Big Picture On Palestine War Emerging

The big picture of what’s going on in the Middle East, sparked by Hamas’ October 7 raid into Israel, is beginning to emerge. To grasp this, it’s necessary to understand that the the West and Israel have differing visions of what role Israel is meant to play in the region.

From the standpoint of the West, Israel plays a classical neocolonial role. Simplicius the Thinker expresses this well, in a very insightful article:

Israel and America's Growing Zugzwang

Israel has always been nothing more than a neo-colonialist forward base for the Western / Atlanticist empire to dominate the Middle East and thereby the Heartland of the world.

To illustrate this point graphically, Simplicius presents two world maps that show, on the one hand, the geo-locations of pro-Palestine demonstrations, and on the other the locations of pro-Israel demonstrations—the global fault lines couldn’t be more clear. This is shaping up as a war of the West against the Rest. Note, however, the prevalence of pro-Palestine demonstrations even in the West:

Israel, on the other hand, has its own vision of its role—that of a Jewish state that is a regional hegemon, which has a marriage of convenience with the West. This vision is in conflict with that of the West.

Now, the reality of the situation is that Israel could not exist without the massive economic and military support of the West—especially that of the American Empire. To exercise its own vision with a significant degree of independence, Israel has relied over the years on the political influence of pro-Israel Jewish populations in the West—again, especially in America. That strategy has worked well up to this point in time. The West has received what it was looking for—a neocolonial forward base—while Israel has also received what it wants—the resources and support that allow it to secure its position in the region and to plan an expansion of its regional status.

But now those two visions are in conflict, and from this arise Simplicius’ characterization of the position the American Empire finds itself in:

Zugzwang is a situation found in chess and other turn-based games wherein one player is put at a disadvantage because of their obligation to make a move; a player is said to be "in zugzwang" when any legal move will worsen their position.

Recent years have seen Israel pursuing a policy of ever increasing pressure on the Arab population of Palestine—especially on the West Bank and in Gaza—with the goal of forcing Palestinians to emigrate. The intent is to finally establish what was the Zionist aim from the beginning, but has been thwarted over the years since 1948—the establishment of a Greater Israel with only a minimal Palestinian presence. I recently quoted a description of the blueprint for that plan, drawing on the words of the early Zionists (The NYT Addresses The Zionist Trap, And More):

Fundamental to understanding Israel’s massacre of Palestinians and the wasteland they are creating in Gaza is to discern the blueprint that Israel’s founders drew up to create their Jewish homeland; what they called Eretz-Israel.

Early Zionist leaders were explicit about what they deemed “transfer” plans to effect a “Jewish majority” in Palestine.  Yosef Weitz (1890-1972)—known as the “architect of transfer” – served as director of the powerful Jewish National Fund’s Land Settlement Department.  As head of what he deemed Transfer Committees, Weitz set in motion long-held Zionist plans to “transfer” (ethnically cleanse) and dispossess Palestinians from their homes, land and businesses.  His diary entry from 12 December 1940 is revelatory:   “It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples….If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us…. The only solution is a Land of Israel… without Arabs. There is no room here for compromises… There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps [a few].”

Weitz also spoke about expanding the “Jewish state’s” borders to include areas in Lebanon and Syria. In a meeting on 22 June 1941 with Jewish National Fund Chairman, Menachem Ussishkin (1863-1941), Weitz wrote:  “The land of Israel is not small at all, if only the Arabs will be removed, and if its frontiers would be enlarged a little; to the north all the way to Litani [River in Lebanon], and to the east including the Golan Heights . . . . while the [Palestinian] Arabs be transferred to northern Syria and Iraq. . . . From now on we must work out a secret plan based on the removal of the [Palestinian] Arabs from here . . . [and] . . . to include it into American political circles. . . . today we have no other alternative. . . . We will not live here with Arabs.” (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, 134-135).

This blueprint is mirrored by a 1977 Likud manifesto:

In the meantime, to avoid an open break with the Arab countries, the position of the West has always been for a division of Palestine into two nation states—the Two State Solution that is anathema to Zionists. Hamas’ October 7 raid into Israel was probably intended to force a halt to the increasing Israeli pressure for ethnic cleansing, whether outright or by drawing outside powers into the conflict. Israel, however, saw the event as an opportunity to expand the situation into a regional conflict that would allow the creation of a Greater Israel within the borders envisioned by Zionist ideologues. Indeed, Israeli officials are openly discussing the need to take over southern Lebanon up to the Litani River (see above), a goal that has eluded Israel twice in the past.

Alastair Crooke, in his fine new article, (cited by Simplicius) sees this dynamic clearly:

'Israel’s' ‘Nakba Doctrine’

"Israel" is sensing the present crisis to be both an existential risk, but an ‘opportunity’ too – an opportunity to establish "Israel" across ‘its Biblical lands’ over the long term.

…

Nakba ‘ambitions’ are widening to South Lebanon (up to the Litani River) too. The radical members of Netanyahu’s government say Israelis will never return to the kibbutz adjacent to Lebanon, without Hezbollah’s removal from the border area.

