Israel Becomes a Rogue State and Widens the War
Israel attacks Lebanon and rejects Franco- American cease fire proposal
September 27, 2024
By Marc Cooper
Six weeks from now we might be enveloped in much more than an historic American election. Six weeks from now we very well may be embroiled in a nightmarish regional war in the Middle East that seems to have already begun as Israel struck heavy bombing raids not just in southern Lebanon but also hundreds of miles away in the capital of. Beirut. And it is impossible to tell at this point how this will affect the American election.
But jumping ahead of myself a bit, this situation demands a doubling down on support for Kamala Harris. Do I mean “Genocide Joe’s’ supposed accomplice in mass murder, the same Harris? You bet I do. Tensions between the US and Israel are heightening and I would be surprised if a Harris admin did not place some new heavy restrictions on US aid to Israel once in power. Trump will escalate.
But one thing is for damn sure. Whatever the Harris position on Israel, the very last thing we need is Donald J. Trump as commander-in-chief if that regional war is raging or even brewing. He’s already gone on the record this week saying he would “blow Iran to smithereens.” Trump and his team on world affairs are morons and gunslingers and this week Trump is campaigning on appeasement of Russia, deriding Zelensky. And saying Ukraine will never be the same so it might as well just cede the territory Russia’s imperial invasion has captured.
Do you think a Trump administration would put any pressure to do anything except kill more Arabs in Palestine?
Look,. I am talking to you Gen Zers, the With-holders, and the Very Pure who think it immoral to vote for Harris while the war escalates. I have suggestion: Grow the Fuck Up! Either Trump or Harris will be president in January. You want Trump as commander in chief with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza raging, with a new front on Lebanon and with China gearing up to seize Taiwan? If you don’t see the error of your ways, you frankly have no reason to be involved in politics as you have no clue as to what u are doing. So please exit, or better, take your good intentions and take a deep breath and strategize how to win over more to your position, rather than confront and polarize that mostly helps the other side. It’s the youth who change society, so please make your efforts count beyond self-satisfaction.
You can jump and down and call me all the names you want, but this American Jew is now prepared to call Israel a rogue state. It’s certainly no North Korea. But it’s government is starting to look as dangerous and destabilizing in the region as Iran or any other less than admirable place in the Middle East. The mass bombing of Lebanon, from the south to Beirut, is supposedly to “eliminate” Hezbollah. Wait, weren’t the Israelis gonna first eliminate Hamas in Gaza? I think that issue is still pending — and will be for literally years to come.
Just for those who don’t know which river is near which sea, Hezbollah is NOT a Palestinian organization. It is a Shia Muslim mainstay of Lebanese society. It holds cabinet seats. It runs vast social welfare programs. It is deeply woven into the fabric of Lebanese society. It’s strength and relevance in Lebanon is a result of a long standing power sharing agreement among Lebanese shia and sunni Muslims and Christians and isn’t disappearing anytime soon despite the cowboy boasts of Bibi. Hezbollah also has a military/terrorist wing whose primary duty is to pump hundreds of mostly ineffective rockets over the border into Israel. Though they are thought to possess some 50,000 more and some with better accuracy. Hezbollah is true threat to Israeli civilians who had been living near the Lebanese border until they were evacuated.
Israel, like any other country, has a right to defend itself. But flattening Lebanon (again) as it has done in Gaza will not eliminate resistance to Israel, it will only increase it for generations to come. Gaza waThe only solution to Middle East peace is international diplomacy which would include the US as Israel’s primary arms supplier.
As Israel prepares its coming ground invasion of Lebanon, both the United States and France called this week for an extended cease fire between Israel and Hezbollah. CBS News Reports:
Mr. Biden and Macron said their cease-fire proposal had been endorsed by the U.S., Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
"We call for broad endorsement and for the immediate support of the Governments of Israel and Lebanon," the two leaders said.
Speaking Thursday in London, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah "deeply troubling," acknowledging a risk of all-out war and urging Israel and Hezbollah to "choose a different path" with a diplomatic solution.
"The best way forward is to pursue a cease-fire that will enable diplomacy to take place," Austin said.
