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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   37847 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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Reviewing Predictions on the Israel-Gaza War

The Institute for the Study of War opines that

The Israeli campaign into the Gaza Strip was a military success but has fallen short thus far of setting conditions to replace Hamas as a governing entity. The Israeli government enumerated three objectives at the beginning of the war: destroy Hamas’ military, return the hostages, and destroy Hamas’ government.[1] These objectives—though expansive—were achievable through a combination of military and political action. The Israeli campaign succeeded in destroying Hamas’ military and securing a ceasefire that would release the hostages. The campaign has also isolated Hamas in the Gaza Strip, though Israel and its partners will need to ensure that Hamas remains contained. But neither Israel nor the United States has tried seriously to achieve a political end state that would build upon this military success and permanently replace Hamas as a governing entity in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s failure to achieve this final war aim means that the strip will remain without an alternative governance structure and security broker, and Hamas remnants will inevitably try to fill that role again, especially as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdraw. Hamas will use this space to reassert its political authority and reconstitute its forces—unless the United States and Israel take further steps to prevent those things from occurring.

The Middle East Monitor meanwhile summarizes Israeli opinion:

Unlike previous military campaigns in Gaza – on a much smaller scale compared to the current genocidal war – there is no significant strand of Israeli society claiming victory. The familiar rhetoric of “mowing the lawn”, which Israel often uses to describe its wars, is notably absent. Instead, there is a semi-consensus within Israel that the ceasefire deal was unequivocally bad, even disastrous for the country. The word “bad” carries broad implications. For Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, it represents a “complete surrender”. For the equally extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, it is a “dangerous deal” that compromises Israel’s “national security”. Israeli President Isaac Herzog refrained from offering political specifics but addressed the deal in equally strong terms: “Let there be no illusions. This deal – when signed, approved and implemented – will bring with it deeply painful, challenging and harrowing moments.”

In Haaretz we get headlines like: "Total Victory in Gaza? Dismantling Hamas? The Hostage Deal Is Exposing Netanyahu's Lies” and "The Gaza Cease-fire and Hostage Deal Is the Same One From Eight Months Ago. Why Did Netanyahu Accept It Now? Ailing hostages rotting in tunnels for 15 months and over 120 Israeli soldiers killed since Benjamin Netanyahu declined a previous cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas are the least of the Israeli prime ministers' concerns. He wanted to be pressured just ahead of Trump's inauguration”

I can’t track it down online and I’ve since recycled the paper, but at the signing of the ceasefire, I read a WSJ op-ed in which the writer bemoaned that the hostage exchange, as lopsided as it was, constituted a defeat for Israel, and provided an obvious structure for future defeats. There’s been a consistent drumbeat of sentiment among committed Zionists and self-described foreign policy realists that the ceasefire constitutes an Israeli defeat. And inasmuch as one takes Netanyahu seriously earlier in the war, it does seem a defeat of a kind. Israeli hawks have said from the beginning that they were fighting to destroy Hamas root and branch and obtain lasting peace and security for Israel. That this was not another “mowing the grass” operation, that their intent was to totally and permanently alter the relationship between Israel and Gaza such that there would never be another attack originating from Gaza against Israel.

Now, at the end of the war, the grass is well and truly mowed, but permanent changes seem unlikely to materialize. Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity, while the doomerism seems overwrought it’s tough to see how Israel emerged from this more secure in its long term future. In the short term, perhaps even for a decade or so, Hezbollah is neutered, Hamas is pulling itself off the mat, Iran has been punched in the nose, Baathist Syria is gone; the grass is mowed, there is no immediate threat of attack. But in the longer term, it is hard to see what strategic objective Israel achieved. While a great many Palestinians were killed, amid cries of GENOCIDE from the usual suspects, I’m not even sure there are fewer Palestinians now than there were on 10/6/23. The attitude of those left behind in Palestine towards Israel requires little guesswork. Support for Israel is in decline among younger American voters, they may not be able to count on unconditional US support in the future (I’m not sure Zionism is a position likely to shift with age in the way that positions of issues like Taxes and Racial Equality have historically shifted with age). Israel still has no actual operational plan of what an acceptable government of Gaza would look like, a group that they would endorse as an alternative to Hamas rule in the enclave, or even an outline or an idea of what such a group might be. Many Israeli officials and soldiers face risk of prosecution abroad on war crimes charges, which I imagine will not come to pass in any significant quantity, but it means something that thousands of Israelis will be unable to travel to much of Europe. Israel is unlikely to see a revival of the Abraham Accords peace process with the Gulf States under a second Trump admin, though we can all hope that the Dealmaker in Chief can pull a rabbit out of the turban and get this done.

Looking back, this leaked intelligence paper from Israel detailing plans for removing the population of Gaza to camps in the Sinai before occupying Gaza, was remarkably prescient. The authors predict that the violence required to occupy a populated Gaza would be too great, unsustainable for the Israeli forces politically, and result in the Israeli forces ultimately exiting Gaza without achieving their goals. This has now occurred. While Trump is now making noises about removing Gazan civilians, it is not clear how this would be achieved physically.

