Creating Lebanon: outcomes of the recent Conflict
This essay seeks to outline and briefly discuss the plusses and negative results of Israel’s recent and unduly limited conflict with Iran in the Lebanon.
But the title is apposite: the main goal of the western powers and the perennial Labor-internationalist regime of Israel in the war, and a subsidiary goal for Hizballah and its Iranian commanders was to establish on a firm footing the artificial state of “Lebanon.” This Franco-British contraption (b.1945) whose very name is Hebrew denoting a region, “the Lebanon,” the three ridge lines of the Mountains of that name (based on the Hebrew lavan, “white” for the limestone that dominates there and root of levanon, the “moon” that illuminates it).
The fact that securing the artificial boundaries, and strengthening the dysfunctional, volatile “army”* of this fake state whose factionalism pervades it in every feature was near the top goals of the Israeli regime demonstrates its suicidal faithlessness and rejection of its own history, land and integrity.
So assessment of the positive and negative aspects of this conflict for Israel begins with recognizing the rack of lies to which the government bound the nation. The next assault is visible and hastening toward the Jewish people.
In detailing the good and bad of this bad business we will present a short list for we need to focus on essentials. The time of decision draws near…
Positives: Alas, since they are few, we will start with identifying the good outcomes for Israel of this lie-based conflict.
Hizballah, a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was significantly reduced despite the confused and weak effort of the Israeli political and military top tiers (one could call their ‘efforts’ successful in that they intended to choke and restrain Israel’s military). Hizballah already is rebuilding (the IDF reports seven major shipments within two weeks of the “ceasefire,” a.k.a., hudna) under protection of the UN and EU, but it was harmed. Moreover, its position amid the warring factions of diverse peoples and sects in the Lebanon was greatly complicated and compromised. Nasrallah has work to do to rebuild alliances of convenience and to avoid retribution. Part of this shuffling, at which he excels, involves dancing between his controllers in Iran and the various factions in the Lebanon, Shiite, Sunni, Druse, diverse and competing Christians, secular and not. It may be that European help, mediated as usual through the UN is critical for Nasrallah’s survival. But, to stray into bad news for a moment, his longevity does not alter Iran-Hizballah’s genocidal plans for Israel.
The conflict also exposed and greatly deepened the rift between the Sunni and Shiite parts of the Islamic world. Saudi Arabia and Egypt lead the former; Iran with ‘Syria’ trailing along for its own strategic-survival reasons lead the latter. It is not only the invective between these competitors that has grown fiercer; the violence in Mesopotamia is the battleground where it is played out in blood. This could be a significant plus for Israel and America and Britain if the leaders of these nations really wished it to be so, that is, if their game was not crisis-management. This fact emphasizes the need of Israel to take preemptive action to guard itself within defensible, natural and historic borders.
Best of all, the conflict showed that the great majority of the nation of Israel retains enormous courage, self-sacrifice, will to win and staying power despite decades of disinformation, demoralization, graft and fatalism stewed in the socialist oligarchy and its anti-Jewish concepts and methods.
Positive Alarms:
The rest of the positive aspects for Israel of the conflict with Hizballah were not good in themselves but because they revealed grave flaws within Israel that must be repaired for the nation to live.
The corrosive effects of Oslo have been exposed even more vividly than in the previous thirteen years of massacres, loss of will and purpose. The faltering and incoherent manner in which military operations were conducted, or suppressed outright reveals the spiritual and intellectual rot that pervades the IDF upper echelons. The officers, political appointees chosen for obeisance to Labor’s rejection of the birthright, displayed the defeatism and the phobia about conquering, occupying, even maneuvering on land at the dark heart of the Oslo-Road Map scheme. The “desirable land,” the essence of Israel, is feared, like victory, as a source of problems. “They make good evil…”
Subsidiary existential problems that were exposed were the intentional decline in military readiness and capabilities; the failure, for example, to manufacture and deploy the THEL anti-missile laser system that was designed to interdict rockets like katyushas; the failures of logistics and supplies, of training…
Exposed was the critical need to occupy, settle and defend all of Israel’s Promised Land for, in secular reasoning, strategic depth which is indivisible from integrity in every aspect of life. If the Lebanon had been incorporated into Israel in 1982 this war would not have happened; Oslo would not have happened. The German navy would not know be patrolling the shores off Israel with European troops massing above the Galilee. If the Lebanon had been annexed in 1982 there would have been massive aliyah, economic growth and, with these, joy and integrity. The nations would have given up their idea of grinding down Israel through attrition, peace “agreements,” “prisoner exchanges” (three Jewish soldiers peaceably standing guard for a thousand murderous criminals), penning in of Jews and expulsions of them from historic Jewish land.
Two famous examples of the existential dimension of this imperative: the raid on Entebbe which established Israel’s deterrent power and resolve in the face of the nations, established the value of the life of every single Jew no matter where, was possible, barely, because Israel still possessed its land (see my essays on Torah and topography) in the Sinai peninsula. The cargo planes that made this mission possible took off from Sharm el Sheik in the southern Sinai. Now it’s a place where Israeli politicians chat with Muslim potentates about surrendering more of Promised Land.
