Contexts and Pretexts: Israel’s Lebanon Invasion

Media ‘experts’ tugging the official US line of supporting Israel at all costs often talk about Israeli fears of terrorists at their borders. They deliberately want to cloud facts by detaching them from their roots and historical context and now they present the abduction of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah as the cause of this new invasion of Lebanon. Now, when half a million Lebanese have been displaced, hundreds of civilians killed and injured, the economy and infrastructure that affects the lives of almost 2 million destroyed, which will cause misery to millions in the coming decade, they want us to focus instead on "Israeli fears", generated by the abduction of 2 soldiers when over 10,000 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners have been languishing in Israeli jails for decades. And undercover of this invented “fear” and right of "self-defense", the US won’t even call for a cease-fire, thereby giving Israel an open license to kill, maim and destroy at will. [Let us also not forget that Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, practically destroying the country and still occupies Shebaa farms that belong to Lebanon].

Let us move back to the context of the Gaza abduction of one Israeli soldier on June 25th by Palestinian fighters. On June 9th Israeli gunboats killed 7 Palestinians, and wounded 40 others on the Gaza beach. On 13 June, another attack was carried out on a Gaza highway by Israel, killing eleven and injuring thirty. On June 20th, three Palestinian children were killed and 15 others wounded in a failed execution attempt carried out by Israel .Then after this relatively petty incident of the abduction of one soldier on June 25th, Israel’s destruction of the power plant and cutting off of water for nearly 2 million people and the border blockade before that which was starving a society that suffers from 80% unemployment, and later abducting Palestinian government members (more than the one soldier that was abducted) are all ignored by these hypocrites on the media who want us to talk about "Israeli fears".

After repeated appeals by the Palestinians for world intervention to stop this onslaught against millions of innocents over one soldier, that went unheeded, and after repeated impotence shown by the Arab US client states, Hezbollah was provoked into doing something against their common enemy. Such an occurrence, of course, was expected by Israel, it was no surprise to them, and they were waiting for a pretext for a Lebanon invasion, to act as a facilitator for an upcoming pretext for the US Air War on Iran.

Events leading to a pretext for an Air War on Iran are fast approaching. The U.S. elite have come to their expected conclusion that the solution to their ills in Iraq is another war, a projection of their military metaphysic, war as an end by itself a fix for all troubles they perceive. How this new campaign will start is a matter of speculation but it seems that this pretext might come on the high seas as the US tries to evacuate its "non-master race" citizens from Lebanon (that is why the delay even as they are not asking Israel for a cease fire). Iran has already been built up as not only the provider of the surface to sea missiles but as a commandeer of them from the Lebanon coast. Any such incident can easily be blamed on Iran and an Air War, as retaliation, launched by the US. This of course is a matter of speculation, but a pretext is being sought for an Iran campaign, and here it might find an easy resolution for these elite. It is in this context that the belligerently disproportionate response by Israel on Lebanon and earlier on Gaza can be understood.

That said, Israel is functioning as a facilitator for this pretext. It is not interested in a wider conflict in its immediate Arab neighborhood at this time. Any wider conflict might upset the political setup in Egypt, with which it is quite happy, and from their military might rise another Nasser that might pose greater difficulties for both the US and Israel in the region.

Muhammed Asadi can be reached at masadi@aol.com.