Yves here. The latest escalation by Israel in its war with Lebanon is serious bad news. I had started drafting this post when mainstream media sources were denying Israels’ claims that it has killed Hezbollah leader Hassam Nasrallah. BBC is now reporting that Hezbollah has confirmed that he is dead. Alastair Crooke has maintained that every Hezbollah senior officer, including Nasrallah, has trained a successor, although Nasrallah’s was not known. On the Judge Napolitano show on Friday, I believe it was Ray McGovern (who then had informed reports that suggested that Nasrallah had survived) who maintained that any successor would be more hard-line.
Until its terrorism via exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, followed by an intense wave of air strikes in Southern Lebanon and attacks on Beirut, Israel and Hezbollah had been engaged in tit for tat, with Hezbollah and Israel confining their blows to particular areas of each country. Hezbollah has attempted to observe a variant of the old normal by extending its target range into Israel to Haifa and environs, still hitting only military targets.
Israel has crossed every conceivable boundary. It keeps blowing up residential buildings, with the pretext that it is out to assassinate Hezbollah leadership. Israel has admittedly had some successes with these attacks, such as the killing of Fuad Shukur, Ismail Haniyeh, and Ibraim Aqil. However, Israel claimed its latest barrage on Beirut, which blew up an entire neighborhood, destroyed Hezbollah headquarters and killed Hezbollah leader Hassim Nasrallah. Whether it did damage or destroy the Hezbollah center remains to be seen. Israel initially claimed it had killed Nasrallah but he is alive.
This attack matters for two reasons. First, heretofore, Israel assassination attempts targeted officials who were above ground. By saying it is now seeking to kill Hezbollah officials in underground facilities, it is trying to justify the use of massive bunker-busting bombs in Beirut. We know how well that strategy worked with the Hamas tunnel network. By all accounts, the Hezbollah tunnel system is vastly more extensive and better fortified.
So Israel has now embarked on a campaign to turn Lebanon into Gaza:
After Netanyahu’s speech saying there are no civilian spaces in Lebanon and calling hospitals, schools and every home a legitimate target, Israel attacked Beirut.
He stood at the UN, declared his war crimes and carried them out. This is what total impunity looks like. https://t.co/WiTZj2B85H
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) September 27, 2024
Israel used at least ten 5,000 pound bombs to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a densely populated civilian neighborhood. That's more than three times Hiroshima.
— Lama Al-Arian (@lalarian) September 28, 2024
I have not found a suitable clip of Netanyahu’s speech on Twitter. However, the bits I saw so exuded preening self regard, wallowed in self-created victimhood, as to be so rancid that the English language lacks sufficiently strong words to vilify them.
Second is that by killing Nasrallah, Israel has violated another tacit understanding, that top leadership would not be targeted. Now, if in matching this escalation, Hezbollah were to succeed in killing a top Israel general or minister, or even Netanyahu himself, Isreal would use that to demand that the US commit forces to defend Israel.
Israel’s apparent attempt to assassinate Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a massive strike on an underground headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs marks the most alarming escalation in almost a year of war between the Shia militant organisation and Israel.
Immediately after a highly bellicose speech by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN general assembly – where he appeared to directly threaten Iran as well as promise to continue “degrading” Hezbollah – the first reports of a massive strike began to emerge.
Within less than an hour, Israeli journalists with connections to the country’s defence and security establishment were suggesting that Nasrallah was the target and that he had been in the area of the headquarters at the time of the strike.
That the strike was regarded as highly significant was quickly confirmed by a series of statements from Israel – including an image showing Netanyahu ordering the attack on the phone from his New York hotel room….
For much of the early months of the conflict with Hezbollah, which began on 8 October– a day after Hamas’s attack from Gaza – it was understood that Israel would not assassinate the militant group’s most senior members. But in recent months those “red lines” have increasingly been rubbed away.
By Jessica Corbett, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
Israel’s dropping of massive bombs in Beirut on Friday sparked a fresh wave of global condemnation against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with critics accusing him of trying to drag the Middle East into an even bloodier conflict that could engulf the entire region.
The Israeli attack supposedly targeted Hassan Nasrallah, head of the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah. Multiple media outlets reported that the leader survived, though hundreds of others are feared dead in the “complete carnage” from the bombing that leveled several buildings. While the death toll from Friday is not yet clear, over 700 people have been killed in Israel’s strikes in Lebanon since Monday.
