War Roundup--Russia and Palestine

First, just to let readers know what’s up with light posting. In a little less than a month my wife will be having hip replacement surgery. We have a variety of things to do to be ready for that. In addition, some dental work for my wife has come to the fore, so we’re trying to get that done before the surgery. I’m not great at juggling things, multi-tasking, so I can only do my best at keeping up.

Now, today, after the grampa stuff I mentioned (very rewarding), I listened to a couple of Danny Davis videos—who’s on fire after his vacation. Both videos are highly recommended. One was with Doug Macgregor:

Col Douglas Macgregor Ukraine BufferZone in Kursk Disaster Awaits

Macgregor made no bones about what he thought of the Kursk incursion by Ukraine. He termed it a complete disaster. He stated that as many as 12k troops may have been sent into the the Kursk region, but that the Russians have already killed about 4k. The rest are largely cut off from resupply, have no effective defensive positions, have lost most of their heavy equipment, and are now being hammered with everything Russia can throw at them—including things like fuel air explosives. He adds that he has heard that as many as 2k of those troops were foreigners. This was a true NATO invasion, and Russians are enraged. They want their army to go all the way west.

Davis and Macgregor also discussed the Middle East. Macgregor repeated his view that Netanyahu is calling the shots, and that this places the US in a precarious position. If Netanyahu’s plan for a major regional war—including Iran—comes to fruition, thousands of US personnel will be at high risk. Macgregor emphasized that US actions in Ukraine give Russia every reason to supply a variety of Middle East actors who are hostile to the US with top flight Russian weapons systems. That means missiles, for the most part. Missiles that can get through to US bases and US ships. In Iran’s case, of course, it also means air defense equipment.

Davis also devoted a solo video to the Middle East:

CEASE-FIRE in Gaza: Who's it Really up to?

Davis was totally on fire. Part of this was due to Netanyahu making it crystal clear today—for anyone who had any doubt—that he would never agree to stop the war on Palestinians.

Megatron @Megatron_ron

 So officially Netanyahu said that he does not want an agreement that will end the war.

Literally admitting that he has been obstructing the negotiations all along, pretending to negotiate just to keep the Israeli public calm who demand the return of the hostages.

Israel is facing an all-out war and the hostages will never be returned.

11:32 AM · Aug 20, 2024

Of course, as usual there is more than one angle to this. Yes, Netanyahu has to gaslight the Israeli public—who are all on board with genocide and the rape of Palestinian prisoners, but want their own prisoners returned alive. On the other hand, it’s also necessary to gaslight the American public—keep them thinking that there’s some sort of negotiating actually going on so the flow of genocidal weaponry to Israel continues. The reality, as Davis makes excruciatingly clear, is that Netanyahu sees this as an opportunity to kill as many Palestinians as possible. He’s making the most of it and wants it to continue into a major regional war.

Zhou and Trump can mouth all they want about wanting the killing to stop, but they’re not going to do anything effective to end it and it won’t stop. As for the people who are presumably running this show in DC—Sullivan and Blinken—anyone who thinks these two don’t fully understand what Netanyahu is doing, and what his plans are, are delusional. They are only running interference for Netanyahu.

There’s no magic to this dynamic. Netanyahu doesn’t have some unfathomable hold over US politicians. This is about the political influence of American Jews who support the Zionist project, come hell or high water. Influence means money, in the form of political contributions, and that explains the degrading spectacle of Congress clapping for Netanyahu like performing seals, even though the majority of Americans want the genocide to stop. The politicians know that Americans are largely unable to put two and two together and come up with the correct answer. They’ll vote for the candidates who get the most money and, when Israel is an issue, the candidates with the most money will be the candidates that do the bidding of Jewish donors.

Alastair Crooke’s latest article goes into more detail regarding what drives this, and he names names among American Jews who lead the ideological war.

Revisionist Zionists dare the U.S. to pull the plug on their Nakba agenda

(You can hear Crooke discussing this article with Judge Nap Alastair Crooke: Might US Pull the Plug on Israel? but I recommend the article. The answer, btw, is No.)

Crooke places what's going on in Palestine in the immediate context of the rise to power of the coalition of Jewish supremacist parties that coalesced around Netanyahu. The support for this government appears to be a minority in Israel, although a substantial minority. Crooke places Netanyahu and the other Jewish supremacists in the tradition of the Revisionist Zionism of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, which seeks a Greater Israel on both sides of the Jordan River--or, in the maximalist version, extending from the Nile to the Euphrates. Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon were also in this group.

Crooke connects this Revisionist Zionism to American Neoconnism by pointing to the influence of Leo Strauss on the leading lights of Neoconnism--people like Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and David Wurmser. Crooke sees Strauss as following in the tradition of Jewish esoterism and a "double truth", which he traces to Maimonides. The similarity to Strauss' alleged esoterism is clear.

Crooke's thesis is that the tactic of the Revisionist Zionists--up to and including Netanyahu--has been to employ the esoteric technique of the double truth--hiding their true meaning in double speak. This has been necessary to keep Americans on board and enmeshed to the point that it's almost impossible now for the US to distance itself from the most grotesque excesses of Jewish supremacism--such as genocide. This has led to a political crisis in the US, as it has come at a time of political turmoil in America as well as at a time when the Anglo-Zionist empire finds itself facing possible wars that those with military savvy understand America is not prepared for.

