Nov 15·edited Nov 15Liked by The Anti Empire Project
Hi Justin, I agree with this succinct analysis, with one exception: “The Axis of Resistance strategy seems to be based on the hope that the US and Israel can be forced to see reason.” I think that early on, the Axis of Resistance held this assumption. But it seems highly likely to me that they no longer do. There is too much evidence to suggest that the US and Israel cannot be forced to see reason. That includes the US’ complete loss of reason in Ukraine. I tend to think that at some point, probably after the pager attack and the assassinations of Haniyeh and Nasrallah, that the Axis of Resistance modified their assumption to one that assumes a war of attrition until Israel collapses from within, or the US empire collapses from within, or the US empire is no longer able to maintain an adequate munitions and equipment bridge to Israel.
Thanks a lot, for this and everything else. The history course, the sitreps, the therapy sessions and all books you have made me read - the latest is Yahya Sinwar´s. Fantastic book! And hero.
“Dominance is the current situation, in other words, extended forever into the future.”
If this article is written to show the depth of the delusional pathology of the Zionist regime, then it does a good job. But, at times, it felt like it overestimates the realistic possibility or practicality for the rabid Zionists’ to continue indefinitely enacting their genocidal goals, dreams, hubris, and self-aggrandizement of their capabilities.
First, it would be very quite unlikely that Israel can even continue like this for another year let alone a forever war of this magnitude without the Israeli socioeconomic fabric falling apart. This is acknowledged even by many Israeli pundits. There is even increasing conflicts between the military and intelligence institutions on the one had and the political leadership, as was exemplified by the firing of the defense minister recently.
Neither the forever war nor the world destruction are much of an option for Israel, and it’s way weaker than the propaganda in the West has brainwashed people to think. Look how Israel has panicked and responded in a muted way when confronted by a real actor and viable threat as Iran. No one could’ve predicted Israel to tremble with hesitancy or doubt in attacking Iran directly after its territory was attacked in a way that no state or entity had even dared to fathom since the very existence of the Zionist entity. Israel would’ve long ago attacked or attempted to destroy Iran’s nuclear industry or vital energy infrastructure if it had the capability or wherewithal to bear the consequent response from Iran, especially after 20 years of nonstop boisterous bluster of its intent to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. You think Israel has ever been shy about aggression or worried about diminished support from its American and other western sponsors? No, it’s because deterrence with Iran was established long ago and only heightened in recent months.
Israel as it exists today is in very deep trouble and there’s no easy way out regardless of ceasefire. The frog has already been boiled enough that it can no longer get out of the scalding water. Israel absolutely does not have the human and economic resources to engage in long term wars of attrition and it was never designed for such. It is destined for implosion given its internal social contradictions as an apartheid settler colony, and a significant portion of the settler population has the option to get the hell out before risking and losing their lives for the Zionist state. Israel as a Zionist project will implode whether it continues “the current situation” or settles for a ceasefire for the time being.
I like this systematic analysis. Scott Ritter has also said, I think to Nima Alkhorshid over the last week or so, that the US can't solve Ukraine's recruitment problem with funds. Stacks of money can't drive tanks. The Israeli military's collapsing morale has been in the news for some time, and Damien Willey at the KernowDamo channel says (see "ISRAEL'S MILITARY IN CRISIS AS SOLDIER NUMBERS PLUMMET!") that Israeli settlers are emigrating to avoid the draft, drafting Orthodox Israelis has failed, and so Israel has offered citizenship, jobs, and housing to previously unwelcome Ethiopian Jews, and Germany is likewise offering citizenship and up to 5.000 Euro a month to its Afghan, Syrian, and Libyan asylum seekers if they fight as mercenaries for Israel. They are using the desperate forcibly displaced to forcibly displace others. Paraphrasing Jon on your sitrep 406, we need new words to express disgust at ever spiraling depravity.
There may be another meaning to dominance, centered around how the war is being fought. Time and again Israel has tried to force a hot, fast war, and time and again the resistance has slowed it down to a tanks frozen in Russian mud war of attrition. We are due for another carefully crafted Iranian missile attack. I assume True Promise 3 will be big, showy, and one degree more painful than the previous iterations, and once again will be designed to flip the media narrative and re-energize resistance without triggering direct US involvement.