As The New York Times reported:
Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said that there had been a “complete decimation” of four to six residential buildings as a result of the Israeli strikes. He said that the number of casualties in hospitals was low so far because people were still trapped under the rubble. “They are residential buildings. They were filled with people,” Mr. Abiad said. “Whoever is in those buildings is now under the rubble.”
Social media and news sites quickly filled with photos and videos of massive plumes of smoke and smoldering rubble.
While attention fixates on the fate of #Hezbollah leader Hassan #Nasrallah, bear in mind that flattening 6+ high-rise apartment buildings, without prior notice/evacuation, means 100s of casualties.
This is a mass casualty event, whatever #Hezbollah losses. pic.twitter.com/s4Plc8Sfka
— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) September 27, 2024
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon, said Friday that she was “deeply alarmed and profoundly worried about the potential civilian impact of tonight’s massive strikes on Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs. The city is still shaking with fear and panic widespread. All must urgently cease fire.”
However, the bombing is widely expected to worsen this week’s escalation, which came after nearly a year of the IsraelDefense Forces (IDF) trading strikes with Hezbollah over the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 41,000 Palestinians.
“For Israel, it may not matter if Nasrallah was killed. Either way, it believes it’ll get the regional war it has sought,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said of the Friday attack.
Citing an unnamed Israeli official, NBC Newsreported that “Israel expects Hezbollah will attempt to mount a major retaliatory attack” in response to Friday’s bombing of the group’s command center.
As Reuters detailed:
Israel has struck the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, four times over the last week, killing at least three senior Hezbollah military commanders.
But Friday’s attack was far more powerful, with multiple blasts shaking windows across the city, recalling Israeli airstrikes during the war it fought with Hezbollah in 2006.
In a video posted on social media, IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari described the Friday attack as “a precise strike” on what “served as the epicenter of Hezbollah’s terror,” adding that the group’s headquarters “was intentionally built under residential buildings.”
During Netanyahu’s United Nations General Assembly speech on Friday—which was met with a walkout from several diplomats and other officials—the prime minister said that Hezbollah has stored rockets “in schools, in hospitals, in apartment buildings, and in the private homes of the citizens of Lebanon. They endanger their own people. They put a missile in every kitchen, a rocket in every garage.”
In response, Middle East expert Assal Rad said, “So he’s claiming there’s no civilian spaces in Lebanon and Israel has a right to destroy all of it.”
Jason Hickel, who has positions at multiple European universities, also sounded the alarm over those lines from the Israeli leader’s speech.
Netanyahu is “effectively arguing all homes are a military target,” he said. “This is 100% genocidal and this maniac must be stopped.”
The US was reportedly informed of this mass Israeli attack on Beirut in Lebanon shortly beforehand.
Comes just one day after US released $8.7 billion more in aid to Israel & hours after Netanyahu told the UN “Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace.”pic.twitter.com/LW2ST4DixB— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) September 27, 2024
Hours before the attack in suburban Beirut, the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) strongly condemned“Israel’s brutal bombardment of Lebanon, another reckless escalation in the Middle East on behalf of the Benjamin Netanyahu regime that risks further destabilization in an already fragile region.”
“The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon is the latest dark chapter in a series of disproportionate displays of force. Its ongoing genocide in Palestine over the last year has proven beyond any doubt that its willingness to commit horrific acts knows no bounds,” DiEM25 said. “Rather than seeking a peaceful and just resolution, Israel’s government has consistently chosen the path of militarism, often with international support from the European Union and the United States.”
“The international community, including the E.U., has a critical role to play in promoting peace rather than enabling violence,” the group added. “Peace and security in the Middle East will not come through bombs and military strength. It will come through diplomacy. We remain committed to working towards that aim and stand in solidarity with the Lebanese people, as well as all others suffering from this violent escalation.”
