Why Israel is Stuck
Three concepts of Western warfare
After months of threatening a Rafah invasion, Israel finally went in. They quickly took the civilian crossing with Egypt - in violation of the peace treaty negotiated between the two countries to Israel’s great advantage in the 1970s. They planted Israeli flags at the crossing, blasted the sign saying “I love Gaza”, and declared a kind of “Mission Accomplished” moment.
But like George W Bush’s speech which was supposed to be the end of the Iraq war but was actually the beginning of the Iraq insurgency and a major step in the long-term erosion of American supremacy, Israel’s declaration of victory is premature.
Over the next few days, Palestinian resistance groups initiated a series of operations (many of which they recorded in dramatic field videos) at a tempo nearly unmatched in the war, now in its eighth month. Resistance spokesman Abu Obeida told listeners that the fighters had scored hits on 100 Israeli military vehicles in 10 days in Rafah in the south of Gaza, Jabalia in the north, and Zeitoun in the north (from which the Israelis have since withdrawn). Israeli soldiers, Abu Obeida said, were suffering casualties “by the dozen”.
Under heavy fire in both Rafah and Jabalia, Israel is likely to withdraw from these areas as well. We can then expect a return to aerial bombardment and siege warfare on the starving population. Then more raids, perhaps into the middle of Gaza, during which Israel will lose more soldiers and more vehicles, before withdrawing. Then a period of bombing, then more raids. All the while, Lebanon’s Hizbollah will be hitting military installations on Israel’s northern border with escalating firepower and Yemen’s Ansarallah will be tightening a blockade on ships trading with Israel.
Based on the experiences of the 2006, 2008/9, 2012, 2014, and 2021 wars, Israel would have been expected to have accepted a ceasefire by now, having settled for the demonstration effect of killing between 40,000 - 200,000 or more (according to an estimate made by Ralph Nader) and unwilling to bear the growing costs in soldiers’ lives, displaced Israelis, and economic difficulties.
Why has Israel been so determined this time, compared to previous times? Is it the case that, having mobilized around half a million men, that the numbers of casualties sustained in these ground operations is bearable by Israel, even if Israeli casualties reach the thousands or even tens of thousands?
This is, likely, the calculation. Israel has mobilized all available troops and the US has provided all the firepower Israel can wield. But this approach of maximal firepower and maximum mobilization - of overkill and of over-mobilization - has disconnected Israel from normal military calculations and normal strategic thinking, rendering it vulnerable to the resistance’s counter-strategies.
To understand this vulnerability, let’s break down Western wars in history into three types: Clausewitzian, counterinsurgency, and genocidal.
Clausewitz says war is policy by other means; Counterinsurgency wars are about controlling a population; Genocidal wars are about destroying the foundations of life.
Clausewitz’s book On War uses the campaigns of Frederick the Great, the Prussian king who fought with his European neighbours, and of Napoleon, who fought all the rest of Europe combined (while also fighting a genocidal war against Haiti, but we’ll leave that aside for this article). In these wars, the goal is to inflict losses on the enemy’s military to compel the loser to do the winner’s bidding.
In colonial counterinsurgency wars, the goal is population control. Insurgent leaders are targeted for assassination. Insurgent and insurgency-suspected organizations are dismantled by arrest and imprisonment, physical destruction, and sabotage. Compliant leaders are installed and supported. Populations are overawed and terrorized by campaigns of torture and demonstrative massacres, including “punitive raids”. Recent examples of these wars are the US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and general Israeli behavior in the West Bank.
In colonial genocidal wars, the goal is extermination. Food sources are targeted - both stored food and crops. Masses of people are killed indiscriminately including women, children, noncombatants. Survivors of massacres are driven into unlivable areas to die and ringed with enough firepower to kill them if they try to escape. Many of the US “Indian Wars” followed this pattern (see Stannard’s American Holocaust and Grenier’s The First Way of War) as did the German genocides of the Herero in 1905 and the Nama in 1908, reported in, e.g., The Kaiser’s Holocaust.
