Where after Lebanon?

Everyone is asking where the aggression that genocidal Israel has extended toward Lebanon, using Hezbollah's threats as a pretext, will finally stop, and of course who will stop it. Our friend Mehmet Şeker has described Israel as an unleashed pitbull. If only it ended there: it actually has a leash, and that leash has been loosened by the US in line with its own interests. In other words, it is not Israel that is unleashed but the hands that hold its leash. Now, using Hezbollah as a pretext, they are bringing Lebanon too within the scope of genocide, but before that let us not refrain from making a few considerations that come to mind.

The most important reason why Hezbollah, and Iran as the power behind it, had not so far responded with the expected effect was seen to be that Hezbollah could not afford to suffer greater losses. For however high-toned its rhetoric of hostility toward Israel had been, Hezbollah had so far avoided turning it into actual conflict. After all, Hezbollah does not represent the whole of Lebanon, and the cost of a war it alone declared and entered would be paid by all of Lebanon. In fact, Hezbollah's hesitancy in this regard could have been appreciated as a responsibility observed on behalf of all of Lebanon. Yet beyond a certain point, even in the expression of this sense of responsibility, a passivity verging on exaggeration catches the eye. Israel strikes and strikes, kills and kills. It has eliminated nearly all of Hezbollah's senior officials, right up to the leader Hassan Nasrallah, yet Hezbollah insists on offering no proportionate response, as if it still had more to lose. It displays, so to speak, an example of patience that turns the other cheek when struck on one. Of course the question comes to mind: what does Hezbollah still have left to lose?

Even avoiding Lebanon becoming the target of all-out Israeli attacks because of a war Hezbollah would enter has ceased, from this hour on, to be a sensitivity worth observing. Although Hezbollah has not given a proportionate response in terms of its known or supposed power and capabilities, Israel has continued to attack as disproportionately as possible and has now raised the bar of aggression to the next level.

While we wait to see how Hezbollah will respond to Israel, Israel's genocide machine advances toward Lebanon, and it has already begun to be discussed that the continuation of this movement may also encompass Syria. When it reaches Syria, how will Russia and Iran, which have a defense cooperation agreement with the regime, react? In fact, at the point where the game is squeezed in Ukraine, will the Lebanon and Syria fronts provide Europe and America with an opportunity for a new opening? The course of events shows that this is by no means out of the question.

Everyone now knows and sees that what drives occupier, genocidal Israel to this aggression is not its own security. It is in any case impossible to interpret Israeli aggression within the framework of the behavior of any country that acts within the logic of international relations. What Israel does has exceeded, by miles upon miles, all the roles attributed to a state within these relations.

Israel is not a state; it is an organ of terror, threat and intimidation. What it does is not what any state could do. As such, it is dragging the Jews, whom it gathers from every part of the world and turns into occupying, genocidal terrorists, into an immoral and irrational adventure in which they will ultimately be the victims. That is, it is a project that does the greatest evil of their history not only to others but to itself, to the Jews as well.

As such, Israel constitutes an exception within the whole logic, law and existence of international relations. Although this exceptionalism stems from its not being subject to any rule and not recognizing any rule, for now it stems from its being able to use a power that supports this rule-defying behavior in a rough, unquestioning and spoiled manner.

To be able to act exceptionally is, in fact, from the standpoint of the logic of power, a sign of being sovereign. The sovereign is the one who can establish the exception. But no sovereign can remain sovereign by constantly moving along exceptional lines. The US, or the established world order, which grants Israel this exceptional space without limit, is in fact rapidly approaching its own limits and its own end.

The aggression extending to Lebanon shows that it will not stop there, and where it goes from here is that this exceptionalism becomes a threat to all humanity. Israel constitutes a threat to all humanity. In a world where such a great field of movement is granted to the bigoted-Zionist interpretation of religion on which this exceptionalism rests, no one is safe against this bigotry.

This world, which has built its entire order to shelter this bigotry, no longer has any value left in its claims of enlightenment, democracy, secularism, human rights or rationalism.

Within this world order, all these values, carefully cultivated for two hundred years, have been sacrificed to Israeli exceptionalism. And this is the picture of the human tragedy in which, because of Israeli exceptionalism, unreason has been experienced after reason, ignorance after knowledge, fascism and despotism after democracy, and abasement after an honorable humanity.