the situation in Israel demonstrates a cunning on the part of Hamas that some commentators can only explain by arguing that “this is what Netanyahu wants,” or “Mossad knew this would happen, and let it happen.” (gee if that’s the case, then I wonder what other things Mossad might have known about and maybe facilitated, perhaps 22 years ago in Manhattan? I digress) Israel’s domestic politics are not pretty right now, or they weren’t until a week ago, with 38 straight weekends of protests against Netanyahu’s “alleged” corruption indicative of deep divisions in the country. and there’s nothing like an invasion to rally unity in the face of, as Israeli officials are so fond of saying, subhuman barbarian hordes. subhuman barbarian hordes with a keen sense of strategy and timing.
anyone not bought-and-sold, either literally or psychologically, by Israeli propaganda knows it’s ridiculous to condemn violence on the part of Hamas without at least mentioning the nearly 80-year-long campaign of settler colonialism carried about by Zionists under the auspices of Western, namely Anglo-American, patrons. others can detail the systematic, psychopathic destruction of Palestinians, the huge disparities in casualties, the shameless bad faith with which Israel claims its “right to defend itself.” of course, Free Palestine, down with Zionism.
deeper, though, than the overt anti-colonialist struggle, the situation in Israel is a warning shot for the coming crack-up of the neoliberal world order. Israel is and always has been a white colonialist project given justification by cynical deployment of “anti-Semitism”, so that the Anglo-American establishment can maintain an outpost in the oil rich Middle East. the reign of the New Romans (who incidentally operate Empire more like the Spanish than the Romans, but don’t spoil their fun) is only possible so long as pipelines pump that sweet petroleum out of the Arabian desert and into American or British banks. part of maintaining this foothold is in Israel projecting an image of indomitable strength, hence the billions of dollars in funding and arms sent there each year by the United States–Obama signed an agreement that promises $38B to Israel between 2017 and 2028, and Antony Blinkey has said they’re working on sending more aid to assist in what Netanyahu believes will be a prolonged conflict.
if this is to be a prolong conflict, it means that Israel is not in the position of indomitable strength it needs to contain this uprising. a very bad sign for Empire. and if the conflict drags on, those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause will join up with Hamas, further destabilizing the region. the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, long-time supporters of Palestinian liberation, may be called into to provide reinforcements. keep in mind that World War I, aside from being a clusterfuck of petty squabbles between the decrepit houses of the European aristocracy, broke out due to conflicts between empires seeking access to markets and capital. nowadays, China, Russia, and the Anglosphere are competing to assert market dominance in the 21st century. Ukraine serves as proxy conflict between the US and Russia over economic access to the Eurozone. and now, with the promise of a prolonged conflict in the Middle East, the oil fields of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Iran may now be up for grabs as well.
the US has already promised to dispatch aircraft carriers and destroyers to the Eastern Mediterranean to support Israel’s “right to defend itself,” “enough to start World War III,” according to Marwan Bishara of Al-Jazeera. Bishara worries that Netanyahu may be “tricking the Biden administration into war” with Iran, fulfilling Bibi’s long standing dream of punishing the Islamic Republic for its nuclear program. but Biden has also, despite his gestures towards military withdrawal, promised to not “leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia, or Iran” in the Middle East. it would be extremely rash of Netanyahu to expand a conflict that his IDF does not seem operationally capable of sustaining, but then again these kinds of wars don’t explode out of reasoned strategy. and the Empire is buckling, a position that only ever leads to rasher, and more violent, flailing.
and if Lebanese Hezbollah gets involved, Israel may be stretched so thin that its only option will be nuclear. and make no mistake, even without nuclear arms, there’s not much Israel can offer other than total devastation, either in a military victory over the present invasion, or by reducing Gaza, the West Bank, and the entire region, to ruins, fulfilling the doomsday prophecies of the evangelicals, those Jesuits of the Amerikkkan Empire.
but the ruins of the old world are always the fertilizer of the new, and if there is to be a new world, we must rethink what liberation is, where to best direct rebellion, and how to manage resources without the extractive logic of Empire.
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