Why Israel Can’t Win
Endgame: Masada 2.0
By Kevin Barrett | October 6, 2024
“Israel” is quite proficient at killing people. In less than a year they have killed 40,000 civilians in Gaza, and last week killed 2,000 more in Lebanon. Unofficial estimates of the real death toll in Gaza, as opposed to the officially recovered, counted, and identified bodies, exceed 200,000.
As they slaughter vast numbers of women and children under the flimsiest excuses, the Zionists also kill the political and diplomatic leaders with whom wiser leaders would be negotiating. They apparently have not considered that for each civilian they kill, dozens of furious survivors and onlookers become long-term anti-Zionist combatants-in-waiting. And they don’t seem to realize that martyring political and diplomatic leaders gives fighters added incentive to up their game, and leaves them no option but to do so. That’s why, in the wake of the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Israel’s attempted invasion of Lebanon has been shockingly (to the Zionists) unsuccessful.
Randomly murdering tens of thousands of civilians, or assassinating a handful of leaders, superficially looks like tactical success. Richie Allen seemed to think that Israel’s terrorist attack on non-combatants associated with Hezbollah via exploding pagers was an impressive achievement.* As I told him, just about anybody who really wants to randomly murder that number of people, or more, can do so if they so choose. The fact that Israeli leaders employed such an elaborate Rube Goldberg scheme to mass murder noncombatants—to counterproductive strategic effect—reveals the Israelis as psychopathic idiots and shameless war criminals, not geniuses.
The appearance of tactical success achieved by Israel’s pointless murders conceals a colossal strategic failure. The root of that failure is simple: Netanyahu has no idea what he is trying to achieve, other than keep the war going so he can stay in office and out of prison. His extremist coalition parters, Smotrich and Ben Gvir, do have a vision—“exterminate Amalek”—but since this is 2024, not the Bronze Age, that isn’t going to happen. Israel can kill a small fraction of today’s “Amalek” but for every Amalek they kill, ten or a hundred more will spring up. Long before Israel killed even 5% of its current Amalek enemies it would have transformed most of the world’s 8 billion non-Jews into a new, even more angry and determined Amalek.
Netanyahu’s official war aims in Gaza are (1) eliminate Hamas, and (2) use military force to bring back the Israeli hostages alive. Both are obviously impossible, as Israel’s military and intelligence leaders have reiterated. Hamas is just a current name for Islamic resistance to Zionist genocide, and that resistance is an idea that can’t be eliminated by military means. And military attempts to snatch back hostages will almost always lead to the deaths of those hostages.
Since he has set impossible war aims, and has no realistic ones, Netanyahu is bogged down in a war on Gaza that he, and Israel, will inevitably lose. And now he is making an even worse mistake by invading Lebanon and stepping into an even bigger quagmire. Once again, Netanyahu has declared goals that cannot be realized: (1) Defeat Hezbollah, which like Hamas is simply the local form of Islamic resistance to genocide, an idea that cannot be defeated militarily, and (2) Change the military equation so that Zionist settlers can return to the occupied northern territories. But unlike in 2006, when Hezbollah defeated Israel with only a tiny fraction of the arsenal and army it now possesses, the Lebanese anti-terror group now has long-range rockets that can hit those northern territories from anywhere in Lebanon (and from parts of Syria and Iraq for that matter). Obviously there is no evident military path to enabling the northern settlers to return.
Endgame: Masada 2.0
Since the officially-declared vision of what Israeli “victory” would look like is impossible, while a conventional military defeat of “Israel” also seems unlikely due to the Zionists’ advantage in heavy weapons, how can this war possibly end? The most likely ending will involve some form of Masada 2.0. The original Masada, which of course is a myth not a historical reality, involved a civil war in which fanatical Jews were slaughtered by even more fanatical Jews, who then committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the Romans.
Masada 2.0 will similarly pit Jewish fanatics (the remnants of Labor Zionists) against even loonier ultra-fanatics (Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and the rest of the messianic-millenarian maniacs). The moment of truth will come when Israelis collectively wake up and realize that Israel is bogged down in two hopeless quagmires, and that Netanyahu’s stated war aims are a pipe dream: The Israeli captives will never be brought back alive by military means, Hamas is still around and will remain so, Hezbollah can keep raining missiles on “Israel” indefinitely, and the settlers won’t return to the north without a peace agreement that would amount to an Israeli surrender (given the impossible declared war aims).
At this point the Zionists capable of rational strategic thinking will come into conflict with those who are not so capable—the Smotriches and Ben-Gvirs who imagine that if they only commit enough abominations their messiah will magically appear to save them. The strategic Zionists will see and accept the inevitability of a strategic retreat, while the messianic-millenarian lunatics will see that as a betrayal of all that is holy. The “sane Zionists” (I know that’s an oxymoron) will recognize that Israel’s only path to long-term existence as a “Jewish state” would be to somehow revive the two-state solution involving withdrawal from 1967-occupied territories. But the messianic-millenarian fanatics and the half-million settlers on those territories, like the ultras in the Masada legend, would rather die than compromise. When push comes to shove, and Netanyahu is finally scapegoated and sacrificed for his war failures, open fighting is likely to break out between the two factions. It may involve targeted assassinations, as happened to Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Mob violence, possibly on a grand scale, is another possibility.
If the strategic Zionists win, and the war ends with at least the illusion of an Israeli return to “normalcy” featuring a promised and apparently viable path to a Palestinian state including all of the 1967-occupied land with East Jerusalem as its capital, more than a few of the millenarian lunatics may very well commit mass suicide, whether by their own hands or in a “suicide by cop” scenario when they are removed from the Occupied Territories by the IDF. And thus Masada 2.0 would take the “mass suicide rather than surrender” motif from myth into history.
