Helping Hezbollah
By Jim Fletcher
Israel’s generational win against Lebanese terror group Hezbollah two years ago will long live in everyone’s memory.
The “exploding pagers” caper was so good, it sounds like something out of a James Bond movie.
Israeli intelligence worked for years to create dummy companies that sold pagers to the terrorists. At a pre-determined time, they set them off. Many terrorists had body parts blown off or outright killed. Hezbollah will never forget, you can be sure.
We all know by now though that President Trump’s strategies regarding the Middle East are unclear at best. At worst, they seem to parallel those of Biden and Obama. In fact, all the U.S. presidents stretching back to Carter. On the surface, it appears the U.S. is tying Israel’s hands in relation to solving the northern terror dilemma. For three years, Israeli citizens in the north part of the country have been either running to bomb shelters, or permanently moving.
In the past, Hezbollah’s infamous stockpile of rockets and missiles—estimated to be around 150,000—threatened Israel existentially. That situation could not continue. Then, the pager affair.
In the past six months, Israel stood poised to wipe out Hezbollah for good. Along with the now-fading opportunity to erase Iran’s mullahs and Hamas, the Jewish state was going to upend the status quo in the Middle East. Something no American administration has ever been able to do.
One gets the feeling that the foreign policy goal since Truman has been to just keep the status quo going.
On the surface (an important distinction right now), it appears the Trump administration is not going to finish the job. It’s a mystery. Why? Why tie Israel’s hands on all fronts, when they are on the brink of victory?
We’re not sure.
As the Iran drags curiously on—we get no clear messaging from the Administration—Trump seems to be moving toward a status quo scenario. From a truly bold approach previously, we are no seeing a desire not to uproot the mullahs. It seems that Trump believes this is all a business deal, and he can will the Arab nations in the neighborhood to some kind of Abraham Accords-type deal. Problem is, even if they do, the paper is not worth the ink it’s printed with. After Trump, what happens next?
Israel, meanwhile, is tied once again. Some criticize Netanyahu, but if it weren’t for his vigilance the last 30 years, who knows what would have happened?
Reuters is reporting that there seems to be a chink in the Trump-Bibi armor:
“TEL AVIV, June 2 (Reuters) - Benjamin Netanyahu is under criticism at home after U.S. President Donald Trump declared Israel would halt plans to attack Iran ally Hezbollah in Beirut, highlighting pressure the Israeli leader faces ahead of an election polls show him losing.
“Trump said on Monday that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to halt attacks on one another, hours after Netanyahu ordered new strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, prompting a warning from Iran that Israel was jeopardizing Tehran's talks with the U.S.”
Whatever Trump is doing behind the scenes, his own public comments, along with the glee Iran gets from them, hampers Israel. The public PR is dreadful.
Further, Trump’s back-and-forth, now-discredited “ultimatums” are a joke. Nobody takes him seriously publicly. I think part of the problem is, his previous business strategies do not play well in foreign policy. It’s one thing to beat a real estate rival in Manhatten. It’s quite another to deal with the constantly duplicitous jihadists. They are not remotely the same.
Trump’s very public upbraiding of Netanyahu—the only true ME ally he has—is causing the Israeli premier internal political problems. Should this succeed and new elections bring in a mediocre Bennett or worse…Yair Lapid…Israel will be in difficult shape.
“Netanyahu's challengers in elections due by October accused the prime minister of having acquiesced to Trump on issues of national security.
“’The location is different, the story is the same,’ said Naftali Bennett, a right-wing security hawk and former premier who also criticizes Netanyahu over Hamas militants' resurgence in Gaza.
“’A government that has lost control of Israeli sovereignty,’ Bennett said in an X post.”
Bennett distinguished himself as a member of Israel’s elite counter-terrorism unit, Sayeret Matkal. But like almost all IDF elites, his political skills are limited.
More important though, again, why prop-up terrorists like Hezbollah? What is Trump’s aim?
I don’t know. And it’s unlikely anyone outside his brain knows.
If not for God, Israel would be in a world of hurt.
But that’s just the point, isn’t it?