I've been seeing a lot of things from a lot of people crying out for "justice" for Palestine, against Hezbollah, against Israel for blowing up Hezbollah.
It occurs to me that the focus on "justice"is basically mistaken.
Ignore for the moment whether we're talking about Jews or Arabs or Persians. The underlying issue is that Hezbollah has been shooting at Israel for 18 years while Hamas just invaded Israel, murdered more than 1000 people, and took more than 200 hostages who they have been torturing, exploiting as propaganda, and executing.
It's all well and good for people basically on the sidelines like the US government to say that they would wish for all of that bad stuff to stop – that's what they're asking for, the bad stuff to stop – but they don't seem to offer any incentive for it to stop.
Now, in most conflicts, there is at least some incentive to minimize damage to your own population. Israel certainly sees that as an incentive. But Iran, first of all, isn't really risking their own population. The population at risk are occupied by the Islamist fanatics in Hamas and Hezbollah. To the extent that the population in Gaza and Lebanon are any concern to Iran, it's that the more of them that die, especially if they can be characterized as civilians and women and children, the better they serve Iran's purposes.
The people of Lebanon know they're not who Hezbollah values.
Watch: Hezbollah affiliates hopped decided to drive through towns waving Hezbollah flags. The locals did not want anything to do with them and began beating and chasing the Hezbollah members away.
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) September 27, 2024
Free Lebanon from Hezbollah! pic.twitter.com/dgfhyPW5Xk
Now, if anyone were really going to be crying out for "justice" they'd be calling out for justice for the people identified as Palestinians. They are Iran's canon fodder. They are real victims in this war. Not because of Israel, but because they can be exploited in death for Iran's gains.
So I suggest that "justice" should be at best a secondary goal. It would be nice to get "justice" for the murdered Jews. It would be "justice" to free the Gazans and the Lebanese from being colonized by Iran. But the goal I think needs to be very much more direct.
The problem is that Iranian forces or their client forces are killing people. They are shooting missiles. They are massacring villages. They are getting people who are supposedly on their own side killed because a dead Palestinian is good PR.
So forget "justice." The goal — the real goal — has to be simply to make them stop. If Hamas in Gaza is attacking Israel, remove their capability to attack Israel. If Hezbollah is shooting missiles at Israel, remove their capability to shoot missiles. And if there is an entrenched organization that's organizing the missiles, remove the organization.
Hi Yemeni 🇾🇪 Houthis 👋
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) September 29, 2024
How stupid can you be? You saw what Israel 🇮🇱 did to Hezbollah in Lebanon. You should remain silent and play dead... This is certainly not the time to fire a ballistic missiles on Tel Aviv!
This is what you get you idiots 👇
pic.twitter.com/XZrpkOIw9l
I think increasingly what we're seeing over the last year is that Israel has come around to this notion. Don't look for a cease-fire that never works. Don't try to negotiate. The real goal has to be to make them stop. And to do that, their capabilities have to be eliminated. There's really no other option.
