Guest essay by Scott Ritter, The Multiplural World, Oct 10, 2024
(This essay first appeared in Consortium News on Oct 8, 2024. Below find a compilation of recommended, related analysis (headlines and weblinks) drawn from the ‘World news’ page of The Multiplural World.)
I have previously written about the attack by Hamas-led forces against Israel on October 7, 2023, calling it “the most successful military raid of this century”. I have described the Hamas action as a military operation, while Israel and its allies have called it a terrorist action on the scale of what transpired against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
“The difference between the two terms,” I noted, “is night and day — by labeling the events of October 7 as acts of terrorism, Israel transfers blame for the huge losses away from its military, security, and intelligence services, and onto Hamas. If Israel were, however, to acknowledge that what Hamas did was in fact a raid — a military operation — then the competency of the Israeli military, security, and intelligence services would be called into question, as would the political leadership responsible for overseeing and directing their operations.”
Terrorism employs strategies that seek victory through attrition and intimidation — to wear an enemy down and create a sense of helplessness on the part of the enemy. Terrorists by nature avoid decisive existential conflict, but rather pursue asymmetrical battle which pits their strengths against the weaknesses of their enemies.
The war that has gripped the Levant since Oct. 7, 2023, is not your traditional anti-terrorism operation. The Hamas-Israeli conflict has morphed into a conflict between Israel and an ‘axis of resistance’ involving Hamas, Hezbollah, the governing Ansar Allah (‘Houthi’) movement in Yemen), and the Popular Mobilization Forces of Iraq, Syria and Iran. It is a regional war in every way, shape, or form that must be assessed as such.
The Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz noted in his classic work, On War, that “war is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.” From a purely military perspective, the Hamas raid on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was a relatively minor engagement, involving a few thousand combatants from each side. As a global geopolitical event, however, it has no contemporary counterpart.
The Hamas raid triggered a number of varied responses, some of which were by design, such as luring the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza, where they would become trapped in a forever war they could not win, triggering the dual Israeli doctrines governing military response to hostage taking of the ‘Hannibal Directive’ and the Israeli practice of collective punishment, the so called Dahiya Doctrine.
Both of these doctrines put the IDF on display to the world as the antithesis of the “world’s most moral military” by exposing the murderous intent ingrained into the DNA of the IDF, a propensity for violence against innocents which defines the Israeli way of war and, by extension, the Israeli nation.
Prior to Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was able to disguise its true character to the outside world, convincing all but a handful of activists that its actions in targeting “terrorists” were proportional and humane. Today, however, the world knows Israel as the genocidal, apartheid state it really is. The consequences of this new global enlightenment are manifest.
Changing the face of the Middle East
President Joe Biden announced a major policy initiative on Sept. 9, 2023 during the G20 summit in India. At that conference, a new, India-Middle East-European Economic Corridor (IMEC) was announced. This was a proposed rail, ship, pipeline and digital cable corridor connecting Europe, the Middle East and India.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, commenting on Biden’s announcement, called the IMEC “a cooperation project that is the greatest in our history”. It “takes us to a new era of regional and global integration and cooperation, unprecedented and unique in its scope”, adding that it “will bring to fruition a years-long vision that will change the face of the Middle East and of Israel”.
But because the world now views Israel as a criminal enterprise, the IMEC looks for all intents and purposes to be no more — the ‘greatest cooperation project in Israeli history’ that would have changed the Middle East likely will never reach fruition. For one thing, Saudi Arabia, a key player in the scheme having already invested $20 billion in it, says it will not normalize relations with Israel until the wars end and a Palestinian state is recognized by Israel, something the Knesset voted earlier this year would never happen. Such ‘stability’ is necessary for the project,
The demise of the IMEC is just part of the $67 billion economic hit Israel has taken since the Gaza conflict began. Tourism is down 80 percent. The southern port of Eilat no longer functions because of the anti-shipping campaign run by the Ansarullah forces of Yemen in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Workforce stability has been disrupted by the displacement of tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes because of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks as well as the mobilization of more than 300,000 reservists. All this combine to create a perfect storm of economy-killing issues, which will plague Israel so long as the current conflict continues.
The bottom line is that, left unchecked, Israel is looking at economic collapse. Investments are down, the economy is shrinking and confidence in an economic future has evaporated. In short, Israel is no longer an ideal place to retire, raise a family, work…or live. The biblical “land flowing with milk and honey,” if it ever existed, is no more.
