Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Gaza war

Israel Is Killing A Lot Of Civilians, But Is It Winning The War?

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On May 7, 2024

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I’m going to quote retired Israeli general Yitzhak Brick at length:

Netanyahu knows that continuing this process will lead to the collapse of the State of Israel militarily, economically, politically and socially. Even if Hamas and Hezbollah continue to fight as they do today, without military surprises, the “state of Israel” will collapse .

Netanyahu knows full well that we have been in a military stalemate for the last twenty years . The chiefs of staff divided the army into six divisions based on their global vision that the major wars were over. They built a small ground army that could barely fight in one sector; in a regional war we would have to fight in six sectors at once.

Netanyahu also knows that this situation has led to dire consequences in the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas returned to areas where the army had entered and left in the Gaza Strip . The army’s intention to continue the war of attrition against Hamas through raids does not bring any benefit, because these attacks are just a drop in the bucket that weakens Hamas.

Netanyahu is well aware that as long as the war of attrition against Hamas continues, Hezbollah will also continue to deplete our forces on the northern border , and this has very dangerous consequences. Netanyahu also understands that entering Rafah will not bring any results, but on the contrary, since it will worsen the problem tenfold. Our entry into Rafah will completely destroy our relations with the countries of the world and with the Arab countries with which we have peace.

This will have very dire consequences, first of all, the isolation of the “State of Israel” in the political and economic spheres and the arms embargo, which has already begun.

Hamas was already well prepared to enter the battle and prepared a strategic ambush for us with traps and explosives in the streets, squares and in the houses themselves. It will be months before reserve soldiers disobey orders to enlist, as has become the case in the paratroopers, where dozens of them refuse to re-enlist.

America can’t beat Yemen, and has offered them everything — an end to sanctions, release of all funds, international recognition and dissolving the internationally recognized government plus a ton of aid. Yemen, a bunch of tribesmen, have laughed in America’s face.

Israel invaded Gaza, pulled out almost entirely and is now going in again. Their casualty claims for Hamas killed are the same as the number of civilian males killed, and are thus laughable. They can’t beat Hamas, who won’t fight them straight up but relies on endless guerilla action and the civilian casualties are a near exact mirror of the Palestinian population in terms of percentages of men, women and children killed.

In other words, they’re just blowing shit up without any emphasis on destroying Hamas.

Meanwhile the northern settlements are depopulated, with Israeli settlers fleeing the constant missile and drone attacks from Hezbollah. Israel impotently suggests they will occupy southern Lebanon, but they don’t have the manpower and their army quality is crap (this is not the 68/73 Israeli army) while Hezbollah has some of the best infantry in the world, full of combat veterans and filled with zeal. Hezbollah, like Iran, attacks almost nothing but military targets, not civilians, and their military has not been weakened by being a brutal and sadistic occupation army. (Occupation armies, used to fighting the weak, always become weak themselves.)

The Israeli deficit has swelled, their incoming and outgoing trade is under attack, and Yemen has said they will start attacking targets in the Mediterranean (though I don’t think these attacks will be very effective, it doesn’t take much to make merchant marines and their insurers scared.)

There is now a worldwide student protest movement, and while they’ve been crushed by violent force, polling shows opinion moving steadily against Israel. Turkey, rather to my surprise, has finally cut off all trade with Israel, and Turkey is a big deal.

The fact is that if Iran, Hezbollah and Yemen all went all out against Israel, I’m quite sure Israel would lose the conventional war unless the US went to full war to help them: it’s Israeli nukes that keep them alive. The Resistance is aware of this, and their strategy is to wear Israel down, to impose costs over and over again, and to make Israel and America look weak.

So we have the incursion into Rafah, where the majority of Palestinian civilians have been herded by Israel. The intent here is to kill as many civilians possible, and it backed by even more efforts to stop all food, water and medicine from entering Gaza. Israel’s strategy, such as it is, is to “drain the swamp.” Kill most of the civilians, and Hamas is finished. Israel’s killed a lot more people than the official stasticis: the Gaza Department of Health is no longer capable of counting even obvious deaths, and massive numbers of corpses haven’t been counted because they’re buried under rubble. There’s so much rubble that I’ve seen it estimated that it will take over twenty years to clear.

