Yves here. Satyajit Das provides a long-term view of how the Middle East has become a tinderbox in a three-part series.
This review is provides an integrated assessment and I hope you will you circulate it as a backgrounder. Sadly, this vantage seems timely as Iran and the Axis of Resistance look set to retaliate bigly to recent Israel assassinations. Israel looks to be finally getting the regional conflict that many experts argue it has been seeking.
This post, which reviews the origins of the hostilities, includes a discussion of key miscalculations.
By Satyajit Das, a former banker and author of numerous works on derivatives and several general titles: Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives (2006 and 2010), Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011), Fortune’s Fool: Australia’s Choices (2022). His latest book is on ecotourism and man’s relationship with wild animals – Wild Quests (2024)
This is the first of a three-part series examining the unfolding events in the Middle East.
The Middle East like the Balkans produces more history than it can consume.
The central issue is Palestine. There are volatile religious differences between Sunni-Shia Islam, several forms of Christianity, Judaism, the Baha’i Faith, Druzism, Yazidism and Zoroastrianism. The 1916 secret British-French Sykes–Picot Agreement which shaped modern nation states borders without regard to historical tribal territories has left a legacy of resentment. A mix of hereditary monarchies, authoritarian democracies and theocracies complicates government. Great power politics remain a factor primarily because the region contains crucial large oil and gas reserves.
From time to time, this cauldron bubbles over. This is one of those times.
Dispossession
The essentials of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was summarised by George Antonius in his 1938 The Arab Awakening: “The treatment meted out to Jews in Germany and other European countries is a disgrace to its authors and to modern civilisation; but posterity will not exonerate any country that fails to bear its proper share of the sacrifices needed to alleviate Jewish suffering and distress. To place the brunt of the burden upon Arab Palestine is a miserable evasion of the duty that lies upon the whole of the civilised world. It is also morally outrageous. No code of morals can justify the persecution of one people in an attempt to relieve the persecution of another. The cure for the eviction of Jews from Germany is not to be sought in the eviction of the Arabs from their homeland …”
The 1917 Balfour Declaration, orchestrated by Lord Rothschild and Chaim Weizmann, pledged vague support for a Jewish ‘homeland’ in Palestine, seized by Britain from the Ottoman Empire during the first world war. Increased Zionist immigration created predictable tension and conflict between Arab and Jews. The decision by the United Nations (UN) to partition Palestine facilitated Britain’s withdrawal and the creation of Israel in 1948. US President Harry Truman recognised the Zionist nation minutes after its formation. It set the stage for subsequent events.
Israel has always sought for security reasons to gain control of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean and the Litani River within Lebanese territory and Syrian Golan Heights to the Suez Canal. Theodor Herzl, the Viennese journalist and founder of the Zionist movement wrote of emptying Palestine of its “penniless” Arab population: “Both the process of expropriation [of land and property] and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
Over subsequent decades, Israel, supported by the US and its Western allies, expanded its territory in a series of wars. The Nakba and subsequent dislocation left Palestinians destitute and trapped stateless in two pockets of land: Gaza, controlled by Egypt, and the West Bank, administered by Jordan. In the 1967 six-day war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank.
The 1993 Oslo peace accords contained a five-year interim agreement giving the Palestinian people the right to self-determination. Crucial questions remained unresolved – the international border between Israel and a future Palestinian state, illegal Israeli settlements, the status of Jerusalem, Israel’s control over security, and the Palestinian’s right of return.
Palestinian-American philosopher Edward Said described the Oslo Accord as a Palestinian Versailles and Yasser Arafat as an Arab General Petain. Opposed by far-right and orthodox Israelis and a large portion of the Palestinian population, including militant groups, the process failed. This led to series of violent protests or intifadas (shaking off) by Palestinians which were brutally supressed by Israel. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza due to the high cost of occupation. Subsequently, victory in an election and military success allowed Hamas to gain sole control of Gaza while a Fatah dominated Palestinian Authority ran the West Bank.
Occupation
Israel’s occupation and rejection of the two-state solution relies on several factors. Holocaust guilt especially among Western powers who were directly complicit or did not intervene was easy to exploit. Over time, America and the West’s need for a sentinel to protect its energy interests, counter balance a post-Shah Iran and the rise of radical Islam has been central to support of Israel.
Israel’s vast propaganda machine indoctrinates its population and controls global opinion, portraying any event in Zionist terms. Critics are silenced by weaponizing the term ‘anti-Semitic’ – problematic in that Jews themselves are one of the Semitic races. Critics, such as Norman Finkelstein, whose The Holocaust Industry questioned the exploitation of the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for financial gain and to further Israeli political interests, are branded ‘self-hating Jews’ – a generic slur on any internal dissenter. In 1982, playwright Yehosha Sobol accused Prime Minister Menachem Begin of using the Holocaust like “a dishcloth with which to wipe one’s dirty hand clean”.