Exhaustingly disheartening.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah killed by Israel in major escalation of conflict
‘During Netanyahu’s United Nations General Assembly speech on Friday—which was met with a walkout from several diplomats and other officials’
It was more than ‘several.’ It was scores and while Netanyahu was talking you could see empty seats everywhere when the cameras panned across his audience. Everybody knows that he is trying to start a region wide war in the Middle East and he is committing one massacre after another. It was the same half-baked lies in his speech and yet again he brought along some cartoons, this time in the form of two maps showing the ‘blessing’ and the ‘curse.’ The ‘blessing’ map shows Saudi Arabia joined up with Israel in that ropey trade route between India and the Mediterranean talked about some time ago. Of course Saudi Arabia would have to join the Abraham Accords but then Israel would let them pay for all the roads, railways, infrastructure that Netanyahu said would be built. The ‘curse’ showed countries like Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen as a black blight on the Middle east and Netanyahu had the hide to demand that the UN take action against Iran in an upcoming meeting. At this stage of the game, I think that nearly every country in the world is tired of his *** and don’t want to listen to his crap anymore-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MQoCSeKwU4 (3:25 mins)
There was a walkout, but what’s also under-reported is that Netenyahu brought along the same seal troope to hoot and cheer from the gallery as he did in his speech to congress. Order had to be called in the chamber when he entered and the clapping went on throughout much as it had in congress (though in that case, the representatives on the floor were joining in).
That must have been Bibi’s lawyer, Tony Blinken hooting and cheering from the peanut gallery.
Reuters has this as of 8:30 EST,
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanons-hezbollah-confirms-leader-nasrallah-killed-2024-09-28/
Yes, also Al Mayadeen, Middle East Eye, Middle East Monitor have the story. Not just invention of western press.
Yes, it came over the news ticker on Hezbollah’s English website:
https://english.almanar.com.lb/
“15:43 Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah Martyred All the Way to Al-Quds
14:46 Hezbollah mourns Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah: His Eminence passed away as a great martyr and brave hero
14:41 Hezbollah announces martyrdom of Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah”
(Time zone = Beirut / Al Quds–Jerusalem time)
There’s only one solution to a rabid dog that bites every child in the neighborhood.
Even if the dog’s owner is the 400 pound drunk with an arsenal of weapons.
That dog owns the drunk.
Odd to me that the Haifa refinery hasn’t been targeted, or the oil pipe that crosses turkey, given that Israeli warplanes need fuel to deliver bombs. Red Sea access is already blocked, and tankers thru the med still have to dock to deliver their cargo.
Before yesterday the unofficial rules were tit for tat escalation with Israel being the ratcheting up side. Hezbollah would not target oil infrastructure without Israel doing it first.
Going forward, I’m fairly certain the unofficial rules have now changed, its anyones guess.
So Lebanon is becoming the second example of Isreali genocide. A casual obverer might well conclude that the lack of military response – not even economic sanctions – from Hezbollah or the Global Majority – is a bright green light to Israel to proceed as she wishes.
Pretty much. People keep saying Israel underestimates the resistance but I think everyone is underestimating Israel. They have full western backing, tacit Gulf Arab backing. Even Russia and China have only made strong statements and nothing further.
Israel will keep this going long term as neither Iran nor Hezbollah (who I’m starting to think exaggerates its capabilities) have the appetite, ability, or support to wage a large scale war.
Nasrallah is reported to be dead.
Israel is literally carrying out the Dahiya doctrine or in other words, carpet bombing civilians. It is what they do best.
So far Hezbollah appears to be massively overrated as a military force. I initially bought into this idea that they were restraining themselves, but if they don’t respond to this in a very big way, their ability to deter anything is non- existent. I would guess we will find out very soon.
But it’s self-defense, isn’t it? yes. If Israel does it, it is self-defense. For anyone else it is aggression and if that aggression is against Israel, it is also anti-semitism. He who sows the wind may well reap the whirlwind.
Nasrallah is dead, per Reuters citing Hez spox. https://www.reuters.com/
Killed, of course, by US bombs delivered (same banal verb used to describe pizza and groceries) by US-provided aircraft, likely F-15 or -35. Likely several of the “bunker buster” GBU-28 or -37 bombs, part of the Empire’s profit-center manufactory grimly “provided” to the Likudniks.
Amazing how blasé most imperium dwellers are about such news. Now we who are paying any attention sit in a sort of status epilepticus, waiting to see if this act by the neocon’s boss dog will trigger the true endgame of all against all.
