Tag: Gaza war Page 1 of 2

Has Israel Lost?

On January 20, 2025

There’s a lot of celebrating of the Gaza ceasefire. Hamas troops are openly on the streets, hostages from both sides are being returned (that only Israeli captives are called hostages is ludicrous) and it’s clear that Israel came nowhere close to destroying Hamas. This is an impressive accomplishment, Gaza is only 25×5 miles: Gaza is tiny. Hamas’s tunnel strategy clearly worked.

That said, Gaza is a wreck.

The official civilian casualty numbers are under 100K, but I suspect a full population study will find the death toll far higher. All Gaza hospitals are non-operational, often destroyed entirely and a high percentage of the nurses and doctors are dead. Water and power infrastructure has been smashed, and even if Israel turns their side back on most of Gaza will be without.

A great deal will depend on whether the ceasefire sticks. Netanyahu has suggested that the war will start up again.

So, with all due respect to Hamas, Yemen and Hezbollah, it’s going to depend on Trump. Of the three Yemen has the most leverage, it can keep attacking if Israel keeps violating the ceasefire and the only way to get it to stop is to keep the ceasefire, which will re-open shipping as nothing else can, but by itself it’s not sufficient.

However ultimately Trump has plenty of leverage. As Yitzak Brick, the ex-IDF general said:

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

The war doesn’t start up again if Trump is willing to use his leverage. It’s that simple. Trump doesn’t seem to like war, but he’s also surrounded by Zionists and hawks. Israel has already, as usual, violated the ceasefire, as it has thousands of times in Southern Lebanon. It will attempt to find an excuse to re-start full scale bombing.

But if Trump really doesn’t want that, it doesn’t happen. That simple. Israel still has tens of thousands of internal refugees, a huge loss of middle and small sized businesses and it also requires US financial and economic aid. Israel can’t fight if Trump brings down the hammer.

I will note, that at least so far, it appears that those who refused to vote for Biden because of the Gaza genocide were justified, and that those Muslim leaders who appeared publicly with Trump appear vindicated. Biden was pro-genocide, and refused to his leverage to stop the war. Trump, even before taking power, said that if the hostages weren’t returned by January 20th, there’d be hell to pay, and lo-and-behold, on January 19th the hostages were returned. Trump’s envoy forced Netanyahu to meet him during Shabbat, after Netanyahu initially refused.

Israel has a great deal of power in the West, thru its operatives and donations, but it is the tail to America’s dog, and a determined President, like Reagan in Lebanon or George Bush Sr. can stand against if they decide to. Since Trump can’t have a third term, he doesn’t need to kiss AIPAC’s ass.

We’ll see how it plays out, but at least the start has been promising.

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If The Gaza Ceasefire Holds, Israel Has Won

By Ian Welsh

On November 27, 2024

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So, terror bombing appears to have won the Gaza war. Israel’s ground invasion was pathetic, Hezbollah’s troops proved their reputation is deserved, but Hezbollah has agreed to a ceasefire.

That’s what Israel needed: that’s a strategic victory. Without Hezbollah missiles and drones hitting Israel, a ton of the pressure is off, especially economic pressure. Now Israel can concentrate on Gaza and Hamas. Without Hezbollah, they’re doomed and the genocide and ethnic cleansing of, at least, Northern Gaza will be successful.

This is why I always felt that Hezbollah, Iran and the Iraq militias needed to put much more pressure on, especially back when the Israeli army was concentrating on Gaza and Hamas still had most of its troops.

There’s a good chance this ceasefire won’t hold, of course, but if it does it’s an Israeli victory. Anyone spinning it any other way is full of shit.

If there’s going to be another round, then Iran needs to get serious anti-air to Hezbollah, because with terror bombing having worked, the Israelis will do it again.

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Middle East War: The Israeli Ground Forces Still Can’t Deliver

By Ian Welsh

On October 28, 2024

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Israel has three great assets:

Its air force;
Its spies;
America.

