christopher jensen

Legislative softball game is today. And the House has sent the Senate a condolence card ahead of the game.

The situation in northern Israel is getting surprisingly little attention in the West. Here’s some background and an explanation of just how dire it is. World War Three gets closer by the day, and I’m not exaggerating. UNSC resolution 1701 (2006) is that Hezbollah agree to stay north of the river Litani in Lebanon. This puts Israeli settlements out of anti-tank rocket range. However, Hezbollah have broken this and since 7th October have fired thousands of rockets into Israel, displacing some 60,000 Israelis from their homes. To be clear, Hezbollah is a direct Iranian proxy, who live like a virus inside the almost-dead body of the Lebanese state. Their fighters are far superior to Hamas, having gained serious experience in the Syrian civil war. They have no real ground manoeuvre or air power, but their tunnels in the chalk rock of southern Lebanon are better than Hamas’ and they have an estimated 150,000 rockets. There are UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon, but (shockingly for the UN, I know) they’re as much use as a bacon sandwich at a Bar Mitzvah. One very senior Israeli source described them to me as “an umbrella that folds when it rains”. So Israel has a real, very serious problem. They do not have the manpower to assault into Lebanon for any kind of sustained campaign, especially whilst Gaza is ongoing. So, in polite terms, they are kicking the shit out of it from the air (over which they have total superiority) and relying on missile defences. Thousands of targets have been struck in the last 9 months but Hezbollah retain very significant missile capability. This is why Israel are beholden to the USA to offer obscenely generous ceasefire terms to Hamas (that Hamas appear to be declining). They cannot afford to lose American military aid with this threat on their northern border. In the videos below, in the first vid you see the war zone northern Israel has become. The second one is the settlement of Katzrin in the Golan Heights. Surrounded on all sides by fires. In a statement to Qatari-funded Muslim Brotherhood mouthpiece Al Jazeera, yesterday Hezbollah said, “We simultaneously attacked 15 bases in the Golan and the Galilee using 150 rockets and 30 drones. This is the most extensive attack carried out by the organization since October 8, this attack came in response to the assassination in Joya and in order to deter Israel from carrying out further assassinations of this type.” On top of that, Iranian proxies in Iraq took responsibility last night for the joint operation they carried out together with the Houthis (Iranian proxies in Yemen), which launched these ballistic missiles and UAVs towards the Israeli cities of Ashdod and Haifa (third video). Iran is besieging Israel on all sides, and Israel is bending, not breaking. This situation is genuinely dire. It explains why Hamas will not sign a ceasefire deal, and why other non-Iran aligned Gulf states are meeting with IDF commanders. The entire region is teetering on the edge of a much more widespread conflict with Iran, and Israel is taking the brunt of it. If this situation deteriorates, our allies in the Gulf may call for aid. As a second front in the war against the Iran-Russia-China-Qatar axis of malign global actors, this could not be more serious or worrying. And all the while we see subversive Iranian proxy organisations organising protests about Gaza on Western streets. Hopefully the West is not defeated domestically before the war even starts in earnest.