So there’s a race: can Israel finish its genocide, or will they be forced to stop due to military and economic exhaustion?

My bet is against Israel, but only at about 2:1 odds.

As for Israel itself, it needs to cease to exist. The atrocities are off the scale: multiple hospitals were invaded, patients, doctors and nurses killed and buried, often after torture. The bombing is completely indiscrimate and makes Putin and Bush Jr. look like humanitarians in comparison. Something like 98% of Israelis think that the amount of force used is either appropriate or too little. The society itself is sick from top to bottom, “good” Israelis, like “good” Germans are vanishing minority, though they do exist.

The end state needs to be a single Palestinian state and there needs to be no “truth and reconciliation” nonsense, but full war crimes trials.

Whatever the case, like the Crusader States, Israel is doomed. It may end soon, it may take a decade or two, but it will fall. America is in decline, Israel’s military is crap and the American century is at its end.

Let it be the last settler ethnostate.

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No Mass Rapes By Hamas On October 7th/Open Thread

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On March 2, 2024

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In fact, no evidence of even a single rape.

I noted, repeatedly, that I doubted these rape claims and was correct, as usual.

Now if you believed them you need to think very carefully about why. Every war always includes reports of fake atrocities and this is especially true at the start of the war, in order to gin up support. My “favorite” is that when Iraq invaded Kuwait, we were told that Iraqi soldiers were bayoneting babies in incubators.

Never happened.

Note that the primary purveyor of the mass rape claims was the New York Times, who also were the primary purveyors of fake nuclear weapon scares in the lead-up to the Iraq War.

The New York times is Hasbara from the top, intensely dedicated to Israel and the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing and genocide. I cannot recall any war it didn’t support. It also has a record of intensely political editorial decisions: for example in the 2004 election it decided not to publish revelations of mass spying on American citizens, against the law, because it would effect the election (hurt Bush, help the Democratic candidate.)

If you believe the New York Times without running what they claim thru a common sense filter (do they have reason to lie about this or to twist it?) you’re a fool. This applies to the media in general.

The fact is that whatever you think of Hamas, they were first elected because they had a reputation for incorruptability, as opposed to the PLO, which had becoming a sewer of corruption as well as servants of the Israeli state. They have no record of using rape as a weapon, none, and no reason to mass rape. We even had eye-witness reports from Israelis that they had treated women well, from October 7th and 8th.

There was a possibility that a few rapes had occurred, but even that turns out to not be true.

If you fell for it originally, you should have become suspicious quickly, because there was so little evidence. Haaretz noted that they couldn’t find any hospital admittances, there was no flood of claims (which there would have been) and so on. There was virtually no evidence to back up a very few claims from extremely biased sources.

If you trust the media, you are a fool. That’s understandable. You were brought up to think that authority figures were trustworthy (even though they’re the ones who do almost all the harm in the world). But at some point you have to grow up and notice that the much of the media is your enemy, just like most corporations, rich people and governments. They want your support, they want to take as much from you as they can, and they want to use you for their purposes and most of them don’t care how much you are hurt as a result.

Don’t be a fool.

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The Rate Of Child-Deaths In Gaza Are About To Soar

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On February 21, 2024

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From the start of the conflict I have been most concerned, not with the bombing, as bad as it is (6x as much as the US dropped on Iraq during the last war in postage-stamp sized open-air prison) but by the cut-off of food and water. Israeli protesters have been blocking much of what little humanitarian aid is sent, the main aid agency has been defunded by the largest donor countries, most Gazans are starving and most of what little water they have is dirty.

UNICEF now reports, and these numbers are from January and thus almost a month out of date (meaning the current situation is wrose), that:

The report finds at least 90 per cent of children under 5 are affected by one or more infectious disease. Seventy per cent had diarrhoea in the past two weeks, a 23-fold increase compared with the 2022 baseline.

We don’t tend to take diarrhoea seriously, because we have medicine and enough water and we aren’t malnourished and underweight to start with, but historically diarrhoea is a mass killer. Without hospital care (and there is almost none left in Gaza), water or medicine, Gazans, and especially children, are going to start dropping like flies.

I am also seeing that due to malnutrition new mothers can’t breast feed, and there isn’t much if any formula meaning death of newborn babies will be astronomical.