If the messianic-millenarian lunatics win again, as they did with their assassination of Rabin in 1995, “Israel” will descend into chaos. Frenzied mobs will go berserk, awaiting their Messiah to lead them to ultimate victory over the gentiles. Almost all competent Israelis will have long since left, while the ten-children-per-family ultra-religious Zionists who don’t know how to do anything except bake unleavened bread and sit around all day chanting the Torah and poring over the Talmud will be all that remains. Economic collapse and political chaos will ensue. Military defense against the world’s two billion Muslims, who will never forgive or forget the Zionist genocide, will become impossible, especially as the US empire’s influence recedes. Ultimately the Holy Land will be absorbed back into the Islamic world.
The above assessment may sound partisan, given my sympathies for the Islamic resistance. But my prognosis is widely shared by well-informed people across the ideological spectrum. Indeed, I have merely spelled out the unspoken parts of what the well-informed segment of the world’s Zionist leadership knows all-too-well. Thomas Friedman, who calls Netanyahu “the worst leader not only in Israeli history, but in Jewish history” has been bemoaning the current Israeli leadership’s colossal strategic failures since last October. And Friedman is not an outlier. He represents the views of Zionist leaders, both in “Israel” and the West, who have thought things through.
So why are the majority of Zionists, including most of the Zionist-dominated media, reflexively supporting Netanyahu’s doomed non-strategy? Mainly because most of them are not as well-informed as Thomas Friedman. Zionists, whose partisanship has infused media and decision-making circles, inhabit a propaganda bubble that bears little relation to reality. High on their own supply, they almost involuntarily cheer for Israel whenever they see it under attack, drooling and growling on command like a pack of Pavlov’s dogs. Like their millenarian-messianic fanatic counterparts, secular Zionists are blinded by tribal loyalty. They are very good at not seeing things they don’t want to see.
When Israel implodes into Masada 2.0, the collective blindness of the larger Jewish tribe, not just its most extreme fanatics, will be the reason.
*Richie Allen: Hasn’t Hezbollah been severely dented, and maybe that’s putting it mildly, after this daring and brazen series of attacks against its leaders with the booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies?… I mean, that was an incredible coup that by the Israelis, love them or hate them. It’s kind of to be admired really how they pulled that off.
Kevin Barrett: Well, that’s certainly not the view from Lebanon or anywhere else in the region, including here in Morocco. Israel slaughtered a whole lot of civilians. Those pagers were not used by military people. Those pagers were only used by the civilian wing of Hezbollah. It’s the equivalent of targeting the post office and the welfare department and the hospital bureaucracy in the UK. It’s like if they blew up the pagers of the National Health Service in the UK and the UK post office. It didn’t even touch the military. It didn’t scratch the military wing of Hezbollah. Now, that said, the bombings have. But first, let’s be clear that this pager attack and radio attack was a mass murder of civilians and among the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the world…
You’re listening to Kevin Barrett just briefly on the pager. So let’s just say you’re right then, that it had little or no impact on the military wing of Hezbollah. It’s still an incredibly brave, not brave at all, it’s cowardly. It’s an incredibly brazen thing to do, Kevin, and a bit of a coup for Mossad, right?…
Richie, that’s ridiculous. “Brazen,” and you’re admiring it! I mean, if I wanted to kill a few thousand Americans, I could do it very, very easily. I know how to poison water supplies if I want to. I mean, it’s not very hard. It’s easy to kill a lot of civilians.
That’s all Israel did, right? I mean, their people have been poisoning people’s wells for thousands of years. And this is just more well poisoning and meaningless, non-strategic slaughter of civilians. It’s moronic. One individual like me or anybody else could kill that many civilians if we were enough of a jerk to want to, like those Zionists are.
Hezbollah death traps, attacks on supply lines deal heavy blows to Israeli army
The Cradle | October 4, 2024
Heavy fighting continued in southern Lebanon on 3 October, as Hezbollah fighters fiercely confronted the Israeli army’s incursions into the country’s territory and inflicted casualties among its ranks.
Israeli forces were struck with rockets on the outskirts of the Lebanese town of Odaisseh on Thursday afternoon, one of the towns where troops fell into a bloody ambush just a day earlier.
A Hezbollah guided-missile attack also hit a Merkava tank in the Natoa settlement not long before.
“When an Israeli enemy infantry force attempted to infiltrate towards the cemetery of the town of Yaroun, the Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance detonated a Sejil explosive device at the advancing force at 12:00 noon on Thursday 10-3-2024, killing and wounding them,” Hezbollah said earlier, marking its 21st statement on 3 October.
Hezbollah announced shortly before that its fighters “detonated an explosive device at 12:00 noon on Thursday 10-3-2024 with a force from the Golani Brigade in the Tartira area in the town of Maroun al-Ras, which was trying to bypass the western side of the town.”
The members of the Golani Brigade force were killed or wounded, the Hezbollah statement added.
“Since dawn on Thursday, the Islamic Resistance fighters have been confronting all attempts by the elite forces of the Israeli enemy army to advance on more than one axis in southern Lebanon with various types of weapons and explosive devices, inflicting heavy losses on them in terms of equipment and personnel,” Hezbollah field sources told Al Manar on 3 October.
The sources added that the fighters continue to prevent any Israeli advance in southern Lebanon with pre-prepared ambushes. They also explained that Hezbollah also continued targeting supply lines and troop gatherings in several Israeli bases and sites along the border.
