The Gaza war has been going on for two months now. I am starting to get very sick of seeing it day after day. Especially, sick of seeing dead Palestinian children, burned, rotting or with their guts out.
I am even more sick of the sick people still ready to do anything, shut out all truth, go into every kind of pretzel logic, to defend the indefensible. I am sick of seeing these ugly, fanatic, glaring or smirking faces of Zionists all over the media. I am sick of hearing “antisemite” thrown at anyone challenging the Zionist lies.
I have terminated friendships with people supporting Israel and Zionism. I have now ended subscriptions to newsletters which do not clearly condemn the genocide of Palestinians. Yet I have more tolerance for people who flat out approve it, than for the total failures as humans who try to ‘both sides’ the atrocity.
emotional reaction
I am sick of it. Of course, the typical Gazan is by now a lot more sick of it than I. She is there and I am here.
I wonder why this all upsets me so much, really. I watch it and read about it, on my electronics, from eight thousand miles away. I am in my warm suite in Toronto, with unlimited good Lake Ontario water coming out of my tap.
My lights work, my fridge is full, no bombs are dropping on me. There is a community health clinic just up the street. The hospitals are still working, although they are having problems with the covid mass infection and the neoliberal disruption of public health care.
My biggest worry so far is that Musk will cut off my Twitter, oops, X, account for saying “From the river to the sea…” or similar sentiments. I have expressed pro Palestine sentiments in some net forums. I have yet to be banned from one for expressing such sentiments.
In one, I put down a link to one of my blog posts and generated a fifty six comments long thread. I simply checked out of it and let these people go on making complete asses of themselves, denouncing me as an antisemite, and stronger nouns and adjectives. No one defended me on this forum, but I got substantial reads on that, and subsequent blog posts, from that forum.
I have put out some strong pro Palestine blog articles. They are the most read stuff I have done in awhile. No one has attacked the actual articles, but I am sure some new bytes appeared in some automated files on me in some databases somewhere.
I am not out walking around with signs and smearing ketchup on store fronts. I am too old for that anyway. Of course, I have obtained my very own “Free Palestine” t-shirt in my size, but I will likely not be wearing it in anywhere public until next summer.
I am not too worried about encountering some Zionist thug on the street. From what I know about these people, from some strongly anti Zionist Jewish friends of mine, they only get chippy when they are in large groups. Even then, unless they have a large numerical advantage, they will cower behind the police.
Zionism
But here is what is frightening; the Zionists remain powerful. They are strongly embedded within both the big factions of the capitalist oligarchy. The right wing Christian Zionists, the dumbest type of fanatic yet known, are growing in number.
The left Zionists have also gained new recruits in recent years. These are the same people who also scream about “Putin” and his “invasion” of Ukraine. You would not even call that hypocrisy, but rather cognitive incoherence; the inability to develop any coherent world view.
They are the people who engage in the ‘pronouns’ nonsense and all the other identity politics. They lead in demanding that our industrial infrastructure be torn down because of the climate doing what it does, changing. There are not that many of these people, or their right wing counterparts, but they are powerful weapons for the oligarchic forces which develop and deploy them.
What seems to have really rattled the Zionists in the western countries is the rise of this new movement they did not create and do not control. In street demonstrations and other public confrontations, the Zionists are badly outnumbered and rhetorically outgunned.
The managers of TikTok are apologizing to the chief perception managers for the preponderance of anti Zionist content on their platform. They explain that their young user demographic is simply pro Palestinian. The same seems to hold true throughout the cyberspace.
The Zionists have lost the propaganda war. Hamas somehow has developed a much more powerful propaganda service. They must have had some help from somewhere, and that is a very interesting topic.
It seems some elements of the globalist elite have broken with Zionism. This is part of the split among the globalists which is growing apparent as they lose their hegemony. The factions have not publicly challenged each other yet.
The Zionists are not backing down, but are becoming even more vicious. The buttons are being pushed to bring about a suppression of these new transgressors. However, the buttons are not working as well as they did.
People who make any kind of pro Palestine statement online are being identified and attacked. People are being fired, censured, denied advancement opportunities, their careers threatened, false complaints laid against them, and so on. This is clearly well resourced and well organized; a strong argument for internet privacy.
People are being falsely arrested over pro Palestine stuff. Pro P demonstrations are being shadowed and bullied by police while Zionist actions are being left alone. The long spell of Toronto police keeping out of politics has been broken by the Zionist panic.
The pro Palestinians are not backing down. This movement is growing in strength. It is really encouraging that they are not simply accepting official attack and suppression as a price of political expression.
They expect the courts to work for them. They are starting law suits against their attackers. They are demanding that charges be dropped and they often are dropped.
