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| Benjamin Netanyahu, current Prime Minister of Israel. This is a very bad, very dangerous man. |
Thee Optimist should really be writing a novel.
He has one due, and novel writing (along with other artistic endeavors) is generally a more pleasant way of spending time than reading the news.
Unfortunately, the Stepford Wives in the US Congress and in the Biden Administration have stepped in deep doo doo, in a way that affects us all, even Thee hermit-like Optimist.
There is no escape from these people.
What have they done? Simple. They have given the treacherous lunatic Benjamin Netanyahu carte blanche to launch a large-scale war in the Middle East.
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| The 3,000 year old city of Gaza has been under continuous, genocidal assault by the Israeli war machine since October of last year, using weapons paid for with Thee Optimist's tax dollars. The attacks have killed somewhere between 40,000 and 186,000 people, mostly women and children. No, Thee Optimist is not pleased by this use of his money. |
The Reasons For This Disaster...
...are outside the scope of this blog post, but I'll talk about them anyway. A speed run through it goes like this:
- in 70 AD and again in 135 AD or thereabouts, the Romans (who were at the height of their famous Empire) expelled the Jews from the area known as Judea (roughly modern day Israel, with parts of Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank), where they had lived for maybe ten centuries.
- that area was the fabled "land of milk and honey," that Jews believe the fictional character God promised them in the biblical Book of Exodus. Much of the Hebrew Torah and the Christian New Testament take place there.
- with the vast majority of Jews gone and cast to the winds, the Romans renamed the place a version of "Palestine," a name it kept for nearly the next 2,000 years. They tore down the Second Jewish Temple (yes, that temple), and replaced it with a Roman Temple. Later, likely in the 700s AD, the Muslims tore down the Roman temple and replaced it with the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which stands there to this day.
- the place changed hands many times over the ensuing centuries, often violently. Indeed, the Muslim occupation of Palestine was the reason for the Christian Crusades of the High Middle Ages.
- in the late 1890s, an Austrian journalist named Theodore Herzl, a secular Jew who suffered from severe clinical depression, and possible bouts of ecstatic and delusional thinking (the diagnosis "bipolar" didn't exist in 1890), floated the idea of a Jewish homeland.
-He did this in response to the pogroms and anti-semitism that were such a large problem in Europe. One option (of many) was for Jews to move back to their Biblical homeland, from which they had been expelled so long ago. This idea was called "Zionism."
- during World War I, the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey, which had ruled Palestine for centuries) found itself on the losing team, and subsequently collapsed. The English (who found themselves on the World War I winning team) wound up in control of Palestine, a role they became uncomfortable with when large numbers of Zionists began to move there and attack the people already there (people known as Palestinians).
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| Theodore Herzl. Although he didn't invent Zionism per se, he was its greatest champion. He died in 1904, at the age of 44, of a heart condition. Much like the fictional character Moses, he led his people to the Promised Land, but was unable to enter it himself. Among his last words were, "Greet Palestine for me. I gave my heart's blood for my people." Herzl had three children, all of whom were said to be "cursed." His daughter Paulina was a heroin addict who died of an overdose in 1930. His son Hans killed himself the day after Paulina's funeral. Herzl's youngest daughter Trude died in a Nazi concentration camp. |
- World War II arrived right on schedule (humans can't go very long without fighting amongst ourselves). Adolf Hitler and the Nazis took anti-semitism to a new level, and decided the best thing to do with Jews was to kill every last one of them.
- the Nazis lost. Hundreds of thousands of European Jews survived the Holocaust, and, desperate to escape Europe (where, let's face it, people were still trying to kill them, even though the war was over), suddenly moved to Palestine en masse.
- it was a lot of Jews coming all at once. They quickly slaughtered the Palestinians, drove them off their historical lands and into refugee camps, and by 1948, had declared the founding of the modern state of Israel.
- everything that came afterwards were attempts by the Palestinians to get their land back, along with (much more successful) attempts by the Israelis to suppress the Palestinians, subjugate and humiliate them, and take ever more land from them.
- the Israelis have been armed, empowered, enabled, aided and abetted in this effort by the global superpower the United States, which uses Thee Optimist's taxes to pay for it. Indeed, none of this would be possible without the money of the good, prosperous middle-class American taxpayers, of which Thee Optimist is one.
- one reason why this happens is Israel is a vestige of the Cold War, which never really ended. The US is loathe to give up its old Cold War cat's paws.
- Another reason is there is an immensely wealthy and powerful lobbying group in the United States called the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC). If the automatons in public office in the US say a bad word about Israel, AIPAC spends A LOT of money to unseat them. Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush recently found this out the hard way. This is known as getting "AIPACked."
- over the decades, the Palestinians have been aided, enabled, armed and empowered by a wide variety of entities, including charitable organizations, the United Nations, numerous countries, and in recent years by the modern state of Iran and the network of Shiite militias it organizes and funds.