Israel has been trying to conduct a genocidal war on Gaza since 2005. The idea was to surround Gaza with the Gaza fence and the ring of settlements known as the Gaza envelope; to use automated weapons, AI targeting, and frequent “mowing the lawn” aerial massacres to prevent exit without being labor-intensive; and to gradually render the entire Gaza Strip unlivable by the destruction of farmer’s fields, denial of coastal fishing, and an ever-constricting siege of food supplies.
The strategy was foiled by the Palestinians in Gaza, who managed to keep making Gaza livable while also generating a military resistance capable of counterattack (the notorious rockets) and ultimately, on October 7 2023, of breaching the ring of firepower built to keep them contained in their long-term death trap.
To counter the Palestinian strategy, since October 7th, Israel has tried to further constrict the area through total siege, bringing about famine; destroy every hospital to deepen the unlivability of the strip; and finally to use their ground forces to break Gaza into smaller enclaves in the hope that each enclave might be made uninhabitable in a way that the entire Gaza strip could not be.
In response to this, the Palestinian resistance has maintained steady military pressure on Israeli troops forming the individual rings of fire to try to enclave Gaza, forcing the Israelis to withdraw after taking losses each time. The network of tunnels and the resilient local weapons industry has made it impossible for Israel to destroy the armed resistance, even as the Palestinian civilian population is targeted for genocide.
Now we can return to a discussion of why overkill and overmobilization haven’t brought Israel to victory.
Overkill means the ability to threaten is gone. Israel’s doctrine of massively disproportionate violence against civilians (called the Dahiya doctrine for a neighbourhood Israel destroyed in Lebanon) has culminated in Gaza in the most appalling string of war crimes that could, if an actual system of international justice were to materialize, at some point see its leaders in jail for crimes. But in the military context, the consequence is that Israel cannot use the threat of firepower to try to get compliance. If they are going to exterminate you no matter what, if they shoot anything that moves, if they attack hospitals – then there’s no benefit to complying and no additional penalty for defiance, since they’ll kill you in any case if they get the chance.
Overmobilization means most soldiers have nothing to do. The transformation into rubble of most of the urban surface of Gaza renders any counterinsurgency warfare strategy moot: there are no flows of people to try to control by setting up checkpoints, no one able to go to work or school as the schools and workplaces have been destroyed; no functioning civilian institutions to try to recruit spies and informants from; all leadership has moved underground. Would-be counterinsurgent troops have nothing to do except wander around in the rubble waiting to be ambushed from unseen tunnels. The Israelis have shaped the battlefield into one that gives them no role but to take a position, fire endless amounts of US-provided ammunition into the distance, and wait to be attacked.
While the mobilization of half a million troops means that losses of dozens of soldiers per day can be sustained for a very long time, these huge numbers can’t really be brought to bear on the enemy even if the Israelis were to try to go into the tunnels, which they thus far have not been.
The Israeli army is much more than a military force: it is the melting pot meant to create social cohesion (now failing) in a country composed of people from all over the world with nothing in common. As Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro notes in The Empty Wagon, the Israeli Defence Forces officer training course contains modules like “What is Judalism? The uniqueness of the Jewish people; the people and land in a Jewish perspective; War and the army in a Jewish perspective; is Judaism a religion, a way of life, or a constitution?; the identity of the Jewish people.” Ben Gurion envisioned the army as the place where the “admixture of people which flows in from foreign exiles will be cleansed, refined and purified from harmful, foreign dross in the melting pot of Jewish brotherhood and through military discipline.” Shapiro notes, “sounds more like a rehab than an army.” Only a tiny fraction of this half million would have the qualities to even be accepted into, let alone complete, a training course on knife fighting in dark tunnels. Even the basics of staying out of windows or infantry cover for armored vehicles doesn’t seem to have been learned.
Meanwhile the seeping of the Hannibal doctrine - in which a soldier should expect to be killed by his comrades rather than risk becoming a captive and a potential bargaining chip to swap for thousands of Palestinian prisoners - into every corner of Israeli life since its application against masses of Israelis on October 7th and its pervasiveness in the army cannot but erode the confidence of the ordinary soldier. Not only does the Israeli army not have an ethos of “no man left behind”, the ethos is “don’t get captured or your comrades will kill you because your life is worth less to us than the Palestinian prisoners we’re torturing…”
Keeping bad news from the Israeli public is a high priority for the regime, and that seems to extend to the army as well, as soldiers don’t appear to learn lessons from their engagements with the resistance. Keeping this huge force in the field, supplied, and above all propagandized, is costly in proportion to its size - while military results do not appear to be.
