On: Is Israel seeking free reign from US in Lebanon?

Diary Entry - September 12, 2024

The spectacle unfolds precisely as predicted: Israel, that most American of client states, now tests the leash while pretending it does not see the hand holding it. Netanyahu’s “dramatic shift” is neither dramatic nor a shift - it is the inevitable next page of a script written in Washington, performed with just enough improvisation to maintain the fiction of sovereignty. The medieval castle of Beaufort, that picturesque ruin, now serves as stage prop for a modern farce. One almost admires the audacity: to frame colonial expansion as military necessity requires either a cynic or a true believer, and Netanyahu has always been too shrewd to be the latter.

The American response will follow its own tired script - a furrowed brow, a murmured concern, then the quiet transfer of more munitions. This is how empires manage their dependencies: with just enough restraint to maintain deniability, and just enough recklessness to remind the vassal who holds the purse strings. Lebanon, that perennial casualty of other people’s wars, will once again play the role of collateral damage in a drama it did not write.

The true marvel is not Israel’s aggression, but the Western press’s continued surprise at it. What did they expect? A client state given unlimited arms and unconditional moral cover will, in time, behave exactly as clients always do - with increasing boldness and decreasing gratitude. The only mystery is why anyone pretends otherwise.

Beaufort will join the list of places where history is written by the victors and mourned by the displaced. The castle’s stones will outlast the lies told about its capture.