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The ‘Birth Pangs’ Of The New Middle East May Not Be The Ones The U.S. Has Wished For
Edward Luce for the FT:
How Netanyahu is ‘running rings’ around Biden (archived)
The US president had hoped to disentangle from the Middle East. But the turbulence in the region could influence the election and define his legacy
“Netanyahu knows how to play the Washington game better than most US politicians,” says Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, now columnist for the Haaretz newspaper. “And he has been running rings around Biden.”
…
On countless occasions over the past year, Netanyahu has appeared to agree to one thing with Washington and done the opposite in practice. Whether it is wranglings over the terms of a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release, or the more recent attempt at a 21-day ceasefire with Hizbollah, each time Biden is left looking impotent. “The Biden administration seems to be saying, ‘We’re suffering from a bit of autumn damp,’ ” says Pinkas. “No, this isn’t seasonal damp, it’s Netanyahu urinating all over you.”
This has been the general theme of a media campaign for a while. "Natanyahoo is steamrolling Biden and the poor guy can do nothing about it."
I do not buy it. One phone call from the White House to the Pentagon would hold resupply flights from the U.S. to Israel. Without constant supply renewal the Israeli Air Force would have to stop its bombing campaigns in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen within days if not within hours.
But instead of calling the Pentagon the whole Middle East team around Biden, Antony Blinken, Brett McGurk and IDF soldier Amos Hochstein, has been urging Israel to extend its campaign.
They are hoping, like the neoconservatives in 2006 during the Bush administration, for the 'birth pangs of a new Middle East', which will forever change the strategic situation on the ground.
Behind the scenes, Hochstein, McGurk and other top U.S. national security officials are describing Israel’s Lebanon operations as a history-defining moment — one that will reshape the Middle East for the better for years to come.
The thinking goes: Israel has obliterated Hezbollah’s top command structure in Lebanon, severely undercutting the group’s capabilities and weakened Iran, which used Hezbollah as a proxy and power projector.
The internal administration division seems to have dissipated somewhat in recent days, with top U.S. officials convening Monday at the White House with President Joe Biden to discuss the situation on the ground. Most agreed that the conflict, while fragile, could offer an opportunity to reduce Iran’s influence in Lebanon and the region.
The conclusion from this is that Netanyahoo is largely doing exactly what the Biden administration wants him to do.
The strategic situation may well change. But it is not going to be the way Biden and Netanyahoo may hope for.
Most of the 200 missiles Iran fired on Israel two days ago passed through the Israeli air defenses and hit their targets with good precision. Some expensive air planes got damaged but no one was hurt. A similar strike on Israeli energy facilities could easily disable the country for months of years to come. A strike on IDF barracks or Israeli population centers could easily cause mass casualties.
Shortly after the strike President Masoud Pezeshkian met with Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Doha, Qatar:
The Saudi minister voiced his country's determination to develop relations with Iran, Xinhua news agency reported.
"We seek to close the page of differences between the two countries forever and work towards the resolution of our issues and expansion of our relations like two friendly and brotherly states," he said.
He highlighted the "very sensitive and critical" situation in West Asia due to Israel's "aggressions" against Gaza and Lebanon and its attempts to expand the conflict in the region. He said Saudi Arabia trusted Iran's wisdom and discernment in managing the situation and contributing to the restoration of calm and peace in the region.
Yesterday the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, held Friday prayers in Tehran. Little remarked in western media was the fact that he sermon was largely voiced in Arabic and that the whole event was seen on Arabic live TV through AlJazeerah.
This already is a new Middle East in which the Gulf states are no longer hostile to Iran and which the religious schisms between Sunni and Shia has largely lost its power.
Who then is left of the former U.S. allies? On whom can it call for support in the region when it plans to attack Iran?
Has this whole U.S.-Israeli campaign really helped to "reduce Iran’s influence in Lebanon and the region"? Will continuing it ever do so?
My impression for one is that it has strengthened the front against Israel and the positions of Iran in and beyond the Middle East.
