Israeli Border Provocation Moves Plan for Regional War Forward

By Kurt Nimmo
Global Research, September 02, 2019
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Israel has bombed both Syria and Iraq with impunity. Syria, over the last couple of years, has endured attacks by Israel hundreds of times. In July, the IDF, using US-produced F-35i stealth fighter jets, attacked targets inside Iraq. 

From Al-Jazeera:

The mystery attacks have not been claimed by any side and have left Iraqi officials scrambling for a response amid strong speculation that Israel may have been behind them.

Earlier this week, the deputy head of the Iraqi Shia militias, known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces, openly accused Israeli drones of carrying out the attacks, but ultimately blamed Washington and threatened strong retaliation for any future attack.

Such attacks are potentially destabilising for Iraq and its fragile government, which has struggled to remain neutral amid growing tensions between the United States and Iran.

Israel usually doesn’t admit to illegally bombing of its neighbors. However, following the raids in Iraq, embattled Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu indirectly took credit for the attack. 

After Iraq accused Israel of an attack on a powerful Shi’te militia in the country, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu said to his supporters in a Facebook post: “I am doing everything to defend our nation’s security from all directions: in the north facing Lebanon and Hezbollah, in Syria facing Iran and Hezbollah, unfortunately in Iraq as well facing Iran. We are surrounded by radical Islam led by Iran.”

Netanyahu, however, is not defending the Israeli people from Hezbollah and “radical Islam led by Iran,” but rather ensuring there will be a large war that puts millions of civilians in the crosshairs, as it did during the failed invasion of Lebanon in 2006. If the war escalates, Netanyahu will use it to call for unity during Israel’s upcoming elections. 

Iraq characterized the attacks as a “declaration of war.”

Hezbollah and Iran have promised to respond to the latest round of Israeli attacks. 

It now appears that long-promised war following Israel’s 2006 defeat and humiliation at the hands of Hezbollah is moving forward. 

On September 1, Hezbollah destroyed an Israeli vehicle along the border. Israel has a long history of border provocations designed to elicit a response by its enemies and produce a casus belli for a war that the Israelis promise will all but destroy Lebanon and kill countless civilians in the process. 

If Iran’s Press TV is correct, the death of a senior military officer in that attack will undoubtedly result in more aggressive behavior by the Israeli military. The Israelis have long used the death of soldiers as a pretext to escalate hostilities. 

Leave it to the corporate propaganda media to make it appear Hezbollah launched an attack without provocation. 

Israel, of course, portrayed the border provocation and the attack on an IDF vehicle on occupied land as a dire threat to babies and grandmothers. 

Back in 2015, Israeli defense minister Moshe Yaalon promised to kill Lebanese civilians in large numbers during the next manufactured war. 

Speaking at a conference in Jerusalem, Yaalon threatened that “we are going to hurt Lebanese civilians to include kids of the family. We went through a very long deep discussion … we did it then, we did it in [the] Gaza Strip, we are going to do it in any round of hostilities in the future.”

The Israeli official also appeared to threaten to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran, although he said “we are not there yet.”

In response to a question about Iran, Yaalon said that “in certain cases” when “we feel like we don’t have the answer by surgical operations” Israel might take “certain steps” such as the Americans did in “Nagasaki and Hiroshima, causing at the end the fatalities of 200,000.”

If you believe Israel is a moral country, the only democracy in the Middle East—as we are repeatedly and fallaciously told—and incapable of such wanton mass murder and sadistic mayhem, consider what happened in Shujaiya, eastern Gaza, in 2014. This terror raid is but one of hundreds since the establishment of Israel nearly 70 years ago. 

Hezbollah is said to have over 100,000 missiles and rockets stowed away for the next war. Israel claims its heretofore unannounced attacks are intended to disrupt and destroy an Iranian missile pipeline and military presence Iran to Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. 

All three countries have significant Shi’a populations and are naturally aligned with Iran. The cross border trade, cooperation, and religious pilgrimages between what is now Iraq and Iran existed many centuries before the Zionist plan to establish Greater Israel at the expense of Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims in the region. 

The corporate media is working overtime to portray Hezbollah as the aggressor. This may or may not be the catalyst that begins the next war in the Middle East. 

Israel knows the neocons in the White House fully support the Zionist cause and will not hesitate to commit US firepower and possibly troops to a “final war” against Hezbollah and Iran. Congress, domesticated by AIPAC, will sign off on the coming war. 

Remarkably, the Pentagon admitted Iraq has the right to defend itself against “external actors,” that is to say Israel, although the Pentagon didn’t go so far as to specifically call out Israel. 

Israel is upping its game to force Trump to fully back its plan to invade southern Lebanon, punish the Lebanese people for supporting Hezbollah, continue aggression against Syria and Iraq, and go after the big kahuna, Iran. This agenda cannot be accomplished without the United States and its military. 

Trump is probably the most pro-Israel president in US history. His blessing for the ethnic cleansing and dispossession of thousands of Palestinians through annexation—Netanyahu now says Israel will annex the West Bank in addition to stolen property in the Golan Heights—as well as moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, is not considered pro-Israel enough by Likud and the fanatical settlers who routinely terrorize and kill Palestinians. 

Nothing short of total war will suffice—and Bibi wants that to happen before the Israeli elections later this month. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Another Day in the Empire

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Kurt Nimmo, Global Research, 2019

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