Moving on to the military situation: the Israeli military remains unable to destroy Hamas, but destroying Hamas has never been the goal: the goal is ethnic cleansing.

Egypt is building camps in the desert near Gaza. Egypt has, in the past, refused to allow ethnic cleansing into their country, on the grounds it would be destabilizing and they can’t afford it (and a pretense of caring about ethnic cleansing, which is true of the population but not the ruling caste), however it appears a deal between Israel, the US and Egypt may have been cut.

If this is so, Israel will win the war unless Hezbollah and Syria attack before the ethnic cleansing. Remember, the real Israeli  goal is, and always has been, to get rid of the original occupants of Palestine by any means possible. Once the Gazans are pushed out, the Palestinians in the West Bank, who don’t even have a Hamas, will be dealt with: indeed settler, police and military violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and seizure and bulldozing of homes is way up.

There are multiple players here, but unless the war expands or I’m wrong about Egypt, which I could be, I don’t see how this doesn’t end in an Israeli “victory”.

They learned well what the Nazis taught.

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Will Israel Invade Lebanon? Will They Win If They Do?

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On January 27, 2024

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Hezbollah’s Flag

Lots of reports coming out that an attack is imminent.

Israel is caught in a bind. The constant attacks on settlements and military targets in the north of Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon have forced settlers to leave. There’s are at least a quarter million internal Israeli refugees, and they can’t return until Hezbollah stops firing. The ongoing war, the problems with trade, the refugees and so on are causing massive budget and economic problems.

Hezbollah won’t stop firing until Israel leaves Gaza, stops bombing it and stops the blockade.

Israel, or rather Netanyahu, needs a win in Gaza or his political career is over.

Hamas won’t give up the hostages until there is a permanent peace and all Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza, but the Israeli project is to occupy at least part of Gaza permanently.

The only way Israel can end the Hezbollah strikes is thus to, in effect, lose the war with Hamas. Such a loss isn’t just the end of Netanyahu’s career, it’s a massive strike to Israel’s legitimacy, and to the myth that Israel is powerful.

And it’s the end of the settler project in the North, since any new settlers (or old ones) will know that they’re there at the sufferance of Hezbollah, which wants them gone and will eventually try and force the issue. Settlers will leave and stop coming if the IDF can’t protect them, and protecting them means having deterrence over Hezbollah

So Israel needs to force Hezbollah to stop attacking without meeting Hezbollah’s demands. They need to prove they can still force Hezbollah to what they want. The threat of force isn’t working any more, so like a bully whose victim won’t give them what they want, they now have to go all in.

Problem is Israel can’t even win against Hamas, who are far weaker than Hezbollah. Hezbollah has 150,000 missiles, many of which can reach Tel Aviv. Israel won’t be able to defeat Hezbollah and they won’t be able to stop the missiles, so to “win” they’ll have to devastate Lebanon’s civilians: mass destruction, like in Gaza.

Problem is, again, that Hezbollah is a LOT stronger than Hamas and has enough missiles with enough range to launch absolutely massive attacks against Tel Aviv. They can take out Israel’s power, their water: everything. Anything that Israel does to Lebanon with air power, Hezbollah can do in return. And Israeli civilian morale is likely to be a lot weaker than Lebanese civilian morale.

Worse, though I don’t believe the Israelis understand this, if they lose the war on the ground, Hezbollah’s strong enough to advance into Israel and take and hold ground.

Israel’s in a bind, and unless they’re a lot stronger than I think they are (they aren’t) or Hezbollah’s a lot weaker, or the US mobilizes for war against Hezbollah, they’re marching into a war they can’t win; a war which will destroy their internal legitimacy by proving the IDF can’t protect civilians and can’t win wars, and which will badly damage and possibly even destroy the settler project and thus the “River to the Sea” for Israel.

Could happen to a country who deserves it, but only with a lot of looking.

The price of expelling Israel from Palestine will be huge, but Israel is on that road.

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Assassination Will Not Help Israel

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On December 29, 2023

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This is sheerest stupidity:

Nothing will change about Iran’s policy, or to how well it is carried out. Not a thing.

The problem with American leaders is that they don’t believe in anything enough to die for it. Oh, they have beliefs, the beliefs of a leech (which is unfair to leeches, which are, unlike ticks, largely beneficial to their hosts.) They really, really believe in neoliberalism, because it has made them filthy rich.