Israel’s military success was another factor. Well-equipped, nuclear capable, and backed by the US and its allies, it has dominated the Middle East. General Moshe Dayan allegedly denigrated his achievements on the grounds that he was only fighting Arabs: “If you put one knock on the tin bin – they all run away, like birds.” The rise of Iran and its non-state proxies has changed the balance at least in terms of asymmetric warfare.
Israel’s divide-and-conquer strategy exploits Arab disunity, especially the Sunni-Shia divide. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu supported Hamas to divide Palestinians and undermine any two state solution claiming that Israel has no partner for peace. An allied factor is the corruption of many regional rulers and the Palestinian Authority.
Over time, success has emboldened Israel’s ambitions driving the rapid growth in illegal settlement in the West Bank and increased control over Palestinians. Key features include geographical isolation and restricting freedom of movement using walls, illegal settlements, checkpoints and permits. This is allied to control of tax revenues, resources such as water, and services such as healthcare. French Illustrator Julien Bousec saw the West Bank as an archipelago of Palestinian islands surrounded by an Israeli sea. These measures assert Jewish sovereignty over the land.
Israel ensures that Palestinians are economically weak. Blockades and restrictions, which can be imposed and removed arbitrarily, have strangled its economy. A system of limited work permits provides Israel with cheap labour and acts as a mechanism of control. It produces a society of those with and those denied permits. It make Palestinians heavily depended on international aid which Israel can regulate and turn on or off at will.
The most important feature of the apartheid state created is violence. Israel has deliberately created unbearable conditions in Gaza and the West Bank which has led to a cycle of never-ending violence and regular eruptions of desperate acts by the hopeless and victimised. Before 7 October 2023, there have been four major confrontations between Hamas and Israel resulting in around 70,000 Palestinian casualties.
Israel’s superior weaponry and surveillance means every aspect of life can be monitored. Destruction of homes and infrastructure in acts of collective punishment, detention without charges and torture is commonplace There is widespread use of bought informants. Targeted assassinations of deemed enemies without judicial process is policy despite Israeli laws proscribing such acts without trial unless the individual was preparing or carrying out terrorist acts.
Israeli politician Abba Elan writing in the Jerusalem Post on 8 August 1982 found the violence of Israeli language lacking in humility, compassion or restraint: ‘to pound’, ‘to crush’, ‘to liquidate’, ‘to eradicate to the last man’, ‘to cleanse’, ‘to fumigate’, ‘to solve by other means’, ‘not to put up with’, ‘to mean business’, ‘to wipe out’. Recurrent military actions in Palestinian territory with indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and destruction of civilian infrastructure is ‘mowing the lawn’. More recently, Israel leaders have gone further: “We are fighting against human animals…we will eliminate everything”.
Israel has converted Gaza and the West Bank into a “vast prison without a roof”, a phrase used by Fyodor Dostoevsky to describe his exile in Siberia, which he termed a “house of the living dead”, the title of his published diary of this period. The aim is to force the Palestinians to experience constant humiliation, similar to that used by the Nazis against German Jews recorded by Victor Klemperer in his diaries of the period. The objective is make conditions unliveable to drive out the Palestinians to allow Israel to expand its territory.
David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first President, allegedly acknowledged the problem: “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come, and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” Ben Gurion understood the true dynamics: “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors, and they defend themselves…The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view, we want to take away from them their country.” Writing in 1967, author Amos Oz agreed: “the Arabs are here – because Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinians….The Palestinian owes no deference to God’s promise to Abraham, to the longings of Yehuda Halevi and Bialik, or to the declaration by that British Peer Lord Balfour”.
Resistance to the occupation is driven by the human desire for dignity and anger about humiliation and loss. Palestinians have correctly concluded that they stand alone and the only way to extract concessions is through force. Sun Tzu writing in his The Art of War: “If you surround your enemy completely, give them no chance to escape, offer them no quarter, then they will fight to the last.” As Frederick the Great observed: “The aggressor is the one who forces his opponent to take up arms.” The alternative is to die by inches.
Deluge
On 7 October 2023, Hamas undertook Al-Aqsa Flood a daring attack on Israel. What is frequently ignored is that international law, such as Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, recognises armed resistance against an occupying power giving legitimacy to Hamas’s actions although it does not give the right to indiscriminately kill or target civilians.
Israel’s response was characteristically violent. Brutal offensives on defenceless civilians and civilian infrastructure sanctimoniously defended as self-defence.
Israel deployed its arsenal, much of it provided by the US and allies, including well-equipped ground forces supported by armour and artillery, manned and unmanned air force which enjoyed full freedom of operation due to Gaza’s lack of air defences, and navy. As in previous Gaza wars, Israel used powerful 2,000 pound bombs whose lethal radius is nearly 400 metres as well as phosphorus and cluster bombs (use of which is either restricted or banned by international law).
