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Lunatics
Another day in the paradise that is the Holy Land found Israeli tanks bulldozing their way into a UNIFIL post while Hezbollah's rudderless foot soldiers busied themselves launching drones at Haifa.
There were conflicting accounts of the tank incident. UNIFIL -- the UN's peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon -- said a pair of Merkavas "destroyed" the main gate and "forcibly" overran the post. The IDF denied "storming" the mission, but Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his demand that the UN withdr
Unclear what purpose UN peacekeepers serve there. They are not keeping the peace, and have no hope of doing so. Nor are they keeping Hezbollah out of any areas, and it seems quite plausible that Hezbollah is using UN positions as cover.
Of course they don’t serve any purpose. And of course Hezbollah’s using them for cover. It’s not that the IDF’s lying, it’s that the IDF’s a bunch of assholes. Nobody trusts Hezbollah’s word over the IDF’s word. It’s not an issue of “Are there really weapons buried in the ground?” Or “Does Hezbollah deliberately shield itself with civilians?” The answer to all of those questions is “Yes, absolutely” and everyone knows it. But that doesn’t mean the IDF’s thereby righteous when they murder 300 people trying to kill 2, or when they engage in an textbook act of terrorism (e.g., the exploding pagers) on the excuse that you can’t make an omelette (disfigure 2,000 Hezbollah members and blind a few hundred as a bonus) without breaking eggs (injuring who knows how many people just minding their own business inadvertently standing next to exploding fanny packs). This is a classic Big Lebowski: “You’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an asshole!”
It is a war that both sides see as existential. There are no rules. That is to say, no rules that will be followed by the ones fighting for, they believe, their survival. Better, they both think, to be assholes than to cease existing.
Regardless of the merits of the argument, I think John hit the nail on the head. Netanyahu is (at least partially, likely totally) motivated by his own political and personal survival, but the rest of the cabinet and public opinion is largely on his side regarding the war generally.
I thought this was really well reported and one of the first articles on the subject (besides H’s) where I felt I learned something.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/09/israel-gaza-war-biden-netanyahu-peace-negotiations/679581/
They’ve really decided they are going to die unless they push the axis back from their borders. It may or may not be true (I’ll plead the fifth on that), but the fundamental calculus within IDF brass/cabinet has changed and it’s immensely important to understand that.
What has personally shaped my opinion is that Biden/Lloyd Austin/etc seem to agree with the Israeli assessment and have begun to underwrite it. You can make a lot of conspiracy theories as to why, but to me that’s a key fact pattern that doesn’t get discussed. Curious if anyone has any thoughts?
This is not ‘Nam, John, this is– actually, nevermind, this is basically ‘Nam. There are no rules.
HIT “We are even !”
“No we aren’t”! Hits back. , “Now, we are even”!
” MOM ! He won’t stop hitting me !”
4 year olds in the back seat.
Netanyahu remains an incredibly unpopular leader in Israel. As things go with strongmen, when you are unpopular you need a foil to shield yourself with. That foil came to fruition on October 7 last year, and for the past year he has leveraged the horrors of that day to justify indiscriminate violence against the people who look like the attackers to shield himself from public accountability. Obviously, that violence was only going to sate Israelis only for so long before it became clear that more violence wasn’t going to solve the problem in Gaza. That is the threat from Hamas had been reduced to nearly null and now Israeli’s were just being seen as the same sort of folks that have indiscrimenantly killed them for thousands of years. Next up, Hezbollah, I imagine this violence will follow the same playbook as Gaza until Bibi has used up all of that capital as well. But there are no shortage of countries on Israel’s border that he can leverage to keep himself in power for at least 5 or 6 years, because at one time or another all of them have been active threats to Israel. That is up to and including Iran. He’s able to achieve all of this because he has the full support of the most advanced arms manufacturing power on the planet and thousands of years of repeated attempts at genocide against his people to justify his own violent aims. What’s the end game for Netanyahu? I don’t know that he’s thinking that far ahead, he’s in survival mode politically and I think he’s willing to take this as far as he can to protect himself all the while claiming to be protecting Israel. For Americans this should be viewed as a dark preview for what Trump would also do in similar circumstances. If you don’t like the face of Israel right now, then don’t put a Netanyahu clone in power.