“The Islamic Resistance fighters targeted on Thursday 10-3-2024 a gathering of Israeli enemy forces in the Avivim settlement with a rocket salvo,” the Lebanese resistance announced.
It also fired rockets at troops in the Al-Bassa settlement and launched a Falaq rocket at Israeli positions in the Shomera settlement, as well as at the Sasa settlement.
Earlier on Thursday, Hezbollah detonated two explosive devices near an infantry force trying to enter the town of Maroun al-Ras.
Tel Aviv has so far admitted to the deaths of eight of its soldiers in southern Lebanon. It claims to have killed dozens of Hezbollah operatives.
A Hezbollah field source told Al Mayadeen on 2 October that more than 80 Israeli soldiers and officers are between dead and wounded, adding that the Lebanese resistance has destroyed five Merkava tanks.
“What is coming is more painful for the enemy,” the field source said.
An Israeli M113 remote control army vehicle was abandoned inside the border village Kfar Kila on Thursday. Hezbollah has forced troops to retreat several times during the incursions that the Israeli army has been attempting to carry out since Wednesday morning.
Israel has meanwhile continued to bombard south Lebanon heavily and issued evacuation orders to residents in over two dozen villages.
Two Lebanese army soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon on 3 October, including one who was helping coordinate an evacuation of civilians with the Red Cross.
Hezbollah kills over a dozen Israeli soldiers attempting to invade south Lebanon
The Cradle | October 2, 2024
Israeli forces continued to take heavy losses during their attempts at infiltrating southern Lebanon on 2 October, forcing them to retreat a number of times.
Lebanon’s Armed Forces (LAF) confirmed on Wednesday afternoon that an Israeli force withdrew from the Blue Line back to the Israeli side of the border after penetrating 400 meters into Lebanon’s territory.
“While an Israeli enemy force was trying to encircle the town of Yaroun from the forest side, the Islamic Resistance fighters surprised them at 2:00 pm on Wednesday 10/2/2024 by detonating a special explosive device, killing and wounding all members of the force,” Hezbollah said on Wednesday afternoon.
“In defense of Lebanon and its people, the Islamic Resistance is engaging in clashes with the Israeli enemy soldiers who have infiltrated the town of Maroun al-Ras from the eastern side, inflicting several casualties among them, and the clashes are still ongoing,” it said earlier.
Video footage showed Israeli forces carrying several dead or wounded soldiers in order to evacuate them via helicopter.
According to Israeli sources cited by Sky News Arabia, 14 soldiers have been killed so far by Hezbollah fighters since Wednesday morning. Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath previously reported that four have been killed and around 20 others injured.
Among those killed by Hezbollah fighters is Lieutenant Eitan Oster from Israel’s elite Egoz unit. Israel admitted his death as the “first” killed in clashes with Hezbollah.
Early on Wednesday morning, Hezbollah thwarted an attempt by Israeli soldiers to penetrate Lebanese territory via the town of Odaisseh, targeting them and forcing them to retreat after inflicting casualties.
“The number of enemy casualties in today’s battles is very large, and there is a media blackout imposed by the enemy,” the head of Hezbollah’s media relations office, Mohammad Afif, said on 2 October.
The Israeli army claims its ground operation aims to push Hezbollah away from the border and return tens of thousands of Israeli settlers evacuated from the northern settlements as a result of the Lebanese resistance’s operations, which began on 8 October last year.
In his last speech prior to his sudden assassination last week, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah promised that any ground invasion of Lebanon would be “hell” for Israel and that the settlers “will not return” to the north.
US deploys thousands of troops to Middle East as tensions rise
Al Mayadeen | October 1, 2024
Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters on Monday said the US is increasing its military presence in the Middle East by deploying a “few thousand” additional troops.
According to a statement, this includes bringing in new units and extending the stay of those already stationed there.
“A certain number of units already deployed to the Middle East region… will be extended and the forces due to rotate into theater to replace them will now instead augment” those that are already there, Singh said.
“These augmented forces include F-16, F-15E, A-10, F-22 fighter aircraft and associated personnel,” Singh added, noting that there will be “an additional few thousand” personnel in the region as a result.
This comes in light of heightened escalations amid the start of “Israel’s” “localized and targeted” aggression of Lebanon.
The latest attacks on US positions in the region include a strike on the US military’s Victoria base near Baghdad Airport, occurring late Monday into Tuesday.
The Yemeni Armed Forces have also struck Israeli military targets earlier today using long-range multi-purpose one-way assault Samad 4 drone.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah continues its operations targeting Israeli movements within the occupied Palestinian territories.
Iran also launched a response to the Israeli assassinations of martyrs Haniyeh, Sayyed Nasrallah, and General Nilforooshian earlier, launching hundreds of rockets toward occupied Palestine.
Heightened escalations
On Monday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed support to Israeli Security Minister Yoav Gallant for “dismantling attack infrastructure” belonging to Hezbollah.
Austin also warned Iran of “serious consequences” should it directly strike “Israel” in retaliation for attacks on the Lebanese Resistance group.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah Political Council member Mahmoud Qomati said in an interview with Al Mayadeen that Hezbollah’s allies “will intervene if the battle expands.”
Qomati warned that southern Lebanon “will become a graveyard for the occupation forces” should they enter, highlighting the Resistance’s vast arsenal of unused weapons and the fighters’ readiness to engage with Israeli forces.
Addressing observers, Qomati said the Resistance was rebuilt immediately following the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
The legacy of Sayyed Nasrallah is well-maintained, he said, adding, “his trust is in our hands and will remain so with every leader and fighter.”
