Douglas Murray: A Time of War

 When we planned this episode of Honestly, I thought we would be looking back at the past year from a slightly quieter vantage point. We were going to release it on October 7. But quiet is the last thing happening in the Middle East right now.

HOW ISLAMISTS OVERRAN MY COUNTRY LEBANON

 Brigitte Gabriel tells the story of how Islamists overran her country Lebanon 🇱🇧 with the aid of Islamic countries in the 1970s.

It's important to note that religion and thus religious extremism is dangerous and needs to be checked especially in Africa so that what happened to the Middle East won't Take place on the continent. This is the reason why the enlightenment and advocacy towards naturalism needs to be intensified in Africa and the world.

Hezbollah Provocations Raise Israel-Lebanon Tensions

Video Of The Week -Tense Quiet Takes Hold Along Israel-Lebanon Border -  https://tinyurl.com/4jyu2ej2

For the full Article from BICOM go to https://tinyurl.com/56d9wmtj

 

What happened: Two incidents on the Israel-Lebanon border on Wednesday raised the tension between Israel and Hezbollah.

·        In the first incident several men approached the border fence in the area close to Zarit. According to the IDF, Israel deployed “non-lethal” measures to prevent them from damaging the fence.

·        According to the IDF, “a number of suspects approached the border fence with Lebanon and attempted to tamper with the barrier. IDF forces immediately identified them and employed measures to push them back.”

·        The IDF released surveillance footage showing four people approaching the border fence, and running away after an explosion.

·        According to Lebanese reports, three men thought to be Hezbollah operatives were taken to a nearby hospital in Tyre.

·        In the second incident, a number of suspects approached the security fence in the area near Metulla. They threw rocks and started a fire adjacent (on the Lebanese side) close to the security fence. IDF soldiers fired warning shots into the air, and the suspects withdrew.

Context: Tension has been growing for the last month, since Hezbollah placed two tents south of the Blue Line (inside Israel) in the Mount Dov / Sheba farms area.

·        Israel has so far used diplomatic channels (with the US, UN and France) which led to one of the tents being dismantled.

·        Later on Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah made a speech, marking the 17^th anniversary of the start of the second Lebanon war. Nasrallah warned Israel that Hezbollah would retaliate if the IDF were to remove the tent that remains. According to Nasrallah, the tent is inside Lebanon and he is demanding the removal of the fence Israel built around the northern part of Ghajar.

·        Ghajar is an Alawite village, on the Lebanese, Syrian, Israeli border, captured by Israel in 1967. In 1981 it was annexed by Israel and its residents offered full Israeli citizenship. The village’s northern neighbourhood has since expanded into Lebanon. The UN recognises the Blue Line runs through the village, but Israel has built the fence around the northern perimeter to ensure security.

·        Earlier in the week, US envoy Amos Hochstein met with Prime Minister Netanyahu to update on US efforts to deescalate the tension.  It was Hochstein that brokered the Israel-Lebanon maritime agreement last year.

·        Hochstein’s visit has been interpreted as a sign of a dual US approach to Israel. Whilst the Biden administration in unhappy about Israeli government’s domestic and West Bank policies, they have shared concerns when it comes to regional security.

·        As well as the erection of the tents, last week an anti-tank missile was fired close to Ghajar border area.

·        In recent months Hezbollah has set up numerous observation posts, permanent and semi-permanent structures along the border.

·        There is concern that Israel’s enemies interpret the country’s current internal divisions as a moment of weakness and will seek to exploit the security situation.

Looking ahead: US envoy Hochstein is expected to meet Lebanese political leaders in the days ahead, as part of his shuttle diplomacy to reduce tension and avoid a military conflagration.

·        Following the incidents on the border, Defence Minister Gallant said, “Anyone who tests us will get a response. We have a lot to do, and we will know how to do what is needed at the right time.”

·        The IDF believes that Nasrallah will not instigate an all-out war but may be willing to risk several days of fighting, the consequences of which are unknown, but include fears of a wider conflict.                                                                                           

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“Karish becomes Olympus”

Video Of The Week -“Lebanon-Israel Maritime Gas Deal”- https://tinyurl.com/ynwh3zp7

 For the full article by Zachy Hennessey, from JP, go to - https://tinyurl.com/4a6msjxm

 Energean PLC has announced a new commercial natural gas discovery of 13 billion cubic meters off the shore of Israel as a result of its exploratory drilling well dubbed Zeus-1. It has also confirmed the presence of an additional 3.75 bcm at its Athena site. 