What it doesn’t have is a good army:

After nearly five weeks of intense fighting, Israeli soldiers have managed to enter several border villages, advancing a maximum of just under two kilometres in some areas. However, they have been unable to establish overnight positions. These forces have resorted to widespread destruction, levelling homes and mosques along the border to create “scorched earth” zones. This tactic, however, exposes Israeli tanks, making them vulnerable and preventing adequate concealment as they cautiously advance through Lebanese villages. Consequently, Israeli casualties have surged

Or, to put it another way, Netanyahu’s mouth has written checks that Israel’s ground forces can’t cash. So Israel is back to wanton destruction, mostly by air.

I’ve said for years that Hezbollah’s army is one of the best in the world, man for man, and so far it seems that judgment is vindicated.

Israeli forces are currently only engaging Hezbollah’s “spoiling attacks” within the “engagement area”. They are yet to penetrate the “main battle area,” where Hezbollah’s primary defences and “striking forces” are positioned. Hezbollah’s strategy integrates conventional and guerrilla warfare tactics, employing adaptable defences above and below ground. It focuses on attrition strategy, using mobile defence tactics to harass and weaken enemy forces before drawing them into decisive engagements. These tactics include tactical retreats that expose enemy flanks, allowing Hezbollah to strike at Israel’s advancing spearhead, systematically disrupting momentum and inflicting heavy losses.

Meanwhile Israel’s attack on Iran does not appear to have done great damage and Hamas ordered Northern Israeli villages being used as invastion staging points to evacuate, and has started hitting them with missiles and drones, leading to another couple hundred thousand Israeli internal refugees.

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But the weak suffer what they must, and Northern Gaza has spent October under complete embargo of food and water. The Israeli genocide of Palestinians continues, and the clear intention is to occupy North Gaza permanently once its residents are displaced or dead.

Indeed the Israeli way of war is now clearly “genocide uber alles” with Israel’s air attacks in Lebanon prioritizing civilian buildings, with multiple attacks on hospitals, at least one attack on an orphanage and repeated warnings that they will strike first responders who try to save lives.

Israel is attempting to break the will of civilian populations through terror. Israel’s war doctrine is mass terror, ethnic cleansing and genocide, with attacks meant to maximize civilian casualties both during and after the attack. The fewer hospitals, doctors and so on, the more people who will die or be permanently maimed.

This is a war of the cowardly against civilians, which makes sense: Israel’s occupation has left its military specialized in brutalizing civilians. It had great difficulty against Hamas, a rag tag militia with missiles and other weapons built in basements. Against Hezbollah’s ground forces: seasoned, well equipped and dug in, it has been unimpressive.

The problem for Israel is simple enough: terror from the air doesn’t win wars and doesn’t break moral. Instead it makes people more determined to resist, not less.

If Israel, after its assassinations and attacks on warehouses had declared victory, it would still look strong. But engaging with Hezbollah on the ground has proven a serious mistake.

Israel is a great example of “those who are abused become abusers.” Israel might as well be Nazi Germany when it comes to both ideology (national ethnic supremacy) and actions: genocide of a despised ethnic/religious group.

It is a sad thing to see, both for their victims and for themselves. They have become monsters, and with polls indicating over 90% support for the way the war is fought, it’s clear that this has infected the mass of the Israeli citizenry.

When Israel is finally defeated, likely in a future war, it will need to completely de-Zionised, in a way Germany was never properly de-Nazified.

This entire war is sad and stupid and based on the fundamental injustice of taking other people’s land and homes. It is pursued thru terror, mass murder, genocide and ethnic cleansing and war crimes are so routine they happen every day as a matter of policy.

Every nation who supports Israel in this is stained by Israel’s crimes. We all know genocide is happening, and our countries have supported it, made it possible and opposed all efforts to end it.

To riff on Jefferson, we had best hope that there is no just God.

The Czechloslovakia Analogy Is Overused, But It Fits Israel

By Ian Welsh

On October 9, 2024

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Yesterday I wrote an article about how lack of aggression has allowed Israel to control the initiative and choose the time and place it wants to fight. If you haven’t read that article, please do so now.

