There is growing support among Israeli officials to launch an offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
The report comes as Israel is anticipating a major response from Hezbollah to the assassination of Fuad Shukr, a high-level Hezbollah military commander who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on July 30.
While the Israeli military and Hezbollah have continued to trade fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since Shukr’s killing, Hezbollah has not escalated things beyond the rocket and drone attacks it’s been launching since October 2023.
Current and former Israeli officials told the Journal that an escalation from Hezbollah could be the pretext for Israel to launch a full-blown war in Lebanon. One senior Israeli official said a major Hezbollah attack could “lead to an Israeli attack that will lead to a new reality on the northern border.”
Some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government want a ceasefire in Gaza, which would cool tensions in the north, while others want to see an offensive in Lebanon. Israeli officials told the Journal that the leadership of Israel’s northern command is also itching for an escalation against Hezbollah.
One reason the Israeli officials think the time is ripe for an escalation is the strong support that the US has shown Israel in the wake of Shukr’s killing and the Israeli assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, which is expected to provoke a major Iranian reprisal attack.
The US insists it is doing everything it can to prevent war in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region, but providing unconditional support for Israel has only emboldened it. The US is also vowing to defend Israel from any consequences for recent escalations and has deployed more firepower to the region solely for that purpose.
On Tuesday, the US State Department approved $20 billion in new arms sales for Israel, a move that demonstrates strong US support for the genocidal war in Gaza. Israeli officials told Axios that another purpose of the US moving the weapons sales forward was to send a message to Iran and Hezbollah.
If this is what they want, then let them lose their own war without dragging the US into it. No fighting, and no money for it either. Let them sink into their own mire.
Israel delenda est.
Perhaps they will do it to themselves, since clearly we won't even think it.
We should defend Israel, and by that I mean the 1967 borders. Wars of conquest, that is on them.
What war of conquest? The 1967 war started when Egypt blocked one of Israel ports. That war started between Israel and Egypt. However, Jordon and Syria felt the need to join in. Thus Syria lost the Golan Heights and Jordan the West Bank. So now there are new borders.
Well taking land that isn’t recognized as yours, and moving people setttlers into it might serve as a rough working definitions.
“So now there are new borders.”
Nope, just looked. UNR 181 remains in effect and Israel’s borders have not changed.
Egypt blocked international waters that led to an Israeli port, but Israel started the war by attacking first. It launched a surprise attack that took out the Egyptian airforce.
Israel also started the 1956 War.
In 1948, Israel had begun militarized ethnic cleansing on a large scale in Palestine prior to the invasion pf the Arab armies; so Israel had a hand in starting that one too.
No you shouldn't. The US should defend the US. I mean against all those enemies who would otherwise invade the continent.
The Israeli have to live in peace with their neighbours. There is no alternative compatible with survival.
Some people think that the IDF is opposed to a war with Lebanon, and that the IDF doesn't necessarily take orders from Netanyahu.
The IOF is much like Erdogan in that respect, they say things. Whatever. The IOF has to take orders from Netanyahu or it would be officially a military coup. Befehl ist befehl.
Israel is like that high school instigator,saying "Let's you and him fight!"
They are, and so are we. Can you imagine if Putin nuked DC, and Iran nuked Israel. Better still, both of our countries were completely destroyed. Can you imagine the celebrations around the world. I'm so ashamed of our government.
To quote our next VP "That is just weird".
It's beyond your understanding.
I cannot imagine it. I can comprehend and describe in some detail what would happen next. That's largely a technical and physics story. Many people can do that. Many people do do that. But I don't think there is anyone alive who can imagine it.
"I'll hold your coat".
If I were 30 years younger I would take you up on that.
Or like the guy in school who buys his support from the upper class mafia that he can quickly jump behind if someone dares to challenge him, similar to most politicians.
https://www.presstv.ir/Live
The following internet links present some data on US arms exports from the defence industry to the Middle East.
The arms industry promotes inflation, because working people generally do not use their income to buy armaments.
No arms exports to the Middle East!
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240813-us-lifts-ban-on-offensive-weapons-sales-to-saudi-arabia/
https://www.state.gov/fiscal-year-2023-u-s-arms-transfers-and-defense-trade/
https://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/archive-date/202407
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000048360 Armaments, arms control and disarmament, Part III., 9. On the theory of armaments dynamics
Excellent footwork!
