لنستخرج كنوزا من المعرفة و الإبداع و العلم و الأفكار
Netanyahu needs to be stopped
Just in case the Biden administration somehow fails to start Word War III in Ukraine or Taiwan, Netanyahu is doing his utmost to start it in the Middle East and he might have the best chance of succeeding.
Not content with bombing five countries at the same time, Netanyahu has stepped up his attacks, breaking every diplomatic norm, including destroying hospitals and blowing up aid workers to deter aid agencies from operating in Gaza, and bombing the Iranian consulate in Damascus, and committing so many other crimes against humanity, it’s impossible to count.
The bombing of the Iranian consulate and ambassador’s residence in Damascus was a violation of the Vienna Convention and an act of war. While Israel has not accepted responsibility for the attack at the time of writing (it rarely does), Israeli officials confirmed their involvement to the New York Times. If Iran retaliates in kind, this almost certainly means a regional war and we all know where this leads.
The likely target of the attack, Iranian ambassador Hossein Aknari was uninjured, but 11 people were killed according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, including a Brigadier General of the Revolutionary Guard and his deputies.
Killing, or attempting to kill,
ambassadors is just not a thing that civilised countries do. This is yet another example of Israel breaking international norms because it believes it can act with impunity. If the precedent is set that consulates and ambassadors are legitimate military targets, that endangers every embassy on earth. It makes it much harder for countries to talk to each other, making peace less likely. It’s exactly the type of move you make if you want to destabilise the world.
Imagine if Russia or China started blowing up western consulates. Would we just shrug that off? Let’s not forget that consulates are support buildings for embassies that are often sovereign territory of the country they represent. An attack on an embassy is an act of terrorism.
Netanyahu is pressing ahead with his maniacal rampage because his political survival depends on it. There have been huge marches against him in Tel Aviv. Israeli police have arrested family members of hostages who protested against the way he has prosecuted the war, showing disregard for the safe return of those hostages.
But we are talking about more than Netanyahu’s political survival. Israel could be lashing out because it fears its days are numbered as its neighbours grow in strength. It might feel its only hope is an all out strike against the enemies that surround it. If Israel goes down, you can be assured it’s launching nukes and leaving cities across the region looking like Gaza.
Israel doesn’t seem to have asked itself why it has so many enemies in the region, or considered that endless land grabbing and terrorist attacks might not be in its strategic interest. It doesn’t seem to have considered the approach it thinks will secure its survival is more likely to guarantee its destruction. It doesn’t matter if it has the full might of NATO behind it, even a medium-sized power has the capability of doing to Israel what Israel did to Gaza. It doesn’t seem to consider that a peaceful nuclear power is more likely to be left alone than a murderous one.
In his mission to defeat the opponents he calls terrorists, Netanyahu is prepared to carry out acts of terrorism on a much larger scale than Hamas. We must therefore ask ourselves if we’re comfortable with our government supporting terrorists and if we would be prepared to fight for these terrorists.
If a regional war kicks off, we would be fighting for Israel which means our military would be an extension of the IDF. In other words, we would be part of a terrorist organisation. Given that NATO nations don’t have the numbers to fight a war on this scale, conscription would surely be inevitable.
Hands up everyone who wants to be thrown into the meat grinder for a lunatic state that says it’s acting according to god? Your life would be sacrificed to save the people who chose to commit a Biblical massacre and that goal would probably not be achieved anyway. Your death would be for nothing.
Israel knows it cannot defeat a nation the size of Iran alone so we can only conclude it’s trying to drag us into a regional conflict to do the fighting for it. Given the ongoing support for genocide, it’s entirely possible, or rather likely, that at least some NATO states would join the fight.
Iran is saying its response to the consulate bombing will be “decisive”. When this happens, are we going to blame Iran and start this catastrophic regional war, or are we going to stand up to an out of control Israel that is a danger, perhaps the biggest danger, to the entire world?
