Netanyahu, Defiant, Appears to Have Gone Rogue, Risking a Regional War

[Uncle Joe]

Ignoring the efforts of President Biden and the condemnation of many allies, the Israeli prime minister is forcing the pace of the war and feeding the revolt of the far right.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel delivering a speech to Congress in Washington last month.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

(snip)

Absent a clear goal in the war, however, Mr. Netanyahu’s defiance is dividing Israel from its allies and the country itself. It has further shaken trust in his leadership. It is fueling suspicions that he is keeping the country at war to keep himself in power. It is intensifying a deep rift inside the society — about the fate of Israeli hostages, the conduct of the war and the rule of law — that is challenging the institutional bonds that hold Israel together.

(snip)

They represent a populist revolt against the country’s traditional democratic ethos and institutions, including the army and the judiciary. Much like former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Netanyahu, despite his long period in power, rides that anti-elitist wave, arguing that he is the only politician who can stand up to the United States and the United Nations and prevent a sovereign Palestine dominated by Hamas.

“We’re in a very dangerous process that can cast a shadow over the basic DNA of this country,” said Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s most prominent journalists and commentators. “Cultural confrontation is fine, but not so fine with politicians who are messianic or radical populists and not only become part of the government but hold crucial posts there.”

(snip)

There are many Israelis “who have no belief in diplomacy but think of Israeli security only in terms of pre-emption, intimidation and deterrence, and who think that they must always have the back of the military in the face of an implacable cruel enemy you’re always confronting,” said Bernard Avishai, an Israeli American analyst. “So anything you do to the enemy is justified.”

(snip)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/world/europe/israel-defiant-gaza-war.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. And raise your hand(s) if you think that this was discussed between

Bibi and TSF last week-end.

[Igel]

5. Haniyeh, maybe.

But Trump tends to blurt out things without regard to any truth value or propriety, so Netanyahu would be an idiot to entrust him with anything important, so probably not.

The Haniyeh killing, NYT reported, was set up a couple of months ago. It might have been discussed with Blinken then, but even that's unlikely, IMHO.

[Bev54]

6. I have no doubt and perhaps Bibi thinks Trump is going to win, Trump probably told him that

they were going to cheat to get in power. Bibi and Trump may have miscalculated. I hope Harris brings the hammer down on Netanyahu and tells Israel, have a new election. Maybe Israel can learn from France and consolidate some of the more central and left parties to defeat the RW.

[karynnj]

12. After the election, coalitions of parties must be firmed because no party has had 61

Members of Knesset. A purely left coalition can't win because the total of their seats is far too low. The Bennett/ Lapid coalition which was called center left included some on the right who hated Netanyahu.

[Lonestarblue]

2. Bibi wants to start a Middle East war so the US comes to his rescue by fighting Iran for him.

Netanyahu is a terrible leader. I was just disgusted after the news of Israel’s torture and rape of Palestinian prisoners broke that Israelis protested FOR the rape and torture! What has happened to the decent people who used to be in Israel?

[roscoeroscoe]

7. Agreed!

Like Trump, he would do anything, sacrifice as many lives as necessary, to stay in power. The saying goes, better to rule over a graveyard, right?

The worst never want to give up power.

[Sneederbunk]

3. "Appears to have gone rogue"? Really?

[MrWowWow]

4. Bibi would make a great onboard kamakazi drone pilot

or better yet, strap him to a Gabriel Missile.

[dalton99a]

8. Netanyahu should pay for his own wars. America has no business making Netanyahu great again

[ancianita]

9. Hezbollah runs Lebanon. Iran runs Hezbollah AND their leader, Nasrallah. Got it?

Last edited Sat Aug 3, 2024, 10:25 AM - Edit history (1)

in 2024, with the rebels in Syria mostly subdued, hundreds of Hezbollah combatants were still operating there. Israeli officials said that Iran had mounted a long campaign to “Lebanize” Syria, by attempting to build a Shiite militia similar to Hezbollah, with fighters principally from Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Since 2016, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria. In April, one of them killed Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who oversaw Iranian efforts in Lebanon and Syria, and who reportedly served on Hezbollah’s leadership council. His death prompted Iran to fire more than three hundred missiles and drones at Israel.

We can put a missile into the flat where Bibi is meeting with his ministers.” He brushed aside concerns of a counterattack, describing a vast network of protective tunnels. “We have tunnels for cars, tunnels for trucks, tunnels for railroad cars,” he said. I asked Hassan how the war between Hezbollah and the Israelis could ever be resolved. “Very simple,” he said. “When they leave on the same boat they came in on.”

https://archive.ph/Jqifv

Israel and Hezbollah carried out a combined total of 7,491 cross-border attacks between Oct. 8, 2023 and July 5, 2024, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). Hezbollah was responsible for more than 1,200 of the incidents.