In 1905, the Germans were losing the war to the Nama. 20,000 Germans, succumbing to thirst and driving themselves mad, were chasing 2,000 nimble Nama cavalry, led by Hendrik Witbooi, around in the desert endlessly.
Nama noncombatants had fled to the bush where they suffered from hunger hiding from the Germans. The Germans finally tried to convince the noncombatants to surrender by using missionaries, who promised to alleviate the starvation in exchange for surrender. They lied: when the Nama surrendered, they were sent on further death marches and into (perhaps a German innovation) the world’s first death camp on Shark Island. When the Germans couldn’t complete the genocide by war, they did so by deception.
But that’s also a trick that expires, and a century later, the Palestinians won’t be deceived.
https://justinpodur.substack.com/p/why-israel-is-stuck
wat0n wrote: the UN itself charges for briefings by its staff. Why would it be any different for country missions to the UN?
Needless to say, the requirement for such a job would be to, yes, work for a pro-Russia media outlet.
Is this your way of saying I have no evidence that "Aaron Mate was paid to brief the United Nations" and no evidence that "The Grayzone are paid by the Kremlin", because it looks like it. We've been back and forth on this about ten times now and you've not posted any evidence to support your smears so I guess we can file this under 'wat0n is full of shit again'.
...one from his own website, if anything.
Yes, it was from Norman Finkelstein's website that you shared, a broken link, that again doesn't prove what you claim. When you're this weak, it might be in your interest to on this part of the debate, since it's obvious you can't prove what you claim. And frankly, it gets very boring very quickly.
The fact that you believe someone wearing a kippah walking by leftists is an "agitator" speaks volumes.
Lots of orthodox Jews and Jews wearing kippahs - I like those watermelon ones btw!
- attend the anti-genocide Palestine protests. That's not the problem here. The problem here is that Gideon Falter and his org, the Campaign Against Antisemitism, is an obvious Zionist hasbara/propagnda outfit. I recently found out it was co-founded by a certain obvious hasbara troll, Joseph Cohen of the Israel Advocacy Movement, and is funded by the Jewish National Fund.
Your clutching at straws on this story where an obvious agitator got exposed for what he is obvious. Gideon had about 4 days of fame until the full clip was posted showing he was looking for trouble. Hahah at "walking by". When you have to lie this much to justify genocide, you might want to consider getting a new job, because you really do suck at this one, that is: when Zionists who defend an ongoing genocide play victim.
It's actually from academics, not some random "Western source"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparati ... ns_Project
You do understand that the universities of Texas, Wisconsin and Illinois are in the West, right? And you
still have no Palestinian source for something you're claiming is in the Palestinian Constitution despite me asking a handful of times. So, we can also file this under 'wat0n is full of shite again'.
They got caught out bullshitting when it came to the Al Ahli attack.
Everyone who isn't a retard knows that the Israelis bombed the Christian Baptist hospital, killing hundreds of Palestinians. They threatened it repeatedly before they did so. They then bombed it three times before this major hit that killed hundreds. And they initially admitted to it on their social media until they realized the number of casualties might make them look bad. So they opted to blame the victims and get people like you to lie on their behalf.
Palestinian weapons barely kill more than one person at a time. And you're the joker trying to claim this one time Palestinians killed hundreds in their own hospital. What a pathetic mind you have, wat0n. Just...savage and sick and clearly in need of psychological treatment.
Israelis attacking Palestinian hospitals is not new. They've been doing it regularly during the current genocide-on-steroids and during previous wars. It's what Zionists do. In between lying their asses off and stealing anything they can, in this case, Palestinian women's lingerie and millions of Palestinian cash as they invade Gaza and the West Bank..
Your sources are usually propagandists, and including some that have a bad track record. Or which contradict your own arguments.
You dismissing things doesn't make any of what you say in your lazy one-liners true. If that were true, you'd counter what is said. Instead you're just a typical hasbara troll smearing those who out your bullshit that you can hardly even defend, never mind prove..
