Former Biden administration senior advisor Amos Hochstein says he supported last summer’s Operation Midnight Hammer, in which the Trump administration struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, because “we had thought internally in the Biden administration we may have to take [strikes] if there was a second term.”
“We did war games. We did some practice runs on what it would look like to look into it, because that may have had to happen under our watch as well," he says.
I don't understand why Mario is so upset.
The situation is very simple:
For 21 years, from 1949 until 1969, the people of northern Israel lived peacefully with their neighbors in southern Lebanon. It was so peaceful that my grandfather, with his jeep, took me (then a 6-year-old boy) into Lebanon to visit his friends.
From 1969 onward, things changed.
(See video)
First, the PLO began bombarding northern Israel. Then came the Lebanese Civil War, during which Muslims killed Christians. Christians had to flee to Israel for safety. (Ask .@ACTBrigitte
if you don't trust me — she lived through it.)
Next came Hezbollah, financed by Isamic Regime money. They turned every home in the Shia villages into a military position — either to store arms caches or as a firing position into Israel, taking advantage of the higher topography on the Lebanese side.
Since then, for nearly 50 years, Israel has periodically gone into Lebanon to "clean it up" (first in 1978, last major operation in 2006) and then withdrawn, leaving Lebanon.
In 2024, we had to go in again after Hezbollah fired daily rockets, destroying one civilian home after another in every Israeli village along the border.
I didn't see Mario getting upset when hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians and farmers were forced to flee their homes.Once again, we left Lebanon (except for five small strategically located hills) and signed a ceasefire.
The Lebanese government promised to prevent Hezbollah from using southern Lebanon to attack Israeli civilians.And here we go again.
Hezbollah is once more firing daily barrages of rockets (nearly 100 yesterday) at civilians in northern Israel.
Yet Mario's outrage is not directed at Hezbollah, not at the Shia communities that harbor them, not at the Islamic regime in Iran that finances them, and not at the Lebanese government that promised to deal with them — but at Israel.He also seems afraid to interview Lebanese people who might challenge his views (see below), just as he was afraid to interview the long list of Iranian women I suggested earlier.
I wonder why.
לא צריך שעון בטהראן. עזבו אתכם מאורניום ומהורמוז.
מדינת ישראל משמידה את עצמה במו ידיה.
תקציב הביזה המנותק שעבר הלילה מבטיח שלילדים שלנו לא יהיה מה לחפש פה.
ממשלה אוטואימונית.
לא, לא יהיה בסדר.
הבחירות הקרובות הן ההזדמנות האחרונה לתקן מסלול.