By late July 2024, Hezbollah had launched more than 6,000 rockets and 300 drones at Israel, killing 24 civilians and 22 Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah primarily targeted Israeli military bases and towns along the border as well as civilian communities in the Galilee. More than 60,000 civilian residents of northern Israel evacuated, and at least 1,500 buildings and other structures were badly damaged.

https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2024/apr/02/timeline-israel-against-iran-hezbollah

Hezbollah has around 150,000 rockets and missiles, most with a range of a few dozen kilometers. Various reports, however, say a substantial number can reach targets located hundreds of kilometers from Lebanon.

Hezbollah is the most heavily armed non-state actor in the world, concluded researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington in an extensive 2018 report on the lethal arsenal stationed just north of Israel. The group holds a large and diverse reserve of "dumb" rocket artillery alongside ballistic, anti-air, anti-tank, and anti-ship missiles, the report found.

https://archive.ph/L0B5p#selection-837.0-841.209

ISRAELIS LIVE WITH DEADLY FIRE EVERY SINGLE DAY. Israelis have lived under the pincer of two Shiite forces -- Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north.
https://archive.ph/eCXOi


Have an opinion about a country under daily attack? Love, hate or take offense at Netanyahu?
And would you listen if you were in Israelis' and Netanyahu's shoes? Highly doubtful.

Western allies' rule: pressure should never be on allies defending against deadly attacks, but on the attackers.

When this war is over, Israelis will hold Netanyahu accountable themselves. Themselves.

While Israelis live under this daily dark cloud of death, as they have for decades, all this "rogue" talk by ignorant armchair generals an ocean and sea away from deadly fire is not helpful at best, bullshit at worst.

[Uncle Joe]

10. How did Hezbollah originate? I got that

(snip)

Hezbollah emerged during Lebanon’s civil war, which broke out in 1975 when long-simmering discontent over the large, armed Palestinian presence in the country reached a boiling point. Various Lebanese sectarian communities held different positions on the nature of the Palestinian challenge.

Under a 1943 political agreement, political power is divided among Lebanon’s predominant religious groups—a Sunni Muslim serves as prime minister, a Maronite Christian as president, and a Shiite Muslim as the speaker of Parliament. Tensions among these groups evolved into civil war as several factors upset the delicate balance. The Sunni population had grown with the arrival of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, while Shiites felt increasingly marginalized by the ruling Christian minority. Amid the infighting, Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982 to expel Palestinian guerrilla fighters that used the region as their base to attack Israel.

A group of Shiites influenced by the theocratic government in Iran—the region’s major Shiite government, which came to power in 1979—took up arms against the Israeli occupation. Seeing an opportunity to expand its influence in Arab states, Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) provided funds and training to the budding militia, which adopted the name Hezbollah, meaning “The Party of God.” It earned a reputation for extremist militancy due to its frequent clashes with rival Shiite militias, such as the Amal Movement, and its attacks on foreign targets, including the 1983 suicide bombing of barracks housing U.S. and French troops in Beirut, in which more than three hundred people died. Hezbollah became a vital asset to Iran, bridging Shiite Arab-Persian divides as Tehran established proxies throughout the Middle East.

Hezbollah bills itself as a Shiite resistance movement, and it enshrined its ideology in a 1985 manifesto that vowed to expel Western powers from Lebanon, called for the destruction of the Israeli state, and pledged allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader. It also advocated an Iran-inspired Islamist regime, but emphasized that the Lebanese people should have the freedom of self-determination.

(snip)

Israel is Hezbollah’s main enemy, dating back to Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 1978. Hezbollah has been blamed for attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets abroad, including the 1994 car bombings of a Jewish community center in Argentina, which killed eighty-five people, and the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in London. Even after Israel officially withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, it continued to clash with Hezbollah, especially in the disputed Shebaa Farms border zone. Periodic conflict between Hezbollah and Israeli forces escalated into a monthlong war in 2006, during which Hezbollah launched thousands of rockets into Israeli territory.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hezbollah



The common denominator is Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

[ancianita]

13. You answered your question. NOW the common denominator is Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Back THEN, as always,

the very reason for Hezbollah's and Hamas' existence is because of the very existence of Israel -- now a state, set in homelands these believer systems had all shared for thousands of years.

When did Palestinians try to drive Jews out of the Middle East? Go back to that point. I don't agree with Bill Maher's take on the state of things very often, but about the Palestinians I do.

