Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart is not a military or foreign policy genius, but he does play on TV. After 11 months of rocket fire from Hezbollah that has seen 60,000 Israelis become refugees in their own country, Israel has started to hit Hezbollah hard in recent days, leading Stewart to ask, “What did Lebanon do?” on Monday’s edition of The Daily Show.
Most of the segment was designed to hit President Joe Biden from the left for failing to secure a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. After a montage of Biden saying how important the issue was to him, including one of him at an ice cream shop, Stewart set up a clip of Fox News’s Bill Hemmer, “I'm going to take a big bite of my ice cream cone as I find out how our ceasefire efforts are paying off.”
In the clip, Hemmer reported, “Israel launching an all-out assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon over the weekend.”
After a spit-take, Stewart replied, “What?... Wait, we've been working tirelessly for a ceasefire in Gaza and then [bleep] Lebanon? The whole point was we're going to downgrade Hamas, we're going to attack the terrorists there, we’re going to get the hostages home. What did Lebanon do?”
Nobody forced Hezbollah to join the war after October 7. It made a choice to do that so that it could wax poetic about “unified resistance” and burnish its “resistance” credentials as a clip of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted, “No country can accept the wanton rocketing of its cities. We can't accept it either.”
Stewart didn’t care, “But you've also been wanton rocketing! What kind of rocketing are you doing in Gaza, if not wanton? And by the way, that’s how little criticism they face. By the way, Lebanon is also a country. What makes you think they're going to accept your rocketing or whatever other James Bond shit you've been up to?”
Later in his monologue, Stewart teed up a clip of Axios’s Barak Ravid on CNN, “If you really want to experience the full cognitive dissonance and language calisthenics that have to be deployed to describe the Middle East over the last, I don't know, four, five, six, 10,000 years, we're describing, I give you: the golden soundbite, brought down from Sinai to explain how [bleep] convoluted this has to be.”
In the clip, Ravid reported, “What the Israeli government has said, and the Biden administration has, in many ways, subscribed to this idea—is deescalation through escalation.”
A confused Stewart exclaimed, "Or, as that is sometimes called: war!… I mean, do you even hear yourself?”
It’s a rather simple concept. For 11 months, Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire based on the so-called “rules of the game,” but Hezbollah miscalculated just how seriously Israel takes the situation. The fact that tens of thousands of Jews may not be able to live freely in the Jewish state is untenable. However, for various political and practical reasons, Israel held back and even now would still prefer not to launch a ground invasion, so it is intensifying its air efforts to try to convince Hezbollah their support for Hamas isn’t worth it.
For his part, Stewart brought out multiple books, including 1984, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Garfield comics, to suggest the idea was absurd and worse than Orwellian.
Finally, Stewart tried to push back against the idea that favoring an end to the Gaza war makes one pro-Hamas or anti-Semitic and played clips of several former high-ranking Israeli security officials to prove his point. One was former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who left the war cabinet after he accused Netanyahu of not having a strategy.
In the clip, an interpreter quotes Gantz as saying, “The prime minister did not look the public in the eye and tell the truth: That he won't bring the hostages alive.”
However, Stewart omitted Gantz has said he would back a ground invasion of Lebanon should it come to that because the American political spectrum cannot be easily applied to Israel.
If Stewart wants to argue that invading Lebanon in order to allow displaced Israelis to return home will fail because the war will be so devastating that they may not have homes to return to, he can try to argue that point. Speaking of 1984, what he cannot do is demand to be taken seriously as a commentator while memory holing the fact that the geopolitical situation is what it is because Hezbollah has been waging a war of choice on Israel for the last 11 months.
Here is a transcript for the September 23 show:
Comedy Central The Daily Show
9/23/2024
11:02 PM ET
STEWART: I'm going to take a big bite of my ice cream cone as I find out how our ceasefire efforts are paying off.
BILL HEMMER: Israel launching an all-out assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon over the weekend.
STEWART: [Spit-take] What? So worth it. Wait, we've been working tirelessly for a ceasefire in Gaza and then [bleep] Lebanon? The whole point was we're going to downgrade Hamas, we're going to attack the terrorists there, we’re going to get the hostages home. What did Lebanon do?
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: No country can accept the wanton rocketing of its cities. We can't accept it either.
STEWART: But you've also been wanton rocketing! What kind of rocketing are you doing in Gaza, if not wanton? And by the way, that’s how little criticism they face. By the way, Lebanon is also a country. What makes you think they're going to accept your rocketing or whatever other James Bond shit you've been up to?
…
STEWART: What if you really want to experience the full cognitive dissonance and language calisthenics that have to be deployed to describe the Middle East over the last, I don't know, four, five, six, 10,000 years, we're describing, I give you: the golden soundbite, brought down from Sinai to explain how [bleep] convoluted this has to be.
BARAK RAVID: What the Israeli government has said, and the Biden administration has, in many ways, subscribed to this idea — is deescalation through escalation.
STEWART: Or, as that is sometimes called: war! That is -- World War II, look at the subhead! Deescalation through escalation. I mean, do you even hear yourself? My god, that -- deescalation through escalation. That phrase is right out of, hold on a second, let me see if I can find it. Hold on, no, it's not in here, hold on, let me see if I can find. No, it's not in there. Let me see if I can find --
…
STEWART: I'm sorry? Criticism of the war is shameful and it gives comfort to Hamas? You know who might be surprised to hear that? The Israelis, who are unbelievably critical of the war and Netanyahu.
BENNY GANTZ: [Speaking Hebrew].
STEWART: What are you going to say now, mother[bleep]? Get off my back! You heard what he said! He said... [Attempts to speak in Hebrew] Does anyone have a Google translate on what he said?
GANTZ [VIA INTERPRETER]: The prime minister did not look the public in the eye and tell the truth: That he won't bring the hostages alive.