I personally cower like a rabbit in the weeds, having just been fortuitously spared by the random walk of the howling madness of Hurricane Helene, knowing Tampa Bay is likely on Mother Nature’s target list as the great storms ramp up frequency and vigor. And knowing that the idea of moving to some place that “the models” designate as a holdout against natural violence is a phantasm, given the “surprising reach” of the new generation of heat-enhanced maelstroms.
Have to wonder if terminal madness has truly overtaken the entire grasping power structures of the species. No sense that there’s any mechanisms to restrain the beast.
“Help us, Obi Wana Putin — you’re our only hope!”
I saw this separately and have updated the post. REFRESH YOUR BROWSERS.
Sorry folks, at this point of the carnage, having the majority of the world’s delegates walk out at the UN is just not going to cut it. Nice theatrics – but I am not sure when our elite is going to learn that theatrics are no longer going to be enough. We have become too accustomed to the way things used to be. Things are going to have to get very uncomfortable – and I am just not sure the world, especially the West is up to it.
I have a Christian Lebanese family in my practice. I had to deal with the elder matriarch yesterday – whose elderly family members in Beirut are feeling the bombs like earthquakes. And they all know that every time that happens all kinds of brothers and sisters are getting killed.
And again, I see our politicians here in the USA actually signing bombs – albeit for another conflict – and I just do not know what to say. It is obvious that these elites care absolutely nothing about innocents – we should have picked up on that when Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, was droning wedding crowds. But now we are dealing with mass slaughter – I just do not know what to tell my kids – other than to hug them ever more tightly.
Well, maybe someday Netanyahoo, Blinken, Biden,Nuland, etc., (the list is a disgustingly long one), will all have a sit down with the likes of Madeleine Albright and compare notes on their actions, and maybe have to explain themselves to all the innocents. I’m sure there is a special room for them to gather, if Satan even dares to let them in.
Hezbollah should release their entire rocket arsenal now. Like what are they waiting for? No one will be sending them Christmas presents should they decide to be “rational” (whatever that means) with their response. You say they care about the opinions of the Global South? Screw the later, they are all sucking at the t**s of the evil capitalist system. At the end of the day, what’s the use of stockpiling hundreds of thousands of rockets if you are not going to use them?
At this point I think Hezbollah’s competence was vastly overrated. Just the fact that Nasrallah was killed a few days into the war shows that Israel or the U.S. knew where he was and also, how were they not prepared to put their leaders into a bunker deep enough to survive 2000 lb bombs? They have had years to prepare for this war and when it happens it turns out their leaders are easier to kill than Hamas’s. Sinwar might be dead according to Seymour Hersh, but if so, he survived for months.
The article states that Israel used the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb using conventional means, ten 5000 pound bombs. Not just a few measly 2000 pound explosive devices.
This strike destroyed an entire neighbourhood. Now, if you come back and suggest that those civilians were “collateral damage” from a targeted military strike, then don’t be upset when half of Tel Aviv goes up in flames after a “targeted strike” against IDF facilities near there.
This war has now entered the “Kill them all” stage. No civilians on either side are safe now.
Israels days as a functioning State are numbered.
I am not praising Israel. They are genocidal killers. The society is insane. And when people say they are a democracy ( an apartheid democracy) that just makes it worse.
But whatever the size of the bombs and the reports I saw said 2000 lbs, Hezbollah has been planning for many many years for exactly this situation and their leadership was destroyed almost immediately.
We will see what sort of response they can still mount. I am not wishing for mass death on the other side, but I do think they have to hit military installations hard or there is no deterrent. And I think Israel’s Western supporters are giddy about all this— Biden’s people might be worried about a war with Iran just before an election, but if Hezbollah is humiliated and it stops there they will be secretly or not so secretly thrilled, after making a few boilerplate insincere comments about the sadness they feel for civilians
Good point about Hezbollah having to reply to this. “Face” comes into play here. Now, will the extant Hezbollah leadership play it ‘safe’ and target military installations exclusively? Time will tell.
Ten 5000 lb bombs is 25 tons of explosives. A kiloton is 1000 tons of explosives. Hiroshima was approximately16 kilotons or 16,000 tons of explosive power, Nagasaki 21 kilotons. So the Beirut bombing is not even close.
Having said that, Reuters reported in June the US had sent 14,000 2000 lb bombs. That is 14 kiloton dropped on Gaza, so that approaches the atomic bombings in terms of explosives and doesn’t include smaller bombs.
