It is not too early to discuss Israel's failures

Hamas is the villain; but strategically and tactically, Israel has made grave mistakes

(WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC IMAGE BELOW)

PART 1:

Last night, I bumped into the mother of a boy my son knows, an Israeli woman who now lives in New York with her kids.

I’m just trying not to stay home, she said. To distract myself. I’m so angry.

She didn’t mean at Hamas. Every Israeli - even liberal, secular ones, like this woman - now understands Hamas is evil and dangerous and must be defeated.

But this woman didn’t see Hamas as worthy of her anger. Hamas is merely the scorpion, more interested in spreading its poison than surviving. No, she’s angry at the frog - at the Israeli government and Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, its right-wing prime minister. And she is right to be.

Because Hamas didn’t fail last week. It succeeded, in the worst possible way.

Israel - and more specifically Netanyahu - failed.

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(Join the fight for truth.)

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The success of the Hamas assault has fed conspiracy and “just-asking-questions” theories on Twitter, speculating Israel somehow knew of or even encouraged the Hamas attack.

Unreported Truths readers are frequently skeptical of the mainstream media - as am I, despite my former membership in it. But I have been happy to see that (at least based on your emails to me and comments on articles this week) you aren’t biting on this particular conspiracy theory.

If you are considering doing so, please don’t.

The moment is too serious to pretend that the Jewish government of Israel allowed 1,300 civilians, nearly all Jews, to be slaughtered in the cruelest of ways.

And for what reason, exactly? So Israel could invade Gaza - a step it desperately does not want to take?

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(WARNING, GRAPHIC IMAGE TO FOLLOW)

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(To claim Israel encouraged or somehow wanted Saturday’s attack is to dishonor these dead.)

SOURCE

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No, what happened Saturday was a monstrous failure by the Netanyahu regime and the right-wingers who support it - or more accurately a monstrous tactical failure after (at least) two huge strategic miscalculations.

The first was that Israel should drive Jewish settlements deeper and deeper into the West Bank, the land between Israel’s eastern border and the Jordan River that since 1947 has been apportioned to Palestinians.

In theory, the extra territory provides a buffer zone for Israel proper, which is not even 10 miles wide at its narrowest point. In reality, Israel’s army, air force, and nuclear arsenal guarantee its territorial security from a conventional war far more than a few extra miles of land would.

The deeper justification - which Netanyahu’s right-wing supporters increasingly make openly - is nationalist-religious. The settlers call the West Bank land Judea and Samaria and claim Jews are entitled to all of it.

They want to merge Israel’s existing territory with the West Bank, creating a Jewish state that includes the entire territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. At a minimum, they hope to build so many settlements to make a functioning Palestinian state in the West Bank impossible, and thus force Palestinians there to live under permanent Israeli occupation.

But in denying the validity of any Palestinian claims “from the river to the sea,” the right-wingers are mirroring Hamas’s demand for complete control of the same territory. In doing so, they destroy even the theoretical possibility of peace and deny Israel the moral high ground.

The settlement push has also had a significant practical impact, diverting the Israeli military and intelligence services. Israel’s army has repeatedly been forced to move units to the West Bank to discourage fighting between settlers and Palestinians.

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(What’s 25 battalions between friends?)

(SOURCE)

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An October 2022 report even suggested the constant flow of soldiers to the West Bank had degraded the ability to fight of the units who were sent there.

Yet Netanyahu and his conservative government did not mind. From their perspective, the settlements were a win-win. They made the Palestinians miserable and strengthened Israel’s (phantom) grip on the West Bank.

Meanwhile, other Arab countries cared so little about the Palestinians - and the settlements - that they were willing to normalize relationships with Israel even as Netanyahu kept building them. When the Hamas attack began Saturday, Israel was even closing on a deal with Saudi Arabia, the granddaddy of ‘em all.

And so Israel put more and more time and money and effort into the (morally and practically futile) project of dominating the West Bank - and paid less and less attention to the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza under Hamas.

END PART 1