This overwhelming military capability wads deployed in densely populated urban areas against a militia armed primarily with small arms, machine guns, rocket propelled grenades and primitive short-range rockets. Resistance fighters responded with guerrilla tactics, favoured by out-gunned insurgents, using improvised roadside bombs and setting lethal traps.
The casualties reflect this imbalance in weaponry. Israel initially claimed 1,400 casualties in the initial Hamas attack. Around 130 hostages, some of whom have been killed or released, were taken. In the subsequent military conflict, around 5,000 members of Israel Defence Forces (“IDF”) have been killed or wounded.
Palestinian casualties and losses have been greater. Hamas has lost around 10,000 to 15,000 of its reputed 40,000 force. Total Palestinian dead now approach 40,000 with around 90,000 wounded, around 70 percent of which are women and children.
On 5 July 2024, the British medical journal The Lancet, since validated as plausible by other sources, estimated that the actual death toll could be over 186,000. This reflects unrecovered dead buried under rubble. There are other causes. The World Health Organisation estimates around 1.8 million cases of infectious diseases. The lack of medical treatment is another contributor. If correct, then this would represent around 9 percent of Gaza’s pre-war population, compared to German losses and Russian losses of 10 percent and 16 percent in World War 2.
Israel has destroyed 60-70 percent of Gaza’s buildings and most of its civilian infrastructure including hospitals, power infrastructure, wells, water treatment and sewerage plants, food production facilities and schools. It has attacked health professionals and aid-workers including UN staff, to destroy the ability of Gaza to function. Journalists, especially those from media deemed unfriendly such as Qatari Al-Jazeera, have been legally prevented from reporting or murdered to choke off reporting from the war zone to mask its operations.
So-called civilian safe zone have been attacked. Constant changes in designation are designed to keep the population in a constant state of turmoil. Around 85-90 percent of Gaza’s population (1.8 million individuals) are now displaced with no area of safety or access to essentials of survival, especially food, water, sanitation, shelter and medicines
Israel has prevented aid supplies from reaching the victims effectively starving Gaza. This has been done through closure of critical access corridors. Before the war, around 500 trucks of supplies entered Gaza daily. Since the start of the war, only around 200 trucks on average have been able to enter with the numbers drastically falling since Israeli operation in Rafah which effectively shut down the route from Egypt.
Source: New York Times
Israeli operations have increased in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem with regular raids and isolation of areas for extended periods while the IDF conducts search, arrest or destroy missions. Over 500 Palestinians, around a quarter of whom are children, have been killed. Around 10,000 Palestinians, including a number of minors, have been arrested since 7 October with a number of deaths in custody. Allegations of torture have emerged.
Attacks against Arabs, including destroying crops and livestock, by settlers, whom former Prime Minister Menachem Begin thought had ‘messianic complexes’ has doubled . The Israeli military have been active participants or have failed to protect Palestinian civilians.
In parallel, newly passed laws effectively annex of the West Bank transferring land management, planning and construction, supervision and management of local authorities, professional licensing, trade and economy, management of nature reserves and archaeological sites to an Israeli appointed deputy head for civilian affairs.
The Israeli justification for their actions have been based on the 7 October civilian casualties, the largest in the country’s history. Many have challenged the statistics.
Israel subsequently revised its estimated initial death toll down substantially. The casualties appear to include Israeli soldiers alongside civilians as well as Hamas fighters. Many bodies were badly burned making identification difficult. Causation is uncertain because of the IDF invocation of the ‘Hannibal Directive’ which calls for all necessary measures to be used to stop Israel’s enemies kidnapping its soldiers if necessary killing both kidnappers and kidnapped.
Unsubstantiated claims that Hamas tortured, beheaded and burned alive babies and sexual violence were later dropped or refuted. Israel has sought to discredit UNWRA, the UN Palestinian refugee agency, claiming that the body co-operated with Hamas. The immediate result was suspension of desperately need aid. Those claims too proved incorrect and most countries, with the exception of the US and the UK, have resumed funding.
None of this new. In reviewing the first Gaza War in 2008-2009, Richard Goldstone, a Jewish South African jurist who headed the UN Human Rights Council’s independent fact-finding mission, found that Hamas and the IDF had violated the laws of war in deliberately harming civilians. The Israeli side committed larger and more serious infractions. Goldstone’s team exposed direct attacks against civilians with lethal outcomes, direct and intentional attacks on hospitals. Preventing medical aid being provided and destruction of civilian infrastructure with no military significance in a campaign designed to deprive civilians of basic necessities. He found that Israeli actions were directed at the people of Gaza as a whole and intended to punish, humiliate and terrorise the population: “radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever-increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”
An Uncertain Madness
In the 1854 book Daniel, a Model for Young Men, Reverend William Anderson Scott adopted a heathen proverb: “whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad“. Israel believes that it has right to kill anyone and everyone. The objective is to make Gaza unliveable and kill sufficient Palestinians to force them to leave their ancestral lands in what some have called Nakba 2.
