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Israel Has Lost The War
Swoop:
One State Department official told us: “We are increasingly concerned that Israel wins all the battles but is losing the war.”
It is well too late for such concern.
As Tony Karon writes: The War Isn’t Over, But Israel Has Lost
[T]o borrow from the casual callousness of Condi Rice during the last such display of futile brutality, we are witnessing, again, the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” Israel failed in 2006, just as in 2002 and 1982. This time, they tell us, will be different.
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The Israelis — and their backers in the American political establishment — appear incapable of grasping that which is empirically obvious: Hamas and its ilk grow stronger every time Israel seeks to eliminate them by force.
But of course Israel continues to do what it does best: increase its useless violence:
The Israel Air Force has dropped leaflets on the Gaza Strip warning residents that it plans to escalate its two-week-old offensive.
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The notice says Israel is about to begin a "new phase in the war on terror." It says it will "escalate" an operation that already has killed more than 800 Palestinians.
What do the Israelis think the people in people in Gaza will do with such notices but wipe their asses with them?
The IAF has bombed anything that can be bombed by now. The IDF can try to go into the cities. Many IDF soldiers would die in those. The election would then certainly be lost for Livni and Ehud Barack as the Israeli public abhores casualties on its own side.
The only realistic option for Israel by now is to sue for a cease-fire with Hamas. But then – realism is something that seems to be not koscher, or it is simply scarce supply in Israel and in Washington DC.
Israel’s ruling cliques have several outcomes in mind from this splendid little war, cleverly launched and concluded in the interregnum between two American Presidents, during a time when there’s no one in Washington to do anything about it.
They will continue to hit Gaza’s populace hard, very hard, ignoring all calls from the world at large to stop their attacks, until a couple of days before Obama’s coronation, at which point peace will break out with a ceasefire signed and troops withdrawn.
The American media will crow that Israel has suddenly and amazingly managed to unshit the bed. That what is past is past. That a bright new day has arrived, and that everyone is just fine again, and — hey look over there, it’s Obama’s crown!
Of course, several clever outcomes will be in place on that marvelous, new morning:
* further degradation of the Gaza ghetto, with much tighter controls on smuggling routes, so fuel, food, water, weapons, medicine are even less available. The Gazans will be a little bit closer to a starving rabble fighting back with sharpened sticks.
* military and political weakening of Hamas.
* a consequent strengthening of Fatah as the only ‘serious’ alternative to Hamas, the only possible political entity to sign future surrenders for all Gazans.
* a deal with Egypt to control the border town of Rafah, where 90% of the tunnels that supply Gaza and Hamas are located. It may involve UN monitors to stop the smuggling.
* unarmed international troops throughout Gaza to monitor Hamas (but not to monitor Israelis), which actually means international troops for Hamas to shoot in order to bring Israel sympathetic publicity for years to come.
You see, after a python coils around its prey, it waits for its victim to exhale. Then it tightens its grip, relentlessly making each subsequent breath smaller, shorter, and harder to accomplish.
The relentless Israeli policy toward the Palestinian people since 1948 has not evolved, nor gone through any crisis or upheaval. It has never been hidden or credibly denied. It is exactly and precisely what it was in 1948 —
Get them the hell off our Land, even if it means killing babies in their mother’s arms. Just get them the hell off our Land.
Americans did the same thing to the natives cluttering up their Land, everywhere between two shining seas. At every encounter, every treaty signed, every conflict, every discussion the natives lost, and lost, and lost relentlessly until they had no homes, no territories, no means of surviving except the charity of their reservation bosses. Thus America fulfilled its Manifest Destiny.
Like a python tightening its coils with every attempt to breathe. It took a couple of centuries, but the outcome was never in doubt.
Israel’s Manifest Destiny is to rule all of Gaza, all of the West Bank, the entire lower half of Lebanon up to and including the Litani River, as well as a fine chunk of Syria, and a handsome slice of Jordan. All of it free of natives and aboriginals, all of it Greater Israel at last.
It’s been sixty years getting this far along on the project. Come back in 2068, and relentless progress will have accomplished so much more.
No one has ever stopped them. No one will stop them now.
If Israel is ever stopped from this plan, it will not be words that stopped them.
