Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Is Israel Dying? |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2025-05-09
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| [Last edit: 2025-05-11, 5 AM] What follows is my speculation about whether Israel may be dying—and if such death should be called “suicide”. A news program (C.J.Werleman) tells of a push by Turkiye in Syria that may challenge Israel in Syria. This report renewed my interrest in the question “Is Israel Dying?” Any armed confrontation between Israel and a new entrant to the international scene adds to my surmise that Israel is dying. Turkiye is a partisan for Palestine, although very quiet like most “supportive” states. Only Yemen is militarily active as a partisan for Palestine. However, Turkiye has a presence and active interest in Syria—where Israel also operates. Werleman describes Turkiye —I have no idea of the truth of this—as a military power superior to Israel. And, of course, Israel’s army is exhausted after 18 months of “war” in Gaza. Even shooting fish in a barrel is exhausting it seems. Especially fish that shoot back. Hamas is small but it does shoot back. Like the USA, Israel wrongly believes itself invincible and demonstrates immense hubris and enjoys bullying. It believes its own propaganda, which is dangerous for its neighbors and for itself. Unending war is expensive and could lead to bankruptcy (as it seems to be doing in the USA). Like the USA, Israel has lost its most recent “war[s]”, the USA losing in Ukraine and Yemen (and Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam) whereas Israel has “lost” its war in Gaza if its purpose (or one of its purposes) was to defeat Hamas; although to be fair, Israel has certainly succeeded overwhelmingly if its purpose (or one of its purposes) was to commit genocide and wipe out all or most of the people of Gaza. (Of course, the people of Gaza could not fight back and Hamas is and always was a very weak military force. Remember the fish in the barrel.) Is Israel Dying? Before I learned of the addition of Turkiye to the mix, I’ve recently wondered if Israel may be dying. Was there reason to wonder? Yes, based on what I’ve read and heard on-line. • Israel’s economy is ruined by the costs of war and the disruptions due to soldiers away from normal pursuits for a very long period of time, the high costs of missile defenses against Yemeni attacks, and the costs of damage from (somewhat) successful Yemeni attacks, • [India v Pakistan skirmishes] Israel’s arms export industry has sold drones to India which Pakistan, using Turkish-supplied drones, has shot down, cutting against Israel’s arms exports profits in future, to say nothing of Israel’s sense of invincibility, • Israel’s failure to stop recent missile attacks from Yemen (due to imaginative new evasive missile technology used by Yemen), despite Israel’s and USA’s various and doubtless very expensive anti-missile systems, works to deflate Israel’s sense of invincibility and public morale, • Israel’s imports have become much more expensive due to the Yemeni closure of the Red Sea, and lately Israel has had international air traffic closed down somewhat due to successful Yemeni attacks, • many of Israel’s soldiers and reservists are refusing to serve, some soldiers are worried about being accused of committing war crimes, • many countries are threatening to arrest Israeli soldiers visiting on vacation (as “war criminals”), • “civil war” inside Israel is often spoken of locally, • many of Israel’s educated people (doctors and scientists and engineers who can get work elsewhere) are leaving Israel, • many internal refugees from the north of Israel, chased out by attacks from Hezbollah, put a burden on the state and the society, • the few remaining Israel hostages still held in Gaza (that is, as it seems, not killed by Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, seem not to be a concern of the Netanyahu government, infuriating many Israelis, • and in Israel’s imperial councils there is still talk of a war with Iran (or perhaps despair that the USA may not help with such a war). In addition, USA’s ever-changeable President Trump may even have a consistent policy of cooling off toward Israel, AIPAC or no AIPAC, as illustrated by: • his truce with Yemen made without consulting Israel, • his travel and negotiating plans among Gulf countries made without consulting Israel, • his attempts to negotiate a return to JCPOA or the like with Iran, rather than fight Israel’s hoped-for war with Iran, • and now there is even speculation, see Jerusalem Post, that Trump will recognize the Palestinian State, • and, for quite a while now, American public opinion, especially among youth, has been turning against Israel, including many American Jews, • and even Congress has stopped its formerly knee-jerk obedience to AIPAC’s demands, defeating legislation aimed at criminalizing boycott of Israel.. And there is more. Israel didn’t care that it has long been a pariah among the countries of the “global south”, • but lately even EU countries have begun to recognize the State of Palestine, and to suspend shipments of weapons, munitions, and spare parts to Israel. If Israel is Dying, it is Suicide As I see it, if Israel is dying, it would clearly be a case of “suicide” since Israel could have avoided all these elements of “dying” by a simple expedient, available at any time since 1967, namely, making peace with Palestinians and abandoning the hope and drive for a “greater Israel” (that is, an Israel commanding the entirety of Mandatory Palestine) from which all or most Palestinians have been removed (or killed). But because Israel refuses to end its genocide of Gaza and its hugely energized whatever-it-is in the West Bank (ethnic cleansing?), it must face continued attacks from Hamas, Yemen, maybe Hezbollah, and now maybe Turkiye, and deal with deteriorating social conditions at home. A Personal Note My sympathy is not with Israel. Having been married to a Palestinian, I feel almost that Palestine is my second homeland, perhaps in the way that some American Jews feel about Israel. I think that Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has changed the way many people around the world think about Palestine, changing an abstract, legalistic opinion (the Palestinian people have a right to their own homeland) into a visceral feeling, horror at Israel’s obvious attempt to destroy a people, amazement at Israel’s possibly deliberate decision to replace the Nazi Holocaust of Jews of 80 years ago, in the minds and sympathies of the world’s people, with the Zionist Holocaust of the Palestinian people of Gaza of today. The Nazi’s Tausendjähriges Reich was erased, but not because of the Holocaust. By contrast, Israel seems to me to be dying precisely because of its imperial ambition, open racism and cruelty, constant flauting of international law, and its genocide of the Palestinian people of Gaza. I know there are some Jewish Israelis who have long opposed Israel’s whole approach to the Palestinians, who have opposed Israel’s 56-year occupation and, especially, opposed the genocide now underway in Gaza. But after watching the apparently nearly universal approbation of the Jewish people in Israel for the government’s now 18-month genocide of Gaza, my own emotional reaction longs for an Israeli death—at least for the death of its dreams of empire and omnipotence and omnipresence and the death of its oppression of the Palestinian people—which would leave Israel as a smaller, no longer bellicose, no longer imperial, nation, a Middle-Eastern Switzerland?, next to a reconstituted Palestine. Because surely it is time for the 100-years war of Zionism against Palestine to end forever. |
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