Netanyahu rejected the proposal before the ink was dry on the statement. CBS:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office deflected international calls for a cease-fire with Hezbollah Thursday, hours after President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron issued a joint statement calling for them to back a temporary truce proposal with wide international support. The U.S. and French leaders called Wednesday on both sides in the high-stakes standoff to back the proposal, but neither had indicated any support by Thursday, and the exchange of deadly fire continued.
"This is an American-French proposal that the Prime Minister has not even responded to," Netanyahu's office said Thursday, adding a dismissal of a separate report suggesting the Israeli leader had told his military to "moderate" its assault on Hezbollah to give space for discussion about a possible cease-fire.
"The report about the purported directive to ease up on the fighting in the north is the opposite of the truth," Netanyahu's office said. "The Prime Minister has directed the IDF to continue fighting with full force."
Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz said definitively on social media early Thursday: "There will be no cease-fire in the north.
Israel’s air strikes in Lebanon were massive. Some 650 killed and thousands wounded. That’s a lot of causalities for supposedly attacking arms depots. And the coming land invasion will be scorched earth with thousands more killed.
Netanyahu is every bit a rogue leader as the Mullahs in Iran. He is more than willing to flip off his primary allies, the US and France and it is clearly now the tail wagging the dog. The US has no interests whatsoever in a wider war especially one engulfing Lebanon. He has shown zero interest in easing the horrific mass killing in Gaza. The IDF is working with, I am sorry to say, civilian groups on the West Bank to support what are at least armed vigilante or death squads. Jewish settlers on the West Bank, many of them American Jews, are as fundamentalist as Hamas, and with Yarmulkas on their caps and AK-47’s in their hands, they are raiding and killing Palestinian communities as the IDF watches silently. More than 700 Palestinians have been killed on the West Bank this year as Israel attempts to gobble up the remaining land (of which there isn’t much) left.
Netanyahu also carried out an act of dastardly international terror that has gone more praised than condemned. The setting off of thousands of explosives packed into pagers bought by Hezbollah was not some wonderful innovation – except maybe in the same category of the atom bomb. Yes, the pagers were bought by Hezbollah. Hezbollah also has thousands of civilian relief workers throughout Lebanon. Only a crass Israeli propagandist would make the patently false claim that that Israel knew where everyone was carrying one. That the Israelis at war would spread such laughable propaganda is one thing, to but to watch some of my fellow American Jews applaud this makes me sick. They are every bit as fanaticized in defending Israel’s terrorism as some Pals are in defending Hamas.
At last count, 140 people were killed by the pager and radio explosions, and several hundred women and children were injured by the shrapnel. Since when do we applaud a country sending thousands of exploding pagers to unverified end users. That’s not “surgical” It’s mass blind murder. If the Palestinians did this to Israel, you would see tactical nukes flying into Beirut within 2 hours. Most chilling, this opens a new chapter in world warfare, much as the atom did. How long before explosive loaded digital and electronic gadgets become common warfare? You want to live in that world? Send ur thank you cards to the killers at Mossad.
The only solution to the Middle East is intense, ongoing, multi party diplomacy. There are NO military solutions. And for every Palestinian killed by Israelis, three more fedayeen fighters are created, guaranteeing eternal conflict.
Strange how people do not learn from history. Vietnamese communists defeated the Japanese, French and the US imperial army over a stretch of 40 years. And are still in power. So that really worked out, no? We fought the Taliban for 22 years and they are still in power. We spent billions to stop the guerrillas in Central America and yet in both Nicaragua and El Salvador, who we also vowed to destroy, are today legit political powers and have been in and out of government since the wars ended 30 years ago. Who do you think is going to be in power 10 years from now in Gaza?
Netanyahu, Hezbollah and Hamas are a sordid sado-masochistic threesome. They hate each other but they all need each other to justify their respective extremists positions. Netanyahu has no interest in peace, no interest in a settlement, no interest in doing anything for the Palestinians, and I believe his greatest desire is to now provoke Iran into attacking Israel in retaliation for the Lebanese bombings. Netanyahu’s calculation that Iran entering the war would bring the US into it accomplishing Netanyahu’s three real major goals: keeping his corrupt ass out of jail, extending his tenure as long as he can continue a war, any war, and helping elect Donald Trump who will “unfetter” him.
