Yesterday at dinner, after posting regarding Danny Davis’ excellent analysis of the Israeli effort to instigate a full scale war in Lebanon …
It seems clear that Israel is doing everything in its power to provoke a massive military response from Hezbollah—and Iran—that Israel will then use to play the victim card to the gullible West. Above all to the US, to draw us into a war that Israel can’t win—but that we can’t either.
I raised the issue with my wife: What if the Axis of Resistance insists on continuing with their own playbook, rather than Israel’s? What if the Axis of Resistance thought all of this through beforehand, fully aware of the Anglo-Zionist ability to escalate, and decided on a strategy that takes all of this into account? The latest Israeli attempts to elicit the needed retaliation from the Axis have been tough for Hezbollah and Iran, but the Axis has stuck to its strategy through all previous escalations.
First, an update on the military situation—other tweets indicate that the USS Harry won’t arrive in the region until mid-October. A lot can happen between now and then:
MenchOsint @MenchOsint
 The USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) and its carrier strike group are set to leave Naval Station Norfolk Monday for a deployment in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
More than 6,500 sailors are assigned to the strike group which includes:
1 x Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg (CG-64)
2 x Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Stout (DDG 55) & USS Jason Dunham (DDG 109).
It will be the 5th American Aircraft Carrier deployed in the region since Oct. 2023.
Here’s a very good AP article that assesses the latest Israeli strike on Hezbollah’s command structure in Beirut (DD covered this in the post I linked above):
Hezbollah commander killed in Israeli airstrike was top military official on US wanted list
Now, a salutary warning from Will Schryver:
Will Schryver @imetatronink
 Never Underestimate
- The cold-blooded ruthlessness of the Anglo-Saxons
- The "too clever by half" vanity of the Zionist zealots
- The self-doubt of the Russians
- The resolute patience of the Chinese
- The intellect of the Iranians
- The potential of the Africans
7:26 PM · Sep 20, 2024
Now for where it looks like things are going. Will Israel finally get the major regional war it wants? Haaretz thinks not:
Hezbollah is not falling into Israel's trap, and has signaled it will not stray from its guiding strategy in the Gaza war – supporting Hamas without plunging into an all-out regional war that would implicate Iran
Think back. The initial hubristic Anglo-Zionist “strategy” was to first ethnically cleanse Gaza, then pivot to Hezbollah and drive them north of the Litani river (about 25 miles into Lebanon). Then do another pivot and ethnically cleanse the remaining Palestinians in the “West Bank”. A year later that strategy is in shambles—as is Israel’s economy. Its military has also suffered heavy losses and attrition to personnel and equipment, despite the never ending stream of munitions from the US as well as intel support from the US/UK.
Faced with strategic defeat, Israel has attempted a constant stream of provocations, especially against Iran, to provoke a war in which the US would be forced to join. Netanyahu is convinced he can manipulate US policy—but public opinion in America has shifted over the years of forever wars and will no longer allow that unless Israel can successfully play the victim card. That isn’t working. Public opinion in America sees Israel in a new light and has turned against support for Israel’s genocide on Palestinians. Worse, more and more Americans are learning the truth about the Israeli hasbara machine—its atrocity hoaxes and lurid sexual fantasy narratives. As a result, dragging the US into a huge new regional war that would almost certainly lead to far higher US casualties than in previous wars looks like a non starter for US politicians—despite their currently expressed rapture for genocide, and Trump’s campaign to “crush” free speech regarding Israel. The only ploy left is to instigate a mass killing of Jewish civilians, on an unprecedented scale. But Hezbollah refuses to bite, targeting military installations, instead.
Larry Johnson today expresses all of this today in a very succinct article that I highly recommend.
Ukraine and Israel Following the Same Playbook, But Uncle Sam Doesn’t Want to Play
The “same playbook” is to get the US military directly involved in combat operations via provocative escalations.
Ukraine and Israel both share at least one thing in common — they are desperate and flailing about trying to get the United States directly involved in their respective wars. …
Israel, for its part, has failed to eradicate Hamas after 11 months of fighting, its economy is in shambles — thanks in part to the Houthis shutting down port activities in Eilat — and it has been unable to stop Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israel. Israel, like Ukraine, has embarked on a strategy of provocation — i.e., hit Iranian and Hezbollah targets and hope that they will take retaliatory measures that will create political pressure in the United States to intervene and fight alongside Israel.
