Addenda, ongoing and updated
20 September, 12:42 PM CDT: New headlines: “Israeli military carries out targeted strike in Lebanon”. Which is to say, “They only hit Dahieh so don’t worry. The missiles were aimed at Dahieh and we meant to assassinate only one person. We can stick bombs in pagers and walkie talkies but when it comes to carrying out a political assassination, long range missiles are our best option. This was targeted. So to whoever else might have been killed or maimed: our bad! Why were you out in the market on a Friday afternoon after prayers? Why weren’t you at home bravely waiting for your phone to ring so you could know that everyone was alright?”
The collateral damage is of course always the point, and as much a part of the calculation as the target of the attempt. Lebanese hospitals are overwhelmed by the injured and the dead. This is the point.
Biden and Macron are in agreement: there is a diplomatic path forward to “de-escalation” in the Middle East. Great. What is it? What is the object over which we are negotiating? The continuing existence of the Palestinian people as a political subject? The capacity of the Lebanese state to defend itself against incursions upon its territory by a hostile foreign power? What does the other want? Does it know?
20 September, 7:26 AM CDT: The New York Times today asks that its readers contemplate the audacity of the Israeli attack on Hezbollah as evidence of Israel’s continuing superiority in covert operations and spy craft. This seems rich given that, by common admission, the year long assault on Gaza and the intensification of violence in the West Bank, in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran stems from a major intelligence failure. The attack inside Lebanon is, one might suggest, part of a larger campaign to restore faith, for Israelis and their international partners, in the capacity of their intelligence networks. The message: You do not know what we are doing but we are doing it. We are the mechanism of what you want but cannot admit. Meanwhile, the Atlantic is running a piece meant to console Americans who are now looking askance at their phones. “Your phone is not a bomb,” it declares, as if that publication, like all major media outlets, has not been raging against the plurality of evils that descend from our addiction to devices, our unconscious attachment to these cruel fetishes which we know—but we don’t know—are destructive and evil.
11:45 AM CDT, well after Nasrallah’s speech promising retribution, another US headline: “Former CIA director warns of escalation in Israel-Hezbollah conflict.” What was your first clue, Chief Intelligence Operative?
19 September, 11:20 AM CDT: A headline in the US media: “More explosions in Lebanon as Israel prepares for war.” Apparently, Israel—like the United States—never provokes wars or causes wars. It merely “prepares” for war, which is its sad dispensation, its special burden among the otherwise desultory community of nations.