The Fall of Israel
I have previously written about Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, calling it “the most successful military raid of this century.”
I have described the Hamas action as a military operation, while Israel and its allies have called it a terrorist action on the scale of what transpired against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
“The difference between the two terms,” I noted,
is night and day — by labeling the events of October 7 as acts of terrorism, Israel transfers blame for the huge losses away from its military, security, and intelligence services, and onto Hamas. If Israel were, however, to acknowledge that what Hamas did was in fact a raid — a military operation — then the competency of the Israeli military, security, and intelligence services would be called into question, as would the political leadership responsible for overseeing and directing their operations.
Terrorism employs strategies that seek victory through attrition and intimidation — to wear an enemy down and create a sense of helplessness on the part of the enemy. Terrorists by nature avoid decisive existential conflict, but rather pursue asymmetrical battle which pits their strengths against the weaknesses of their enemies.
The war that has gripped the Levant since Oct. 7, 2023, is not your traditional anti-terrorism operation. The Hamas-Israeli conflict has morphed into a conflict between Israel and the so-called axis of resistance involving Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansarullah (the Houthi of Yemen), the Popular Mobilization Forces, i.e. militias of Iraq, Syria and Iran. It is a regional war in every way, shape, or form that must be assessed as such.
The Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz noted in his classic work, On War, that “war is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.”
From a purely military perspective, the Hamas raid on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was a relatively minor engagement, involving a few thousand combatants from each side.
As a global geopolitical event, however, it has no contemporary counterpart.
The Hamas raid triggered a number of varied responses, some of which were by design, such as luring the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza, where they would become trapped in a forever war they could not win, triggering the dual Israeli doctrines governing military response to hostage taking of the “Hannibal Doctrine” and the Israeli practice of collective punishment, the “Dahiya Doctrine.”
Both of these doctrines put the IDF on display to the world as the antithesis of the “world’s most moral military” by exposing the murderous intent ingrained into the DNA of the IDF, a propensity for violence against innocents which defines the Israeli way of war and, by extension, the Israeli nation.
Prior to Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was able to disguise its true character to the outside world, convincing all but a handful of activists that its actions in targeting “terrorists” were proportional and humane.
Today the world knows Israel as the genocidal apartheid state it really is.
The consequences of this new global enlightenment are manifest.
Changing the ‘Face of the Middle East’
President Joe Biden, on Sept. 9, 2023, during the G20 summit in India, announced a major policy initiative, the India-Middle East-European Economic Corridor, or IMEC, a proposed rail, ship, pipeline and digital cable corridor connecting Europe, the Middle East and India.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, commenting on Biden’s announcement, called the IMEC “a cooperation project that is the greatest in our history” that “takes us to a new era of regional and
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.