Reality check
A few things the mainstream media may not have told you
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Here are some things about the Iranian war against Israel that the objective, balanced and accurate mainstream media may unaccountably have omitted to tell you.
Today, the Iranian proxy army Hezbollah in southern Lebanon fired a massive barrage of more than 100 rockets towards the northern Israeli town of Safed. This attack caused a city-wide power outage.
Swathes of northern Israel are once again on fire as a result of rocket attacks by Hezbollah. One-third of the homes in Metulla have been demolished by rocket fire. The former mayor of the town of Safed, Ilan Shochat, said:
This is Hezbollah's new strategy – intentionally firing on open areas to ignite fires and burn the north.
In 2006, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1701 designed to end hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. Lebanese and UN forces were deployed to southern Lebanon to enforce the peace and the disarmament of Hezbollah and any other armed groups. Yet Hezbollah installed some 150,000 rockets and missiles among the civilian population under the eye of UNIFIL troops, and constructed terror tunnels from southern Lebanon under the border (termed the Blue Line) with Israel.
Since the day after the October 7 pogrom in Gaza, Hezbollah has unleashed around 5000 rockets, explosive drones and anti-tank guided missile attacks at northern Israel, as well as making seven attempts to infiltrate into Israeli territory (just as Hamas did on October 7). This has resulted in the evacuation from their homes of some 60,000 Israeli civilians, who have been living as refugees inside Israel ever since.
The UN has done nothing to enforce its own Resolution 1701. Instead the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who blamed Israel for the October 7 pogrom in which Palestinian Arabs from Gaza slaughtered 1200 Israelis and kidnapped 240 into Gaza, said:
I feel compelled to voice my profound concerns about escalation between Israel & Hezbollah along the Blue Line. The risk for the conflict in the Middle East to widen is real and must be avoided.The people of the region and the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.
The responsibility for stopping that by disarming Hezbollah and holding it to account for flouting UNSC Resolution 1701 lies with none other than the UN, which has refused to do so. We should all feel compelled to voice our profound concerns about the malignancy of the UN and Antonio Guterres.
Israel has been engaging only in precision attacks on Hezbollah targets in response to the onslaught waged upon it from Lebanon. But Hezbollah has been widening that onslaught from northern to southern Galilee and it has even reached Haifa bay. It looks increasingly likely that Israel will soon embark on a military attack on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to end this intolerable situation once and for all. It has told the civilian population of southern Lebanon to leave, and it looks like many if not most have done so.
The cost to Israel of an all-out war against Hezbollah may be fearsome. Many of the Islamist army’s rockets and other missiles have a precision and reach that would make the Hamas attacks look like a picnic. It is estimated that thousands of Israelis may be killed by Hezbollah’s vast airborne armoury before Israel can gain the upper hand. And Iran may itself seek to defend its most valuable army by launching direct attacks on Israel, joined by its proxies in Iraq and Yemen.
But what choice does Israel have? The rockets are flying, Galilee is burning, tens of thousands of Israelis are refugees in their own country, and the international body responsible for upholding peace and security does nothing to stop this but continues to mount its own obscene war of demonisation and delegitimisation against Israel.
And the world behaves as if nothing is happening other than the war in Gaza and the fate of its Palestinian Arab residents. The western media has told the public virtually nothing about the nine-month onslaught on northern Israel, nothing about UN resolution 1701 and nothing about the UN failure to deal with this.
As a result, when Israel is finally forced to deal properly with Hezbollah, aggressor and victim will once again be inverted and Israel will once again be blamed for unwarranted and disproportionate aggression.
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The war against Israel, which is being waged simultaneously on seven fronts, is being orchestrated by Iran. A constant source of astonishment has been the concern shown by the Biden administration — while professing support for Israel against Hamas — to protect Iran. When Israel wanted to nip Hezbollah’s attacks in the bud soon after October 7, the US told it not to do so. Even now, the US is telling Israel the same thing. It has done everything possible to hamper and prevent Israel’s attempt to destroy Hamas, Iran’s proxy in Gaza. Even after Iran itself unleashed a hail of missiles against Israel in April, the US forbade the Israelis to attack Iran in response.
This is all part of what many call the Obama Doctrine, being implemented by an administration whose key Middle East officials are Israel-hating Obama retreads — and whose scenario for a new Middle East order, astoundingly, features genocidal and Islamist Iran as an essential counter-force to Israel and Saudi Arabia.
As explained here by Michael Doran and Tony Badran, this was the strategy behind President Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal which would have legitimised a nuclear-armed Iran with only a few years’ delay. Even when American interests have been attacked by Iranian proxies, as has happened dozens of times since October 7, the US has responded with only a limp flick of the wrist. Indeed, America’s supine and even grovelling posture towards the fanatics of Tehran, who have understood that the Biden administration seeks to appease rather than defeat the various forces ranged against the west, undoubtedly helped pave the way for the October 7 pogrom.