The conflict in Ukraine has gone far longer than many analysts thought possible, with Western money artificially staving off Ukraine's admission of defeat. I would imagine that Israel's moribund military will be sustained far more aggressively. The resistance has been forced into a painful exchange - sacrificing lives to bleed the empire dry. But all empires fall eventually. And there is no doubt in my mind that resolute Palestinian struggle will be written about in history books as the lynchpin of the forces steering us all to the end of US-Israeli hegemony.
Agreed. Every single empire in history has fallen, why should the USA be different? It has many advantages but so did every other extinct empire. Rebels always lack a preponderance of numerical and materiel superiority.
Thanks for another informative post. I appreciate your concision. We already know how terrible the Israelis and Western Jewish supremacists are. Will liberals in North America and Europe notice the contradiction of supporting Trump’s policies in Western Asia while decrying his fascism and criminality? I doubt it. The Resistance will stop Israel or it won’t. That’s the future.
Nov 17·edited Nov 17Liked by The Anti Empire Project
Israel's last quarter reported GDP growth has been downgraded twice since and is now negative on a per capita basis. This quarter's is coming in the next week more or less; whatever it is, it will be downgraded.
Also, Israel has a very high-skilled, English speaking population of Trump supporting Jews. Don't discount the possibility that Trump, Musk, Thiel etc actually secretly want them to flee Israel and move, permanently, to the US. None of them are ideologically committed to Zionism the way Biden is.
Nov 17·edited Nov 17Liked by The Anti Empire Project
I really think it takes a fanatical ideology to not just let a Genocide happen (that just takes cowardice), but actively facilitate it happening as Genocide Joe has.
“Samson could be invoked by Netanyahu in his bunker if his enemies are closing in - and the Axis is trying to win in a way that doesn’t lead to world destruction.” That sums it up for me. There are terrorists in the world, and the Axis of Resistance is fighting them. The discipline, coordination, and strategic thinking of the resistance, as you describe here, highlights how effective the empire has neutralized armed resistance in the West. The 2nd Amendment in the USA, for example, is still around for semi-adults to play with their toys at gun ranges, but not to use them as actual tools for armed struggle.
Dr. Podur’s summary of the opposing plans is very helpful. The comments here are also helpful. Much gratitude to everyone. I’m only a layman but I’m cautiously optimistic that the West will see the impracticality of the current situation, that Israel’s conscript army will collapse like America’s conscript army and society did in Vietnam. Who predicted that in 1965, except that is the Viet Cong, the winners?As an American, I can just say many people wan’t an immediate ceasefire, but the USA as everyone knows is not a democracy and was never designed to be; the word isn’t even in the constitution. The resistance must win, and they can.
This is a comment about Finkelstein but because it's critical I wanted to put it in the least public place possible as I respect his overall work and don't want to engage in a tear down. But listening to you and Jon discuss it again I couldn't avoid this conclusion which is that it is a kind of not white supremacy but white chauvinism- an inability to conceive of the world and the course of world history as being determined by Indigenous people. So he sees Israel as the only player, maybe ameliorated at times by attention from the West. He wants good things for the world. But he hasn't been able to let go of the other part of the brainwashing that we are subjected to in the imperial core, that which tells us that it is only the West that can act on history. So he looks to the wrong places. And yes of course that leads to despair.
The bullet points of this succinct compilation still hit like gut punches every time.
I am conflicted about the South Africa comparison - perhaps some of you could fill in?
It seems that expecting a version of the South Africa solution was kind of an automatic default setting among liberals in the 1990s (with Rabin or Barak as de Klerk and Arafat or Marwan Barghouti as Mandela).
Given that the South African "peace and reconciliation" process is historically quite unique... strange, really, in retrospect. Also there were so many incongruities, a Two State Solution quite unlike the South African model, etc. I guess it felt comforting at the time.
Aside from the difference in population ratios as discussed by Peter S, Sarah, and others here in this thread, there are additional historical factors that made the South African reconciliation process possible, such as it was [-> I think we need to both acknowledge what the South African people and the ANC achieved - and also the limits of what they were allowed to achieve]:
(1) The South African elites had a wake-up call in their military defeat at the hand of Cuban troops. (International boycott movements also alarmed them).
(2) Paradoxically, the South African government at the same time could negotiate with Mandela's ANC from a position of overwhelming strength. This was due to external factors, i.e. the fall of the Berlin Wall and the impending implosion of the Soviet Union.
