On October 2 morning a veteran strategic affairs expert, while reading his own Op Ed article in a premier Indian newspaper of that date found himself in an embarrassing situation as whatever he had written turned out to be a totally premature and rubbish conclusion. In the column obviously penned a day or two earlier (but appeared on that day) he had ridiculed Iran for not reacting after the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, pager and walkie-talkie blasts and subsequent assassination of Hasan Nasarallah.
He teased Tehran by stating that its weakness has been exposed. But on October 1 night Iran launched a massive missile attack on Israel causing widespread destruction and proving many such pundits wrong.
This writer was not the only one to have egg on his face. A large number of such experts all over the world came to this hasty conclusion about the defeat of Iran and its allies in the war. Most of them only highlighted the Israeli and American version that after the death of Nasarallah Hezbollah would be annihilated and unable to fight back.
Jumping the gun in any long drawn see-saw battle does not only reveal the bias of these journalists and masters of military affairs but also exposes their lack of professional acumen.
Pager, walkie-talkie attacks
Many of them hailed the pager and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon as a master stroke of Israel (they would not name America the real perpetrator) which would cripple Hezbollah’s communication system, and thus would be unable to fight.
No doubt, between September 17 and 27—that is from the pager attack to Nasarallah’s killing–Israel had an upper hand. The United States President Joe Biden, who is leading the war, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is actually playing the second fiddle, had reason to celebrate. In contrast there was a feeling of dejection in the rival camp.
But by October 1 the situation changed. Iranian counter-offensive neutralized the advantage of the United States and Israel. Now the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, once slated as a turning point of the modern warfare, appear to be childish acts as neither Hezbollah, nor Hamas and Houthis have been silenced. Instead, since October 1 the number of missiles rained on Israel has increased. Now they are coming from Iran and even resistance groups in Iraq. Israel too has continued the bombardment of Lebanon and Gaza, but had till the filing of this article not retaliated to the Iranian attack. Contrary to this Iran had further warned Israel of more such aerial bombardment.
When a similar attack was launched by Iran on April 13 the Israelis did not carry out any major counter-attack, though as a symbolic gesture it reportedly carried out an operation inside Iran, which the Western media underplayed it.
Long drawn battle
Nobody can predict the scenario in the Middle East, which is on the boil ever since the Christianized Western imperialist powers in the middle of 19th century decided to use the Jews to fight their post-Crusades war against the Muslim world. Mind it, the idea of Israel was conceived when no oil was discovered anywhere in the region—all these explorations took place in the early 20th century. Even the Suez Canal came up in 1869, that is three decades after the idea of a Zionist state was conceived in the late 1830s. In fact, Napoleon in 1798-1801 tried to occupy Egypt and Palestine with a similar objective.
The leaders of imperialist powers, who have nothing to do with their own religion, tried to exploit the religious sentiment of common Christians and Jews, to form a country near the tri-junction of Asia,
Africa and Europe.
Settler colonialism
Apparently, Iran should not have any right to interfere in the politics of Levant and come to the support of Hamas or Hezbollah. But by the same logic there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for the Western powers to undertake this concept of settler-colonialism. Never in the history of the world did lakhs of people (read Jews here) were first uprooted from the same West and then settled in far away land on the plea of the Promised Homeland.
If the Americans have not learnt anything from their humiliating retreat from Afghanistan and Iraq they must learn from their misadventure in Vietnam, which lasted for three decades (1945-75).
Just like Israel today, first France and then the United States, came on the side of non-Communist South Vietnam. Like Israel today, the whole battle against North Vietnam, which wanted to unify the country as in the pre-colonial past, was fought by the American land, air and naval forces. South Vietnam has only notional presence—it was actually an American base handed over by France.
The only difference in the case of Israel is that Americans are not directly disclosing their involvement in the war it is fighting for the cause of Zionism, whose greatest champion is President Joe Biden. The United States knows that this would jeopardize the whole plan.
By late 1960s a lot of opposition grew in America when soldiers were forcibly recruited to fight in Vietnam. World heavyweight boxing champion Mohammad Ali Clay and many others had to pay a heavy price for resisting this campaign.
In contrast the protest against the American involvement in Israel is not as strong for obvious religious reasons, though many people, even Jews, came out in the streets of the United States. If a large number of ex-soldiers and volunteers from Europe and America are voluntarily joining the Ukrainian army to fight against invading Russian forces, the numbers of them coming in support of Israel are many times more. The Western media is not highlighting this aspect.
It needs to be reminded once again that the concept of Zionism is dearer to more Christians than Jews.
There are about one crore members of Christians United for Israel in the United States. Thus, this is the biggest Zionist organization in the country. The number of Jews living in the United States is only
75 lakhs. And many of these Jews are not supportive of Zionism. So, when one speaks of the Jewish lobby, it also means Christian Zionists.
Yet there are still many Christians in the United States and across the world, who look at Jews with suspicion and call them conspirators and anti-Christ. They are accused of indulging in anti-Semitism.
But it is Christian Zionists who call the shots?
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