Again, it is frightening that Canadian politicians, from all parties and all levels, wall to wall, support Zionism. So does much of academia and civil society. It does not seem to matter what atrocities the Israeli army commits, or what racist and xenophobic rants Israeli leaders come out with, or how thoroughly Israeli propaganda is debunked.
It does not matter that the Canadian public is now solidly on the side of Palestine. It does not matter that the whole world is revolted by the Israeli mass slaughter of Gaza. It seems to be no matter that Canada continuing to vote against Palestine in the United Nations destroys our international prestige and credibility, and thus hampers our international relations.
It is as though we were a client state of Israel. The situation is the same with the United States, even though Israel depends totally on it. Their army and economy would collapse without American support and subsidies.
Once, the USA had real power over Israel. On several occasions, American presidents could order the Israeli Prime Minister to stop a war, or attacks by Zionist fanatics on Palestinians. The present Israeli chief of state brags that he does not care what the Americans think, he will do as he pleases.
effective resistance
The old saying is that arrogance goes before a fall. Israel is clearly headed for a fall if it continues attacking Gaza. The question is if it will happen before most of Gaza has dropped dead.
Israel’s army is losing on the ground against the Hamas military forces, called the Qassam brigades. Their real casualty rate is kept secret. If they were making any progress against the Qassams, they would be showing us the dead enemy fighters, captured equipment, and the cleared tunnels.
There is also a northern front to this war. The Hezbollah militia of Lebanon has mobilized along the border with Israel. The Israelis have a hard time coping with Hezbollah’s rolling strikes across the borders.
Israel dares not cross the border and run into Hezbollah’s system of tunnels and its weapons, much better than what Hamas possesses. It has bombed in Lebanon, causing some civilian deaths, and threatened to flatten Beirut as it did in 1988.
Hezbollah now has a large missile force which could saturate Israeli air defences and flatten Tel Aviv. They are holding this back as Beirut’s insurance against another flattening. Israel is also taking some fire from across the Syrian border.
The Houthis in Yemen have joined in the fun and games. They have fired missiles but none have reached Israel yet. They have seized several Israeli owned ships in the Red Sea and attacked others.
The Americans have ships in the Red Sea but have not attacked the Houthis. This is for the same reason the Saudis ended their war on the Houthis. They now have Iranian supplied missiles which could destroy the Saudi oil fields and shipping terminals.
inside Israel
The Israeli government has clearly lost domestic support. We get contradictory information about the mood of the Israeli street. There is a poll out which claims two thirds of Israelis think their army is not using enough firepower on Gaza yet.
Yet most Israelis seem to want the war to stop and for their own people in military service to stop becoming casualties. They want the hostages held by Hamas released. The families of these hostages have become leaders in demanding an end to the war.
People are arguing in the Israeli streets, with some saying Gaza should be simply ‘given’ to the Palestinians, like it is not theirs to begin with. Others scream about driving the “Sons of Amalek” into the desert or the sea. More credible polls show that support for Netanyahu and his Likud coalition government has collapsed.
If an election could be held, the somewhat less vicious opposition would take power. Israel is famous for unstable governments and frequent elections. However, the present Prime Minister, Netanyahu, will go to jail for a long time for embezzlement whenever he finally loses office.
Thus, Netanyahu accepts the support of the extreme right wing parties. The religious extremists see this as their opportunity and are determined not to let it go by. Their goal is to have the non Jewish populations “from the River to the Sea” eliminated.
Some of these people see even driving Palestinians out as a mistake. They would just sit in refugee camps outside Israel’s borders, plotting revenge on Israel. They should all be killed.
The war is also having a calamitous effect on Israel’s economy, from which it will not recover. The costs of the mobilization are huge, as much of the workforce has gone into the army. No one any longer wants to trade with Israel, or invest in Israel.
surrounding Israel
A military alliance is slowly starting to come together which could crush Israel. The problem is that most of these countries do not trust each other and have even been fighting with each other. However, public outrage about the Gaza massacre is so intense and universal that they are going to have no choice but to work together.
Egypt has a strong military but the government is committed to secularism and distrusts the religious based Hamas. Hamas and Palestinians belong to the Sunni branch of Islam. They do not trust the countries where most of the people are of the Shia branch of Islam; Hezbollah of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
During the war in Syria, Hamas sent troops to fight alongside Islamic State (ISIS). Hezbollah sent troops to help the Syrian government. Yet since then, they have patched up their quarrel. Hezbollah has trained Hamas in the art of tunnel warfare.
The Arab states which border the Persian gulf generally distrust Shia Islam and especially the Iranians; the ‘Persians’. However, they are patching up this quarrel as well. The Arabs are making it clear they want the war on Gaza to end immediately. Qatar in particular is a big funder and supporter of the Palestinians and Hamas.
