Is Lebanon Even a Country?

 By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

It’s hard to believe today, but until the 1970s the Israeli border with Lebanon was the quietest of Israel’s frontiers. Lebanon, as a country, never really participated in the Arab wars against the Jewish state. As a state it still doesn’t, actually. So why is this now Israel’s most dangerous boundary?

The problem, of course, is that Lebanon is a failed state, in the fullest sense of the word. It hasn’t really had control of itself since the 1970s, first due to the interference of the PLO and, since the 1980s, the entity in its Shi’ite south adjoining Israel, Hezbollah. In effect, part of Lebanon remains a vassal of Iran.

After the First World War, as the new polity of Greater Lebanon emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Its Maronite-Catholic and French planners envisioned it as a “Christian national home” reminiscent of the Jewish one promised by the Balfour Declaration in Palestine. One prominent Maronite delegate to the postwar peace talks in Paris, Emile Eddé, used the term explicitly.

It was therefore split from the far larger French Mandate of Syria. But the Christians were geographically a small population and desired more territory. So its borders were significantly more encompassing than those of its Ottoman predecessor, the predominantly Christian governorate of Mount Lebanon. In fact, the French authorities worried that the Maronites, Lebanon’s largest Christian denomination, were overreaching by absorbing so much land inhabited by Sunni and Shia Muslims.

But the Christians had suffered from a great famine while under Turkish rule during the war. After the armistice the traumatized Maronites were desperate for agricultural land, and insisted, despite French reservations, on the inclusion within the emerging Lebanon of the mostly Sunni Akkar area north of Tripoli and the heavily Shia Beqaa Valley along the eastern border with Syria. This would eventually lead to their political downfall.

The Shias were the poorest and most downtrodden of the country’s myriad groups, their marginal importance made plain by images of the 1920 ceremony creating the French Mandate of Lebanon. The religious figures flanking the French General Henri Gouraud were the Maronite Patriarch Elias Peter Hoayek and the Sunni Muslim mufti of Beirut, Sheikh Mustafa Naja. The Shias were not even invited.

Eddé had been clearest among Maronite leaders “in wanting a proper Christian Lebanon rather than a multicommunal mélange.” In 1932 he even begged Paris to lop off the Sunni-majority area around Tripoli and, crucially, the Shia-majority south. “This Christian majority is much too weak to defend against the attraction exerted on it by Syria,” he wrote in a memo.

France eventually buckled to mounting Arab nationalist pressure in its Syrian mandate and granted it qualified independence. To dampen Lebanese Muslim support for unification with Syria, President Eddé agreed to name a Sunni Muslim as prime minister.

This led to the confessionalism that would be codified in the 1943 National Pact that created an independent state. Lebanon would have a Maronite president, a Sunni prime minister and a Shia parliamentary speaker.

Lebanon soon became a sectarian battleground within its borders. In 1975, confrontations between Christians and Muslims, and Lebanese and Palestinians, exploded into a 15-year civil war. Syria soon invaded and wouldn’t leave for three decades.

Meanwhile, the new Shia rulers in Tehran created a far more militant movement and called it Hezbollah, the Party of God. Intermittent violence, including four major conflagrations, between Hezbollah and Israel has followed ever since, with the Lebanese state virtually a bystander. Hezbollah is embedded in residential and commercial areas of nearly every city and town south of the Litani River. And the Beqaa Valley is a depth zone that includes social presence, logistics, and at times funding and smuggling routes.

Disarmament was the purpose in theory of a November 2024 ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. But that task was left to the Lebanese Armed Forces, which were not up to the job.

Since the current war with Iran began in February, Hezbollah has stepped up its bombardment of northern Israel and has refused to abide by a ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese government. A fragile peace has been declared, but it wasn’t negotiated between the two parties that are actually in conflict with one another.

Hezbollah has no interest in any peace deal with or recognition of any kind of Israel because it would be a violation of its raison d’etre which is to be Iran’s protector. Israel can weaken Hezbollah significantly, but until the Lebanese are able to end being occupied by this movement, Hezbollah will always remain a threat.

Hezbollah maintains its power not only through weapons but also through services, welfare systems, credit, local mediation, and patronage mechanisms. This is why physical strikes on its strongholds do not necessarily translate into a loss of public support.

There is little will and little capacity within Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah. Lebanon is not a functioning country, but an amalgam of at least five or six factions; compromise has been the order of the day for years and there is no centre that can commit to and enforce any meaningful decision. Until then, Hezbollah calls the shots – literally.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces have created a buffer zone in southern Lebanon to severely reduce a potential ground incursion by Hezbollah. But it’s a band-aid solution.