Posted by: Antifa | Jan 10 2009 18:50 utc | 7
I’ll try and re-iterate what I was discussing yesterday about why Israel has lost this action, but in doing so I acknowledge that some of us have a need to see only darkness and despair even when evil assholes are getting kicked. If I cared enough about why that is so ,or could be bothered with the lengthy tirades and heaps of invective that we would all have to wade through, I would argue why it is that some who fight against the greed of established tyranny need to believe each day is worse than the one before, but I don’t, so I wont.
The mere fact that Israel has begun it’s pamphlet campaign about arcing up the violence even further, betrays two things. That this is a seat of the pants exercise where this attempt to scare the prisoners of gaza is another forlorn roll of the dice ,and that the Israeli’s know they are losing so have turned inwards, ignoring world opinion against cranking up the violence in the hope that by confining their discussion to fellow colonists and their barrackers amongst the diaspora, they will reinvigorate somehow and re-gather momentum.
It is unlikely that either will be successful. One of the primary tactical objectives of this action was to drive a wedge between Hamas and the people. Israel’s murder planners convinced themselves that by attacking Gaza that the ordinary people would blame Hamas and turn on them. This is ploy which Israel and many other aggressors who have the technological capability but not the hearts and minds, do have success with in conflicts.
One could argue that the attacks on Palestinian refugees and low level PLO fighters in the first invasion of Lebanon was moderately successful in stirring up factional divisions within the PLO because when the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla occurred, the PLO senior leadership was safely ensconced in exile in Libya, or at least that is how the zionist propagandists played it.
Israeli murderers in charge forgot one thing when they set about terrorising the people of Gaza in the vain hope they could drive a wedge between Gazaains and the Hamas leadership, that is that the leaders of Hamas are in Gaza, in the thick of the horror experiencing it along with every other Gazaain. There are no bunkers buried a mile below the surface and a hundred miles behind the lines for the Hamas leadership, to be rumoured to be cowering in, they are side by side with everyone else at a time.
As a consequence every terrorist bomb, shell or rocket israel throws at them increases the feeling of solidarity between Hamas and the people.
It is true that Israel has the technological ability to slaughter every one of the 1.5 million people of Gaza, and equally true that many israelis would like to do just that, but does anyone really think they will?
Time is against them, they have another 10 days before Obama the shilly shaller has to make a stand and if the rest of the time up until then is dominated by a horror genocide, then he will have no choice but to put an end to it by the time he is inaugurated.
Do you really think the rest of us are going to sit on our asses if such and outcome looks likely? I don’t know about other MoA -ites but I have no intention of letting that go by with an incisive post or an angry letter. This is a horror which ordinary peeps around the planet can effect the outcome of because as even much as they would like it not to be so the israeli leadership isn’t anywhere near as impervious to world-wide reaction as shrub was.
One of Obama’s biggest selling points to his backers was that he would win back the the support of non-amerikan consumers. Unless the rest of us outside amerika also see the emperor’s clothes, amerika’s projection of power beyond it’s day to day capability cannot work. That is amerika can barely fight one war at the moment, it has 2 boiling and more likely so cannot afford to be seen to support the obliteration of Gaza.
Whatever his personal views or that of his staff, Obama won’t want the memory of his coronation to be 1.5 million dead. Same same for his corporate backers, this awfulness in Gaza may be right up their alley, but for sure there isn’t a dollar to be made out of it in the short term, and the long term benefits aren’t particularly obvious either, so many particularly those teetering on the edge desperate to convince foreigners to bail out again, won’t see this horror as a plus either.
Many of the same posters argued that amerika hadn’t lost on Iraq, well they can’t have it both ways. Once/if the empire is established in the ME, much closer to Iran, and without the drama and divisiveness that Israel creates, why would amerika still need Israel?
That is the conundrum for Israel’s leadership, one of the reasons they are acting so irrationally. They can’t survive on their own in the ME but equally once allies for the amerikan empire are established in the Mid East, Israel becomes superfluous, dangerous in fact because Israel’s continuing presence makes amerika’s new friends uneasy.
Equally if amerika doesn’t yet have a secure position in Iraq, and Saudis are wavering, the one thing amerika cannot afford is to make support for amerika by ME leaders untenable because amerika was complicit in such a horror as the obliteration of Gaza.