- Iran and its militias have become so powerful in the past 15 years, that left to their own devices, they could likely wipe Israel from the map (yes, that is an article from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies - no, Israel is not a democracy in any meaningful sense). In fact, the stated policy of Iran and its proxies is to destroy Israel.
- simultaneous with this, Israel has been ruled by a pathological lying madman named Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted on corruption charges, allies himself with the most extreme elements in Israeli society in a bid to remain in power, and appears ready to launch a gigantic apocalyptic war, hoping that the United States will back him up in this.
- Oh yeah. The Israelis have nuclear weapons. The first ones were given to them by the French, possibly as early as the 1950s, which in retrospect was a terrible idea. It is a bad idea for anyone to have nuclear weapons. It is especially bad when crazy people have them.
It is unbelievably bad when crazy people, under existential threat from all sides, and who have a fascination with the legend of Samson, have nuclear weapons.
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| Until very recently, Ismail Haniyeh was the figurehead leader of the Palestinian militia Hamas. He was also the lead negotiator for Hamas in the ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel, brokered by Qatar. The Israelis assassinated him while he was visiting Iran. |
Where Are We Now?
Naturally, this is where uninformed people begin to foam and foment, because the Palestinians attacked the Israelis this past October 7, and committed widespread atrocities while doing so.
"Israel has a right to defend itself!"
Actually, legally speaking, it doesn't have that right.
Regardless, the October 7 attacks have led the Israelis to carry out a campaign of extermination against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which meets the internationally-agreed upon definition of genocide.
Meanwhile, Israeli society itself has not been immune to the effects of this campaign. It is, in fact, falling apart.
Since October 7, an estimated 500,000 Jews have left Israel, many saying they don't plan to return. Some of them are among the wealthiest people in the country, who are taking their money with them.
Approximately 46,000 Israeli small businesses have gone under since the start of the war, with another 60,000 projected to go under by the end of 2024. The war has blown a massive hole in the government budget.
Red Sea shipping, a source of trade and income for the Israelis, has been shut down by missile attacks from the Iran-supplied Houthis of Yemen.
The port at Eilat, Israel's only Red Sea port, has closed and gone bankrupt.
Construction in Israel is down by more than 90% (most of the construction workers were Palestinians). Agriculture is down by almost the same amount.
Tourism is down by nearly 100%. An Israeli government minister claimed that from November 2023 to April 2024, not a single foreign tourist arrived in Israel.
There are about 90,000 internally displaced Israelis, most of them from the abandoned towns near the northern border with Lebanon, which is under constant rocket assault by Hezbollah.
The government of Israel has been seized by an unpopular and dangerous coalition of messianic religious fanatics and extreme right-wing Zionists. The lunatic Netanyahu uses these lunatics so he can cling to power. In fact, this marriage of criminal insanity was in charge before the genocide started (which is why it's happening), but they are moving to cement their rule.
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| Right wing Zionist thugs attacked Israeli military bases in late July because the military arrested nine of its own soldiers who violently and repeatedly raped a male Palestinian prisoner. Likud Party (Netanyahu's political party) lawmaker Hanoch Milwidsky defended the rape, shouting, "If he is a Nukhba (elite Hamas militant), everything is legitimate to do! Everything!" |
For reasons which must be all too obvious, Israel has few, if any, friends left on Planet Earth. Everyone hates them. Except, you know, Genocide Joe and the rest of the American Manchurian Candidates.
Even Turkey, which has a generally fraught relationship with Israel's enemy Iran, and which is ostensibly an ally of the United States, has begun to signal that it might decide to take Israel out itself.
This could be seen as empty bluster from Turkey's erstwhile dictator Tayyip Erdogan, red meat for Turkish popular outrage at Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
But there's more to the story. Turkey has oil-drilling claims in the Eastern Mediterranean that conflict with Israel's. From Turkey's point of view, wouldn't it be nice if there was no such place as Israel?
Moreover, many Turks view themselves as the descendants of the great Ottoman Empire (which they in fact are), and the Ottomans were mostly benevolent rulers of Palestine for a long time. The Turks see the Palestinians as their (little) brothers and sisters.
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| Massive anti-Israel rallies have been taking place across Turkey, and in many, many other places, including the United States. |
Where Does it Go From Here?
Everything from here down is speculative. Thee Optimist can't possibly know what comes next. But he can speculate in an outrageously irresponsible manner, and will now do so.
Ahem.
Israel can no longer defend itself from its enemies.
The Hamas attacks on October 7 are widely seen as a complete failure of Israeli intelligence and military capabilities.
The fact that a somewhat rag-tag militia like Hamas is somehow still fighting after ten months of a vicious onslaught and a grinding war of attrition, is another indictment of Israeli military capabilities.
That Hezbollah has basically set all of northern Israel on fire, and forced its seemingly permanent evacuation, is yet another.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), after ten months of war, are widely described as "exhausted," even by their own government ministers.
