{"id":281067,"date":"2024-02-01T07:57:13","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T07:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=281067"},"modified":"2024-02-03T08:07:40","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T08:07:40","slug":"the-tragic-self-destruction-of-an-enraged-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=281067","title":{"rendered":"The Tragic Self-Destruction of an Enraged Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alistair Crooke \u2013 Strategic Culture Jan 29, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Israel is boxed-in, as is becoming very evident to many Israelis. One Israeli correspondent (formerly a Cabinet Secretary) illustrates<\/a> its nature:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe meaning of the 7th<\/sup><\/em> October default is not only the loss of lives \u2026 but mainly the potential transformation of how Israel is perceived \u2026 as no longer to be feared by Middle Eastern actors\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Israeli leadership must internalize that we can no longer be content with a \u2018sense of victory\u2019 among the Israeli public \u2026 It is doubtful whether victory in Gaza is enough to restore the fear of Israel to the levels we had vis-a-vis our enemies. A victory that boils down to just the release of the captives and confidence-building measures to establish a Palestinian state would not be enough in shoring up Israel\u2019s image in that regard\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf the quagmire of Gaza \u2026 brings the [Israeli] leadership to the realization that there is no ability to present a clear victory on this front, one that will lead to a strategic change in the region, they must consider switching fronts and reasserting Israeli deterrence through the removal of the strategic threat in Lebanon \u2026 victory against one of the richest and most powerful terrorist organizations in the world \u2013 Hezbollah \u2013 can restore deterrence in the region in general \u2026 Israel must remove the threat from the north and dismantle the power structure Hezbollah has built in Lebanon, regardless of the situation in the south\u201d. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBut without victory in the south, a significant achievement in the north becomes that much more important\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

The above quotation goes directly to the heart of the issue. That is: \u2018How can Zionism be saved?\u2019. All the rest of the \u2018blah-blah\u2019 coming from world leaders is largely bluff. Not only is Gaza NOT<\/em> giving Israelis a sense of victory; on the contrary, it is widely proliferating a violent anger at a surprise, \u2018shameful\u2019 defeat.<\/p>\n

Some in the war cabinet (i.e., Eisenkot) suggest<\/a> that Israel look truth in the eye: It should capitulate to Hamas; give a ceasefire a chance; release incarcerated Palestinians, and save the hostages held in Gaza:<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is necessary to say boldly that it is impossible to bring the hostages back alive in the near future without a [ceasefire] deal, and anyone who is feeding lies to the public is feeding lies\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

But this is not the predominant sentiment amongst Israelis: The latest Peace Index<\/em> survey<\/a> reflects the pervasive gloom: 94% percent of Jews think Israel has used the right amount of firepower in Gaza (or \u201cnot enough\u201d (43%)). Three-quarters of all Israelis think the number of Palestinians harmed since October is justified to achieve its aims; a full two-thirds of Jewish respondents say numbers of casualties are definitely justified (only 21% say \u201csomewhat\u201d justified).<\/p>\n

The true price Israel will be paying, however, is not merely the release of Palestinian prisoners (though that, in itself, would create a popular uproar); but rather, it is fear that acquiescence to Hamas demands would spell the end to the Israel-security paradigm:<\/p>\n

This paradigm consists of a quasi-religious \u2018contract\u2019 that Jews shall enjoy security every, and anywhere, in the land of Israel \u2013 brought about by the elaborate matrix of radical insecurity of space and rights imposed on non-Jews (i.e. Palestinians), versus<\/em> the full force of protection and sovereignty for Jews. This forms the universal paradigm underwriting Jewish security.<\/p>\n

Until 7 October, that is. The events of that day demonstrated that Jewish Israelis are no longer secure inside Israel \u2013 and that the Zionist framework<\/a>, in respect to security, must be re-thought \u2013 or perforce abandoned. This realisation has given rise to a psychological mass formation of insecurity. As Emeritus Professor of History at the Hebrew University, Moshe Zimmermann, notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Zionist solution is not a solution. We are arriving at a situation in which the Jewish people who live in Zion live in a condition of total insecurity \u2026 we need to take into account that Israel is causing a reduction in the security of Diaspora Jewry, instead of the opposite. So this Zionist solution is very deficient, and we need to examine what caused this deficiency.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s outsider talk of a two-state notion cannot be \u2018a solution\u2019 to present tensions \u2013 and is bogus. And, writes leading Israeli commentator, Alon Pinkas, the White House and Netanyahu know it<\/a>. It is bogus because the Israeli zeitgeist and current psyche of fears and the demand for revenge precludes it; because the settler-zealots will not be removed without rivers of blood; and because two-states for most Israelis threatens the thin edge to the end of Zionism since the non-Jewish group will insist on parity of rights: i.e. no more special rights for one population group (Jews), over another (non-Jews \u2013 i.e. Palestinians).<\/p>\n