Qomati also reiterated Hezbollah’s stance, which had been affirmed by the late Secretary-General since the beginning of the Israeli occupation’s war on Gaza, stressing that the party “will not halt its support unless a comprehensive proposal is put forward, including a ceasefire in Gaza.”
The weakness of Zionist air power
By Robert Daly | Al Mayadeen | October 1, 2024
What we have seen in the Zionist conduct of war since October 7, 2023, is a flashy, noisy exhibition but no seizure and holding of territory.
The murder of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the destruction of six high-rise apartment buildings with multiple airstrikes make Zionist air power appear triumphant over Hezbollah. But nothing could be further from the truth. It is not air power that defeats enemies in war. Rather, it is infantry—conquering, seizing, and holding territory that defeats an enemy. The Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany not through air power but through the ground battles of Stalingrad and Kursk and then by pushing the Nazi troops back into Germany as the Soviets liberated one occupied state after another from Ukraine and Belarus to Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The West at the time bombed Dresden and other cities, but that effort had little effect in defeating the Nazis. So, Zionist bombings of Lebanon’s cities kill citizens and wreck their homes but do not occupy territory or defeat Hezbollah.
It is beyond the capability of air power to seize enemy territory and hold it. Air power is only a form of contemporary artillery. In the past 100 years, humankind has ‘progressed’ from mere cannons and tanks delivering artillery shells onto an enemy’s positions to warplanes dropping them from above. What we have seen in the Zionist conduct of war since October 7, 2023, is a flashy, noisy exhibition but no seizure and holding of territory. Today, Hamas has retaken all of Gaza and continues to manage the territory as the Zionists have admitted in press briefings though they attacked Gaza by air. The Zionists responded to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack by bombing and destroying civilian residential buildings, but that did not destroy Hamas, which took advantage of the situation and the changed terrain to prepare positions from behind wrecked buildings to attack Zionist tanks and armored personnel carriers, which they have destroyed by the dozen. In this way, we have seen the contrast between ground fighters and air power in Gaza, where the Zionists are effective at killing women and children from the sky above with bombs, but cannot occupy and hold the territory that that population lived in.
If air power is an effective way to defeat one’s enemy and win a war, why is Hamas still ruling Gaza? Yedioth Ahronoth, a leading ‘Israeli’ newspaper, citing Israeli security sources wrote this past week that:
○ Hamas is working to consolidate its authority again in the areas of Gaza that the IOF left.
○ No one in Gaza stands against Hamas, and no one challenges its rule.
This is not new. In June, after eight months of Zionist bombing, the Guardian wrote “Hamas still strong in areas ‘cleared’ by Israel in northern Gaza.” How is that possible? Zionist warplanes far above do not provide much competition with Palestinian freedom fighters on the ground. Zionist armored vehicles full of scared reservists are easy targets for Gazan patriots who destroy those vehicles one after another. The Guardian concludes, “Hamas’s ability to return to areas from which it was earlier forced to retreat threatens ‘forever war’.” The paper explains, “There may be more Hamas militants in the north of Gaza, supposedly cleared by Israeli forces months ago, than in Rafah, the southern city in the territory described by Israeli officials as the extremist Islamist organization’s “last stronghold”. “We do have to remember there are more Hamas armed people in the north of Gaza in the places that the IDF has already moved out of than … in Rafah … Those are the IDF’s numbers. This is why the IDF had to go back into Jabaliya and … Zeitoun. Hamas is controlling all those areas,” Eyal Hulata, the head of “Israel’s” “national security council” from 2021 to last year, told reporters last May. Zionist air power and fragile armor have failed to conquer Gaza. They only wrecked it.
One can expect an even better outcome for the domestic national liberation army in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has the advantage of better and more artillery and soldiers experienced in fighting ISIS and Al-Qaeda on the ground in Syria.
One of the most disgusting Zionist air war practices is their cowardly war by assassination. Zionists will swoop down in aircraft of various sorts to kill someone on a motorcycle, a family in a car, or a leader of the national liberation movement in a building. To do that, they do not hesitate to murder hundreds of others in the area, as when the fascists murdered Sayyed Hassan. For if the Nazi abandoned his air vehicle and fought a fair fight on the ground, he would surely lose.
Moreover, it is an embarrassment to an American with a memory to hear Hezbollah or Hamas referred to as “terrorists” for defending their own land from Zionist invaders. Does not anyone remember Washington’s crossing of the Delaware on Christmas 1776, when they and their makeshift army slaughtered British-hired Hessian mercenaries drunk from celebrating the holiday? If Hamas is “terrorist”, then why isn’t George Washington?
So, we have it: “Israel” has not won in Lebanon. Rather, “the enemy must wait for us by air, land, and sea. We repeat: If war is imposed on Lebanon, the Resistance will fight without rules, controls, or ceilings,” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah once said. “Storming the Galilee is a possibility that remains present within the framework of any war that the occupation may launch against Lebanon,” he added, referencing his 12-year-old promise that Hezbollah will invade “Israel’s” north if Tel Aviv chooses to attack.
Of Cool Heads and Hot Heads
By Philip Kraske • Unz Review • September 29, 2024
Ever more desperate, Israel is working hard to start a world war with the United States on its side. The elimination of Hassan Nasrallah won’t make much difference to Hezbollah’s fight; the new leader will soon step up. But Israel might regret the absence of the cool-headed Nasrallah.
Cool-headedness has actually been the norm this past year, and is among the few hopeful notes on the international scene. Lots of leaders are keeping calm, holding back the factions in their governments that would love to take a crack at the folks thumbing their military noses at them.