This may explain why they felt they needed to negotiate at all and why they actually implemented what for them amounted to quite a sweet deal. To my knowledge, there never really was a plebiscite among "White South Africans" for the end of racial Apartheid (which partly put them into competition with Black South Africans). The accounts I have read depict it largely as a project of the business elites who spoke (British) English rather than one carried by the mass of Afrikans speaking Whites (their version of Dutch).
The (absence of) these factors may explain the reticence of Israeli elites to take the peace route. [We should also be careful in retrospect not to treat the utter defeat of the "peace camp" as an historical inevitability either, even given the clear contradictions within the Oslo "settle the land for talking about peace" process... what if Rabin hadn't been assassinated, etc.]
Again, I am really conflicted about the value of the South Africa comparison, especially going forward. By now, the Israeli business elites [their .01% countrol an immense amount of the economy even by "Western" standards] certainly had their share of military wake-up calls. However, the Israeli advantage in military and economic terms is waning, also as a consequence of the war and the resistance strategies in Justin's analysis.
So it is difficult to see them coming to the negotiating table from a position of renewed strength. Nor outright weakness, as the Republicans will likely support them even more religiously. Perhaps everyone will eventually come to the table utterly exhausted? Any of this would be so much unlike South Africa, though.
How well do business elites control the Israeli state at this point? Historically their vehicle of choice was the Labor party (a historical piece of irony), now effectively defunct (another historical piece of irony). There are by now many quite different extreme-right parties in the Knesset representing progressively estranged and insular constituencies (of eligible voters). Perhaps they are still in the pocket of big business after all? Perhaps we should expect more from ordinary people than from business "interests", anyway?
Could Barghouti still play the part of Mandela - one can only hope from a position of relative strength? But it is so hard to see an "Israeli de Klerk"...
But then again, who expected de Klerk's gambit at the time?
Thanks for the analysis, which looks reasonable and realistic. All basic parameters are identified.
The Axis of Resistance's path is so far clear. The term "The boiling Frog Strategy" fits well.
As for Israel-US, the idea seems to prevail now across the board, that the Empire's strategy is (undetermined) escalation: No (HONEST) negotiations, no compromise of any sorts. Full scale dominance MUST BE reached (or restored), not only in West Asia but also everywhere else.
The Imperial Forces have so far the military upper hand. They demonstrate their destructive capabilities every single day with incredible ferocity. However, the military resources (material, logistic, personal) are FINITE and the cost is increasing.
Both competing big players (Russia, China) and the Global South are catching up. Not only militarily, as the Axis of Resistance or the Ukraine conflict shows, but also, in other fields that in the end will MAKE THE DIFFERENCE: economy, finance, trade, and industrial, research and development capacity.
The era of Western Colonial Hegemony is coming to an end. The Western Elites do not know it yet. Palestine is a major articulation point (and accelerator) where the birth of the multipolar and multi-nodal world is taking place - on the ground and in our mind.
Most probably, the Colonial Outpost(s) will collapse FROM WITHIN when the Heart of the Empire have readjusted to the irrevocable NEW Realities.
Like always, a great analysis of the state of the genocide.
I wonder whether it's even possible for Israel to agree to a ceasefire at this point. Their entire existence is now predicated on maintaining regional military dominance. If they agree to a ceasefire that undermines this perceived military superiority, it seems like a slippery slope to losing status as a nation altogether. They'll no longer have the unilateral authority to determine what happens to Israel as a country. For example, if they lose the war, which is basically what a ceasefire at this point would mean, they could then be subject to all sorts of international, if not regional, oversight, that could potentially include war crimes tribunals for most of their leaders. There's no possibility of a truth and reconciliation commission for this. So I wonder if Israel is looking at the status of other settler colonial states like the US, Canada and Australia, and thinking to themselves "well, they enacted a genocide, and look at them now? We just need to get to a point where Axis resistance is impossible, and then over a long enough time period the genocide will become normalized." Of course, this completely ignores the differences between their genocide and the genocide in the West that made this normalization possible, but still.
I also wonder about the possibility of implementing South African neo-colonialism. Maybe, but that almost certainly won't mean the end of the Zionist project. Looking at South Africa now, the white settler project is continuing apace, with outcomes for poor black South Africans often being worse now than under Apartheid. Apartheid, instead of being encoded directly into legislation, is now obscured within the fabric of South Africa's economic system. So the idea that Zionism would somehow end as Palestinians are integrated into Israeli society? It didn't even happen in the case of South Africa, and the settler:indigenous ratio was far more heavily weighted in favour of black South Africans. I might be wrong, but Jews outnumber Palestinians 2:1, so, I dont know...
