Alastair Crooke – Strategic Culture Oct 26, 2023
The reality of the necessity of war is permeating widely the consciousness of the Arabic and Islamic world.
Tom Friedman uttered his dire warning in the New York Times on Thursday last:
“I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now [unilaterally] to destroy Hamas — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests”.
“It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the U.S. has built…I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
“Unfortunately, the senior U.S. official told [Friedman], Israeli military leaders are actually more hawkish than the prime minister now. They are red with rage and determined to deliver a blow to Hamas that the whole neighbourhood will never forget”.
Friedman here is talking, of course, about an American alliance system, pivoted around the idea of Israel’s military prowess being invincible – the ‘Little NATO’ paradigm that acts as the essential substrata for the spread of the American-led Rules Order through West Asia.
It is analogous to the substrata of the NATO alliance, whose claimed ‘unchallengeability’ has underpinned U.S. interests in Europe (at least until the Ukraine war).
One Israeli Cabinet member put it to the veteran Israeli defence correspondent Ben Caspit that Israel just cannot permit its long-term deterrence being undermined:
“This is the most important point — ‘our deterrence’”, the senior war Cabinet source said. “The region must quickly understand that whoever harms Israel the way Hamas did, pays a disproportionate price. There is no other way to survive in our neighbourhood than to exact this price now, because many eyes are fixed on us and most of them do not have our best interests at heart”.
In other words, the Israeli ‘paradigm’ hinges on manifesting overwhelming, crushing force directed to any emerging challenge. This has had its origin in the U.S. insistence that Israel have both the political leading-edge (all strategic decisions lay with Israel uniquely under Oslo), and equally, that it has the military cutting leading-edge over all its neighbours too.
Despite being presented as such, this is not a formula by which to reach any sustainable, peaceful accord by which the 1947 UNGA Resolution 181 (the division of Mandate-era Palestine) into two states can be reached. Rather, Israel under the Netanyahu government has been moving closer and closer to an eschatological founding of Israel on the (Biblical) ‘Land of Israel’ – a move that expunges Palestine totally.
It is no coincidence that Netanyahu flourished a map of Israel during his General Assembly address last month in which Israel dominated from the River to the Sea – and Palestine (indeed any Palestinian territory) was non-existent.
Tom Friedman in his NYT reflections may fear that just as NATO’s impaired performance in Ukraine has ruptured ‘the NATO myth’, so too the 7 October Israeli military and intelligence collapse and what happens in its wake in Gaza ‘might explode the entire pro-American alliance structure’ in the Middle East.
The confluence of two such humiliations might break the spine of western primacy. This seems to be the gist to Friedman’s analysis. (He likely is correct).
Hamas has succeeded in smashing the Israel deterrence paradigm: They were not afraid, the IDF proved far from invincible, and the Arab street mobilised as never before (confounding western cynics who laugh at the very notion of there being an ‘Arab Street’).
Well, that is where we are – and the White House is rattled. The Axios CEO VandeHei and Mark Allen have taken to print to warn:
“Never have we talked to so many top government officials who, in private, are so worried … [that] a confluence of crises poses epic concern and historic danger. We don’t like to sound dire. But to sound a siren of clinical, clear-eyed realism: U.S. officials tell us that, inside the White House, this was the heaviest, most chilling week since Joe Biden took office just over 1,000 days ago … Former Defence Secretary Bob Gates tells us America is facing the most crises since World War II ended 78 years ago…
“Not one of the crises can be solved and checked off: All five could spiral into something much bigger … What scares officials is how all five threats could fuse into one”. (Spreading war as Israel enters into Gaza; the Putin-Xi “anti-American alliance”; a “malicious” Iran; “unhinged” Kim Jon Un and fake videos and news).
However, missing from Friedman’s NYT piece is the other side to the coin – for the Israeli paradigm has two sides: the internal sphere, which is separate to the external need to exact a disproportionate price from Israel’s adversaries.
The internal ‘myth’ holds that the Israeli State ‘has its citizens back’, wherever Jews live in Israel and the Occupied Territories – from the remotest settlements, to the alleyways of Jerusalem’s Old City. This is more than a social contract; rather, it is a spiritual obligation owed to all Jews living in Israel.
This ‘social contract’ of safety however just collapsed. The Kibbutzim in the Gaza envelope are evacuated; twenty kibbuz have been evacuated from the north, and a total of 43 border towns have been evacuated.