The talk of a Saudi Arabia normalisation deal is also bogus \u2013 Saudi Arabia is bound by the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative<\/em> of 2002 (a Palestinian State as the pre-condition to normalisation); and because the Palestinian Authority cannot easily be \u2018reconstructed\u2019 as Israel\u2019s \u2018Vichy\u2019 security arm to torment fellow Palestinians.<\/p>\n

So, why all the posturing with \u2018solutions\u2019, untethered to political realities?<\/p>\n

Well, this debate suits both Biden and Netanyahu. Team Biden is in containment mode. The White House hopes \u2013 through containment \u2013 to \u2018stroke\u2019 the flames of war-fever raised by the Gaza assault down to \u2018low heat\u2019, and thus to slide the situation imperceptibly towards the regional \u2018quiet\u2019 that the Administration deems \u2018appropriate\u2019 to an Election Year.<\/p>\n

To this end, talking Saudi normalisation and two-states are \u2018pacifiers\u2019 (even if bogus) for Biden to appear to be \u2018managing\u2019 the conflict and avoiding its\u2019 widening. And, for Netanyahu, he can parade how robust and courageous a \u2018warrior\u2019 he is, by standing up to the U.S. and by saying \u2018No\u2019 to any Palestinian state whatsoever.<\/p>\n

Yet the reality is that Israel is boxed-in, with the box incrementally being ratchetted tight. The situation moves ever closer to tragedy, where \u2018tragedy\u2019 does not arise by sheer mischance. It happens because it had to happen; because of the nature of the participants; because the actors involved make it happen. And they have no choice but to make it happen because, well \u2026 that is their nature.<\/p>\n

That is the case here \u2013 former British Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, wrote about the violent religious conflict in Elizabethan England caused by the Calvinist Puritan suppression of Old Catholicism, in which the \u2018Goddess of earlier pagan beliefs\u2019 \u2013 the latters\u2019 natural human energies still flourishing \u2013 finally erupted into enraged ferocious form to destroy the Puritan hero.<\/p>\n

Replace Puritan suppression by an enraged Jehovan god who abhors the ancient Islamic imagination and civilisation (for its presumed treachery and lethal hatred towards Israel) to give the context to Shakespeare\u2019s \u2018truth\u2019.<\/p>\n

Ted Hughes\u2019 leitmotif is that of England\u2019s history as a burden of Protestant guilt. Shakespeare, he writes, was haunted by a sense that not so very long ago England was a Catholic country which \u2018hardened into Protestantism\u2019. In his Rape of Lucrece<\/em> poem, the Roman king\u2019s soul is \u201cdefaced\u201d by the rape of Lucrece that he has perpetrated. Ultimately, by this deed, the king loses all, and is banished. The pure Lucrece commits suicide.<\/p>\n

Here is the point: Ted Hughes has written of the competing myths of Shakespeare\u2019s era, Tarquin (the Roman king) represents \u201cthe Jehovah-worshipping Puritan\u201d, whose creation myth tells him that it is the transcendent, omnipotent God who is in charge, not \u2018the Other\u2019 divinity. In his zeal, the Roman king sets out to destroy her (representing the \u2018other\u2019). But these shifting protean Puritan forces ultimately prove self-destructive<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Biden (so to speak) embraced the Hebraic impulse to annihilate the violent \u2018otherness\u2019 erupting out of Gaza, but presumably, he has an inkling that in so doing, he has crossed an \u2018invisible moral line\u2019. He is complicit to the crimes that subsequently visited Gaza. He must shoulder a portion of guilt. Yet he must persist. He has no choice. He must let Gaza (and possibly Lebanon, too) happen \u2013 because that is the Biden nature.<\/p>\n

And Hamas and Hizbullah cannot retreat, because these collective repressed energies have been liberated. It is too late to halt the revolutionary impulse. An impulse that is widening to the West Bank; to Yemen, Iraq and beyond. Israel\u2019s ports are now encircled, and are under missile siege.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu, by contrast, fearful of the growing d\u00e9bacle in Gaza has pushed himself to the classic \u2018hero\u2019 mode. On the one hand, it may be narrowly defined as that genre of myth which celebrates the rise of a male hero who sets out on a quest, facing terrifying obstacles on the way, and who proves his courage in combat, eventually returning to home amidst adulation.<\/p>\n

