Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Did the Bible inspire Israel’s attack against Hezbollah?

Using technical wizardry, Israel simultaneously detonated thousands of Hezbollah pagers in Lebanon and Syria, effectively castrating a bunch of fighters who subscribe to an ideology that views sadistic rape as a weapon of war. A short time later, after weathering eleven months of non-stop rocket fire from Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel finally launched serious military attacks against Hezbollah outposts. I firmly believe that the IDF looked to the Bible for its inspiration when planning this unique attack.

If you haven’t read Genesis 34 in a while, here’s the story it tells:

The Bible patriarch Jacob had 12 sons and one daughter, Dinah. One day, Dinah, the sole young woman in a household of brothers, left her home to visit with neighboring women. Shechem, the son of Hamor, who was the chief of the Hivite tribe, saw Dinah and raped her.

Once having raped her, he proceeded to do what we today call “gaslighting”: That is, he announced that he was in love with Dinah. The likelihood that he “loved” her is slender. What’s more likely is that he did not want Dinah’s brothers to come after him or that he wanted her dowry. Therefore, he asked that Hamor, his father, arrange for Dinah to become Shechem’s wife.


Dinah’s brothers, however, would not be appeased, especially since Dinah had not been returned to her tribe. Shechem and his father, however, saw an opportunity in all this and proposed a tribal merger with Hivites marrying Israelite women and Hivite women marrying Israelite men.

Because Dinah’s brothers recognized that this was not an arm’s length transaction but was, instead, a hostage negotiation built upon the fact that their sister had been raped, they pretended to go along with the deal, right down to agreeing to Dinah’s marriage to Shechem. However, they pointed out that Shechem had not been circumcised.

The brother’s only demand, therefore, was that Shechem and all the Hivite men get circumcised. In that case, the Hivites would get Dinah and all the other Israelite women, too. Hamor and Shechem made the sale by telling the Hivite men that they would possess all the Israelites’ livestock and material wealth. This was a lie, of course, since Jacob and his sons never made such a promise. It indicates that the Hivite chieftain and his son fully intended to marry the Israelite women, kill the men, and take all their goods. This prospect sealed the deal, and the Hivites underwent a mass circumcision.

Once the Hivite males were completely incapacitated, Jacob’s sons raided the city and killed all the men. They rescued Dinah, took all of the Hivites’ material goods as well as their women and children, and returned home. In other words, the Israelites did to the Hivites what the Hivites clearly intended to do to them. The mass circumcision was a preemptive strike, leaving the Hivite men incapable of waging war.

Now, consider what Israel did to Hezbollah—which, again, has been firing tens of thousands of Iranian-made rockets into Israel almost every day for nearly a year. The only reason there haven’t been mass deaths is because Israel vacated the entire north. Even with that, though, Hezbollah managed to slaughter 12 Druze children playing on a soccer field.

Israel has been planning for some time to respond to Hezbollah’s warfare (which Iran has funded and to which Iran has contributed all the weapons). However, it’s had a major problem: Waging a two-front war is a terrible burden on a country that’s already been at war for months and has suffered tremendous losses. Moreover, Biden has been slow-walking weapons to Israel while giving materials to Hamas, and other nations, such as Labor-led Britain, are boycotting Israel when it comes to weapons sales.

To have a fighting chance against Hezbollah, Israel needed to weaken Hezbollah’s troops—so it launched the modern equivalent of demanding that the Hivites circumcise themselves:

More than 2,700 Hezbollah terrorists were wounded and at least eight were killed across Lebanon on Tuesday when their communication devices exploded, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad confirmed.

Approximately 200 Hezbollah terrorists were in critical condition in 100 different hospitals, Beirut’s health minister announced about three hours after the explosions were first reported at 3.30 p.m. local time.

Since then, it’s clear that more than 3,600 Hezbollah troops in Lebanon and Syria were injured.

The images from the explosions indicate that many of the Hezbollah terrorists carried their pagers in their front pockets, although others had them in their hands, near their abdomens, or by their buttocks. (Warning: The images are sometimes gruesome.)

Tellingly, one of the people injured when these dedicated Hezbollah pagers went off was the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon. I’m sure he has a good reason for having had a Hezbollah pager.

Immediately after the attack, Israel launched a series of targeted strikes against Hezbollah outposts and weapons locations:

The Hivites feel Hezbollah’s pain. Dinah smiles.

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