On Saturday afternoon, a Hezbollah rocket fired from southern Lebanon struck a soccer field in the village of Majdal Shams in Israel’s north, slaughtering 12 children.
For the last 10 months, many have warned that Israel is on the brink of a major war with Hezbollah. But the truth is that Hezbollah has been fighting—and winning—in Israel’s north since October 8. For the past 10 months, Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy terror group that controls southern Lebanon, has essentially redrawn the northern border of Israel by pummeling the border towns daily with rockets, leaving 225 square miles unlivable for Israelis and displacing around 80,000 Israeli citizens.
Israel—pounded by Iranian proxies from all directions—now faces one of the most perilous moments in recent history. The prospect of an all-out war with Hezbollah, which could very well spread to a larger, more dangerous regional war—perhaps directly with Iran—seems closer than ever.
What is Israel going to do? Will Israel choose to confront Hezbollah, or will they respond in a more limited way to avoid the regional escalation that the Americans so fear? How does U.S. policy, and the upcoming presidential election, influence Israel’s strategic calculation? Is Kamala Harris equipped to bring calm to the region? Or are Israelis just waiting for Trump to return to office? Is America’s current policy—which is the containment of Iran—backfiring and inadvertently creating a regional crisis? Most importantly, should we be thinking about the war with Gaza and the war with Hezbollah as discrete fights, or are they all part of a broader war that’s already underway between Israel and Iran?
Answering those questions today is Haviv Rettig Gur. Haviv is a journalist and writer for The Times of Israel, and he is one of the most important and insightful thinkers of our time on Israel and the Middle East.
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This has been going on for the last 20 years and many Americans are just waking up.
Unfortunately, as noted in the podcast, the Western left has been trained to think Israelis are privileged whites and everyone else is an underprivileged minority, so they don't feel bad when Israelis are killed because that's how they've been taught.
It is good to hear a discussion of the situation(s) in and around Israel and the Middle East. It is also interesting to hear the unmistakable undertones from the two participants in the discussion. Why? Because the terrible orange man is unmistakably the better choice for the survival of Israel and these two have a seething hatred for him. Bibi Netanyahu is the Little Satan in the discussion, but he is conducting the strategy that keeps the Democrats from making good on their final transition to a full-throated support of terrorists hoping to realize "from the river to the sea". Why can't they just speak "their" truth? Maybe they aren't (yet) quite willing to see Israel burned to the ground to satisfy their desire to see Bibi and The Donald perish in those flames. I hope that my opinion on this is wrong, but that is exactly what my gut instinct is telling me. It's funny that I don't feel that visceral hatred of my own political enemies, even though they Actually want to destroy all I hold dear.