Nuke

Don't mean to put Jean on blast, but I want to address a specific comment he made on Israeli settlements in Lebanon, since it represents a view shared by a segment of the Leb population: "There was never any attempt to establish settlements in the South before". The truth is more complicated. Yes, Israel never built any settlements in Lebanon when they occupied parts of it pre-2000, but it's not because they didn't have any ambitions to; they did early on after the June 1982 invasion, but one of the key reasons why Israel never succeeded in formally establishing settlements in South Lebanon (akin to those in the West Bank and the Golan), despite its long occupation, is because of fierce Lebanese armed resistance to its presence (by Jammoul and a number of Shia armed groups, including what later became Hizballah), which first forced them to retreat to the "Southern Security Strip" by 1985, and then forced them to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000, given the casualties they incurred and the long term cost of maintaining the occupation. It's not well-known (or well remembered) that the far-right Tehiya party (strongly connected with the Gush Emunim messianic settler movement) joined the Begin government on July 22 1982 (right after the invasion of Lebanon), with Tehiya's Yuval Ne'eman becoming a member of Begin's cabinet. A month prior, Ne'eman laid out his views on Southern Lebanon in an article in the Jerusalem Post. His conclusion was that "Israel will have an opportunity of reaching a stage of socio-economic development in the nearby region which, geographically and historically, is an integral part of Eretz Israel. Israel could possibly even reach an agreement on border rectification" [see comment section for source]. Meanwhile Gush Emunim was literally running paid advertisements in Maariv (widely read back then), about colonization of the South [see comment section for source]. Contemporaneous secret reports from the US State Departement and the National Intelligence Council also indicate Washington's suspicions that Israel planned on building settlements in Lebanon. For example, in a Washington Post article from Nov 27 1982, Jack Anderson [see comment section for source] reveals that: "Secret reports shown to my associates Dale Van Atta and Ron McCrae indicate why the White House is disturbed. One secret state department report, for example, had this to say on September 15, as the Israeli invasion of West Beirut was proceeding apace: "there is a danger that Israel's logistical operations will evolve into permanent administrative agencies". In other words, the suspicion is that Israel is in the process of building a military civilian government for Israeli occupied Lebanon. The same pattern of Israeli infiltration that has been seen in the West Bank territories seems to be evolving in Lebanon. The ultra-nationalist extremist group Gush Emunim, is planning to put Israeli settlements in Southern Lebanon, according to US reports". Another secret report from July 7 1983 [see comment section for source], declassified in 2007, from Charles Waterman, Vice Chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, to Stephen Bosworth, Director of Policy Planning for the State Department, reveals that: "Some ultra Zionists will push for annexing the South. Already some members of the Tehiya party have argued that the 1949 armistice line is artificial and does not represent the historic northern border of Palestine. Other ultra-nationalists have spoken about ancient Hebrew ties to Southern Lebanon. While these groups are clearly now on the extreme fringes of the Israeli body politic the past experience of changing Israeli attitudes toward the West Bank, Gaza, Golan and even Sinai indicates that a long occupation develops ideological justifications". So the truth is much more nuanced than "there was never any attempt to establish settlements in the South before". There were certainly ambitions to do exactly that, but they never materialized, in no small part because of Lebanese armed resistance.

how it feels trying to localize a joke that ONLY works in your language