Portside

Israel’s airstrike that killed Hezbollah and Iranian commanders in Syria last Sunday could be a highly risky pre-election gambit, designed to in part bolster Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral performance in 2015. And the predictable and possibly provoked Hezbollah response may set the stage for a direct Israeli confrontation with Lebanon.

Our predicament is substantially obscured by the frightening enthusiasm for war among leading pundits. As Stephen F. Cohen has observed about the Ukraine–Russia crisis, the US media are simply not telling the truth about the failure of our post–Cold War policy. They demonize the opponent and never acknowledge the rational alternatives that exist. America needs an antiwar movement of truth tellers to confront and shame the propagandists.