Gaslighting is your only out now, heh?
This is a response to me asking for evidence "Hamas oppress Christians" and again, something you can't prove. Zionists lie as they breathe.. *places in waton is talking shite folder*
You don't even need to do much of an effort given I quoted the relevant info. And it comes from a Catholic university affiliated to the Church.
Citation needed!
So Gaza is an open air prison one can leave whenever he wants now?
Gaza was an open air prison pre-October 7 from around 2006/2007, and since, has become an extermination camp. Yes, Palestinians can leave if they have about $5000 per person and understand they can never return, but most Palestinians don't have that type of money. Many are crowdfunding to get out. Is this hard to understand? I can go over the details further since you're playing dumber than you are.
I'm not sad the settlers are being subjected to sanctions. If anything I hope the US sanctions more of them.
Then why bring it up that a handful of extremists/fascists got sanctioned for their terrorism?
...Protests that are opposed by the public. You forgot that part.
It is "the public" that are at these protests. Millions worldwide. It's wonderful to see. I went to a number of protests since the last time I was here, including uni encampments. It's great seeing the level of passion out there against genocide..
If Hamas was popular, it would hold elections, wouldn't it?
It did, and won. The so-called democrats in Israel and the West refused to accept the results because the Palestinians "voted the wrong way". Hillary Clinton even admitted that.
And to turn this back on you, if the Palestinian Authority - who you cheerlead for and who the vast majority of Palestinians despise - were so popular, it would hold elections wouldn't it? It hasn't for 16 years because it is a good servant to the Israelis and U.S. in helping maintain the savage military occupation in the West Bank..
Hamas has already threatened to execute hostages, the ceasefire deal it wants would just legitimize that.
Citation needed for "Hamas has already threatened to execute hostages," because that is complete bullshit.
Hamas have
repeatedly stated they want the hostages to go home. Sinwar expected a hostage exchange deal within days of October 7, he said he thought they would be back within a couple of days and told some of the freed hostages that they would go home soon and they reported this back once they were freed.
Sinwar and other Palestinian fighters did not believe that the Israeli government actually doesn't give a shit about their own hostages. Something that has played out to this day with the rejection of the ceasefire deal by the Israelis on May 6. The families of the hostages are protesting Netanyahu's fascist ruling coalition regarding the hostages, not Hamas.
Many of the hostages' families do indeed hate Netanyahu, and why wouldn't they? After all, October 7 happened under his watch. Netanyahu bears responsibility for the October 7 attack happened, right after Hamas and the other factions that directly participated.
I think many Israelis have learned that their government doesn't give a shit about them once the shit hits the fan. Israeli civilians, military and others have seen now that if they are taken hostage, their government will kill them using the Hannibal Directive before attempting to rescue them. Hopefully this will encourage the 4 million or so with dual citizenship to go home, or consider living in a free Palestine where Palestinians have the basic human rights that they enjoy..
As for who is executing Israeli prisoners, that is Israel. We saw it happen on October 7 when Israeli tanks and airforce were bombing and firing on their own civilians to prevent them from being taken as hostages.
Some examples of Israeli prisoners being killed in Gaza by Israel bombs and guns are: Yossi Sharabi, Ron Sherman, Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz, Itay Svirsky.None, this is a right-wing government after all. It's the coalition Netanyahu set up when he won in 2022.
I know it is a rightwing government. All Israeli governments are rightwing. I was asking who this left is in Israel that you claim exists. And you respond with nonsense like the above as if I will forget the conversation when all I can do is scroll up to see how you're trying to dodge the debate once again. My guess is you can't answer because I'm right and there is no left in Israel close to power. Because it's an ethnosupremacist settler-colony..
When they put it in their Constitution in 2003.
Citation needed for "Palestinians seeking an ethno state" from a Palestinian source.
I don't know why I ask because you won't provide much more than boring one-liners, but at least I can expose how disingenuous, at best, Zionist hasbara-trolls are.
Given your support for mass murder and mass rape of civilians, I think the only one projecting here is you.
Nope, it's definitely you, in between supporting a state committing a live streamed genocide. I think anyone reading knows who the savage in this debate is.