China merely tut-tuts about foreign navy ships traversing the Strait of Taiwan, Hezbollah keeps its big missiles in their silos, Iran responds to Israeli attacks with a few half-hearted firecrackers, and Vladimir Putin frowns and issues warning after warning when Ukraine, with Nato help, hits Russian refineries and radar installations. Meanwhile Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Syria, and Turkey — and I’ve probably missed a few — itch to put holes in Israeli runways.
But restraint is the watchword. Unlike before World War One, when governments decided to declare war from one day to the next, countries are looking before they leap. Why? To what do the world’s citizens owe this clear shift to reluctance among national leaders to jump into conflict? It’s often been observed that nuclear weapons have kept the peace among the great powers. Nowadays, however, other elements keep the peace just as well. Here are the three most important ones.
The first is economic. It’s true that capitalist consumerism has atomized the citizenry, but it also keeps people quiet. National leaders figure that the only way to keep everybody fed and employed and hypnotized by Netflix series is to keep the economy running. Take tourism, for example — a labor-intensive industry that absorbs a lot of workers with little formal education. Israel’s has been hammered. Who wants to retrace the steps of Christ in the Holy Land amidst the squall of sirens announcing incoming missiles from Hezbollah? Israel now has to rotate its forces in and out of the military just to keep the economy going. But they’re finally going to throw the Palestinians out, and figure it’s worth the tradeoff.
Other touristy countries have much less to gain. In Turkey, tourism makes up more than ten percent of the economy, and is still growing. In Egypt, it’s 24 percent. Take that away, and the ensuing unrest will topple governments. But their leaders have less to gain from tackling Israel.
The second element is strategic. Just over the last several years, war has turned into a video game of missiles and missile-defenses and drones of all different kinds. As the commentator Alistair Crooke has observed, American aircraft carriers parked in the eastern Mediterranean look like something out of the 1950s. A couple of missiles sent from Crimea would send them to the bottom of the sea in a question of minutes.
Conventional war has all but disappeared. Imagine what would happen to American troop and supply ships traversing the Atlantic. If German U-boats sank nearly three thousand, Russians would sink every one of them, and not from a dank submarine but from a cosy office in Moscow. And crossing the Pacific to attack China would be a suicide mission.
National governments see the destruction wrought by Russian missiles — not its army shelling villages, but the attacks from afar on major cities and infrastructure — and they quickly figure that restraint is the better part of valor.
The third element that makes governments hesitate to get into a fight is that societies are far more fragile than before. Imagine what would happen if the Chinese got mad at the Americans and dropped a few missiles on highway overpasses, which then collapsed highways, between San Diego and San Francisco. Of course, hackers could wreak havoc on just about everything, but if software defenses proved troublesome to them, a couple of missiles — or just bombs placed by hired thugs — on data centers would quickly affect the internet in all kinds of random ways. Well-paid jokers could send drones flying around Atlanta and Chicago airports — or Istanbul’s or Frankfurt’s or Tokyo’s — closing them down. And if some leader were in a bloody frame of mind, he could order the downing of just two commercial airliners, one taking off in Paris and the other in Miami — and watch every flight reservation in the the western hemisphere get canceled in an hour. Citizens of the world’s poorest countries would finally have the last laugh.
In fact, there is a never-declared Mutually Assured Destruction that restrains governments, or quasi-governments like Hezbollah. All to the good, except that conventional war seems to be morphing into terrorism. Now that Israel has opened the Pandora’s box of booby-trapping consumer items, how long will it be before desk lamps — or shoes or avocados — begin to explode in Tel Aviv? Will Kurds need to take apart their Turkish-made earphones? As readers of Unz.com know, attacking China is far more cost-effective through untraceable biological attacks against its people and livestock, and invites no revenge — at least for the moment.
Israel’s attack with pagers and radios, Ukraine’s worthless drone strikes on Moscow apartment buildings, America’s aimless pecking at “terrorists” in Syria and Iraq — these are harbingers of the terrorist world to come.
And as defeat approaches, the losers are bound to raise the ante — especially the Israelis and Ukrainians. As in World War Two, the years of war have corroded their last vestige of ethics, and they know that the Washington elite will ultimately excuse their tactics. The western media would give nothing but dashing accounts of how Zelensky and Netanyahu — harried, exhausted, yet persevering — listened to their advisers, rubbed their necks, and gave the green lights to “limited” chemical or nuclear attacks against advancing enemies. For an excellent example of how flexible, how downright protean, mainstream journalists can be, read New York Times columnist Amanda Taub’s article on the legality of Israel bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus: “Israel Bombed an Iranian Embassy Complex. Is That Allowed?” She concludes that it was.
In short, if Hezbollah’s next leader, not so restrained as Nesrallah, unleashes missile hell down the whole length of Israel, Netanyahu and his hard-eyed friends may come to regret finishing him off. Doesn’t history tell the best jokes?
Israel’s new quagmire: a ground invasion of Lebanon
By Mohamad Hasan Sweidan | The Cradle | September 28, 2024
On 26 September, the Israeli army announced the conclusion of a brigade exercise simulating a ground operation in Lebanon, several kilometers from the shared border. In the past two days, several Israeli military officials, including Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy and Northern Commander Uri Gordin, have spoken about the occupation army’s readiness to execute ground operations in Lebanon.
But how can Tel Aviv realistically conceive of launching ground troops into a country that has not once, but twice, managed to expel occupation forces, to engage in combat against an adversary – Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah – that is far better armed and organized than in years past?