Turkey also has a very powerful army. The mentally unstable president of Turkey, Erdogan, talks about soon being at war with Israel. However, he is known for having a big mouth and for not following through on what comes out of it.
The key piece which could make an alliance against Israel fall into place is Russia. It already has troops and aircraft in Syria and helped it to win its war with ISIS, the American funded proxy army unleashed on it. Until now, it has been trying to be neutral toward Israel.
The Russian government really does not like what Israel is doing. However, Russia is always very cautious. It does not want to get into anything new in South West Asia before it finishes up in Ukraine.
Russia has made clear that the genocidal attack on Gaza must stop. Russia has strongly supported the United Nations resolutions about the situation. Heads of state of the above mentioned countries have been flying to Moscow.
Russia is especially concerned about America moving naval forces into the Eastern Mediterranean to prevent any country from coming to the aid of Gaza. As soon as the Americans did this, Russia started deploying aircraft carrying hypersonic missiles with nuclear warheads over the Black Sea. These could destroy these American naval forces.
It is clear that Israel will be unable to defeat Hamas. If it keeps trying, inevitably a regional war will begin. This could lead to nuclear war, which Russia as a nuclear power has a special interest in avoiding.
Despite all this, the extreme right in Israel remains defiant. Netanyahu’s response to criticism in the Israeli parliament is; “Shut up”. They defy the Americans to stop them, even though the attack depends on a flow of American munitions.
The question is, how bad must the situation get for Gazan civilians before the hammer finally comes down on Israel. The United Nations Secretary General is becoming more strident. A resolution what would give legal justification for military action on Israel is being held up only by the American veto.
resilience
The Gazan population has so far proven remarkably resilient. Much has been written about the way human populations respond under stress; to either a sudden emergency or a slow developing crisis, or to being crowded together in an impossible situation. Much of the way Gazans have reacted contradicts these assumptions.
The Gazans are not in denial about their situation. They understand how dire it is. They are not attacking people or symbols which remind them of this.
They are not turning on their government. They are not blaming their government for the situation and are not demanding of it what it cannot do. They understand how the situation has developed, and the logic in their government’s response.
The really grim truth for the Gazans is that this crisis was seen coming a long way and there has been no way to avoid it. The Israeli government sees them as subhuman and a constant threat, wants them dead or driven into Egypt, and and has been making their territory uninhabitable. Egypt is understandably very resistant to taking them in.
The Gazans are quite literally in a “die on your feet or die on your knees” dilemma. They can kneel down and be slaughtered like sheep. They can stand and fight back with everything they can muster, and if they die they will at least have made their murderers pay a price.
Zionism has already paid a huge price. The whole world has seen through them. They will never recover from this and it is the beginning of the end of the Israeli state.
By fighting like this, the Gazans have given themselves a chance at survival. They may all die, or Israel may be forced to a halt, or Egypt may crack and let them escape into Sinai. Meanwhile, they focus on staying alive, and keeping their children alive.
No acts of suicidal rage seem to be happening; people charging at Israeli soldiers with rocks. There are many examples of quiet courage, for example doctors telling the invaders; “my patients are immobile and I will not abandon them. If you are going to kill us all, then do it.” Journalists struggle to get the truth out to the world, knowing that the enemy is tracking and killing them.
The people let their army fight, and stay out of its way. Those who are suitable for military service, and trained and armed, are making Israel pay. The Qassams are not using suicide bombers or ‘human shields’.
There appears to be little or no looting going on, or gangs stealing food from the weak. This is despite the lack of a strong police presence, which would simply be attacked by Israel anyway. People self organize and help each other as best they can, in the face of Israeli efforts to flag and eliminate any apparent leader.
There is no evidence, from the video and text accounts getting out of Gaza, of the kind of demoralized behaviour often described in people in crisis situations. There is no ‘milling about’. The ‘give up and die’ response is not the norm.
The range of responses in an emergency are said to be; about 30% of people respond appropriately to it, 50% wait for someone to tell them what to do, 10% are overly optimistic, and 10% deny there is any problem. The optimists and the deniers are the first to die in disaster situations.
Those who get through such situations are generally the ones who focus on surviving another hour and another day. That is what the Gazan people seem to be doing. They are not hoping and they are not giving up.
It seems that 75 years of living under siege has forged the Gazans into a resilient community.
the ending
Some people claiming inside knowledge have said that the Americans are giving Israel another month to finish the war. Israel will not be able to accomplish its stated goal of finishing off Hamas in that time. The Qassams are proving to be nearly invulnerable in their tunnel complexes.
As well, Israel’s actual goal, of driving the population out of Gaza, will not be achievable in that time. However, the situation is now at a point where disease and starvation will begin killing more Gazans than bombs and shells. A tipping point will come where the states involved in the crisis will have to act or lose all credibility, and in some cases power.
