Putin calling Netanyahu recently over the Israeli jet being shot down – and subsequently putting a halt to a new ‘war’ with Syria – showed a lot. You don’t invest in oil and gas for decades to allow Israel to blow all that up in an afternoon. Probably top of the long list of reasons is that Russia wouldn't allow Israel to go to war with Hezbollah and Lebanon, because it would put Putin in a difficult spot in the region and disrupt energy deals already signed there.
Here are a few of the main reasons war between Israel and Hezbollah is by no means "inevitable" at the moment. Is it possible that the entire storyline is entirely false but the echo chamber has now got out of control and now the media is reporting on its own hyped stories from before? Almost certainly. Yet it’s this disinformation which features in western news pieces from correspondents here – who are reporting on the reported – and then which makes it into the desk of lazy, Israeli apologists who are only too eager to write their analysis pieces in the US.ĭo western media outlets actually benefit from wars – especially ones they have been ‘predicting’ for months? You betcha.ĭoes Israel use the phalanx of its American academics to push the agenda and deliver relevant messages to both Lebanon, Hezbollah and the US? Yep. Yet the list of points which are employed to back up this ‘inevitable’ war are erroneous at best and disingenuous at worst. Invariably the sources are the defense minister or senior IDF figures who, constantly talk of the impending war – how it will be for Beirut residents, who, last time round in 2006 went to the beach, as just one example. In recent months, the Israeli press has been constantly pushing a line that a war with Lebanon is inevitable. Or when 50 Palestinian demonstrators faced tear gas in front of the US embassy in Lebanon.īut the same echo chamber continues to generate the same storyline from scholars and armchair experts all around the world, especially in the US, where there is a strong contingent of academics and journalists who follow the Israeli storyline, without bothering to check any of the facts. This assertion, arguably, comes from an echo chamber which I would say is led by the New York Times which can’t refrain from using the word ‘war’ in any headline it writes about Lebanon, including even Prime Minister Hariri’s house arrest in Saud Arabia in December of last year. Where does this uncorroborated narrative come from? Who is driving it? Yet talk of war is more about an American dream in the newsroom, rather than a precursor to an actual war.ĭo you ever wonder whether western media might have an unhealthy vested interest in war, in the same way that many believe the arms industry does? It’s often occurred to me in Beirut where I read almost on a daily basis from experts around the world – many who have never even visited the region, even on holiday – that Israel is about to start a war with Lebanon. Media in the US and Israel is awash with stories about a possible war with Hezbollah.