Israel and Hezbollah have been at war since October 8, when Hezbollah started firing guided rockets at Israel.

They have been at war since they were founded in 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War

There has been a UN-brokered ceasefire since the later 2006 war. Minor issues have occurred since then, but October 8 was the first major escalation between the two in almost twenty years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...

If you want to run with this argument, they have been at war since 1948, when all of Israel's neighbors including Lebanon invaded Israel following the UN vote to grant Israel statehood and Israel's declaration of independence.

> It’s a declaration of war on Lebanon

A few observations:

1. This is an attack against Hezbollah, not Lebanon. The two entities are tightly coupled, but they are not the same.

2. Israel and Hezbollah are already at war. 60,000 Israelis have been displaced because of Hezbollah ongoing rocket and missile attacks. Israel has retaliated in various ways.

TLDR: you can argue that this is an act of war against Hezbollah. But it is not a declaration of war, and it is not against Lebanon.

In Britain, if the mobile phones of 3000 members of the non-governing Conservative Party exploded in their pockets caused by the armed forces of a different state, one could be reasonably assured you just declared open war on Britain.

For a more accurate analogy, imagine if Conservative Party were a terrorist organization with its own military, took direct orders from Iran, had claimed for itself all of Wales, and had been firing thousands of missiles into France without cooperating in any way with either the British government or army.

Then imagine that France predictably shoots back, and takes great care to specifically target members of that terrorist group.

In this more accurate analogy, would you still say that France declared open war on Britain? I would say no - that the terrorist group is the one that declared war; and that France is clearly engaging in acts of war against that terrorist group, which happens to be embedded in a host country, like a parasite.

For a more accurate anology involving Britain, imagine that British secret services decided to detonate pagers belonging to Sinn Fein party members in the territory of the Republic of Ireland.

Yeah I agree with you. It’s also that the situation in the region around Israel is so complex and long-running that there aren’t really appropriate analogies. The two countries are at a state of war that’s fairly obvious regardless of the parties involved. I’m fairly confident Israel given its history in these matters knows what it’s doing and takes actions that will move it toward security and victory, and any potential responses from Hezbolah have been considered and accounted for. One thing that came up for me was if Hezbolah had de-escalated, what would Israel have done with the pagers? It’s clearly a kind of “sleeper” munition, I wonder what the circumstances would have been for them to never use it.

What if the pockets of IRA members had exploded (yes, I know. Say 40 years ago when they were doing their share of bombing)? Does anyone seriously dispute that Hezbollah is a proxy army for Iran?

I think your comparison stops holding wage as,soon as you mention the Conservative Party. They just aren’t the same thing as Hezbollah.

Well if it had happened to 3000 IRA members in Ireland, that would be about tantamount to a declaration of war by Britain. But even if not, it wouldn’t do wonders for the peace process and I could guarantee bombs would still be going off in the UK to this day.