceivably work is if a state in the region is prepared to carry messages between Israel and Hezbollah which would lead to a de facto unwritten agreement to tone down the violence.’
Regrettably, that would never work as we have seen how the Israelis only ratchet up the violence with the long-term aim of getting American troops on the ground to fight their wars for them. But as Yves has pointed out, the US military of 2024 is not the US military of the 1990s. Not even close.
Several times you wrote that one or another side “can’t be seen” to do something. By whom, and why is this? Not in specific terms, but more generally: why is it that government or quasi-government forces are, in your view, constrained by some perception of them that they don’t want to project? Are they afraid of ‘the public’, broadly? These are real questions I have, as I look on, perplexed, at White House press conferences; there isn’t a conclusion I’ve come to I’m looking for support for, though I have my suspicions, and they have to do with class.
Really good comment, Aurelien, and I don’t really disagree with anything in the main, but I may have a couple counterpoints related to Hezbollah’s willingness to escalate (along with the whole Axis of Resistance). Specifically around this …
Obviously, taking losses hurts and you can’t wish away material factors like the experience you mentioned. But at the same time, I think this underestimates how the martyrdom concept, particularly among Shia, changes how organizations effectively work.
The outward leaders are often just living symbols while they’re alive, and there’s almost always indirection when you try to figure out who is making operational decisions. I think the sense that the world is unjust and death is inevitable also means anyone with rank is very proactive and personally involved with apprenticeship. I’m not sure they even see skill as something that one accumulates over time (a very Modernist framing when you think about it) so much as God-given talent that can either be wasted or properly organized.
I wasn’t raised in a Muslim home BTW, but I’ve picked up a lot of the culture, plus a lot ironically translates very easily from a US military upbringing. And while my dad & I don’t agree about much, especially in politics, I always agree 100% with his statement that “nobody is irreplaceable”. I also like to add my own corollary: “… so if an organization believes someone is, that organization will eventually get stomped.” And in that light, the Israel / US leadership focusing on high-ranking members of the Resistance Axis is partly just projecting their own short-term, petty & futile, self-preservation instincts onto the war. Meanwhile (if I’m right), Hezbollah et al. have incorporated “the dogs may bark but the caravan moves on” as a basic organizational principle.
Curious occurrence.
I was going to post a counter argument to what seemed to be a Hasbara comment and got a screen that said: “Sorry. Replies to unapproved comments are not allowed.”
I had to laugh. The Moderators are on their toes today! Good work.
Stop the arms deliveries to this Mideast Mafia and you’ll see a cease fire real fast, Mike Liston
Indeed. Instead, what we get is this (per TASS):
Israel secures $8.7 bln US aid package in support of ‘ongoing military efforts’
“The Israeli Defense Ministry specified that the aid package comprises $3.5 bln for essential wartime procurement and $5.2 bln ‘designated for air defense systems, including the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and an advanced laser system.'”
“A bridge to nowhere or, more accurately, Son of Gaza floating pier.”
It’s not just what Yves says, it’s how she says it. She really has a way with words. It’s one of the reasons why I come here.
Echoes of James Joyce, who described a pier as “a disappointed bridge.”
re: pager/walkie attack, my understanding is that military Lebanese Hezbollah has had a dedicated wired fiber-optic communications system for at least a decade.
Yes, we had this in our earlier post (linked above). They have used fiber optics starting before 2006. And otherwise messengers.
Just as with Gaza, Netanyahu’s settler fellow travelers are already dividing up South Lebanon. Readers might be interested in Uri Tzafon (sic) the settler group tasked with organizing future settlements in “North Galilee”. He has challenged both air and ground troops to “destroy everything”. Since this is common knowledge in Israel, not surprising that Hezbollah is also aware. Would obviate any consideration of a truce.
On the other hand, the Treasury folks in Israel are worried. Little commentary makes it past the censor regarding the stability of the banking system. While Israeli patriots stay in Jerusalem et al, they are said to be converting shekels to dollars, sending their money overseas. A bad scene in a situation wherein the budget overspending is so great, additional funding depends on yet another formal review.
Are Netanyahu and his government relying on US dollars, beyond those allocated to weapons, to shore up the fiscal stability of the country? Simultaneous continuation of both Gaza and Lebanon “endeavors” has the capacity to accelerate Israel’s movement to total bankruptcy. With little hard information available some pundits are suggesting that this could happen prior to the US election.
