By turning pagers and walkie-talkies into small hand-held bombs that could be detonated from afar, killing or badly maiming those carrying them, Israel has wrought havoc in the ranks of a Shiite militia, Hezbollah, aka “the army of God,” which boasts a huge arsenal of advanced missiles and is regarded as much more dangerous than its Sunni counterpart, Hamas. The holy warriors used what elsewhere are considered to be primitive devices because they thought that, unlike the far more sophisticated mobile phones that superseded them decades ago and have been purchased by billions of people throughout the world, they would help them keep their whereabouts a secret from anyone out to send a drone in their direction.
This proved to be a very big mistake. By making thousands of them explode almost simultaneously, Israel not only tore apart Hezbollah’s communications’ network and undermined its morale, but also scored a major propaganda triumph. For a small country whose very survival, and that of its inhabitants, depends entirely on its military prowess, this is a matter of literally vital importance. Unlike the many Europeans and North Americans, who talk as though it were evident to every sane person that all territorial differences or ethnic disputes can be overcome by diplomatic means, the Israelis know perfectly well that in their part of the world it would be suicidal to show any sign of weakness. To the distress of those who want to think otherwise, they are not about to give peace a chance by surrendering to their foes and letting the United Nations, dominated as it is by vengeful autocracies, decide what to do with them.
To nobody’s surprise, the success of this targeted operation – virtually all the pagers and walkie-talkies that blew up belonged to Hezbollah – was immediately sneered at by those who disapprove of Israel’s willingness to confront what they call the “international community.” Some insisted that it would “raise tensions” in the Middle East, which is now near boiling point because so many believe Israel has become vulnerable, and others that it amounted to “terrorism” and was a “breach of human rights.” This was only to be expected. In such individuals’ view, Israel should do the decent thing and resign herself passively to being bombarded sporadically by showers of missiles and drones or having citizens gunned down or hacked to death by religious fanatics seeking a place in paradise.
When, as regularly happens, tens of thousands of people are massacred, often in a gruesome fashion, in countries such as Sudan, the Yemen, the Congo or Ethiopia, few outsiders take much notice. These days, even the Syrian bloodbath attracts little attention. The patronising assumption is that in those parts of the world they do things differently and it would be wrong to judge them by Western standards. However, when “innocent civilians” are killed or wounded and their deaths can be attributed to an Israeli strike on the Jihadists of Hamas who use them as human shields, world leaders are quick to voice their displeasure. Though, in the West at least, most do accept that Israel should be allowed to defend herself against those who make no secret of their desire to slaughter all her Jewish inhabitants by mounting wave after wave of attacks like that of October 7 almost a year ago when Hamas butchered more than a thousand, most of them “peaceniks,” they insist that she must do so without inconveniencing anyone else.
The Israelis, who want to keep their Western allies, especially the United States, on side, do their best to stick to rules that apply only to them, but even warning people in Gaza or the Lebanon that a raid is coming their way so they had better move to a less dangerous area is considered excessive by the many who think the “Zionist entity” is an imperialist enterprise that should be dismantled or simply want the entire Middle Eastern problem to go away. Such attitudes are encouraged by influential media outlets that pretend to be neutral but rely almost entirely on information provided by Hamas which is designed to give the impression that, in Gaza, not a single armed Jihadist has been killed in the conflict, only women, children and their grandparents.
In US government circles, it would seem that the fate of Israel matters rather less to Joe Biden’s government than the electoral impact of the war the world’s only Jewish state is waging against Iran’s proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. The Democrats fear that if Kamala appears to support Israel too enthusiastically, she would upset Muslim voters in key states such as Michigan, but were she to throw in her lot with the pro-Hamas protesters, she would turn off the many who have come to despise the college students who gleefully chant anti-Semitic slogans without, in many cases, seeming to understand exactly what they mean.
Of late, much has been made of Benjamin Netanyahu’s unwillingness to pay much heed to orders supposedly emanating from the US government. It would seem that he – along with many Israelis who loathe him but, since last October, have no interest in trying to coexist with the Jihadists – is perversely reluctant to help Kamala by putting a halt to the war against Hamas in Gaza or taking a softer approach towards Hezbollah. If Israel did so, both groups would declare victory.
While it is clearly in Israel’s interest to remain in the good books of whoever is in charge of the United States, it would be extremely short-sighted for her to let Hamas off the hook so it could lick its many wounds, regroup and, with Iran’s backing, prepare for a new attack like the one which last October led to the war in Gaza that is still going on and increased the likelihood of an even bigger one breaking out in southern Lebanon. Far from bringing peace to a region that has much more to fear from Iran than from a small, but extraordinarily dynamic, democracy that is under siege for what are basically religious reasons, a decision by any Israeli government to pin its faith on diplomatic manoeuvring and the benevolence of risk-averse Western countries wielding “soft power” would be bound to have quite horrendous consequences.
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