Israel’s successful assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, along with the pager attacks and bombings aimed to take out key leadership, have caused me to reassess the big picture.
The big picture being the relationships between Israel, Iran, and the United States. And how things are likely to play out from here.
First, I need to take a step back and remove emotion to allow objectivity to rule. I will freely admit that my heart is with the resistance elements of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Ansar Allah that are trying to do something about the genocide being perpetrated by Netanyahu and the IDF against innocent Palestinian civilians. It is hard for me not to root for some external force to act as a deterrent against the worst impulses of barbarians like Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and especially the US neocons who cheer on Israel as if it were a football team. They act as if killing children is no big deal. Worse, they have no real “skin in the game”, unlike Israelis who have to live in their homeland and deal with resistance attacks firsthand.
With that being said, I think that objectively speaking, Israel has a right to self-defense and to protect its civilian population from attacks such as the Oct. 7 successful Hamas operation. Israel’s initial actions post-October 7th were defensible, including going into Gaza with ground forces to try and terminate Hamas fighters, and recover the hostages.
Where Israel and Netanyahu crossed a moral line was in indiscriminately destroying civilians. They have targeted reporters, intentionally killing several dozen, killed relief workers, and caused thousands of civilian deaths through indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, schools, and other soft targets. Much of Gaza is in total ruins, with no running water, electricity, or way out. This is at a minimum ethnic cleansing.
Here are just a few examples:
(Note that I’m quoting CNN, which is not exactly an anti-Israeli news source.)
Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah killed in southern Lebanon, 6 others wounded | CNN Business
These and other atrocities have earned the Israeli government accusations of Genocide and an ICJ order to immediately cease and desist from further acts of Genocide, and other reports suggest an imminent indictment of Netanyahu and other actors in the Likud government by the ICC.
I would just say that as it applies to Israel itself, they are prosecuting the war in a “no holds barred” fashion that suggests that they understand they’re in an existential fight. There is at least some defense to actions such as taking out enemy leaders such as Nasrallah; however, there is no defense to the intentional killing of civilians at a scale that suggests a desire to simply exterminate the Palestinians, at least in Gaza.
Now let’s consider the reaction of the collective West. The collective West is defined as the US, the UK, and most of western Europe. The reaction by the West to Israel’s acts of total war has been hypocritical. They claim publicly to want to constrain Israel to some degree, but their actions suggest the opposite. Sending billions in military aid, vetoing UN resolutions for a ceasefire, and actively trying to undermine the actions of other countries such as South Africa in the ICJ doesn’t follow the rhetoric of leaders like Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, and others.
Worse still, there has been an active diplomatic campaign to try and force Hamas to accept a ceasefire along with releasing the only leverage they have over Israel - the remaining hostages. The ring leaders of this campaign include the US, along with Qatar and Egypt. As I posted in a comment on the excellent substack run by Richard Steven Hack (note that this is somewhat emotional but I believe it captures the situation nicely):
All summer long I banged my head trying to figure out what sort of Kabuki Theater Bibi, Blinken, and those quisling Arab sellouts in Qatar were up to. They kept lying every single day about their dead dog of a ceasefire, and Bibi always played the role of Lucy to Blinken's Charlie Brown. It was perplexing because if you took the actors at face value, it made no sense. All it would take to force Netanyahu to heel would be cutting off all the military support from the Pentagon.
Or merely threatening to do so, perhaps with a few Congressional stooges trotted out to make the threat credible.
Then it dawned on me that Blinken was just a performing monkey and the whole thing was a scam. The only point was performative theater to make it appear that the US was in some sort of good faith effort trying to get a ceasefire. They never intended to get an actual ceasefire implemented.
So, to sum up, the West’s reaction to Israel’s total-war approach, including acts that plausibly seem to be Genocide or at least serious war crimes, has been to run an interference campaign, including a phony and cynical approach of using diplomacy as cover to convince its own citizens that they’re “really working for peace”, all while sending more and more lethal aid to one side of the conflict. It is sort of how in the 90’s after OJ was acquitted of murdering his wife and Ron Goldman, he proclaimed that he would dedicate his life to finding the “real killers.” We all know how that ended up (spoiler alert - lots of golfing by the Juice, but no locating the real killers.)