These discoveries have confirmed the company’s suspicions that the so-called “Olympus area” located between the Karish and Tanin gas fields are both voluminous and commercially viable.

“Following the start of production from our Karish reservoir last week, I am pleased that our drilling program, which has now delivered five successful wells from five, continues to deliver value, ensuring security of supply and energy competition across the region.”

Bounty of Israeli gas in Olympus area

The company is now plotting its next steps toward capitalizing on the area’s bounty and expects to update the market on the total resource volumes within the Olympus area, taking into account the uplifted volumes in both Zeus and Athena, in early 2023.

 “Following the start of production from our Karish reservoir last week, I am pleased that our drilling program, which has now delivered five successful wells from five, continues to deliver value, ensuring security of supply and energy competition across the region,” said Mathios Rigas, CEO of Energean.

“We are evaluating a number of potential commercialization options for the Olympus area that leverage both new and our existing, unique Med-based infrastructure, and we expect to commit to a development concept in 1H 2023,” he said.

Future drilling sites off Israel's coast

In addition, Energean has moved its Stena IceMax drilling rig in order to begin drilling at its Hercules drilling site, the final well in its 2022 drilling campaign.

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Angry Lebanese Druze tackle Hezbollah Terrorists

Video Of The Week -Druze Villagers Block Hezbollah launching Rockets https://tinyurl.com/yhcmfxtx

Angry villagers in Chouya accuse terror group of endangering lives by firing from near civilian areas; Lebanon army arrives, confiscates launcher, arrests 4 suspects

 By EMANUEL FABIAN6 6-8-2021

 For the full article go to Times Of Israel - https://tinyurl.com/22wr3c2d  

 Druze residents in a southern Lebanese village halted the Hezbollah crew with its rocket launchers that had fired into Israel on Friday, and detained its members until the Lebanese Army arrived, according to media reports and video footage.

 The group stopped a truck-mounted multiple launch rocket system as it drove through the village of Chouya, the video footage showed.

Some angry villagers could be heard protesting: “Hezbollah is firing rockets from between homes so that Israel hits us back.”

Others converged on one of the Hezbollah members in the truck, shouting, “Who are you, you dog?”

Hezbollah later issued a statement saying that the rockets were fired from remote areas, adding that the fighters were stopped in Shwaya on their way back.

“The Islamic Resistance was and will always be most keen about the safety of its people and avoiding any harm to them through its acts of resistance,” the statement said.

The Lebanese Army later arrived to confiscate the rocket launcher seen in the video and said it arrested four suspects involved in the rocket fire. Media reports said four Hezbollah members were detained.

Reports indicated that the rocket launchers mounted to the vehicle stopped by residents in Chouya were used in the earlier attack, and some of the barrels appeared to be empty.

Nineteen rockets were fired at the Golan Heights and Galilee Panhandle from Lebanon on Friday morning, the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah both said.

The IDF said 10 projectiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system and six landed in open around Mount Dov. Another three rockets failed to clear the border and landed in Lebanese territory, according to the military. 

The Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group confirmed it had fired the projectiles, its heaviest barrage since the 2006 Second Lebanon War, which it said came in response to recent Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon. “The Islamic Resistance shelled open areas near the Sheba Farms with dozens of 122mm rockets,” it said in a statement carried in Arabic-language media.

Military spokesperson Ran Kochav told reporters on Friday that Israel has “no intention of going to war, but we do not want to turn the Lebanon border into a line of confrontation.”

“The incident shows Hezbollah’s deterrence, as it fired at open areas,” Kochav added.

He also asserted Hezbollah intentionally fired the rockets at open areas. Still, the Iron Dome system was activated to intercept some of the rockets, which is usually only done when projectiles are heading for populated areas, military bases or key infrastructure.

“This is a moderate response from Hezbollah, as to not escalate the situation,” Kochav said.