Anyway to all the pessimists out there, I have no belief that Obama will make much change at all to the ongoing oppression of humanity but I also reckon that israel is beginning to recognise the limits on it’s power. Like a maddened junk-yard dog, the zionists have galloped barking and slavering at any threat, this time right up to the fence in the corner, but already they can feel the collar gripping as their chain grows taught before it finally viciously snaps them back to their kennel where they will lie whimpering on the ground for a while, hoping to rouse the owners sympathy once more and hopefully a bone, before getting up and going to repeat the attack. Except next time the ‘enemy’ will know exactly where the chain runs out.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 10 2009 23:31 utc | 25
israel has lost a battle, not “the war”.
There is no official declared war, there is no opposing army (Hamas has no army, no weapons, no fleet, no aircraft etc.)
the only thing israel has lost is the war on emotions and pictures.
As for the US, even they have not lost the war in Iraq/Afghanistan. Obama will have enduring bases (like Germany, Japan, etc), once the americans are there, they are hard to get rid of. There are like parasites.
Look at our spineless politians in germany, would they dare say, thanks guys, your time is up, relocate back to alabama?
Nope, never.
Israel will escalate to its heart content with usamerican complicity because they as well as the us don’t give a shit about world opinion.
And we the world mainly demonstrate, and shout into the void, because we are scared witless, and wonder deep down, silently when it will be us.
Make no mistake it will be us eventually. When food runs short, unemployment goes thru the roof world wide, natural disasters etc. Then it will be us.
This is no war to defend a country against another, this is the slaughter of people for resources, scares resources. And everyone who is not with them…….will be deaded eventually.
I don’t consider myself depressed, but a realist, a worker, a non person in the greater scale of things, and as such i know that to these people, the corporations, the polititians i have no value other than my productivity and my tax payer status.
I said it before, i say it again:
There are no human rights, never were, never will be. It is a ruse designed to keep us believing in the “american” dream of liberty and happiness, and to stay obedient.
But if i am out of a job, out of money, out of support (which goes hand in hand with lack of job and money) than i am nothing more than a street bum, a looser, a slacker, lazy, and so on.
We need to believe in human rights because otherwise the wast majority of human kind would despair, and most likely stop being civilized. And our overlord can’t have that now, that would be bad taste.
Posted by: sabine | Jan 11 2009 2:35 utc | 33
Two important pieces:
– New term coined to describe Israel’s actions against education in Gaza
A new word emerged from the carnage in Gaza this week: “scholasticide” – the systematic destruction by Israeli forces of centres of education dear to Palestinian society, as the ministry of education was bombed, the infrastructure of teaching destroyed, and schools across the Gaza strip targeted for attack by the air, sea and ground offensives.
Prominent Legal Figures: Israel’s bombing of Gaza is not self-defense, it’s a war crime
ISRAEL has sought to justify its military attacks on Gaza by stating that it amounts to an act of “self-defence” as recognised by Article 51, United Nations Charter. We categorically reject this contention.
The rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they are, do not, in terms of scale and effect amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defence. Under international law self-defence is an act of last resort and is subject to the customary rules of proportionality and necessity.
The killing of almost 800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and more than 3,000 injuries, accompanied by the destruction of schools, mosques, houses, UN compounds and government buildings, which Israel has a responsibility to protect under the Fourth Geneva Convention, is not commensurate to the deaths caused by Hamas rocket fire.
For 18 months Israel had imposed an unlawful blockade on the coastal strip that brought Gazan society to the brink of collapse. In the three years after Israel’s redeployment from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. And yet in 2005-8, according to the UN, the Israeli army killed about 1,250 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children. Throughout this time the Gaza Strip remained occupied territory under international law because Israel maintained effective control over it.
Israel’s actions amount to aggression, not self-defence, not least because its assault on Gaza was unnecessary. Israel could have agreed to renew the truce with Hamas. Instead it killed 225 Palestinians on the first day of its attack. As things stand, its invasion and bombardment of Gaza amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s 1.5m inhabitants contrary to international humanitarian and human rights law. In addition, the blockade of humanitarian relief, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and preventing access to basic necessities such as food and fuel, are prima facie war crimes.
We condemn the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel and suicide bombings which are also contrary to international humanitarian law and are war crimes. Israel has a right to take reasonable and proportionate means to protect its civilian population from such attacks. However, the manner and scale of its operations in Gaza amount to an act of aggression and is contrary to international law, notwithstanding the rocket attacks by Hamas.