Now let’s move to another front. For sake of objectivity, let’s say that country B invades another country A on its border. Prior to that invasion, Country A acts in a hostile fashion to country B, including:
Shelling and killing civilians in the border region, including ethnic nationals of country B
Building up a massive army on the border
Heavily fortifying the border
Removing a legitimate neutral government and replacing it with a crony-led one in a coup supported by foreign money and influence;
Signing on to a phony ceasefire agreement just to buy time to re-arm, after suffering setbacks in the border area whereby that region was supposed to be autonomous under international law, while still remaining legally a part of country A
By now you guessed that country A is Ukraine and country B = Russia.
The pattern that jumps out is that there are a lot of simularities between Israel’s fight against a foreign enemy and Russia’s fight against NATO/Ukraine. Both Israel and Russia had their own citizens subjected to killing by foreign enemies. Both faced a buildup of hostile forces right on their borders:
Israel: In Gaza, Southern Lebanon
Russia: In the Donbass, Southern Donetsk
On Israel’s borders, Iranian money and influence helped cement Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon. On Russian borders, NATO money and influence helped to install a puppet regime leading to the crony Zelensky after the legitimate government of Ukraine was coup-d in 2014 (there was an interim period where a slightly less anti-Russia leader was in charge of Ukraine.)
Even the phony ceasefire gambit looks similar, although details differ. In 2014 the Minsk agreement was supposed to lead to a de-conflictation and security for the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine, now pretty much captured by Russia. We all know how that ended.
And in 2024 we see the West up to similar tricks - promoting a fake ceasefire to take some pressure off of the internal politics of the US and Europe, where many protests against Israel have sprung up. This ceasefire is clearly not meant to bring peace. Instead, the real motive is delay - move the conflict until after the election in the US, and probably buy time for more weapons to be delivered to Israel. Also, there may be an element of trying to stall Iran from retaliating against Israel.
To conclude, when you step back and take away the emotions and propaganda rhetoric such as “Ukraine is a democracy! They’re fighting for freedom!” or “Everything Netanyahu does is indefensible” some patterns jump out. That’s the benefit of objective analysis. I’m sure that reasonable people may disagree with my conclusion, but I would counter that when viewed rationally, there are a lot of similarities between Israel and Russia in terms of their situations and their response. Clearly Israel has gone much further in inflicting civilian casualties, targetting civilian leaders, and disregarding the rules of International Law. Russian prosecution of the war has been notably restrained, including letting Western policial leaders come and go through Kiev as if it were Disney world. Imagine if Netanyahu were running Russia - those guys would all be dead!
For some reason Israel gets a pass from the West, and that is a topic for another day.
Finally, a prediction: Israel will launch a ground offensive into Southern Lebanon before the US election day on Nov. 5th. Netanyahu is unconstrained and sees a window of opportunity that may close after the election.
Disclaimer - all opinions are mine and merely opinions. I claim copyright to this work, and any use by Artificial intelligence, web scraping bots, or other automated tools is expressly not consented to. Should I find this content in ChatGPT, Co-pilot, or other AI-generated tools, I reserve the right to sue for copyright infringement.
"objectively speaking, Israel has a right to self-defense"
You blew your entire argument right there.
You make the same mistake in comparing Russia in Ukraine and Israel against Hamas.
Israel is NOT a legitimate country. It is a colonial occupation and is recognized as such in international law and by the bulk of the human race. It came into existence through racist terrorism and foreign meddling in the affairs of Palestine.
Second, I realize that Israel in the 21st century is an artificial construct. It's an idea, not so much a place. And a colonialist project, with some similarities to the USA that was formed on the genocide of indigenous peoples.
That being said, the right to self-defense is more of a human right than one of a country. The whole concept of international law is pretty much flawed because there is no such thing as an impartial judge or jury. Every attempt at a global institution is corrupted or bought off, or subject to weak enforcement powers. The legal concept of personal jurisdiction doesn't work either across international borders.
Although the US gives it a pretty good try, with their illegal long-arm jurisdictional tricks.
All I am saying is that any individual living in a place has the right to self-defense, and the right to insist on a government that eliminates outsiders who try to kill "us."
I do not condone nor enjoy watching Bibi commit massacres and ignore the norms of civilized countries, including Russia, that do not resort to such measures.