The actions are in contravention of international law. The concept of proportionality outlaws military actions expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the expected advantage. Israel’s action breach this standard.
Genocide is defined as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. Ethnic cleansing, while not recognized as an independent crime under international law, refers to a purposeful design by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas. Israel’s violent actions would appear to prima facie meet both definitions. As EU Foreign Affairs head Josep Borrell stated: “One horror does not justify another.”
In Errol Morris’ film Fog of War, with the benefit of hindsight and age, US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara identified one key lessons of war: the need to know and understand your enemy. America’s defeat in the Vietnam War was proof that miscomprehension leads to defeat.
Hamas’s leadership, especially Yehya Sinwar, recognises that Israel and its Western supporters only pay lip service to the two-state solution. The 7 October 2023 attack made the Palestinian issue once again prominent. It demonstrated that the IDF were not all conquering and the plan for the erasure of Palestinian identity and hope could be successfully resisted, albeit at high cost. It was intended to draw in sympathetic regional actors such as Hezbollah, Syria, and the Houthis with the support of Iran to engage Israel and the West. It sought to unify the Palestinian people forcing them to confront the stark choice between fighting and extermination or exile.
Israel’s objectives are confused. Despite statements by politicians of destroying Hamas and preventing it from ever becoming a threat, its military establishment considers such an outcome unlikely. In the words of Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi: “Hamas did not create the conflict. The conflict created Hamas. You cannot bomb an idea out of existence.”
Moderate politician Moshe Sharett writing in the Jerusalem Post on 18 October 1966 had warned against disproportionate reprisals: “….has it really been proven that reprisals establish the security for which they were planned… when military reactions outstrip in their severity the events that cause them, grave processes are set in motion which widen the gulf and thrust our neighbours into the extremist camp?” Yet the only Israel strategy is violence: if force doesn’t work, use more force!
Former US General McChrystal, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, developed ‘insurgent math’, that is, every innocent civilian killed helped recruit roughly 10 revenge seeking terrorists. Israel has helped Hamas and other regional militant groups increase their numbers dramatically condemning its future generations to fight a never ending and probably unwinnable war.
There is no realistic post-war plan for Gaza. Reversion to a two state solution based on 1967 borders is now impossible. It would require Israel’s leaders to admit politically toxic failure. The generational hatred amongst Palestinians resulting from the brutal war is unlikely to be surmountable. Israel’s Finance Minister Smotrich stated on 14 November 2023 that: “Israel will no longer be able to accept the existence of an independent entity in Gaza.”
Hamas’s strategy is reminiscent of the Tet offensive during the Vietnam war. While initially gaining ground, the Vietcong ultimate lost on the battle field incurring heavy losses. But it was decisive in determining the course of the war. It demonstrated the poorly equipped Vietcong’s fighting abilities and resilience. It also turned public opinion in the US against the war leading to its gradual withdrawal which allowed North Vietnam to overrun the South in 1975. Time will tell whether the events of 7 October 2024 are similar.
© 2024 Satyajit Das All Rights Reserved
These pieces are co-published by the New Indian Express Online and NakedCapitalism.com.
33 comments
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Thank you, Yves.
That war is being fought in England and Northern Ireland, too.
Readers may be aware of the violence taking place over the week-end.
The immiseration of the past five decades and mismanagement of immigration need no further comment from me other than, to say, that it was interesting and heartening to read many of the ethnic minority / children of immigrant left highlight the need to tackle inequality and even migration. It may come as a surprise that darkies like me focus on class, not racial, matters. We despise the misleadership class.
What I do want to highlight is the role played by the English Defence League. The EDL was founded in 2009 as the English and Jewish Defence League, but is better known as the EDL. Its shareholders were and remain the NYC based JDL and an Stephen Yaxley Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson. Robinson was recruited by a former British soldier who had served in Northern Ireland. Funding comes from Israeli / Zionist fronts, who provide money to and staff for Starmer, and US fronts for the Mercer family and Mike Pompeo.
The EDL is supposed to provide security around Zionist events, coordinated by the embassy in London, associate English nationalism with Zionism and provoke Muslim communities, so that Zionists profit from the backlash.
They are aided and abetted in that, not just by the usual suspects in the press, but by the BBC and Channel 4. Yesterday evening, C4’s Alex Thomson talked about an “Asian mob” (on the march after repelling an attack on a mosque) (selective editing). The BBC’s John Ware and Robbie Gibb are half of goy quartet who own the Jewish Chronicle. William Shawcross, son of Hartley Shawcross / Shortly Floorcross, and another whose name escapes me are the other pair.