Living in so called Straya, the risk of neo colonisation is an important consideration. We have seen this in almost every revolutionary country. Here in Australia, the genocide never stopped, just moved to slower, normalised and falsly legitimised pace. Empire & colony have used the language of meretocracy, reconciliation and (de) colonisation to normalise the slow genocide of Aboriginal Peoples. This is why Palestine cannot be a single issue movement. No matter the outcome, we press on. We don't rest at Palestinian liberation, we must not leave behind Australia's First Nations Peoples, Kananky, West Paupa, Sudan, Kenya. All are suffering and dying for the material benefit of empires and colonies. Regardless of when and even if success comes, we stay steadfast because we would never want to be empires apathetic and ignorant lap dog.
*Justin, thank you for all your efforts towards building collective knowledge ❤️
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics “brief on the status of the Palestinian people at the end of 2023” press release:
5.55M in Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem
1.75M in 48
6.56M in Arab states
0.772M in other countries
-------
14.63M around the world
“It is expected that the number of Palestinians will reach approximately 7.3 million in historical Palestine, while the number of Jews will reach 7.2 million by the end of 2023.”
===
2023 stats on Jewish population from the Jewish Virtual Library:
7.46M in US
7.43M in Israel
-----
16.78M around the world
^^NB: but there is some funny number jumping in the stats from 2022 to 2023 as they shifted from one data set to another. Another strange part of the data presentation is how stats on non-Jews in the West Bank and Gaza is specific down to the unit, but the count of Jews in Israel is rounded off to the thousands.
Total population of Israel and Palestinian Authority (West Bank and Gaza) is 15,174,938, of which 7,427,000 are Jews. So in their count the split is 7.43M Jews, 7.74 Palestinians.
Rough parity, but in both sets of data Palestinians outnumber Jews.
Thanks for this. Yeah, I think it's tough to find the actual stats, and the ones I used may have just included Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which might explain the discrepancy. Regardless, if the ratio is 1:1 in Palestine, this is a far cry from apartheid South Africa, where the ratio was 4:1 against the whites. The whites became an unstable minority, and so they were forced into capitulation to save themselves. At the very least the kind of lopsided population phenomenon present in South Africa is not happening in Palestine. But this is also a far cry from the indigenous to settler ratios in the commonwealth colonies. But population isn't all that matters, and as you both pointed out, there are many Palestinians abroad, and Palestine itself is surrounded by Arab states.
One thing might save us, greed. Greed is eating the USA empire alive, as each faction scrabbles for the final feast they are attempting to elbow each other away from the host body. When Israel finally becomes a serious impediment to the feast, it too will be elbowed away. I just can't see that far into the future as to when, but I can see far enough to say it will happen.
Absolutely agree they are a feaster, but are their elbows sharper than Rockefeller, Mellon, etc. Israel was a unsinkable aircraft carrier, but in a time of obsolesces for aircraft carriers, do they provide a decent ROI compared to their opportunity costs?
Depopulation is the philosophy of the WEF. The Uber Rich Parasitic class has no use for the working class. The lower level capitalists just want to sell things and make money. In order to do so, these capitalists must rebuild their countries. And they need a mass movement of working class people to protect them from the Uber Rich Parasitic Imperialists.
I am grateful for this cogent and honest analysis, but wow is this depressing. As an American citizen, it’s hard to deny that the best case scenario would be for the “west” to suffer a catastrophic defeat. Is that possible? I guess I’ve answered my own question: we would sooner nuke the planet than relinquish power. Ugh 😣
The war against the US-led Empire is raging worldwide, and the strategy of ATTRITION IS VALID ON ALL FRONTS. West Asia and Eastern Europe are on focus, but developments elsewhere WILL BE DECISIVE: A central node is CHINA.
The Channel "Inside China Business" has published many videos that explain why the US neocons and their proxies HATE China so much, i.e. how China sustains the efforts by the Global South to break Western Hegemony - and even makes this struggle possible.
Everybody here knows, but for the record, the REAL argument against China has nothing to do with democracy or human rights. The US has NEVER (honestly) bothered about those issues - neither within its borders nor outside.
