‘Israel is not invading Lebanon, it is liberating it.” So proclaimed France’s pre-eminent liberal philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy as Israeli tanks drove across the border and its war planes bombed villages in the south and residential districts in Beirut. “There are moments in history,” he exulted, when “ ‘escalation’ becomes a necessity and a virtue.” For Lévy, it is not just Lebanon that Israel is liberating, but much of the Middle East, too.
Lévy is not alone in rejoicing at Israel’s spreading military offensive. For many, Israel is waging war, not merely in “self-defence” but, in the words of president Isaac Herzog, “to save western civilisation, to save the values of western civilisation”, a claim echoed by many of its supporters. And the destruction of Gaza, of its hospitals and universities, and the killing of 40,000 people? And the 2,000 people killed in Lebanon in a fortnight, and the fifth of its population displaced? Collateral damage en route to saving civilisation.