Genocides R US.
They’re fighting a war of attrition. Emotional catharsis is for losers (See “Kursk 2024”).
I believed that until a few days ago. Having your leadership decapitated makes it seem less plausible.
Anyway, one way or another we will find out if my current opinions are correct.
Hezbollah announced the death of Nasrallah only after a new secretary general had already been elected/selected/annointed. That’s how Nasrallah got the job, and that how his predecessor got his job. Hezbollah has been in this game long enough to make it impossible for Israel to decapitate it.
I don’t know the region at all, but I guess Hezbollah is waiting for a) the majority of Lebanese to accept that they are in war with Israel and b) Israel’s ground attack. They are still a political force in a state build on tribal alliances, and they can’t deal with Israel and a civil war at the same.
Yeah, Israel is fighting a war of attrition and so far it seems to be succeeding.
The resistance has barely made a dent.
I was thinking early this morning about martyrs and the ethos of martyrdom. As a child, raised in the mid-century Catholic Church, the tales of the martyrs (the more gory, the better) emphasized the importance of endurance and suffering in ensuring the triumph of Christianity over the military might of the Roman Empire.
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs did the same for the Protestants in the 16th century England. Being burned at the stake by the powerful Catholic establishment didn’t work immediately to change hearts and minds. Until it did. Foxe cleverly tied in the persecution of the early Roman Christian martyrs with the current crop of religious dissidents being persecuted by Queen Mary.
The endurance of martyrdom, while having the appearance of not ‘striking back,’ can actually be the strongest form of resistance. The Roman Empire and the 15th century Catholic establishments used swords, arrows, axes and fire as they attempted to eradicate the new ways of thought that threatened their power. Israel, with its helper engine the US/UK/Western Imperium, has much more powerful weapons. But for how long will these WMD’s prevail against the anti-colonial, anti-occupier narrative that is becoming ascendent?
This has all been allowed and supported by the US.
Whether or not Biden/Harris approved this exact thing, the fact is they have refused to rein in and stop Israel.
And as there is not a major press conference this am from Biden/Harris that says something to the effect, all weapons transfers are stopped, sanctions are being implemented, oil shipments are stopped etc, says it all.
I suspect like others that it’s now too late. A major escalation is about to take place.
And please remember Biden/Harris and their push in Russia.
Biden/Harris, war criminals
I grew up in the 1940’s, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, eating ‘Syrian bread,’ (now called ‘pita’) made fresh daily at the local bakery. One of the few ‘take-out’ dishes available was from the ‘Syrian restaurant,’ which cooked up delicious and exotically grilled ‘lamb-on-a-stick’ with ‘Syrian salad’, made with, get this …. fresh lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, black olives and tons of mint, and dressed with olive oil and vinegar (not mayonnaise!) And, bits of crispy lamb and salad could be stuffed into the ‘pocket bread’.) All very different from my family’s Irish/Baltic fare of mashed potatoes, fried meat, and watery, overcooked veg.
‘Syrian’ was what the mostly Christian immigrants from the lands now labelled Lebanon, Syria and Palestine/Israel, called themselves. By 1910, there were 3,000 ‘Syrian’ residents in Lawrence, working (slaving?) in the enormous woolen and cotton mills that lined (and polluted) the Merrimack River. There was a Syrian church and Syrian social clubs and a Syrian section of the city.
The more recent Palestinian (and Muslim) immigrants concentrated in Michigan are upset with Israel’s relentless bombing-of-everything in Gaza, (and land-grabs in the West Bank) and with the US government’s ‘ironclad’ support of this ethnic cleansing operation. I wonder if the descendants of the earlier Lebanese/Syrian diaspora will finally be angered at Israel’s wanton destruction of entire neighborhoods in Beirut.
I’m confused. What do you mean “lands now labelled Lebanon”? The area was known to the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians as Lebanon, is repeatedly referenced in the Old Testament as Lebanon, Strabo and Pliny the Elder referenced it by its name, the mountain is named Mt Lebanon….