Will these displaced families trust the State again? Will they return to the settlements one day? Confidence has been ruptured. Yet, it is not Hizbullah’s missiles that frighten the residents, but the pictures from last 7 October in the Gaza periphery communities – the fence that was breached in dozens of spots; the overrun military bases and posts there; the towns that were occupied by Hamas forces; the ensuing deaths; and the fact that approximately 200 Israelis were abducted to Gaza – has left nothing to the imagination. If Hamas succeeded so, what will stop Hezbollah?
As in the old nursery rhyme: Humpty-Dumpty had a big fall, yet all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.
This is what worries the White House Team. They are deeply unconfident that an Israeli invasion of Gaza will put ‘Humpty’ together again. Rather, they fear that events may go badly for the IDF, and further, that the images relayed across the Middle East of Israel using overwhelming force in a civilian urban setting will revolt the Islamic sphere.
In spite of western scepticism, there are signs that this insurrection in the Arab sphere is different, and resembles more the 1916 Arab Revolt that overthrew the Ottoman Empire. It is taking on a distinct ‘edge’ as both Shi’a and Sunni religious authorities state the duty of Muslims to stand with Palestinians. In other words, as the Israeli polity becomes plainly ‘Prophetical’, so the Islamic mood is turning eschatological, in its turn.
That the White House should be floating kites about ‘moderate’ Arab leaders pressing ‘moderate’ Palestinians to form an Israeli-friendly government in Gaza that would displace Hamas and impose security and order shows just how severed is the West from reality. Recall that Mahmoud Abbas, General Sisi and the King of Jordan (some of the region’s most pliable leaders) pointedly refused even to meet with Biden after the latter’s Israel trip.
The anger across the region is real and threatens ‘moderate’ Arab leaders, whose room for manoeuvre is now circumscribed.
So hotspots are proliferating, as are attacks on U.S. deployments around the region. Some in Washington claim to perceive an Iranian hand, and are hoping to expand a window for war with Iran.
The panicked White House is over-reacting – sending huge convoys (100s) of heavy-lift cargo planes loaded with bombs, missiles and air defences (THAAD and Patriot) to Israel but also to the Gulf, Jordan and Cyprus. Special Forces and 2,000 marines are being deployed too. Plus two aircraft carriers and their attendant vessels.
The U.S. thus is sending a veritable full-scale war Armada. This can only escalate tensions – and provoke counter-moves: Russia now is deploying on Black Sea patrol, MiG-31 aircraft equipped with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles (that can reach the U.S. carrier force off Cyprus), and China reportedly has dispatched naval vessels to the area. China, Russia, Iran and Gulf States are engaged in a frenzy of diplomacy to contain the conflict, even were Hizbullah to enter deeper into the conflict.
For the moment, there is focus on hostage releases creating much (deliberate) noise and confusion. Perhaps some expect that hopes of hostage releases may delay, and finally bring to a stop the planned invasion into Gaza. However, the military command in Israel, and the public, are insistent that Hamas must be destroyed (as soon as the U.S. vessels and new air defences are positioned).
Be that (the invasion) as it may, the reality is that Hamas’ Qassam Brigades have shattered both the internal and external paradigms of Israel. Depending on the outcome of the war in Gaza/Israel, the Brigades may yet land a further contusion on the body-politic that “triggers a global conflagration – and explodes the entire pro-American alliance structure that the U.S. has built” (in Tom Friedman’s words).
Should Israel enter Gaza (and Israel may decide it has no choice but to launch a ground operation, given the domestic political dynamics and public sentiment), it is likely that Hizbullah will incrementally be drawn further in, leaving the U.S. with the binary option of seeing Israel defeated, or launching a major war in which all the hotspots become fused ‘as one’.
In a sense, the Israeli-Islamic conflict now may only be resolved in this kinetic way. All efforts since 1947 have seen the divide only deepen. The reality of the necessity of war is permeating widely the consciousness of the Arabic and Islamic world.
I agree with most of this, but the White Nazi House isn’t worried at all. Maybe some of the bin emptiers and toilet roll holder fillers are concerned, but Nazi sect members are loving it.
Let’s go back a couple of years, when I was saying on here, Israel is on borrowed, and that Israel is fundamentally weak. In fact, more than two years, maybe 5yrs.
I doubt I was the only one seeing this trend. I’m sure some Nazis could see this, even if their masters ignored it.
No matter what’s happens moving forward, Israel is finished as we knew it a few weeks ago.
Crooke is right, most leaders outside the Nazi sect are moderate, but their sheeple are angry that demented Nazi Israel can run a massive concentration camp where they slowly genocide the Palistinians.
Crooke talks about the bigger Israel. I said this a week ago, it’s a land grab, and while Israeli sheeple are angered, the Israeli Nazis wanted this all along.