Features of the Israeli strategy so far
Since the start of its recent escalation with Lebanon, Israel appears to be executing its war on five simultaneous tracks. First, it seeks to strike Hezbollah’s command and control system, mainly through targeted assassinations against key resistance military leaders, the most recent target being drone unit commander Abu Saleh Sorour.
Second is to directly strike Hezbollah’s military capabilities based on an existing bank of targets established by Tel Aviv: Last Monday, the Israelis announced that they had successfully struck 1,600 resistance military targets, including weapons depots, missile stores, and launching pads. Notably, they claimed the same kinds of successful strikes in the July 2006 war, which turned out to be grossly inaccurate.
Third, Israel aims to apply internal Lebanese pressure on Hezbollah by harming its constituents, supporters, and even detractors. Tel Aviv has intensified its bloody targeting of civilian populations and areas in the past two weeks, killing over 728 civilians, injuring thousands, and displacing nearly 390,000 people, according to official Lebanese government data.
Fourth, is an attempt to influence the broad, general Lebanese environment to turn against the resistance through systematic media campaigns – in cooperation with Lebanese media outlets and personalities who parrot Israel’s intimidation narratives in order to tame and curb Hezbollah’s actions. The fifth and final track, so far, is the growing threat and preparation for an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon – albeit a limited one – with a goal to confirm Israeli field superiority by controlling Lebanese areas, even for short periods.
Hezbollah’s reactions?
Naturally, the resistance intends to thwart Israel’s strategies through a set of interconnected steps. After each assassination, Hezbollah confirms that its command and control system remains unaffected, then launches a controlled escalation to confirm its readiness in the face of enemy shocks. This was evident on 24 September, when Hezbollah launched a 300+ missile strike the day after Israel’s air campaign, essentially to confirm that its missile capabilities were locked and loaded, ready to go.
As in past Israeli confrontations with Hezbollah, the latter’s support base remains largely consistent and supportive of the resistance’s escalatory plans. Separating Hezbollah from its incubating environment is an Israeli strategy that has repeatedly failed, mainly because the resistance’s rank and file originate from this very society.
Finally, Israel’s goal of turning Lebanese public opinion against the resistance has not advanced, to date. Rather, Israeli aggressions have increased national cohesion, particularly after the occupation state’s pager terror attack, except in some limited cases.
The fifth track: ground invasion of Lebanon
In recent days, discussions about the possibility of an Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon have increased markedly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has boasted that military operations against Lebanon will continue “at full strength to ensure Hezbollah is “significantly weakened,” and has rejected international calls for an immediate ceasefire.
The army’s chief of staff also instructed Israeli forces to prepare for a possible ground attack for the purpose of establishing an Israeli buffer zone in southern Lebanon. Operationally, the occupation army is preparing for this possibility by running training drills and summoning two reserve brigades to the northern front.
According to Western and Israeli sources, there are several scenarios for a possible Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon, with each scenario offering different strategic objectives and risks:
First, is a limited ground action inside Lebanese territory with the aim of striking specific Hezbollah targets near the border, such as missile launch sites, or clearing an area to prevent the resistance from carrying out attacks on Israel. This would be a short-term action used to pressure the party in ceasefire negotiations. At this point, if Tel Aviv chooses the option of ground action, this will be the most likely scenario.
Second, is a limited ground incursion to push resistance forces to retreat from the border, specifically to reduce the range of anti-tank guided missiles that Hezbollah possesses. Israeli military commanders have indicated this option would serve to create a “security zone” extending 8 to 10 kilometers inside Lebanese territory. Notably, this scenario increases the likelihood of prolonged fighting and higher Israeli human and military losses.
Third, is a complete ground invasion of Lebanon – the most extreme scenario – with the goal of destroying Hezbollah’s capabilities. Currently, this scenario remains highly unlikely due to its extremely high-risk profile – and given that Tel Aviv’s near-term goal is not to destroy Hezbollah but rather to alter the security challenges on its border with Lebanon.
Attack where?
An Israeli ground attack – limited or expansive – is expected to focus on specific geographic areas in Lebanon, mainly the south, where Tel Aviv wants its Hezbollah-free buffer zone, or the Bekaa region that flanks the Syrian border. Israel envisages a scenario similar to the status quo in southern Lebanon in the 1990s, in which it maintained a security zone to limit Hezbollah’s access to the border – before being purged by resistance commandos in 2000.
Conversely, a limited Israeli ground action in the Bekaa would be to impact and tighten Hezbollah’s logistical and weapons supply routes from Syria, either by cutting off land routes between Lebanon and Syria or by cutting supply lines between the Bekaa and the south. The groundwork there will be a continuation of Israeli air strikes in the Bekaa, which targeted four main border crossings with Syria – Al-Arrayedh, Mutariba, Saleh, and Qabsh.
Most western analysts are not optimistic about the Israeli army succeeding in executing ground operations in Lebanon, given Hezbollah’s enhanced and sophisticated capabilities to confront such an action. In a Washington Post article, writer Max Boot says this wild option “would be another quagmire for Israel.” From Tel Aviv’s perspective, the best-case scenario would be that its air campaign succeeds in halting the Lebanese support front for Gaza and allows displaced Israeli settlers to return to their homes in northern Israel.
But with no imminent resolution of its conflict with Lebanon likely – given Netanyahu’s refusal to entertain a northern ceasefire, let alone a Gaza one – the possibility of an Israeli ground action in Lebanon increases, despite the extraordinary risks for the occupation army. From its recent battle history with Lebanon’s resistance, in which Israel has lost face, Tel Aviv knows well that its air superiority is matched only by Hezbollah’s ground advantage.