Sorry to confuse you, Es s Ce Tera. I was simply trying to explain that 19th and early 20th century immigrants from Beirut, for example, were called ‘Syrians’ in that time and place. Probably partly due to the total ignorance of the ‘authorities’ and the locals about the geography of that area. (As my Lithuanian immigrant ancestors, were listed as coming from ‘Russia,’ for example.) It was not a comment about the authenticity of the current sovereign state of Lebanon.
The small ‘Syrian’ bakery my family frequented in Lawrence, has now become a good-sized business. We found their pita bread (now called ‘Middle Eastern’ ) in a Wyoming market a couple of years ago. Slightly stale, filled with preservatives, and nowhere near as delicious as my memories. But what is?
Just a technical correction for credibility
This is a bit over 20,000kg or 20 tons
Hiroshima was 15 kilotons or almost 1000 times larger
So yes massive bombs, but nowhere close to atomic
A later report is the IDF claimed 85 one ton bombs, so >3x the earlier blast force: https://x.com/alex_callinicos/status/1839985932868481365
Like Putin, Nasrallah was (relatively speaking) a cautious, (lower-case-c) conservative, pragmatic leader and held back the calls of rapid escalation.
His death, imo, has pretty much sealed the fate of Israel…in that Hezbollah will not stop until defacto unconditional victory
They can do that by keeping Israel in a pressure cooker. At the moment Israel has had to abandon the north of the country and most of the settlers are living in the south but are demanding to be returned home. But that can’t happen until there is no Hezbollah and to do that the IDF would have to go in and dig them out in land battles which they know that they can’t win. So all Hezbollah has to do is keep on firing rockets and drones into northern Israel to keep it a DMZ and let internal pressures in Israel go to work.
I unfortunately believe that we are going to see asymmetric responses to Gaza and this (ie, American or European airliners falling out of the sky over the Atlantic). Horrifying what the world has come to.
My other thought it its interesting how Hezbollah can be dismantled in a few days, but yet ISIS cannot be wiped out.
ISIS is Islamic Gladio. It is too useful a tool for the CIA to “wipe out.” It has been a psyop since its inception in Western media.
No. It’s pretty clear in hindsight that Islamism terrorism in the West waa a byproduct/blowback of western-Israeli intelligence services meddling in the sandbox (BinLaden, ISIS).
I think Manchester Arena bombing proved that conclusively even if the Hamburg 9/11 cell of Saudis is doubted as prima facie
“Netanyahu Condemned Over Massive Beirut Bombing.” Ah. Good. More strong words. That should do it this time.
There’s a quote from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations which I think is good advice, “take care that you don’t treat [feel for] inhumanity as it treats human beings.” I’ve never had that so challenged in myself as now, seeing the news from Gaza and now Lebanon.
Lebanon only has a population <5.5 million (essentially NYC proper minus Manhattan).
multiply each civilian death by 60 to get a per capita equivalent to the USA.
I could have this wrong, but I do remember Nastallah as being a moderating influence some time back (so I can’t place it) when his followers were ready to go on a rampage and he counseled restraint. He was charismatic but seemingly more sensible than some of the old.
for some reason this news is shocking and it feels like Israel’s savagery has crossed a new line.
dare I say RIP or do we wish our enemies to burn in hell for eternity?
Brian Berletic has a short post up on YT imploring folks to not fall prey to the ‘shock and awe’ tactics once again being employed by the usual western suspects. With Bibi acting like a super-villain from the Batman universe he and the Zionists are deliberately trying to stoke rage and bloodlust in us ‘goyim’ (non-Jews). Eye for an eye and all that. Brian particularly called on the ‘alt-media’ universe to exercise restraint – at least until the fog of war has lifted somewhat so as not to be unwitting puppets of the perpetrators. (His post was in advance of the confirmation of Nasrallah’s martyrdom). As an aging longhair I’m all for Peace, Love and Understanding but this really ‘shivers me timbers’. The End Times in our lifetime- why am I not surprised? Try to keep cool y’all!
Nasrallah succeeded his predecessor – killed in Israeli airstrike in 1992 – and it appears an IRG general was killed too. At least Israel has now declared open season on political leaders and negotiators worldwide – part of its plan to overthrow all international restrictions on war – ironically initiated by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia in Hague Conventions
What ye sow shall ye reap
There’s a tendency in the West to be very naive about how things work in this part of the world.