Hi Justin, I agree with this succinct analysis, with one exception: “The Axis of Resistance strategy seems to be based on the hope that the US and Israel can be forced to see reason.” I think that early on, the Axis of Resistance held this assumption. But it seems highly likely to me that they no longer do. There is too much evidence to suggest that the US and Israel cannot be forced to see reason. That includes the US’ complete loss of reason in Ukraine. I tend to think that at some point, probably after the pager attack and the assassinations of Haniyeh and Nasrallah, that the Axis of Resistance modified their assumption to one that assumes a war of attrition until Israel collapses from within, or the US empire collapses from within, or the US empire is no longer able to maintain an adequate munitions and equipment bridge to Israel.
Thanks a lot, for this and everything else. The history course, the sitreps, the therapy sessions and all books you have made me read - the latest is Yahya Sinwar´s. Fantastic book! And hero.
“Dominance is the current situation, in other words, extended forever into the future.”
If this article is written to show the depth of the delusional pathology of the Zionist regime, then it does a good job. But, at times, it felt like it overestimates the realistic possibility or practicality for the rabid Zionists’ to continue indefinitely enacting their genocidal goals, dreams, hubris, and self-aggrandizement of their capabilities.
First, it would be very quite unlikely that Israel can even continue like this for another year let alone a forever war of this magnitude without the Israeli socioeconomic fabric falling apart. This is acknowledged even by many Israeli pundits. There is even increasing conflicts between the military and intelligence institutions on the one had and the political leadership, as was exemplified by the firing of the defense minister recently.
Neither the forever war nor the world destruction are much of an option for Israel, and it’s way weaker than the propaganda in the West has brainwashed people to think. Look how Israel has panicked and responded in a muted way when confronted by a real actor and viable threat as Iran. No one could’ve predicted Israel to tremble with hesitancy or doubt in attacking Iran directly after its territory was attacked in a way that no state or entity had even dared to fathom since the very existence of the Zionist entity. Israel would’ve long ago attacked or attempted to destroy Iran’s nuclear industry or vital energy infrastructure if it had the capability or wherewithal to bear the consequent response from Iran, especially after 20 years of nonstop boisterous bluster of its intent to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. You think Israel has ever been shy about aggression or worried about diminished support from its American and other western sponsors? No, it’s because deterrence with Iran was established long ago and only heightened in recent months.
Israel as it exists today is in very deep trouble and there’s no easy way out regardless of ceasefire. The frog has already been boiled enough that it can no longer get out of the scalding water. Israel absolutely does not have the human and economic resources to engage in long term wars of attrition and it was never designed for such. It is destined for implosion given its internal social contradictions as an apartheid settler colony, and a significant portion of the settler population has the option to get the hell out before risking and losing their lives for the Zionist state. Israel as a Zionist project will implode whether it continues “the current situation” or settles for a ceasefire for the time being.
thanks for this comment
Thank YOU for the tireless and high quality contributions across various media platforms.
I like this systematic analysis. Scott Ritter has also said, I think to Nima Alkhorshid over the last week or so, that the US can't solve Ukraine's recruitment problem with funds. Stacks of money can't drive tanks. The Israeli military's collapsing morale has been in the news for some time, and Damien Willey at the KernowDamo channel says (see "ISRAEL'S MILITARY IN CRISIS AS SOLDIER NUMBERS PLUMMET!") that Israeli settlers are emigrating to avoid the draft, drafting Orthodox Israelis has failed, and so Israel has offered citizenship, jobs, and housing to previously unwelcome Ethiopian Jews, and Germany is likewise offering citizenship and up to 5.000 Euro a month to its Afghan, Syrian, and Libyan asylum seekers if they fight as mercenaries for Israel. They are using the desperate forcibly displaced to forcibly displace others. Paraphrasing Jon on your sitrep 406, we need new words to express disgust at ever spiraling depravity.
There may be another meaning to dominance, centered around how the war is being fought. Time and again Israel has tried to force a hot, fast war, and time and again the resistance has slowed it down to a tanks frozen in Russian mud war of attrition. We are due for another carefully crafted Iranian missile attack. I assume True Promise 3 will be big, showy, and one degree more painful than the previous iterations, and once again will be designed to flip the media narrative and re-energize resistance without triggering direct US involvement.
The conflict in Ukraine has gone far longer than many analysts thought possible, with Western money artificially staving off Ukraine's admission of defeat. I would imagine that Israel's moribund military will be sustained far more aggressively. The resistance has been forced into a painful exchange - sacrificing lives to bleed the empire dry. But all empires fall eventually. And there is no doubt in my mind that resolute Palestinian struggle will be written about in history books as the lynchpin of the forces steering us all to the end of US-Israeli hegemony.