So, the call is heard for "Israel" to ‘take’ Lebanon up to the Litani (a key water source) -- and ‘serendipitously’ the Israeli air force has begun operating up to 40 kms inside Lebanon. Cabinet members now openly speak of the IDF needing to turn its attention to Hezbollah once Hamas has been ‘obliterated’.

Israel’s actions have placed the American Empire in the zugzwang that Simplicius speaks of. America has been focused on its two major rivals, Russia and China. A major conflict in the Middle East, at a time when NATO is dissolving in the Ukraine debacle and China is in a de facto defense alliance with Russia, could stretch the Empire to the breaking point. The ability of the US to actually conduct a major military adventure in the Middle East is very much in doubt. And yet, as we have previously discussed, it looks very much like Israel may be actively seeking to draw the US into its war.

Israel on its own cannot fulfill its vision on any sort of reasonable time scale—thus the need to draw the US into the mix. The Neocon run Zhou regime, by biting at Israeli propaganda and rushing enormous naval based forces to the region, has played into Israel’s game plan. The American plan appears to have been to support Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, while restraining other regional actors—especially Hezbollah—by a show of force.

Typically, the tone deaf Neocons failed to anticipate the revulsion of much of the West against Israeli war crimes, open dehumanization of Arabs, and even calls for genocide. At the same time, the increased US presence has led to intensifying attacks on US bases in the region, with the risk of drawing the US into open warfare while the Russian military watches closely. Israeli is finding its Gaza operation slow going, and knows now that its vaunted political ops forces in the West cannot guarantee support for a long war. And so Israel is expanding its strikes into Lebanon with the expectation that the American Empire would join in if a wider war breaks out—as Israel hopes.

This is far more than the American Empire ever bargained for. By leading Israel to act outside its assigned role as neocolonial forward base for the West, the Zionists are threatening to turn Western plans for global hegemony upside down. Here’s how Simplicius puts it—and you see that he expresses the zugzwang very clearly—damned if they do, damned if they don’t:

The powers that be have recognized this and are panicking … Israel’s current actions are seen as accelerating the realignment of the entire globe to such a dangerous degree that the U.S. and co. see no “off-ramp” to ending the conflict without the total loss of influence in the MidEast, as well as the handing the entire future destiny of the globe on a silver platter to Russia and China—who are being perceived as the ‘good guys’ on the right side of history as per this conflict.

and

So the U.S. itself senses that Israel is potentially deliberately trying to draw Hezbollah in so that big daddy America can come in and “finish off” Hezbollah/Iran once and for all. Meanwhile, U.S. knows the dangers of this as it has no where near the current capability to fight a protracted conflict against Iran, which could virtually shut down the entire global economy and cause all of Biden’s “economic miracles” to be flushed down the toilet, creating a disastrous scenario for the 2024 elections that would hand the win to some opposition party, particularly Trump.

And it gets even worse. Simplicius also sees the dangers facing Israel. Israel plunged ahead because its public was demanding action. But faced with a long war, time may have several jokers up its sleeve:

… while it’s true that ultimately the IDF could wipe out all of Gaza—since 500k men are simply not realistically going to be substantially attritioned—it could take so long that by the time they emerge “victorious” the entire world would have drastically changed and realigned, and Israel’s economic conditions will have been so severely affected as to completely change the trajectory of Israel’s future as a nation.

Now, imagine for a moment, that this whole outline adds Hezbollah to the equation, with the opening of a major second, northern front. Now add to the equation the brewing mutinies in the West, the massive building political crisis and coming critical election cycle. Israel may find itself in extremely deep waters, with U.S. potentially unable to financially aid it.

Iran could very well be sitting back and waiting for Israel to weaken to a far more critical degree before initiating another phase of an operation to finish them off.

There are so many moving pieces here, and controlling them seems well nigh impossible. These are uncharted waters, and the ship of state is captained by a combination of blind hegemonists and wild eyed ideological fanatics.

In the meantime two more developments—which we’ve touched on previously—are taking place. One, of course, is the gradual coalescing of the Arab and broader Muslim world (to include Turkey, Iran, and beyond) appears to be progressing in step by step fashion—to the exclusion of US influence. The second is that the close coordination between the US and Israel to control the public square in the US has failed—as Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL explicitly recognizes. Simplicius adds:

… for the U.S. to provide the military and global political backing for Israel to conduct its operation, Israel in turn must provide the social and cultural narrative control in order to allow the Western elite class to continue pushing the moral justifications for Israel’s actions.

And this is the crux of everything: Israel appears to have heavily banked on being able to use its various social control technologies—which mostly consists of its various NGOs and global ‘anti-hate groups’ like the ADL—to dictate the narrative around this genocide.

But they failed miserably.

Israel did not appear to have a good bead on the pulse of the global awakening. ...

Times have changed, things are unwinding, Israel is losing control:

We, the little people, can only watch and wait. For the time being.