Infantilizing Hezbollah

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, September 20, 2024

 

This morning, while perambulating the canines, I listened to this segment on NPR’s Morning Edition, where I am an occasional guest. Leila Fadel interviewed an eye surgeon who has been doing gruesome work in the wake of Israel’s “Paging Hezbollah” attack. 

 

Here’s the first 20 seconds or so. (I transcribed it from the audio myself. It doesn’t appear on the NPR website, which they referred us back to when we pointed this out.) But by all means, listen to the whole thing: 

 

Overnight Israel launched a wave of fresh airstrikes against Southern Lebanon. This after the leader of the militant and political group Hezbollah said the rigging of pagers and handheld radios into tiny bombs that exploded across the country in the hands and pockets of people shopping and going about their daily lives amounted to a declaration of war from Israel.

 

A reasonable person who only listened to this interview, in its entirety, would reasonably assume that Israel somehow detonated pagers in Lebanon almost at random and for no stated reason. The only thing—again, according to this report—that linked the victims was that they were in Lebanon and they possessed these pagers. They were just going on about their “daily lives” when Israel managed to make them explode. 

 

If that were the sum of the story, the Iranian Foreign Ministry would be right to proclaim this was “an example of mass murder.” It would mean that Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of what NPR calls “a militant and political group” would be right to declare Israel’s actions an act of war. Hell, I’ll go further, and just concede that it was an act of war. (We’ll come back to that.)

 

But there are some things left out from this segment.

 

Hezbollah’s cold-blooded aspirations.

 

Let’s start with the word “terrorist.” 

 

Calling Hezbollah a terrorist group is not pro-Israel editorializing. The United States, United Kingdom, Arab League, Switzerland, Bahrain, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Germany, the Netherlands, and numerous organizations have designated it a terrorist organization. Other entities have merely labeled its “military wing” a terrorist group. These include the European Union, France, and Kosovo. 

 

The primary reason Hezbollah, founded in 1982, has been designated a terrorist organization is that it is a terrorist organization. In April 1983, it blew up the American embassy in Beirut, killing 49 staffers. In October of that year, it blew up the American and French Marine barracks, killing 299 people. The next year it blew up a restaurant in Spain near an American airbase, killing 18 American servicemen. It used a car bomb on the American embassy annex, killing 11 people and injuring 58. Then it hijacked a Kuwaiti plane, killing four. In 1996 it used a truck bomb at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. Air Force personnel and injuring another 372. In 2005, it assassinated Rafic Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon.

 

I could go on, but it would take too long. In the years since its founding as a terrorist proxy of Iran, Hezbollah has killed Saudis, Americans, and most of all Jews. And not just in the Middle East or Israel itself. Perhaps most infamously, in 1994 it blew up a Jewish community center in Argentina, killing 85 people. It has targeted—and killed—Jews around the globe. All of the hair-splitting in the West about “Zionists,” not Jews, being the enemy is a nonsensical distinction for Hezbollah. 

 

But let’s get more up-to-date. Hezbollah’s official position is that Israel must be destroyed. Unlike Hamas—which also says Israel must be destroyed—Hezbollah isn’t resisting an “occupation.” Israel makes no claims on Lebanese territory and is not occupying any (and, contrary to a lot of ignorami, the Lebanese aren’t Palestinians). Even the U.N. agrees that Israel withdrew from Lebanese territory in 2000. In short, Hezbollah doesn’t want “peace in the region.” It doesn’t want Israelis and Palestinians to live side-by-side with recognized borders, etc. It wants to see Israelis expelled or extinguished. 

 

And, it acts on these aspirations. 

 

Just one day after Hamas launched its terrorist assault on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah started launching—even more—rockets into northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas. It has continued to do so for nearly a year, causing roughly 100,000 Israelis to leave their homes. 

 

Which brings me back to this “act of war” nonsense. When you are in a war, lots of your actions are “acts of war.” When Ukraine launches missiles at Russian forces, inside Ukraine or Russia, it is an act of war. And Ukraine is entirely right and justified for its acts of war. Likewise, when Hezbollah launches rockets at Israelis—civilians or military assets—that is an act of war. And when Israel bombs launch sites or otherwise strikes back, that too is an act of war. And, Israel is entirely justified in doing so. Acts of war during a war are like acts of eating during a meal. 

 

In a brilliant operation, it managed to boobytrap pagers that belonged to Hezbollah militants and commanders, aka terrorists. It detonated them and killed or wounded some 3,000 people, the overwhelming majority of them members of Hezbollah. There are reports, though not entirely confirmed, that the toll was far worse for Hezbollah than initial reports (including many from the terrorist organization itself) suggest. According to alleged internal Hezbollah documents leaked by Saudi intelligence, 879 of its members were killed in the communication equipment explosions, including 131 Iranians and 79 Yemenis. Among the dead are 291 senior Hezbollah officials. A senior Israeli military official says the entire senior leadership of the elite (terrorist) Radwan force was later eliminated by an airstrike, according to Axios’ Barak Ravid.