 

Jordan is Caught Between Iran and Israel

 By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

The war against Iran launched by Israel and the United States on February 28 placed Jordan, geographically, militarily and politically, in the firing line, a precarious position for this relatively weak state.

The war came in the midst of a severe crisis in Israeli-Jordanian their relations. Since October 7, 2023, the leaders of the two countries have neither met nor spoken publicly, and the level of relations was downgraded; joint infrastructure projects discussed before the war were frozen.

This state of affairs reflects the anti-Israeli sentiment prevalent among parts of the Jordanian public, which has intensified over the past two and a half years against the background of the war in Gaza. However, despite the rupture between the leaders of the two countries, military coordination between the Israeli and the Jordanian armed forces has continued.

Jordan has not allowed its airspace to be used against Israel, helped keep threats away from the countries’ long-shared border, and enabled travelers from Israel to use Jordanian airports. This conduct has not been easy, in the context of the kingdom’s struggle against Islamist elements seeking to draw Jordan into the “ring of fire” of the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance.

Jordan has refrained from condemning the Israeli-American attack on Iran despite pressure to do so from the Islamic Action Front, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm in the Jordanian parliament. In this regard, a historic decision was made in April 2025 to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood itself because of its involvement in terrorism and its challenge to the state’s monopoly on the use of force.

During the June 2025 twelve-day war, Iranian missiles and drones on their way to Israel were intercepted over Jordanian territory. In the current conflict, about half of the attacks have been directed at Jordan itself and were carried out with the involvement of pro-Iranian militias in Iraq.

The 2026 war has led Jordan to adopt a declared policy of “positive neutrality,” namely, intercepting Iranian missiles in its sovereign airspace on their way to Israel and actively defending its territory against direct attacks, while also declaring that it is not a party to the conflict and calling for de-escalation and a diplomatic settlement.

Despite Iran’s hostile activity, Jordan’s public position has remained measured and ambivalent: on the one hand, it condemned the Iranian attacks against it and against the Arab Gulf states and made clear to Tehran that harm to the security of the kingdom and its citizens constitutes a “red line.”

On the other hand, it declared that it is not a party to the conflict and was careful not to express support for overthrowing the Iranian regime. In conversations King Abdullah held with dozens of world leaders, foremost among them U.S. President Donald Trump, he indicated the need for dialogue and diplomacy in order to halt the escalation, resolve the crisis, and achieve comprehensive calm.

Overall, Jordanians view their country’s alliances as anchored primarily in the Arab world,

particularly with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, while also recognizing the United States as a central

external partner. The fact that Palestine features so prominently underlines how closely public

perceptions of Jordan’s alliances are bound up with the ongoing conflict and its wider regional

implications.

The troubled relationship between Jordan and Iran has historical roots stretching back decades and is unrelated to Israel. In the 1980s, King Hussein supported Iraq in its war against Iran. In 2004, his successor King Abdullah coined the term “Shiite Crescent” to warn of expanding Iranian influence in the Middle East. Iran’s involvement in Syria and Iraq, both of which border Jordan, has confronted the kingdom with direct threats, including border infiltration, terrorism, and the smuggling of weapons and drugs. In addition, King Abdullah has for years urged the United States to adopt a hard line toward Iran. In 2015, he expressed reservations about the nuclear agreement with Iran advanced by President Barack Obama, although he refrained from criticizing it publicly.

Iran’s attacks have placed Jordan’s leadership in an uncomfortable light, and Amman’s frustration with Iran has only deepened. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Iranian chargé d’affaires for a reprimand on March 1, protesting Tehran’s “flagrant violation” of Jordan’s sovereignty and an “unacceptable escalation that threatens civilian safety.” On March 18, Jordan complained that Iran had fired over 200 missiles and drones at the Hashemite Kingdom. King Abdullah declined to critique the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Although many Jordanians view Iran as a negative factor undermining the region’s stability, they are more antagonistic toward Israel, which they still view as a greater danger to their country’s sovereignty than Iran. They doubt that the war can achieve one of its principal objectives of creating conditions for regime change in Iran and consider the American-Israeli plan to overthrow the regime as unclear and resting on wishful thinking. Under these uncertain conditions, an explicit Jordanian alignment against Iran could prove a dangerous gamble.

In any case, even as Jordan rebuked Iran for its attacks, few believe that the conflict will lead Jordan to boost relations with Israel. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the Jewish state for its military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon and its policy toward Jerusalem’s holy sites. Amman’s policies for the foreseeable future remain unlikely to change.

 

Today’s Antizionism is Jew-Hatred

 By Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

The Jewish world has grown darker. I’m not going to compare the anti-Jewish hate that has spread across this and other countries since October 7, 2023, to the Holocaust, but we know that Jewish life has become far more precarious. And so much of the hatred flies under the rubric of so-called “antizionism,” with people claiming that this isn’t “antisemitism.” But this is false dichotomy. And we know it when we see it.

