Israel and America’s Growing Zugzwang

by Simplicus the Thinker, published on Substack, November 18, 2023

This is a pretty interesting, if meandering, analysis that looks at the regional and global aspects of the war in Gaza.  He has some interesting leaks and maps to back up his positions as he moves towards a final conclusion.   It is only one opinion, but brings out a lot of information.  [jb]

We can now safely say that our previous reading of the Israeli situation appears to be accurate. The U.S. is acting as a rudderless ship, rushing to the MidEast out of reflex with no clear gameplan, and is in fact terrified of Iranian escalations.

We now know this due to a confluence of new data.

Firstly, recall when I said you’d know how serious the U.S. was based on where it positioned its carrier group. It’s now turned out that the USS Eisenhower is positioned off the coast of Oman exactly where I said it would be if the U.S. were not serious about doing anything more than posturing. That’s because it’s too distant to strike the most important targets of Iran, but is safely out of reach of a majority of coastal missile defense systems.

⚡️⚡️⚡️Iranian proxies covered a hangar with equipment at the US Harir military base in Iraq.

There is no information on the victims.

Iranian proxies vow to attack the United States as Israel continues its genocide in Gaza.

Where is the air defense??⚡️⚡️⚡️

They even released footage of the kamikaze drone launch:

As well as an official statement (AI autotranslation):

Meanwhile casualties continue to go up. Not only have the earlier ~40 now risen to ~55, but there were reports of U.S. soldiers deaths in another strike days ago, now being hushed up.

My point is that, Iran is striking major blows on the U.S. And how does Biden respond?

Biden- Khamenei

That’s right—this is my second reason as proof. Biden is now offering to bribe Iran with a massive $10B as concession to make them stop escalating.

This is underscored by Israel’s own warning of a “long war” that could take from six months to a year or more.

In fact, in a newly ‘leaked’ audio from General Aviv Kohavi, at the 2:18 mark he expressly states: “My friends, it will take time…we can’t complete this mission after three months.”

Why is that? As I wrote before, it’s primarily because the U.S. is not ready for true full-scale war, doesn’t have the ammo or assets in place, nor has the resolve—as there is a full-blown mutiny inside the State Department as more and more officials side with Palestinians and believe the U.S. to be in the wrong.

The tide is slowly being turned against Israel with many in the Western structures now seeing a ceasefire and some sort of political solution as best. In fact, some have opined that the West is signaling this to Israel via its control over the media. There has been a very bizarre raft of new reports from Western MSM stalwarts like BBC and CNN that are suddenly quite critical of Israel.

In yesterday’s CNN piece Jake Tapeworm, I mean Tapper, goes completely out of character slamming the “racist” Jewish supremacism of many members of Israel’s Knesset, including heavily criticizing Netanyahu.

Then shockingly the BBC followed suit with a report about how disingenuously Israel is deceiving the public with fake planted props and other lies.

Some believe it’s just the networks ‘covering their own asses’ and saving themselves from the coming firestorm after the dust settles. However, it does appear like pressure is being put on Israel to limit its genocide. These networks do not report anything without clear guidance from above, which comes from the same globalist cartels that control Western governments.

Another theory I’m partial to is that they’ve identified the writing on the wall that the genocide Israel is currently committing is condemning the entire country to an untimely end. I wrote about this several articles ago where I said that Israel is facing an existential crisis and may cease to exist in the future. Current actions represent an all out hail mary attempt to challenge fate, but may in fact accelerate that demise.

The powers that be have recognized this and are panicking because Israel has always been nothing more than a neo-colonialist forward base for the Western / Atlanticist empire to dominate the Middle East and thereby the Heartland of the world. Israel’s current actions are seen as accelerating the realignment of the entire globe to such a dangerous degree that the U.S. and co. see no “off-ramp” to ending the conflict without the total loss of influence in the MidEast, as well as the handing the entire future destiny of the globe on a silver platter to Russia and China—who are being perceived as the ‘good guys’ on the right side of history as per this conflict.

The other issue we delved into last time is how Israel is faring militarily thus far. There are two opposing takes to this: Israel is handily crushing Gaza while sustaining very minor losses (man/materiel), will succeed in driving everyone out through the south without a hitch and accomplish all of its stated geopolitical goals.

The other side believes Israel is already taking unsustainable losses and is suffering irreparable economic damage in the process.

It’s difficult to gauge which is closer to the truth due to the thick fog of war over the conflict. Hamas released a statement that they’ve destroyed nearly 200 of Israel’s ~500-600 active Merkavas already, while Israel claims very few armor losses. Who is right? We know Israel lets no type of journalistic integrity pass inside of Gaza—ALL footage and reports must be screened by the IDF.

Plus a steady stream of footage showing damaged/destroyed Namer APCs and Merkavas, continues to leak out, giving credence to Hamas’ claims.

To get a further inkling, we have reports like the following:

Washington is encouraging Israel to speed up the operation in Gaza and prevent its delay, which would negatively affect Biden’s election positions, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service said. The United States is aware that the solution to the task of destroying Hamas may lead to a large number of civilian casualties, but considers this to be completely acceptable, the department noted. Together with England and Germany, Washington intends to obstruct initiatives providing for a ceasefire in Gaza, the SVR says.

