02/10/2024

WEDNESDAY | OCT 2, 2024

10

Israel’s delusion of victory

I T is a heck of a way to celebrate, isn’t it? Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s commander, is dead, or so the headlines screamed. The response in Israel? They are getting drunk on arak and high on the fumes of military power. On Channel 12’s Meet the Press , Amit Segal and Ben Caspit raised a glass because: Why not mark an assassination with a toast? Paz Robinson, that sharp-tongued Channel 13 reporter, is handing out chocolates in Karmiel, left-wing branding be damned. Even Channel 14’s notoriously bullish The Patriots opened with a fanfare of song, led by the ever-patriotic Yinon Magal. It was a circus of jubilation, a macabre carnival of misplaced triumph. Even Yair Golan, who once held court as one of Israel’s most progressive voices, the guy from Meretz, joined the party. The man practically tweeted victory confetti: “A new era has begun in the Middle East.” By “new era”, did he mean a cocktail of blood and vengeance, and a war that just will not quit? Israel has always had a thing for celebrating “victories” with the gusto of a sports team that just won the World Cup, but the reality is far more tragic than triumphant. The streets may be filled with cheers and songs, but somewhere beneath the surface, something far more sinister is brewing. It is easy to get lost in the euphoria of a victory lap, but history, as it often does, will remind us that these moments of jubilation come at an unfathomable cost. The Israeli Air Force made sure the world saw their version of the parade. Jets screaming out of the Negev, pilots and commanders trading lines like characters in a gritty war movie. “You’ve delivered a show of victory here,” Major General Tomer Bar chimed on the radio, his voice dripping with that old familiar pride. The pilot, high on adrenaline and perhaps something else, shot back: “We’ll reach everyone, everywhere.” And why not? When the limits are erased, the script has no lines to follow. Just action. And still, they wanted more. Haaretz whispered what everyone was thinking: It is time for the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) to march into southern Lebanon, and take advantage of Hezbollah’s dazed and confused moment before Iran restocks the missile

shelves. Don’t forget the West Bank – 3,000 soldiers already shipped off to make sure that front stays hot, too. War on three fronts? Sure, why not? Israel’s winning all of them, or so they think. They have cracked open a bottle of optimism and drank it down in one go, blissfully ignoring the hangover creeping over the horizon. There is this image of Benjamin Netanyahu, standing tall at the United Nations General Assembly, middle finger raised to the world. To Joe Biden. To restraint. Three times now, he has told the US to shove it – reoccupying Rafah, rejecting ceasefires, igniting Lebanon – and three times he has walked away unscathed. Israel is drunk, stumbling headfirst into a world where consequences are for other nations. Khalil Gibran once wrote, “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” There is a cruel irony in this quote today. In trying to erase its enemies, Israel may only be etching deeper scars into the souls of the Arab world, scars that will one day emerge stronger, angrier and more unyielding than ever before. For every Nasrallah taken down, a new leader will rise – one more radical, more driven and more prepared to die than the last. And Israel, with all its might, will have nothing to show for it but more suffering. This is not a story of victory, it is the making of a never ending tragedy. Meanwhile, pilots and commanders have been handed the keys to the war machine. No chain of command, no moral dilemmas and no pesky thoughts about collateral damage. The red lines have dissolved. Civilians? Just part of the scenery now. Children? Barely a footnote. Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank – they are all fair game, open targets. Israel can starve a nation and still hold its head high. Torture and rape behind prison walls. Doesn’t even cause a ripple in the public consciousness anymore. They have killed 300 people with strikes on four apartment blocks. And the world? Mostly silent. And this silence is perhaps the most deafening part of it all. Western leaders, who otherwise claim to uphold human rights and dignity, are now suspiciously quiet. The images of dead children, flattened homes and cries of mothers cradling the bodies of their infants are all seen as collateral damage

In trying to erase its enemies, Israel may only be etching deeper scars into the souls of the Arab world, scars that will one day emerge stronger, angrier and more unyielding than ever before. – REUTERSPIC

Palestine. That scar will not heal until the occupation ends, no matter how many Nasrallahs or militants fall. Israel can reoccupy the ground and claim a piece of southern Lebanon as its new fortress, but no war, no assassination and no airstrike can erase the Palestinian cause. For every bomb they drop and every life they take, they are only sowing the seeds of the next conflict, the next uprising and the next war. The root of this chaos is not Hezbollah or Hamas. It is the occupation that fuels it all. Today, Israel can celebrate and pat themselves on the back for killing 1,000 Lebanese, 50 of them children. They revel in their achievements, blissfully unaware of the monster they are feeding. Victory? Hardly. This is a nation drunk on power, and the hangover will come eventually. And when it does, future generations of Israelis will be left to pay the price for a national mission built on the lives of those who dared to stand in its way. The writer is an entrepreneur with a passion for politics and international affairs. As a world traveller, his global experiences enhance his photography and literary work, providing unique insights and perspectives. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

in the great geopolitical chessboard. No one in power dares to speak out against it for fear of angering a powerful ally or upsetting the delicate political balance. So, the world watches, mouth clamped shut as war crimes unfold before its eyes, each one more grotesque than the last. The tragedy, though, is that this is not a victory. It is a slow, spiralling descent into the void. Killing leaders and commanders does not erase the movement. Nasrallah’s death does not erase Hezbollah, it simply opens the door for the next generation, angrier and less restrained. This is no new era. This is an old one with a fresh coat of blood. Hezbollah did not want this war, not like this. Their strikes were signals, not death blows. But Israel, blinded by its delusions of grandeur, has transformed this conflict into something far more existential. They have written Hezbollah’s playbook for them, just as they did for Hamas, just as they have done time and again. And so the cycle spins. The cruel irony? The more Israel flexes its muscles, the further it pushes real peace out of reach. It can bomb Lebanon into rubble, reoccupy Gaza and destroy homes and futures but it cannot wipe away the heart of the issue: