Two Narratives Of Israel-Lebanon War

There are two competing narratives of the war between Lebanon and Israel, one being promoted by the liberal media, the United Nations and Muslim-majority countries (the “Anti-Israel Camp”), and the other by Israel and its supporters. How each side sees the framework of the war will continue to direct the commentary as the war unfolds.

Anti-Israel Narrative

According to one telling of the story, Hezbollah is a “Lebanese militant group” which is “supported by Iran.” The group attacked Israel on October 7, just after the Hamas massacre, “to show support for its Palestinian ally,” and will stop fighting Israel as soon as there is a “ceasefire agreed to by Hamas.”

In this telling of the events, Israel has opened up a new front against Hezbollah for virtually no reason, as the key to stopping the Hezbollah attacks is to end the fighting in Gaza. Israel’s “ferocious assault on Hezbollah” is not only unwarranted but infuriating the United States President Biden who has sought to confine the fighting to Gaza.

*NY Times article bemoaning Israel’s attack on Hezbollah, creating a rift between the U.S. and Israel*

Hezbollah is portrayed as only a Lebanese ally of the Palestinian group Hamas, whose mission and intentions are unstated. Israel’s mission is seemingly a folly, destined to repeat the “mistakes the United States made after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

Pro-Israel Narrative

The same events are seen very differently by Israel supporters and those who appreciate a truthful account of current events.

Hamas and Hezbollah are U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations, backed by the leading state sponsor of terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Each is a genocidal jihadi group dedicated to destroying the Jewish State and are acting together to try to achieve that aim.

Hamas has majority support of Palestinians, with 58% of parliament. It’s goal to destroy Israel is to enable 6 million Palestinians to overtake the Jewish State. Hezbollah is slightly less popular than Hamas, with 48% of parliament and seeks to expel the 490,000 Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) who reside in Lebanon to a new state of Palestine.

Israel was attacked by both Iranian proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah on October 7, 2023 and is fighting a defensive war it does not want against each. The threat of Hezbollah is much greater than Hamas, which has an estimated 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel. Over 80,000 Israelis in the north have been internally displaced to the south because of the Hezbollah attacks and ongoing threats.

These narratives are very different. The anti-Israel camp thinks that the United States waged wrongful revenge attacks after 9/11 and Israel is going down the same ill-advised path. But the pro-Israel view is that the American response wasn’t the problem: it waged the war terribly, first by attacking Iraq which was not involved in the 9/11 attacks, and then spending twenty years in Afghanistan fighting a terrorist group that could not pose an existential threat to the US, for the action al Qaeda took on a single day. That dynamic is not remotely similar for Israel fighting two clear and obvious enemies on its borders that are constantly attacking its citizens.

If the reports you consume tell you that Hezbollah is simply helping its beleaguered Gazan allies who are being crushed by the powerful Israeli army against the wishes of the United States, know that you are absorbing a toxic anti-Israel fake account of the just defensive war Israel is waging against genocidal foes next door.