Rocket fire from Lebanon has been exceedingly rare in the 15 years since the 2006 Second Lebanon War Israel fought against Hezbollah, though it has occurred sporadically. Recent months, however, have seen a slight uptick, with 10 launches aimed at Israel during May’s 11-day war in Gaza, as well as last month, leading to fears among some that the phenomenon could become more common, as has happened in areas on the Gaza border.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known by its acronym UNIFIL, said Friday the situation was “very serious.”

“UNIFIL has detected rocket launches from Lebanon and return artillery fire by Israel. This is a very serious situation and we urge all parties to cease fire,” UNIFIL said in a statement.

Israel has conveyed to Lebanon via UN peacekeepers that it could intensify its response if calm is not returned to the border.

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Hezbollah Exploits Chaos in Lebanon

Video of The Week  "Peace Loving" Terrorists- https://tinyurl.com/d6rwkwty

For the full article from “the Algemeiner” by Steven Emerson go to: https://tinyurl.com/5x6u38n4

Lebanon is going through one of the gravest economic depressions in modern history. More than half of the country’s population now lives in poverty, and the country’s currency has plummeted by 90%. Fuel shortages have led to fights at gas stations and the shutdown of critical power stations.

The Middle Eastern state is now on the brink of a “social explosion.” This dire warning from caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab was issued on July 6 as he desperately called for international help to save “the Lebanese from death” and “prevent the demise” of his country.

Instead of taking some responsibility for Lebanon’s economic crisis, Hezbollah — the country’s most dominant political force — is looking to exploit the crisis and further expand its influence. 

Israel has answered Diab’s call for help and formally offered humanitarian assistance to Lebanon through the United Nation’s peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL). But Hezbollah is expected to block any form of Israeli assistance to Lebanon, further illustrating the terrorist organization’s obedience to Iran’s extremist Shia ideology, to the detriment of the Lebanese population.

 “As an Israeli, as a Jew, and as a human being, my heart aches seeing the images of people going hungry on the streets of Lebanon,” Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz said earlier this month, adding that Israel is “ready to act and to encourage other countries to extend a helping hand to Lebanon so that it will once again flourish and emerge from its state of crisis.” 

Instead of focusing on how to remedy his country’s woes, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah deflected blame towards the United States during a July 6 event called “Palestine is Victorious,” and highlighted his group’s main goal of fighting Israel. 

“When in the Axis of Resistance, we talk about the ‘liberation of Palestine,’ we are not talking about dreams or fantasies,” Nasrallah said, adding “we do not exaggerate our goals, and this is one of the most important elements of the resistance force.”

However, as Lebanon continues to descend towards potential state collapse, Hezbollah’s incentives could change. The group’s leadership could take even more power instead of standing by.

 Western governments therefore need to prepare seriously for a scenario whereby an Iran-backed terrorist organization consolidates further control over a country on Israel’s doorstep.

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Chevronʼs Purchase Could Unlock Israelʼs Natural Gas Bonanza

 Video Of The Week - Lebanese Journalist - Peace with Israel Is Coming -https://tinyurl.com/y6o58zjo

By Stanley Reed, 9-10-2020 NY Times - https://nyti.ms/2Fk0q36

 Chevron, the American oil giant, wrapped up the acquisition on Monday of a relatively small Houston-based company called Noble Energy, paying about $4 billion.

Until recently, the deal would have been unlikely, if not unthinkable — because what distinguishes Noble is the large natural gas business it has built in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, especially in Israel, an area that major oil companies had until now avoided.Chevron’s move is the latest milestone in a remarkable shift in perceptions about a relatively newregion for the petroleum industry in the eastern Mediterranean. Once a dead sea for the oilindustry, this area, reaching from the Nile Delta in Egypt up to Israel and Lebanon and around Cyprus, has come alive with exploration vessels, drilling rigs and production platforms in recentyears thanks to a series of large natural gas discoveries.

Those finds are drawing major oil companies into the area, attracted not only by the prospect of further undiscovered resources but by improving relations between Israel and its former foes Egypt and Jordan.

International oil giants previously steered clear of Israel, partly,  to avoid alienating large Arab oil producers like Saudi Arabia. The move by Chevron, which this week edged ahead of Exxon Mobil to become America’s largest oil company by market value, indicates that thedays when Persian Gulf states bristle about business with Israel may be over. Recently, the UnitedArab Emirates and Bahrain established relations with Israel with apparent Saudi blessing.