"Human rights" - which as an aside I don't believe in - apply to humans, not states. So I have a right to self-defense - a state does not. As an anarchist, I also object to the notion of a right to insist on a government that attacks other people.
That said, Russia obviously has an "interest" in preventing NATO from using Ukraine to attack it. Israel may have a similar "interest". But so does Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Yemen and Iran. So does every nation on the planet.
So what?
Declaring that Israel has an interest makes no judgement as to which interest is "correct" in the sense of which interest reduces the amount of conflict in the world.
Which makes it all an irrelevant tautology.
In the real world, the US is an aggressor state. So is Israel. They actively pursue using force to get what they want without regard to the impact on the world. Russia, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the rest do not. They have consistently acted defensively. Any "aggression" by Hamas on October 7 was a legitimate defense against an attacking occupying state. Hamas are actual individuals engaging in defense against a state. Therefore, any "human rights" involved apply to them much more than the Israelis.
In addition, as I've said elsewhere, any Israeli citizen who did not buy his property in a legitimate real estate transaction from a Palestinian, or from someone who did, is an occupier and thus a legitimate target. As the Israelis like to say about the Palestinians, "there are no civilians."
As I said, I don't believe in "human rights" or for that matter morals or ethics. I judge events based on whether they are a threat to me. The US government and its allies and their behavior are a threat to me because they are provoking nuclear powers capable of destroying where I live.
So I couldn't care less about Israel's "right of self-defense". They have none and they're about to find that out, in terms of the common phrase "fuck around and find out."
"objectively speaking, Israel has a right to self-defense"
You blew your entire argument right there.
You make the same mistake in comparing Russia in Ukraine and Israel against Hamas.
Israel is NOT a legitimate country. It is a colonial occupation and is recognized as such in international law and by the bulk of the human race. It came into existence through racist terrorism and foreign meddling in the affairs of Palestine.
Sorry, You lose this argument - objectively.
First, thanks for commenting.
Second, I realize that Israel in the 21st century is an artificial construct. It's an idea, not so much a place. And a colonialist project, with some similarities to the USA that was formed on the genocide of indigenous peoples.
That being said, the right to self-defense is more of a human right than one of a country. The whole concept of international law is pretty much flawed because there is no such thing as an impartial judge or jury. Every attempt at a global institution is corrupted or bought off, or subject to weak enforcement powers. The legal concept of personal jurisdiction doesn't work either across international borders.
Although the US gives it a pretty good try, with their illegal long-arm jurisdictional tricks.
All I am saying is that any individual living in a place has the right to self-defense, and the right to insist on a government that eliminates outsiders who try to kill "us."
I do not condone nor enjoy watching Bibi commit massacres and ignore the norms of civilized countries, including Russia, that do not resort to such measures.
"Human rights" - which as an aside I don't believe in - apply to humans, not states. So I have a right to self-defense - a state does not. As an anarchist, I also object to the notion of a right to insist on a government that attacks other people.
That said, Russia obviously has an "interest" in preventing NATO from using Ukraine to attack it. Israel may have a similar "interest". But so does Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Yemen and Iran. So does every nation on the planet.
So what?
Declaring that Israel has an interest makes no judgement as to which interest is "correct" in the sense of which interest reduces the amount of conflict in the world.
Which makes it all an irrelevant tautology.
In the real world, the US is an aggressor state. So is Israel. They actively pursue using force to get what they want without regard to the impact on the world. Russia, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the rest do not. They have consistently acted defensively. Any "aggression" by Hamas on October 7 was a legitimate defense against an attacking occupying state. Hamas are actual individuals engaging in defense against a state. Therefore, any "human rights" involved apply to them much more than the Israelis.
In addition, as I've said elsewhere, any Israeli citizen who did not buy his property in a legitimate real estate transaction from a Palestinian, or from someone who did, is an occupier and thus a legitimate target. As the Israelis like to say about the Palestinians, "there are no civilians."
As I said, I don't believe in "human rights" or for that matter morals or ethics. I judge events based on whether they are a threat to me. The US government and its allies and their behavior are a threat to me because they are provoking nuclear powers capable of destroying where I live.
So I couldn't care less about Israel's "right of self-defense". They have none and they're about to find that out, in terms of the common phrase "fuck around and find out."