Dit artikel zette ik op 25 september op Facebook. Het werd verwijderd. Facebook zal geen artikel verwijderen waarin Israel wordt gesteund, maar met steun aan het Palestijnse verzet loop je altijd het risico dat het er af wordt gehaald. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maar hier is het dus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Isra\u00ebl heeft nog niet genoeg van oorlog voeren, ook al lukt het maar niet om de eigen doelen te bereiken. Gaza is vrijwel geheel vernield, het zou naar schatting 80 jaar duren om het weer op te bouwen. Het moorden van de bevolking gaat ook gewoon van dag tot dag door. Maar tegelijk is zichtbaar dat Isra\u00ebl de oorlog niet kan winnen: Hamas is niet verslagen en volgens de voorspellingen zelfs van het Isra\u00eblische leger zelf, kunnen ze dat ook niet. En de oorlog die ze voeren maakt het onmogelijk om de gijzelaars vrij te krijgen. Er is, tot ergernis van de echte militairen in Israel, geen plan hoe de oorlog moet eindigen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ondertussen is Isra\u00ebl dus een nieuwe oorlog begonnen, tegen Libanon. Met een originele aanval via de ontplofbare communicatie apparaten van Hezbollah, en met de absoluut niet originele politieke moorden op de leiders van Hezbollah, nu met de grootste vangst: Nasrallah zelf. Politieke moorden, noem het terrorisme, zijn altijd al een belangrijk onderdeel van Isra\u00ebls machtsvertoon geweest in pogingen om de vijand te ontmoedigen, en er al doende er voor te zorgen dat de vijand nog vijandiger wordt. Verzetsorganisaties als Hamas en Hezbollah hebben nooit tekort aan nieuwe rekruten die klaar staan om de vermoorde strijders te vervangen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ali Abunimah, van The Electronic Intifada dat we elke woensdag kunnen volgen op live stream (om 18:00) is de eerste die een samenhangend commentaar heeft geschreven, en ons er vooral aan herinnert hoe zowel Isra\u00ebl als de VS elke keer als ze weer eens hun koloniale spierballen wilden laten zien uiteindelijk toch met de staart tussen de benen moesten vertrekken. Uit Libanon, Afghanistan, Irak. Want ook in Libanon kunnen ze moorden en verwoesten, verslaan kunnen ze het niet. Hier het verhaal van Abunimah:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ali Abunimah The Electronic Intifada 28 September 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israel\u2019s assassination of Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hizballah, in an apocalyptic bombing attack on Beirut\u2019s southern suburb on Friday is likely, at least in the short term, to cause enormous shock, despair and demoralization among supporters of the resistance to Zionism in Lebanon and across the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is exactly what it is intended to do.
Confirmed by Hizballah on Saturday, Nasrallah\u2019s killing comes after a series of tactical successes in the early stages of Israel\u2019s unfolding full-scale attack on Lebanon, an open-ended assault that may well equal in barbarity Tel Aviv\u2019s ongoing genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are terrible and difficult thoughts to absorb after almost a year of genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First there were the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, followed by a series of assassinations of Hizballah\u2019s senior leaders, and now the head of the organization itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Nasrallah himself admitted in his final speech, the organization suffered a severe blow with the pager attacks. Even worse was to come. Clearly there were serious breaches in security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nasrallah\u2019s stature as a tactical and strategic thinker, as the most prominent and trusted leader of the Axis of Resistance, and as a personality capable of inspiring and reassuring supporters even in the worst of times, cannot be overstated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The euphoria in Israel, Washington and some Arab capitals, will be exceeded only by the grief of Nasrallah\u2019s supporters, who are far more numerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And there is no doubt that the loss is real and great from the perspective of a resistance that faces not only Israel\u2019s formidable arsenal, but all the resources of the United States and the collective West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israel\u2019s ability to carry out this series of attacks in quick succession will shake the confidence of many in Hizballah\u2019s legendary prowess and operational security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The attacks will go some way to restoring the prestige Tel Aviv has lost among its Western and Arab backers after a year of military failure in Gaza, and its failure to prevent the Hamas military offensive that wiped out the Gaza division of Israel\u2019s army on 7 October 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And although Hizballah has been hammering Israeli military assets and settlements in the north of historic Palestine with rockets, many in the region are asking why the resistance group\u2019s response to Israel\u2019s escalating aggression has not been harder and harsher \u2013 even as Israel intensifies its bombardment of civilians across Lebanon and within its capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another question on many lips is why Iran, which vowed retaliation after Israel\u2019s murder of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, has acted with such restraint. There is a growing perception that its lack of response only encouraged Israel\u2019s ever more brazen violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShock and awe\u201d is not victory<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amid the rapidly changing situation and the torrent of emotions after a year of livestreamed genocide in Gaza, now being extended by Israel to Lebanon, it is hard to maintain a long view. But doing so is essential for sound analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is worth remembering this: In almost any asymmetrical war, when the strongest side \u2013 the invader or colonizer \u2013 goes on the offensive, it often appears to achieve quick and stunning success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed \u201cshock and awe\u201d is the name of a Western, specifically American, military doctrine, developed in the 1990s and explicitly touted when the US invaded Iraq in 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also called \u201crapid dominance,\u201d its aim is to demoralize and paralyze the adversary with the use of overwhelming and spectacular displays of violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The goal according to the doctrine\u2019s authors, is to so \u201coverload an adversary\u2019s perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve seen this time and again in recent decades and we\u2019re witnessing it now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just weeks after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the United States attacked Afghanistan, quickly toppling the Taliban government under the pretext that it had sheltered Osama bin Laden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