So far, neither Russia nor Hezbollah/Iran have taken the bait. ...
... Earlier this week, it looked like Israel was ready to enter southern Lebanon and engage Hezbollah. But it looks like Israel’s true strategy is to try to provoke a reaction from Hezbollah and Iran that will justify the United States riding with military forces to the rescue. But, Hezbollah ain’t taking the bait:
…
It appears that Hezbollah, along with Hamas, have opted for a war of attrition with Israel. They are willing to suffer terrible losses, but calculate that Israel’s ability to sustain the fight — especially if Hezbollah sits back and continues to rake northern Israel with rockets and missiles — is limited. ... Hezbollah’s strength is its ability to fight a defensive battle, which Israel will likely be unable to win.
The bad news for Israel is that the US military knows that, too. LJ agrees with Larry Wilkerson’s sources about what’s going on behind the scenes:
Biden and his puppet master, Jake Sullivan, under pressure from the Pentagon, have refused to grant Ukraine’s request to launch “long-range” missiles into Russia. And the US Commander of CENTCOM, with the blessing of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, told Netanyahu that if he provokes a war, he will fight it on his own. The US will not intervene.
As so often, much of what’s going on in Israel is theater that targets the American public. Of course, if the American public continues to decline the gambit, there’’s no guarantee that the Zionists won’t do something crazy. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Danny Davis, in another excellent monologue today, doubles down on yesterday:
ULTIMATUM: Israeli Ambassador Issues Stark Warning to Hezbollah
DD sees the trend of public opinion around the world pretty clearly. However, he believes that the US will continue to supply Israel with all the munitions it asks for—in that regard he disagrees with the claim that Israel has been told it will be on its own. First he shreds Israeli hasbara about “diplomacy” and “peace”:
The Israeli intention [in southern Lebanon] is to literally wipe out everybody—push them all out and create this big zone. ... If now Israel comes in there and starts just crushing everybody and moving them back, folks, I think the chances that the global community allows that is pretty remote. Israel is rolling the dice to think that even Western Europe is going to stay behind them if they do—I think that they probably won't, because feelings and emotions are already on edge and tattered from what they have seen [Israel do in Gaza]. Israel has destroyed so much goodwill that it has had in the western world four decades that it has built up, that is it is shredding a lot of that as we speak. So far the only stalwart is the United States, and if anybody thinks the US is going to put any pressure on Israel not to do this you're going to be a little bit disappointed.
It would be foolish to try to make hard predictions on this situation. However, I tend to disagree with—or would qualify—DD’s assertions that it would be political suicide for a US politician to cross or push back at Israel Lobby bullying. My sense, FWIW, is that the state of public opinion on this issue is more fluid than DD allows for. The trend in polling has been strongly against Israel’s genocide. Would an attempted genocide in Lebanon force the matter, bring it to a head in America?
In fairness, DD does seem to have a sense of this. Toward the end, having once again gone over how militarily crazy Israel’s plans are, he returns to public opinion:
You can't literally go and just crush an entire people and shove them out of an area and the rest of the world will be okay with it. I think that [Israel] will lose big time if they do. Israel will lose militarily, they'll lose diplomatically, and they'll lose politically. And then, of course, all kinds of bad things happen from that, because once that happens there there's so many different offshoots of things I couldn't speculate on where things may go. But there's a whole raft of things that are possible. And they're all bad.
I believe that this will apply in America as well as around the world. We shall see.
"Ukraine and Israel both share at least one thing in common — they are desperate and flailing about trying to get the United States directly involved in their respective wars. …"
They have a great deal in common. Both are run by Jews; each is the instigator in a front of the Jewish-supremacist Ascendancy's war on goyim(humans); each is a flash-point for the global nuclear war they're trying to trigger: the Final Solution to the goyim question.
‘… other tweets indicate that the USS Harry won’t arrive…’ - are you referring to USS Harry Netanyahoo? Or USS Harry Blackrock?