The winds of larger war and conflict are growing. The West needs to reevaluate its current position in the region and indeed the world. We need true and solid leadership. I trust our country to lead the way to Peace and we need it ASAP. PEACE NOW!
You need diplomats in order to be able to have some kind of conversation. The U.S. at present doesn't have any. Blinken? He's like the J.V. of dipomats.
Sometimes the name gives away the game.
What good is a blinkered diplomat?
& a biased one at that.
When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.
Hannah Arendt
The Biden regime are criminal asylum inmates, that is true of the leading western democracies, they lack leadership and morals and social conscience, they are vile people.
ah, you've touched me there, but I know even for Hannah Arendt, like the rest of us her most humble acolytes, hope springs eternal.
Yes, how can we live without hope?
Yes, … la condition humaine is essentially tragic. Hence, religion, no?
As someone once said, "Religion is the Opiate of the Masses". Marx may have been right to a large degree, but what passes for religion today is many things but has little to do with a 'God' of traditions.
also: … the heart of a heartless world. But beyond all that, there are the great ontological questions for which science and pleasure-pain have no answer. Marx should have said “pleasure is the opium of the people”.
Uncle Sammy has been a force for evil in the middle east for over seventy years!
That's nearing a conclusion, but threatens catastrophe in the interim.
Which US Presidents weren't war criminals?
Empires aren't known for producing moral leadership or a social conscience.
There's a definable social/economic cause called capitalist imperialism.
You trust the US to lead the way to peace?
Why in the world is that?
The US has been destroying democracy in the Muslim nations for over 70 years, See Mohammad Mosaddegh, 1953.
The US practically invented modern day jihadism, destroying decades of social, material and cultural progress in Afghanistan. That was writ large in Iraq and Libya.
Yemen & Syria have survived Uncle Sammy's onslaught but have paid a horrible price in lives and damage.
You have to go back to Jimmy Carter to make a credible argument that the US was ever a force for peace in the region.
The record since then has been horrendous, atrocious, oil-soaked imperialism.
It really is time to utilize prophecy…
Suddenly "armageddon" doesn't seem like some mythic fable.
Your man Trump says nuclear weapons are not that scary.
Sooner or later Israel will have to take out Hezbollah. In the process, Israel will need to push the borders with Lebanon back and make a defensive zone. This can all be avoided if Hezbollah would simply stop firing at Israel, but they will not.
If Israel would stop the bombing and killing and respect the HUMAN RIGHTS of PALESTINIANS and would obey international laws, and if the ISRAELIS had a conscience, maybe peace would be possible.
The Israeli Zionists have NO morals NO conscience, morally Israelis are the pit. The best people, if they can, are leaving Israel. Only hateful war mongers, like the evil settler monsters stay for now.
What permeates within Israeli society is a propaganda sickness that is fed to them. They are more hopeless than ever…
Israel is unable to stop what it's doing, because it is doing exactly what it set out to do, which is to create an ethnically pure Jewish state. That was the design of the original Zionists in the 19th century, and nothing has happened to change that plan. The only change is that now the plan is out in the open for all to see, while before it was hidden in falsehoods of coexistence with Palestinians.
Prior to the 1960's Zionists were quite open about the colonialist nature of their movement. "Colonial" was in the names of many major Zionist funds and organizations.
Hi Tim:
Please observe the basic fact that continued forceful occupation literally puts the hammer down, firmly.
What Israel needs to do is get a therapist. They have lost against Hamas…sure they are confident woman/baby killers and enjoy raping prisoners guilty of only being Palestinian…Hezbollah has no interest in killing Israeli's..they want to defang the Israeli murder machine by targeting military infrastructure, and removing Israel from Lebanese territory..Sheeba Farms.
"…growing support among Israeli officials."
OHHH. I read the title of the article and thought. "Why would Israeli citizens want this ?" and there's my answer. They don't; their idiot leaders do.
Leaders are all, "It'll be quick and easy; the war will be over by Christmas."
Has Judge Nap been dissappeared?
Wondering that myself.
A must-watch discussion with Alastair Crooke:
War in Inevitable – Alastair Crooke, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen
https://t.co/cBAHdbLbDa
Why not, the US congress, which they own, will pay for it.
Personally, I hope the Israelis choke on it.