Crooke’s conclusion is that Netanyahu and the Revionist Zionists have pulled the wool over America’s eyes. It’s too late to turn back. “America is trapped. The power-brokers are unhappy, but impotent.” We face war. Here is how we in America arrived at this point, according to Strauss:

To understand the nature of this occult war between the Revisionist Zionists and Washington, it is necessary to revisit Leo Strauss, a German Jew, who had left Germany in 1932 under the auspices of a Rockefeller Foundation grant, finally to arrive in the U.S. in 1938.

…

That is to say that the Revisionist notions are shared by the influential group of Americans that formed about this Professor of Philosophy – Leo Strauss – at the University of Chicago. Many accounts report that he had formed a small inner group of faithful Jewish students to whom he gave private oral instruction: The esoteric inner meaning to politics was centred, hearsay recounts, on asserting political hegemony as the means to guard against a new Shoah (holocaust).

The core of Strauss’s thought – the theme to which he would return time and again – is what he called the curious polarity between Jerusalem and Athens. What did these two names signify? On the surface, it would seem that Jerusalem and Athens represent two fundamentally different, even antagonistic, codes or ways of life.

The Bible, Strauss held, presents itself not as a philosophy or a science, but as a code of law; an unchangeable divine law mandating how we should live. In fact, the first five books of the Bible are known in the Jewish tradition as the Torah and ‘Torah’ is perhaps most literally translated as ‘Law’. The attitude taught by the Bible is not one of self-reflection or critical examination – but of absolute obedience, faith, and trust in Revelation. If the paradigmatic Athenian is Socrates, the paradigmatic biblical figure is Abraham and the Akedah (the binding of Isaac), who is prepared to sacrifice his son for an unintelligible divine command.

I should be clear that I disagree vehemently with this Straussian ideology. I refer my readers to the archive for the earlier Meaning in History for my argument that Israelite religion embodied what Mircea Eliade describes as an “archaic ontology,” nothing like the type of ideology that Strauss posits. It’s interesting to note that this centrality of Abraham and the Akedah features prominently in much modern Protestant thinking. It is not a coincident that much modern Jewish thought has been heavily influenced by Protestant thought, which David Goldman characterizes as a “Judaizing heresy.” Evangelical embrace of Zionism and Revisionist Zionism are thus seen to be two sides of one coin.

‘Yes’ western liberal democracy brought civil equality, tolerance, and the end to the worst forms of persecution. Yet at the same time, liberalism required of Judaism – as it does of all faiths – to undergo the privatization of belief, the transformation of Jewish law from a communal authority to the precincts of individual conscience. The result, as Strauss analysed it, was a mixed blessing.

Crooke is correct. Liberalism is an exclusivist secularized religion. The “privatization of belief” is congenial to most forms of Protestantism that follow the Lutheran idea of faith as, essentially, a subjective conviction. For Christianity, however, faith is not subjective—it is a reasonable belief rooted in the marriage of historical fact and the development of the late Israelite “archaic ontology” into an explicit metaphysics of created being.

The liberal principle of the separation of state and society, of public life and private belief, could not but result in the “Protestantisation” of Judaism, he suggested.

To be clear: these two antagonistic ways of being express fundamentally different moral and political points of view. This is the essence of what divides the two ‘camps’ that inhabit Israel today: Democratic ‘cultural Judaism’ versus the Judaism of faith and obedience to divine Revelation.

Setting the Trap for the U.S.

The U.S. Straussians began forming a political group half a century ago, in 1972. They were all members of Democratic Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s staff, and included Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and David Wurmser. In 1996, this Straussians trio wrote a study for the new Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. This report (the Clean Break Strategy) advocated the elimination of Yasser Arafat; the annexation of the Palestinian territories; a war against Iraq and the transfer of Palestinians there. Netanyahu was very much a member of this circle.

The Strategy was inspired not only by the political theories of Leo Strauss, but also by those of his friend, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, whom Netanyahu’s father served as private secretary.

Full disclosure. I actually own (and have read) a copy of Benzion Netanyahu’s mammoth tome on the origins of the Inquisition in 15th century Spain.

Now, Crooke shifts a bit. He sees a split between American Neocons, who fear for Israel’s actual existence, and the more eschatologically inclined Jewish supremacist parties in Israel—who embrace the prospect of an apocalyptic regional war. Americans are bystanders to the debate between Neocons and Revisionist Zionists. We get not say. Our elected “representatives” collect the money and send the weapons.

For the avoidance of confusion, the American Straussians – today usually called ‘neo-cons’ – are not in principle opposed to the Netanyahu government’s Nakba agenda. It was not Gazans suffering that exercised them; rather, it was the threats by the Revisionist Zionists to launch an attack on Iran and on Lebanon. For, were this war to be launched, the Israeli army – for certain – would not be able to defeat Hezbollah on its own. And for Israel to wage war on Iran would amount to certifiable madness.

Thus to save Israel, the U.S. undoubtedly would be forced to intervene. The balance of military power has shifted considerably towards both Hizbullah and Iran since the Israeli-Lebanese war of 2006 and any war now would be a fraught and risky undertaking.

Yet – this was of the essence to the Israeli government’s unspoken ‘esoteric’ (inner) agenda.

Washington tries to Push Back, but finds itself Check-Mated

The only alternative for the U.S. would be to encourage a military coup in Tel Aviv. Already, some senior officers and non-commissioned Israeli officers have come together to suggest this. In March 2024, General Benny Gantz was invited to Washington (against the wishes of the PM). He did not, however, accept the invitation to overthrow the Prime Minister. He went to make sure that he could still save Israel, and that his allies in the U.S. would not turn against the Israeli military cadre.

There’s quite a bit more in the article regarding the matter of a possible coup in Israel against Netanyahu. Who might preempt that coup by recourse to the Ben Gvir led militias.