Thanks to Netanyahu, countries in the Middle East that have been hostile towards one another, like Turkey and Iran, are being pushed closer together. Both have an arsenal of state of the art missiles and drones that could leave Israel in ruins. Turkey has the option of purchasing nukes from Pakistan to deter Israel from using its nukes and can overwhelm the IDF with a fighting force of one million ferocious fighters.
Even if Turkey sat this one out, a war against Iran alone would be five times more challenging than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, given its geographical advantages, well-equipped military and air defences operated by Russia. Now imagine how tough it would become if other countries in the region were involved. Egypt and Algeria could easily be drawn in.
If Egypt were forced to absorb the Gaza population, this would have a huge destabilising effect on the country, crippling its economy, creating a security nightmare, and ultimately leaving Egypt responsible if Hamas launched attacks from its soil. This is not a situation it’s likely to accept and the Egyptian population is certainly not happy to sit back while Palestinians are exterminated. We’ve seen protests in Egypt, Algeria and Jordan demanding intervention to save Gaza.
Israel has been launching attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, as well as targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. It has been killing civilians, UN workers, politicians, and ambassadors across the region with missile strikes against Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Yemen. Just days ago, an Israeli strike killed dozens in Aleppo.
It doesn’t take a genius to understand a state that bombs its neighbours non-stop is not interested in peace. Israel knows Iran doesn’t want war so if Iran doesn’t retaliate, the consulate attack is cost-free, and if Iran does retaliate, it has its excuse to escalate, knowing its big brother will come to its rescue. If it didn’t have that big brother, it would not dare act so tough.
World War III is looking more likely because the psychotic little brother can’t control himself. Netanyahu admits to a death toll in Gaza of 13-19,000 civilians and 13,000 Hamas fighters. His lower figure for civilian deaths relies on every dead male being a Hamas fighter so it’s hardly going to be accurate. Israel has set up “kill zones” in Gaza and everyone in those kill zones is classed as a Hamas fighter. Israel even killed three hostages who’d escaped from Hamas because they’d wandered into a “kill zone”. That shows you how much they’re valuing civilian life.
Given the Gaza Health Ministry lost the ability to count the dead some time ago and so many people are buried under rubble, often by Israeli bulldozers, you can probably double or even triple Netanyahu’s body count. But even if we accept his estimates, by his own admission, he’s sacrificed a horrific number of civilians and he’s probably not improved Israel’s situation from a military perspective.
The tipping point into regional war seems likely to be the Rafah invasion. Even if the IDF wanted to preserve civilian life (it doesn’t), in the chaos of an urban environment, soldiers will have the mentality of “when in doubt, pull the trigger”. The IDF is an ill-disciplined TikTok army that is not ready for real fighting which is why it’s focusing on butchering civilians. The boys who wear women’s underwear and the girls who perform silly dances are scared out of their minds about facing Hamas in the tunnels beneath Rafah. It’s not widely reported that when US and Israeli special ops went into Gaza’s tunnels, they took casualties and gave up trying to rescue the hostages.
It’s extremely difficult to take a city in ruins, even with satellites and drones, leaving the possibility of Israel resorting to fuel-air explosives to incinerate everything in sight. This strategy would be effective and indiscriminate. It would be like the US resorting to napalm in Vietnam. What happens then? Does the west stand by Netanyahu or get rid of him?
If Netanyahu backs down, leaving Hamas mostly intact, having caused unthinkable death and destruction, and no doubt radicalising many more Palestinians, he will only have succeeded in putting Israelis in further danger. The man who built his reputation on being the national security guy will be finished. His plan is to eradicate Hamas, hope the regional powers let him get away with it, and push the argument that the end justified the means, but the more brutal the genocide becomes, the closer to a tipping point we get. Netanyahu has put Israel between a rock and a hard place.
Historically, US presidents have intervened when Israel has gone too far and told them to back down, but I’m not sure that’s on the cards this time. Is it because Biden is blinded by loyalty to Israel or is it because he is compromised?
