{"id":6048,"date":"2024-09-29T11:23:46","date_gmt":"2024-09-29T09:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6048"},"modified":"2024-09-29T11:23:46","modified_gmt":"2024-09-29T09:23:46","slug":"killing-nasrallah-israel-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2024-09-29\/killing-nasrallah-israel-price\/","title":{"rendered":"In killing Nasrallah, Israel chose to open the gates of hell. We will all pay the price"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"subtitle\"><em><strong>The West, via Israel, is fomenting for Hezbollah and the Shia resistance their own ISIS moment. Moderates are once again losing the argument \u2013 because we lost it for them<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6050\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/nasrallah.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"520\" height=\"352\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/nasrallah.jpg 520w, https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/nasrallah-300x203.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px\" \/>\n<p>Hezbollah has confirmed that its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was among the hundreds of Lebanese killed in Israel\u2019s massive bombardment of a suburb of Beirut last night.<\/p>\n<p>Israel\u2019s decision to assassinate Nasrallah, using some of the enormous bunker-busting bombs the United States has been arming it with, is beyond foolhardy. It is outright deranged. Israel has removed \u2013 and knows it has removed \u2013 a moderating influence on Hezbollah.<\/p>\n<p>Israel\u2019s action will achieve nothing apart from teaching his successor, and leaders of other groups and countries labelled as terrorist by western governments, several lessons:<\/p>\n<p>* That Israel, and the West standing squarely behind it, do not play by any known rules of engagement, and that their opponents must do likewise. The current restraint from Hezbollah that has been so baffling western pundits will become a thing of the past.<\/p>\n<p>* That Israel is not interested in compromise, only escalation, and that this is a fight to death \u2013 not just against Israel but against the West that sponsors Israel.<\/p>\n<p>* That Israel&#8217;s ideological extremism \u2013 its Jewish supremacism, and its endless craving for Lebensraum \u2013 must be met with even greater Shia-inspired extremism.<\/p>\n<p>Decades of western terrorism in the Middle East unleashed a Sunni nihilism embodied first in al-Qaeda and then in ISIS.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the West, via Israel, is fomenting for the Shia resistance its own ISIS moment. The moderates in what the West dubs \u201cterrorist organisations\u201d have once again lost the argument. Why? Because the US imperial project known as \u201cthe West\u201d has once again demonstrated it will not compromise. It demands full-spectrum, global dominance \u2013 nothing less.<\/p>\n<p>Israel may make very short tactical gains in killing Nasrallah. But we will all soon feel the whirlwind.<\/p>\n<p>When that whirlwind comes, the job of our politicians and media will be to ensure we make no connection between this moment of savagery and insanity from us and the blowback.<\/p>\n<p>The role of western establishments will be to cry victim, to insist \u201cThey hate us for our freedoms\u201d, for our civilisational superiority, because \u201cthey\u201d are simply barbarians.<\/p>\n<p>But what comes next, as with what came before, will be entirely predictable. Violence doesn&#8217;t beget calm, it begets more violence. Israel knows that. Our leaders know that. But they opened the gates of hell anyway.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Disclaimer: Nothing in this post, in line with Section 12 of the UK Terrorism Act, in any way indicates, or should be seen to be encouraging, support for any group designated as a terrorist organisation by the British government.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The West, via Israel, is fomenting for Hezbollah and the Shia resistance their own ISIS moment. Moderates are once again losing the argument \u2013 because we lost it for them<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6050,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-6048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-israel-war-crimes","9":"tag-war-industries"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6048"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6052,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048\/revisions\/6052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}