But die for it, except in the sense of “destroy the world for profit?”

No.

The leadership of Hamas, Hezbollah, even Iran to a lesser extent, have beliefs they are willing to die for, personally, not just send other people to die for.

Further, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian army (especially the Revolutionary Guards) are ideological organizations. From top to bottom, they believe in more or less the same things. You could kill the top 99 leaders of those orgs, and Mr. would not be that much different.

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In our society and our organizations, corporate or military or civil service, the people at the top have significantly different beliefs from the people in the middle, who have different beliefs from those at the bottom.

Further, because in our organizations there is vast infighting, because there isn’t any consensus beyond “make money” or “get power”. In organizations where, in fact, everyone isn’t pulling in more or less the same direction (if perhaps fighting a bit over “how to get there) leadership matters. The interests of employees in corps are not the same as executive interests. They don’t want the same things, or benefit from the same policies.

None of this applies significantly to Hezbollah or Hamas, to Ansar Allah (the Houthis) or (to a lesser extent) to the Revolutionary Guard. You could kill Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah tomorrow and it would make very little difference.

Leaders of genuine ideological organizations (we’re going to discuss this more in the future) do not have the calculus of late capitalists “leaders.” They do not think the same way. they do not feel the same way. And the organizations they run have genuine missions that the leaders and followers both believe in.

It’s been so long since we had almost any of that in our society that we don’t get how it works. Even NGOs aren’t like that: I know NGO workers and professional staff: they believe, but the people who run the NGOs don’t, actually, and don’t act in alliance with their values, morals and ethics.

Assassinating leaders of ideological orgs doesn’t matter. They just keep going.

This, plus the fact that the Israeli army is incompetent and low moral, is why Israel can’t “destroy” Hamas or Hezbollah.

As the master once wrote, “first make yourself invincible, then wait for your enemy’s moment of vulnerability.”

Israel has already lost. In truth, for those with eyes to see, in 2006 we learned they had already lost. Now it’s just about when and how much suffering.

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Why Israel Is Performing So Badly Against Hamas

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On December 5, 2023

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It has become clear that Israeli forces are not succeeding at taking out Hamas. Israel’s own estimate of Hamas casualties from October 7th to the ceasefire was one to two thousand Hamas deaths. This is almost certainly an overstatement, for obvious reasons.

Maps of the Israeli invasion show control of a fair chunk of Northern Gaza, but it isn’t full control: they still get attacked by Hamas in most of these areas. Videos of Hamas attacks often show amazing levels of Israeli incompetence, most often lack of infantry screens for tanks.

The reason is simple. For decades the Israeli army has primarily been used as a paramilitary occupation force: they shoot, bomb and beat up civilians who can’t fight back. You become good at what you do, and when it comes to terrorizing civilians, the Israelis are top-notch. It’s why they train police forces and paramilitary forces around the world, including in America and India.

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But if you specialize in beating up people who can’t fight back: in sniping civilians, bulldozing houses, raiding civilians homes and so on, well, you aren’t going to be good at fighting military forces.

On top of this Hamas’s military wing has only one real job: to fight Israel. So a force optimized for beating up civilians (the IDF) is fighting a force which while woefully under-equipped, is optimized for fighting them.

Israel’s main reason for damn near indiscriminate bombing is because they want to ethnic cleanse and/or genocide Palestinians. But another reason is that they suck at fighting Hamas, and so “mowing the grass” is all they really can do: it’s all they really know how to do. For a couple generations now, the IDF’s main strategies against enemies in areas they don’t control has been bomb, bomb away and their strategy in areas they do control has been raids, beatings, snipers, bulldozers and so on.

The IDF is just hyper-optimized for fighting people who can’t fight back effectively, and unfortunately for them, Hamas is optimized for fighting the IDF.

It should be added that this is a specific example of a general rule: occupation armies become weak (they also become brutal and stupid). It’s one of the reasons why you should never use your army as an occupation force for any significant length of time.

If you must occupy for long periods, you should have a separate organization which is not under the same command. And your military should despise that organization and consider them dishonorable scum. If it’s any other way, your military will be useless when you face a real enemy.

Update:

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