Ian Brownlie QC, Blackstone Chambers
Mark Muller QC, Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales
Michael Mansfield QC and Joel Bennathan QC, Tooks Chambers
Sir Geoffrey Bindman, University College, London
Professor Richard Falk, Princeton University
Professor M Cherif Bassiouni, DePaul University, Chicago
Professor Christine Chinkin, LSE
Professor John B Quigley, Ohio State University
Professor Iain Scobbie and Victor Kattan, School of Oriental and African Studies
Professor Vera Gowlland-Debbas, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
Professor Said Mahmoudi, Stockholm University
Professor Max du Plessis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban
Professor Bill Bowring, Birkbeck College
Professor Joshua Castellino, Middlesex University
Professor Thomas Skouteris and Professor Michael Kagan, American University of Cairo
Professor Javaid Rehman, Brunel University
Daniel Machover, Chairman, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights
Dr Phoebe Okawa, Queen Mary University
John Strawson, University of East London
Dr Nisrine Abiad, British Institute of International and Comparative Law
Dr Michael Kearney, University of York
Dr Shane Darcy, National University of Ireland, Galway
Dr Michelle Burgis, University of St Andrews
Dr Niaz Shah, University of Hull
Liz Davies, Chair, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyer
Prof Michael Lynk, The University of Western Ontario
Steve Kamlish QC and Michael Topolski QC, Tooks Chambers
Posted by: bea | Jan 11 2009 14:04 utc | 62
Good morning to all on this 17th day of the Gaza pogrom.
And what are the morning headlines . . .
Right on time, Israel lets the press know that “the end of the Gaza operation is in sight.”
Right on time, President Obama lets the press know that he plans “to take swift action on the Middle East peace process” on his very first day in office. He owns it from that moment. Oo-rah!
Well, right on time.
The plan is to see the international media focus on the groovy new American President, and on the glorious new morning he ushers in for the Middle East.
(Of course, Obama is also promising to spend his first day on restraining those crazy Iranians and their mad quest for a nuclear bomb to wipe Israel off the map with, and he’s also going to promise to close Guantanamo on that day, but the main message is right on time, and right on target — there’s a new President inside the Beltway, so be sure to wrap up all this Gaza shit before his big day.)
There are many around the world protesting and organizing to stop what Israel is doing. Regrettably, they will receive from the ruling parties of Israel and America the same giant finger that was offered to the huge and historic protests that went on before the Iraq War began. Protest all you want — you are “fringe elements” relegated to the fifteenth paragraph of any news article that covers your incoherent shrieking and marching. To protest is to declare yourself a non-serious human being. A powerless human being. That’s how the media will report it.
The only organizing that will have any real effect on Israel is a worldwide trade and economic embargo on the scale that was applied against South Africa during its apartheid era. Such an effort will be years in taking its toll, during which time all memory of the current little war will fade to oblivion. Hell, Israel may be able to squeeze in a few more little ops like this one. They do need to expand in three of the four directions of the compass. There’s room for flexibility.
There are some who think Israel is floundering right now, flying by the seat of their pants in this Gaza op, grasping at straws, trying to salvage something valuable out of this fustercluck they’ve surprised themselves with. As if Israel doesn’t know Hamas intimately. As if Israel has stepped in a cow pie, and is flailing for balance before they sit down in it.
Nothing could be further from the facts on the ground.
Israel does not fight theater wars, they plan and fight on all available fronts, just the way the American military does nowadays. All these modern 4th Generation Warfare concepts were developed between Israeli and American think tanks, military colleges, defense contractors and intel agencies. They fight on every front, every time. Press releases are right up there on the strategy list with willy pete. Both are very effective weapons.
Full spectrum warfare includes the press, the bullets, the diplomatic front, the political chits called in, the contracts and careers provided the Pentagon and Defense industry, the internet, the UN, the blogs, and even the hackers. On and on.
Israel is running this splendid little war right to plan, and these protests were all anticipated, these diplomatic noises were all agreed upon ahead of time. Sure, there’s a few days of leeway built in, room to cool things off when needed, stop shooting for three hours every day if necessary, and maybe close up and go home a day or two early if the heat gets to the red line, but none of what is happening is outside the operation’s parameters.
Those fresh leaflets being showered over Gaza are not being printed up late at night by harried military press operators — they were printed and stacked on pallets weeks ago, long before the first shell was fired.