American confidence following this swift apparent success undoubtedly spurred Washington to go on to its next project: the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the government of Saddam Hussein quickly overthrown and American tanks in control of Baghdad, President George W. Bush gave his infamous \u201cMission Accomplished\u201d speech on 1 May of that year \u2013 words that came to haunt him as the United States became bogged down in a war of attrition against resistance in both Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These rapid victories, or so they appeared, sparked real fears at the time that the American forces would roll onwards towards Damascus and Tehran, or perhaps other \u201crogue states\u201d on America\u2019s hit list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We know now, from the so-called Afghanistan Papers, that the warmongers in Washington recognized all along that they had lost the war, but lied to the American public for almost two decades that they were winning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And when the American withdrawal from Afghanistan came in August 2021, the humiliating departure from Kabul airport was widely compared to the chaotic scenes of the defeated Americans evacuating in helicopters from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, Vietnam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With respect to Israel too, this pattern has been evident. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 \u2013 an assault it dubbed \u201cOperation Peace for Galilee\u201d \u2013 its forces quickly swept north to Beirut, besieging and occupying an Arab capital for the first time in the Zionist settler state\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israel murdered tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians and expelled the Palestine Liberation Organization. But success, from Tel Aviv\u2019s perspective, quickly turned to failure.
During a long occupation, resistance to Israel grew, especially from Hizballah, which did not even exist at the time of the Israeli invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hizballah and other resistance groups bled Israeli occupation forces for two decades in a grueling war of attrition, until Israel withdrew from occupied southern Lebanon in defeat in May 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even in the context of the American-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, Israel\u2019s constant professions that it has placed this or that part of Gaza under its total control, quickly crumble. The fact is that the resistance continues to fight in every part of Gaza.
So far every Israeli-American \u201cday after\u201d plan, in which a defeated Hamas would be replaced by an Arab-backed Palestinian collaborator force, has collapsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Distracting from an exhausted Israel\u2019s ongoing failure in Gaza, is perhaps one of the factors spurring Israel to seek spectacular \u201csuccess\u201d in Lebanon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turning point
This sobering moment is a turning point in the long regional war for liberation from racist, Western-backed settler-colonial Zionism. But after a century of Zionism\u2019s depredations and horrors, neither the people of Lebanon nor Palestine have surrendered, and there\u2019s no reason to believe they will now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the contrary, after the initial shock, the determination of the resistance will only increase, and its circle will expand, as it has in every phase of the liberation struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nor does the assassination of Nasrallah, with American bombs and American warplanes, and perhaps other assistance from Washington, change the trajectory of the downward decline of US global power \u2013 the power on which Israel relies for its survival.
Let\u2019s recall too that the Zionists have always used assassination as a primary tactic. However, their war is not against individual leaders, but against entire peoples whose determination cannot be so easily snuffed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nasrallah himself assumed the leadership of Hizballah after Israel murdered his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi in 1992. Nasrallah grew the organization to unprecedented strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That strength is not based on the will of one individual, but on a base of support deeply committed to the cause and willing \u2013 as Nasrallah himself never failed to point out \u2013 to make enormous sacrifices on the road to liberation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the Israeli army has admitted Hamas cannot be destroyed because \u201cHamas is an idea, Hamas is a party,\u201d then what about Hizballah?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is most sobering is that the war to liberate Palestine and the region from Zionism will be no less brutal on the people of the region than the wars to liberate Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa and so many other places targeted by the Euro-American empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After all, the occupiers and colonizers are the same countries, and the genocidal hatred their ruling classes bear towards the people whose land and rights they seek to usurp has never dimmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like others before him, Nasrallah gave his life on the road to liberate Palestine, and that struggle did not end today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dit artikel zette ik op 25 september op Facebook. Het werd verwijderd. Facebook zal geen artikel verwijderen waarin Israel wordt gesteund, maar met steun aan het Palestijnse verzet loop je altijd het risico dat het er af wordt gehaald. Maar … Lees verder