At its core, the cabinet judges that public anger and the call to “crush” Hamas will outlast the US estimation of a ‘few weeks’ war at most.
By Alastair Crooke
Biden and his team, who were angling for a full ceasefire, have been comprehensively rebuffed. The Cabinet and the Israeli military were chaffing under the constraints of a ceasefire. Once any military action is stopped, the longer the “time out”, the harder it is to begin again. As expected, the truce now has come to an end. American expectations were unrealistic, given the mood of the public and the unity within Netanyahu’s Cabinet.
Effectively, we are entering a new war — for it will be on a markedly different scale. For one, the Hamas leadership has said that in this next phase, the main fighting force (three-quarters of all its Gaza fighting men) will engage the Israeli soldiers; and secondly, because the war is likely to widen and take new and unexpected paths.
Not only did Netanyahu and his team snub Biden — Blinken said to Gallant, “You only have a few more weeks,” to which Gallant replied, It “will be months,” to which Blinken snapped back, “I don’t think you have months” — but significantly, Netanyahu’s Cabinet ministers also knowingly – and deliberately — cut across the ‘red line’ enunciated by the united Resistance fronts: Stop the massacre in Gaza, or else!
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Why knowingly and deliberately?
Because “Israel’s” Cabinet war aims are in a process of metamorphosis — partly to escape censure for the lapses that allowed October 7 to take “Israel” by surprise, Netanyahu the ‘master of image maker’ is shifting public attention away from the initial Hamas attack (which he blames on Military and Intelligence shortcomings) to paint a canvas of 7 October events in the dramatic brush-strokes as the opening round of a ‘Second War of Independence.’ In short, “Israel” is fighting a no-choice war. And “Israel’s” survival (and Netanyahu’s personal political survival) is possible only if the war is prolonged since it is a formative “national struggle”.
The cabinet strategy, therefore, rests on the bet that Israeli public opinion will hold (despite Netayahu’s personal disapproval ratings), due to the overwhelming public support at this point for the two declared objects set by the war cabinet: Destroying the ‘Hamas regime’ and its capabilities and the release of all Israeli captives in Gaza.
At its core, the cabinet judges that public anger and the call to “crush” Hamas will outlast the US estimation of a ‘few weeks’ war at most. On this, Netanyahu and his cabinet seem to be on firm ground. A poll published last Friday by the Israeli Democratic Institute reported that 90% of the public fully support the “annihilation of Hamas.” IDI’s Director commented that the poll underscored that nothing had changed in terms of Israeli attitudes: There is no basis, the director noted, in his sounding of opinion, to support either a ceasefire or a political solution. For the Israeli public, there can be no stability until “Hamas is eradicated.”
The second step taken by “Israel’s” cabinet is to support Netanyahu’s artistry of a “heroic, no-choice struggle” by coloring the coming ‘War of Independence’ in absolute Manichean terms: light versus the dark; civilization versus barbarism. This is intended to kindle a wave of support for the key step of taking the “fiction” of a political agreement with the Palestinians off the table — “once and for all.”
The ‘table’ is being set for a long Israeli war against ‘cosmic evil’.
“Only I [Netanyahu] can prevent a Palestinian State ever coming into being in Gaza, Judea or Samaria”: “I will not allow it”. “There will never be” [a Palestinian state]”. ‘Only I can manage relations with Biden (a 40 year friendship). Only I know how to manage the US psyche’.
“I am leading”… ‘not only on behalf of Jewish history but also Western civilization’.
It is a typical narcissistic Netanyahu bluster. Agreed. But it is also an all too common mistake in the West to underestimate one’s adversaries. Netanyahu’s bluster may work. It seems from the polling that it will. (Netanyahu is a fox).
Haaretz military affairs correspondent Amos Harel writes:
“The anger in Israel over these events (surrounding 7th October), is mounting continuously … the emotional considerations come on top of the prevailing notion among the public that without the total defeat of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, there is no prospect of reducing the damage wrought by the surprise attack. Moreover, that without a military victory on this scale, it will be impossible to deter Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon from attempting similar actions in the future”.
It cannot be spelled out more clearly than from these statements by Netanyahu (“no Palestinian State”) that “Israel” is pushing for a Second Nakba. Netanyahu is building — with his florid Manichaeanism popular domestic support — toward a silent new ultimatum for Gaza: “Emigration or annihilation”. And later, in the West Bank, too.
So, here comes the ‘new war’: A Hebraic civilizational war to establish a ‘new’ “Israel” on the “Land Of Israel” versus the emerging Islamic nationalism undergirded by civilizational (non-institutional) Islam.
Hamas — indeed — has shattered the paradigm. The “two-states notion” has slipped under the waves.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
Alastair Crooke, Director of Conflicts Forum; Former Senior British Diplomat; Author. Via Al Mayadeen
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Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
Comments
9 responses to “Netanyahu and his cabinet are taking ‘Israel’ to Biblical Armageddon”
Holocost revisited by Israel to the Palestinians.. I wonder what their Godthinks about their mass killings of children hospitals. The list goes on
How is it possible for world governments, including my own British of which I am deeply ashamed, not, repeat not, to condemn Israel for what it is doing most catastrophically in Gaza but relentlessly too on the West Bank? How?
What Netanyahu and his government has done in its frightful actions, massacres and ethnic cleansing has turned the state of Israel into a paradigm not only for Arabs but for all right thinking people of a state that should never have been created and does not deserve to exist.
Who knows how it will end? As things look, it’s the approaching triumph of Eretz Israel, and what will be a tragedy of undying hatred in the region, even more as Israel’s military ascendancy diminishes and its Arab neighbours’ strengthens.