Hamas is clear it will fight Israel forever, and until its destruction.
If that's what most Palestinians really want, and vote accordingly, what do you think will happen?
Hamas and the 7 or so other Palestinian factions are fighting a war of liberation against occupation. Zionism must - and will - go. Equal rights for all or get the fuck out..
Is this supposed to be an argument?
I posted a poll showing the masses would rather be kidnapped by Hamas over the IOF, just to shatter the illusion you hold, assuming that the masses worldwide hate Hamas like Zionists do (the latter of which who only do because they got their asses rightly handed by them). Most people prefer Palestinian freedom fighters over Zionist fascists who are big into committing genocide and then celebrating it on Tik-Tok, retardedly not understanding that the majority of the world don't tolerate such behaviour, never mind celebrate it <--- this is a big factor in why generation Z has no time for Zionist bullshit.
Projecting much again or are you fessin' up something?
That's a Zionist trait: projection of their own crimes on their victims. Other things Zionists are big on are lying, stealing, raping, killing and playing victim. Good for everyone observing that it hardly works anymore.
Yeah, I bet they were fighting soldiers like the Bibas family heh?
If you look at the videos of resistance attacks, you will see they target soldiers only. Whereas the cowards in the Zionist army kill indiscriminately, men, women and children. Here's a most recent video of the resistance actions against the invading Zionists in Gaza, who by the way keep getting their asses handed to them. These videos are really great, I recommend taking a shot every time a Palestinian fighter hits a Zionist terrorist. You may be quite drunk by the end.
They are from the last week alone..I can share weekly updates if you like.
This is great too.
And this:
The bravery of the Palestinian resistance compared to the cowardice of the invading terrorists cannot be denied..
Not fighting in close quarters either, although Hezbollah has lost more men than Israel has.
Did someone say Hezbollah?
Hezbollah record all their fighters deaths in the various resistance channels. The Zionists pretend the same isn't happening to them or will record the odd death here or there after the Palestinian resistance shows videos of them red-triangling those terrorists. You can see some of that in the videos above. Zionists won't admit how much they have lost because it'd force the country to seek an end to the war. What we do know is many Zionists revolted against going to Rafah and loads more are seeking mental health treatment because they can't hack war when it's not on computer games; actual combat is new to them and since they don't have the will to die for what they think is their country, unlike Palestinian fighters, it's clear who will win this war, sooner or later..
Also, Hezbollah made Israel shrink by 10 kilometres since October 6th. Which is very cool.
Also also, read the article at the top of this post to see how the Zionists won't win.
Too bad former president Donoghue disagrees. What's plausible is that, if South Africa's claims are true, they would amount to a breach of the Genocide Convention. But the ICJ did not make any determinations on whether this is the case or if it's even plausible for the simple reason that this is left for the merits stage of the trial.
Everyone with eyes who isn't a liar understands what Zionists are doing is committing genocide against Palestinians, and for some of us with a longer view than October 7, understand that that is what has been happeing to Palestinians since day dot. Despite that, hundreds of genocide scholars, law-people etc. have concluded it is genocide.
A new study from last week also concluded the same. Zionists may lie to themselves in defence of the genocide while pretending it isn't happening, but the masses worldwide see the Zionist genocidal colony for what it is.
A ground-breaking study by a coalition of prestigious academic institutions has concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza since 7 October, 2023, constitute genocide against the Palestinian people. The study, conducted by the University Network for Human Rights, the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University School of Law, the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School, the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, and the Lowenstein Human Rights Project at Yale Law School, presents a thorough legal analysis of Israel’s conduct in the context of the Genocide Convention of 1948.
The report concludes that Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza have been motivated by the requisite genocidal intent, as evidenced by statements from Israeli leaders expressing dehumanisation and cruelty towards Palestinians, as well as intentions to destroy and exterminate them. The patterns of conduct by Israeli military forces in Gaza further reinforce the finding of Israel’s genocidal intent, the report said.
QatzelOk wrote:The other Israeli-kill threads are full of page after page of "Quote where I said the report was lying" spam. It seems like one of your hasbara tactics is to ignore reality, and the other is to bore people to death with spam.
Indeed.
Free Palestine.
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