Collective West supporting Israel ‘to wipe out the Palestinian population’: Prof. Marandi
Press TV – September 28, 2024
Professor Mohammad Marandi says all the Western countries are supporting the Israeli regime “to wipe out the Palestinian population.”
Marandi, a professor at the University of Tehran and a political analyst, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Friday from Beirut, Lebanon, where he is based these days.
“All the Western countries are supporting the regime in every way possible, through aid, through political cover, through weapons, through ammunition, and… through intelligence gatherings,” Marandi said.
“So this is a collaboration of tens of Western regimes to wipe out the Palestinian population,” he stated.
The Iranian academic added that “when it comes to seeking a ceasefire they are doing everything possible to help the regime carrying out both a holocaust in the south of Palestine and ongoing genocidal attacks in the north of Palestine.”
Commenting on Israel’s recent aggressions against Lebanon, Marandi said, “Hezbollah and the people of Lebanon are paying the price for defending the people of Gaza, against the genocide.”
“For over 11 months now, the resistance in Lebanon with the support of the overwhelming majority of the Lebanese population, have been engaging in battles or in strikes across the border in the north of Palestine in order to draw troops away from Gaza, and to support the people of Gaza to lessen the intensity of the ongoing holocaust in Gaza,” he stated.
The Islamic resistance movement Hezbollah has been conducting numerous operations against Israeli targets since October last year when the Israeli regime waged a genocidal war in the Gaza Strip.
At least 41,534 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in the brutal Israeli military onslaught so far.
On Friday, Israeli warplanes launched massive airstrikes on the southern suburb of Dahiyeh in Beirut, killing at least eight people and wounding around 80 others.
Hours after a new wave of Israeli airstrikes hit the Dahiyeh area.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas called on “Arab and Islamic nations” to act and “reject this brutal aggression” by Israel against the brotherly people of Lebanon.
Hamas condemned the “Zionist escalation and aggression” against the people of Lebanon.
Speaking about the hypocrisy of the Western media, Marandi said, “Whenever they bomb towns and villages across the country, the Western media calls it Hezbollah strongholds.”
He added that many ordinary people get killed in Israeli attacks the Western media call targeted strikes against Hezbollah leaders.
“In general it is fair to say that Hezbollah and the people of Lebanon have played the most courageous role in this almost one-year-long genocide in Gaza because they voluntarily chose to draw Israeli forces away from the battlefield in the south of Palestine,” he noted.
Hezbollah confirms Hassan Nasrallah assassinated by Israel
The Cradle | September 28, 2024
Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah confirmed on 28 September the assassination of its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah during intense Israeli airstrikes that hit Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday.
“His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, has joined his great and immortal martyred comrades, whose path he led for nearly thirty years, during which he led them from victory to victory, succeeding the Master of the Martyrs of the Islamic Resistance in 1992 until the liberation of Lebanon in 2000 and to the glorious divine victory in 2006 and all the battles of honor and sacrifice, arriving at the battle of support and heroism in support of Palestine, Gaza, and the oppressed Palestinian people,” the statement released by the Lebanese resistance reads.
“The leadership of Hezbollah pledges to the highest, most sacred, and most precious martyr in our journey full of sacrifices and martyrs that it will continue its jihad in confronting the enemy, in support of Gaza and Palestine, and in defense of Lebanon and its steadfast and honorable people,” the statement adds.
Hezbollah also stressed that its leader “is still among us with his thought, spirit, line, and sacred approach, and you are committed to the pledge of loyalty and commitment to resistance and sacrifice until victory.”
Nasrallah was killed during an Israeli carpet bombing campaign on the Lebanese capital that destroyed several residential buildings and displaced tens of thousands of civilians. The attack reportedly targeted the main headquarters of the Lebanese resistance movement.
Earlier on Saturday the Israeli army confirmed Nasrallah’s assassination alongside other top resistance leaders. Israeli authorities told the New York Times (NYT) that they had been tracking Nasrallah “for months,” adding that “more than 80 bombs were dropped over a period of several minutes to kill him.”
Born in 1960 to a Shia Muslim family in a poor area of east Beirut, Nasrallah briefly joined the Amal Movement as a young man, inspired by its leader Sayyed Musa Sadr.
In late 1976 Nasrallah left for Najaf in Iraq to study at the city’s religious seminary, where he met Lebanese scholar Abbas Mussawi. After the 1978 Baathist crackdown on Shia Muslims Nasrallah and Mussawi returned to Lebanon where he continued his studies.
Nasrallah became head of Hezbollah’s executive council and a member of its shura council in 1985. Seven years later, Mussawi, serving as Hezbollah’s secretary general, was assassinated along with his wife and child in an Israeli airstrike.
Speaking at his funeral, Nasrallah said, “By murdering … Sayyed Abbas Mussawi, they sought to kill our spirit of resistance and destroy our will for jihad. But his blood will continue to simmer in our veins, only strengthening our determination to move forward and intensifying our enthusiasm to pursue the path.”
“America will remain the primary enemy of this nation and the greatest Satan of all. Israel will forever be, in our eyes, a cancerous growth that must be eradicated, an artificial entity that should be removed, even if all the rulers of the world recognize it. Palestine—all of Palestine—will remain part of this nation, and we shall not relinquish a single grain of its sand.”
According to Iranian General Hossein Hamedani, following the assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani by the US in 2020, Tehran tasked Nasrallah with uniting its armed allies in Iraq. He also supervised the overall policy for the Resistance Axis during the US-backed Syrian war.