It was in the tea leaves years ago, and instead of fading away, the Nazis have decided to bring things to a head. It’s not just Israel fading away, but the entire Nazi West.
Andrew Nazi Neil writes in the Fail that cheap money is over. This is an understatement! The New Free World simply won’t bankroll the US economy and it’s MIC. We’ve had 15yrs of Central Banks issuing blank cc’s to their Nazi regimes, because no one in their right mind would hold worthless US paper. Don’t get me wrong, the Chinese don’t want the US to just collapse. They’ve been ever so gentle with their dying uncle, but Uncle Sam is a debt junkie, run by the war mongering MIC Nazi sect.
Maybe some Nazis don’t want WW3, but the WW3 supper was in prep during the 70s. World wars just don’t happen, and just about everyone makes this HUGE mistake that you can isolate the current crisis and go: ‘The White Nazi House fears losing control’, blah, blah, blah.
The shear Nazi arrogance of sanctioning two nuclear super powers, and you don’t think there’s going to be any payback? lol
This idea the Nazis don’t want WW3 is joke. Designed 2008 financial collapse, then currency wars, then illegal sanctions, and trade wars. Brexit is a trade war against the EU. Stop this pathetic nonsense that it’s about our pathetic freedom in Nazi prison UK. Not only did the British Nazi elites take our freedoms, most won’t be able to travel, because the Nazi UK is becoming so poor.
Many times, I’ve said the sheeple high point was in the 1970s. Since then it’s been all down hill. Just think about all the tech gains since the 70s, and none of the benefits have been passed on to the thicko sheeple.
And you might ask, what does this have to do with WW3? Everything, because capitalism (if it ever existed) doesn’t work. Obligated US debt, over $300 trillion. An unregulated derivatives market that’s just waiting to shit itself on humanity, and a NWO Nazi sect which is out of control. You can’t vote these nutters out of power, they are everywhere.
You don’t think the Arab world, and the New Free world don’t know this? There’s a stark choice, accept Nazi rule, or fight. Putin knew the score when he came to power. He tried for some 20yrs, but the Nazis didn’t listen. Now there are hypersonic missiles in the air, no doubt nuclear armed, with the specific task of sinking US carriers, and it takes just minutes to do this.
The Chinese are sending 6 boats. You might scoff, but they’ll be brimming with missiles.
Even if Isreal isn’t beaten on the battlefield, it’s finished, just as UKraine is finished. Some of it will remain. Western UKraine was poor before the war, and now it has lost the money making East.
Why are we in this mess? Because of brainwashed thicko voting sheeple, Nazi sheeple who hate, hate Russians, hate the Chinese, and who will hate anyone, unless they run under the Nazi Jack, kick a football, or swing a cricket bat. So long as the play for the Nazi team, the Nazis will have moments of cognative dissonance, but after that, it’s back to hating.
There’s some bollox conflab about AI threats, and Lizz Nazi Truss said China should be barred from attending. Sunak said they can attend, but he said this only to save face. The UK is one fecked up old dying dog.
It’s meant to escalate. That’s why everything is so provocative.
The West is only reacting–Moslems have warred against rational humans for 1 400 years and will take Europe into a new Dark Age of theological murder quite soon if not pushed back. They have no rights
One ought not to forget the thousands of young men who have arrived on American soil ready to arm themselves and carry out wartime terrorism, forcing America into a situation that they are not equipped to handle.
Has America bitten off more than it can chew? Looking at the incredible stupidity and the lack of leadership in the country, onc can only surmise that we are finished.
I’m fed up with all these articles which talk about Israel being caused by surprise when the attack by the Palestinian resistance on 7th October was the most obvious false-flag attack in history. And the very name “Israel” is synonymous with false-flag attacks.
The “Spine of Primacy” they witter on about seems to be more the hump of a hunch back…..
As I have said before, the unnecessary creation of Israel was the greatest political blunder, next to WW2, ever undertaken. We now see the fatal results of that horrific blunder. It goes back to the Balfour Declaration, scheming Jew Zionists, and Britain’s inability to simply end WW1 in 1916.
Naturally, Israel/Iran/Russia/UK/USA are all in on it, with their intelligence/terrorist agencies (Mossad/CIA/MI6/KGB/Hamas/Hezbollah) to escalate this conflict into something bigger, so they can eventually include the whites of the West in a new war to decimate/exterminate them. That’s all this is really about.
Just watched this Ritter video, and he confirms what I’ve been saying, but more so.
The Russians have a staggering air superiority against anyone. He says at the end, ‘F35 poilots, say goodbye to your loved one when you go to work, because, if the US goes to war (against Russia), you ain’t coming home.