“It is opening up the Israeli market to the world,” Nati Birenboim, a former Israeli energy official said of Chevron’s arrival. “Everyone knows when they bought Noble, they bought Israel.”More than 20 years ago, Noble came to Israel to hunt for petroleum. It has produced major natural gas finds that  turned Israelcinto an exporter with long-term contracts worth an estimated $25 billion.

“I think what Chevron sees is the opportunity” to buy into “massive natural gas resources located in the center of a region with a lot of demand”

Along with the drilling sites off the coast of Israel, a major discovery called the Zohr gas field, found by the Italian energy company Eni in Egyptian waters in 2015, has drawn development in the area.Total, the French oil firm, and Eni have even extended the hunt into the sea off strife-torn Lebanon “It is a very attractive region,” said Wayne Ackerman, a former adviser on gas to Saudi Aramco, who has studied the area’s geology. “I am convinced there will be more discoveries there.”

More than 20 years ago, Noble helped put the region on the energy industry’s map. Delek Drilling, an Israeli firm, brought the company to Israel to hunt for petroleum. The partnership, which began in 1999, has produced major natural gas finds that not only reduced Israel’s dependence on imported coal and oil but turned Israel — with some helpful nudging from American diplomats — into an exporter with long-term contracts worth an estimated $25 billion to help power the neighboring economies of Jordan and Egypt.

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Facts About the Beirut Explosion

Video Of The Week-UNRWA; Incitement at its Best - https://tinyurl.com/y26eqtq9

Report from - Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Center

As the Lebanese people struggle to recover from the catastrophic deaths and destruction wrought by the Beirut explosion, more questions than answers continue to arise. The official story, that in 2013, Lebanese port officials impounded a Moldovan flagged ship bound for Mozambique, laden with explosive chemicals, does not address other facts which have emerged and must be investigated:

1.         Sections of the Beirut port are under the control of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. Israeli officials have long complained that the Beirut port, “the Hezbollah Port” was being utilized by the terrorists to smuggle contraband and weapons into Lebanon. As UN Ambassador Danny Danon recently stated: “Israel discovered that Iran and its Quds Force have been exploiting civilian maritime channels, and specifically the Port of Beirut.”

2.         Hezbollah has a long history of illegally acquiring and stockpiling ammonium nitrate in civilian areas. In 2015, Britain’s M15 and Metro Police carried out a raid on a secret Hezbollah warehouse in London that contained 3 tons of ammonium nitrate. The British government shamefully covered-up the raid in order not to damage relations with Iran shortly after signing the dangerous Nuclear Deal. It is believed Hezbollah was planning on using the chemicals for an attack in the UK. Click here

3.         The same year, police in Cyprus discovered a Hezbollah warehouse storing 8.3 tons of ammonium nitrate. A Hezbollah operative was arrested and charged with planning a terror attack. “A state prosecutor said Lebanese-Canadian Hussein Bassam Abdallah admitted that Hezbollah aimed to mount terrorist attacks against Israeli interests in Cyprus using the ammonium nitrate that he had been ordered to guard at the Larnaca home of another official of the Iranian-backed group.” Click here

4.         Israeli intelligence gave German police information, earlier this year, of the location of a Hezbollah stockpile of ammonium nitrate in southern Germany. The fact that the Iranian terror group was warehousing the explosives on German soil helped to push Berlin to outlaw all wings of the Hezbollah organization.  “Mossad reportedly gave Germany information about warehouses in the south of the country where Hezbollah stashed hundreds of kilograms of ammonium nitrate, a material used to make explosives.” Click here

5.         Hezbollah has a long history and deliberate strategy of stockpiling rockets, weapons and explosives in civilian areas. Hezbollah intentionally utilizes civilian neighborhoods including the basements of schools, mosques, residential buildings and hospitals as missile depots. The terrorists understand that the Israeli air force would be hindered in responding to rockets launched from civilian centers during the next war with Lebanon. And if Israel does attack the launchers and kills civilians, Hezbollah is counting on the UN, the Europeans and the ICC to immediately accuse Israel of war crimes. Hezbollah calls it this “Human Shield” program. Click here