Now new intelligence has suggested that Iran has ramped up still further its nuclear weapon development in order to take advantage of American pre-election paralysis. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has reportedly ordered the reactivation of Israeli teams focusing on Iran's nuclear programme. There are reports that this was prompted by concerns from former security officials about Israel’s recent neglect of the issue. That itself is pretty alarming — if true — in what it suggests about the Israeli government. But here’s the eye catching bit as reported by the Israeli news site Walla:
A source familiar with the matter said: “Recently, the penny finally dropped.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared: “All options are on the table — Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”
Can it really be that, at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour, the Biden administration has finally connected with reality? If so, things must be even more terrifying than anyone had thought.
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On Tuesday, a physiotherapist called Fadi al-Wadiya who worked for the humanitarian group Médicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders) was killed in an Israeli drone strike in Gaza City.
MSF immediately responded with righteous fury. It declared:
We are outraged and strongly condemn the killing of our colleague, Fadi al Wadiya, in an attack this morning in Gaza City. The attack killed Fadi, along with five other people including three children, while he was cycling to work, near the MSF clinic where he was providing care. “Killing a healthcare worker while on his way to provide vital medical care to wounded victims of the endless massacres across Gaza is beyond shocking; it’s cynical and abhorrent,” said Caroline Seguin, MSF operations manager for Palestine.
The IDF then revealed that Fadi al-Wadiya was a “significant operative” in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group. It specified that that he had served as a key terrorist in the Islamic Jihad's rocket programme and that for more than 15 years he had been involved in Islamic Jihad's manufacturing operations where he was recognised as an expert in electronics and chemistry. The same year that al Wadiya had joined MSF, he had attempted to leave Gaza with two other terrorists to undergo training in Iran.
And how did MSF react to what was surely a devastating blow to its authority and reputation as a dispassionate and disinterested provider of medical aid? Was it shocked? Was it horrified? Did it have a long night of the soul? Nope, it didn’t miss a beat. It had no indication, it declared, that one of its employees, was a terror operative as claimed by the Israel Defence Forces.
And then the IDF released pictures showing al Wadiya in terrorist fatigues alongside his fellow-jihadists in Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
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A clinical figure in Gaza who proceeds seamlessly from treating needy Arabs to the mass murder of Israelis. A humanitarian organisation, funded by millions of philanthropic dollars, that apparently doesn’t know it provides cover for terrorists. Who could possibly have imagined such a thing??
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One of the many assertions made by the UN and western media which has incited hatred of Israel has been the mass destruction of Gaza’s buildings by the IDF. Back in December, when the war was merely three months old, the Wall Street Journal claimed:
Nearly 70 per cent of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed.
Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who has written about the history of aerial bombing, told the Journal:
Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history. It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.
Really? Today, YNet reports:
The IDF disputes UN figures of the scope of destruction in Gaza. Figures revealed for the first time by YNnet on Thursday claim only 16 per cent of buildings in the [Gaza] Strip were destroyed since the start of the war, as opposed to 50 per cent according to UN figures and 70 per cent in foreign media reports. (The data referred to the period ending May 31).
The IDF said, unlike the UN and media outlets, it collects almost daily visual evidence using advanced drones and other technological means in addition to satellite imagery so their data is more reliable and would be presented to the various international tribunals and investigations into Israel's conduct in the war.
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Finally, in this period of utter insanity and moral bankruptcy, let us salute those beyond-brave Arab individuals who are speaking up for truth, decency and Israel. Click here to watch Egyptian scholar Dalia Ziada, executive director of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Democratic Studies, talking about how Hamas hides in houses and hospitals and uses people as human shields rather than protecting them in the tunnels or any other shelters. Referring to the “huge death toll” in Gaza, she notes she can’t believe the Hamas statistics or anything they say. She declares:
I’m still supportive of Israel’s war on Hamas, not on Gaza. And I will continue to be supportive of Israel’s war on Hezbollah, on the Houthis, and all the seven fronts of war”.
And who could forget Mosab Hassan Yusuf, the “Green Prince” whose father was a founder of Hamas but who now tirelessly delivers blunt truths about Hamas and scathingly demolishes the west’s useful idiots who attack Israel instead. In his latest post on X/Twitter, Yusuf writes about the “Hamas nightmare”:
The UAE and Egypt are prepared to participate in the postwar security force in Gaza. The IDF, Shin Bet, and Mossad will continue to hunt Hamas fleeing forces, leaders, and anyone who participated in the Oct. 7 attacks for months and years to come. Hamas leaders’ request to move from Qatar to Turkey or Jordan has been rejected. Sinwar is losing his leverage over a hostage deal, soon he will be left with one option, to free the hostages in exchange for his exile. It will take 15-25 years and $Billions to bring Gaza back to where it was on Oct. 6.
The pro "Palestine" activists can eat falafel and STFU.
Wow. Would that the defeatist, appeasement-minded west had a fraction of this man’s spirit, and his courage. Thank you, Arab heroes.