Ritter says the US has no idea how the Russians are able to destroy their planes, and he goes on to suggest the same tech could be used against cruise missiles, ICBMs and maybe even hypersonic weapons.
Me, I think the Russians have given this tech to Iran and China. You see, this tech is up and running, so the Russians are probably well into the next version of this system.
Also, Ritter explains why most of the US defense budget is wasted, and by the time a widget is produced, it’s doesn’t work, and is out of date.
https://youtu.be/rdmCVSNiOmI?si=SM3qsEOnDO2rq18t
I don’t know why they don’t teach this at school, let me clarify Deterrence Doctrine again, because if you understand its simple logic, you can analyze every conflict in every context, Deterrence Doctrine is concerned with the following:
1- Balance of terror (To be able to scare your enemy!)
Traditionally US moves aircraft carriers or B52 bombers around to scare its enemies.
Zion has built the reputation for itself to carpet bomb with an overwhelming force. Or use the Sampson option in the end with its nukes!
Resistance can threaten to close Bab Al-Mandab and/or Hormuz straits or use sure-strike weapons.
etc…
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2- Flexible response (To have many response options against an enemy action and thus the ability to surprise)
Nowadays US and Zion seriously lack in this department! They have little flexibility of response, in contrast the vast area that resistance forces control with their missile and drones provide them with ample flexibility of response and ability to surprise their enemies. Without flexible response your enemy knows about your plan and takes advantage of it.
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3- Big Retaliation/pay back (Secondary strike capability and the ability to respond to an enemy action with a bigger retaliation)
Despite having wrecked Gaza again and again and again… Hamas retains the ability to launch rockets in mass against Zion cities. Iran keeps sure-strike missiles under mountains in missile silos for example. US brings aircraft career to maintain air power in case Zion airports are hit.
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4- Total war (Being able to control the situation and escalate to total annihilation or total war when required)
Controlled and effective escalation is an art of war. Iran has already set its red lines as US has. Russia has also set its red lines… The goal is to win by defeating strategy of the enemy with the minimum cost.
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There are things to consider when analyzing a theater of war, here are some examples:
– If Resistance Axis impatiently escalate, it would ruin its good position and waste momentum. Sure civilians in Gaza are dying and it pains us, but just imagine how unnecessary escalation can lead to exponentially more deaths and damage to asset. every death is a tragedy but in the grand scheme of things even ~10K deaths from 2 Million population of Gaza is in fact less than the deaths that happen in many earthquakes or happen if things escalate further. People of Gaza have chosen this path and their women are the reason their men still have the will to fight.
– Hezbollah is only engaged in limited strikes against Zion and Nasrullah has not appeared on TV at all, this quiet is part of the Balance of Terror. Both US and Zion focused their attention on Gaza and Hezbollah but now Hooties in Yemen have launched missile attacks on the city of Eilot. This complicates the theater of war for US and Zion. Hezbollah can just wait as a Sword of Damocles (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mg636osd-af.11 ) held above Zion’s head while, they now have to worry about US bases in Iraq and Syria and a new threat from Yemen in the south! This keeps them overstretched and in a state of panic.
Interestingly, there was news that Yemen had launched missiles against US ships, later it became evident that Zion has a listening and radar base in Eritrea that covers red sea, they detected the missiles and US warships or patriots in SaudiArabia intercepted them. Guess what…Unknown forces attacked that base in Eritrea and blinded them, yesterday Eilot was attacked by a missile and there was a massive explosion.
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For more information on the Hamas Blitzkrieg on Oct 7th see my moment here: https://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=274480
my two tomans
one thing is very good : YOU CAN KILL US
BUT ANTIAMERICAN + ANTIJUDA HATE
+ CONTEMPT WILL GROW IN THE WORLD .
Israel-Palestine War: Is the US Preparing to Attack Iran? –
New Rules
Iran-Russia set a western trap in Palestine – Pepe Escobar
Nothing To See Here by If Americans Knew –
EarthNewspaper.com
This Dude Gives Me Hope – debess
Israel–Palestine Conflict, False Flags, World War –
EyesIsWatchin
Iran court rules US must pay $420mn in damages over 1980 – Tabas terror attack
The Real Story Of Terrorism In The Middle East – Dr. Peter Hammond
مُجال – القدس لنا (اجرای میدان فلسطین)
mojallofficial
They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo) – Sting
Russia Is Not Worried About The American Shitheads in Washington – Nothing To See Here
https://grizzom.blogspot.com/2023/10/russia-is-not-worried-about-american.html
Yahwey’s nearly driven out right now, tonight…Thing’s are about to get much worse for the world, then will be temporarily happy, then really really unhappy.
Wake up, while you still can.