Analysis | ‘Lebanon, Part of the Promised Land’: Israel’s Messianic Right Wing Targets New Territory for Settlements

Before you dismiss the religious messianists who held a small online conference on Monday with their eyes set on reclaiming ‘God’s Promised Land,’ remember that their plans for West Bank settlement seemed equally outlandish 50 years ago

In his wonderful book, A Tale of Love and Darkness, Amos Oz writes of a conversation he has with a fellow kibbutznik as the two walk sentry duty. The fellow surprises Oz by expressing understanding for the fierce resistance of the Arabs. The man says the problem is power, that it is a human weakness to strive for it without limit. The enjoyment of power since 1967 has done its work on Israel, caution was advised and rejected. There is no bridge too far, no limit on a tiny country with the power of the US behind it. Zionists yearned for power for preservation, were given carte blanche by the US, but now look at what it has brought. There is no good ending to come yet the dream of power doesn’t die. I suspect Weiss has never seen the devastation of war as she invites it.< . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . /div>

Lawyer Doron Nir Tzvi’s declaration, quoted above, that “everything is bullshit”, interpreted to mean that “if Israel decides to annex south Lebanon, it can be formalized legally and diplomatically”, has formed part of Israel’s legal doctrine since the state’s foundation.

The head of the IDF’s International Law Division, Daniel Reisner, had this to say after Operation Cast Lead:

“If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. (…) International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal moulds. Eight years later it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy.”

On the contrary, closely analogous: “everything is bullshit (…) if Israel decides to annex south Lebanon, it can be formalized legally” displays the same reasoning as “International law progresses through violations.” To annex south Lebanon would be a violation of international law, but Israel’s “legal work”, to which it devotes vast energy and resources, would endeavour to create a new jurisprudential thesis that would, with the support of Israel’s “global northern” backers, eventually serve as justification for the violation. Except that things are changing. Israel’s current genocidal assault on Gaza will now inhibit the effectiveness of its legal “creativity”.

As for “everything (that is, international law) is bullshit”, Israel’s most prestigious Zionist historian, Benny Morris,suggested as much in a recent debate with Norman Finkelstein and Mouin Rabbani: “No one cares about international law” were his exact words.

A new Lebanon war!

Wouldn’t that be awesomely convenient!

A new war, thanks to our Hasbara

1/ shall make us the defenders, better the victims again;

2/ subsequently we can, during our official Hezbollah business target as many Palestinian refugees’ camps as the world’s inaction and indifference allow;

3/ or will allow us to commit indefinitely more atrocities in Gaza, because, once again, aren’t we the victims? The good guys? The fake, Jewish only democracy?

4/ Lastly in will artificially and temporarily at least, like Gaza, reunite a never more divided, and polarized Jewish Israeli society where however for 90% everything divides us other than jointly deciding not to see the Palestinian elephant in the room.

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