'IIsrael is not invading Lebanon, it is liberating Lebanon. ”So Known as France's preeminent liberal philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy tells how Israeli tanks cross the border and fighter jets bomb southern villages and residential areas in Beirut. “There are moments in history,” he gleefully said.“Escalation” becomes necessary and a virtue”For Levy, Israel is not only liberating Lebanon, but also much of the Middle East.
Levy is not the only one happy about Israel's escalation of military attacks. For many, Israel is not just for “self-defense”; Words from President Isaac Herzog“To save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization”, The claim resonated by Many of its supporters. And the destruction of Gaza and its hospitals and universities, and the murder of 40,000 people? And in Lebanon, where 2,000 people have been killed in two weeks and a fifth of the population has been displaced? Collateral damage on the way to saving civilization.
I don't need to say this, but it's hard to paint anyone who criticizes Israel's wars in Gaza or Lebanon as supporting Hamas or Hezbollah, or celebrating the massacres of October 7 last year. Since it has become the norm, let me say that what Hamas did was barbaric. As I wrote at the time, “Hamas is both a threat to the Jewish people and a betrayal of the hopes of the Palestinian people.” The same can be said about Hezbollah.
However, until October 7, 2023, Israel's prime minister and most of his government. much more supportive of Hamas More than I ever did or wanted to be. “Anyone who wants to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state must support strengthening Hamas and sending money to Hamas.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at a Likud conference. “To prevent the two-state option, he is trying to turn Hamas into his closest partner,” said Gershon Hakoen, a former Israeli general who has long supported Netanyahu's policies. Hamas is openly the enemy. I'm secretly on your side”
Israel's support for Hamas goes back decades and is an “attempt to fragment and weaken support for the powerful, secular PLO by leveraging competing religious alternatives,” a senior official said. said. CIA agent told UPI More than 20 years ago. This strategy was so successful that Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2006, splitting the Palestinian Authority in two, with Hamas controlling Gaza and Fatah controlling the West Bank.
In recent years, of era of israel observed“Since 2018, Israel has allowed suitcases containing millions of dollars in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its border,” while in effect “launching incendiary balloons and rockets from Gaza.” I'm turning a blind eye to that.” On October 7, the day after the massacre, he added: “The idea of indirectly strengthening Hamas has disappeared.”
Hamas was responsible for the October 7 slaughter. However, Israel supported its development for the express purpose of denying Palestinian statehood. And now, in an attempt to undo its previous actions, it has ravaged Gaza. Israel must implement a “new Nakba” [catastrophe]' argues Hakohen. “Gazans must be expelled Leave their home forever. ”
However cynical as it may be, there was nothing exceptional about Israel's strategy. For decades, Western governments have sought to help pursue their own political objectives, from funding international jihadists to oust France, which had secularized the Afghan Red Army after the 1979 Soviet invasion. tried to use Islam to Encourage the construction of prayer rooms In the words of Paul Dijou, Minister of Immigration in the government of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Islam was described in factories as a “stabilizing factor that keeps believers away from deviance, delinquency, and membership in trade unions and revolutionary parties.” There is. Such policies often created a space in which more radical Islamist movements could flourish. We are still living with the repercussions of this strategy.
Prime Minister Netanyahu's goal in threatening to escalate Israel's war and turn Lebanon into a second Gaza is not to “liberate” anything or anyone, but to maintain control at home and abroad. The lessons of previous invasions of Lebanon (1978, 1982, 2006) should be clear enough. The first two times Israel invaded to confront the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the third time to try to eliminate Hezbollah, which had risen with Iranian support in response to the 1982 invasion and occupation. Each invasion included the 1982 massacre of up to 3,500 Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites in two Beirut refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, by Israel's allied Lebanese Christian Phalangist militias; It featured quite a bit of bloodshed and nothing anyone could call “liberation”. ”.
There is a deeper problem here as well. In modern times, Historian Ronald Schechter writes:“Jews got better at thinking.” [with]” comment Reactions by David Nirenberg In his classic history of “anti-Semitism,” he similarly says, “Modernity thinks with Judaism.” What they meant was that the symbolic role assigned to Jews became a means of addressing broader social problems. Nirenberg writes that “the 'Jewish question' is not simply an attitude toward Jews and their religion, but a way of critically engaging with the world.”
Using “Jews” as a means of understanding the world is, of course, most applicable to anti-Semitism. For anti-Semites, belief in a mythical Jewish power explains the evil in the world. This also applies to many parts of philosophicism. Although the term was originally coined by anti-Semites, it has become more widely used to describe the views of those who particularly admire the Jewish presence in the world.
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And that increasingly applies to perceptions of Israel, which has also acquired symbolic status on both sides of the debate. For many of Israel's opponents, the state has become a totem for much of the evil of the modern world. For supporters of the Jewish state, it is a particularly moral state, charged with the burden of defending civilization against barbarism. One perspective leads to celebrating Hamas's brutal attack on October 7th as “resistance,” while the other sees the destruction of Gaza and the invasion of Lebanon as a necessary defense of Western values and “civilization.” Leads to.
If October 7th was an act of “resistance” and the destruction of Gaza and the atrocities in Lebanon can be ignored as essential steps towards a more civilized world, then we can say “resistance” and “resistance”. I suggest that we need to reconsider what “ means. civilization”.
Kenan Malik is a columnist for the Observer
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