Avoiding Mass Ethnic Cleansing Or Genocide In Gaza

We (in the West, anyway) are ruled by psychopaths.

An all out Arab war on Israel might end up killing more people, rather than saving lives. Was have a tendency to do that. The “Axis of Resistance” might arrange small scale attacks on multiple fronts, that would hamper and slowly bleed the IDF, perhaps leading to a turning point 10 years down the road, but that would not prevent the IDF from genociding Gaza, which can be done by air power & artillery, or simply by withholding food, water, and medicine.

I’m guessing the Hamas strategy is something like this: 1) create a shocking 9/11 type incident that causes Israel to over-react 2) let Israel genocide Palestinians (not that Hamas has the power to stop the genocide) so that world opinion gradually turns against Israel 3) then use defensive guerrilla warfare tactics to slowly bleed the IDF year after year until Israel finally throws in the towel. Say 10 years, like Vietnam, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc..

It would not be impossible for Russia and China to intervene in various ways, but from a Machiavellian point of view it is in Russia and China’s best interest to sit back and watch the West get bogged down in yet another unwinnable imperialist conflict.

You really told the truth on this issue.
Gaza is so small and so densely populated that even if this war spreads out of control and other countries in the area get involved it will be to late to save the people in Gaza. People can not last long without warer. They can not last long when they are injured without medical care. They can not last long when they are buried under ruble and there is no heavy equipment to free them.
On one hand widening the war will get even more people killed because in addition to the death toll in Gaza one will have to add the death tolls of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Then on top of that one does not know what the outcome will be. It is possible that all 4 of those countries end up being brought in to the US emipire when the dust settles.
None the less I would favor an expanion of the war because it would divert US resources away from the, in the short term, more important conflict in the Ukraine. In addition, If I am lucky, the war in the Middle East might mean at least a temporairy end to oil exports from the region. That will hurt the West even more than it hurts China.
Yes widening the war will get even more people killed. But their deaths will be for a good cause, fighting a political cancer.
Those who die may say, hell I did not agree to being placed at risk for your crusade. But I will repeat what someone else said here several days ago. There can not be a sensible public health policy without some level of coercion.

Modern memory – particularly Western modern memory – really doesn’t have a good sense of how bad the Nakhba was. To be worse, one would probably have to completely de-populate Gaza, which I don’t think they can get away with – even given how mild the current Western reaction is.

I suspect the strategic model here is the 2006 Southern suburbs of Beirut – scaled up, with the addition of a significant ground offensive. Essentially the full weight of combined arms against an urban environment with little concern about collateral. The ultimate aim here would be to demonstrate that HAMAS is unable to mount a meaningful defence and that even the most successful possible offensive operation they could ever mount (difficult to imagine what they could do that would be more successful than what they’ve done) only ultimately brings destruction. No idea how that will actually be interpreted by the intended recipients, but I suspect that’s the Israeli aim. Strategically, they are obsessed with deterrence and demonstrating escalation dominance.

“.The way things are going, the only way to stop Israel from committing genocide or a wave of ethnic cleansing that makes the Nakba look mild (and quite possibly both) is if Hezbollah/Syria/Iran and perhaps other Muslim countries declare war and win.

It’s unfortunate, but the Israelis have gone mad with power and demonization of the people who are primarily their victims, the Palestinians.

Kick your victims into a corner, brutalize them for generations, then they lash out with violence that is horrific but not even close to as bad as what you have done to them, use it as justification for more horror.

..And children, if you think anti-semitism is bad now you haven’t even seen how bad it will be if Israel does what it’s planning to do.”

The Israeli leadership sleep soundly as long as they have the United States to be their bully boys and to strongarm any countries that speak up into silence.

Israel is really doing it. They’ve given a million people a whole 24 hours to leave northern Gaza, and told the Doctors Without Borders hospital it has two hours to evacuate. There’s then also now multiple reports of Israel targeting convoys doing what they’ve been told to do and fleeing south. Al Jazeera is now reporting IDF ground forces have started making raids into Gaza itself.

Israel appears to be going for broke. In for a penny, in for a pound; all pretense is being dropped as they for a maximalist ethnic cleansing strategy. The ground invasion is on, the army, having been raised, will be used. The ball is in Hezbollah and Iran’s court for the next move. They’ve both said Israeli troops in Gaza was unacceptable. Will they now back that up? And what will the battered but now very experienced Syrian army do? If they want the Golan Heights back, now would be the time to act.

Neither Iran nor Syria will attack Israel in any overt way; there’s no reason to believe that Israel wouldn’t reply with Nukes, and they would not risk that.

Hezbollah has a little more freedom of action, but not much. They aren’t exactly a “State”, but I doubt they will risk the inevitable reprisals on the people and infrastructure of Lebanon. I don’t think Israel would use Nukes on Lebanon, but they could probably count on the US doing much of the [conventional] bombing.

One could hope that Israel would be restrained from using Nukes by the fear of becoming a Pariah State, but I wouldn’t bet my Capitol City on it.

Everyone wracking the big old brains to rationalize the actions of one side or another, when the answer is as plain as the nose on all our faces. If we concentrated equal amount of energy to waging war on the elite, none of this would be happening.

But no. Let’s do precisely what the elite have always relied on us to do: pick a side a cheer-lead evil.

Eric, sorry to burst your bubble, but the forces of the legitimate left are so weak that if they used all fo their power trying to destroy the western elites it would be like a misquito tying to moe the Hoover Dam.
It is not at all likely that the legitimate left in the west can have any influence on events at all. But its best and really really slim chance is that as a misquito it might be able to help the weaker anti US hegomony elites get in a punch against the stronger and historically much more agressive and hypocritical western elites.
Realalistically the only slim chance of dong that is to keep telling the truth and hope to god that the truth gets heard by someone in the western securtiy institutions and that the truth actually penetrates their thick skulls, and that the truth takes root and that such people decide to become sand inside of the gears of the system and have the skill to damage the system in ome small way.
That would in practice mean coordinating their activity with either, the Cubans, Venezuelans, Russians, Chinese, or Iranians. It would also mean that they would have to have the skill not to get detected if they are going to have much chance of doing any damage. There is also a chance that even if they have been detected and who ever it is that they are working with knows that they have been detected and the western agencies do not know that the other side knows that they have been detected some damage can also be done by getting the western intell angencies to believe that the other side has fallen for the false info that has been planted with the known defector (traitor if you prefer)
The problem with penetrating the thick skulls of the confederate conformists is that they need to be subject to a prolonged deprogramming. There is no organization that can systematically subject confederate conformists to consistent prolonged deprogramming. The legitimate western left can only count on a one in a million chance here and a one in a million chance there to get the targeted audiance to question their authorities.
Any chance that the legitate western left has at bringing its elites to accountabilty now lies with those outside of the western system. Those leaders outside of the western system may very well also be shitheads. If that turns out to be the case, then the struggle starts all over again, until the collapse of the environmental system brings the collapse of all institutional systems.

ealing wine israel at this point
https://www.google.com/search?q=swimming+pool+flamethrower+Quentin+Tarantino&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:702dc6b7,vid:KD5OipDZFhI,st:0

Curt,

I didn’t say One. Word. About. The. Left.
For crying out loud, all labels are a handicap anymore. Want to start a successful movement?
Call it the “I hate the $%#$%^^&!! elite movement.”
Then it has a chance.

The notion that Bill Mahr is any kind of lefty is laughable on the face of it. He’s always been a reactionary, he kisses up and kicks down. The only difference between him and Rush Limbaugh is Mahr trys to act cool, like someone you’d want at a party. His utterly witless atheism is all part the act.
And as has been mentioned, the conflict in Occupied Palestine is between Zionist Colonizers and the native inhabitants. Playing up the religious angle only serves to muddy the waters. Though it is worth noting that there have been increasing outrages perpetrated by radical settlers with army support at the AL Asqa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam and located on the Temple Mount. A faction of radical religious Zionists intends to destroy the AL Asqa mosque in order to rebuild the 2nd Temple. This would galvanize the entire Islamic world against them and be the end of Israel in short order. Yet, there is an approximately 50 million strong “Christian Zionist” movement in the U.S. that supports doing exactly that in order to bring about literal Armageddon. That’s the sub-text to all this.

Eric,
No, I agree, you did not mention the left. But that the legitimate left has to wage war against our own elite is implicit in your suggestion because who else is going to do wage war on the western elites? Certianly not the right that is all right with the system, except were the system is not right wing enough. The independents are certianly not going to do it. The fact that they consider themselves independents shows how confused they are. The Democratic Party people are not going to do it. The left that does not believe in revolution or a military coup is certianly not going to do it. Once all those people are ruled out very very few people are left. And I have the impression that the average age of those that are left is over 60 if not over 70.
That means that the only positive thing that the legitimate left is capable of for now is trying to put people that serve in the CIA, and FBI, and NSA, and DIA, and their Canadian and European, and allied Asian counterparts in to a state of mind where they say to themselves, fck it, I do not give a shit about my future or the future of my family anymore, I am tired of doing the job of a NAZI, I am not only going to leave the reservation I am going to do something to tear the reservation fence down when I go.

A really sad thing is that the legitimate left is not even capable of defending this meager capability. Because people like Brain Berletic, and Scott Ritter and Ian Welsh, can easily be shut down with no consequences to those who do the shutting down.
I surmise that they have not been shut down because 99% of the time they are just speaking to the choir and the occiasional time that they are not those who would object think that they can probably keep the damage under control. We can only hope that they miscalculate on these rare occasions.

There is one other thing that people living in the US could have done. They could have tried to educate their police forces to be more in favor of left wing causes. But it is to late for that now.

No, Curt. I think we need to wipe the slate clean of the left/right dichotomy and start over. It no longer serves a useful purpose. I’m willing to see the working class of every persuasion as an ally. I am more than willing to look past the ideological “warts” the “left” sees in the right, and the “right” sees in the left to achieve a larger purpose. Real change never happens w/o the compromise of old ideologies. Think about that. It has to be the case. As long as the lines are drawn between neighbors, the elite win.

Comparative trauma: during Shock and Awe,I read that Baghdad shelves were empti d of children’s Tylenol.—Parents trying to keep their children calm. Now I read that Israel‘s trauma centers are overrun by anxious Israelis in the wake of the Hamas incursion. Unimaginable, exponentially greater devastation ongoing as a million plus evictees try to escape without water, while being buzz d by US supplied Israeli jets also ng was he way.

Eric, in the lead up to the US led invansion of Iraq a bit of hope was reignited in me that it was still possible to turn things around in America. But the past 20 years of history have again smothered that hope under a mountain of sand. Yes we can get rid of thinking in left-right politcal terms. I do not see that that is going to get us anywhere as I do not see any hope at all that large numbers of people of any political kind of politcal thinking in the United States are going to turn against the continuing criminal enterprise that currently runs things in America. The vast majority of the people might know that they are getting screwed but they still worship the Constitution as gift from a God. And there is a catch 22 in the entire affair. The conditions for a revolution can exist without a change in the vast methods of indoctrination and the vast methods of indoctrination can not be changed without a revolution.
This catch 22 caused me to conclude around 2005 that the only slim hope that America had would be to turn those who are supposed to be the linchpin of the system against the system.
This occured to some extent in Nazi Germany duing WW2 and in Portugal in the early 1970s, and perhaps to some extent in Venezuela under Chavez. Well, the first one did not turn out well. But if not for the efforts of a Major Riemer who was in the right place at the right time to smother the attempt might have. Then the Portuguese effort had more initial success but was hijaked. Then there is Venezuela, an experiment in which the jury is still out.
Now I think that we can definatively say that the powers that be saw this play being made even before I was born and had made sure that it would not happen.
One top of all of these pessimistic but realistic factors is the speed in which the world’s environment is collapsing. It is now obviously way way way to late to prevent the type of collapse the not only kills billions of people, from hunger and dehydration and desease it is most likely to kill everyone on the planet before the end of the century. We should not be surprised if this collapse kills everyone by 2050.
The planet is still making millions of internal combustion engines per year and those engines will be in operation for another 20 years if there are still people to operate them. Industrial countries do not even take the most simple step to reduce CO2 production, which in my opinion would be to turn off street lights between 1 and 5 am.
My conslusion is that we are screwed. The only short term distraction that we have left is to cheer for the Russians, Chinese, and Palestinians. I will even cheer for the Iranian Mullahs at this point. Not because I do not have some serious disagreements with them. But I do not see Islam per se as a big problem. Depending on how it is interpreted Islam can be a tolerant religion that works against economic exploitation.
It is possible to build a more just Islamic society than a secular capitalist society. Yes the Iranian Mullahs currently in charge might need to be overthrown for that to happen. But in the mean time I welcome any support that they give, even if it is just words, to the anti western uprising. And I do not support the overthrow of the current Iranian Mullahs because I have no idea what would replace them.
A by product of cheering for the Russians, Palestinians, Chinese, and Venezuelans is that our cheers might rub off on someone who is in a positions to do more harm to the US led policy goals than we can.

Soredemos,
Scott Ritter may not consider himself anykind of a leftist. People have many varied ideas of what a leftist is. Leftist for him may have only negative connotations. But he supports the Russians, and the Palestinians. That is a pretty good evidence in my book that he does not support US foreign policy goals. That is the most important issue to me.

Well, Ritter seems to want to sort of generically support Palestinian while throwing up his hands and basically declaring a pox on both Zionists and Hamas, as if they’re really just two sides of the same coin.

But the simple reality is that there is no future for Palestine absent something like Hamas, because Zionism is a totalitarian, maximalist ideology that wants all of the old Hebrew Levant. It’s not going to concede anything just because of BDS or sympathetic documentaries. If Palestine has any future, it’s going to be arrived at through fighting, or at least the threat of fighting (a convienent myth is that Gandhi peacefully kicked the British out of India. He didn’t. The then recent memory of a united Hindu-Muslim Axis proxy army did. That was a taste of the likely future if Britain didn’t get out fast).

As for ethnic cleansing I’ve no doubt that Israel would prefer the pure version but I think they will go for a “light” version in the form of Israel taking the northern half of Gaza and then build a new and bigger wall from Negev to the Mediterranean Sea. By increasing the population density from 5,000 pr kvm2 to 10,000 rump-Gaza will be impossible to live in and the Palestinian will leave of their own “free” will.