Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Lebanon’s involvement has been revelatory.
Do anti-Israel protesters on campus care about Palestinians or do they merely hate the Jewish state? If they’re waving Hezbollah flags and chanting support for the Iranian satrapy, they aren’t worried about Palestinians. Do activists want peace or merely the unfettered ability to make war on Israel? If they’re blaming escalation on Israel and legitimizing a third country’s entry into the war Israel didn’t start, it ain’t peace they’re after. Do politicians stand against terrorism or do they stand against Israel? If their definition of “terrorism” includes Israel’s targeted maiming of terrorists, they’re taking a stand against the Jewish state.
Support for Hezbollah or insistence that Israel is the aggressor in South Lebanon immediately exposes one’s bad faith.
The terms commentators use to describe events are also revealing. Since what is happening in Gaza is definitionally not a genocide, why would people use that word anyway? Once again, let events in Lebanon be our guide: If someone calls Israel’s targeted response against Hezbollah terrorists after months of having its own population bombed from South Lebanon “genocide,” we can infer that this person’s application of the term “genocide” to Gaza is just as intentionally dishonest. In general, it’s best not to attribute the worst possible motive to someone in public debate, but anyone who calls Israel’s Lebanon response a “genocide” has only one possible motive. It’s not a multiple-choice question.
“It’s easier to stop sending the Israel government weapons to conduct its genocidal wars than it is to evacuate every American in Lebanon,” posted anti-Semitic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.
In terms of its effects on public discourse, this is a very unhelpful thing to say. But in terms of its revelatory capacity, this is a very helpful thing to say.
“What is one supposed to do to stop the madness?” asked American University of Beirut professor Mona Fawaz. “People have protested, written letters, advocated, resigned, been fired, camped, lost degrees, filed for court ruling, demonstrated beyond any unreasonable doubt Israel’s genocidal intent, and still, the killing machine is on.”
For an educator, this is a self-discrediting statement. But one suspects this person is motivated by something other than education.
DC think-tanker Yousef Munayyer wanted his audience to know that Israeli figures pointing out Hezbollah’s human-shields policy are “Attempting to manufacture consent for a genocide of Lebanon’s Shia community.”
A morally blind statement? Sure. An innocent mistake? No.
Israel’s operations in Lebanon have been so precise that they have won praise from Tlaib’s fellow Democrats who might otherwise be readily critical of the IDF.
“For those of us who have been critical of the conduct of the war in terms of [there being] too high of a tolerance for civilian casualties, we should be a little cautious to criticize an operation this precise,” Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz told Jewish Insider about Israel’s pager plot.
“This attack was definitely aimed precisely at Hezbollah and seems to have been highly successful,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told the outlet. “It seems to have been extremely strategic.”
Several other Democrats had similar reactions.
The fact of the matter is, Hezbollah’s intervention on behalf of Hamas has been clarifying. Accusing Israel of genocide for retaliating against indiscriminate bombings with unimaginably precise strikes is the act of a deeply dishonest propagandist. But the ramifications of that propagandizing should not be contained to Lebanon and Hezbollah. It should extend to Gaza.
A lot of people have lent credibility to the accusations of genocide in Gaza without voicing those accusations themselves, either by airing them on TV or by amplifying such statements on social media or elsewhere. They should pay close attention to the hysterical criticism of Israel’s targeted strikes in Lebanon to see how they have been made, wittingly or unwittingly, a vehicle for bad faith and hypocrisy.