Macgregor And Crooke On The Same Page: The Tragedy Of Israel's Self Destruction

In my earlier (today) transcription of Doug Macgregor’s comments to Danny Davis, Macgregor sketched out the fundamental dynamics driving the war in the Middle East. Israel having, predictably, screwed up in Gaza, with no end in sight—Netanyahu even speaks of war in Gaza continuing into 2025—is now looking to—what else?— escalate. Why? Because they can’t be seen to have been defeated—never mind that their 2006 defeat by Hezbollah and their 2014 defeat by Hamas forever destroyed their narrative of invincibility:

Well, what's next is the regional war that, right now, Mr Netanyahu and his government want. They want that because they're losing. They've made a mess of Gaza, their country is at high risk of destruction, so their answer to everything is escalate. If you escalate you inevitably pull in your vassal state--the United States--and the US Armed Forces will do your bidding. That's where we are. The Israelis are not difficult to figure out--I understand completely what they're doing, and why the larger problem is for the United States.

You need to distinguish lies from truth. All you're getting from [Netanyahu's] side is one lie after the next. First of all, the whole campaign from the outset had remarkably little to do, I would argue, with the hostages taken on 7 October. As we've seen recently, much of what happened on the 7th of October ends up being debunked--in other words, these allegations of mass rape and mass murder and so forth. That that's part of the problem, but nobody pays attention to that.

Remember, journalists always write--for better or worse--the first draft of history. That first draft said all sorts of terrible things, therefore it stands--even though it may not be true. And what we're finding out is, a lot of it isn't right. [Netanyahu's] real purpose, and what the Israeli people want--and I know this for a fact and I understand why they feel this way--is the complete removal of all the Arabs ...

How does that work? How will a bloodied and battered IOF, having failed against a rag tag Hamas, prevail against an exponentially stronger foe? By bringing in Uncle Sam.

Alastair Crooke, later in the day, today, makes the same point by likening what’s happening to the Greek concept of tragedy. He begins by quoting an Israeli diplomat contact, who explicitly confirms what Macgregor (who has excellent contacts in the IOF) stated:

“If the quagmire of Gaza … 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 … victory against one of the richest and most powerful terrorist organizations in the world – Hezbollah – can restore deterrence in the region in general … 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”.

“But without victory in the south, a significant achievement in the north becomes that much more important”.

Does that sound crazy to you? Welcome to the wacky world of Zionism. That makes perfect sense to the likes of Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich. Crooke sees this as the working out of the entire tragedy of Zionism:

The above quotation goes directly to the heart of the issue. That is: ‘How can Zionism be saved?’. All the rest of the ‘blah-blah’ coming from world leaders is largely bluff. Not only is Gaza NOT giving Israelis a sense of victory; on the contrary, it is widely proliferating a violent anger at a surprise, ‘shameful’ defeat.

… acquiescence to Hamas demands would spell the end to the Israel-security paradigm:

This paradigm consists of a quasi-religious ‘contract’ that Jews shall enjoy security everywhere, and anywhere, in the land of Israel – brought about by the elaborate matrix of radical insecurity of space and rights imposed on non-Jews (i.e. Palestinians), versus the full force of protection and sovereignty for Jews. This forms the universal paradigm underwriting Jewish security.

Until 7 October, that is. The events of that day demonstrated that Jewish Israelis are no longer secure inside Israel – and that the Zionist framework, in respect to security, must be re-thought – 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:

“The 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 … 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.”

Whoa! What did that guy just say? He said that, by revealing the insecurity of Jews in Israel, Israel can no longer be seen as a refuge of last resort for diaspora Jewry. In other words, all those Jews—as some have told me personally—who thought that, if the nasty anti-Semitism in America got too bad, they would always have a safe haven in Zion, well, they’d better think again. Sound wacky? What did I just tell you? That is the total failure of the Zionist project.

This is where the concept of tragedy—the ineluctable playing out of events to their ultimate conclusion dictated by the nature or character of the main players—comes in:

Yet the reality is that Israel is boxed-in, with the box incrementally being ratchetted tight. The situation moves ever closer to tragedy, where ‘tragedy’ 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 … that is their nature.

…

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’s ports are now encircled, and are under missile siege.

Netanyahu, by contrast, fearful of the growing débacle in Gaza has pushed himself to the classic ‘hero’ 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.

By the way, you can see Netanyahu’s appropriation of the heroic role in his self aggrandizing—in his mind—claims to have deep sixed all threats to the Zionist project (dispossessing the Palestinians) via a “two state solution.”

On the other, in Homer’s recounting however, heroes with the highest status are those most vulnerable to shame. Any slight or reversal may threaten a leader’s 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’s 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.

Is this to be Netanyahu’s fate too? Are ‘the gods’ 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 Israeli deterrence through the removal of the strategic threat in Lebanon. In this situation, Israel cannot be content with anything less than victory, Netanyahu is being urged.

There’s much more in the article, in which Crooke also discusses Zhou’s role in all this:

The Tragic Self-Destruction of an Enraged Israel

The embrace of a false ideology leads to ruin, but the adherents are psychologically incapable of backing out of the corner they’re in, because it would destroy the narrative of their identity based in false ideology.