Al Akhbar, a daily tabloid published in Beirut, on Tuesday, ran this headline above the fold: “Gaza Monster Devours Lebanon.” It is closely affiliated with the Assad regime in Syria.
The editorial below is eye-opening:
“Tension is useless in approaching what is happening. It is useless because it is useless and that is it. What is useful is to take a deep breath, and look around us to know what happened, why it happened, how it happened, and where we are going from now on.
“The enemy did not suddenly decide to open fire. Let us be clear that we are the ones who opened fire in support of Gaza. And when we did so, we did not act like the neighborhood kids who decided to avenge their relative’s insult. Rather, we did so with full awareness, and that is the essence of what the resistance (Hezbollah) is doing and its central goal is to work to remove the occupation entity (Israel).
“This goal indeed seems fanciful in the minds of many, but it exists among a group of the people of this region, with Hezbollah at the forefront. It is a goal that necessarily presupposes close cooperation with the people of the land, that is, with the Palestinians. Therefore, the relationship between the resistance in Lebanon and everyone fighting the enemy inside Palestine was established and developed. Therefore, anyone who believed that the resistance in Lebanon would stand idly by in the face of what is happening in Gaza is either stupid or short-sighted.”
The above is a delectable mélange of realism – Israel didn’t start this, Hezbollah did; and a fanatical devotion to the very concept behind Hezbollah’s post-October 7 attacks. Oh, and those in Lebanon who expected Hezbollah not to poke the Zionist bear are “either stupid or short-sighted.”
التصعيد بين #حزب_الله و #إسرائيل يزيد من الانقسام السياسي والطائفي في #لبنان وسط حالة من الارتباك في الشارع ومخاوف من جر البلاد إلى حرب#قناة_العربية pic.twitter.com/jW09TCEXev
— العربية (@AlArabiya) September 24, 2024
Your country is collapsing around you, your economy makes 1928 Germany look like Sweden, your enemy is both smart and brutal, and yet, in your mind, continuing to fire on Israeli civilians to somehow alter things in Gaza – that’s the wise choice.
For a week now, I have been going back in my head to the scene from Monty Python’s “Holy Grail,” with the Black Night who insists that “None shall pass,” even after King Arthur chops off all his limbs:
Another Al Akhbar headline proclaims: “Does the occupation army think that it has actually struck the military capabilities of the resistance? The intoxication of the first strikes: The enemy repeats the mistakes of 2006.”
The mistakes of 2006 were, in order of importance: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reacted swiftly to Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two IDF soldiers, a miscalculated move that ended up costing the lives of 121 Israeli soldiers; the IDF Chief of Staff was Dan Halutz, who is rated as the worst chief in Israel’s history. Halutz had been picked for the job mostly because he was willing and eager to carry out the expulsion of some 10,000 Jews from Gaza – which his predecessor had been disinclined to do. Halutz, an Air Force general, threw the infantry and armored corps into the flames with little preparation or sense of a mission.
?حالة من الذعر و الفوضى تسود القرى والمناطق في جنوب #لبنان و عدد كبير من السكان يقررون النزوح شمالاً باتجاه #بيروت و البعض الأخر اتجه إلى #سوريا للفرار من حملة القصف الواسعة التي تنفذها #إسرائيل على مليشيا #حزب_الله ولم تشهدها لبنان منذ حرب 2006 pic.twitter.com/a6JJpUCAMD
— محمد .. ( ابو عبدالعزيز ) .. (@cr7_50_) September 23, 2024
But Al Akhbar should relax: this time around, Netanyahu’s cabinet and the IDF spent 11 months plotting the response to Hezbollah provocations. It involved evacuating some 70,000 civilians from the north while the army was intensifying its attacks on Gaza, the war that had to be won first.
And as soon as Hamas in Gaza had turned from an organized terrorist army into the occasional band of armed Arabs peeking out of tunnels to be killed with their RPGs braced in their dead arms – that’s when Israel went to war up north. Last Tuesday, it took out Hezbollah’s low-tech communication system, the beepers. On Wednesday it took out the walkie-talkies. On Friday it took out the 15 top commanders of the Radwan force, Hezbollah’s elite commando whose mission was to repeat the atrocities of October 7 in northern Israel.
Since Friday, the IAF has been striking Hezbollah’s arsenal of long and short-range, dumb and smart rockets, reporting a 50% cut in the terrorists’ alleged 150,000 warheads. On Monday alone, the IAF packed 1,150 sorties against Hezbollah targets, including storage facilities in the Beqaa Valley, in northeastern Lebanon. Videos online recorded the staggered explosion of those weapons warehouses, paid for by the billions of Iranian dollars thawed by President Barack Obama.
المعلومات عن إستهداف إجتماع لقيادات من #حزب_الله كيف تعقد إجتماع فوق الأرض وأنت في حالة حرب وأمام عدو معروف بالغدر أي مستوى من الإهتراء هذا توالت السقطات لصالح عدو مهزوم منهك من قبل ثلة صادقة محاصرة صابرة في #غزة .#الضاحية_الجنوبية #لبنان#إبراهيم_عقيل #كتائب_القسام https://t.co/LRGdxDeVVK pic.twitter.com/2sJwuDB2xo
— حفيد الشهداء | ?? (@Habib_54_) September 20, 2024
When the IDF land forces cross the border, they will still meet resistance, but the ground will have been nicely softened for their convenience by the region’s most powerful air force.
Netanyahu has been defining the mission in Lebanon as returning the 70,000 evacuated Israelis back to their homes along the border, where they will live securely. In many Israelis’ opinion, this security can only be achieved by the IDF taking over southern Lebanon, from the Litani River which runs east-to-west across Israel’s northern neighbor, some 28 kilometers from the border. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 calls for Hezbollah to retreat north of the Litani, but for 18 years, neither the UN contingency nor the Lebanese army have been able to get them there. Diplomatic efforts certainly didn’t help.
The only way to keep Hezbollah on the north bank of the Litani River is to keep the IDF on the south bank.