Agreed. Every single empire in history has fallen, why should the USA be different? It has many advantages but so did every other extinct empire. Rebels always lack a preponderance of numerical and materiel superiority.
Thanks for another informative post. I appreciate your concision. We already know how terrible the Israelis and Western Jewish supremacists are. Will liberals in North America and Europe notice the contradiction of supporting Trump’s policies in Western Asia while decrying his fascism and criminality? I doubt it. The Resistance will stop Israel or it won’t. That’s the future.
Thanks Timmy - that was exactly my point.
Israel's last quarter reported GDP growth has been downgraded twice since and is now negative on a per capita basis. This quarter's is coming in the next week more or less; whatever it is, it will be downgraded.
Also, Israel has a very high-skilled, English speaking population of Trump supporting Jews. Don't discount the possibility that Trump, Musk, Thiel etc actually secretly want them to flee Israel and move, permanently, to the US. None of them are ideologically committed to Zionism the way Biden is.
I have wondered about the intensity of Bidens commitment in particular and whether it is especially intense. We will see soon
I really think it takes a fanatical ideology to not just let a Genocide happen (that just takes cowardice), but actively facilitate it happening as Genocide Joe has.
“Samson could be invoked by Netanyahu in his bunker if his enemies are closing in - and the Axis is trying to win in a way that doesn’t lead to world destruction.” That sums it up for me. There are terrorists in the world, and the Axis of Resistance is fighting them. The discipline, coordination, and strategic thinking of the resistance, as you describe here, highlights how effective the empire has neutralized armed resistance in the West. The 2nd Amendment in the USA, for example, is still around for semi-adults to play with their toys at gun ranges, but not to use them as actual tools for armed struggle.
Dr. Podur’s summary of the opposing plans is very helpful. The comments here are also helpful. Much gratitude to everyone. I’m only a layman but I’m cautiously optimistic that the West will see the impracticality of the current situation, that Israel’s conscript army will collapse like America’s conscript army and society did in Vietnam. Who predicted that in 1965, except that is the Viet Cong, the winners?As an American, I can just say many people wan’t an immediate ceasefire, but the USA as everyone knows is not a democracy and was never designed to be; the word isn’t even in the constitution. The resistance must win, and they can.
This is a comment about Finkelstein but because it's critical I wanted to put it in the least public place possible as I respect his overall work and don't want to engage in a tear down. But listening to you and Jon discuss it again I couldn't avoid this conclusion which is that it is a kind of not white supremacy but white chauvinism- an inability to conceive of the world and the course of world history as being determined by Indigenous people. So he sees Israel as the only player, maybe ameliorated at times by attention from the West. He wants good things for the world. But he hasn't been able to let go of the other part of the brainwashing that we are subjected to in the imperial core, that which tells us that it is only the West that can act on history. So he looks to the wrong places. And yes of course that leads to despair.
The bullet points of this succinct compilation still hit like gut punches every time.
I am conflicted about the South Africa comparison - perhaps some of you could fill in?
It seems that expecting a version of the South Africa solution was kind of an automatic default setting among liberals in the 1990s (with Rabin or Barak as de Klerk and Arafat or Marwan Barghouti as Mandela).
Given that the South African "peace and reconciliation" process is historically quite unique... strange, really, in retrospect. Also there were so many incongruities, a Two State Solution quite unlike the South African model, etc. I guess it felt comforting at the time.
Aside from the difference in population ratios as discussed by Peter S, Sarah, and others here in this thread, there are additional historical factors that made the South African reconciliation process possible, such as it was [-> I think we need to both acknowledge what the South African people and the ANC achieved - and also the limits of what they were allowed to achieve]:
(1) The South African elites had a wake-up call in their military defeat at the hand of Cuban troops. (International boycott movements also alarmed them).
(2) Paradoxically, the South African government at the same time could negotiate with Mandela's ANC from a position of overwhelming strength. This was due to external factors, i.e. the fall of the Berlin Wall and the impending implosion of the Soviet Union.
This may explain why they felt they needed to negotiate at all and why they actually implemented what for them amounted to quite a sweet deal. To my knowledge, there never really was a plebiscite among "White South Africans" for the end of racial Apartheid (which partly put them into competition with Black South Africans). The accounts I have read depict it largely as a project of the business elites who spoke (British) English rather than one carried by the mass of Afrikans speaking Whites (their version of Dutch).
