Opinion: Will Brutal Campaign to Remake Mideast Work This Time?

This column appeared previously in the Amherst Bulletin.

After a year of a genocidal campaign in Gaza in response to the Al Aqsa Flood attacks of October 7 and the recent escalation in Lebanon and beyond, it’s a good time to assess where we’re at, how we got here, and where we’re going.

Immediately before the Hamas-led attack it appeared that Saudi Arabia was about to cement a peace agreement with Israel, a move that, in the minds of many (in particular, Hamas), would have totally sidelined the Palestinian liberation movement for a long time to come. Israeli apartheid would have been definitively established and joint American-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East secured.

The attack by the Palestinian resistance, along with the solidarity manifested by the Iran-led “axis of resistance,” set these twin goals back significantly.

At first Israel seemed to have no real strategy other than vengeance, and the U.S. appeared to be reluctantly led along to provide unlimited support. However, it seems that two things changed, in both Israel and the U.S.

First, the Israel lobby joined forces with the most autocratic political forces in U.S. politics to exploit the crisis, in typical “shock doctrine” fashion, to launch an all-out attack on dissent, especially within higher education. The apparent immunity of the university from the fairly uniform consensus that was constructed to support the Western imperial project was now, thanks to completely overblown charges of antisemitism, removed, and we’ve seen repression on our campuses at a level we haven’t seen since the McCarthy era.

Second, as a consequence of the limited nature of the support rendered by the axis of resistance, especially Hezbollah and Iran, and their demonstrated caution, both Israel and the U.S. became bolder and embarked on a crusade to “remake” the Middle East in their image. Just as they did with the neocon-inspired U.S. attack on Iraq in 2003 and the invasion of Lebanon in 2006 (which Condoleezza Rice at the time characterized as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”), they are now planning the complete destruction of Hezbollah’s military deterrence, along with any possibility for organized Palestinian resistance or even normal life.

In the process they are hoping to seriously weaken Iran as well. The goal is to make Israeli apartheid a permanent feature of the Middle East, integrated into the U.S.-led system that encompasses the so-called “moderate” Arab regimes including the Gulf states, Jordan, and Egypt.

Important evidence for U.S. positive support for this undertaking comes from a recent article in Politico, describing secret talks between high U.S. administration officials and Israeli leaders in which the former gave the green light to Israel’s expanded attacks on Lebanon.

Indeed, according to a report by CNN, the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, had agreed to a U.S. and European proposal for a 21-day cease-fire along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon just a day or two before Israel assassinated him in a massive bombing raid that flattened several large apartment buildings in Beirut. (It seems, in the minds of Western leaders, so long as you’re targeting a designated “terrorist” you can kill any number of civilians without losing sleep. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris commented that the Nasrallah assassination achieved a “measure of justice.” Really?)

The question is, will this new attempt to remake the Middle East succeed? We know how the invasions of Iraq in 2003 and Lebanon in 2006 turned out: While causing immense death and destruction and chaos in the region, they did not achieve that elusive “remaking” goal.

While Israel has overwhelming superiority in the air against its adversaries, its record in ground fighting with Hezbollah (and even Hamas, which is not nearly as strong) has been dismal. They were decisively repelled in 2006. Many are predicting the same fate for this attempt. However, the Israelis learned some lessons from 2006, they have full U.S. backing, Hezbollah has been seriously weakened, and Iran so far doesn’t seem to want to engage in full-scale war, which might be what it takes to stop the U.S.-Israeli plan. It’s very hard to predict how the current round of fighting will go.

So where are we headed? Unfortunately, unless progressive forces in the U.S. can finally rein in the political establishment, it appears to be increased repression at home, and untold misery for the peoples of the Middle East, and perhaps for the rest of the world as well.

Joseph Levine is a resident of Leverett and a recently retired Professor of Philosophy at UMass.