This is an existential problem for Israel. For there to be a viable “Jewish homeland”, demographics dictate there must be a discernable Jewish majority in Israel. There are just short of ten million people living in Israel. About 7.3 million are Jews; another 2.1 million are Arabs. (Druze and other non-Arab minorities comprise the reminder.)
There are some 5.1 million Palestinians under occupation, leaving a roughly 50-50 split when looking at the combined totals between Arab and Jew. An estimated 350,000 Israelis hold dual citizenship with an EU country, while more than 200,000 hold dual citizenship with the United States. Likewise, many Israelis of European descent can easily apply for a passport simply by showing that either they, their parents, or even their grandparents resided in a European country. Another 1.5 million Israelis are of Russian descent, with many of those holding valid Russian passports.
While the main reasons for maintaining this dual-citizen status are convenience and economic, many view the second passport as “an insurance policy” — a place to run to if life in Israel becomes untenable. Life in Israel is about to become untenable.
Escape from Israel
Israel had already suffered from a growing emigration problem derived from dissatisfaction with the policies of the Netanyahu government — some 34,000 Israelis permanently left Israel between July and October 2023, primarily in protest over the judicial reforms being enacted by Netanyahu.
While there was a spike in emigration immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks (some 12,300 Israelis permanently emigrated in the month following the Hamas attack), the number of permanent emigrants in 2024 was around 30,000, a drop from the previous year.
But now Israel is being bombarded on a near-daily basis by long-range drones, rockets, and missiles fired from Hezbollah, militias in Iraq, and the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen. The Iranian ballistic missile attack of Oct. 1 vividly demonstrated to all Israelis the reality that there is no viable defense against these attacks.
Moreover, if the Israel-Iran conflict continues to escalate (and Israel has promised a retaliation of immense proportions), Iran has indicated it will destroy Israel’s critical infrastructure — power plants, water desalinization plants, energy production and distribution centers — in short, Israel will cease being able to function as a modern nation state.
At that point, insurance policies will be cashed in as hundreds of thousands of Israelis holding dual passports vote with their feet. Russia has already told its citizens to leave. And if millions of other Israelis who qualify for European passports opt to exercise that option, Israel will face its ultimate nightmare — a precipitous drop in the Jewish population that skews the demographic balance decisively toward non-Jews, making moot the notion of an exclusive homeland for the Jews.
Israel is rapidly becoming unsustainable, both as a concept (the world is rapidly tiring of the genocidal reality of Zionism) and in practice (i.e., economic and demographic collapse.)
The changing view from the United States
This is the current reality of Israel: in one year’s time, it has gone from “changing the face of the Middle East” to being an unsustainable pariah whose only salvation is the fact that it has the continued support of the United States to prop it up militarily, economically, and diplomatically.
Therein lies the rub. That which made Israel attractive to the United States — the strategic advantage of a pro-American Jewish enclave in a sea of Arab uncertainty — no longer holds as firmly as it previously did. The Cold War is long gone, and the geopolitical benefits accrued in the U.S.-Israeli relationship are no longer evident.
The era of American unilateralism is fading, rapidly being replaced by a multipolar world with a center of gravity shifting towards Moscow, Beijing and New Delhi. As the United States adapts to this new reality, it finds itself engaged in a struggle for the hearts and minds of the ‘Global South’, that is, world outside the European Union, the NATO-member countries and a handful of pro-Western, Pacific island countries. The moral clarity that American leadership seeks to bring to the global stage is significantly clouded over by its ongoing unquestioned support for Israel.
Israel has in its post-Oct. 7, 2023 actions self-identified as a genocidal state totally incompatible with any notion of international law or the basic precepts of humanity. Even some Holocaust survivors recognize that modern-day Israel has become the living manifestation of the very evil that served as the justification for its creation — the brutally racist ideology of Nazi Germany. Israel is anathema for everything modern civilization stands for, and the world is gradually awakening to this reality. So, to, is the United States awakening.
For the moment, the pro-Israeli lobby in the U,S, is mounting a rearguard action, throwing its weight behind political candidates in a desperate attempt to buy the continued support of their American benefactors. But geopolitical reality dictates that the United States, in the end, will not commit suicide on behalf of an Israeli state that has lost all moral legitimacy in the eyes of most of the world.
There are economic consequences attached to American support for Israel, especially in the increased gravitational pull of the BRICS forum, whose growing list of members and those who are seeking membership reads as a who’s who of nations fundamentally opposed to the Israeli state.
The deepening social and economic crisis in America today will create a new political reality where American leaders will be compelled by electoral realities to address problems which manifest on American soil. The day when Congress can allocate billions of dollars without question to oversees wars, including those involving Israel, is coming to an end.