Robinson lives in Spain and travels on an Irish passport. His recent arrest in Canada documented as much. There are suggestions that his high level backers facilitated his escape from Kent to Cyprus.
Many thanks! It is difficult to assess the extent to which the unrest within certain British towns is an instance of the ‘madness of crowds’. The British public can be susceptible to panics: many will remember that there was the child abuse ‘witch hunt’ of a decade ago, and some may still recall (though perhaps not with amusement) the incident in 2000 when a paediatrician believed to be a paedophile was attacked by a confused mob.
Insofar as this may be co-ordinated and masterminded, I wonder whether it is: (i) an instance of certain reactionaries wanting to put the government on notice that Labour gained office with a large majority only on the back of <34% of the vote on a turnout of <60%, so with such impaired legitimacy they had better not use that majority to effect a further instance of what some believe (perhaps wrongly) to have been accelerated 'social engineering' in the fashion of the Blair/Brown years; and (ii) as you note, it is about projecting certain perceived social wrongs onto the Islamic minority, especially in those areas where it is a large minority, in order to cultivate the narrative that the UK is engaged in an existential clash of civilisations. Thus, foreign policy is, or becomes, the outworking of domestic politics, so these reactionaries may hope.
Of course, it may also be all the other things the commentators have remarked upon in recent days, of the housing and welfare crisis, of poor economic prospects (the cake is shrinking and being sliced more thinly) and the usual bigotry.
Some on the Left have noted that if Labour does not work at speed to confront rising inequality, resolve endemic issues with social services and increase growth other than through debt dynamics in the housing market, then this may be a portent of much more to come. Naturally, Reeves has been working hard to emphasise how 'respectable' Labour is in office, and a few Left-leaning media commentators have remarked with surprise (though some had been warning of this for a long time) that she appears to have been captured completely by senior Treasury officials. However, why is anyone surprised by this, given that she was nurtured within the bosom of the 'beast' (i.e., the Bank of England)? Of course, Labour has no growth agenda worthy of the name, and appears set on realising any old sort of growth via consumption by goosing house prices, in the manner adopted by successive British governments since the 1980s.
Also, I cannot help note that there is a major risk of escalation in the Middle East/West Asia, and this unrest may be distracting key figures within the British state from that rather more existential risk when there is a high probability it might spin out of control very quickly.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comment.
Being portuguese and living in Portugal it was very enlighting to read your comment.
The “description” of the events in England by our own free press was the following: evil extreme right wingers rioted – images – then declarations of relatively wealthy English people living in london who declared with a sad face and consternation that “those people who rioted” dont speak for the majority – images- and off to the next infotainment – the olimpics.
No defense league, no jews, no background story and a child of portuguese origin got killed in what started this; imagine if not…
Quality jornalism is everywhere…
there are a lot of working class people in Bristol -near to where I live-who also condemn the rioters. We have a press and politicians who inflate the ‘immigrant problem’ as it does draw votes. The Reform party lead by a fan of Trump, got about 14% of the total vote in last month’s election. A national poll found 50% of the population believed that an equal number or majority of immigrants were ‘illegal’. A truer percentage would be around 5%.
As you say “quality journalism’ ! If we had it, the facts would be pointed out.
The English and Jewish Defence league was dissolved in 2019. But the same people ‘re-incarnate’ in other groups. Most of the rioters were motivated by racism.
The 12 tribes … one was Judah, the Lion. The house of David. They settled away from the other 11. They named their land Judea and the capital city Jerusalem. Israel was settled by the 11 tribes but they may not have stayed there.
Then the Ashkenazi, or Nazi for short. Aryans who had lost their lands in Asia to the Rus, having been weakened by Persia. They hate Russia and Iran. They fled via Georgia, Venice and Genoa to the Netherlands and America.
Disraeli etc in the 19th century. British Israel ?Society?
All the rest is a fairy tale about oil and trade at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and Asia.
Balkanization suits those who choose to divide those they wish to exploit.
Vietnam reference is informative.
Frank Church and his amendment enforced the policy that US “cannot kil enough of them”!
Can the powers running the current morasse move toward that conclusion?
Likely not!
Israel owning nukes is troubling! They have no use other than destroying the world’s oil well!
‘Hamas’s strategy is reminiscent of the Tet offensive during the Vietnam war.’
Only to a limited extent. Hamas saw which way the political winds were blowing and how Arab states were getting ready to sell out the Palestinians to normalize relations with Israel in order to get economic & political benefits from the US. That is what the Abraham Accords were all about and the big danger for them was that the US was leaning on Saudi Arabia to sign up which would get many other States to sign up as well. But with that one military raid, that idea is dead now. True, at horrific costs but the other way would have been to fade quietly into the night.
