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Why War in Lebanon Is Inevitable

(Providence) Robert Nicholson - I spent a lovely Friday evening this summer on a friend's terrace in northern Israel a few km. from the Lebanese border. The scene was idyllic, except for the Iranian missiles falling from the sky and the Israeli rockets flying up to stop them. While U.S. envoys have been unable to stop Hizbullah's attacks through diplomacy, Israelis are demanding action. I asked my friend how she and her family, Israeli Christians, got on amid such chaos. "This happens every day," she answered. "You get used to it." Feeling the booms reverberate in my chest, I couldn't understand how. "How will this end?" I asked her. She replied, "We destroy Hizbullah - it's the only way." Most Israelis agree with her, and after seeing the situation with my own eyes, I couldn't help but join them. I'd heard the same sentiments two days earlier in Tel Aviv from Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of research for military intelligence and director-general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. He said, "The lesson of Oct. 7 is that Israel cannot tolerate heavily armed radical Islamists on its borders, even if they stay quiet for years. They must be destroyed, preemptively if necessary." Israelis almost always prefer quiet "live-and-let-live" deals with their enemies over military confrontations. Harboring no illusions about changing hostile societies through force, they avoid grand adventures and apply violence only in limited circumstances. Yet many in Israel now believe it was their very aversion to war and willingness to embrace a modus vivendi in Gaza that made the horrors of Oct. 7 possible. Israel's previous policy had been to contain Hamas in Gaza, periodically degrading its military infrastructure in short wars, yet keeping the Hamas regime afloat with cash infusions from Iranian ally Qatar. "I helped design that policy," Kuperwasser said. "And yes, it worked - until it didn't." But "honestly, what was the alternative: a preemptive Israeli invasion and regime change in Gaza? No one would have supported such a thing before Oct. 7....[Yet] the idea that religious fanatics sworn to our destruction would ever live quietly on our borders was delusional." "We need to finish the war in Gaza, turn to Hizbullah in Lebanon - and then to Iran. Whoever wants to destroy us, we must destroy them first. What choice do we have?"
2024-09-24 00:00:00
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