In these dangerous days keep your head screwed on tight. Keep ur emotions under control. Think strategically. LEARN from history (you know, even Boomers have some valuable advice) And organize against the war. Notice I said ORGANIZE. The reason Biden/Harris will not stomp on Israel, as they should, is simple math. However many American voters are sympathetic to the Palestinians, there are ten times as many Americans who feel some sort of kinship with Israel. And, yes. AIPAC is a major irritant. But let’s not become conspiracy theorists. Yes, AIPAC is the Israeli lobby, but make no mistake, even without it Israel enjoys massibe popular suppoort for all the right and wrong reasons. I mean, the Holocaust did sort of leave an impression and the Israeli situation for most is way too complicated to unravel.
We live in a country where 35% of the people can’t name the three branches of government. Those folks and many others have no idea what Der Yassein or the Nakba was. Half of them don’t know the name of their Senator. Lots of work to be done folks. Lots of very tedious time consuming incremental work of education and mobilization.
Too often the campus-based protests over Gaza look like a vanguard without a mass following. I will be impressed by the first university shut down for divestment by a peaceful protest of 10,000 students.
The movement against the war in Vietnam began silently in the early 60’s with campus teach ins so the protesters would know the whole history of the conflict. The first demo of any size against the war was organized by SDS in 1965. It was peaceful with about 20,000 protesters. Many wore a suit and tie. It took another two years to grow into a mass movement in 1967-68 and it peaked in 1970 in Washington with hundreds of thousands in the streets. Just remember, the US dd not withdraw till 3 years later. And after the 1973 withdrawal the US supported the South Vietnamese till they were defeated in 1975. But it was the Vietnamese that ended the war, not the peace movement. It helped. But the US lost militarily. That is not going to happen in Israel.
Indeed, one of the reasons the war was brutally extended was because of the 1968 election of Richard Nixon. On behalf of the anti- Vietnam war community, I accept responsibility for this horror. In 1968, the large radical student and peace movement decided we could not “morally” vote for Humphrey because he was war monger LBJ’s VP. Nixon won by a hair. We made a big misake. Let’s not make the same one. Please.
P.S. This is directed at fellow American Jews who are 100% Israeli boosters. The Israeli economy is in trouble as the call up of elderly reservists closes down small businesses and large ones as well. If you are Jewish, and under 50, the IDF will be happy for you to emigrate and enlist if you think it will bring peace to your imaginary second homeland if you rub out a few more God forsaken Arab villages. Or I guess you could just go Temple on Sabbath and tell the rabbi you are really a Good Jew but are “uncomfortable” with Netanyahu but you love Israel. But if you enlist in the IDF please do not do it for me, as unlike some of you, in the year 2024, Israel does not offer me any so called protection as a Jew. Maybe it did that for Jews during its first two decades but no longer. To me, Israel is now a danger to world peace, Jews and Goyim alike. I have no interest in being associated with an Apartheid state, run by an egomaniacal authoritarian imitating WWII’s Bomber Harris, surrounded by a racist and frankly fascist cabinet, and I certainly want no part of Armed Jewish Vigilantes shooting up villages and Arabs and dogs (and not in that order) on the West Bank. Maybe your rabbi can talk some sense to you, unless he’s another who thinks Palestinians are subhumans. +++
Now a few days after your post, Israel has invaded Lebanon, and Iran has fired missiles at Israel, largely ineffectual. And as we could have predicted the US leaps into action to defend Israel. Netanyahu’s plan to stay out of jail and help Trump win by expanding the war and continuing the genocide in Gaza (now largely ignored by the world in favor of these exciting new conflicts) is largely succeeding even though it mortgages Israel’s future to secure short term success. And the US has fallen into a common trap for declining empires, inexorably stumbling, armed to the teeth, behind a colonial vassal into a futile conflict with grave dangers internationally and domestically. And nobody seems to have any capacity for halting this rush to war and slaughter, notably not the superpower, the “indispensable nation,” as it accepts its role as destroyer in chief.
But meanwhile we must still focus on the threat of a fascist takeover in the US by Trump and his allies Putin, Orban, etc. We must still have a united front against fascism so we can fight the empire another day. Messy, no?
It’s on the iriginalliece tgat came kut Thurs nite. U are now looking at a resend copy thst went kut a fay later. All 3000 recipents saw ur excellent comment the initial email blast.