One day after the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, Nasrallah declared the opening of a “front in southern Lebanon to support Palestinian resistance,” vowing over the past year that the effort would remain active until the war in Gaza ends.
“Our commanders, fighters, women, and children will be martyred; we are united in sacrifice – this is the reality of resistance, and this is our path until the day of judgment,” Nasrallah said during a televised speech earlier this year following the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr.
Hezbollah bombs Israeli arms factory, forces fighter jets to withdraw
Al Mayadeen | September 25, 2024
The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon – Hezbollah announced Wednesday that its fighters launched rockets targeting a bomb material factory in Zikhron, occupied southern Haifa, using a barrage of Fadi-3 rockets.
For the second time on Wednesday, Hezbollah struck the settlement of Kiryat Motzkin with volleys of Fadi-1 rockets. Concurrently, Hezbollah’s air defense units engaged two hostile fighter jets near the Lebanese towns of Houla and Mays al-Jabal to force them out of Lebanese airspace.
In its statements, Hezbollah emphasized that these operations were carried out in support of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and their Resistance, while also defending Lebanon and its citizens.
The Lebanese Resistance has expanded its strikes toward Israeli occupation military bases in northern occupied Palestine, landing precise and direct hits despite an unprecedented Israeli assault on various regions in the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon.
Israeli media reported that air raid sirens sounded in the settlements of Gonen, Lahavot Habashan, and Kiryat Shmona in the Houla Valley.
‘No region in Israel outside combat zone’
Israeli settlers in areas stretching from Katzrin in the North to Rosh Pina, Safed, and Mount Meron were advised to stay near bomb shelters.
“There is no region in Israel that is outside the combat zone in the past 24 hours, from Mount Hermon to the Arava Valley,” a correspondent for the Israeli Army Radio said.
These operations add to previous attacks carried out earlier in the day, including Hezbollah’s targeting of the Mossad headquarters in the outskirts of Tel Aviv with a Qader-1 ballistic missile. This facility was responsible for orchestrating assassinations and detonating pagers and handheld radio receivers in Lebanon.
Hezbollah had inflicted significant losses on the Israeli occupation through the expansion of its operations, with Israeli media saying “Isreal” has lost an estimated $1.07 billion over the past two days alone.
The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (KAN) reported that “Israel’s” strikes on Lebanon on Monday cost the entity some 650 million shekels ($173 million). Officials have underlined that if the airstrikes campaign on Lebanon protracts beyond 10 days, it would require the approval of an additional budget breach.
Israeli media quoted a former official from the Shin Bet security service as saying, “The capability of Hezbollah to launch rockets towards central Israel should not be underestimated.”
The former official added, “What [Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan] Nasrallah did today is just a small preview of what he has in store.”
In an interview with the Israeli Channel 12, retired Israeli brigadier general and former financial advisor to the military’s chief of staff, Reem Aminoach, said the escalating use of missile interceptors is a major factor contributing to the significant increase in daily operational costs.
US deploying more troops to West Asia amid Israeli escalation of violence
Press TV – September 23, 2024
The US Department of Defense has decided to deploy more boots to West Asia amid the Israeli escalation of war in the region.
Additional US troops will be deployed to the Middle East in response to a sharp spike in violence between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon that has raised the risk of a greater regional war, the Pentagon spokesperson said on Monday.
Gen. Pat Ryder announced the new deployment without providing details on how many additional forces would be needed or what they would be tasked to do.
“In light of increased tension in the Middle East and out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional US military personnel forward to augment our forces that are already in the region. But for operational security reasons, I’m not going to comment on or provide specifics.”
The United Nations has sounded the alarm, warning that the escalating violence between the Israeli regime forces and the Hezbollah resistance movement in Lebanon was catapulting the Middle East conflict “to another level”.
Prior to the latest escalation of violence, the Pentagon had announced that the approximately 40,000 US troops deployed in the region were “enough to protect Israel.”
In addition to tens of thousands of troops in the Middle East region, the Pentagon has warships, fighter jets, and air defense systems deployed to protect both its forces and the Israeli regime.
Ryder warned of the potential for the Israel-Hezbollah violence to escalate, calling for a diplomatic solution.
“Clearly there is the potential for these tit-for-tat operations between Israel and Hezbollah to escalate and to potentially spiral out of control into a wider regional war, which is why it’s so important that we resolve… the situation through diplomacy,” Ryder said.
Middle East tensions rose sharply after the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shakr in Beirut at the end of July, prompting the Pentagon to begin sending additional US troops to the region. The US military claimed the additional American troops would not be engaged by the Israeli forces for “offensive” operations against Hezbollah.
Pentagon’s announcement comes as fears of a broader regional war grow, with Israel striking hundreds of targets in Lebanon following Israel’s communication devices terror attacks which targeted Hezbollah cadre and civilians with exploding pagers earlier this week. The attacks killed 37 Lebanese and injured thousands more.
World powers have called on the Israeli regime and Hezbollah to pull back from the brink of an all-out war, with the focus of violence shifting sharply in recent days from Israel’s southern front with Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon.
Hezbollah, a powerful political and military force in Lebanon, has exchanged near-daily fire with the Israeli regime forces in support of the defenseless Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) and the Ansarallah-led government of Yemen stand alongside Hamas and Hezbollah, targeting US and Israeli positions in the region in an effort to oppose Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The occupying zionist regime forces launched the genocidal war on helpless Palestinians trapped in Gaza almost a year ago in early October, which has claimed the lives of more than 41,400 people, most of them innocent women and children.