6.         In 2016, Hezbollah’s chief terrorist Hassan Nasrallah had threatened to fire rockets at an ammonia storage facility in Haifa. He vowed that the explosion would be like a nuclear bomb striking Israel. He repeated this threat on several occasions causing Israeli officials to remove the storage tanks. “Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened in the past to destroy Israel by causing a massive explosion in the port of Haifa using ammonia tanks that he said would be like a “nuclear” explosion. In addition Hezbollah allegedly sought to acquire ammonium nitrate via Syria since 2009 and tried to infiltrate the agriculture ministry in Lebanon to do so, according to leaked diplomatic cables.” Click here

7.         On Valentine’s Day in 2005, a team of Hezbollah terrorists murdered then Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri with a powerful bomb in Beirut. 21 people were killed in the massive explosion. Hariri was a strong opponent of the Hezbollah group and the regime of  Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad that was attempting to control Lebanon. Four Hezbollah assassins are being tried in absentia by a UN court for the murder. Ironically, after 15 years of stalling, the UN’s Special Tribunal for Lebanon, hearing the Hariri case will deliver its decision on Friday. It’s believed the Special Tribunal will declare Hezbollah as responsible for the bombing attack. Click here

Hezbollah’s long involvement in attempting to procure and stockpile ammonium nitrate perpetuates the growing suspicions that the Iranian terrorist organization, which rules Lebanon, was directly involved in the warehousing of the chemicals at the Beirut port. When the Lebanese population will finish dealing with the devastation and mourning its dead and wounded the finger-pointing at Hezbollah’s role in the tragedy will begin in earnest. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon whose verdict in the Hariri assassination trial will further emphasize Hezbollah’s guilt. Hezbollah and its Iranian masters, the key source of Middle East instability, must be driven out of Lebanon.

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STOP TUNNELS AND WAR

Video Of The Week - Exodus of Jews from Arab Lands-  https://tinyurl.com/y994c8ym

BY JPOST EDITORIAL - 15-01-2019

What were those Hezbollah tunnels built for? Is there any doubt that they were to be used in the next war with Israel? 

Three days ago, the IDF announced that its effort to find and destroy Hezbollah cross-border attack tunnels was coming to an end, after a sixth such underground passage had been the discovered and was being destroyed.

This was the biggest and most sophisticated of all six tunnels, one that stretched half a mile inside Lebanon and a few dozen meters into Israel, some eight football fields long in total. This was one with height and width, carved out at a depth of 55 meters (180 feet) making it the deepest of the tunnels uncovered by the IDF. Inside was a terrorist’s lair, with electricity, a railway to move equipment and garbage, exit stairs along the route, and other aspects that made it more sophisticated than the others, and likely the most valuable one to Hezbollah.

What were those Hezbollah tunnels built for? Is there any doubt that they were to be used in the next war with Israel?

“Their goal has been to penetrate our territory, to kidnap our people, including civilians, murder civilians and conquer the northern piece of the Galilee,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a briefing last month along the border after inspecting the military operation. “This is not merely an act of aggression; it is an act of war.”

If this “act” of war becomes part of a sustained activity, everyone knows what comes next: all-out war. Israel will defend itself and bomb over and under all locations engaged in that Third Lebanon War, targeting the missile launch sites that emanate alongside homes in the small Lebanese villages short kilometers north of the border.

In those villages – Hezbollah uses “every third house in southern Lebanon,” Netanyahu said – are Lebanese grandmothers playing with their grandchildren, sitting over an entranceway to a tunnel. There are hospitals, supermarkets and schools. All are being used to cover Hezbollah terrorist activity and all will be fair targets in a future war. The photographs of the casualties will be on page 1 in every newspaper in the world, and the UN Security Council will meet to condemn Israeli aggression.

Then the Security Council will meet. Not today, when the blatant evidence of these acts of war being perpetrated along Israel’s sovereign border is being ignored. Only then.

It is shameful that the United Nations, and almost every country in the world, is not speaking out against these self-evident truths: the tunnels were a new underground frontier to be used by the Shi’ite terrorist group to infiltrate fighters, as an opening salvo in a future war accompanying the launching of rockets, missiles and mortar shells. As Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said when he helicoptered to the North last month to view the IDF work, Hezbollah did not dig tunnels that breach Israeli territory in order to “go shopping.”

To its great credit, the United States is one country that has spoken out. On Monday in Beirut, after meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale condemned Hezbollah.