That is a.very important fact that has been overlooked by most. Thanks for your reminder.
the difference between the Palestinians and the Vietnamese was that the Americans never intended to purge Vietnam of the Vietnamese to take their land. Settler colonialism is more vicious.
Yes, which makes me think that the Algerian war for independence (1954 to 1962) is a better analogy. It was vicious and a million European settlers left after independence. The number killed has been estimated to be anywhere from 400,000 to 1.5 million.
Exactly. Israel is today’s French Algeria or Rhodesia, just one of the legacies of colonialism that should have been eradicated in the 20th century. If all Jews were expelled from “Israel”, I would have no sympathy for them.
If you expelled everybody from Palestine who are “legacies of colonialism” there wouldn’t be anybody left. Or did the Turks, Arabs, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, and Canaanites just spring from the ground like mushrooms?
According to the achaeogenetic studies Palestinians (so basically also Syrians and Lebanese), Bedouins, Saudi-Arabians and Yemeni Jews have lived in the area at least the last 14,000 years. They might have come as colonizers from North-Africa, though.
I don’t think ranking one as more vicious is useful: the US carpet-bombed SE Asia, dropping more than 5 million tons – double the amount dropped by all countries in WWII. The US also infamously used chem weapons and napalm. I have spoken to Vietnamese folks who survived this, what they endured is the most horrific one can imagine, there is no way to compare. They are equally as barbaric, vicious, horrific and are historic atrocities equal to any other regime in history. Far too many have forgotten about the history.
But considering Gaza and Palestine are such small places, the bombs dropped per square kilometer must be a world record by now. Instead of napalm, they drop white phosphorous nowadays.
“ The casualties reflect this imbalance in weaponry. Israel initially claimed 1,400 casualties in the initial Hamas attack. ”
Which they lowered when they realized that 200 burned bodies were Hamas invaders— since Israel presumably killed them, it suggests they knew their own firepower was likely to have killed many of their own people or they wouldn’t have thought these 200 were Israeli..
“ Hamas has lost around 10,000 to 15,000 of its reputed 40,000 force.”
Israel has claimed to have killed about 15,000 or 16,000, but they clearly count every make of military age that they kill as Hamas.
every male, 15 years old or older, is considered Khamas
They took Obama’s standard and lowered it by a year.
Developments over the last couple of days have got me thinking of Dr Strangelove.
Famously, in an early scene Gen. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) explains to Group-Capt. Mandrake (Peter Sellers) that he has launched the wing under his command against the USSR so that the US Government would be forced into a position of ‘total commitment’.
Thus, the response of a weakened IDF against Lebanon in response to a pending Iranian retaliation against Israel could well be used as a basis on which to force ‘total commitment’ from the US Government, taking full advantage of the present weakness (and bad faith) of the latter.
In a later scene in the film the Soviet ambassador (the teddy-bear loving Peter Bull) explains to US president Muffley (Sellers again) that the USSR has just implemented a massive ‘Domesday’ device, in which a vast number of nuclear warheads have been buried and have been linked via a computer; any strike will detonate the whole lot and guarantee MAD. When challenged by Dr Strangelove (Sellers), the ambassador notes that the Soviets were due to announce the creation of this device in a few days’ time.
The US has warheads in Western Europe and has recently gained the consent of the German government to the installation of such warheads in that country (which, unlike the attempt of Reagan with cruise missiles) has provoked scant comment. It appears the US wishes to repeat the same trick in Ukraine, with the risk of repeating 1962. As Theodore Postel has recently explained to Prof. Diesen and Mr Mercouris, this will give Russian leaders little more than 2 minutes’ prior warning, meaning that they must perforce delegate a decision to launch a retaliatory strike to subordinate officers. Given that most subordinate officers are likely to launch such a strike (as they will fear potential punishment/recrimination if they do not), this risks becoming an equivalent in effect to the Domesday device so memorably described by Peter George and Terry Southern.
The tit-for-tat in the Levant risks turning into a July crisis. US policymakers are distracted by the ‘existential’ threat of Trump, French policymakers by parliamentary instability and British policymakers by domestic riots (they were distracted by the Irish problem, which was in an acute phase in the summer of 1914). Israel is as uncontrollable as Serbia in 1914. It is possible (though I hope unlikely) to envisage a scenario where there is rapid escalation in Lebanon, drawing in Iran. Given the recent reconfiguration of international alliances, the West may be drawn in behind Israel, and Russia (also China) behind Iran. With possible consequences too fearful to mention. This may be the ‘total commitment’ which some in Israel may desire.