Where does the brain-washing and manipulation of the Israeli population come from? Are they really so immersed in their Tel Aviv coffee shops and beaches and Western life-style, their enjoyment of “Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest”, the hillside garden suburbs rich with cypress and glorious comfort and planting while Gaza, yes and the West Bank Palestinians see their already oppressed existence crushed by armoured bulldozers into rubble and thousands massacred.
Why are the Israelis so unmindful of all the misery inflicted by them daily, in small ways and hugely horrific, on the West Bank and Gaza most of all, before those self-sacrificing and doomed young Gaza men launched their desperate attack on October 7th?
What horrors did Jews resist and flee from to reach the shores of Palestine…though actually how many have the comforts of dual nationality, American, British and European Jews who have happily waltzed into richly-funded West Bank enclaves on land wrenched from desperately poor Palestinians with nowhere else to go.
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar opens with a denunciation of the level of forgetfulness and ignorance that so many display, like the current population of Israel…
“You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! O you hard hearts, you cruel…”
Look at yourselves, all the tables laid out, with silhouette pictures, the word hostage – and fancy that in Israel yet English! all this festive and lamentatory fuss over 200 plus hostages, all of whom so far well treated with no death threats whatever on them except from Israeli bombs when in the same period of their captivity it must be more than 20000 Palestinian dead with all the bodies too under rubble.
And yes I too would weep and curse for the fate of my kidnapped child as anyone would but not to have my grief exploited because our Hamas and Golan Brigades were shamefully defeated and for longer term political aims!
And does the ratio of 100 to 1 dead remind you of anything in World War Two? Kidnap and kill a German soldier and 100 hostages could be shot.
On top of all the deaths, two thirds women and children, there’s the frightful damage of homes and all that makes survival possible, as well as the colossal scale of injuries and the inevitable psychological damage. All of it is scarcely imaginable.
Is this enough for the Jewish population to consider and enough reason for world leaders to condemn? Not quite!
Actually no, there is something worse. There is all this as a frightful precedent for a renewed age of barbarity that most of us hoped we had left behind, except perhaps in relatively far and obscure conflicts. What is next? We thought Russia’s assault was frightful, now this with hardly any official condemnation and my BBC channel endlessly repeating the mindless formula in referring to Hamas as a terrorist organisation
Get real British government and the BBC etc: it’s Israel that is the terrorist organisation.
Condemn and stop Israel now: do unto others as you would they do unto you.
And the world looks on.
Disgusting.
What to expect from a religious-Fascistic entity? The aim is Genocide by mass murder of the civilian population. What is difference today is that the Jews are committing their crimes in broad daylight.
I am on hundred percent in agreement and supportive of your comments.
Apparently the creator of the “Chosen People” has yet again given them marching orders to slay as many of their non-Jewish neighbors–putatively also his own creations–as possible. I mean, they have always claimed to be merely following his orders on this, just as any loyal Schutzstaffel Soldat would do. Is this for his own personal entertainment (using the latest innovation in theatrical technology since smell-o-vision?), or has he not the skills to stop creating said defective creatures in his own image and likeness? What’s the logical explanation, eh? If you can answer that, I’d also like to know how killing his only son reincarnated in human form earns humanity his forgiveness for exercising the human nature he endowed upon us, including, most importantly, the “original sin” basically of curiosity? Seems to me he has only escalated the offense from mere disobedience to homicide. How does any of that make sense? Seems like getting released on parole for the murders you committed while serving your prison sentence. OBTW, has anyone ever seen the deed to these promised lands that the Jews claim under penalty of death to any dissenting gentiles? Maybe we should really be a skosh more skeptical of any theological claims to special rights, privileges, status or salvation based on any identity group membership.
“A poll published last Friday by the Israeli Democratic Institute reported that 90% of the public fully support the ‘annihilation of Hamas.’”
How can that be, when about 20% of the Israeli public are Arabs and other non-Jews? Are half the Arabs in favor of this holocaust committed by Jews on their own brethren?
ISRAEL—land of the new Nazis—-where what happened in WW 2 was a horror—and yet —what is it YOU have created Netanyahu and your gang off murderers? Nothing good will come from this—Look around America—why are you participating in this nightmare for Palestinians? Where it seems not to matter what Israel does—“No problem,” from America. These new Nazis need to pay for the horrors they have foisted on the Palestinians since 1948—-the Israeli Nazis are now here again filled with meanness and lack of humanity—Let us hope that this reemergence of Nazism in this land dies away. . Palestinians are still here and alive—-sadly much of Israel has chosen the Nazi role—a role that will sadly hurt the Jews more than they even know. To see the Israelis act with such impunity does not bode well, Israel—–for Pa;estinians will not be wiped out. But the Israelis running this charade of
horror? I wish you exactly what you deserve. I wish some humanity to you—but sadly it appears that death will be your dominion.
Delicately dining on the next person’s shame
Sidestepping blame is the name of the game
Then again, we must all pay our dues in the bathroom
And wiping one’s ass offers a cure for delusions of grandeur
I know this guy who passionately identifies with people like George Floyd who end up on the receiving end of the cruelty of a failed paternalistic system. You see, this guy I know had parents who sometimes vented their rage on him using terror and physical injury. The worst part may have been when his intermittently-out-of-control parents treated him as if he deserved fear and punishment for violating the rules of the game even though the rule-makers were themselves sometimes out of control. Well, he grew up to have his own cruel tendencies, but he’s learning the path to healing includes self-understanding and self-acceptance. He also knows his parents felt the crush of a failed paternalistic system. And a student’s spirit beckons him on to the last classroom of the way as a patently problematic plantation spasms in a final necrotic gasp of denial with its own knee on its own neck. Soon and very soon.