Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, Sept. 20, 2024
“… although times and circumstances have changed, the Jews remain the primary boogeymen of Western thought.”
It was the covert operation that inspired thousands of Internet memes. The simultaneous explosion of thousands of pagers in the possession of Hezbollah operatives followed a day later by a similar mass explosion of terrorist walkie-talkies was the top story across the world this week.
The strikes on Hezbollah leadership that occurred a few days later might have been just as important in seeking to cripple the terrorists’ ability to continue its ongoing missile strikes on northern Israel and possible threats of a possible land attack on the Jewish state. Nevertheless, the attack on members of the organization (and its associated sponsors and string-pullers, like the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon who reportedly also had a Hezbollah beeper and lost an eye when it blew up) carrying around those relics of 1980s technology triggered both the imagination and the indignation of international opinion.
We can’t know for sure just how much damage Israel has done to Hezbollah’s morale, let alone its capabilities to inflict terror and pain on Israelis as well as Lebanese citizens. There may be some truth to what the doomsayers among New York Times analysts and Israeli left-wingers who claimed that any harm would be superficial and transitory.
More important was the angry reaction inspired among many Western liberals who denounced the attacks because they don’t believe in Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists and because they no longer believe that any Western nation has the right to fight even the most just wars. …SOURCE
