[Sundaycommunity] Fwd: Catholic Network for Women's Equality Fwd: Israel at war

Thu Oct 12 03:15:59 PDT 2023

A sad world. Catherine

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From: Ian Bremmer <ian at gzeromedia.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 11, 2023, 4:07 p.m.
Subject: Israel at war
To: <rganley209 at gmail.com>

This week, I walk you through *Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel *and answer
your questions about *the war*. Plus, your weekly rec from my dog Moose.

Let’s get to it.

*- Ian*
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Dear Rosemary,

This week, I walk you through *Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel *and answer
your questions about *the war*. Plus, your weekly rec from my dog Moose.

Let’s get to it.

*- Ian*

A brutal wake-up call shakes Israel and the world
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Four days ago, on Oct. 7, Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist group that has
controlled the Gaza Strip since 2006, launched a surprise invasion of
Israel by land, sea, and air, killing over 1,300 Israelis, injuring over
3,000, and taking more than 150 to Gaza as hostages. This was the most
significant attack on Jews worldwide since the Holocaust.

For the first time, Hamas managed to attack deep into Israeli territory,
overrunning two military bases and terrorizing countless towns and
neighborhoods. For a country of under 10 million, the 1,300 killed are the
equivalent of over 45,000 in the United States, dwarfing 9/11’s toll.
Unlike in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, civilians rather than soldiers accounted
for nearly all Israeli deaths.

The trauma is only made worse by the shock that millions of Israelis feel
after the worst intelligence and security failure since 1973, when Egypt
and Syria simultaneously invaded Israel from the Suez Canal in the south
and the Golan Heights in the north without warning. Israel’s national
security apparatus, laser-focused on threats to the homeland particularly
from Palestinians in the occupied territories, had since come to be seen as
the gold standard on surveillance, intelligence, and border security. No
one remotely thought something like this could happen there in 2023. Much
like America’s before 9/11, Israel’s weakness was to a large extent a
failure of imagination. This failure is all the more surprising given the
history of the Jewish people, who have been under nearly continuous
existential threat since biblical times.

While Israeli society’s fragile sense of security has been shattered, the
one solace is that unlike in 1973, Israel’s existence is not threatened
today. Yes, Hamas has proven more formidable than anyone thought possible,
but it is still a militia, and the IDF is one of the most advanced
militaries in the world. Although this will be of no comfort to the
families of the hundreds of Israelis already killed and kidnapped, or to
those who will be caught in the crossfire from this point onward, Israel’s
overwhelming military superiority over its enemies guarantees that it will
live to see another day.
Why Hamas attacked now – and why Israel was taken by surprise

There are two big questions to unpack here: why Hamas chose this moment to
start a suicidal war that Palestinians will pay dearly for, and why Israel
was caught off guard by it.

The answer to the first question is that as carefully planned and
deliberately executed as Hamas’ terrorist operation was, the decision to
carry it out was a desperate one, driven by an increasingly untenable
environment – largely of Hamas’ own making – that had left the group in a
no-win situation.

The Gazan economy was terrible and getting worse. Israeli settlements in
the West Bank were expanding. Geopolitics were turning against
Palestinians, and even the Arab world had largely moved on from their
plight. While Hamas continued to deny Israel’s right to exist and refused
to moderate, Israel was in the strongest diplomatic position it’d been in
decades, having normalized relations with the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco and
being on the verge of doing the same with Saudi Arabia. Well served by the
status quo, the Israeli population no longer felt any urgency to engage
with the Palestinians. In short, Hamas was fast becoming irrelevant and
took a desperate gamble to change that, their own lives and the Palestinian
people’s be damned.

To be clear, none of the above remotely justifies Hamas’ murderous actions,
which are unjustifiable. Nor do I seek to explain the inexplicable. After
all, Hamas has always been a genocidal cult hellbent on killing Jews and
destroying Israel; its foundational documents state those goals explicitly,
and all their statements and actions to date have been perfectly consistent
with that agenda. All I’m trying to explain is the strategic logic behind
this attack: why they chose to launch an operation of this nature at this
particular moment in time.

A separate question is how could Israel let something like this happen to
them? The answer is that they got complacent and distracted.

The country’s political and military leaders were lulled into thinking
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Hamas had been successfully deterred from attacking Israel by “the
consequences of further defiance.” Instead of looking for confrontation,
they believed Hamas was focused on governance. Sure, there’d be periodic
outbreaks of violence, but Israel could always rely on the Iron Dome
missile defense system to suppress rocket fire; on border security measures
to prevent raids; on targeted assassinations and air strikes
(euphemistically referred to as “mowing the grass”) to prevent escalations
from spiraling.