Well, it’s the 27th already here in Aus and as I wake up this morning here is the ABC main story:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-27/middle-east-wrap/104403464
No more ambiguity there. Netanyahu just stuck his middle finger up to Biden and everyone else pretending they want to calm him down.
Thanks for yet again another highly informative discussion of the state of play or should I say war in Palestine/Israel.
Regarding Endnote 3, according to my Freytag & Berndt map of Israel/Saini, which I bought when I was there on business 30 years ago, the distance from the tip of the stubby, north-pointing peninsula on which Haifa sits to the southwest corner of Lebanon is about 33 km. However it’s fair to say the distance from the city to any significant military asset in southern Lebanon threatening it is probably 55 km or more.
When Netanyahu gave that direct message to the Lebanese people-
‘I urge you – take this warning seriously. Don’t let Hezbollah endanger your lives and the lives of your loved ones. Don’t let Hezbollah endanger Lebanon. Please, get out of harm’s way now.’
Somebody pointed out that that was the exact same message that he gave last year to the Palestinians about Hamas – and then promptly slaughtered those Palestinians by the thousands. The Lebanese have seen this movie before.
More political theater. Reuters reported in June that:
Today Reuters reports that:
Give me an effin’ break. 21-day ceasefire my a**. Biden and Blinken are a couple of war criminals.
That is too large a percentage of Israel’s population to be allowed to flee/leave. I would not be surprised to see “shelter in place” orders and restrictions on movement introduced lest too man settlers decide to settle abroad.
Please get a grip. Israelis cannot be imprisoned in Israel.
The practical restriction is that (as we had in Links a couple of days ago) many airlines have cancelled fights to Tel Aviv, some for just a few weeks but also including quite a few indefinitely and others through March 2025.
The bigger issue is only some Israelis are dual passport holders. The ones that aren’t would find it hard to leave permanently. Not that many countries accept working-age people on a permanent basis. And usually lotta hoops even then.
If Hezbollah can deplete the Iron Dome defenses sufficiently, then Iran could bring the really heavy iron into the fray. Then all the F-35s on the ground go bye-bye and the IDF has no cover. At least somebody on the Israeli military side of the house must have gamed that out. When are they going to remove Netanyahu and his crazy friends? That seems like the only path to a ceasefire. Biden’s and Blinken’s constant bleating for PR purposes does not signify.
Why is no one – as in the US – stopping Israel in this “war” officially begun last Oct. 7th? It seems to me to be more and more clear that the US (or a weighty group of power brokers within the US) is fully on board with all that is happening and actually wants to go after Iran. And it also seems clear to me that Israel has stated in artful terms what they intend to be their winning move – and that is to turn to its nuclear arsenal when they deem it necessary. The US is likely fully on board with that as well, though there will be the usual ‘deep concerns’ about it – because the US wants to see how these weapons perform in an actual war setting. No ‘boots on the ground’ (betting Norman Finkelstein is correct) just more and more highly destructive bombing. $8.7 Billion. Is that not a reward? These ‘masters of war’ are all in at this point it seems to me.
“недоговороспособны” or “Not Agreement Capable” describes perfectly the world created by US Intransigence which has encouraged Israel and Ukraine and UK to exacerbate every conflict to draw in USA.
What has changed since 2006 that makes Israel think it can “win” this time?
What has changed since 2006 that makes Israel think it can “win” this time?
The same thing that keeps continually changing for the US to think that it can “win” any of its wars since WW2.
Maybe it’s delusions?
Survival. No one in power wants to be to told that winning is impossible.
Desperation actually.
Israel is obsessed by “Replacement Angst” and differential rates of reproduction. Israelis do not breed fast enough to occupy and defend the territory they seized and are condemned to expand the perimeter in the hope of keeping the “Replacement population” at a distance………to do so they must sacrifice their limited population unless they can leverage US “infidels” as helots to die for their objectives.
So far Americans have focused on shopping and ignored what goes on………the butcher’s bill however is being presented to US population……….and it may mean they cannot travel anywhere internationally in safety or live behind a fictional military security shield which looks as threadbare as that Israel believed it had