“While Lebanon has the right to defend itself, that is the right of the Lebanese state alone,” Hale said. “It is unacceptable to have a militia outside the control of the state, and unanswerable to all people of Lebanon, digging attack tunnels across the blue line to Israel or assembling an arsenal of over 100,000 missiles with which to threaten regional stability.”

The northern border with Lebanon has the potential to become the next theater of war. Thousands of Hezbollah guerillas were sent to Syria in 2013 to fight alongside the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Now that Assad’s forces have emerged victorious, the guerillas have returned and attention turns to the Israel-Lebanon border.

“The people of Lebanon have to understand that Hezbollah is putting them in jeopardy, and we expect Lebanon to take action against this, to protest against this, not to give in to this,” Netanyahu said. “And the fact that the Lebanese army is doing nothing means that they are either unable, or unwilling, or both.”

The IDF says it “is monitoring and is in possession of a number of sites where Hezbollah is digging underground infrastructure that has yet to cross into Israeli territory.”

The world has an opportunity to speak up and work to prevent the Third Lebanon War. We don’t understand what everyone is waiting for.

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When Anti-Zionism Tunnels Under Your House

Video Of The Week - What Is Hezbollah? - https://tinyurl.com/ycf3hhzf

By Bret Stephens -

For full article go to - https://tinyurl.com/ydfd9otk

In 2002, Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, was said to have given a speech noting that the creation of the state of Israel had spared his followers the trouble of hunting down Jews at “the ends of the world.” The Lebanese terrorist group has prominentapologists in the West, and some of them rushed to claim that Nasrallah had uttered no such thing.

Except he had. Tony Badran of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tracked down the original recording of the speech, in which Nasrallah carries on about “occupied Palestine” as the place appointed by Allah for the “final and decisive battle” with the Jews. By “occupied Palestine,” he wasn’t talking about the West Bank.

Sometimes anti-Zionists are — surprise! — homicidal anti-Semites, too.

That’s a thought that can’t be far from the mind of anyone living in northern Israel, where in recent days the Israeli Army has discovered at least three tunnels dug by Hezbollah and intended to infiltrate commandos under the border in the (increasingly likely) event of war. Given the breadth of Hezbollah’s capabilities, the depth of its fanaticism, and the experience of Hamas’s excavation projects in Gaza, it’s fair to assume other tunnels will be found.

What would Hezbollah do if it got its fighters across? In 1974, three Palestinian terrorists crossed the border from Lebanon and took 115 hostages at an elementary school in the town of Ma’alot. They murdered 25 of them, including 22 children.

Another infiltration from Lebanon in 1978 left 38 Israelis dead. Given Hezbollah’s long record of perpetrating massacres from Buenos Airesto Beirut to towns and cities across Syria, it’s a playbook it wouldn’t scruple to follow in a war for the Galilee.

Note: Anti-Zionists are not advocating the reform of a state, as Japan was reformed after 1945. Nor are they calling for the adjustment of a state’s borders, as Canada’s border with the United States was periodically adjusted in the 19th century. They’re not talking about the birth of a separate state, either, as South Sudan was born out of Sudan in 2011. And they’re certainly not championing the partition of a multiethnic state into ethnically homogenous components, as Yugoslavia was partitioned after 1991.

Anti-Zionism is ideologically unique in insisting that one state, and one state only, doesn’t just have to change. It has to go. By a coincidence that its adherents insist is entirely innocent, this happens to be the Jewish state, making anti-Zionists either the most disingenuous of ideologues or the most obtuse. When then-CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill called last month for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea” and later claimed to be ignorant of what the slogan really meant, it was hard to tell in which category he fell.

The good news is that the conversation about anti-Zionism remains mostly academic because Israelis haven’t succumbed to the fatal illusion that, if only they behaved better, their enemies would hate them less. To the extent that Israeli parents ever sleep soundly, it’s because they know what they are up against. And, to borrow Kipling’s line, they never make mock of uniforms that guard them while they sleep.

The same can’t be said for that class of scolds who excel in making excuses for the wicked and finding fault with the good. When you find yourself on the same side as Hassan Nasrallah, Louis Farrakhan and David Duke on the question of a country’s right to exist, it’s time to re-examine every opinion you hold.

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