Commentary
‘Informed’ or not, Israel’s war in the Middle East is the real thing
This is not a “gloves on” war for a “new order” in the Middle East; instead, the goal is to break up the region by shattering it along ethnic, religious and sectarian lines. Divide and conquer. And Italy is involved.
As the media tells it, aiming to keep us unconcerned, Israel’s attack on Iran was “phoned-in”; “both Washington and Iran were informed in advance”; “the Iranians won’t retaliate.”
At first glance, it would seem that Israel’s retaliation after Tehran's October 1 attack amounts to a kind of “gloves on” war. In reality, it’s a war like any other, just waiting for the right time to escalate – perhaps the election of the next U.S. president. Everyone knows that Iran and its nuclear program have been Netanyahu's true obsession for decades: but he needs the indispensable American military support to strike at the heart of the Islamic Republic. Has the big showdown merely been postponed?
Nevertheless, the war continues, and its toll of casualties and destruction keeps growing. On the night between Friday and Saturday, on which Tehran was hit – for the first time since the SCUD missiles fired by Saddam Hussein in 1988 – the Israelis dropped bombs on Lebanon, Gaza, and Damascus, almost as if to underscore that the preconditions for a ceasefire are still not present. Everyone waited to see what would happen on Saturday in Doha at the summit between the heads of the CIA, Mossad and Qatar, the first attempt to reopen negotiations after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
But if we think this is a war that Israel is waging alone, we are sorely mistaken. And it’s not just about the billions in war supplies to Tel Aviv. An investigation broadcast by the Qatari network Al Jazeera revealed that over the past year, the U.S. and U.K. have set up a real “air bridge” to Israel, with 6,000 military flights, including at least 1,200 cargo flights.
But there’s more. Out of the more than 1,200 reconnaissance and intelligence flights to locate targets to strike, 20 percent were flown by Israeli aircraft, 33 percent by American aircraft and 47 percent by British ones. In short, 70 percent of the reconnaissance overflights to strike Hamas and Hezbollah – which thus contributed to the operations that bombed buildings, hospitals, schools, and killed civilians – were carried out by the Anglo-American alliance, whose aircraft have been taking off from bases in Germany, Greece, Cyprus, and Italy in the center of the Mediterranean. This is how we Italians are also involved in this war – without anyone telling us about it, of course.
Perhaps when the Meloni government builds a military logistics base in Qatar, as announced, we might also be as privileged as Al Jazeera and actually get informed about what is happening in the Middle East, since our NATO allies are carefully avoiding telling us.
Thus, we have to pay close attention to where we stand when it comes to international legality. The truth is that with our participation in the “air bridge” alone, we are helping Israel carry out the destruction of Gaza and Lebanon, while at the same time we are asking Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon. We have gone down the slippery slope into a paradoxical situation, one which is untenable in the long run – at least for our moral conscience, if not in terms of crass realpolitik.
This week, the UN peacekeepers said that Israeli soldiers again fired at one of their observation posts in southern Lebanon, adding that the security situation was “extremely difficult.” IDF soldiers fired at a UN observation post near the border village of Dhayra, and, according to UNIFIL’s report, “the duty guards withdrew to avoid being shot.” We know how Tel Aviv thinks: by their very presence, Netanyahu says, the blue helmets are giving cover to terrorists.
The attacks on the UNIFIL mission are not “accidents,” because in Israeli PM Netanyahu’s view, international humanitarian law is another one of his enemies. He pointed to this himself in his speech to the UN General Assembly where he called the UN a “swamp of anti-Semitic bile,” language that echoed an expression often used by Donald Trump; not to mention the fact that UN Secretary General Guterres was declared persona non grata and banned from the Jewish state.
As for us, we are pandering to the Israeli premier with endless hypocrisy. On his last trip to the Middle East, Secretary of State Blinken said that Israel “must not endanger UN peacekeepers.” But what was he doing at the very same time? Together with the British, he was sending in American reconnaissance planes to facilitate Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon, while he did nothing concrete to ensure the safety of the UNIFIL mission. Perhaps the optical sensors on U.S. planes are turned off whenever they fly above another incident where the blue helmets are in the crosshairs of the Israeli army. After all, what could one expect from an administration that sent in Amos Hochstein, a former IDF officer, as peace envoy to Lebanon?
This is not a “gloves on” war for a “new order” in the Middle East; instead, the goal is to break up the region by shattering it along ethnic, religious and sectarian lines. Divide and conquer. The promise of the Abraham Accords, wanted by Trump and supported by Biden, is drawing in the Arab monarchies. It’s enough to read the statement from Saudi Arabia, which on Saturday condemned the “violation of Iranian sovereignty” but meekly refrained from even mentioning Israel. That’s what happens when there are bigger fish to fry.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/iran-avvisato-ma-non-e-guerra-in-guanti-bianchi on 2024-10-27