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The UK Should Stand with Israel while Helping the Lebanese State End Hizbullah's Grip
(Jewish Chronicle-UK) Maj. (ret.) Andrew Fox - Israel did not start the war in Lebanon. Hizbullah did. It opened fire on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after Hamas's massacre, forcing the evacuation of 60,000 Israelis from border towns and villages. Calling Israel the aggressor turns cause and effect upside down. Lebanon's sovereignty is hollow; Hizbullah has long functioned as a state within a state. Hizbullah is militarily stronger than the Lebanese Armed Forces, Hizbullah fighters are better paid and better armed. Hizbullah is operating on salary support from Iran, with money laundered through Turkey and the UAE. Lebanon lives under a zombie militia-state which decides questions of war and peace. In early 2023, Hizbullah published footage of its Radwan fighters simulating an invasion of northern Israel. After Oct. 7, Israel's fears of a cross-border massacre from Lebanon could no longer be dismissed as alarmist. A state that has just seen one border community overrun is not obliged to gamble that another enemy, openly rehearsing the same, does not mean what it says. The writer, a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, served for 16 years in the British Army.