@Pasha had an excellent comment near the beginning of the war presaging the situation facing Israel now:

To delve deeper into the uncomfortable topic of the looming genocide, I also increasingly get the feeling that contrary to the expectations of some whose view of geopolitics is eerily similar to RTS mechanics, the genocidal military power IDF is displaying right now is ultimately going to harm Israel a lot more than it helps. I think it mainly has to do with political/military leadership trying to cover their ass and muffle their enormous failures with the sound of bombs. If IDF really goes through with their plan which seems likely to cost civilian lives in the hundreds of thousands, I don't think the nation of Israel will ever recover from this. It is a country that is already losing two of its most powerful weapon: Endlessly idealistic and intelligent Ashkenazi founders who knew to out-think and out-work their opponents at very turn, and most importantly to not lose the sight of their goal even when they had to take very nasty decisions at times: to create a people. Not to destroy one. These people are not only losing out in demography but also they are losing the soul of the nation. Their spirit will not survive a Gazan genocide [AND] Zionist influence in the Western world. Through a combination of dedication, money, human quality, well-crafted propaganda, historical guilt and Cold War positioning, Zionists has always had a very unique power position in Western institutions, especially the US ones. This is quickly disappearing. Western Jews are assimilating into the PMC deracinated blob at a breathtaking pace. They are losing the set of assumptions that motivated them to identify with their kin in Israel, and they are losing the power that comes from ethnic favoritism. A Gazan genocide is very likely going to be the final nail in the coffin here.

I fully agree that the situation with Gaza is entirely unsustainable. But if Israelis go through with what they are plotting right now, they will slowly but surely find out that they are 7 million souls surviving in an ocean of half a billion through miracles, and they are pissing in the miracle potion.

It seems clear that predictions at the outset that “eliminating” Hamas/Islamism as a force in Gaza was not an achievable goal. I’m curious to see if this is an example people reach for in the future. Given the failure to consider predictions based on the 9/11 experience before this war, I doubt it.

What other predictions did you find particularly prescient or wrongheaded?

Israeli hawks have said from the beginning that they were fighting to destroy Hamas root and branch and obtain lasting peace and security for Israel.

Duh, they failed in this goal. There are still Palestinians about, after all.

Israel has a way to gain lasting peace and security- occupy the Sinai, next time Gaza attacks march their entire population out into the desert to die, and tell the west bank that they are now obligated to summarily execute anyone entertaining antizionist ideologies or the entire village will be(they will likely need to make good on this threat a few times). This is not politically possible, but it is what it would take to secure Israel from attack. So Israeli security is not an achievable goal. They're going to do this again in ten years.

How would invading Egypt make Israel's position more secure, rather than less?

If they're struggling to squelch a couple million Palestinians, then how are they supposed to deal with over 100 million Egyptians?

We need to remember that Israel is not a gigantic behemoth like China or Russia, it is a small country heavily reliant on foreign military technology and access to world markets to sustain its strength. They don't have the option of pulling these stunts and getting their high-tech economy rugpulled like a cheap shitcoin.

Israel has defeated Egypt several times before; there's very few people living in the Sinai and a border at the Suez gives them the physical space necessary for death camps.

So the plan is

  1. Invade Egypt and make the big powers very unhappy because of how they need the Suez Canal for their trade
  2. Move a few million Palestinians out of Gaza and into the Sinai where they'll be tortured, starved, brainwashed and/or exterminated in death camps
  3. Somehow hope this doesn't turn into a darkly ironic Warsaw Ghetto uprising but larger and with more tunnels
  4. Somehow avoid having the Israeli economy reduced to zero
  5. Somehow get weapons and munitions to do all this from... the US? Or who?
  6. Secure all their other borders against air and ground attacks at the same time

See Nazi Germany could try this kind of stunt (while fighting first-rate world powers) because they actually were a big, strong country with the armies and industry needed to conquer large territories and exterminate people en masse. Israel is not a big country and enjoys less freedom of action, their army is smaller than Turkey's.

Thailand has a bigger army. Indonesia has a bigger army. Size matters and Israel isn't big, they have no room to make errors and little resources to fall back on.

Moreover, Israel is reliant for its suffrage on a moral system that such actions would undermine. Israel exists and is tolerated in large part because of Western guilt over antisemitism and the Holocaust, a belief in the idea of self determination for ethnic minorities. The moment those beliefs disappear in the USA and the west, so does Israel.

Israel is a nuclear state

South Africa was, too, one upon a time.

South Africa had 6 primitive nuclear weapons made with barely enriched uranium and was less than 10% white(Israel has an outright Jewish majority).

In 1994 whites made up just 10% of the population in South Africa. Even in a fully integrated Israel-Palestine Jews would be 40-50% of the population at the start.

Plus, the whites knew that to some extent South Africa remaining a broadly capitalist country in which they could keep their private property was likely under the international system. Black South Africans mostly don’t hate white people. Even today, the great majority of the richest people and largest landowners in South Africa are white; whites own ~70% of agricultural land and are overrepresented even in the current governing coalition with the ANC.

In the event of an Israel-Palestine I very much doubt the relationship between Jews and Arabs will look like that 30 years after integration.

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