The (absence of) these factors may explain the reticence of Israeli elites to take the peace route. [We should also be careful in retrospect not to treat the utter defeat of the "peace camp" as an historical inevitability either, even given the clear contradictions within the Oslo "settle the land for talking about peace" process... what if Rabin hadn't been assassinated, etc.]
Again, I am really conflicted about the value of the South Africa comparison, especially going forward. By now, the Israeli business elites [their .01% countrol an immense amount of the economy even by "Western" standards] certainly had their share of military wake-up calls. However, the Israeli advantage in military and economic terms is waning, also as a consequence of the war and the resistance strategies in Justin's analysis.
So it is difficult to see them coming to the negotiating table from a position of renewed strength. Nor outright weakness, as the Republicans will likely support them even more religiously. Perhaps everyone will eventually come to the table utterly exhausted? Any of this would be so much unlike South Africa, though.
How well do business elites control the Israeli state at this point? Historically their vehicle of choice was the Labor party (a historical piece of irony), now effectively defunct (another historical piece of irony). There are by now many quite different extreme-right parties in the Knesset representing progressively estranged and insular constituencies (of eligible voters). Perhaps they are still in the pocket of big business after all? Perhaps we should expect more from ordinary people than from business "interests", anyway?
Could Barghouti still play the part of Mandela - one can only hope from a position of relative strength? But it is so hard to see an "Israeli de Klerk"...
But then again, who expected de Klerk's gambit at the time?
What do you think?
Thanks for the analysis, which looks reasonable and realistic. All basic parameters are identified.
The Axis of Resistance's path is so far clear. The term "The boiling Frog Strategy" fits well.
As for Israel-US, the idea seems to prevail now across the board, that the Empire's strategy is (undetermined) escalation: No (HONEST) negotiations, no compromise of any sorts. Full scale dominance MUST BE reached (or restored), not only in West Asia but also everywhere else.
The Imperial Forces have so far the military upper hand. They demonstrate their destructive capabilities every single day with incredible ferocity. However, the military resources (material, logistic, personal) are FINITE and the cost is increasing.
Both competing big players (Russia, China) and the Global South are catching up. Not only militarily, as the Axis of Resistance or the Ukraine conflict shows, but also, in other fields that in the end will MAKE THE DIFFERENCE: economy, finance, trade, and industrial, research and development capacity.
The era of Western Colonial Hegemony is coming to an end. The Western Elites do not know it yet. Palestine is a major articulation point (and accelerator) where the birth of the multipolar and multi-nodal world is taking place - on the ground and in our mind.
Most probably, the Colonial Outpost(s) will collapse FROM WITHIN when the Heart of the Empire have readjusted to the irrevocable NEW Realities.
Like always, a great analysis of the state of the genocide.
I wonder whether it's even possible for Israel to agree to a ceasefire at this point. Their entire existence is now predicated on maintaining regional military dominance. If they agree to a ceasefire that undermines this perceived military superiority, it seems like a slippery slope to losing status as a nation altogether. They'll no longer have the unilateral authority to determine what happens to Israel as a country. For example, if they lose the war, which is basically what a ceasefire at this point would mean, they could then be subject to all sorts of international, if not regional, oversight, that could potentially include war crimes tribunals for most of their leaders. There's no possibility of a truth and reconciliation commission for this. So I wonder if Israel is looking at the status of other settler colonial states like the US, Canada and Australia, and thinking to themselves "well, they enacted a genocide, and look at them now? We just need to get to a point where Axis resistance is impossible, and then over a long enough time period the genocide will become normalized." Of course, this completely ignores the differences between their genocide and the genocide in the West that made this normalization possible, but still.
I also wonder about the possibility of implementing South African neo-colonialism. Maybe, but that almost certainly won't mean the end of the Zionist project. Looking at South Africa now, the white settler project is continuing apace, with outcomes for poor black South Africans often being worse now than under Apartheid. Apartheid, instead of being encoded directly into legislation, is now obscured within the fabric of South Africa's economic system. So the idea that Zionism would somehow end as Palestinians are integrated into Israeli society? It didn't even happen in the case of South Africa, and the settler:indigenous ratio was far more heavily weighted in favour of black South Africans. I might be wrong, but Jews outnumber Palestinians 2:1, so, I dont know...
