Hezbollah and the international community’s silence

It is understandable that the conversation these days about the conflict in the Middle East is focused on preventing a wider war.

A full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah would inevitably cause great harm both to Israelis and Lebanese, as well as the possibility of spreading to other states.

Having said that, many of those who are speaking the loudest now were the very ones who could have prevented the terror and aggression that make the likelihood of a wider conflict much more significant. 

There is a repeated trend that has taken place over many years in reaction to events in the Middle East: ignoring or rationalizing Islamist attacks on Israel, which forces Israel to deal alone with the threats, leading to the inevitable condemnation of the Jewish state when it defends its territory and its people.

We saw this in Lebanon in July 2006, when Hezbollah seized and killed several Israeli soldiers. We saw this in Gaza when Hamas repeatedly launched rockets into Israel and eventually committed the massacre of October 7.

In each case, the international community either minimized the evil or argued, falsely, that there are problems on both sides. This willful ignorance had dual effects. Instead of an international effort to prevent these attacks against the Jewish state, Israel reached a point where it had to defend itself.  

All this seems particularly relevant as we mark the anniversary of the 2006 Lebanon war and as Israel’s northern border heats up. The conversation to some extent has shifted away from the war in Gaza and toward a much more frightening potential conflict with Hezbollah.

Once again, we are seeing this pattern. For months on end, while Israel understandably had its eyes on Hamas, Hezbollah has been using that reality to launch rockets and drones on a regular basis into northern Israel, resulting in many Israeli casualties.

Life for Israeli residents in the north has become intolerable, and about 80,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes and have been living as internally displaced persons across Israel for many months. One would have thought that all this time the international community would have sharply condemned Hezbollah’s actions and worked to stop the ongoing attacks.

Rarely, however, was this the center of attention, until more recently, when Israel indicated the situation was unacceptable and may have to be solved militarily. Suddenly, the world woke up, and the theme of preventing escalation became a primary focus.

What seemed to be tolerable to the international community – the displacement of nearly 100,000 Israelis – was now replaced by something that was deemed intolerable: a full-scale conflict.

Here, too, there were dual impacts of this approach: the failure to address the continued assaults by Hezbollah had brought the area to the brink of war; and the problem, ignored for many months, was turned on its head. It is now presented as a war that must be prevented in order for civilians on both sides to return to their homes. Which is to say, the world only started caring about displaced citizens when they weren’t just from Israel.

This willful, inappropriate attempt to be evenhanded was the inevitable result of the long silence, taken together with panic over the possibility of full-scale war.

And with the failure to accurately place blame where it belonged — on Hezbollah’s unprovoked aggression spurred on by its patron Iran — condemnation of an Israeli military operation in Lebanon would surely surface full-blown.

These two elements are directly interconnected. The failure to take Islamist aggression seriously forces Israel to deal with it militarily. The level of military action is directly correlated both to the nature of the aggression and the fact that Israel knows that it is only its own actions that will provide security for its citizens.

So Israel may inevitably be forced into what many might consider a “disproportionate response” in order to create deterrence which the international community failed to do. And then invariably will come international condemnation of Israel’s military actions as disproportionate.

This cycle of indifference followed by condemnation is one that could be avoided if the international community took its role seriously. There needs to be serious education about the Islamist role in the region, fueled by Iran, that seeks to destroy the Jewish state through missiles and terrorism, and stands in the way of progress between Israel and the Palestinians toward a peace that provides security for each people. 

It is time for serious conversation, but not only about preventing a full-scale war by pressing Hezbollah to move back from the border. It must also be about the nature of the Islamist threat.

The need to stand up early against their aggression is the best way to prevent future wars.