{"id":19432,"date":"2024-10-16T11:04:56","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T08:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=19432"},"modified":"2024-12-03T14:15:17","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T12:15:17","slug":"a-letter-to-lebanon-could-northern-arrows-free-lebanon-from-hezbollah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/a-letter-to-lebanon-could-northern-arrows-free-lebanon-from-hezbollah\/","title":{"rendered":"A Letter to Lebanon: Could Northern Arrows Free Lebanon from Hezbollah?"},"content":{"rendered":"Center Field: A breakthrough in Beirut could lead to a regional turnaround with Tehran, something in everyone’s best interest.<\/strong><\/p>\n

To our Lebanese neighbors, Israeli troops finally entered southern Lebanon following some 12,500 projectiles \u2013 missiles, rockets, and drones \u2013 launched at the Jewish state from your country since last October. About 60,000 Israelis from the North have been displaced and dozens killed, including 12 Druze kids just enjoying soccer on a Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

This incursion followed a two-week campaign humiliating Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist organization that ruined your state and made your lives miserable. Let me be clear: Israelis are fighting most reluctantly. We tried avoiding this conflagration for 18 years \u2013 and have nothing against the Lebanese people. But ask yourselves: What would you do in our shoes?<\/p>\n

In that spirit of friendship, as a historian, I propose renaming Israel\u2019s northern clashes. The IDF codenamed the 1982 war \u201cOperation Peace for Galilee\u201d; it became known as \u201cThe Lebanon War.\u201d That made the operation in 2006 \u201cThe Second Lebanon War,\u201d and this, alas, \u201cThe Third Lebanon War.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, 1982\u2019s conflict should be \u201cThe War with the PLO\u2019s State within a State\u201d or just \u201cThe PLO War,\u201d to be catchy. The 2006 conflict should be \u201cThe First Hezbollah War,\u201d which Hezbollah began by murdering three Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two reservists. That makes this conflict \u201cThe Second Hezbollah War,\u201d or most accurately, \u201cThe First Iranian War.\u201d<\/p>\n

Technically, these were \u201cmilitary operations\u201d because war means violent conflict between two states. That helps explain our sympathy for you. In 1982, the Palestine Liberation Organization dominated southern Lebanon, brutalizing you, and undermining Lebanese stability. I need not tell you how many Lebanese suffered when the Palestinians took over and devastated parts of your homeland. Subsequently, the Hezbollah cancer spread so deep in your country that it\u2019s made Lebanese sovereignty a joke.<\/p>\n

‘We’re not at war with you. We’re at war with Hezbollah’<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps telling the Lebanese people, as he said at the UN, \u201cWe\u2019re not at war with you. We\u2019re at war with Hezbollah, which has hijacked your country and threatens to destroy ours.\u201d And that\u2019s why I hope that if Israel wins decisively, the international community backs you up boldly and creatively, empowering new Lebanese leaders to restore your country\u2019s sovereignty, dignity, and prosperity.<\/p>\n

The international community can finally justify itself here. Instead of yapping \u201cceasefire, ceasefire\u201d whenever Israel defends itself, the French and Americans should use their deep ties in Lebanon to muscle out the terrorists and gangsters draining your country. With moral clarity and courage worldwide, most Lebanese could soon be thanking us for liberating you from Hezbollah\u2019s grip.<\/p>\n

This Beirut Breakthrough could be the formula for a Tehran Turnaround, too. Israel is poised to counterattack Iran. Even though I, as an American historian, think America should be taking the initiative to show \u201cyou don\u2019t mess with America or its allies,\u201d maybe America and the world can follow-up effectively.<\/p>\n

The mullahs know they\u2019re weak. Since the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, they expanded their influence via proxies while trying to keep conflict from Iranian soil. If Israel humiliates them, the international community should stir internal Iranian dissidents to try to collapse the regime from within.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, while hoping for peace everywhere, I couldn\u2019t write a similar letter to my Palestinian neighbors \u2013 nor could most Israelis. We know that hundreds of Gazans also rampaged on October 7, following the better-trained Hamas terrorists, including Palestinians who had worked on the kibbutzim they pillaged.<\/p>\n

We have long seen Palestinians delightedly distribute candy whenever Palestinian terrorists murder Israeli children, women, and men. We read the polls showing the high percentage of Palestinians in Gaza, the disputed territories, and worldwide who approved of October 7\u2019s sadism. And we hear the Palestinians\u2019 blood-curdling cry justifying the mass murder of Jews on campus in downtown districts: \u201cGlobalize the Intifada!\u201d and \u201cFrom the River to the Sea!\u201d<\/p>\n

Like your parents and grandparents, older Israelis once called Lebanon \u201cthe Switzerland of the Middle East\u201d and Beirut \u201cthe Paris of the Middle East.\u201d Lebanon never loomed large in Israeli demonology. In the mid-1970s, most would have bet on Israel making peace with Lebanon long before it made peace with Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco \u2013 or negotiated with Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

Tragically, first, the PLO, then Hezbollah, trashed your country. Even after the Second Lebanon War, er, the First Hezbollah War, Hezbollah treated the international community as contemptuously as it treated the Lebanese people. In 2006, a UN Security Council Resolution required Hezbollah to redeploy away from Israel\u2019s border. Instead, those terrorists spent 18 years fortifying themselves along the border \u2013 and under it, in tunnels \u2013 while amassing over 150,000 rockets, all purchased to kill Israelis.<\/p>\n

In the American TV series The Sopranos, Tony Soprano, a crime boss, lets an old friend, Davey, who owns a prosperous sporting goods store, amass a serious gambling debt. Mobsters quickly overrun Davey\u2019s business, stealing what they can and using this once-legitimate business as a front for nefarious schemes.<\/p>\n

With his business folding, Davey asks Tony, \u201cWhy did you let me do it?\u201d Tony\u2019s reply laces his folksiness with menace: \u201cWell, I knew you had this business here, Davey. It\u2019s in my nature. The frog and the scorpion ya know. This is how a guy like me makes a living; this is my bread and butter!\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, Hezbollah terrorists Sopranoed your country, hiding behind Lebanon\u2019s legitimacy and its parliamentary system, to wreak havoc. It\u2019s in their nature, too. That\u2019s why we need your help explaining to the world that the first step in our shared road to liberation from these psychopaths begins with the international community guaranteeing a sweeping Hezbollah \u2013 and Iranian \u2013 defeat. It\u2019s for our sake, certainly. But for your sake, too.<\/p>\n

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Center Field: A breakthrough in Beirut could lead to a regional turnaround with Tehran, something in everyone’s best interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":19433,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topics-islam-and-arab-world","topics-middle-east","library-op-ed","library-publications"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19432"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19821,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19432\/revisions\/19821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}