RUTHFULLY YOURS

In June of this year, when Israel rescued four hostages alive and unharmed from Hamas captivity, I well recall the perversity of the mainstream-media coverage of the event. Instead of celebrating the audacity and bravery of an impossibly complicated mission that freed innocent civilians from the clutches of murderous terrorists, the media narrative instead became about the “collateral damage” the bloodthirsty Israelis had caused.

Fake casualty numbers were immediately announced by Hamas, to be instantly and unquestioningly spread by journalists whose credulity verged on complicity. Israel was castigated for such things as the cruel and senseless murder of Palestine Chronicle journalist Abdallah Aljamal, who happened to be holding three of the Israeli hostages in his own home when the IDF found him. It was then that I concluded that the game was rigged, and that in terms of narrative framing, Israel would forever only be able to do wrong in the eyes of the media. And I am reminded of that sobering conclusion by the emergent reaction to Israel’s latest intelligence coup, which — though more muted — tracks closely along those same lines, with the same complaints levied by precisely the same suspects.

To catch up all those folks who have been out of the loop and away from their communications devices over the past day and a half, let me start by saying: If yours didn’t explode, then congratulations! You are likely not a member of Hezbollah! Because pretty much all of theirs just did: Yesterday, the encrypted pagers of Hezbollah personnel across Lebanon simultaneously exploded, and just a few hours ago, their entire supply of walkie-talkies went up in an even larger series of remote detonations. Several people died outright, and many others have been brutally maimed in an area particularly sensitive to the pride of military-aged jihadists. These explosions were remotely triggered by Israel, of course, which has been fighting an all but declared war with Iran against its proxies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, on Israel’s northern border, ever since the October 7 massacre.

How did the Israelis do it? While it would have been hilarious to see Marjorie Taylor Greene unexpectedly vindicated in her belief in the existence of “Jewish space lasers,” it turns out the answer might be much more prosaic — and thus infinitely more impressive on a logistical level: Israeli intelligence may have duped Hezbollah leadership into bulk-ordering “low tech” comms devices for their key personnel by leaking to the media that the terrorist group’s online communications had been irrevocably compromised. With Hezbollah now incentivized to change up their communications to a lower-tech, less easily intercepted method (shades of The Wire), it appears the Israelis somehow managed to insert explosives into every individual device the terrorists ordered, either before they left the factory or sometime during the shipping process. And then triggered them remotely.

Reports are still hazy (and in the world of intelligence all such publicly reported information is inherently suspect), but the Israelis are apparently said to have triggered the latent bombs only because they were concerned that the entire operation was about to be compromised — otherwise they might have waited for a much more opportune moment to push the button, for example when personnel had gathered for deployment. Either way, it’s a remarkably elegant precision strike by the Israelis on a terrorist group sworn to destroy them, targeted with amazingly surgical logic to kill or wound combatants while minimizing damage to surrounding civilians. A small number of civilians have purportedly been wounded and killed nonetheless, but the primary outcome of the operation was to grievously wound Hezbollah’s top leadership — the Iranian “ambassador” to Lebanon was one of yesterday’s wounded, to give you a sense of how intertwined Tehran and Hezbollah are — and instill a sense of utter paranoia in the hearts of Israel’s terrorist enemies.

Which is why the complaints from the Left about it — offered in exactly the same tone and language as their outrage in June — ring so hollow. The empty spirit of this gripe is (predictably) perfectly epitomized by progressive mascot Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

Israel’s pager attack in Lebanon detonated thousands of handheld devices across of a slew of public spaces, seriously injuring and killing innocent civilians. This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines US efforts to prevent a wider conflict. Congress needs a full accounting of the attack, including an answer from the State Department as to whether any US assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology.

Spare me your cant, AOC. I’m tired of Israel being held to impossible standards of moral perfection, in exactly the same way I am contemptuous of seeing those same double standards applied to American actions abroad. When Israelis roll into Rafah in armored force, they are called irresponsible monsters for the resultant bloody door-to-door fighting amid a civilian population in which Hamas intentionally nests itself. When Israelis use guided missiles or drone warfare, they are accused of being war criminals. And now, when they come up with an attack so laser-focused on combatants as to target them literally in the crotch, they are still held accountable for any single incidental lost life, as if the consequences of choosing to become a high-ranking Hezbollah terrorist weren’t reasonably foreseeable. (Terrorists who hide among civilians risk those civilians’ lives. I recommend stricter work–life separation in the future.)

I understand how important it is not to be cavalier about the dead and wounded. But the same calculus that led America to drop the atomic bomb (distinguishing it from another favorite topic of moral revisionism, the firebombing of Dresden) applies to Israel: This move saves vastly more civilian lives in the long run by crippling Hezbollah’s ability to launch a war from southern Lebanon, and it therefore makes an Israeli incursion into their territory less likely and, should it occur, more measured. Those opposed to the pager attack are opposed not because it was inhumane or reckless, rather because it was clever and successful — that frustrates them most of all. They don’t want Israel to win this conflict. And make no mistake, whether or not Israel’s conflict with Iran is “hot” or formally declared, Israel is a nation at war, acting in elemental fear for its survival.

In all honesty, that is more than can be said for most of what the United States has done in its military adventurism over the last 25 years. Israel’s idea of a “preemptive strike” was to execute one of the most daring high- and low-tech intelligence operations in modern warfare. Our idea of a “preemptive strike” was to invade and occupy Iraq. In terms of the human costs, I know for a fact which approach has the lighter footprint and which I therefore prefer. Israel will always seek to minimize civilian casualties in war whenever possible for the simple reason that Israeli culture demands it. So it feels utterly grotesque to criticize the Israelis for demonstrating, over the last 48 hours, exactly how desperately they strive to train their weapons only on those who have already sworn an oath to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth.