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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Feral Finster
From the Israeli point of view, killing a lot of civilians *is* winning the war.
If Israel gets exhausted, it will bid its American thug to take over.
Oakchair
One of Israel’s biggest assets was it’s reputation for military superiority. Their military’s inability to defeat a Prison camp rebellion has deflated that asset to zero. This is one reason Israel keeps escalating, and likely won’t stop.
david lamy
While Israel attacks Gaza with U.S. weapons, the U.S. government abolishes the “Bill of Rights” which is the only part of the Constitution that is worth dying for.
It is horrifying to be governed by psychopaths.
mago
As they said back in the (long past) day with a raised fist: right on revolutionary brother!
Willy
I saw a bit where genetic testing was done on Israelis and Palestinians. After all the extraneous genetics were accounted for (Greek, Turk, Arab, Egyptian, Polish, etc…) it was determined that Jews and Palestinians are basically the same people.
Anyways, if I was a Palestinian youth who’d lost his mother, home, game collection and dog, would I wanna carry on suffering in silence? Get the hell out? Be an easy mark for Hamas recruiters? Probably the latter I’d think.
Wasn’t the state of Israel created as a repayment for Holocaust survivors? Well, besides the Brits wanting to get the hell outta there. The Jewish redemption generation are pretty much gone by now. Maybe the USA needs to just pack this one in. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mossad spends half its American donor money digging up dirt on American politicos anyways. If American Zionists, The End of Dayers, the Holy Land tourist jet setters… want to keep that thing going, then maybe they could just move their asses over there and help. The rest of us are getting tired of that shit.
Israel’s roughly equivalent to a New Jersey. I mean, would we really miss New Jersey (excepting some ancient history)? They’re halfway around the world and ten times as bothersome as Jersey ever was. I say fuckem. Put the money into Jersey instead.
someofparts
“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.
…
Let it be the last settler ethnostate.”
Amen
Spotted this in your archives –
https://www.ianwelsh.net/2009/03/
VietnamVet
I want to re-highlight Jared Bernstein’s, chair of the United States Council of Economic Advisers, video who was unable to answer basic economic questions on the government’s printing and borrowing money. Clearly, he’s lost self-awareness, and his stock answers.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13381631/Jared-Bernstein-Biden-economic-adviser-fails-explain-money-works.html
The Fall of Kabul, the continued Gaza Genocide, closure of the Red Sea by Yemen, and declarations of Ukraine’s retaking Crimea in 2025 are the result of inability of Western Elite to see or deal with reality. They’ve created their own bubble but don’t realize it. They are worse than the leaders of the Four Empires (the Habsburgs of Austria-Hungary, the Hohenzollerns of Germany, the sultanate of the Ottoman Empire, and the Romanovs of Russia) that were destroyed by WWI. Western oligarchs and managers are, by their very nature, expressing the mental illness of psychopaths that may well be abetted by catching COVID that they could not mitigate in order to for pharmaceutical industry to increase its profits.
It comes down to the basic theology of the triumph of the corporate/state Western Empire at the turn of the century. The only thing that matters is money and therefore power.
St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century described this as the 7 capital sins. They are (1) vainglory, or pride, (2) greed, or covetousness, (3) lust, or inordinate or illicit sexual desire, (4) envy, (5) gluttony, which is usually understood to include drunkenness, (6) wrath, or anger, and (7) sloth. Each of these can be overcome with the seven heavenly virtues of (1) humility, (2) charity, (3) chastity, (4) gratitude, (5) temperance, (6) patience, and (7) diligence.
Democracy has two assets: (1) feedback from the voters and (2) peaceful transfer of power. They’ve vanished. The 2024 Presidential Campaign is not a choice. These are two of the worst one-term Presidents since James Buchanan who led the USA into a Civil War.
For Western Civilization to survive there must be a Reformation that restores good government, strong borders and human cooperation to keep the Earth livable.
Soredemos
“Yemen, a bunch of tribesmen, have laughed in America’s face.”
Long live the fighters.
Ventzu
Yemen – showing what integrity and decency is.
Jan Wiklund
The link to general Brit, please?
Ian Welsh
Ah, my bad. Brick not Brit, and link added.
Forecasting Intelligence
Out of interest Ian, what do you think will/should happen to those Jewish people who live in Israel?
I also have a question, you probably won’t know the answer, but if the Israelis had lost the wars in the last century, either the independence war or the further wars, what would the winning Arab armies have done to the civilian Jewish population? How would the exiled Palestinians return to their homes, now lived in by Jewish people, without either mass genocide or mass deportations?
As for your short term forecasts, your predictions to date have been terrible (by now Iraqi militias were supposed to be invading Israel!).
Your longer term outlook for Israel I’m inclined to agree with, although I don’t share your relish, I’m quite am admirer of what Israelis have achieved in such a poor region over the last 75 years or so.
Oakchair
“Yemen, a bunch of tribesmen, have laughed in America’s face.”
Long live the fighters.
—–
“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.”
“The things you used to own, now they own you.”
“You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis.”
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”
“If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?” (We know what Israel chose)
“Worker bees can leave.
Even drones can fly away.
The Queen is their slave.”
“Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.”
― Chuck Palahniuk
Forecasting Intelligence
Hi, OK I’ve done some research…
Just before the Six Day War in 1967, Ahmad al-Shuqayri, leader of the PLO, declared: “We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants and as for the survivors, if there are any, the boats are ready to deport them!” Other Arab leaders sounded scarcely less bloodthirsty.
1: The Commander-in-Chief of the Arab Liberation Army, Fawzi el-Kaukji, a notorious Nazi collaborator, threatened in August, 1947 threatened:
—“Should the UN vote the wrong way, we will initiate a total war… murder, wreck and ruin everything….”
2: On Nov. 24, 1947, the Acting Chairman of the Arab Higher Committee, Jamal Al-Husseini, threatened:
—-“Palestine shall be consumed with fire and blood if the Jews get any part of it.”
3:. Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, the first Secretary General of the Arab league told the Egyptian daily Akhbar al Yom on October 11, 1947:
— “…This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacres, or the Crusaders’ wars
“” .The war will be an opportunity for vast plunder””… ”
4: The Arab League orders exhorting the people to clear the way to the 7 Arab armies invading Israel
Refer: Bulletin of The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957:
“”SEEK A TEMPORARY REFUGE IN NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES, later to return to their abodes and OBTAIN THEIR SHARE OF ABANDONED JEWISH PROPERTY.””
Ian Welsh
Forecasting Intelligence,
let’s see how it plays out. There are plenty of people in Israel, including ex-Generals and politicians who say that Israel is losing the war. The Resistance has proved more reluctant to engage on the ground than I expected, you’re absolutely right. I got some of the specifics of the Ukraine war wrong, too, but it hasn’t and won’t effect the final outcome.
As I said day one, it is the famine/water/plague that is the real issue. Israel can’t defeat Hamas militarily.
If you invade and settle a place, it’s not surprising that people want you out. Imagine if someone invaded the eastern coast of the US, kicked people out of half the land, took their homes and forced them into reservations. If the rest of the US later won a war against the invaders, how do you think the settlers would be treated?
Two million French citizens were sent back from Algeria to France after Algeria’s independence.
If Palestinians all get their homes and land back (remember, Israelis are in many cases living in their literal homes and when they aren’t, their homes were often built on bulldozed land and stolen farms), I don’t expect they’ll want to stay in Israel.
Not quite sure why you think that if you kick an indigenous group out of their land and homes with violent force, they or their allies are going to be nice to you if they later win. There are still people alive who who remember the first Nakba and the formation of Israel. If you invade a country, you’d better treat the people there well or you’d better NEVER lose.
That said, Hamas has changed its tune over the last twenty years, and wants a secular state. Jews and Israelis are welcome to stay, they just don’t get to have their religious ethnostate.
Equality is very threatening to people who have been on top.
marku52
@Forecasting. It is rarely this cut and dried but in this case it is.
You are either in favor of genocide or you are not. It is not nuanced….
Bill R
We need to stop calling it genocide and call it what it is a holocaust – a government plan to kill the Palestinian people.
“Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government … based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, disability or sexual orientation: [Wikipedia Holocaust victims] [my editing]
The Israeli government has fully turned Nazi with no pretense of abiding by international agreements.
Feral Finster
@VietnamVet: I would say that the ruling classes see power as more important than money.
The Nulands and Sullivans of this word do not seem to be living lives of sybaritic luxury.
Feral Finster
BillR: “The Israeli government has fully turned Nazi with no pretense of abiding by international agreements.”
Of course. The Israeli government, aided by its American thug, will continue to do so unless and until stopped.
anon
Genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has always been Israel’s mission. As of now, not a single country with the power to stop Israel has done so. Unless something significant changes, Israel will continue wiping Palestinians off the map – or simply allow them to die of starvation and disease – and the international community won’t do anything to stop it.
GrimJim
The US has fallen victim to that classic blunder — never get involved in a land war in Asia — not merely once (Korea), not twice (Vietnam), not just a third time (Afghanistan), nor even merely a fourth (Iraq), but now a fifth and sixth time — Ukraine and Israel, even if by proxy.
The best they ever got out of those has been a draw; second best they won some battles and called it a war and withdrew in mostly good order leaving chaos and more of the same as ante bellum in their wake.
This time, though, the stakes are so much higher. Both enemies and allies are fighting an existential war, and one enemy and one ally each could destroy civilization and possibly the Earth as we know it if they lose…
And both have severe Samson complexes.
Russia can win, but Israel can only lose, even if it “wins” and completes its genocide.
So it only comes down to this — are the US “Elite” stupid enough to go hot on Russia for their win before Israel pulls down the whole temple for their loss?
Who wants to lay odds?
More importantly, how will anyone collect?
Jan Wiklund
Great if it is true. But who is War insights? Somebody to be trusted? Which are his/her sources?
Bill R
A kind of philosophical question but with a relevant purpose.
I first came to Canada almost 50 years ago and have been a a citizen for over 40 years. I am very proud of many things Canada has done – supporting Britain in 2 world wars [66, 000 killed in WW1], its support for China during the famine and action in Rwanda. There have been times like the Canadian parachute regiment’s actions and helping overthrow democratically elected governments like in Ukraine.
When does someone really ‘belong’ to a place? For the last 200+ years, most or all of my ancestors came from less than 50 miles/80km of where I was born. I am, however, very Anglo-Saxon in appearance following invasions 1200 years ago – so am I really British by birth? About 3500 years ago people with black skin and hair lived in England [horrified the English racists when this became known] before invaders took over.
If I remember my Bible from long ago, about 4000 years ago Abraham led the monothesistic Jews out of Mesopotamia to the “Promised land or Canaan” which was already settled by the Canaanites. Several times over the years the Jews left or were forced out of what is modern Israel before finally in 70 CE being disbursed for rebelling against Roman rule.
Does right of conquest and settlement mean that that land is yours [Jews Vs Canaanites; Romans Vs Jews; Ancient Britons Vs Anglo-Saxons for instance]? How many generations of being somewhere make it yours or how many generations away from somewhere stop it being yours?
As I said it is a sort of philosophical question and one that pertains to many issues through out our world.
Bill R
oops
meant to say there have also been times I have not been proud of Canada.
Ian Welsh
It’s in line with other things that the General has said, but I must admit I can’t find the provenance. My bad!
I rather suspect it’s from an Israeli source, he seems to speak and write mostly for a domestic audience.
Curt Kastens
Vorcasting Intell,
Because climate change has passed a tipping point there is no point in making any grand long term plans for peace of justice on planet earth. But many years ago I proposed a peace plan for the middle east that no one took seriously. The reason that the plan was not taken seriously is not because it was a bad plan. The real reason that the plan was not taken seriously is because not everyone that had read that plan then evaluated the plan was acting in good faith.
I no longer remember the exact details but here is an outline of the plan.
We can not blame eitherJewish or Muslim or Christian children for being born in Palestine. But by this point the land is not big enogh to hold all of the claims that are being made for its territory. Therefore the United Nations should offer incentives to the people of the contesting sides to drop their claims for residency in Palestine.
Any family that drops its claim for residency in Palestine will recieve an amount equal to 200,000 British pounds plus 25,000 pounds for over the second child in the currency of thier choice. And anyone accepting this offer will be allowed to immigrate to Canada or Australia or South Africa or New Zealand or Argentina. The peoples of those countries will not be allowed to object to their status as refuges for the people ending their claims for this contested territory.
Once the number of people actually wanting to live in Palestine is reduced to a managable number. Palestine will become a state that follows the model of the Ottoman Empire. Sharia Law for all cases that concern only Muslims, Jewish Law for all cases that concern only Jews, Roman Law for all cases involving only Christians, and finally the Legal Code of Curt Kastens for all cases of mixed ethnicity. My code would be pretty much like US Law based upon the standards of 1979 with the addition of Jury Nullification. A jury would have 13 members not 12 as in the United States. If a person charged with a crime hopes to get away with a crime do to a hung jury the person would need 2 people to cast a vote of not guilty not one. So in both cases a person judged by his peers would have 12 people issue a verdict of guilty. But what I mean by Jury Nulification is not neccessarily that these two people believe that the person did not commit the crime but that the crime itself should not be a crime in the first place. Well, I personally would be open to modifications of this idea such as saying OK there are 11 jurors for a guilty verdict and 2 against the judge can impose a penalty but the penalty can not be as severe as if all the jurors voted for a guilty verdict.
In addition the Jews will be allowed to maintain their own militia in Palestine, That militia will have no limit on the number of weapons that it can possess up to a .50 caliber machine gun. It will also be able to possess a certian number of 80mm motars, 40mm anti aircraft guns, 40mm gernade launchers, man portable SAMs, and drones as set by the peace treaty. No Air Force, No Navy. But Palestine will not be allowed to have its own navy or air force anyways.
Why because my plan is a middle eastern piece treaty not a middle eastern war treaty.
Palestine itself will not be a soverign country. The people of Palestine will hold a referendum. They will vote to be part of an Egyptian Federation that will stretch from Eqypt to Morrocco and include the Saudi Peninsula. Or the Palestinians can chose to be part of an Arab-Iranian-Kurdish-Turkish Confedration. In either case this larger Governmental Institution will be responsible for the protection of Palestinian air space and coastal areas.
If we lived in a sane world my plan would have been adopted. Now all that is left of my plan is the salt Reza Dew of a dryed out lake in a radio active waste land with a massive solar energy imbalance that no one will be able to live in let alone want to live in in as little as 10 or 20 years.
Mark Level
An important post, & mostly, I think, dead on.
I give the “State of Israel” (it’s not a country, since it ethnically excludes the majority of the indigenous people who lived there peacefully, mostly, for millennia, before the thuggish Zionists came in & began seizing land) 2 to 3 years at most before it dissolves, due to worldwide boycotts, divestment & sanctions.
You are correct that Turkey’s stopping profiteering from the genocide was a game-changer, as the public has massively turned against Erdogan due to his collaboration. Given the # of enemies he has made domestically with his repression, as well as the multiple # of times the US has tried to coup him, Erdogan has to save his own skin by doing the right thing for a change– his days as a “leader” are clearly numbered.
When & if the next domino falls in the family dynasty states installed by the West in KSA, Egypt, Qatar, UAE etc. and their publics (or “the Arab Street”) revolt against their slimy collaborators, the process of Israel’s isolation will speed up even further.
The level or repression & McCarthyism directed at campus protests by the US Ruling Class & their media stenographers is stunning, but it will NOT stop a majority of ‘Muricans who still have a sliver of humanity from turning against Zionism for what the UN correctly called in decades ago: systematic racism. Already the polling shows that at best 38% of the public “supports Israel”, mostly ReThuglicans as well as some of the stupid, knuckle dragging racists & fundies the US South is afflicted with. But even their youth won’t mostly be on board. The violent attacks by Zionist thugs & then police have NOT dissuaded or stopped young college students from standing up for the right side of history. In fact, as in Vietnam, the repression will just clarify who is right and bring more around to the majority.
The only thing I will disagree with you on, Ian, is the supposed genetic closeness of the Turkic-Slavic Ashkenazi Clan and that of the locals. The Mizrahi and the Palestinians are linked clearly, but folks like Netanyahoo, whose family lived in Lithuania & mass-converted to Judaism around the 13th century, have never spent time in the purported “Holy Land” or lived within 1,000 miles of its precincts, since they started “returning” in the late 19th century. In fact, the Muslim & Christian Palestinians they are slaughtering are the actual descendants of “Israel & Judah”, as well as their Canaanite neighbors. Someone on MoonofAlabama claimed the Ashkenazis have very high rates of skin cancer due to living in a place a lot sunnier than Ukraine, Russia or Lithuania, Poland, etc. I believe this is likely, but can’t prove it.
In closing, a little note to “Forecasting Intelligence’s” tossed-off comment that “I’m quite am admirer of what Israelis have achieved in such a poor region over the last 75 years or so.” I’m going to respect FI’s consistency so I’d like to ask him– are you also admiring of the Israeli State’s support (with arms & training alongside the US) of the genocide against Indigenous communities in Guatemala in the 1980s? (An estimated 800,000 killed, dead babies thrown into wells to poison the water so the Indios couldn’t return to their burned down villages, etc.?* Do you admire their assistance to the Death Squad government of Roberto D’Aubbison in neighboring El Salvador at the same time? For the assistance to the South African apartheid state?
Please respond– that will surely clarify where you are coming from.
*My source for the data on the murdered in Guatemala in the 80s comes from the Guatemalan government, as well as the UN, among others.
mago
Wow, ML.
I’m waiting to read the response from that challenge.
someofparts
Interesting the way a nation like the US that isn’t even three centuries old thinks it is bringing cultural uplift to nations that have existed for millenia
Soredemos
@someofparts
No ‘nation’ has existed for millenia.
different clue
How ironic would it be if Netanyahu were to one to finally achieve the downfall of Israel and the end of Zionism, considering that the whole reason he agitated ( and created the “permission structure”) for the assassination of Rabin to begin with was that implementing the Oslo Accords and the next steps finishing in Two States would mean the ” end of Zionism”.
If Netanyahu were able to keep the war going so long that he completely avoided having to stand trial in Israel for corruption charges . . . only to end up going on trial for war crimes and/or crimes against humanity in the Hague, that what be the irony cherry on the irony sundae.
Dermotmoconnor
No response to Mark Level, Forecasting?
Hmmmmmmm.
Carborundum
The source is this article in Maariv: https://www.maariv.co.il/journalists/opinions/Article-1096217
I have some doubts that Israel is going to end up being as internationally isolated as Brik believes. To my mind, the maximum likelihood scenario is that Israel becomes an even more active player in the domestic politics of key enabling countries that it depends on, which I look forward to with the same enthusiasm I would have for a cajun style colonoscopy.
For context, Brik has been making the case for years for substantially upsizing the IDF and reducing its dependence on foreign suppliers. I don’t think folks should assume his desired alternative is to down tools and sue for peace…
Jan Wiklund
If one search Yitshak Brik Gaza one finds quite a lot, but not exactly this statement.