If this assessment is in any way reasonable, it highlights the disconcerting way in which the present generation of policymakers and mass media have discounted the risk of nuclear conflict just as the policymakers of 1914 – after a century of comparative peace – heavily discounted the risk of disaster. Yet disaster was just what occurred. This time, if there is a comparable disaster it will prove to be more definitively terminal, perhaps of everyone and everything. And for what? The retention of a hegemony which can no longer be sustained, and for the much vaunted ‘self-defence’ of a country occupying a largely worthless scrap of land which furnishes it with little defensible space, and whose idea of ‘defence’ is an unusual one by most peoples’ standards.
I used Dr Strangelove to teach year nines about the Cold War before the powers that be decided which history we could teach.
My tentative thought is that Netanyahu is trying to provoke an attack so that the US will come to his defence and attack Iran and its allies. Even if the US navy just shoots down incoming missiles, the world knows it wouldn’t do it the other way. The message is …America favours the Israel state with its continuing slaughter of Gaza over other nations and considerations.
It would be nice to think Biden could say ‘if you want to start a war, you are on your own. Agree to a ceasefire and we might consider it.
All the indications are that if a cease fire was declared , Hezbollah and the others would stop firing.
On the other point of missiles in Germany, Russia has moved nuclear weapons into Belarus and we are fairly certain they are positioned in Kaliningrad.
Politico writes
On the sidelines of July’s NATO summit, both Washington and Berlin agreed the U.S. will begin “episodic deployments” of missiles in 2026. The deal includes Tomahawk cruise missiles, SM-6 ballistic missiles and hypersonic systems currently in development, with the caveat that none would bear nuclear weapons.
This can change but it is not al down to NATO.
Many thanks. Indeed! My recollection is also that the nuclear exchange in the infamous TV film ‘Threads’ (1984), an even more visceral viewing experience than ‘The Day After’ (which had such an influence on Reagan), begins with a confrontation between the US and the USSR over Iran… Many Britons of a certain age will recall that it gave them nightmares for some time afterwards.
I wonder whether, in times to come, people will ask themselves what made the World ‘sleepwalk’ into another disaster, should it arise.
If there is to be any retaliation, let it be a limited one not giving rise to further exchanges, and that the most that the rest of us will face will be another round of temporary inflation as energy prices spike. That would be a small mercy for which we might wish to give thanks; nasty though it would be on top of an existing cost of living problem, it would be better than the more existential alternative.
After I read the Israel: Armageddon? post from several days ago, I too was thinking about Dr. Strangelove. It is comical that those in power in our world are actually crazy enough to destroy all of humanity. Everybody here has seen that movie, but in case you have not, Dr. Strangelove is a very dark yet funny movie. I remember laughing out loud as Ripper shows us and Mandrake just how crazy he is, and the only thing Mandrake can do is whimper. Gallows humor indeed.
More often than not I read the post proper and miss 98% of the comments here. The recent posts and comments about Israel, its genocide (and rape)of Palestine, Zionism, religious and political ideology, and American complicity in all of the above have been excellent yet sobering. Cooler heads are probably not going to prevail, but if things cool off we really ought to ban Zionism, not unlike the banning of Nazism in Germany. American and Israeli propaganda are so thick and pervasive that it has convinced millions of people to support the recent evil.
Undoubtedly, there are plenty of commenters here who as nauseated as I am by all of this, and especially nauseated because we don’t really know what to do to rectify things. What shall we do? Take care, my friends.
Thank you, a worthwhile piece. A few notes:
I have recently heard it said that in the spring of 1948, with his prospects for re-election flagging, Truman received a large campaign donation (one million IIRC) with the intent to influence that May 15, 1948 decision to recognize Israel, though the State Department was against it. I believe (but I am not certain) it was in this very informative interview with Ilan Pappé after his new book: The Israel Lobby Is Real. This Is How It Works | Aaron Bastani meets Ilan Pappé
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Should that be that Palestinians are also Semites?
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The David Ben Gurion quote:
Is found in Nahum Goldmann’s the Jewish Paradox, page 99. There is much other information in his book.
The Secretary of State was George Marshall and he was against recognising Israel. You are correct.
From Marshall’s wikipedia page:
“Truman repeatedly rejected Marshall’s advice on Middle Eastern policy. As Secretary of State, Marshall strongly opposed recognizing the newly formed state of Israel. Marshall felt that if the state of Israel was declared, a war would break out in the Middle East (which it did when the 1948 Arab–Israeli War began one day after Israel declared independence). Marshall saw recognizing the Jewish state as a political move to gain American Jewish support in the upcoming election, in which Truman was expected to lose to Thomas E. Dewey. He told President Truman in May 1948, “If you [recognize the state of Israel] and if I were to vote in the election, I would vote against you.” However, Marshall refused to vote in any election as a matter of principle.”
I read that it is rare for a Secretary of State to go public with a disagreement with the President.
Marshall may have wanted to be on “the right side of history”.
