Marty Levine
January 2, 2025
“Here on our television, night after night, our people are being shown the symbols of this war and it is a holocaust. A little seven-month-old baby with its arms blown off, two five-year-old twins dead—and this goes on night after night …the massive shelling and bombing has been so out of proportion . . . that it has been a simple blanket barrage against an area that is populated by civilians.”
This was not said in the last year. It was not said by a pro-Palestinian spokesperson or a protestor at a university encampment. These are the words of President Ronald Reagan speaking to Israeli Prime Minister Meachem Begin in 1982, more than 40 years ago!
When I read this passage which Biographer Max Boot cited (MemCon, Begin and RR, Aug.12 1982, box 7, GKP, RRPL; Strober and Strober, Reagan, 191), in his recently published Reagan: His Life and Legend, I was surprised to say the least. I have been reading this book to get a better historical perspective on Donald Trump and the rise of the MAGA movement that is sweeping over us. With this passage, I was pushed back to what has been occurring in Israel/Palestine and to the vehement criticism of any voice that dares to say what is taking place is beyond the pale even of war.
I had to take time to relearn what had occurred those decades ago, a history lesson that took on even greater importance because of what we are living with today. Everything that has happened since 10/7 also took place then.
The Israeli Government took advantage of what it saw as an opportunity to act out a vision of sovereignty over what is views as a greater Israel. And it does so with the ability to use overwhelming force that can wreak massive destruction and, despite these private words between Reagan and Begin, it can do so with total American support.
Reagan was, a little more than a year into his first term as President, being faced with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in what Israel said was an effort to stop Palestinian terrorism. The stated reason that Israel had to act was its discovery of a plot to assassinate an Israeli Ambassador. History has shown that Israeli leaders had been diplomatically lobbying the Reagan Administration for some months to build support for their desire to invade Lebanon and throw both Palestinian and Syrian forces out.
When that plot was uncovered it provided the needed cover for Israel to launch a massive invasion that went well beyond even its stated goal of turning a 25-mile strip of Lebanon into a demilitarized zone free of supposed terrorists.
Here’s how the Israel Defense Force describes that moment:
Operation Peace for Galilee (Hebrew: שלום הגליל, ‘Shalom HaGalil’), also known as the First Lebanon War (Hebrew: מלחמת לבנון הראשונה, ‘Milhemet Levanon HaRishona’), was a war launched by Israel against Palestinian terrorists based in southern Lebanon. The operation was launched on June 6, 1982, following the attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador to the UK by a terrorist cell. The stated objective of the operation was to put the communities of northern Israel out of reach of the terrorists in southern Lebanon by pushing the latter 40 km to the north. The war lasted more than three months until Israeli forces reached Beirut….
…For a month and a half, a struggle took place in Beirut, in a context of hardening of the siege and evacuation of the city’s terrorists. The objectives were achieved during the fighting. During this period, Israeli forces seized Beirut airport and the southern districts of the city, as well as key points that reinforced the IDF’s influence on East Beirut.
These words ignore the brutality that even President Reagan could not avoid. But it mirrors how Israel minimized the reality on the ground of its war.
And as we are experiencing today, the Israeli government told the world that its forces had harmed the population in only a minor manner. In 1982 the Washington Post published its review of the available data which included this conclusion about Israel’s official statements saying that casualties “…ranged more in the hundreds than the thousands. Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon recently said that there had only been 2,000 casualties, mostly military.”
But as we are seeing today, there is a different picture for those who want to open their eyes. The Middle Eastern Research and Information Project published its understanding shortly after a ceasefire came to the area
How many people have been killed and wounded in the course of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon? Precise numbers have been hard to assemble because of unsettled conditions, lack of free access to all areas, the incomplete recovery of bodies buried under the rubble, censorship and the tendency on the part of Israel and its supporters to view casualty statistics as a tool of anti-Israeli propaganda. Still, some have hazarded aggregate numbers: the Lebanese police, in early July, counted 10,134 Lebanese and Palestinians killed and 17,337 wounded; [1] Caritas, the Rome-based Catholic relief agency, had already issued “minimum established figures” of 14,000 dead, 25,000 severely wounded and 400,000 totally homeless on June 28. [2] As of the second week in July, relief workers on the ground in Lebanon had given up compiling casualty figures, but thought “the figure of 15,000 to 20,000 civilian dead seems very plausible.” [3] On July 13, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Charles Percy reported that US intelligence officials had told him that 10,000 people had been killed, while Lebanese officials were putting the death toll at 18,000 by mid-July.’’…
…thousands of Palestinians died in south Lebanon: Both ‘Ayn al-Hilwa outside Sidon and Rashidiyya outside Tyre were “largely flattened” by Israeli bombardment. [14] Giannou, the Canadian doctor who witnessed the attack, estimates that “at least 1,500 civilians” died in ‘Ayn al-Hilwa. The “suffocating stench of rotting corpses” hung over the area after the Israeli attack, and one eyewitness saw 50 bodies buried in the rubble of just one building. [15] Scenes from Burj al-Shamali, another camp near Tyre, tell the same story: “Many families took shelter in the camp’s clubhouse, according to Mahmoud Marki and other residents. It now lies many feet under earth and rubble. Only a sickly smell suggests what might lie below. Marki says that more than 100 people are dead inside. There are 100 more in another shelter.”
President Reagan’s unscripted comment points the way to an important learning. What is occurring in 2024-25 is not as unique as Israel’s supporters would like to have us think. Yes, the Hamas attack on October 7, 2024 was brutal. Yes, it left 1,200 dead and many more wounded physically and mentally. Yes it put 250 more into the hell of captivity where about 100 still remain. It can be counted as a day unlike any since Israel began as a state.
But Israel’s response has not been unique.
As the weeks and months have gone on, Israel’s leaders have seized upon this day of horror as a rationale for their plan to destroy the Palestinian people and to annex the lands of their vision of a god-promised greater Israel. And they have used their mighty military to wreak as much destruction as possible. This was Lebanon in 1982, and it is Gaza, Lebanon, and all of the occupied territories today.
If you support Israel’s right as a Jewish state to expand as it sees fit and to remove in all possible ways those non-Jews who dare to live on any part of the Jewish homeland (as promised by God), then there is little disturbing in this never-ending story.
But if you have any sense of humanity this cycle of violence cannot be swept away. And the too-easy passing on responsibility to the victim for their own victimization cannot be allowed to continue.
Join me (and President Reagan!) in seeing a holocaust happening right before you. And add your voice to those saying “STOP IT NOW!”