Successive Israeli governments got addicted to this relatively quiet status
quo, which allowed them to ignore the need for diplomacy. Going back
further, Israel’s strategy of avoiding a negotiated solution to the
long-running occupation – a solution that would require politically costly
concessions – by strengthening the irredentist Hamas and weakening the more
moderate Fatah backfired spectacularly last Saturday.

The current Israeli government bears especially great responsibility for
the debacle, having taken its eye off the ball due to two domestic
preoccupations of its own making.

First, Israel’s domestic political crisis, caused by Netanyahu’s insistence
on a controversial judicial reform despite unprecedented mass opposition,
had an impact on Israel’s national security readiness. The government
ignored
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and even ridiculed repeated warnings
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from the IDF that the far-right coalition’s polarizing assault on
institutions was eroding social cohesion, fueling public distrust in the
government, and undermining the military’s readiness.

Second, the coalition’s hardline annexation policies and coddling of Jewish
extremists fueled settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank
(which in turn provoked Palestinian retaliation) and led the government to
deploy most of the regular IDF forces to that sector. As recently as last
week, the IDF transferred three battalions from Gaza to the West Bank to
reinforce the troops there over the Sukkot holiday weekend. This left the
Gaza border lightly guarded, creating favorable operational conditions for
Hamas to pull off its attack.
What’s next

Hamas is holding more than 150 Israelis hostage and threatening to execute
them. As if that wasn’t evil enough, Hamas is also holding far larger
numbers of Palestinians hostage.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s immediate declaration of war will mean
unrestrained air strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza (population 2.3
million). Given the gruesome nature of the Hamas attack, a ground invasion
of the Strip seems inevitable to neutralize the threat posed by the group
once and for all. That means Israel will probably have to occupy the
densely populated territory until all Hamas leadership has been removed,
their operational capabilities dismantled, and their militants disarmed.
Such an operation would take months to complete and inflict high casualties
on both sides, with no guarantee of success.

Throughout, Hamas will continue to use Palestinian civilians (as well as
Israeli hostages) as human shields to maximize the casualties of Israeli
retaliation and turn public opinion against Israel. With no way to escape,
tens of thousands of people, most of them innocent civilians, will be
killed or wounded. Those who are lucky will face unfathomable deprivation
under Israel’s and Egypt’s blockade, which will prevent them from getting
access to food, fuel, electricity, water, and goods.

In turn, Israel’s response and the ensuing humanitarian disaster will
provoke an outcry across the region and the “global South” more broadly.
The “Arab street” (aka public opinion in the Arab world) will erupt in fury
at the cautious response of their own governments. Violence against Jews
will spike around the world. The Saudi Arabia-Israel normalization, which
was months away from a breakthrough agreement, will remain off the table.

Domestically, though, Israel will be politically unified to a degree we
haven’t seen in decades. Earlier today, Netanyahu agreed to form an
emergency unity government with centrist opposition leader and former
defense minister Benny Gantz. All of the anger over Netanyahu’s
hyper-polarizing judicial reform will be suspended until the security
situation is brought under control. Make no mistake: Israeli domestic
political polarization will return, and demand for a reckoning for the
spectacular failures that led to this debacle will play out for years to
come. No matter how hard he tries to shift the burden of blame to the IDF
or the protest movement, the self-proclaimed Mr. Security owns this crisis.
Just like Golda Meir and her Mapai party after the Yom Kippur War,
Netanyahu and the far right will pay a political price for it. But as long
as shock and fear continue to grip the country, Israel will shrug off
internal division and external criticism and remain as unified as any
country in the world.

For now, outsiders, including the Biden administration, will work hard to
keep this conflict contained within Israel’s borders. Iran, Hamas’ crucial
patron and arms supplier, has celebrated the attack with criminal glee, but
it has been careful not to accept any direct responsibility for
orchestrating it, which would trigger massive retaliation from Israel. All
eyes are now on Hezbollah, the much more capable Iranian proxy to Israel’s
north in Lebanon, to be sure they don’t try to open a second front in the
conflict. So far, they have been careful not to involve themselves in the
fighting beyond limited strikes against an Israeli military outpost, but
it’s too early to tell whether this will remain the case. Should the war
expand, the consequences could be far-reaching and catastrophic.

This wildfire is raging, and it will take tremendous international effort
to put it out. Many innocent people on both sides will find themselves
trapped inside the inferno. This war is a tragedy that no one will bring
under control for some time to come.

____________

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You ask, I answer
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This week, you asked:

   - What would a ground invasion of Gaza look like?
   - How much support does Hamas have within Gaza?
   - What is Iran's next move?
   - How does US support for Israel compare to US support for Ukraine?

Check out my answers to your questions in the latest World in 60 Seconds
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Moose's treat of the week
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“My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel”
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by Ari Shavit, a deeply researched, moving narrative history of the State
of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with all their complexities
and contradictions. Probably the most thoughtful book you’ll ever read on
the subject.

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