When the Shia sect finish driving out non-Muslim believers after driving out the Jews, the Shia sect will go after the Sunni sect. How do I know? I learned that from Muslim members of the Center for Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago; around those years I read the Qur'an at least twice, and got 'the long game,' which is to covert the world to Islam. Only two religions aspire to worldwide spread -- Christianity and Islam. One has historically spread belief by the sword. I'll leave it to you to decide which one used the sword first.

[Uncle Joe]

15. Maher's as usual libertarian point of view is an argument against itself.

He even misrepresents who controls the West Bank and it's not a solid green color, it's a bunch of Palestinian islands surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements.

When were the Jews driven out of Palestine?

Palestine was once a Jewish land, a land that was invaded by muslims, and Jews were forced to flee. Why isn't it given back to the Jews and let the muslims return to their land?
First of all, Palestinians have ancestry from the Ancient Canaanites, just like Jews do. (They also have ancestry from Arabs, who brought Islam with them; just like e.g. European Jews also have European ancestry.)

Second of all, the time of Jewish kingdoms in Israel-Palestine was like 2000 years ago. The Anglo-Saxons didn't even live in England yet; Hungarians didn't live in Hungary yet; etc. When the European Jewish Zionist movement started in the 19th century, Palestine had been home to Palestinians, from time immemorial, either way. (There was also a small non-Zionist Jewish population living in harmony with Palestinians.)

Third of all—the issue now is international law. Whether or not it was morally acceptable in the first place to found Israel (or other settler-colonial countries like Canada, the U.S., and Australia), today it is recognized by e.g. the UN; its legitimate border, pending mutual land swaps, is the Green Line. (Meaning “Israel proper” is Israel; Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank are Palestine; and Israel's civilian settlements inside Palestine are war crimes in violation of the fourth Geneva convention.)

https://www.quora.com/When-were-the-Jews-driven-out-of-Palestine

As for the phrase used "From the river to the sea."

[ancianita]

16. And so what. Don't abstract this. Maher knows the history of Palestine as well as you & better than most Americans.

Last edited Mon Aug 5, 2024, 03:27 AM - Edit history (1)

Your message wants it both ways -- first you say that to defend Israel from Muslim terrorist groups -- Hezbollah & Hamas, whose charters are to obliterate Israel from the Earth -- is genocide against Palestinians; and second, that Israel is to exist according to Green Line agreements set up under international law.

Speaking of which... International law is drawn from biblical law and international law says that.
Biblical law came from the days of Jews' developing a societal order out of their own enslavement -- they came to live under the order commandments, laws, statutes, courts, judges, eyewitness testimony, and justice -- which has become the Western order of law. Not holy books.

But you can't have it both ways. Because the Shia pincer of Iran sends in Hezbollah from the north, Hamas from the south and west, neither one caring what you think about Netanyahu or genocide. They will use whatever politics they see fit to divide support for Israel, anything to reach their mission to end Israel.

When you live in an America bombarded with thousands of rockets and missiles for decades of your life, then you can get back to me about some proper way to save America and Americans.

Otherwise this whole thread is set up by your confounding geopolitical judgment. Bottom line, it doesn't help because it confounds our national integrity as Israel's major ally (and maybe only ally) by treaty against those who themselves have already terrorized America in our lifetime, and have already set up shop in Paraguay to eventually attack us again. Under some common denominator of victimization by the Great Satan and the West.

Islam does not care about international law or the West or its traitors or allies. It has all of eternity to subdue Earth.
You'd do well to read more about it before blaming Israel for existing and how it defends its existence.

[Uncle Joe]

17. A hybrid state is the most logical, just and long term solution as the Professor stated,

and the only way you can change Hamas/Hezbollah charters is to work out a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

You talk about what Islam is, it was democracy in Iran for one until our CIA overthrew it in 1953 and installed the torture loving Shah to power.

That hell on Earth reality for the Iranian people is what fed extremist or fundamentalist Islam in Iran to grow in the first place.

We did that because Iran's democracy was going to nationalize their oil industry.

All that shit came back to haunt us along with the rest of the world and no doubt contributed to Reagan's rise to power as Ted Koppel on ABC counted each and every day that the hostages were held, keeping our whole nation emotionally hostage as well.

Reagan of course started "trickle down economics" which over the past near half century created great wealth disparity and in turn fed *rump's rise to power.

So our democracy and Israel's is now threatened because we overthrew a democracy in Iran for the sake of oil.

[orthoclad]

11. The Mideast Magat

another far-right figurehead

[Mosby]

14. Everything that is happening is the fault of GB, and the UN.

Their colonialism led to this problem, and now we are facing world conflict that might bring down everything, and yet here we are talking about whether a country of 75 years should be destroyed.

Is this liberalism? Is this progressivism?