{"id":275917,"date":"2024-09-30T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=275917"},"modified":"2024-09-29T07:29:29","modified_gmt":"2024-09-29T06:29:29","slug":"in-lebanon-carnage-biden-deepens-us-obligation-to-israeli-aggression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/09\/in-lebanon-carnage-biden-deepens-us-obligation-to-israeli-aggression\/","title":{"rendered":"In Lebanon Carnage, Biden Deepens US \u2018Obligation\u2019 to Israeli Aggression"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo by JOSEPH EID\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Israel has killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, emboldening a US-backed war for hegemony in which Arab civilians are an open Israeli target. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

28 Sep 2024 <\/em>– One week after Israel began its US-backed rampage in Gaza last October, President Biden was asked by CBS News if fueling a Middle East conflict on top of the proxy war in Ukraine was \u201cmore than the United States can take on at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Biden shot back<\/a> with indignation. \u201cWe’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history — not in the world, in the history of the world.\u201d Not only does the US \u201chave the capacity to do this,\u201d Biden intoned, \u201cwe have an obligation to. We are the \u2018essential nation\u2019… And if [we] don\u2019t, then who does?\u201d<\/p>\n

In an overlooked comment, Biden gave his blessing not only to an Israeli scorched-earth campaign in Gaza, but Lebanon as well. For Israel, Biden said, \u201cgoing in\u201d and \u201ctaking out the extremists\u201d in \u201cHezbollah… up north\u201d along with \u201cHamas down south… is a necessary requirement.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the first anniversary of Biden\u2019s hegemonic d\u00e9marche approaches next month, the US is playing the \u201cessential\u201d role that he envisioned. Israel\u2019s current bombardment of Lebanon, which has killed (at least) hundreds of people — including Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah — and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, is the direct result of Biden\u2019s self-conceived \u201cobligation\u201d to Israeli aggression.<\/p>\n

Since it began launching rockets at the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms on Oct. 8th<\/sup><\/a> and then expanded its targets to within Israel itself, Hezbollah has stressed that its goal is to pressure Israel into a permanent Gaza ceasefire. Just as Biden proclaims an \u201cobligation\u201d to fuel two regional conflicts, Hezbollah — a group founded in response to Israel\u2019s 1982 invasion of Lebanon — proclaims the same duty to resist Israeli hegemony, which has killed tens of thousands of Lebanese in the last 42 years. Hezbollah\u2019s intervention for Gaza, which displaced tens of thousands in Israel, has been limited in scale. Of more than 10,200 cross-border attacks in the last year, about 81 percent<\/a> were carried out by Israel.<\/p>\n

During this period, the Biden administration has adopted a strategy of pretending to pressure Israel all while offering it the weaponry and diplomatic cover to kill tens of thousands of people in Gaza and make it unlivable for survivors; expand its long-running terror and land theft in the West Bank; regularly bomb Syria; and now pursue its longstanding intent to destroy Hezbollah, the main force in the region that can significantly fight back.<\/p>\n

As in Gaza, Israel is pursuing its goals by terrorizing Lebanon\u2019s civilian population, and not for the first time. It was in Lebanon where Israel formalized a policy of deliberately targeting civilians known as the \u201cDahiya Doctrine\u201d, named after the Beirut suburb pulverized by Israel during its 2006 invasion of Lebanon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened in the Dahiya district of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is shot at,\u201d IDF chief of general staff Gadi Eizenkot, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s war cabinet until recently, explained in a 2008 interview. \u201cWe will subject it to disproportionate force and cause enormous damage and destruction. We don\u2019t consider them to be civilian villages but military bases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Major General Giora Eiland, the influential former head of Israel\u2019s National Security Council, later explained that in future conflicts, \u201cthe suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are the things that can have the most effect on the conduct of Hezbollah.\u201d Accordingly, Eiland advised, the next Israeli assault on Lebanon should \u201cbring about the elimination of the Lebanese military, destruction of infrastructure, and extreme suffering to the civilian population.\u201d In 2006, he noted, \u201c[t]he only good thing that happened…was the relative damage caused to Lebanon\u2019s population,\u201d because the \u201cdestruction of thousands of homes \u2018innocents\u2019 preserved some of Israel\u2019s deterrent power.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, Israel continued its assault on Lebanon\u2019s population by dropping US-made 2,000-pound bombs on at least six residential buildings in Dahiya, killing an unknown number of civilians along with Nasrallah himself.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Biden welcomed Israel\u2019s assassination of the Hezbollah leader as \u201ca measure of justice for his many victims.\u201d Biden made no mention of the many Lebanese civilian victims killed alongside Nasrallah during Israel\u2019s ongoing, US-armed campaign. Biden also affirmed that he \u201cfully supports Israel\u2019s right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups,\u201d and has ordered the Pentagon to \u201cfurther\u00a0enhance the defense posture of U.S. military forces in the Middle East region.\u201d Along with deploying more troops to safeguard Israeli aggression, the US this week handed the Israeli military an additional $8.7 billion<\/a> in weapons. These US weapons supplies, a grateful Israeli Defense Ministry noted last month<\/a>, \u201care crucial for sustaining the IDF\u2019s operational capabilities during the ongoing war.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the umpteenth time, Biden paid to lip service to a negotiated ceasefire, claiming that his \u201caim is to de-escalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means.\u201d Concurrently, maintaining a year-long performance in which the president pretends to be \u201cfrustrated\u201d with Israel while giving it carte blanche to commit mass murder, anonymous Biden aides claimed<\/a> that he was privately \u201cexpressing increased frustration\u201d about being \u201chumiliated\u201d by Netanyahu, who had just abandoned a US-French proposal for a 21-day ceasefire on the Israel-Lebanon border.<\/p>\n