It is likely Egypt will have to act first. They would remove the Israeli supervisors from the Rafah crossing and throw it open to relief supplies. Their troops would have to escort the supplies to prevent Israel from destroying it.
One thing which would apply serious pressure to Israel with minimal civilian casualties would be a distant air and sea blockade. That is, any ship or plane going to or from Israel would be seized. The Houthis have made a start at this.
The elephant in the room is the Israeli possession of nuclear weapons. The Israelis have long threatened to use them if their army is facing defeat. An obvious concern is that the lunatics in control in Jerusalem may use nuclear weapons on Gaza.
Israel is very stupid to have got nuclear weapons. If they ever used them they would likely get such weapons used on them. Israel would not only destroy itself but everything around them.
This is why the world would likely be a lot safer if Russia got more directly involved. It could provide the air defence which would protect Arab and Iranian cities and enable the Arab armies to go on the attack. They would also deter the Americans, who have been taught by the Ukraine war that they really do not want a war with Russia.
unsupportable
This returns us to the question of the totally strange American behavior regarding Israel. The blind support for anything Israel does is completely against the American’s real interest. It does not help them control the ‘Middle East’; it is destroying all its remaining influence with every state in that region.
This would be one cause of the split which is becoming apparent within the American elite. The ultimate basis for support for Zionism is not rational. It is in the religious ideas many members of this elite have, including Dominionist Christians.
However, much of the oligarchy see the harm being done to their empire and their real interests. These people are not yet in a position to openly challenge the Zionists. They may not matter much if the USA collapses in the next few years, as many people see coming.
Such a collapse would also be the collapse of the Israeli Zionist state, as it depends totally on the USA. Of course the Gazans cannot wait around for that.
The justification the American government is using, to keep funding Israel and vetoing UN resolutions, mimics Israeli justification for the war. That is, if they allow Hamas to survive, the Israelis will just keep getting attacks from Gaza. Since they will not defeat Hamas without eliminating the civilian population of Gaza, this entails genocide.
As well, Israel claims a right to defend itself, especially against such a horrible attack, and ‘terrorism’ cannot be allowed. As the old saying goes, the opposition are terrorists, our clients are ‘freedom fighters’. The Israelis are the biggest purveyors around, of state terrorism against civilian populations.
The Israelis constantly raid into Gaza, assassinating people and taking hostages, even during times of supposed truce. The have no hesitation in killing women and children. This is what makes all the exaggerations and outright falsifications about the Qassam brigades operation into Israel so offensive.
It cannot be repeated often enough what article four of the Geneva convention says about military occupations. Such occupations cannot be long term. When the civilian population resists, the occupier must leave.
Those under occupation have the right to do anything to resist and drive out the occupier. Nothing the occupier does to suppress a resistance is legitimate. It cannot claim self defence so as to maintain the occupation.
The same document also describes genocide as the ultimate crime. This includes the extermination or the forced removal of a population or any part of it. These rules were inspired by the treatment of Jewish and other people during the world war.
a state of peace
It cannot be repeated too often, that if the Israelis want peace with the Palestinians, they can stop trying to drive them out and steal their land. There must be a single state, a Palestinian state, “from the River to the Sea”, with justice and equality for all. Israelis can accept that or go back where they came from.
And this, finally, makes the ‘both sider’s’ solution for the conflict ridiculous. That is, the ‘two state’ solution. We have seen how that would work as long as one of the states has military superiority and control of transportation routes.
Contrary to the often heard twaddle about there being “no military solution’ to the Palestine conflict, in this case there is only a military solution. An international force must be deployed, with a United Nations mandate, to end not just Israeli occupation, but the Israeli state. To achieve that, the USA must be removed from the security council.
Israel must be encircled and blockaded until it submits to a United Nations occupation and reconstruction under a UN commission. The Israeli armed forces must be disarmed. Stolen property must be returned to its right full owners. Crimes against the Palestinian population must be punished.
Finally, there is the handsome subject of reparations. Individual Palestinians are owed by the illegal occupants of their lands, often for several generations. Palestine collectively is owed reparations from countries which supported Zionism, including Canada.
However, the biggest responsibility, and the biggest reparations, are owed by the United States. Uncle Sam should be required to replace a lot of destroyed buildings and infrastructure. Plus, pay a lot of compensation to people for missing limbs and deceased relatives, and wasted years of life.
When all this has been arranged, then there can be peace. Enough said.
Previous posts on this topic;
https://adultsincharge.blog/2023/11/19/the-gaza-war-backward-and-forward/
https://adultsincharge.blog/2023/10/31/about-gaza-and-holocausts/