Destruction Without Destination: What Can America Do To REALLY Help Israel?
Israel’s phone attacks served no purpose – and the country might collapse within a year.
The pagers and mobile phones that Israel’s Mossad unit detonated in Lebanon and Syria have killed more than 30 people and wounded 3,500 more, but the Israeli action served no progressive purpose for the Israeli cause. It was destruction without destination.
Both candidates for the American presidency have backed Israel. Harris says that she supports Israel but adds that they can’t defeat Hamas. Trump has also voiced support for Israel, but warns that they are losing the PR war. He also had a moment last year that I am sure he wishes he could take back when he called Hezbollah “really smart”. And he is still miffed at PM Netanyahu for not participating in the US drone strike that killed top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.
The current Israeli attack on communications devices gives both candidates a chance to step in with a different approach.
The big picture was painted seventy years ago by former Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, who posed the question: "What is our vision on this earth? War until the end of the generations and living by the sword?"
And seven decades later, that question has still not been answered…except that living by the sword is a never-ending occupation.
Instead, tactical strikes are grinding on and the war keeps going.
The problem with tactical strikes is that they are not capable of solving Sharett’s big problem.
Yossi Melman, Israeli writer and a co-author of Spies Against Armageddon, posed this question about the latest Israeli move. He asked “why would you waste a valuable intelligence asset that could be used in a more urgent time?”
The tactic is no substitute for a strategy to secure Israel’s position. It will cause pain, but it is not a war-winning action.
Hezbollah already knows that it is no match for Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, when it comes to technology. But as this latest crises demonstrates, the people of Lebanon rallied. So many people showed up at the hospitals to donate blood that nurses were turning people away, telling them that they no longer needed new supplies.
A move like this device explosion only binds a people together and makes them even more determined to resist Israel.
After the attack, I am sure you kept watching the news to see what Israel would do next, after cutting the communications chord between so many Hezbollah fighters…and nothing happened. There was no sweeping surprise move that would have benefited from the momentary paralysis of an enemies’ synapsis.
Except maybe to raise the popularity ratings of Israel’s Premier. He is ready to sacrifice national security interests to get popular acclaim. He is now rushing ahead with a war of choice in Lebanon while his defence force’s readiness is unclear and he has the weakest international support ever registered.
His motives as a peace-seeker are also under fire. He was accused of spiking a ceasefire deal by introducing a raft of new, 11th-hour demands, according to a report by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth citing a document it obtained.
Far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition have pledged to bring down the government should he end the war.
But the Hostages Families Forum said that “the finding of the bodies yesterday is a direct result of Netanyahu’s thwarting of the deals.”
In any event, in order to fight a war in the north, Netanyahu has had to suspend operations in the south (Gaza) and in the east (Galilee).
Yet a war in Lebanon will not bring peace to Israel. He has also not defined what the threat from Lebanon is that he is seeking to neutralize.
Instead, we see the daily violence of Israeli ‘settlers’ who steal Palestinian homes and blow up Palestinian schools and hospitals.
Few of these acts make it into American media.
See comments in the video…few support Israel’s genocide.
We could also notice the steady erosion of Israel’s regional position as the ‘war’ grinds on.
Some 60- 100,000 Israelis have had to leave their homes in the north as Hezbollah continues its bombing campaign from Lebanon. Netanyahu has expanded his war goals to include returning families to their homes in the north, which can only be accomplished through invading Lebanon.
On Israel’s West Bank, the daily casualties have added up. 594 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers, including 143 children. This does not count injuries, like the assault by settlers on two 15-year-old Palestinian boys who were handcuffed, had their legs broken and were then urinated on.
In Gaza, Israel continues its path of pointless destruction. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 95,000 injured. We have gotten so accepting of large numbers that we no longer think of them as people, but as sub-human statistics. But each death of course causes huge pain, and – worse for Israel – an implacable need among the survivors for revenge. Hezbollah has promised a special response to the pointless exploding devices outrage.
This is a dire promise for Israel. According to a report from the Israeli media site Haaretz:
“Lucky Israelis will spend their days and nights in suffocating safe rooms, others will run to the stairwells or look for shelter under trees and rocks. At a time when Air Force planes send Lebanon back to the Stone Age, the airports will close down, Israeli hospitals will collapse, schools and preschools will shut down and tens of thousands of workers will abandon their jobs.”
In the region, Israel’s carnival of chaos has blown apart any regional plan it might have enjoyed for international agreement. After coming close, two Arab countries have now pulled back from a declaration of peace.
Saudi Arabia has said that it would not recognise Israel without a Palestinian state. It also strongly condemned the "crimes of the Israeli occupation" against the Palestinian people. Saudi had come close to normalizing ties with Israel prior to the attack in Gaza.
Pressure for a Palestinian state continues to build. The UN Secretary General stated that Israel’s opposition to a two-state solution was ‘unacceptable’. The only way to address the legitimate aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians is through the two-State formula, he underscored.