Living in so called Straya, the risk of neo colonisation is an important consideration. We have seen this in almost every revolutionary country. Here in Australia, the genocide never stopped, just moved to slower, normalised and falsly legitimised pace. Empire & colony have used the language of meretocracy, reconciliation and (de) colonisation to normalise the slow genocide of Aboriginal Peoples. This is why Palestine cannot be a single issue movement. No matter the outcome, we press on. We don't rest at Palestinian liberation, we must not leave behind Australia's First Nations Peoples, Kananky, West Paupa, Sudan, Kenya. All are suffering and dying for the material benefit of empires and colonies. Regardless of when and even if success comes, we stay steadfast because we would never want to be empires apathetic and ignorant lap dog.
*Justin, thank you for all your efforts towards building collective knowledge ❤️
It's 7M jews to 5.5M palis (48 territories + Gaza + West Bank) and more in diaspora with actual refugee status. Don't think it's 2:1
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics “brief on the status of the Palestinian people at the end of 2023” press release:
5.55M in Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem
1.75M in 48
6.56M in Arab states
0.772M in other countries
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14.63M around the world
“It is expected that the number of Palestinians will reach approximately 7.3 million in historical Palestine, while the number of Jews will reach 7.2 million by the end of 2023.”
===
2023 stats on Jewish population from the Jewish Virtual Library:
7.46M in US
7.43M in Israel
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16.78M around the world
^^NB: but there is some funny number jumping in the stats from 2022 to 2023 as they shifted from one data set to another. Another strange part of the data presentation is how stats on non-Jews in the West Bank and Gaza is specific down to the unit, but the count of Jews in Israel is rounded off to the thousands.
Total population of Israel and Palestinian Authority (West Bank and Gaza) is 15,174,938, of which 7,427,000 are Jews. So in their count the split is 7.43M Jews, 7.74 Palestinians.
Rough parity, but in both sets of data Palestinians outnumber Jews.
Thanks for this. Yeah, I think it's tough to find the actual stats, and the ones I used may have just included Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which might explain the discrepancy. Regardless, if the ratio is 1:1 in Palestine, this is a far cry from apartheid South Africa, where the ratio was 4:1 against the whites. The whites became an unstable minority, and so they were forced into capitulation to save themselves. At the very least the kind of lopsided population phenomenon present in South Africa is not happening in Palestine. But this is also a far cry from the indigenous to settler ratios in the commonwealth colonies. But population isn't all that matters, and as you both pointed out, there are many Palestinians abroad, and Palestine itself is surrounded by Arab states.
One thing might save us, greed. Greed is eating the USA empire alive, as each faction scrabbles for the final feast they are attempting to elbow each other away from the host body. When Israel finally becomes a serious impediment to the feast, it too will be elbowed away. I just can't see that far into the future as to when, but I can see far enough to say it will happen.
I think Israel is a feaster in the ruling group and won't be discarded that way.
Absolutely agree they are a feaster, but are their elbows sharper than Rockefeller, Mellon, etc. Israel was a unsinkable aircraft carrier, but in a time of obsolesces for aircraft carriers, do they provide a decent ROI compared to their opportunity costs?
Depopulation is the philosophy of the WEF. The Uber Rich Parasitic class has no use for the working class. The lower level capitalists just want to sell things and make money. In order to do so, these capitalists must rebuild their countries. And they need a mass movement of working class people to protect them from the Uber Rich Parasitic Imperialists.
I am grateful for this cogent and honest analysis, but wow is this depressing. As an American citizen, it’s hard to deny that the best case scenario would be for the “west” to suffer a catastrophic defeat. Is that possible? I guess I’ve answered my own question: we would sooner nuke the planet than relinquish power. Ugh 😣
The war against the US-led Empire is raging worldwide, and the strategy of ATTRITION IS VALID ON ALL FRONTS. West Asia and Eastern Europe are on focus, but developments elsewhere WILL BE DECISIVE: A central node is CHINA.
Look at this YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74SsIVBY6IU
The Channel "Inside China Business" has published many videos that explain why the US neocons and their proxies HATE China so much, i.e. how China sustains the efforts by the Global South to break Western Hegemony - and even makes this struggle possible.
In the same vein, I recommend another YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BsAa_94dao
Everybody here knows, but for the record, the REAL argument against China has nothing to do with democracy or human rights. The US has NEVER (honestly) bothered about those issues - neither within its borders nor outside.
🤡