There is symmetry in all of these wars. Israel plays the role of the victim even while preparing to attack. In 1948 Chaim Weizmann talked of extermination while assuring the Americans behind the scenes that the Arab armies counted for nothing. Israel's arrogance was checked in the first week of the 1973 war, with humiliation at the hands of Hizbullah waiting in 2000 and 2006. Yet if there is a learning curve Israel does not see it, an example of what long ago US Senator J. William Fulbright called the "arrogance of power."
Israel applies the same tactics at the micro as well as the macro level. On the West Bank and Gaza, it murders and massacres, and when there is a Palestinian response it has its rationale for more crushing blows. On the West Bank, this usually takes the form of enlarging settlements or building new ones.
From the Zionist point of view, this has been a good year. Following the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel by the UAE and Bahrain, the UAE has gone as far as blocking entry visas to the citizens of a dozen Muslim countries while allowing Israelis visa-free entry. Talks in Saudi Arabia between Netanyahu and Muhammad bin Salman - apparently arranged without the knowledge of the king - open the way to the establishment of diplomatic relations, although for the time being this is not expected. MBS can give Israel most of what it wants without needing to come into the open, and as the nominal custodian of the two holy places such a move would enrage Muslims around the world, with explosive consequences possible at the time of the hajj.
Israel's strategic advances also include the commercial, military, and strategic relationship it is establishing in the eastern Mediterranean with Greece and the Greek government of southern Cyprus, which has already allowed Israeli military units to train on the island because of the similarity of the topography to southern Lebanon. Successfully playing off fears of Iran in the Gulf, Israel plays off Greek rivalry with Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean.
Able to attack from the very centre of the central Arab lands - occupied Palestine - Israel is now steadily moving into a position that will eventually enable it to threaten Arab states and Iran from the periphery, from the gulf in the southwest and from the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean. It has pushed these doors open and on the basis of all its past behavior, it will keep pushing until it gets what it wants.
The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has antecedents dating back to the barrel bomb murders in Palestinian markets in the 1930s, the assassination of Lord Moyne in Cairo on November 6, 1944, the blowing up of the King David Hotel in 1946, the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948 and the massacres and destruction that have marked the zionist presence in the Middle East ever since. Whether the enemy is a state, an organization, or an individual, the enemy must be destroyed. The standing refusal of the international 'community' to punish Israel for any of these crimes only encourages the zionist state to go still further.
Speaking to the House of Commons after the murder of Lord Moyne, Churchill, a strong advocate of Zionism all along, remarked that "If there to be any hope of a peaceful and successful future for Zionism these wicked activities must cease and those responsible for them must be destroyed root and branch." [2] These wicked activities have never ceased, those responsible for them have never been destroyed root and branch, the smoke of the assassins' pistols now hangs over an entire region and Zionism has produced generations of criminals fully worthy of Nazi Germany.
No state can endlessly endure Israel's provocations. Iran and Hizbullah are playing the long game, compared to Netanyahu's greed for instant satisfaction but at some point, there will be a limit to what they can endure and then there will be war, possibly if not probably the most devastating in the modern history of the Middle East. What will the international 'community' say then? It will be far too late to regret that it should have done something to stop Israel earlier.
Endnotes
[1] Catrina Stewart 'Sir Winston Churchill: Zionist hero,' Independent, November 3, 2012
[2] 'Palestine (Terrorist Activities) in the House of Commons at 12am on 17th November, 1944.' theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=1944-11-17a.2242.1 For more on Commons debate on the murder of Lord Moyne, see also api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1944/nov/07/assassination-of-lord-moyne#S5CV0404PO_19441107_HOC_294
Churchill assured the House that the Zionists had lost a good friend in Lord Moyne. According to Yitzhak Shamir, however, one of the architects of the murder, and a terrorist who later became an Israeli Prime Minister (like Menahim Begin), Moyne was an anti-semite who did not believe in a Jewish nation or a Jewish people. See Joanna Seidel 'Yitzhak Shamir: why we killed Lord Moyne,' Times of Israel, July 5, 2012.
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