Comment by yoavm

Comment by yoavm 3 days ago

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The answer is pretty straight forward in the sense that the current round of war was initiated (proudly) by Hezbollah, and that while if Hezbollah stops shooting Israel would have no business with Lebanon, if Israel stops shooting into Lebanon Hezbollah has no intention of stopping too. Hezbollah wants to destroy Israel (they say that, not me), while Israel has no desire to destroy Lebanon. Hinting at some kind of symmetry here seems weird.

Israel invading into Lebanon in the late 1970 was a response to an attack originating there [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_Road_massacre#Israeli_...

someotherperson 3 days ago

> the current round of war

Israel has been attacking Hezbollah non-stop in Syria for the last decade[0]. "The current round of war" is quite literally just Hezbollah firing back.

It's strange to me how Israel is able to fly sorties around the entire region and it's not considered an escalation, but the moment that we see responses it turns into the other side being the aggressor.

> while Israel has no desire to destroy Lebanon

The Israeli Dahiya doctrine[1] is literally based on the idea of destroying as much of Lebanon as possible to screw with Hezbollah's support and morale.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_conflict_d...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine

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  • yoavm 3 days ago

    Even the spokesperson of Hezbollah wouldn't say that the current round of war is "literally just Hezbollah firing back". If you're joking then I'm sorry for not catching it, but if not - Hezbollah announced that it's attacking Israel in support of Hamas's attack on Israel.

    As for your second point, you're pointing to an Israeli strategy of fighting Hezbollah by pressuring Lebanese citizens against it. This has nothing to do with having the demolition of Lebanon as a goal.

    Edit: I also recommend you read the Hebrew version of the Dahiya doctrine wikipage. As the doctrine is Israeli and in Hebrew originally, it explains it in much greater details. The doctrine has nothing to do with destroying Lebanon.

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  • ineedasername 3 days ago

    That doctrine has worked. 2006 to 2023 is the longest period of time without conflicts on this scale since before 1970. Until 2006 there were significant showdowns at most every 5 or 6 years.

    The doctrine also is targeting infrastructure for the purpose of denying it to Hezbollah, which is utilizing it to support their fighting. Otherwise, per the wikipedia link on this doctrine, the doctrine has reduction of civilian casualties baked-in:

    "in the first stage targets were attacked which formed an immediate threat, and in the second stage the population was evacuated for its protection, and only after the evacuation of the population were Hezbollah targets attacked more broadly."

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    • someotherperson 2 days ago

      > The doctrine also is targeting infrastructure for the purpose of denying it to Hezbollah

      It also describes the infrastructure as literally every single Shiite city. I hope for all of us that Iran or similar doesn't apply this doctrine to Israel.

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      • yoavm 2 days ago

        Well of course it does. Otherwise, more than 60k people from the north of Israel wouldn't need to leave their towns since October.

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einszwei 3 days ago

Hezbollah didn't exist in 1970s. It was founded in 1982

Like the famous quote said "We make peace with our enemies, not our friends" (I can't recall the source) - what is lacking here is diplomacy.

To repeat - Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1980s was the catalyst for Hezbollah's rise. While they curbed PLO they created a more formidable adversary.

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  • yoavm 3 days ago

    First, I forgot an 's there - I meant 1970s. Second, unfortunately for Lebanon, Hezbollah wasn't the only terrorist organization growing in it [0]. "The proximate cause of the Israeli invasion was the Coastal Road massacre that took place near Tel Aviv on 11 March 1978"

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_South_Lebanon_conflict

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    • einszwei 3 days ago

      Hezbollah was founded in 1982. With benefit of hindsight we can see that while Israel's Lebanon Invasion in 1980s was successful in curbing the PLO who perpetrated the massacre, they created a more formidable adversary in form of Hezbollah.

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  • ineedasername 3 days ago

    Hezbollah is somewhat of the successor organization of the most militant wings of groups like the PLO and Fatah, so I think it is relevant to speak of Hezbollah as in some sense existing in a nascent form prior to its founding

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pphysch 3 days ago

> Hinting at some kind of symmetry here seems weird.

Both sides (Israeli state, and Hezbollah) want to destroy each other. It's a simple symmetry. Conflating the military force with the territory and civilians living on it only obfuscates this.

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  • luckylion 3 days ago

    > Both sides (Israeli state, and Hezbollah) want to destroy each other.

    Have Hezbollah lay down their arms and convert their organization to peaceful gardeners and Israel has no interest in destroying them.

    Have Israel lay down their arms and focus on peaceful gardening and few Israeli Jews will survive.

    Such Symmetry. Enlightened Reddit really is something else.

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    • someotherperson 3 days ago

      > Have Israel lay down their arms and focus on peaceful gardening and few Israeli Jews will survive.

      That's because the entire notion of Israel as a concept is predicated on it being under constant existential threats.

      If Hezbollah goes away, then nothing changes in Lebanon: Lebanese identity isn't based on armed resistance. Israeli identity, however, has nothing else going for it besides armed conflict.

      If conflicts were to go away, so would Israel. Israeli Jews would just be absorbed into whatever local culture they're in, just as they were prior to the formation of Israel (and just like they are outside of Israel). The remaining ones would be the ones engaging in armed conflict -- just as the original groups like Irgun and Lehi were.

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      • edanm 3 days ago

        What are you even talking about? Israel is a country with a population of 9 million people. Do you think if the conflicts stop, this population would just disappear or something?

        Whatever the "Jewish identity" was in 1948, Israel now has more than 70 years of existence, giving it an independent identity from just "Judaism".

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  • yoavm 3 days ago

    [flagged]

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    • pphysch 3 days ago

      Sorry, I can't take you seriously when you equate a clearly defined military-political organization ("Hezbollah") with a broad ethnoreligious group ("Jews"). That's totally absurd and borders on Holocaust denial.

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      • yoavm 3 days ago

        This is the first time ever someone blames me for Holocaust denial [0], but I'll give you another example then. If someone breaks into your house and tries to kill you, you might want to kill them too, but it's a little funny to say that there's symmetry there because "both want to kill each other!".

        [0] to remove any doubt, I am not. I'm not sure how you got there, but I would insane to deny an event the took the lives of many from my family.

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