The portrait of the weakness of the Western world was completed yesterday by the US request to its citizens to leave Lebanon in the face of the risk of war between Hezbollah and Israel. It is a terrible risk, better to flee, a good idea. Biden follows a series of other countries in flight, including Germany, Canada and the Netherlands. The world that found nothing to object to in the fact that a large terrorist force led by Iran launched itself into combat against Israel alongside Hamas immediately after October 7, after the worst anti-Semitic massacre since the Holocaust, is fleeing. For nine months it has seemed normal that from the North Hezbollah would seize the opportunity of a practical alliance between Shiites and Sunnis with Hamas, therefore on killing children in front of their mothers, mothers in front of their children, on rape and arson. And that this should result, together with the tragedy of the attack from Gaza, also in the evacuation of the kibbutzim and cities of the North, so that Israel would be squeezed in a vice. Normal, unbeatable also the destiny of possible destruction of Lebanon in the clutches of Hezbollah: everyone was afraid of their hatred for their connection with Iran. No one knew or wanted to face it, not even with words.
It is strange to think that the visit of Hochstein, the American envoy, had a high point in the request for an “urgent descalation” to Nabib Berri, the president of the Parliament notoriously very close to Nasrallah. In 2006, after a war that followed an aggression accompanied by cruel kidnappings, on August 11 the UN voted unanimously on resolution 1.701 according to which Nasrallah would withdraw his forces from the border with Israel beyond the Litani River, to be replaced by the Lebanese army and UNIFIL. But this did not happen: the border continued to be the place from which the threat directly faces Israel above and below ground through a network of tunnels and missile launchers and a terrorism as fierce as that of Hamas. From the border, a sample of the 250,000 missiles that Iran has also supplied to Hezbollah, its right-hand man in the conquest not only of the Middle East but also in the messianic attack on the Jewish and Christian world, is launched.
Since October 7, the most popular international sport has been to try to stop Israel, not to use the power of the most important countries to enforce the resolution. This while the UN was flailing in all directions to block Israel from responding to Hamas, Hezbollah and then Iran. What will happen now is difficult to predict: Israel certainly cannot afford to continue to have almost 100,000 displaced people, abandoned kibbutzim and cities like Kiriat Shmona, empty homes and schools, offices, clinics, the magnificent local agriculture in ruins. People are important to the Jewish state, and no one outside Israel understands that when Gallant says Lebanon will be the first to suffer and threatens war, he does not do so lightly, but he cannot do otherwise.
It is the very life of the country in danger, an aggression from heaven and on earth much worse than that of Hamas. This is the gaming table, for life and death: is it enough to send your citizens home to Western consciousness?
