RITTER: Hezbollah Dealt Desperate Netanyahu a Loss, Israel Resorted to Targeting Civilians
Israel is known for its bombing capabilities on civilian targets.
Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, said in an interview on Tuesday that Hezbollah defeated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel had to resort to targeting civilians to bring its enemy to the negotiating table.
Netanyahu was straight-up defeated by Hezbollah, Ritter told “Dialogue Works.”
“He didn’t achieve anything that he wanted. Only by slaughtering innocent Lebanese civilians was he able to get Hezbollah — the political party — to agree to a ceasefire because Hezbollah has a duty to the people of Lebanon.
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More than 3,750 people have been killed and at least 15,600 injured since the war escalated between Hezbollah and Israel in October 2023.
Hezbollah responded to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and said there would be no business as usual in northern Israel as long as Gazans were being starved and killed. More than one million people in Lebanon were forced from their homes.
Israel has intensified strikes inside Lebanon, despite reports of a possible 60-day truce.
The BBC reported that the deal would include the full withdrawal of IDF troops from southern Lebanon and an end to the Hezbollah presence south of the Litani.
John Kirby, the U.S. National Security Council spokesman, said the deal is close but “we’re not there yet.”
Ritter said the Lebanese today know that Israel is responsible for bombing them, but if the conflict drags on, it could become a political liability for Hezbollah.
Never mentioned in the Western media is that Hezbollah said for over a year that it would stop all hostilities when Israel stopped its massacre in Gaza.
Norman Finkelstein, the Middle East scholar, said in an interview published last month that the Israeli military is not a good ground-fighting force.
Finkelstein told “Robinson’s Podcast” that he understands Israel’s strategy in Lebanon because he has studied the past. He said Israel would carry out one of its “high-tech murder sprees, which it is expert at.”
He said the goal is to kill a large number of people in Lebanon and get the people in the country to turn on Hezbollah, which is why the IDF is targeting Beirut.
“Israel wants to discredit Hezbollah, so it will keep bombing, and bombing, and bombing…Hezbollah will fire its rockets back because Israel wins in an air war…It’s a no-brainer. But Israel loses in the ground war,” he said.
The Israelis “do not want to fight in hand-to-hand combat with the Party of God [Hezbollah],” he said.
“Israel’s very good at playing video games,” he said. “Very good at playing…I will not dispute that. Sitting behind a computer and killing people…for real…not just virtually…They’re very good at that. They’re the best mass murderers out there, for sure. But actual combat? No. That’s not their game.”
Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006 and Eliyahu Winograd, the head of an Israeli government commission, said in 2008 that the war had been “a big and serious failure” for Israel because the ground offensive did not achieve its objectives.
Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, spoke to the WSJ about the possibility of a ground invasion. He said, “It’s a little like saying to the United States in 1980, ‘Let’s go back into Vietnam.’”
Finkelstein joined Glenn Greenwald on “System Update” last week to discuss Israel’s approach to war with Hezbollah. He said there is no state in the Middle East that has the technology to compete with the Israeli Air Force.
“However, Israel loses, hands down, in a ground invasion, and Israel dreads a ground invasion for the very simple reason that, believe it or not, Israelis don’t want to die,” he said. “They like to kill… it’s fun to kill Arabs… it’s more fun than shooting fish in a barrel.”
Why do some people think they are better than others Why don't people learn to get along negotiate on conflicts
This is hysterical. Maybe it was meant to be a parody like The Onion. There's nothing more entertaining than losers pretending to be victors.
Hezbollah got devasted. They lost thousands of their fighters, almost all their weapons and most of their support among Lebanese civilians. They've been pushed back to the Litani River and if they try to rearm, Israel will resume blowing the crap out of them. Game over Hez.