 

This is what some military strategists would describe as “awesome.”

 

Yes, it’s true. Some of these Hezbollah officials were shopping and going on with their daily life. But if you had a pager that you didn’t get from the Hezbollah supply depot, your pager didn’t explode—and won’t explode. You wouldn’t know this from that NPR report (though in fairness, other reporting has been clear about this fact). You certainly wouldn’t know this from anti-Israel Twitter. “Just an fyi, Israel blew up a bunch of doctors, medical workers, teachers and children in Lebanon today,” Remzi Kenazi a Palestinian resistance poet posted. “They targeted a brand of pager that wasn’t exclusively held by Hezbollah, and indiscriminately attacked civilians in the process. Israel will do anything to push regional war.”

 

This is a lie. 

 

Israel dares to defend itself.

 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is appalled by this operation. “Israel’s pager attack in Lebanon detonated thousands of handheld devices across a slew of public spaces, seriously injuring and killing innocent civilians,” she announced on Twitter. “This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines US efforts to prevent a wider conflict. Congress needs a full accounting of the attack, including an answer from the State Department as to whether any US assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology.” Lame duck (heh) Rep. Jamal Bowman agrees. “Israel’s pager attacks in Lebanon have injured thousands and led to the death of innocent civilians, including multiple children. This attack not only falls in clear violation of international law but also further escalates a brewing regional conflict.”

 

This is not a violation of international law. It’s a violation of the unwritten law that says Israel can’t—or shouldn’t—defend itself. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t condemn Hezbollah when it dropped a bomb on a bunch of Druze kids playing soccer. But a targeted strike on members of a terrorist group, a terrorist group with gallons of American blood on its hands, arouses rage and indignation from her. Are bombs dropped indiscriminately on Israelis not violations of international law? Are they not efforts to kill innocent people just going about their daily life? Do the Druze celebrating the “Paging Hezbollah” operation not understand the situation on the ground?

 

Consider the counterfactual. If Israel really took the gloves off and chose to drop bombs on Hezbollah positions in Beirut, it would be justified in doing so. That course of action would be justified even if it killed a great many civilians, as regrettable as that would be. It should be said that such a retaliation wouldn’t be as ugly as similar actions in Gaza because Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon aren’t as densely populated or as intermingled with civilian institutions—schools, hospitals, etc.—as Hamas is. It would certainly lead to a lot of carnage.

 

But you can be sure if Israel simply bombed the crap out of Hezbollah a lot more innocent civilians would have been killed. And you can be even more sure that Cortez, Bowman, et al would be decrying Israel’s “indiscriminate” and “excessive” response to, again, the constant barrage of rockets and missiles aimed at Israel. One can even imagine them saying, “Why can’t Israel be more precise?” or “Israel doesn’t care about collateral damage.”

 

But when Israel pulls off a maneuver that is unprecedentedly precise and surgical in its minimization of collateral damage, they’re still the bad guys. According to the laws of war and common sense, Israel would be entirely justified to send commandos or bombs after every Hezbollah senior official it could identify. Instead, it blew up their pagers. A few tragic innocents, including a little girl who apparently grabbed her father’s pager, were killed. That’s horrible. 

 

You know what would have prevented her death? If Hezbollah wasn’t—in solidarity with Hamas murderers and rapists—committing acts of war daily in its effort to destroy Israel. If her father hadn’t joined a terrorist organization, he would have dramatically reduced the chances that his daughter would have tragically died. 

 

The reason so many people are deceitfully claiming this was a wanton and indiscriminate act of aggression is that they need it to be. If you concede that this is a retaliation against a terrorist organization for its acts of war, you’re conceding that Israel is in the right. Every time Israel responds to acts of war and terror against Israel, the clock starts over and Israel’s response is deemed “provocative” or “unjustified.” If I punch you in the face, and you punch back, you didn’t start the fight. And if I swing at you repeatedly, but you use your “Iron Dome Technique” kung fu to block the punches, you’re still justified in throwing a punch. If the Ukrainians figured out a way to make the pagers of senior Russian military commanders in Ukraine explode, would you be similarly appalled? If the answer is yes, okay. If not, why not?

 

I think the real objection to Israel’s Beeper King gambit is that it succeeded. It illustrates, in miniature, the animus toward Israel that suffuses debates about Israel. That it’s successful, democratic, prosperous, competent, and determined to defend itself is considered unfair and embarrassing to people who, at some level, would just like to see Israel’s enemies win.