Israel Heads To War in Lebanon
Plus, has America really run out of “good” politicians?
Israel’s security cabinet overnight announced that it had “updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes.”
Shortly thereafter, electronic pagers of Hezbollah members exploded, reportedly injuring or killing hundreds or thousands of operatives of the Iran-backed, Lebanon-based terrorist group. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was reportedly among those injured in what appears to be an impressive technical and intelligence feat by Israel.
On Monday, the chairman and founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, Brigadier General (Reserve) Amir Avivi, spoke publicly of the timing considerations. Winter weather soon approaching will make it easier for Hezbollah to hide, and harder for the Israeli air force, tanks, and armed personnel carriers to operate in southern Lebanon. “100 percent the weather favors them, not us, and this is why we need to operate now,” Avivi said. “We will need to be pro-active and do something now.”
“What’s right for Israel is to do a full-scale attack on Hezbollah,” Avivi said. He said it is “best to do it now” before the Jewish holidays.
“If we won’t attack first, Iran and Hezbollah will attack us,” Avivi said. He said Israel faces a choices between a “Six Day War scenario,” in which it launches a preemptive attack and wins a swift victory as in 1967, or a “Yom Kippur War scenario,” in which it is surprised by an enemy attack and takes heavy casualties as in 1973.
Avivi said the Biden-Harris administration is trying to prevent Israel from taking action before the November election. A Pentagon-issued readout of a call between Defense Secretary Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Gallant said Austin said “Israel should give diplomatic negotiations time to succeed, noting the devastating consequences that escalation would have on the people of Israel, Lebanon, and the broader region.”
Avivi said the Israel public is mixed between feeling “very resolute” and wanting “decisive victory” and concern about coming under attack. He said the country needed to “believe that God is with us.”
If the beeper attack is indeed not a standalone operation but rather a prelude to a wider air and ground offensive along the lines Avivi describes, the economic and political implications could be significant.
Vice President Harris will be caught between public pressure on Israel that could hurt her with Jewish and other pro-Israel voters and images of bombing and suffering in Lebanon that could hurt her with anti-Israel voters. Trump may blame Biden and Harris for mismanaging the situation and promise to restore peace. Gasoline and oil prices may rise in response to the crisis, reinforcing voter concerns about inflation.
In the Israeli political context, a swift victory over Hezbollah in Lebanon could put Netanyahu in a better position going into the anniversary of October 7 than he’d otherwise be in. Yet Israel’s past experience in Lebanon wars, even when it has lots of technological military advantages, has been that ending them is harder than starting them. That third scenario—not a Six Day War scenario or Yom Kippur War scenario but a Lebanon War of 1982 scenario—may help explain in part why Prime Minister Netanyahu has been reluctant, at least until now, to greenlight a ground invasion.
Bret Stephens sums up the presidential election: Bret Stephens says in the New York Times: “If Trump wins the election, I’ll feel sick. If Harris wins, I’ll feel scared. … A Trump victory means the country is again going to go crazy with all the cultural furies he unleashes, both for and against him. A Harris victory means four more years of misbegotten economic policies, like the threat to put controls on prices some federal bureaucrat deems to be too high. A Trump victory is dreadful for Ukraine. A Harris victory could be terrible for Israel. A Trump victory empowers people who don’t accept the results of an election. A Harris victory empowers a candidate who has never won a presidential primary and whose supporters want to jail their political opponent.”
Stephens is conversing with Gail Collins, but if I were in the conversation, I’d urge him to cheer up. If Trump wins the election, I’ll be delighted that voters punished the Biden-Harris administration for fueling inflation with excessive federal spending and for a weak foreign policy that abandoned Afghanistan and allowed Iran and its proxies to attack Israel and international shipping. I’ll also be happy that voters rejected “lock him up” and “raise taxes on the rich” as political tactics. If Harris wins the election, I’ll be happy that America has its first woman and Indian-American president, and that voters rejected, in Trump, a candidate who threw in with the neo-con-bashers so ardently that Vice President Cheney endorsed his opponent.
Stephens’s gloominess is on display also later in the same conversation: “My question is, Why does America no longer seem to have any good politicians?” Stephens asks. “You can now go back and watch politicians from two or three generations ago discuss the issues of the day: For instance, Ronald Reagan debating George H.W. Bush on the subject of immigration — which they both favored — during the 1980 G.O.P. primary campaign, or Richard Nixon debating John F. Kennedy on foreign policy, or listening to Robert F. Kennedy reciting Aeschylus from memory in his heartbreaking eulogy for Martin Luther King Jr. They’re all Gullivers compared to today’s Lilliputians.”
I don’t agree with Stephens that America no longer seems “to have any good politicians.” On the Democratic side, Senator Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York have been exemplary in fighting against anti-Israel tendencies within their party. On the Republican side, Speaker Johnson managed to win Democratic support to stay in office, and shepherded to passage aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan that sent a message of American global leadership and strength. Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx has been heroic on the issue of antisemitism in the universities, and Senator Cotton has been a stalwart leader for Republicans on defense and national security issues. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have been independent voices for those who don’t feel well served by either major political party and have at times helped tug the Democrats away from their more extreme leftist positions. The chairman of the House appropriations committee, Rep. Tom Cole, is an intelligent, thoughtful, and widely respected legislator. In Virginia, Governor Youngkin has set a tone of civility, humility, and graciousness that is rare and welcome in our politics, and his fellow Virginia Republicans, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears and Attorney General Jason Miyares, are also impressive. Earle-Sears may have issued the single best reaction to the death of Hersh Goldberg-Polin: “Hamas must be hunted down until every last one of them is dead and their operations are annihilated!” The Black Republicans in the House—John James, Burgess Owens, Wesley Hunt, Byron Donalds—are refreshing in their independent-mindedness. Rep. Elise Stefanik may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but, together with Chairwoman Foxx, she took out three Ivy League presidents, which in terms of results, is something to reckon with. The lieutenant governor of Florida, Jeanette Nuñez, is an effective communicator. A Democratic member of the New Jersey state assembly, Alexander “Avi” Schnall, is early in what may prove to be a promising career.
I’m probably forgetting some. If you can think of any “good politicians,” feel free to add them in the comments. As for the politicians Stephens uses as yardsticks—Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Nixon, RFK and JFK—they all had their scandals and flaws. I’m a huge admirer of both Reagan and of JFK—I wrote a book about JFK called JFK, Conservative— but they all had their setbacks and plenty of people in the press and the universities who intensely disliked them at various points during their careers. Robert F. Kennedy may have spoken eloquently after King’s assassination, but as attorney general he was wiretapping King’s phone and tried to discourage the march on Washington. Nixon had Watergate, JFK had the Bay of Pigs, George H.W. Bush broke his “read my lips” tax promise.
Foreign students fueling anti-Israel protests: Jay Greene writes in Tablet: “At a certain level of foreign enrollment, our leading universities stop seeing themselves as the incubators of the American elite and start seeing themselves as incubators of a global elite, which sometimes involves teaching hatred of America and its values.” He goes on: “Universities with a critical mass of international students have hosted many more anti-Israel protests than universities where foreign enrollment is more moderate.” If you include “optional practical training,” “Columbia University now has almost two-thirds of its total enrollment from abroad,” Greene writes. The Harvard Kennedy School says its student population is 56 percent from outside the United States.
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I might have added Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to the list, but after Raimondo defended Harris' avoidance of interviews by saying "She has a punishing schedule" my respect for Raimondo dropped substantially.