When Iran made a largely symbolic missile attack on Israel in April, the missiles were mostly shot down by the Americans, the French, the English, and even the Jordanians, not the Israelis.
Iran and Hezbollah have so many missiles, they could quickly overwhelm the much-vaunted Israeli "Iron Dome" missile defense system. Private intelligence firms like Jane's and Forstrat publicly acknowledge that on its own, Israel cannot defeat Hezbollah.
Now that Israel has assassinated Haniyeh, and Iran is likely to respond in a more than symbolic way, the United States is rushing US Navy warships to the area.
The US claims that this is an attempt at de-escalation, because in the American mind the way to de-escalate a situation is to send more weapons.
Yes, I know. That's silly. The Americans are lying. They are sending more weapons because the US is not an honest broker for peace in The Middle East.
In any event, these actions are a tacit admission by the Americans that Israel, on its own, is cooked.
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| Frog slowly getting cooked in a pot. |
What I expect to happen in the weeks, months and years ahead is a series of devastating direct and asymmetric attacks on Israel, its military, Israeli citizens in other countries, and Israeli businesses or embassies abroad.
This will of course lead to tit for tat attacks from Israel and its patron the United States. Lots of spectacular explosions will happen, and many more people will die. There will be scenes of weeping and impotent rage on both sides.
But it won't become World War III. Because of Iran's strategic alliances with Russia, China and North Korea, the United States can't actually go to open war with Iran.
And Iran certainly doesn't want that war.
The embarrassment of Haniyeh's killing notwithstanding, things are going exactly the way Iran would like them to go.
Israel is being worn down. They are dying the proverbial "death by a thousand cuts." They can't even finish off Hamas. They can't begin to fight the much stronger and battle-hardened Hezbollah, at least not on the ground, where such a battle needs to take place.
The civil society of Israel, such as it is, is collapsing. Most secular Israelis consider themselves liberals (!) and leftists. The cognitive dissonance of wishing to be good liberals while participating in racist atrocities will become unbearable, hastening this collapse.
There will be a mass exodus of Israeli intellectuals out of the country. The country is largely held together by these people - they are the well-educated university professors, the scientists, and the people who run the high-tech Israeli start-up companies. They are generally well-off, and have no good reason to stay and get murdered by people who hate them.
Meanwhile, many of the religious nutjobs, who want all-out war, aren't educated and don't work at all. They will stay and continue to be a drain on the country's resources and collective IQ.
Gradually, Israeli society will decline and fracture to such a degree that it will become impossible to maintain. The IDF will lose the ability or will to fight.
Israel's many enemies will begin to take away pieces of it.
Maybe there will be a total collapse. Maybe Iran really will carpet-bomb the place, though I doubt it. Maybe Hezbollah will take out the energy grid.
In any event, Israel can't afford to be weak. It has isolated itself to such an incredible extent, there's no room for error. And yet, its many weaknesses have been exposed.
When it finally does fall apart, I imagine the Turks will air-drop troops into the West Bank, and dismantle the illegal Israeli "settlements" there.
Jordan will be alarmed by the Turkish incursion, and send in their own troops.
Syria will take back the Golan Heights.
Egypt may roll in from the south, and through Gaza. At least initially, they'll be greeted as allies and liberators by the Palestinians. That won't last.
The US Marines will land and open a humanitarian corridor that includes Tel Aviv and part of the Mediterranean coast. Former "settlers" will walk from the West Bank to American protection in Tel Aviv.
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| United States Marines practice landing on a beach somewhere. |
Israeli refugees will be able to emigrate to friendly countries like the US, Canada, and England, where the kind of anti-semitic attacks the original Zionists were fleeing from are rare.
Zionism was supposed to create a safe haven for Jews. As fate would have it, there are many places on Earth where Jews are safer than in Israel.
The region will be partitioned by occupying powers for many years. Eventually, it will become the UNESCO Holy Land World Heritage Site (Disneyland for religious fanatics), and will be administrated at gunpoint by a coalition of countries that maintain an uneasy peace.
Iran won't stake any claim. They don't want the land. They just want to destroy the entity known as Israel. Mission accomplished, they'll go back to enforcing conservative Muslim dress codes, torturing and killing their own intellectuals, and being a thorn in the side of Saudi Arabia.
What will happen to the many Israelis who were complicit in crimes against humanity? Nothing. Nothing happened to the vast majority of Serbs who were complicit or participated in war crimes against Bosnia. Nothing happened to the millions of white people who benefited from South African apartheid.
They just went on with their lives.
Of course, all of this assumes that Netanyahu dies soon, so he can't pull the temple down on top of himself like Samson, and launch nuclear weapons during Israel's desperate last days.
It seems like a lot to suggest that Netanyahu will be assassinated, but he is a deeply corrupt loose cannon in a sensitive position.
Words of Wisdom
"Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later."
- Benjamin Franklin
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