Understanding the attack on Majdal Shams
The rush to take revenge against Hezbollah risks plunging the entire Mideast into a regional war. The propaganda and many of the assumptions around this horrific incident fly in the face of the facts.
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The 12 victims of the missile attack on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights
On Saturday, a rocket came crashing into a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights where Druze children were playing. At this writing, twelve people are dead, and thirty more wounded. Reports are that the dead were children and teenagers.
It’s an unspeakable horror and tragedy, one that should reinforce, to all parties concerned, the absolute necessity of an immediate ceasefire, in Gaza and across the Israeli-Lebanese border. Instead, the incident is adding fuel to the possibility of war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Under such circumstances, it is imperative that a thoughtful, fact-based approach is employed. There are some details that require clarification, and some potentially pertinent facts that must be considered as part of any inquiry, including all the potential ramifications of these details.
Primarily, this is a moment of mourning. Every day, we see the killing of children in Gaza by Israeli forces. The numbers are beyond imagination. The children killed today are no less of a tragedy.
Background
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has been escalating gradually, characterized by airstrikes by both sides. Concern that a wider war might erupt has been growing, and it has been increasingly clear that a misstep by either side could lead to an explosion of violence that cannot be contained.
Hezbollah has repeatedly stated they will end their attacks on Israel if there is a ceasefire in Gaza, something which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has firmly opposed, undermining efforts to such a degree that his own negotiating team has gone public with this reality.
Earlier on Saturday, Israel’s Channel 14 reported that President Joe Biden had given Netanyahu a “green light” for a full-scale attack on Hezbollah. This is a worrisome report, but it must be taken with not just a grain, but a whole bottle of salt.
Channel 14 is a far-right media outlet, aligned with the farthest right elements of Netanyahu’s Likud party, a wing of that party that is barely distinguishable from Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) and other outright Kahanists in Israel. But it is very supportive of Netanyahu and connected to Likud. Channel 14 has been caught spreading false reports frequently. How much of those falsehoods come from the outlet itself and how much is deliberate misinformation fed by the government is open to question. That both are part of the mix is virtually certain.
On Friday, the Biden administration announced it had designated Lebanese nationals for Deferred Enforced Departure (DED). This means that they will not have to leave the United States for the next 18 months, regardless of the expiration of their visas. The order also allows them to remain or be employed legally in the U.S.
All of this could certainly be coincidental, especially given the real concern about potential escalation in Lebanon and northern Israel. Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan has been pushing for DED for Lebanese nationals for some time, and recently organized a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas requesting this designation, based on the continuing economic strife and increasing threat of war in Lebanon.
So, it could all be coincidental. Still, the timing bears watching.
Responsibility
Israel immediately blamed Hezbollah for the missile attack. Almost as quickly, Hezbollah denied any involvement.
Naturally, many in Israel and the West will simply dismiss Hezbollah’s denials while accepting every word Israel says on faith. But it’s worth considering. Hezbollah doesn’t ordinarily deny responsibility for its actions. They generally trumpet them.
That said, this is one they would have every reason to deny if they were responsible. It was an attack on a population under Israeli occupation. People may conveniently forget this, but the Golan Heights is entirely Syrian territory and the part that Israel controls is occupied land. Only one country in the world recognizes Israeli sovereignty over that territory: the United States, which changed its stance on the Golan in 2019 when Donald Trump, on a whim, decided to recognize Israeli sovereignty there, in defiance of international law.
But despite the massive leap to conclusions by both Israel and the United States, there is good reason to doubt that this was an intentional attack by Hezbollah. Indeed, the same reasons the militia would have to deny responsibility are the ones that make an intentional attack on Majdal Shams unlikely.
Hezbollah would have no reason to attack the Druze village, much less target a playing field. Chances are, and contrary to Israel’s propaganda, few if any of the victims of this attack were Israeli.
While most Druze in Israel are Israeli citizens, the Golan is not in Israel. The overwhelming majority of Druze there have refused Israeli citizenship and do not accept Israeli dominance over them.
Thus, Hezbollah would only be harming their own interests by attacking this community. There is no gain here for them, and despite the Islamophobic tropes often employed regarding NY Muslim or Arab militant group, they do not simply launch attacks just to kill people, much less ones that only harm their own interests.
Equally out of the question is the idea that some have proposed that this was a false flag operation by Israel. There is no reason for Israel to risk such a scandal if an operation like that were exposed; if they want to expand the war in Lebanon, they already have ample support to do so, and the marginal extra support they might get from Washington, Berlin, or London because of an incident like this one is nowhere near worth the risk of running a false flag operation.
There are, then, three reasonable possibilities for what happened.
One is that Hezbollah launched a rocket at a different target that malfunctioned in some way and went off course. Hezbollah’s denial covers this possibility, but clearly it is conceivable that, if this did happen, they might not admit it, especially given the tense atmosphere not only between them and Israel but also among the Lebanese and Syrian populations themselves. The people in both countries have obviously been through unimaginable dangers, destruction, and stresses over the past decade, and they are, naturally, terrified at the prospect of another war.
Such a denial would be out of character for Hezbollah, but these are unusual days.
The second possibility is that an Israeli rocket misfired and hit Majdal Shams or only partially intercepted one of the rockets Hezbollah fired. Hezbollah did fire a number of rockets at Israeli military sites on Saturday. It is possible that an Iron Dome missile, sent to intercept a rocket from Lebanon, might have malfunctioned and hit the field or simply damaged but did not fully disable one rocket.
This would not be unusual, as other rockets have been fired at the several key observation posts in the Mt. Hermon area where Majdal Shams is. These sites are some of the most important ones for monitoring activity in both Syria and Lebanon, so they are prime targets.
There have been some unverified reports of witnesses claiming that is what happened, as there is a well-known Iron Dome launching site on Mt. Hermon near Majdal Shams. But there is, at this point, only scant and speculative evidence to support this idea.
Finally, it is possible that a third party might have targeted Majdal Shams, with the goal of ratcheting up the confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah. This is a bit far-fetched as the smaller militias operating in the region have limited capabilities and are not known to have weapons that could have caused the destruction we saw on Saturday, but it is not outside the realm of possibility.
But an intentional, direct attack on Majdal Shams by Hezbollah, or, for that matter, by Israel simply doesn’t make sense. It is physically possible, but it would be an act that holds no gain for either of the presumed perpetrators.
Shameful propaganda
The official account of Israel put out a loathsome tweet depicting overlapping Druze and Israeli flags, with the words “We are all Druze.” This is shameless opportunism, trying to score propaganda points off the deaths of children.
While I cannot speak to the specific citizenship status or personal identities of any of the victims, only around 20% of the Druze in the Golan are Israeli citizens. That figure represents a significant uptick in recent years, largely due to fallout from the war in Syria that Bashar al-Assad has waged ever since the Syrian people demanded their freedom in 2011. The resulting destruction made reunification with their families on the Syrian side of the fence that splits the Golan a distant dream.
Even so, those Golan Druze applying for citizenship remain a small minority. Most of the Golan’s Druze population are classified as permanent residents, not citizens of Israel.
Perhaps some of these children and teens who were killed on Saturday were Israeli citizens, but it is likely only a small percentage of them, at most. For Israel to not only occupy these children’s lands and separate them from their families, but to then use the horrific tragedy of their deaths to beat the drums for war with Lebanon and to cry crocodile tears over young people who cannot be equal to Israeli Jews even if they are citizens thanks to the Nation-State Law, is the height of despicable, racist cynicism.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell called for restraint and an independent investigation. Those are, indeed, the two things that are desperately needed at this moment. But Israel is clearly uninterested in either.
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