Back in 1938 the Allied powers agreed to let Hitler cut up Czechloslovakia. At the time the Czechs had a huge army, and if supported, they were willing to fight. They weren’t supported and, soon enough, France and Britain had to fight Germany minus a massive central European army at their side.

Woops.

October 7th took the Israelis by complete surprise. For two days Hamas roved free. After that, the Israelis systematically bombed the hell out of Gaza and then invaded. They were incompetent and Hamas fought well, but Hamas was vastly outnumbered and out-equipped. To this day they haven’t been able to stop Hamas entirely, but they’ve done a lot of damage and certainly killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

During all this Hezbollah just launched missiles. Oh, they did damage, for sure, and they caused hundreds of thousands of internal refugees and an Israeli economic crisis. Iran supplied Hezbollah and Yemen but unless hit, did nothing directly.

Hezbollah could have hit far, far harder. They could even have invaded, especially during the period when much of the army was tied up in Gaza.

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There’s a concept in military strategy and tactics called “initiative.” The side with the initiative is forcing the other side to react to it. Hamas started with the initiative, but soon lost it and the Resistance sat back and let Israel do what it wanted, when it wanted. Israel mapped out Southern Lebanon, took its time setting up assassinations and figuring out where the missile stocks were: then it struck.

Israel was gifted the initiative by the Resistance (well, not so much Yemen, they did what they could).

Hamas wasn’t ever very strong, to be sure. Not Czechloslovakia, but no joke. Their hope was always that if they provoked a war, the Resistance would join in and they could win.

But the Resistance, who were resentful that Hamas didn’t warn them of October 7th, half-assed it, and didn’t strike when Israel was most vulnerable. (It’s clear Hamas was right not to tell Iran and Hezbollah about October 7th given how compromised they both are by the Mossad.)

Now Hamas, though still fighting, is no longer a serious threat to Israel and Hezbollah was caught on its back foot though I hear at least one credible report that they’re recovering fast.

To go back to the Nazi analogy, Israel is a genocidal power with wants lebensraum.

If the shoe fits.

You don’t play around with Nazis, and so far the Resistance has been doing just that. And even more than Hezbollah, this means Iran.

Surrender, or fight. Stop the half measures.

How Lack Of Aggression Cripples Resistance Orgs

By Ian Welsh

On October 8, 2024

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Let’s talk about Corbyn and Hezbollah and Iran.

These three things aren’t the same in many ways. But all three are fighting an entrenched system.

When Corbyn was leader, he had the majority of the membership behind him, he took control of the executive committee and he only lacked control of the MPs, who were almost all neoliberals united in hatred of him and his program.

This was a simple situation to deal with: Corbyn had the power to force re-selection: to make MPs face elections in their ridings. Almost all would have been replaced by left wingers: they weren’t popular and couldn’t win.

He refused.

He also had the power to replace the administrative class running the party and elections. He didn’t, and they sabotaged him. Without that sabotage he would have won the 2017 election, which was extremely close. This isn’t hyperbole, we have emails showing they deliberately sabotaged the campaign: they would rather the Tories win than Labour under Corbyn,

Starmer has had no such weakness: he has ruthlessly purged the party membership and leadership of left-wingers.

Now let’s turn to Hezbollah. They kept up steady pressure on Israel since October 7th, but they never seriously attacked. They did damage, for sure: most of the Northern settlements are abandoned and there has been a huge economic cost, but they never did what they could. They were scared, I think, of Israel attacking Lebanon.

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Israel is now attacking Lebanon, hitting multiple hospitals, at least one orphanage and telling first responders that if they go to help injured civilians, they’ll be killed.

What Hezbollah wanted to avoid, happened.

Hezbollah really had two choices: go all in and attack with everything, or do nothing. Half-assing it was not smart. It let Israel choose the time of their attack and spend a year planning and executing, which has lead to the loss of much leadership and apparently a good chunk of Hezbollah’s missile stocks.