“Antizionism” is not about the now arcane historical debates that occurred mainly within Jewish communities from the 19^th century through 1948, in which those who became Zionists sought to actualize the Jewish ties to biblical Israel and recreate a modern state. By “Zionists,” today’s enemies are not referring to supporters of the 19th century self-liberation movement of the Jewish people, whose goal was to establish a national home. They known little of this history. They’ve never heard of Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Ber Borochov, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, or Chaim Weizmann.

As a derogatory slur, a pejorative, it simply means “Jew,” the way earlier words, now archaic, used to. Some call Jews “Zios.” They mean the Jewish people, who exist in opposition to everything good in the world, and who are figures of emblematic wickedness. In this they simply update what Nazis said a century ago. Hitler, too, was an “antizionist,” along with his racial antisemitism. It attacks Jews, here in western countries like Canada – in the cities where they live, in the universities they attend, in the publishing houses where they send their manuscripts, and in the entertainment world where they act and sing.

Note that it calls itself antizionism, not anti-Israelism, so that the net can grab virtually every Jew who simply wants to see Israel not destroyed – and that’s the vast, vast majority. We Jews know what it means, regardless of what our enemies claim. Would anyone think that the term antisemitism means hatred of Semites?

Clearly a ludicrous idea; it was invented in the 19^th century by a German Jew-hater, Wilhelm Marr, to make it sound more “racially scientific.” No one is fooled by that, of course, nor should they be by so-called “antizionism.” In its effects, it is for Jews a distinction with a negligible difference. It is meant to portray Jews as villains, and while it may fool some gullible people, it will deceive very, very few of us.

After all, as Michel Coren noted in “Roald Dahl’s Antisemitism Feels Painfully Familiar,” in the British magazine the Spectator March 16, “most Jewish people do in fact to varying degrees support Israel, partly because centuries of bigotry, violence, massacre, and attempted genocide have given them little alternative. They may oppose Israeli policy, may condemn the current government, may even want radical compromises, but there’s still support. And in the current climate of leftist and Islamist triumphalism, it’s all Zionism and none of it acceptable.”

Anti-Zionism is marked by three core “libels”: that “Zionists” are colonizers, guilty of apartheid, and committing genocide. (Actually, the only time we were settler-colonialists was when we conquered Canaan, but that was God’s doing!) Anti-Israel activists incorporate historical manifestations of anti-Jewish discrimination under the guise of anti-Zionist political activism, from the blood libel to Nazi-era tropes, mixed with contemporary academic theories. Anti-Zionism acts as a container for these historical tropes, blending them together with progressive talking points.

George Washington University professor Daniel Schwartz, in “Vocabulary Lesson,” Jewish Review of Books, Spring 2026, describes a pro-Palestinian demonstration in 2025 at his campus where a student held a placard with Israel at the center and spokes radiating outward to other evils: imperialism, white supremacy, even reproductive injustice. “This is not garden-variety political criticism of Israel policies or conduct. It invokes a symbolic architecture in which the Jewish state becomes the universal source of global suffering -- a structure with deep resonance in antisemitic thought.”

Scholars argue that it is the third major iteration of discrimination against Jews. The first was anti-Judaism, based on religion, the second was antisemitism, focused on race, and the third, anti-Zionism, is a hatred of Jewish peoplehood.

“Anti-Zionism transforms the very meaning of Zionism,” contends Adam Louis-Klein. “The Jew is reconstructed through a new symbolic logic and a new repertoire of stereotypes,” Where antisemites invoked the pseudo-biological figure of “the Semite” to cast Jews as an Oriental race infiltrating the West, anti-Zionists invoke the authority of the social sciences to recode the Jew as the “Zionist,” a European colonizer destined to commit genocide of a non-European population.

“Erasing Jewish indigeneity and severing Jewish belonging to the land of Israel, anti-Zionism transforms the race polluter of antisemitism into the white settler of anti-Zionism,” he asserts in his March 24, 2026 Free Press article “Yes, Anti-Zionism Is Discrimination.”

For this reason, he writes, it’s imperative that organizations and institutions committed to protecting Jews and fighting the scourge of Jew-hatred start condemning—clearly and without apology—antisemitism and antizionism. This goes to the moral core of the matter: the right of Jews to a homeland versus the bigotry of those who deny them that right.

After the Holocaust, explicit Jew-hatred became unfashionable in polite society, but the impulse never disappeared. The workaround was simple: separate Zionism from Judaism in name, then recycle every old anti-Jewish trope and pin it on “the Zionists.”