Beyond these ritual face-saving gestures, the Biden administration\u2019s real outlook was quietly relayed to the New York Times. In an article headlined \u201cStrike on Hezbollah Deepens Disconnect Between Biden and Netanyahu<\/a>,\u201d US officials acknowledged that there is in fact no disconnect at all.<\/p>\n

Deep into the article, the Times cited Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called on the White House to \u201cend its counterproductive calls for a cease-fire\u201d and welcomed Nasrallah\u2019s death as \u201ca major step forward for the Middle East.\u201d Inside the Biden administration, the Times reported, \u201cthere were some… who agreed with the latter assessment.\u201d Killing Nasrallah and \u201cwiping out much of Hezbollah\u2019s war-making capacity, could present a once-in-a-generation opportunity to finally break the Iran-backed terrorist group\u2019s stranglehold on Lebanon, some U.S. officials reasoned.\u201d As a result, \u201ca cease-fire deal… could be reached now on more advantageous terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to weakening Hezbollah, these opportunity seizing US officials have ample grounds to be optimistic. Israel\u2019s ability to assassinate Nasrallah and many top deputies in recent weeks, along with the indiscriminate \u201cpager\u201d attacks that wounded and maimed thousands, underscored that Israel has penetrated Hezbollah in unprecedented fashion, with devastating results. Hezbollah\u2019s top ally, Iran, has so far given every indication that it wants to avoid a regional war. And Syria, another key ally in the \u201caxis of resistance\u201d, has been decimated by a decade-long, CIA-led dirty war<\/a> and an ongoing US military occupation\/sanctions regime<\/a> that preserves the suffering.<\/p>\n

But Hezbollah\u2019s supposed \u201cstranglehold on Lebanon\u201d is not the sole product of military power. In a deeply divided country, Hezbollah enjoys a base of support because it has long resisted Israeli aggression against both Lebanon and the Palestinian people. Undoubtedly, there are Lebanese who question Hezbollah\u2019s post-Oct. 7th<\/sup> decision to intervene on Gaza\u2019s behalf. This intervention has not only failed to deter the Israeli assault on the people of Gaza, but has now culminated in Israel expanding its terror campaign deeper into Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Just as Israel and its US sponsor used the Oct. 7th<\/sup> attack to destroy Gaza and restore Israel\u2019s shaken \u201caura of power<\/a>\u201d, they now hope to use Hezbollah\u2019s intervention to wipe it out for good. The calculation in Washington and Tel Aviv is that their joint commitment to aggression against civilians will re-establish \u201cdeterrence\u201d and a ceasefire \u201con more advantageous terms.\u201d Those terms mean a region wherein Hezbollah no longer resists Israeli-US dominance, and ordinary civilians have been sufficiently terrorized into submission.<\/p>\n

Apologists for US-Israeli aggression will argue, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken did Friday, that Israel has the iron-clad \u201cright to deal with existential threats to its security and enemies across its borders with the avowed intent to destroy Israel.\u201d Yet as Hezbollah exemplified in intervening for Gaza, Israel only faces security threats because of its foundational commitment to destroying Palestinians\u2019 right to self-determination and stealing their land. Rather than allow for Palestine\u2019s existence, Israel has opted to ignore countless UN resolutions, international legal opinions, and Arab League peace offers to enforce the world\u2019s longest-running military occupation and assault any force that stands in the way.<\/p>\n

If the US had an obligation to genuine security for everyone, it would join the rest of the world and cease its support for Israeli aggression and occupation. Instead, indifferent to \u2013 if not emboldened by \u2013 the sight of countless more Arab civilians murdered with US-made bombs, Biden has opted to deepen his government\u2019s essential role.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Aaron Mat\u00e9 is a journalist with<\/em> The Grayzone, where he hosts<\/em> \u201cPushback.\u201d He is also a contributor to<\/em> Real Clear Investigations and the temporary co-host of<\/em> \u201cUseful Idiots.\u201d In 2019, Mat\u00e9 won the\u00a0Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media for Russiagate coverage in<\/em> The Nation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 aaronmate.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 Sep 2024 – Israel has killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, emboldening a US-backed war for hegemony in which Arab civilians are an open Israeli target. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":251975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[3300,417,1854,87,865,3339,3264,88,2097,715,767,427,2159,880,70,965],"class_list":["post-275917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-asymmetric-warfare","tag-bullying","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-hezbollah","tag-idf","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-massacre","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine","tag-rogue-states","tag-state-terrorism","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275919,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275917\/revisions\/275919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}