Tablet Magazine

Friday evening in the Levant, Israel targeted buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, killing Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah. This operation represents a dramatic shift in Israeli strategy. Not only have they finally liquidated an adversary they’ve long been capable of killing, they’ve also turned a deaf ear to their superpower patron of more than half a century. But at this stage, heeding Washington’s advice in war is like taking counsel from the angel of death. Just as the U.S. is no longer willing or able to win the wars it commits Americans to fight, the Joe Biden administration won’t let U.S. allies win wars either. By ordering the strike on Nasrallah while attending the U.N. General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underscored the Jewish state’s independence from the global consensus that has resolved not to confront terrorists but rather to appease them, whether they’re plotting in the Middle East or living among the local populations of Western nations, including the United States. Israel’s attack also shows that almost everything U.S. and other Western civilian and military leaders have believed about the Middle East for the last 20 years was simply a collection of excuses for losing wars. The questions that senior policymakers and Pentagon officials, think-tank experts and journalists have deliberated over since the invasion of Iraq—questions about the nature of modern warfare and the proper conduct of international relations in a multipolar world, etc.—can now be set aside for good because they have been resolved definitively....

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