There comes a time you find yourself asking just what more can go wrong, and behold before your eyes it does! As the blaze is burning on all sides in Israel and Palestine, and in the Ukraine on the other end of the geopolitical spectrum, it is almost too late to discuss how this fire was ignited.
Promises & Betrayals
To add fuel to the fire, one needs to just toss in what is going on in the US and how its staying power (resolve) is wearing thin, at least when it comes to the desire to throw more good money after bad with Ukraine and its unconditional support for Israel, right or wrong.
The Middle East is a region whose problems predate the establishment of the State of Israel, especially in terms of British Double Dealing such as the infamous Balfour Declaration and with the French-English with the Sykes Picot Treaty that divided up the region even before WW1 was over and cheating the Arabs out of self-determination.
The British could give some advice to their American partners as why not to get involved in Palestine, as the French tried to do, with the US wanting to pick up where the French left off in Vietnam.
The chickens are coming home to roost!
The question will remain as whose Land is it really: Palestinian or Jewish? The answer to this is becoming moot; it is going to get REALLY hot! With Israel’s military recently warning that all residents of northern Gaza should relocate to the southern half of the territory within 24 hours, as all hell is going to break loose in punitive action inflicted on the locals by the IDF. It is clear that this IDF mandate is not for the purpose of preventing civilian deaths and to prevent a humanitarian disaster, but in fact, just the opposite.
Even Jews, who usually close ranks when the Jewish State is threatened, are divided. There are more than a few loud Jewish voices who are willing to tell it as it is, and how the current crisis is based on “75 years of occupation of Palestine and many of the problems prove that Israel is its own worst enemy.
The occupation and stealing of land, with the blessing of much of the international community, has resulted in oppression, subjugation, and terrible cruelty. It cannot be carried out in the name of the Jewish Religion, or in the guise of the Star of David., and [and most definitely] not in the name of the Jewish people.
It should be remembered that many Jews around the world, especially those who are true to their core religious principles, stand in staunch opposition of the very existence of the Zionist State of Israel.”
Weaving a tangled web
As the CIA and US policy learned, often what is created to weaken other movements, or to act as a proxy, as was the case in Afghanistan with the Mujahedeen, can have unintended consequences. It is Israel that gave birth to Hamas to weaken and fracture the Palestinian authority. Now it can come back to bite its wet-nurse where it hurts the most.
“Supporting and creating Hamas may prove to be a fatal mistake for Israel.” Former Gaza Commandant, Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, said in an NYT interview: “The government gave me money to spend on supporting the Islamists in Gaza to prevent the growing influence of Fatah and the Communists”.
Rabbi Avner Cohen, who was in charge of religious affairs in Gaza for 20 years, said: “Hamas, to my great regret, is a creation of Israel.”
In the 1980s, he prepared an entire report for the Israeli government, concluding with a warning about the threat of a terrorist Islamist cell and, as a consequence, a strong recommendation to immediately stop playing divide and conquer in Gaza.
Dire Consequences
One of the Rabbi’s quotes on the subject is: “Stop supporting this monster before you face the dire consequences.” Those consequences are boiling over now, and it is apparent “what a tangled web has been woven in the process of trying to deceive”.
Being a bit older, and Jewish, and having institutional memory and regional experience has its advantages in understanding all what is coming together—the perfect storm within an existing political crisis in Israel.
I recently wrote to my son, who actually studied about the region at his university: “You are not old enough to remember how Jimmy Carter’s reelection went with Iran holding US hostages?”
Now with civilian and US hostages, and blocked from escaping via of Egypt, and held as human shields. It won’t be good for Joe Biden, and the crisis [likely won’t] be easily resolved. Just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. You are right, no point talking to people who have already made up their minds.
“That’s why these issues are so difficult to resolve!”
Back in the USA
Things are not looking good for the “unwavering policies” of Joe Biden and the Democrats, and Israel, Palestine and the Ukrainian debacles are going to make the 2024 elections look more like a fight to the death, assuming one or the other candidates lives long enough to stand for reelection. It is going to be difficult to walk the political tightrope with conflicts going on in Ukraine and Israel at the same time.
