Israel vs Hezbollah attacks spiralling into the next major conflict.

Right, so whilst we are somewhat preoccupied with General Election doings here in the UK, we mustn’t take our eyes off what is happening in the Middle East, where Israel has once more rejected another ceasefire plan, not that you’ll hear that from UK and most notably US politicians or any of the associated media, they’d rather blame Hamas for everything going wrong despite them accepting the deal, whilst requesting some reassurances, all covered in another video though.
What is becoming a bigger issue for Israel directly right now, has been the escalating actions coming from Hezbollah in Lebanon, who have been supporting Hamas since Israel’s invasion of Gaza on October 8th, which began as low scale strikes, has now grown into hundreds of missiles being fired into Israel daily, to the point it is becoming a question of where Israel will have to concentrate it’s forces most of all now – carrying on it’s genocide in Gaza to the south, or to their northern border where Lebanon is raining fire down upon them in retaliation. But one particular strike by Israel on Lebanon has people scratching their heads too as to just how hard up for weaponry the Israeli army might now be.
Right, so we’ve gone from a couple of kids being injured by some broken glass, to literally hundreds of missiles being fired into Israel by Hezbollah in retaliation for one of their senior commanders getting killed and while for obvious reasons the focus has been on Gaza and what Israel have done there these past 9 months, it should be noted that for that entire span of time, Lebanon has been striking Israel too in support of Gaza, much as the Houthis in Yemen have been doing since last November.
Within that first week, Hezbollah for example, targeted IDF vehicles and personnel at a known Israeli position, and other Israeli positions in the Shebaa Farms region, so called for the farms that historically existed there, but which is actually contested territory between Lebanon and Syria these days and lies between Lebanon and the occupied Syrian territory of the Golan Heights. In retaliation, Israel used white phosphorus in this region against Lebanese civilians, destroyed UNIFIL headquarters in Southern Lebanon, UNIFIL being the UN peacekeeping organisation based in Lebanon that help the Lebanese army patrol and document incidents occurring along their border and also killed a Lebanese Reuters journalist called Issam Abdallah. That was just week one.
The one thing above all else that has stood out for many people is the indiscriminacy of Israeli targets. Be they civilian or military, be they journalists or aid workers, none are safe, all are seemingly valid targets. As much as we can condemn terrorist atrocities committed by the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, both in this conflict and in those before, they have never gone out of their way to kill as many civilians as possible as it seems Israel have absolutely been doing.
Since October artillery shells, mortars, missiles have been fired at Israeli targets, the north of Israel has had to be evacuated, as much as some at least in the Israeli army want to occupy and resettle Gaza, they’ve got over 100,000 displaced Israelis from the north of their country where things have become too dangerous for them to remain and that has just escalated in recent months.
Where for the longest time and we were looking towards Gaza where the worst atrocities were happening, in the north of Israel, along the Lebanese border and into Southern Lebanon, potshots have continued to be taken by both Hezbollah and Israel. White phosphorus has been repeatedly used illegally and this has been reported on by Amnesty International, there was the assassination of a Hezbollah leader in Beirut, which did hit the news. Where Hezbollah’s targets have been mainly IDF outposts, locations, shooting down Reaper drones, it was very tit for tat for months, but something has shifted more recently, things have dramatically escalated over the course of the last month and that is partly related to the ongoing failure to establish a peace plan and an end to genocide in Gaza.
The shift seemed to come after Iran fired those 300 rockets at Israel, in retaliation for Israel targeting their embassy in Damascus, it has been long surmised that the attack, which for the most Israel easily repelled thanks to allied forces helping to take out targets heading towards Israel as well as Israel’s iron dome defence system, was an exercise in intelligence gathering as far as Iran went and Iran will have perhaps passed that information on to any groups aligned with them, who are supported, armed and funded by them, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, because it seemed to me, that it was after that episode, that Hezbollah took a view towards taking out iron dome missile batteries in the north. They’ve successfully done so too, several batteries taken out, costing $50m a pop, they aren’t easily replaced and when so much ordnance is needed in Gaza to carry on as Israel are there, replacing them in the north, which is of less strategic importance to Israel right now, isn’t happening or hasn’t been happening, so the iron dome is getting chipped away at, weakened.
