Hamas and Hezbollah merely ‘attack’ places in Israel, but when the IDF responds, Western media invariably say Israel has ‘escalated’ the violence.
By Hugh Fitzgerald, FrontPage Magazine
One more trenchant observation by British journalist Brendan O’Neill: Hamas and Hezbollah merely “attack” places in Israel, but when the IDF responds, the Western media invariably describe the Jewish state as having “escalated” the violence. More on this verbal undermining of Israel can be found here: “Why is it only ‘escalation’ when Israel retaliates?,” by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, July 29, 2024:
…We see this time and again in the discussion of Israel. Attacks on Israel by Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis are seen as bad, sure, but it is Israel’s response that is truly feared, that is fretted over as potentially apocalyptic.
Even following Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October, in which it slaughtered more Jews in one day than anyone else had since the Nazis, the woke lost more sleep over Israel’s promise of ‘mighty vengeance’ than they did over Hamas’s fascistic terror.
When, earlier this month, Israel attacked Houthi bases in Yemen following a Houthi attack on Tel Aviv that killed a 50-year-old man, the UN droned on about the ‘urgent need to avoid regional escalation’. And now it is Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s barbarism, rather than Hezbollah’s barbarism, that seems to exercise the angst of the righteous of the West.
The truth is that it is Hezbollah that ‘escalated’ tensions – and ruthlessly so.
Since the 7 October pogrom, Hezbollah has fired an untold number of missiles at Israel in solidarity with its fellow anti-Semitic Iranian stooges in Hamas. Swathes of northern Israel have been set alight by Hezbollah rockets. An estimated 60,000 Israelis have had to evacuate their homes.
And now we’ve had the deadliest Hezbollah assault of the post-October moment. Israel should ‘show restraint’? It has. If it now decides not to, if it now decides that the displacement of tens of thousands of its citizens and the massacre of a dozen of its kids is something that must be forcefully confronted, could we blame it?
The treatment of Israel as the only true escalator of tensions in the Middle East is so telling. It speaks to the double bigotry of Israelophobia, where Israel is viewed as the region’s sole autonomous actor whose every military antic threatens to unleash apocalypse, while the other side is infantilized, reduced to the level of missile-firing overgrown children who cannot truly be held responsible for what they do. Even when what they do is escalation.
It is this dual demonization of the Jewish State and infantilization of its enemies that gives rise to the skewed discussion we see today. Which leads to a situation where even Israel’s response to the murder of its children is seen as more troubling than the murder of the children. The West’s viewing of the Middle East through identitarian goggles has blinded it to the truth – and to morality.
We have just seen, yet again, this “escalation” accusation flung at Israel in all the mainstream media, and in the statements from Western officials, including the American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Everyone was talking about the need for Israel not to “escalate the conflict” by hitting back at Hezbollah after it murdered twelve Israeli children.
Biden called Netanyahu to urge him not to “escalate” the conflict, which means, we are given to understand, the IDF must avoid hitting Beirut, even though southern Beirut is where Hezbollah has its headquarters, and most of its fighters, and its vast storehouses of rockets from Iran.
Biden was not the only one trying to hold Israel back from “escalating” the violence, presumably by not hitting targets that might really cause pain to Hezbollah, but be satisfied with a limited attack on Hezbollah, avoiding Beirut, so that the terror group would respond to it with a single barrage of rockets, and thus, mirabile dictu, that feared “escalation” by Israel that so alarms everyone would be avoided. In other words, let’s try to constrain the IDF, even though Hezbollah has become ever more devastating in its attacks, with the latest on a Majdal Shams soccer pitch causing the largest loss of Israeli life since October 7. There must be no “escalation” by Israel.
One might note conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has already “escalated.” It “escalated” beginning decades ago, when the most malign anti-Israel and antisemitic country in the world, the Islamic Republic of Iran, started to construct its ring of fire — a succession of proxies who would surround Israel and make life hell for the Israelis.
Tehran has provided financing and weapons — including 200,000 rockets — to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and much lesser amounts of both to Hamas in Gaza, to the Houthis in Yemen, to the Alawite-run army in Syria, and to Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq. This has led to Israel having had to absorb rocket attacks from all four of these groups, while so far, except in the obvious case of Hamas, the IDF has in fact held back from the kind of damage it could inflict, because it has chosen to listen to American off telling the IDF not to “escalate.” Every attack by those proxies is described almost as if it is to be expected — after all, Israel is, according to much of the world, “occupying Palestinian land,” it would not be right for Israel to respond too strongly, thereby “forcing” Hamas to strike again, with even greater force this time.
When Israel does respond to the Hezbollah attack that killed 12 Druze children at Majdal Shams, the IDF must include among its targets the rockets hidden in southern Beirut, to make a dent in the huge numbers that Hezbollah now possesses. And again Israel will be told by Biden and Blinken and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the latest entrant in the beating-up-on-Israel contest, Kamala Harris, that “Israel must at once halt its escalation in Lebanon. That is the only way to avoid an all out war.” And the media will dutifully repeat this insensate call for Israel to respond so weakly that it will make no impression on Hezbollah. But with 80,000 of its citizens having left their homes in northern Israel to avoid Hezbollah rockets, Israel had no choice.
After I wrote the above, the glad news arrived of the targeted killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, by an airstrike on a house in the middle of Tehran. This followed the killing of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. Israel, some will say, has now “escalated” the conflict. Does anyone of sense think that to be true?
I predict that after all the bloodcurdling warnings by Hamas that it will inflict a terrible vengeance on Israel for the death of Haniyeh, Hamas will instead lob a handful of rockets into Israel, and hope that Israel doesn’t, as Blinken and Harris and Guterres say, “escalate.”