Just you watch — Israel will withdraw from Gaza, and the media and the protesters and the outraged people around the world will go back to sleep, all about four days from now, as the focus gradually switches to the Messiah arriving in Washington, and taking charge of peace in the ME.
Just you watch — Israel will gain iron clad control over the smuggling through and underneath Rafah as a result of this operation, with that tightened control given either to the Egyptians or to international monitors to do for Israel. Israel won’t stop tossing explosives around until they get that concession. Obama will not get a happy First Day if Israel doesn’t stop, so Israel will be given this condition.
This op is right on time, right on target. Israel is just tightening the noose on Gaza, yet again, and even twice this level of international flak is still worth it to Israel because all this flak will go away in two weeks tops.
By February 1st, there will be no discussion of this splendid little war in the American press, and very little of it internationally.
It is not right, fair, legal, moral, or just, but the Palestinians are Geronimo’s Apache clan for the modern era. There simply aren’t enough people in the world who care about their eventual fate, and Israel will not ever inflame quite enough people to effectively protest or dissuade Israel from their original, final solution to the Palestinian question — get them the hell off our Land.
Israel planned straight up mass murder, is carrying it out, and will get away with it.
Posted by: Antifa | Jan 11 2009 18:04 utc | 70
I have no idea what will happen. I tend to agree with the positions mapped out by Tangerine, Antifa, and Lysander.
Debs is dead writes:
I acknowledge that some of us have a need to see only darkness and despair even when evil assholes are getting kicked. If I cared enough about why that is so ,or could be bothered with the lengthy tirades and heaps of invective that we would all have to wade through, I would argue why it is that some who fight against the greed of established tyranny need to believe each day is worse than the one before, but I don’t, so I wont.
In this case, it is because I feel that the ultimate disposition of this conflict is still not even in the near future. Many more will die and suffer before this is over. It may eventially end up like two punch-drunk fighters going at each other until the bitter end. There is nothing pretty or hopeful in this situation. Gazan’s (yes, that is the proper term, not Gaziaan) resistance is certainly brave and heroic. But it is hard to read any hope into this situation.
I do see Cockburn’s position, but then he is not personally under fire. It is a lot easier to bristle with bravado after your second cappuccino of the morning.
Many of the same posters argued that amerika hadn’t lost on Iraq, well they can’t have it both ways. Once/if the empire is established in the ME, much closer to Iran, and without the drama and divisiveness that Israel creates, why would amerika still need Israel?
That is the conundrum for Israel’s leadership, one of the reasons they are acting so irrationally. They can’t survive on their own in the ME but equally once allies for the amerikan empire are established in the Mid East, Israel becomes superfluous, dangerous in fact because Israel’s continuing presence makes amerika’s new friends uneasy.
Equally if amerika doesn’t yet have a secure position in Iraq, and Saudis are wavering, the one thing amerika cannot afford is to make support for amerika by ME leaders untenable because amerika was complicit in such a horror as the obliteration of Gaza.
The US has not achieved its maximal goals in Iraq, but it has not completely failed either. We are aware of the scorecard, the bases, the neo-liberal restructuring of the economy under Garner, etc. The game is not over here yet (as it never really is anywhere in the world), and the future could bring many surprises.
Yes, Israel can look bad for the US. But there are deep structural ties between the two nations, many powerful Zionists with tons of cash in the US, so I do not see the possibility of Israel becoming “superfluous” in the near future. Likewise, other alliances can also fray without breaking, and can be mended.
What can happen, which would greatly change the situation, and the balance of power, very rapidly, would be for a coup of one of the arab puppets, especially Mubarak, followed perhaps by another quick coup. Panic would set in very quickly in US/ISR and an opening could grown for other nations to publicly change sympathies very rapidly.
As it is, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba have come out publicly against the massacre. Have any other nations been so vocal that I am not aware of?
I believe that it is not accidental that this offensive occurred after the “Financial Crisis” which strengthened the US’s hand worldwide and weakened many other countries by wiping out their reserves.
It is sadly notable how powerless UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto of Nicaragua — a better man who could not be found — has been made to look.
@slothrop #27-
It is nice to see you write a post that I can understand. Keep it up!
Posted by: Malooga | Jan 12 2009 0:31 utc | 84
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