This is not 20-20 rear view sight. I said at the start of the war that Hezbollah should attack. Why wait for Israel to beat Hamas down, then turn on them? (Yes, Hamas is still fighting, but attacking when most of the Israeli military was in Gaza and before Hamas had been badly degraded is obviously optimal.)

Now, as for Iran, they too have been overly cautious. I’m impressed by their missile capacities, but they too are sitting on their asses. This is getting close to a North Korea/China situation and it’s time for them to just go all in and stop with the proxy bullshit. Send men and stop the crap.

Khameini himself is 70% of the way to understanding this. He said that the enemy comes for countries, and if you do not defend those countries, why then they eventually come for you. Iran is the end-goal. If Hezbollah is defeated conventionally (they won’t lose a long term guerilla war) then Iran is next.

Caution: building up resources, has served Iran well. But there is time for that, and a time for using the resources. Mao was a war leader, and one of the great generals of the 20th century. He was not afraid of war, and he understood when it was time to fight.

If Iran doesn’t, they put themselves at great risk. Including the possibility that they lose a lot of their weapon stocks in a pre-emptive attack. Are they less compromised by the Mossad than Hezbollah was? Are they sure?

The bombing and so on they seek to avoid will come to them anyway, just as it has to Hezbollah and Lebanon.

Either fight the war or give up, bow to the US and Israel and stop the Resistance.

(Machiavelli observed that most men don’t change. They keep doing the same thing they have always done, even when circumstances change to make old strategies ineffective. Hezbollah has a chance, because their old leadership is dead. Iran needs its old leadership to wake up before they wind up dead and Iran loses.)

Look, Israeli Ground Forces Suck & Their Country Is Postage Stamp Sized

By Ian Welsh

On October 5, 2024

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Any time Iran wants, they can over-saturate Israeli missile defenses, turn off the power and destroy the military bases. That was proven this week.

Israel’s ground forces are incompetent and cowardly. They had grave trouble fighting Hamas. Hezbollah whipped them back in 2006 when they dared attack on the ground. Hezbollah’s troops are seasoned war vetrans, and extremely motivated.

What Israel has is airpower, good intelligence, and the USA.

And nukes.

Airpower’s nice, but it doesn’t win wars. And if all your airbases are destroyed or under constant attack, a lot of it goes away. Neighbouring countries have said they won’t base Israeli airplanes.

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The reason that Israel spends most of its time assassinating leaders and mass-murdering civilians is that it knows it can’t actually win on the ground. It can “clear” areas of Gaza, but it can’t hold them, and Hamas has only a shadow of Hezbollah’s strength.

Without nukes, in a conventional war, Hezbollah might win against Israel: by which I mean that invade and conquer the country. It too has tons of missiles and has been holding back. If Iran went all-in, Israel’s defeat in a conventional war would be certain.

The two things stopping this from happening are America and that Israel has nukes and everyone thinks they’ll use them.

The time of elite Israeli ground forces is gone. It was gone by 1990 or so.

And military technology has changed. In the old days if you didn’t have an air force, that was it: but drones and new missile tech has changed that.

These aren’t your grandfather’s Israelis, and these aren’t your grandfather’s Muslims.

The Future Of Hezbollah and Israel’s Conflict

By Ian Welsh

On September 28, 2024

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Nasrallah is dead, assassinated by the Israelis. There have been significant bombings in Beiruit, and escalation between Hezbollah and Israel are clear.

First, let’s state the obvious. Israel’s intelligence has seriously comprised Hezbollah, much more than they ever did to Hamas. I suspect this is a result of not taking Hamas particularly seriously and the differing nature of Lebanon and Gaza. Gaza, by all accounts, was a fairly tight knit community, united in their opposition to Israel. Lebanon is not, it’s a sectarian state with a great deal of internal divisions.

There was a lot of anger in Iran and Hezbollah that Hamas did not forewarn them of October 7th, but it’s clear they were right not to. If they had, Israel would very likely have found out, and this is especially true if Hezbollah had been told.