For context on Israel’s genocide and US support, we’ve sent over 14 kilotons of 2,000 pound bombs, plus thosands of tons of other bombs. This is a Hiroshima and Nagasaki level of explosive power. The physical levels of destruction exceed those of the 1945 atomic bombings. Once the bodies are removed recovered from beneath the rubble The death toll will be similar or greater.
Exclusive: US has sent Israel thousands of 2,000-pound bombs since Oct. 7 Reuters June 29, 2024
And Congress acted like trained seals with 58 standing ovations. The only thing missing were the beach balls on their pointy noses. War criminals thrive…
And the total dollar amount of weapons supplied by the USA is now over $11 billion dollars:
This is a remarkable presentation, as balanced as I can imagine, written well and calmly, concise but complete. Thank you, Mr. Das, and Yves for posting it.
I agree wholeheartedly with Walter’s view. It is an excellent lesson, lecture or seminar plan and provides a basis for student discussion and further research which runs counter to received opinion. The problem is, I have no doubt the Starmer government will consider it – or any other material offering a balanced summary of events in Palestine – as antisemitic and an example of hate speech, and counter to English law. God knows what the loathsome creatures dwelling in the Biden White House will make of it, but I suspect that God has already given up on the genocidal bastards.
One quibble: on July 19 incoming UK FS David Lammy announced resumption of British funding to the UNWRA. Only the American imperium and New Zealand remain suspended.
I’ve taken to regularly reading the Israeli opposition daily Haaretz, and the parallels to Algeria’s descent into madness during 1954-62 are striking: as in French Algeria, the millennial generation of Israelis have lost their moral compass. Armed civilians, the police, the army, and the current government have abandoned the rule of law. The new generation appear to have decided that the only way to live as an island of 7M Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews among a sea of 50M Arabs in Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria alone is to terrorize and murder their neighbors. However, like in Algeria the settlers are completely dependent on outside sources for military hardware, food, energy, and export markets.
While the Inverted Totalitarian American duopoly shows no signs of jettisoning Israel in the near term, if the October 7 “mass Hannibal” is eventually exposed as the orchestrated propaganda sham that it was and the repression of the pro-Palestine student movement ramps back up, the ability of the imperium to sustain settler-apartheid may weaken. As we saw during both 2020’s Black Lives Matter and January 6th movements, Americans have become highly sensitized to inequality.
Would the Saudis sign-on to an “Abraham Accords” that forced 50 percent of the population of Israel and the Occupied Territories into a “Bantustan” comprising a mere 10 percent of the territory and excluding Jerusalem? Unlikely. Imposition of a facially benign right-of-return for the 14.5M-strong Palestinian diaspora and an arms embargo would be all that it would take to cause a precipitous collapse as happened in French Algeria during 1962. Unfortunately, the fleeing Europeans had murdered about 10 percent of the population in the interim.
The scuttlebutt of the evening seems to be that Egypt announced it’s not going to intercept any projectiles launched towards Israel, Jordan announced that Israel can’t use Jordanian airspace and Pakistan allegedly offered Iran it’s Shaheen-III missiles, in case Israel still wants to keep escalating to the next round.
The US soft power seems to be melting away, and the settler-apartheid may be facing more hard power than it bargained for.
it’s not a very meaningful pledge from Egypt. Egypt does not stand in the way between Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen and Israel. Only when Yemen chooses to send projectiles via Egypt like it did with the drone a few weeks back is there anything at stake. Jordan is the main issue and the resistance should maybe take out Jordan first if Israel is to fall.
I still remember when W. Bush intervened, with disastrous consequences:
US plotted to overthrow Hamas after election victory
This was the administration’s response to elections it didn’t like:
How George W. Bush Helped Hamas Come to Power
The growing consensus is that Iran will soon retaliate, or it must retaliate, if for no other reason than national pride. Yet, as the saying goes, pride comes before a fall. If I were sitting in Tehran, I’d think twice before escalating the conflict.
Israel is in serious trouble and Netanyahu is desperate. He has no viable military or political solution. Normally, Israel would just mow the lawn which would cap the problem for 15-20 years but now it’s different.
Netanyahu wants Iran to launch a significant attack against Israel such that Iran will bear responsibility for provoking a wider regional war. Netanyahu has his ducks lined up. He spoke to Congress and Biden, and he has their support. Thus, he’s confident he can continue ethnic cleansing in greater Israel while the US does the heavy lifting and the world shifts its focus on the Israel-Iran conflict. And Israel will emerge with more territory and weaker neighbors.
As tempting as it is to revenge the Israeli attack, I think Iran should think twice; it is a trap; do something but don’t escalate. And a wider war possibly leading to American deaths won’t help Iran. Clearly, Netanyahu is desperate to drag Iran into this mess. Iran shouldn’t lend a helping hand.