To complicate matters more, with the likely democratic nomination, Joe Biden is like a dead man walking – he is electorally doomed. Finally, people are coming to the realization that he is the wrong horse upon which to place any bets; voters are starting to run away from him and the Democratic Party.
However, rank and file, traditional democrats are honestly disappointed that Kennedy, RFK, is running as an independent instead of as a democrat. I think it was a grave mistake, as it took the wind right out of his sails. Hence, the presidential elections are all the more complicated, and make it easier for Donald Trump, if they don’t jail him for something, some “trumped-up changes” in the meantime – so to disqualify him from standing for political office.
We already know Trump’s one-sided policy on Israel when it violated international law, and his destruction of any semblance of fair play by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
Fuel to the Fire
Netanyahu has been back in power for 10 months and this happened on his watch, he even promoted it by his hardline policy, often intended to play to an Israeli audience for political gain and to hold on to power. He has become the BIGGEST threat to the Jewish people and the survival of Israel as a Jewish State, as sooner or later, there might have to be a one-state solution, and Jews and Palestinians live together in a renewed Palestine.
If I got it right, the Zionists sacrifice their own, Jews to reach their goals, and have an open season on Palestinians, which is beyond my moral understanding. Their goals must be for the Jews to die for some greater purpose, but how can you allow Jews to be killed for the gaining of an objective, or, even worse, for an illusion, or to cling onto your seat as the PM?
That is insane, and each day, at least for now, the whole insanity line, or tendency, or plan or whatever you will call it has become vivid to even those who have been in denial. The Israelis, especially the Zionist ones, honestly have no one to blame but themselves.
Now they probably really are going to lose the state of Israel. Those hardcore Zionist were having a rave against the wall of a concentration camp. I don’t celebrate anyone’s death, never, but Holy Shit, what did they expect to happen?
And now the Israeli government is so bloody genocidal that Hamas finds it easy to trick them into wasting all their ammunition on women, children, and civilian housing. The very same Hamas that Israel and Qatar created and funded in part to divide the Palestinian people into separate and competing camps, so to divide them and turn them against one another.
Israel is going to run out of missiles, and soon. When they do, Palestine is going to tear them to pieces with their bare hands. It’s going to be horrible. Even now, I still have friends who are staying in the country and think that they can somehow make this better, they can’t.
They are all hostages now, and even if Israel wins in the short term, it will be a greater loss, as the Dream of the Jewish Homeland will proved to have been an illusion and Israel and the region will be less secure.
In the final analysis, either it will be a “two-state solution”, or a final solution of a different kind; however, the two-state option is not likely to happen anytime soon, due in large part to the out of control right-wing positions of the Israeli government, stiff-necked people. The same is true as a result of Israeli-settlers illegally occupying Palestinian land.
Hence, it becomes an eye for an eye – with no peaceful resolution in sight. Matters are only made all the more complicated by the Biden administration, and it is being held hostage too, to its own rhetoric.
Time for tough love
It has no political choice, finds itself in a Catch 22 situation, and believes it must provide full support to Israel, right or wrong, at least in the public eye. This is because of the decades of propaganda built up around the myth of Israel being “America’s greatest ally”.
Quite how America’s real allies, those who bled alongside American troops in World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan can stomach this, I can’t understand. Israel has never fought alongside the US, while the British, French, Australians, New Zealanders, and Canadians have, amongst many other countries.
Even tiny Georgia has done more for the US than Israel, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in trying to bleed itself into NATO. Even hated Baathist Syria fought alongside US troops in operation Desert Storm, more than Israel has done for the US in any conflict!
It makes me wonder if the old saw (repeated claim) that Israel is America’s trusted proxy in the Middle East may have things the wrong way around; as could it be that the US is, in fact, Israel’s proxy in the wider world? Certainly, the US seems to act in a manner completely against its own interests in a fanatical support of Israel that will only lead to disaster in the Middle East.
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.