As for the assassination, it’s much less important than people make out: decapitation strategies don’t significantly degrade strong ideological organizations like Hezbollah. The real question is how much knowledge Israel has of the actual military infrastructure. Nasrallah was a well loved leader, but he was a very cautious man and much less interested in fighting Israel than many make out. The new leadership, and given Israel’s success at assassination, it is almost all new, will be far more willing to fight.

Intelligence, airpower and its alliances with American and other Western nations are Israel’s strengths, and they are not small matters.

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That said, those who are panicking, often hysterically, are premature. Hezbollah defeated Israel militarily in 2006, and before that when it won a guerilla war against Israel’s occupation and forced them out. They are much stronger now than they were then. They have more missiles, more men, who are well seasoned fighters, and they have dug in to a far greater degree than Hamas ever could.

Israeli intelligence and the airforce are impressive, but the actual ground forces Israel have are weak: not in equipment, but in morale and competence. To accomplish Israel’s goal of pushing Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon they will have to go in on the ground, and when they do I very much doubt their ability to win.

Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah’s supply lines cannot be cut: the posturing about Beiruit’s airport is ludicrous, the supplies come in by land and there is no possibility of interdicting most of them.

If Hezbollah does need reinforcements, they will have them, from Iraq’s militias and from Iranian “volunteers.” Manpower will not be an issue, though Hezbollah is unlikely to ask for many men at first, since they are not trained to operate in the Hezbollah manner.

Nasrallah was a cautious man, and Hezbollah has been holding back. Their missile force can output far more and better missiles than they have been using in the past, and the end of the old leadership almost certainly means the gloves will come off.

Further, Hezbollah has done great damage to Israel already. The reason Israel is turning to Lebanon is that Hezbollah has displaced hundreds of thousand of settlers, causing an internal refugee problem, and combined with Yemen’s naval blockade, has massively damaged the Israeli economy. And this is with them holding back, because they did not want a general war.

But the only way to truly defeat Israel is to defeat their military, and the best way to do that is for them to attack into Lebanon. Hezbollah, hopefully, will ramp up its attacks to force Israel to do just that, if it isn’t intending to already (which they almost certainly are), and if it is already intending to, to make it happen sooner.

The war, then, is still in its early stages. Do not fall to doom and gloom (if you support the resistance), nor optimism (if you’re pro-genocide). Wait, and see. The real battles, which will determine the outcome of the war, have not yet happened.

Palestinian Deaths In the Gaza Conflict Are Probably Close To Half A Million

By Ian Welsh

On July 26, 2024

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It’s time to cut thru the crap on Gaza death tolls. Here’s a graph of official deaths:

You’ll notice that over time the curve is flattening. Now you might be stupid enough to dunk your eyes in Dettol for fun, and thus think “oh, I’m sure the rate of killing has decreased significantly”, but given that Israel is systematically funneling Palestinians into “humanitarian zones” which it then bombs the hell out of once there’s a good density, that seems unlikely.

There is also the fact that the Palestinian authorities which count deaths are not as effective as they were at the beginning of the genocide.

Psychologically one suspects Hamas does not want to admit how high the death toll is either.

So let’s eyeball that chart and extend the original line before the flattening. We’ll be conservative, and say it should be around sixty thousand.

Now, the Lancet came out with a study on what the actual death toll might be. Let’s look at their methodology.

Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.

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In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death

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to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip. A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death toll was 28 000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be between 58 260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85 750 deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024.

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So, the normal number of indirect deaths is three to fifteen times and the Lancet chose four. But Israel has restricted food and medical aid and systematically destroyed hospitals. Multiple countries cut off funding to the primary aide agency, UNWRA, and most Gazans can’t flee: there’s no way out of Gaza.

That is to say that the indirect death multiplier is almost certainly higher than average in Gaza. So let’s assume just slightly higher than average: an eight times multiplier.

Now do the math 8*60,000=480,000.

A reasonable estimate of the death toll in Gaza is thus 480,000 people. Almost half a million and about seventeen percent of the pre-war population.

Whatever the death toll is it will be closer to half a million than to forty thousand.

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