Political operative James Carville’s famous adage ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ resonates as strongly today as it did when he penned it back in 1992. To survive economically, America will have to adjust its domestic and international priorities, requiring conformity not only with the will of the American people, but a new, law-based international order which largely rejects the ongoing Israeli genocide.
Apart from die-hard Zionists who will hold out in the unelected “establishment” of government civil service, academia, and mass media, Americans will gravitate toward a new policy reality where unquestioned support for Israel is no longer accepted. This will be the final straw for Israel.
The perfect storm of global rejection of genocide, sustained resistance on the part of the Iran-led ‘axis of resistance’, economic collapse and realignment of American priorities will result in the nullification of Israel as a viable political entity. The timeline for this nullification is dictated by the pace of collapse of Israeli society — it could happen in a year, or it could unfold over the course of the next decade. But it will happen. The end of Apartheid Israel.
And it all began on Oct. 7, 2023 — the day that changed the world.
Recommended, related analysis drawn from the ‘World news’ page of The Multiplural World
The Zionist regime cannot fight Hamas and Hezbollah at the same time, by Robert Inlakesh, correspondent, Al Mayadeen English, Oct 12, 2024 The war that the Israeli regime has opened will not close until it is dealt a strategic defeat, one from which it will not likely recover
The true lesson of October 7 is that Israel cannot be reformed, essay by Ghada Karmi, in Mondoweiss, Oct 8, 2024 …The year since the events of October 7, 2023 has shown that Israel can neither be accommodated nor reformed. It must be dismantled, and Zionism must be brought to an end. Only this will finally alleviate the Palestinians’ terrible ordeal over the past 76 years…
[This piercing essay does not seek to explain why so much of the Palestine solidarity movement has focused its advocacy on calls for a ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza and condemnations of Israel. This fact receives too little attention and analysis by advocates for Palestine. The movement to ‘boycott, divest and sanction Apartheid Israel’ gets lost amidst all the condemnations, gets lost in the shuffle, so to speak. The ‘BDS’ movement seeks the dissolution of the Israel apartheid state and its replacement with a democratic and secular government for all those who reside in historic Palestine.]
Powerlessness in the face of Israel’s genocidal war, essay by Patrick Lawrence, in Consortium News, Oct 8, 2024
Related analysis: Inside the State Department’s weapons pipeline to Israel, analysis by Brett Murphy, in Consortium News, Oct 8, 2024
Israel targets and kills children as it expands its Gaza genocide into the West Bank, analysis by Marjorie Cohn, in Truthout.org, Oct 8, 2024 (Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California and is a past president of the National Lawyers Guild.)
As the grim killings of Palestinians by Israel continue, here is the ‘free press’ of the West truly operates, by Alex Lo, columnist, South China Morning Post, Oct 10, 2024 (here in pdf format: How the ‘free press’ of the West truly operates is shown in Gaza)
Biden’s moral failure in Israel, commentary by Peter Beinhart, in New York Times, Oct 8, 2024
[Peter Beinhart was previously a liberal Zionist and is a former editor of The New Republic. In that editor capacity, he backed the 2003 war by the United States against the people of Iraq. In 2020, he wrote a groundshaking essay in Jewish Currents in which he wrote, “The two-state solution is dead. It’s time for liberal Zionists to abandon Jewish–Palestinian separation and embrace equality.”] …In the 2020 presidential election, Joseph Biden presented himself throughiout as a “champion of equality”. That now lies in ruins. Through his unwavering backing of Israel, Mr. Biden has effectively supported its unequal treatment and oppression of Palestinians — especially in Gaza — and has undermined the ethical rationale of his presidency… According to a September survey by the Institute for Global Affairs, Democrats consider Mr. Biden’s policy on Gaza his greatest foreign policy failure. Young Americans are especially alienated: a March 2024 poll by Harvard’s Institute of Politics found that more than three-quarters of Americans under the age of 30 disapprove of Biden’s policy toward Israel’s war in Gaza…
[Note the writer’s use of the term ‘Israel’s war in Gaza’. This is inaccurate–the term should be ‘Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza’. But at least the writer does not play Western media’s game of ‘disappearance’ of Israel’s genocide by using such terminology as ‘the war between Israel and Hamas’, or something similar. There is no ‘war between Israel and Hamas’, and there is no ‘war between Israel and Gaza’. There is a ‘genocide being conducted by Israel with the full backing of the Western powers and their corporate and state media’.]