The other: the raid on Osirak, another miracle of readiness, courage, resolve and strategic brilliance was possible, just barely because the stripped down F-16s, already burdened with extra fuel tanks could straddle the border of Jordan – Saudi Arabia, avoiding radar supplied by Uncle Laban. This flight path in turn was possible because in June 1981 Israel still held the eastern edge of the Sinai where the Etzion air base was positioned. It is now under Egyptian, or rather al Qaeda control…
And the point is not only that what Israel got in exchange for its Sinai proved to be very bad; it had to be: alienation of one’s integrity cannot and will not have good results.
The conflict exposed with particular ugliness the hostility and prejudice of world media and the governments that directly or indirectly control them. It is not an exaggeration to say that for forty years at least this has been genocidal slander, justifying the murder of Jews just as earlier was the suppression or marginalization of news about the Shoah. Now, nearly a million Israelis displaced by indiscriminate rocket barrages are not a humanitarian crisis to the world (implicitly, the Jews are not human) but the peoples who sheltered and assisted the barrages are, even though Hizballah is part of their government and army both. The addiction of the powers to their media’s sly form of the Final Solution has rarely been so vivid.
El Al Planes bearing military cargo from the USA cannot land in Europe but the UN and EU demand that Beirut’s airport be opened to Qatar and other airlines from states that do not even recognize Israel, planes carrying unexamined cargo whose purposes are as clear as the malicious hypocrisy of the contrast.
This warning should open the eyes of all Israelis that they must demand and get leaders that defend and assert their interests and view all other governments as what they are: enemies.
This conflict exposed beyond any last doubt the malice and madness of Olmert and all his partners, most outrageously when he announced that “because the war [sic] was going so well [sic] it would enable him to speed ahead with the convergence [sic] plan” of expelling more Jews from their homes. Eviction notices were delivered to towns that had soldiers fighting at the front.
So the conflict made intensely plain the urgent need to remove Olmert, Peretz, Peres, Haluz and all those around and with them and to bar them forever from public office for they have proved repeatedly to be fools, quislings and Cossacks.
Negatives:
The bumbling and purposefully crippled manner in which Israel’s political and military echelons performed caused a massive loss of Israel’s first line of defense: its deterrent power. Despite clever remarks by Nasrallah and others, the limpness of the government and confusion in the IDF has been noted in all nations and insures further and fiercer attacks. The failures of Kadima-Labor and the IDF top tier have greatly encouraged jihad, ‘Syria,’ for example, announced it was forming its own Hizballah to “take back” the Golan Heights. This was after Peretz, imitating Olmert, put the Heights back on the bargaining table as if to say, ‘here, take it.’
It is patent that they are following orders from the Beltway, Whitehall and, through Peres, probably from the Vatican, too.
The substantial decline in Israel’s deterrence was witnessed as nearly a million Israelis were displaced for five weeks. Left to the perennial Labor elites, Jews will become accustomed to living in shelters and behind walls which continue to be built despite their ruinous costs, their indefensibility, and their patent role I creating a “Palestinian” state in Israel’s heart land and geographic center. It cannot and is not meant to last. The British drive from Mosul and Basra to the sea continues with American muscle and suasion.
The loss of deterrence visible during the conflict already has led to a major spike in anti-Jewish violence around the world, from Australia to London to Seattle to Kiev. Attacks in France, fire-bombing of synagogues, beating and public threatening of Jews have become common. Without a quick restoration of Israeli power and honor, this will worsen rapidly. Things will get very bad.
The captives were not redeemed unconditionally. A Fatah ‘activist’ already has boasted that “kidnapping Israeli soldiers is not considered terrorism but [as] military operations with a big pay-off from the international community.” The promised release of hundreds or thousands of Muslim assailants of Jews supports this grim view.
Edom and Ishmael see the writing on the wall: the worst negative would be if the Jews of Israel do not, or if they see it but somehow fail to seize the moment and take down the defeatist regime of quislings that is leading them to disaster. The Iranian hammer has been raised for months, indeed for years but there are no signs that special operations are underway to cripple the enemy’s various assets in preparation for a saving preemptive strike. It is plain that the “world community,” America too, is willing to let the matter drag out until Israel takes a hit. For the world powers, that will be a two-for: crushing Israel provides them an [unneeded] excuse to crush Persia and impose their “New Middle East” just as the shoah prompted not rescue efforts but creating the UN whose role since then has been to push toward another shoah…
The constant in these games remains strikingly consistent; the story since Nimrod…
So the worst negative leads back to the fundamental positive outcome of this conflict: the Jews of Israel must recognize the glaring failures and bad faith of the regime in all its branches and effect sweeping change before the looming catastrophe strikes. It’s not yet too late for the nation of Israel to rise like a lion and for its children return to their borders…
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* Michael Behe in LibanoScopie a Beirut French-language journal; Behe praised the bravery of Israel and the Jews in doing what everyone else, the “Lebanese” first should have done: expel Hizballah, branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.