[News] Israel’s Biblical wars of ‘self-defense’: The myth of the ‘seven war fronts’

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Israel’s Biblical wars of ‘self-defense’: The myth of the ‘seven war
fronts’
By Ramzy Baroud <https://english.palinfo.com/?p=250012>

Wednesday 23-October-2024 -
https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/israels-biblical-wars-of-self-defense-the-myth-of-the-seven-war-fronts/

Israeli officials keep repeating that the occupation state is having to
fight on multiple fronts. The truth is that Israel chooses to fight on
multiple fronts. The two claims are fundamentally different.

Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went as far as saying
that his country is fighting on seven different war fronts, all driven by
the objective of “defending ourselves against… barbarism.” These supposedly
defensive wars are also carried out in the name of protecting “civilization
against those who seek to impose a dark age of fanaticism on all of us,”
said Netanyahu in early October.

There is no need to counter Netanyahu’s diatribes.

It should be obvious that genocide is not classified as self-defense, and
preserving human civilization does not include burning people alive.

That’s what happened to Sha’ban Al-Dalou, who was killed horrifically
alongside his family in the recent Israeli shelling of Al-Aqsa Martyrs
Hospital in Deir Al-Balah.

Is Israel being forced to fight on seven fronts, though? According to
Netanyahu, as well as other top political and military officials, the
fronts are Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and groups in Syria, Iraq and the
West Bank. Although the major fighting is only taking place in Gaza and
Lebanon, the official Israeli line is keen to exaggerate the number of war
fronts to continue capitalizing on the overly-generous US and Western
military and political support. More wars for Israel also translate into
more money.

Of course, Israel is fighting actual wars too; a war of extermination and
genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, which has killed and
wounded more than 150,000 people in the course of one year. There is also
the other war in the West Bank, carried out with the precise aim of
subduing all forms of resistance, so that Israel may accelerate its
settler-colonial project in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The above is not an inference, but a statement of fact, based on
Netanyahu’s own declared policies. “Israel must have security control over
all the territory west of the [River] Jordan,” he said during a news
conference last January. To be more precise, he added “between the
[Mediterranean] Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
He used the Israeli euphemism for territorial expansion: “security control”.

In an interview with the European public service channel Arte, Israeli
Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel would expand “little
by little” to eventually encompass the whole of the Palestinian
territories, in addition to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and other Arab
countries. “It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to
Damascus,” he said.

Religious prophecies are particularly dangerous when they are embraced by
unhinged, extremist politicians.

This is especially so when they wield the political clout and military
power to put them into action. Netanyahu is a leading member of the same
group of such politicians. He has already justified his genocide in Gaza
and wars everywhere according to religious texts, where he sees his army as
the Biblical Israelites fighting the Amalekites.

These religious sentiments have been used in Israel’s political discourses
throughout its 76-year history. However, they have taken center stage in
recent years under a succession of far-right governments, mostly formed by
Netanyahu. They see in the Gaza war an opportunity to bring about what
Smotrich, speaking as the vice-chairman of the Knesset in 2017, called
“Israel’s decisive plan”.

Ironically named “One Hope”, Smotrich’s plan is primarily centered on the
annexation of the whole of the West Bank, which he, like Netanyahu and
others, refers to as “Judea and Samaria”. The plan entails “imposing
sovereignty on all of Judea and Samaria,” with the “concurrent acts of
settlements,” as in “the establishing of cities and towns” with the aim of
“creating a clear and irreversible reality on the ground.”

Smotrich’s plan, which is being implemented now that he is one of the two
kingmakers in Netanyahu’s government – the other is equally extreme Itamar
Ben-Gvir — was prepared years before the ongoing war on Gaza, and has been
implemented, as per his own admission, “little by little” ever since.

Israel may claim that it is fighting a war on seven or seventy fronts. It
may also assign itself the role of the savior of civilizations. However,
the truth cannot be hidden, especially when the Israelis themselves are the
ones who are disclosing their sinister intentions.

Even the ongoing war on Lebanon, which Israeli leaders, along with their US
backers, have dubbed a defensive war, is now being promoted by some Israeli
politicians and their right-wing supporters as another expansionist war, or
more accurately a quest for “Greater Israel”. There is a difference between
a country fighting a defensive war on multiple fronts and another fighting
for colonial expansion, for regional hegemony and for military dominance
driven by religious prophecies and fanaticism.

Those who have chosen the latter path, as Israel has, cannot claim to be
fighting in self-defense.

“Self-defense in international law refers to the inherent right of a State
to use of force in response to an armed attack,” the International Red
Cross points out on its website. This definition does not apply to a state
that is itself a military occupier and is thus actively hostile and using
violence unlawfully.

Netanyahu and Smotrich, however, are hardly concerned about international
or humanitarian laws. They are driven by ominous, expansionist agendas. If
they succeed, more deadly wars are sure to follow. The international
community must do everything in its power to ensure their failure.
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