Their arsenal has also beefed up, now using a new type of rocket and have started targeting Israeli warplanes for the first time, showing the type of weaponry in their arsenal has moved up a gear and the group is becoming more dangerous as far as Israel go.
Instead of just firing a few rockets at a time, by May they were firing dozens in one go, notably a 60 missile strike on an IDF air traffic control base.
Then a couple weeks ago, at the end of May we saw 150 missiles fired into northern Israel, which has contributed to massive bush fires, and caused even more Israeli civilians to require evacuation and be taken further south for who knows how long.
But three days ago, things shifted up yet another gear because 4 days ago Israel targeted a village in the south of Lebanon in order to take out three Hezbollah fighters, which included a senior field commander called Taleb Abdallah, the most senior Hezbollah figure Israel have killed since the events of October 7th and boy have Hezbollah responded.
The following day they fired some 215 rockets into Israel. The targets for just that day were a military headquarters, an IDF factory, an air surveillance station and numerous IDF outposts besides. It has also been claimed that Hezbollah struck the port city of Haifa for the first time ever, though it appears this was actually the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, yet another entity Israel has to concern itself with, because of what it is doing in Gaza, that it flat refuses to stop and that whilst Netanyahu remain s Prime Minister, it is pretty inconceivable that it will stop, he will always put his political position first, come what may, no matter how many lives, military or civilians are lost or at who’s hands they are lost at.
The following day, that’s last Thursday now at time of writing, another 150 rockets were fired into Israel and into the Golan Heights as well, more fires breaking out. Israel’s response, this is a mad story actually, it has been reported that Israel resorted on Thursday to using a mediaeval trebuchet to fire flaming projectiles into Lebanon and it had me wondering just how short of ammunition they must be, to be firing flaming balls into Lebanon using a 14th century glorified slingshot:
It's mad isn’t it? Are they running out of firepower, or have they simply not got it to spare in the north, where Hezbollah are really ramping things up and things could actually be spiralling into a full on new warfront that Israel will have brought on themselves?
Now given that Hezbollah started attacking Israel in earnest following Israel going into Gaza in what has been anything but a proportionate response to the events of the night of October 7th, many will argue that Lebanon instigated this, others will argue Iran did and whilst there’s certainly likely to be some truth in that, being allied to Hamas, being supportive of the people of Gaza against what Israel is doing to them, they were never likely to sit idly by and watch genocide take place were they? Just as many, if not more people will argue that Israel instigated this and historically it cannot be ignored that Hamas and Hezbollah only came into being in the 1980’s in response to Israeli aggression against Palestine and Lebanon back in the day. I’ve always argued they were monsters of Israel’s own making and though that doesn’t excuse their actions in any way at all over the years, it doesn’t excuse Israel’s either.
The fact remains though that Hezbollah, being part of the Lebanese government, are far more autonomous, not living under occupation and are therefore far better armed and prepared if Israel pushes the point they are trying to make past the point of open warfare.
They are arguing right now that the escalation they’ve initiated is not looking for war, but retaliation for what they consider an assassination of their man, this commander earlier this week, but also as a warning not to try and go all out against them, something I question whether Israel has the ordnance to do so right now, especially after that trebuchet, but also it's apparently an effort to strengthen Hamas’ negotiating hand for a ceasefire, though as I’ve said previously, there seems to be no limit on lives that are worth paying for Benjamin Netanyahu to remain in power. If something isn’t done to put pressure on Israel and done soon, things look set to become a wider scale conflict, as has been warned of from the start, the Middle East is a powder keg where Israel is concerned and the fuse is still lit.
Meanwhile, for those who might have watched this and still find themselves looking for excuses to exonerate Israel, they’ve just been added to a list of countries found to be committing atrocities against children in conflict, finding themselves on the latest annual list produced by the United Nations and naturally they are squealing about this as being grossly unfair, despite Hamas ending up on the list too it’s worth noting. Get the details of that story which utterly condemns the most moral army in the world as anything but and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.