Commentary on MoA's "Netanyahoo's Strategic Dilemma"

Today at Moon of Alabama, b wrote an excellent recap of the Palestinian Crisis, “Netanyahoo's Strategic Dilemma” which follows in whole. I then wrote my own comment while awaiting my flight back to Tennessee to be with my daughter for the birth of her child.

Israel is a colonial settler state in permanent conflict with the suppressed natives.

It thought it could survive in that state, or even extend its settlements, by deterring opposing forces with its superior military.

Hamas has breached that deterrence myth by inflicting, in one day, more casualties in Israel than it had experienced in any previous wars.

Natanyahoo is under pressure to restore the deterrence, to again provide the Zionists with a feeling of superiority.

He can not do that.

Any land attack in Gaza means urban warfare in an already destroyed city with large underground facilities. During the taking of Bakhmut the Wagener forces had in total some 40,000 casualties (dead and wounded). The other side had more than 70,000. What price would the IDF have to pay to 'destroy Hamas'?

The other factor is of course Hizbullah and other resistance groups, which may well attack Israel from the north and various other directions. Hizbullah has loudly said it would do so should the IDF enter Gaza. It has some 100,000 missiles - more than enough to exhaust Israel's air defenses. Its longest reach missiles can attack any major city within Israel. There have already been daily fire exchanges at the norther border.

The 2006 war in Lebanon has shown that Hizbullah is dug in and very able to defend itself. It has since gained more experience by fighting ISIS in Syria. Neither U.S. air force attacks nor a land force invasion can hinder Hizbullah from firing its missiles.

(Syria, as well as Iran, will not intervene in the war unless they are directly attacked.)

Netanyahoo must attack Gaza to restore deterrence. He can not attack Gaza because the urban warfare would cause large Israeli casualties. He can not attack Gaza because Hizbullah would then destroy the myth of the superior settler state even more than Hamas has done so far.

Israel, with the help of the U.S., has tried to push the population of Gaza into Egypt. From Egypt's standpoint that would be a humanitarian solution, at least as long as others pay for it. But it would cause a serious strategic problem. Resistance by Hamas and others against Israel would continue indefinitely, but Egypt would be held responsible for it. It can not and will not take on that burden.

Netanyahoo's next idea was to starve Gaza. But the world will not let him do that. At least not beyond a certain point. Even the UN Secretary General has visited the Rafah crossing. Other global organizations, like the WHO and ASEAN, have spoken up. Pictures of starving people will make it impossible for the west to support that 'solution'.

Meanwhile Hamas fighters will continue to sit in their tunnels, ready to defend their land, and likely with enough provisions to hold out for months.

Israeli settlers, with the support of the IDF, are rampaging through the West Bank. They are killing more Palestinians and further enrage the global public against their deeds. This will escalate.

Israel's decision making is paralyzed. It will for now continue to talk of a ground invasion but will not launch one. It will also continue to starve Gaza.

But something will soon break. At any minute there might be a new large atrocity in Gaza or a pogrom in the West Bank. Any miscalculation in the north could launch that front into a hot war. Hizbullah could start to 'preemptively' invade Israeli proper.

But Israel's Jewish public is still demanding a war of revenge. It still needs the restoration of its deterrence and superiority.

But what if that turns out to be impossible to achieve?

Well. Then something else must change.

As Adam Shatz summarizes in the London Review of Books:

Vengeful Pathologies (archived)

The inescapable truth is that Israel cannot extinguish Palestinian resistance by violence, any more than the Palestinians can win an Algerian-style liberation war: Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are stuck with each other, unless Israel, the far stronger party, drives the Palestinians into exile for good. The only thing that can save the people of Israel and Palestine, and prevent another Nakba – a real possibility, while another Holocaust remains a traumatic hallucination – is a political solution that recognises both as equal citizens, and allows them to live in peace and freedom, whether in a single democratic state, two states, or a federation. So long as this solution is avoided, a continuing degradation, and an even greater catastrophe, are all but guaranteed.

Now here’s my comment to the above:

Relative to b's article, The Original 1922 Mandate that started this entire crisis stipulates that Palestinians and Jews are to have equal rights. But the reality was the Westen Imperialist Powers wanted to use the Jews as leverage to gain a large beachhead within the Oil Lands so they could exert control from there. However, that aim was foiled by WW2 and the fall of the British and French Empires which allowed the Zionist Terrorists to gain the upper hand while politically employing the just proclaimed Holocaust as their OWN exclusive tragedy despite the fact that Slavs outnumbered slaughtered Jews by a factor of 2-3 times more. Truman used the Holocaust of his excuse for recognizing the Israeli state in 1948, which was seen by many as a mistake then and is clearly seen as a mistake now since there was never any political agreement at the same time for recognizing a similar Palestinian State as the Mandate envisioned.

Now as b spelled out so well, the Zionists have in the eyes of many destroyed their right to any sort of state through their terroristic-Nazi behavior that's been the--HIDDEN--hallmark since before WW2 along with Zionist collaboration with the Nazis so their project could be furthered. Once examined, the behavior of Settlers since 1492 shows they are undeserving of any sort of state or humane acceptance due to their Anti-Human behavior. Yes, that's a harsh indictment but what else can be said that doesn't bury the truth of the matter?

IMO, the Zionists are enraged not because they lost their supposed superiority but because their project to rid the land of Palestinians and raze Al-Aqsa Mosque has hit a massive snag just when it seemed to be going so well--an analysis IMO Crooke would agree with.

So, what to do? How to cram the Zionist genie back into its bottle and try to heal 4 Generations of deep wounds? The first step requires the West to cease its support for the Zionists, acknowledge Zionist crimes, and provide massive aid--material and political--to Palestinians, not just in Gaza but globally. That turn of face will provide a start, but ultimately it's the Zionist mindset that must change and become DeZionized, just as Ukraine must be DeNazified.

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