@ Tom Pfotzer | Oct 5 2024 18:32 utc | 74
@ Simon | Oct 5 2024 19:24 utc | 97
@ Peter AU1 | Oct 5 2024 20:38 utc | 149
@ Simon | Oct 5 2024 21:11 utc | 174
Yes, the definition of Zionism is vital. In the simplist term, Zionism is Jewish nationalism. Of course, in saying that, we have to be careful to say that we mean it is a modern nationalism based on an appropriation of Judaism for state-building nationalist purposes, and this conflicts with traditional Judaism. Now, Simon seems to be arguing, along with quite a few others, that it atavistically goes back to the Hebrew scriptures, as found in the bloodthirsty details in the Book of Joshua, for example, and no one can dispute that in ancient times Judaism defined itself as a very separatist identity, so that it was even disliked in Hellenistic and Roman times by its pagan Greek and Roman neighbors. But that said, ancient Judaism was never synonymous with Zionism, nor has later Judaism been so.
This is basically because modern nationalism, exemplified in its most developed form by German Naziism, Zionism, East Galician Ukrainian nationalism, etc., is a pagan, state-worshipping ideology that itself constitutes a religion and excludes other religions. This is expounded in Carlton Hayes’s book Nationalism: A Religion, for example. The state becomes the be-all and end-all for the people. On this also see Carolyn Marvin’s and David S. Engle’s Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag. Just as a religion normally excludes all beliefs and practices that it cannot subsume into itself, so nationalism excludes all else.
Those opposing this view try to say, “Oh, no, nationalism includes religion or is a manifestation of religion; just look at Zionism, or Serbian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox nationalism, etc.” But I say, no, in a nationalist situation it is a rule that, when combining state and religion, the state always eats the religion and the religion never eats the state. So Judaism is not fulfilled by Zionism, but rather is consumed and destroyed by it; Zionism is an utter negation of Judaism. On this, just look at what the really ultrareligious among the Jews say, such as Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro in his book The Empty Wagon: Zionism’s Journey from Identity Crisis to Identity Theft. Likewise, the famous non-Zionist Jewish philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz pointed out, to the irritation of his Zionist interlocutor, that the state is not part of the 613 ritual requirements of Judaism (mitzvot), nor is it part of Judaism at all. All Judaism is for the Zionist state is mere window dressing to try to attract the Jews to a pagan project by making them think it is Jewish.
It is necessary, with Rabbi Shapiro, to completely divorce Zionism from Judaism and to deny any connection between the two. To fail to do so is to play into the hands of the Zionists and to support their project, which is an entirely illegitimate modern invention that needs to be sweepingly discredited. It is Israel and Zionism that are antisemitic, because of their hatred of Judaism. Zionism represents an acceptance, supposedly on behalf of the Jews, of the European antisemitic analysis of who the Jews are.
Furthermore, Zionism was invented as modern Jewish nationalism by the non-Jews. Although its inventors called themselves Christians of various stripes, I do not wish to insult the real Christians unaffected by such nationalism by associating their religion with it in any way, so I will just say non-Jews. These non-Jews, principally in England, in reaction to the prevailing and growing ideas of European nationalism in the early and mid-19th century, assigned a nationalism and separate nationality to the Jews, even suggesting they should go “back” to Palestine. This was viewed as a threat by the Jews, who wanted to stay in their countries and to become part of the citizen body under the liberal dispensation. In the US, this led to the Reform Jews in 1885 adopting the Pittsburgh Platform, which specifically stated:
“We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.”
They did not put this in randomly, but because of the already-existing pressure from so-called Protestants who were more US nationalists on the Jews to adopt Zionism. Shortly thereafter, much of the US leadership, including such lights as John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, future President William McKinley, and Chief Justice Melville Fuller, even adopted the Blackstone Memorial of 1891, demanding the European Jews being persecuted by the new Russian nationalism in the Russian Empire be resettled in Palestine, and this before Jewish Zionism was even formally organized in 1897. The US Jews later became converted to Zionism partly out of fear that too much Jewish immigration to the US would cause a backlash, so they desired to direct it elsewhere. There followed later all the Zionist propaganda, phantasmagoria, and fake history associating Zionism with Judaism. So the ultimate source of this criminality is in modern nationalism born in Europe, and not in the Jewish religion, however much that was appropriated later for Zionist use.
Posted by: Cabe | Oct 5 2024 22:29 utc | 228
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