We’re dealing with an area where first loyalties are to tribe and clan, crossed with religion, and where over a thousand years of Arab and then Ottoman colonisation solidified and perpetuated these differences, whilst coming down brutally on anyone who tried to exploit them to challenge the status quo. The brief Mandate period saw the Europeanisation of a thin middle-class crust, but not enough to develop political and class identities to replace clan and religious ones.
Societies like this run on force. My foot on your face or your foot on my face. Strength is all that really counts, and armed conflicts are by definition between entire communities, not professional militaries. And the oldest trick in the book is to find an external protector who will fight your wars for you. What Israel is doing is simply an extension of that: it happened in the Balkans over the last two hundred years. And external protectors are there to be publicly appeased and privately exploited: Netanyahu is clearly not at all concerned that he’s in the process of trashing twenty years of US policy in the region, or for that matter the region itself. Peace treaties are purely tactical instruments, and nobody takes them seriously, as the West found to its surprise in the Former Yugoslavia–another Ottoman legacy. All that matters is force.
What Netanyahu is trying to do is to destroy Hezbollah and intimidate the remnants into stopping their attacks, and to intimidate Lebanon into somehow disowning the organisation. He seems to be doing quite well so far. There is no “peaceful solution”: all that would stop the war would be to destroy Israel’s military capability, which is trivially easy to do, but which will obviously not be done.
I know Lebanon well, and it breaks my heart to see what’s going on. But ironically, the West has devoted massive efforts over the last 15-20 years to trying to bring the communities together, conscious always that the militias still have their weapons and war could start again. I don’t think most people saw destruction coming from outside, once more. This time, it may be terminal.
This logic that these brutes there know only force seems kinda stereotypical and the West has habit of throwing this wisdom at anyone they want to bomb. Also the Zionist are recent emigrants from the West, so according to this logic they should have better manners, but they seem to fit in really well.
Recent emigres? This Israeli TV show went to the beach and began interviewing the sunbathers there for a cash incentive. They asked them if Israel was a colonial nation and all of those people said no. But when they asked them where they were born, not one of them was actually born in Israel.
How white of you.
I think US has had one objective in Lebanon ie to keep the state weak and deny it proper air defences or an effective army. Quite what France has been doing remains to be seen
Interesting comments. Especially when you leave out the part that the ottoman empire was destroyed by religious fanatics of the west that started at the perfidious battle of Navarino in 1830s with creation of greece and all other statelets that followed, based on their own rules of influence. The ottoman empire was the only place where multiethnic and multireligious peoples were able to live together without cutting each others throats. It was the place where Jews found refuge after the continuous pogroms of the west. All those countries are creation of the colonial powers and if you look at the borders you would see that they were drawn not on basis of ethnicity but commercial interests. It also suited the west to have different groups in the same nation as a way to control and dominate by setting them against each other wherever they didnt agree with their government policy.
As for societies run on force, that is the the driving engine everywhere.
Do you really think ours is not run on force?
Israel’s only strategy is to use terror on civilians to break the will of its enemies. Their military has nowhere near the size and strength to actually win a war of attrition. One could say that they are in reality all tactics (terror) and no strategy from a conventional standpoint. So far the resistance appears the opposite. too much strategy and way too little tactics. Their tactics have been scary but take too small of a toll on Israel. At some point, the resistance will have to heed the words of our legendary general, George Patton: “Good tactics can save even the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy even the best strategy.”
How is leveling an entire residential neighborhood different from the destruction of the twin towers?
That said, Israel (and USA) will do as they please in the middle east.
Its a killing testing ground.
And there wont be an outcry in western countries as muslims are looked on as not worthy generally.
People who think there will be some response from Lebanon or Iran are deluding themselves.
The are reduced to uttering King Lear’s words after each event: I will do such things I know not yet what they are but they shall be the terror of the world.
Folks, the technological gap is IMMENSE as I have said here before and predicted that Israel will go after Hesbolla’s leadership and get rid of them. Next in line will be Iran’s leadership and they will succeed there too.
I even wonder to what degree this is a US operation sending a message to other leaders in the world. No matter where you hide, we know where you are.
This seems to inaugurate a new area of rules of engagement in future wars, start by killing the top leadership. I like it. That might make them think twice before bringing the humanity on the brink of destruction and send joe six-pack die needlessly in the trenches.