On the other, in Homer\u2019s recounting however, heroes with the highest status are those most vulnerable to shame. Any slight or reversal may threaten a leader\u2019s whole identity, as well as his standing in the eyes of his peers. Those enjoying the highest status can be damaged most by loss. Hector resists his friends and family\u2019s appeals not to go to war, and instead goes to his death. His loneliness and estrangement from his loved ones adds pathos to the heartbreak of the moments immediately before his death, when suddenly he realises the gods have tricked him and led him to his doom.<\/p>\n

Is this to be Netanyahu\u2019s fate too? Are \u2018the gods\u2019 leading him to tragedy? They certainly have boxed him in. The Gaza defeat makes him vulnerable to ruin, and for Israel, no clear victory in Gaza that will lead to a strategic change in the region. Netanyahu is being urged to consider switching fronts to reassert<\/u><\/em> Israeli deterrence through the removal of the strategic threat in Lebanon. In this situation, Israel cannot be content with anything less than victory<\/em>, Netanyahu is being urged<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nir Barkat, a former mayor of Jerusalem who is favourite to succeed Netanyahu as leader of Likud, said<\/a> that Israel could afford to keep fighting, and still open up a new front with Lebanon, despite the billion shekel (\u00a3200 million) a day cost of the conflict.<\/p>\n

Barakat said that as \u201cbig as the crisis is\u201d,<\/p>\n

\u201cit is also a really big opportunity: Iran is a legitimate target for Israel. They will not get away with it. The head of the snake is Tehran \u2026 Israel is edging towards a full-blown war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, having evacuated the north of the country\u201d:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever it takes \u2026 This is a religious war\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, Phase Two of this conflict is drawing to a close, and Phase Three is opening. The intensity of the wider war will spike, most likely triggered by a change of status in Hizbullah\u2019s r\u00f4le: Will this be triggered by an Israeli intervention, or pre-empted by Hizbullah making the first move? Will Biden authorise the U.S. to be drawn-in to supporting Israel? Likely yes \u2013 because it is his nature<\/em> to support Israel. But how far will he go?<\/p>\n

The political palliatives (the ostensible political \u2018solutions\u2019) will give place to harder-nosed discussion about how to make a ceasefire stick. This phase will likely move from an immobilised UN, to the more informal structures of the BRICS, with Russia and China playing a bigger, direct part. Europe will be afflicted by schism (and the U.S. too, albeit to a lesser extent).<\/p>\n

This next phase will likely persist without resolution, during the process by which all sides test their respective strengths against the other. And this will be the time when Israel\u2019s social cohesion<\/a> is severely stress-tested. Can it be sustained? Will the foundations of Zionism be reconfigured, and Zionism forced to abandon its Jabotinsky roots?<\/p>\n

It will also be the time in which the Jewish superintendency over the U.S.\u2019 and Europe\u2019s western political matrix also will struggle to reconcile between the competing myths as their conflicting poles of energy destroy \u2018social order\u2019, and one or other of the principal actors to the conflict passes through some form of inevitable tragedy.<\/p>\n

Revolution and cultural wars are not time-limited events; they overflow into the \u2018before\u2019-event (i.e. the coming conflict), as well as into the \u2018after\u2019.<\/p>\n

However, if Ted Hughes\u2019 proposition that Shakespeare\u2019s \u2018tragic\u2019 equation is one in which competing archetypal narratives \u2013 with their energies explosively unleashed \u2013 will result in violent tragedy is correct, then we should expect that the playing out (currently) of the Hebraic creation-myth versus<\/em> Islamic civilisation\u2019s cultural expanse, also will have momentous impact inside both America and Europe \u2013 well beyond the particulars of the conflict playing out in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

It will become the pivot to the new era.<\/p>\n

For, the core myths associated with Puritan Jehovian suppression on the one hand, and the release of the countervailing energies of resistance on the other, run through human existence as a double helix. They already are overflowing into the dormant, yet still present, religious sensibilities in the West. They will pierce through the West\u2019s own distinct \u2018revolution\u2019 and brewing \u2018civil war\u2019.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Alistair Crooke is a former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not only is Gaza NOT giving Israelis a sense of victory; on the contrary, it is widely proliferating a violent anger at a surprise, \u2018shameful\u2019 defeat. According to Nir Barkat, a former mayor of Jerusalem who is tipped to succeed Netanyahu there is only one solution to this: to strike the head of the snake and the\u201d head of the snake is Tehran\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":281068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=281067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281069,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281067\/revisions\/281069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/281068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=281067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=281067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=281067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}