And for the first time, Palestinians took a seat among member states at the UN, exercising a new right accorded to the delegation despite not being a full member of the organization. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the UN, took his place at a table between Sri Lanka and Sudan labeled "State of Palestine." 143 nations voted in favor of the new status. Objecting alongside the US and Israel were Argentina, Czechia, Hungary, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Papua New Guinea. A veritable powerhouse. So this is what Israel has come to.
Palestinians can now introduce proposals and amendments and sit among the member states, though they will remain unable to cast a vote or join the Security Council.
Hamas has already said it will lay down its arms if an independent Palestinian state is established.
US support for Israel is beginning to fray. Bernie Sanders is willing to block $20-billion in US arms aid to Israel.
Retired Israeli Major General Itzhak Brik says that Israel will collapse within a year if the war of attrition against Hamas and Hezbollah continues.
“Israel is sinking deeper into the Gazan mud, losing more and more soldiers as they get killed or wounded, without any chance of achieving the war's main goal: bringing down Hamas. The country really is galloping towards the edge of an abyss. If the war of attrition against Hamas and Hezbollah continues, Israel will collapse within no more than a year.
“Terror attacks are intensifying in the West Bank and inside the country, the reservist army is voting with its feet following recurring mobilizations of combat soldiers, and the economy is crashing. Israel has also become a pariah state, prompting economic boycotts and an embargo on arms shipments.
“We are also losing our social resilience, as the growing hatred between different parts of the nation threatens to ignite and bring to its destruction from within.”
He adds that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is forecasting a regional war.
In this he will not be disappointed.
A new player has arisen, and Western media are not paying sufficient attention to it. It exists in a poor and desperate zone, but it is dedicated to its cause.
The Houthis have just hit Tel Aviv with a drone that exploded on a building in the centre of the city.
Remember the Mujahideen in “Dune”? The desperately poor, horribly tough desert tribesmen? The Houthis make them look like lounge lizards.
The Houthis control most of Yemen. They had to beat a coalition made up of the Yemeni government, the Saudis, and several other states like the UAE, all backed by American. Now their territory extends to some of the western and northern areas close to Saudi Arabia. With Iranian help they fought for several years, and then turned their attention to helping the Palestinians in Gaza. They have no territorial goals; they are looking on their support as a virtuous humanitarian act.
Their drone evidently flew over Egypt and came in from the Mediterranean at low altitude to Tel Aviv. It held only 10 kg of explosives instead of the normal 18, so it could make the longer journey to Israel.
The Israelis said that human error led to the drone being mistaken for a friendly aircraft. The Houthis say it is a new type that can evade radar. They intend to “impose a sense of insecurity” over Tel Aviv.
The Israelis then bombed the strategic Yemeni port of Hodeidah, killing at least six people and injuring dozens of others.
From personal experience in the region, I’m betting that this will make zero impression on a people who live by the belief in ‘Inshallah” – if God wills it.
But the main point is that Israel’s war against everyone in the region just got bigger. Now it includes a group who don’t care if they die. The Houthis say they will continue to target Israel until it stops its war on Gaza.
In the middle of this expansion, Netanyahu is thinking about extending the war north into Lebanon.
In doing this, Brik says that Netanyahu has lost his humanity, basic morality, norms, values, and responsibility for Israel's security. He grieves that the country is disintegrating in the hands of the PM’s leadership.
The pointlessness of it all is not lost on Israelis. Marches against Netanyahu are calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign.
“Just like in Gaza, Israel is spiraling into war with Hezbollah without a strategy or clear goals,” wrote Haaretz columnist Zvi Bar’el. He notes that the only outcome of such a conflict is another generations-long occupation of territory – this time in Lebanon – with no expectation that the result will be any more successful than Israel’s occupation of the West Bank or Gaza.
In fact, it seems to me that the larger the Islamic population grows in Israel’s expanding territory, the more Israeli guns are need to point at them, and the less secure Israel becomes.
Back to where we started: the explosion of 3- 4,000 communications devices by Mossad was just one more ineffective tactic in a war that will have no chance of ending as long as Netanyahu is in charge. The operation, which in intelligence parlance is known as “infrastructure operations,” no doubt took a lot of time to plan and prepare. Israeli agents had to set up a shell company, offer sets to Hezbollah that were - at first – reliable, and then place small explosive charges into other sets. It might have take 5- 10-years to set up.
Now Hezbollah will regroup and deploy a more secure line of communications devices. There is no apparent win for Israel out of this move. Mossad will start from scratch, using more care.
The American presidential candidates, however, have a step up if they want to use it. This would be an ideal time to emphasize the two-state solution, with a carrot: offer to cover both states with a new communications system.
Americans are good at broadband.
And establishing a single communications system that covers two states is actually and effectively a more unified approach than a continuing war to support Netanyahu.
And fittingly, it’s all about connectivity! As my business slogan reads: Change The Network, Change The World!
FYI: A note on sources for this article: for the Middle East, I rely mostly on Haaretz in Israel and Al Jazeera in the Arabic states. Both media outlets offer neutral news and opinion sources. In fact, they are often condemned by the respective governments – Haaretz by Israel and Al Jazeera by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Israel, off and on - and you know you can trust a source when its government is cursing it.
‘News in the bright light of official condemnation” – that could be the new slogan for Barry’s Substack!
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