As well as reports claiming the Israeli interior officials too are increasingly at an impasse as to how to proceed:

Friends at other channels are now reporting that the war cabinet (of Israel) is bickering among itself, most of the ministers talk of a need to increase attacks against Hezbollah. Netanyahu has refused, and his own right hand man, Ben Gvir, is now calling for his dismissal. Important to note that Ben Gvir is one of the few government ministers who are allowed to have their own militas separate from the IDF and Mossad, and therefore, a highly unstable individual with hundreds of armed men as his followers thrown in the mix is not the best look for the Israeli power structure.

In fact, other reports have come out stating that U.S. Sec. Def Lloyd Austin ‘warned’ his Israeli colleague Gallant over escalating against Hezbollah. Axios reports:

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin expressed concern to his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant in a call on Saturday about Israel’s role in escalating tensions along the border between Israel and Lebanon, according to three Israeli and U.S. sources briefed on the call.

And:

Why it matters: Austin’s message to Gallant reflected growing anxiety in the White House that Israeli military action in Lebanon is exacerbating tensions along the border, which could lead to a regional war.

They go on to state that it was the White House which urged Austen to send this message to Israel, due to fears that “Israel is trying to provoke Hezbollah and create a pretext for a wider war in Lebanon that could draw the U.S. and other countries further into the conflict, according to sources briefed on the issue.”

So the U.S. itself senses that Israel is potentially deliberately trying to draw Hezbollah in so that big daddy America can come in and “finish off” Hezbollah/Iran once and for all. Meanwhile, U.S. knows the dangers of this as it has no where near the current capability to fight a protracted conflict against Iran, which could virtually shut down the entire global economy and cause all of Biden’s “economic miracles” to be flushed down the toilet, creating a disastrous scenario for the 2024 elections that would hand the win to some opposition party, particularly Trump.

One theory I’ve even seen espoused is that the U.S. rushed its carrier fleets out solely to keep Israel pacified as U.S. officials were worried that an unhinged Israel could “nuke” Iran out of desperation.

As of this writing a new BBC article has even hit the web once more highlighting these issues:

Insiders are ‘stunned’ at the intensity of internal opposition:

Several internal memos have been sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken through a channel, established after the Vietnam war, which allows employees to register disapproval of policy.

Much of this dissent is private, and the signatures are often anonymous out of concerns the protest might affect jobs, so the full scale of it is not clear. But according to leaks cited by multiple reports, hundreds of people have signed on to the wave of opposition.

Read the article to see how bad it’s gotten, it details a world of internal strife like never before, with Biden facing immense pressures to call for a ceasefire.

But back to the Axios article for a moment, they describe how Biden’s administration has been scrambling to try to quell Hezbollah from entering the conflict:

They end by repeating the recent reports from Israeli press that Gallant and several senior IDF commanders actually wanted to do a massive preemptive attack on Hezbollah at the start of the war, but that Netanyahu overruled Gallant. These are likely the types of characterizations that had the U.S. internally extremely worried.

Meanwhile, Kit Klarenberg’s latest delves into the economic aspect, claiming an inordinate toll on Israel’s economy:

LINK on UNAC Blog / The Grayzone

He reports:

The FT reports that the war has disrupted and ravaged “thousands” of companies, many teetering on the brink of collapse, with entire sectors plunged into an unprecedented crisis.

Data cited from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics reveals a bleak reality – one in three businesses have either shuttered or are operating at 20 percent capacity since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood commenced on 7 October and punched a hole in Israeli national confidence.

More than half of businesses face revenue losses surpassing the 50 percent mark. The southern regions, closest to Gaza, bear the brunt, with two-thirds of businesses either closed or functioning “to a minimum.”

He goes on to say nearly 1/5th of Israel’s workforce is jobless due to various evacuations and presumably the call up of 360,000 reservists.

Last time I reported economic losses of about $90M per day, but apparently Bloomberg sees it as $260M per day.

If this much economic damage is being incurred just from Hamas, then Hezbollah entering the conflict could likely sink the Israeli economy long term, just by sheer ability to lock down the state with a constant barrage of long range attacks.

Supporting evidence comes by way of reports like the following:

BREAKING:

Israeli media:

250,000 Israeli settlers have immigrated outside “Israel” since October 7, and more than a million have been displaced to other settlements from the north and south. pic.twitter.com/1HhxZgtBQC

— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) November 15, 2023

This is insane. For the first time since the creation of Israel, the Israeli settlements have gone dark while the Lebanese villages facing them are illuminated. Almost all Israeli settlements along the Lebanese borders were evacuated out of fear of Hezbollah. (📷 Ali Shoeib) pic.twitter.com/BrLyaQaHlM

— Hadi Nasrallah (@HadiNasrallah) November 16, 2023

As you can see from the above, vast swaths of settler communities are already not only going dark, but outright fleeing for good.

However, some recent reports claim that Hezbollah has no intention to enter the conflict, one going so far as to state that Iran flat out told Hamas in a meeting that they would not be helping them, angered by the fact that Hamas began the attacks with no forewarning given to Iran.

But let’s think this through logically for a second. The fact is, no matter how well Hamas claims to be doing, it’s simply not feasible that they can cause enough casualties to somehow ‘decisively defeat’ the IDF. Realistically speaking, a force of 500k+ can take tens of thousands of casualties before even feeling the difference—just ask Ukraine. Thus far, there is no credible evidence Israel is taking “overwhelming” casualties. At the same time, we must admit that Israel has not presented any credible evidence of any substantial destruction of Hamas manpower, either.

But this leads one to conclude that the more likely swaying factor would be the economic pressure on the country, rather than outright total losses within IDF ranks.

On paper, I concede that it seems like Israel should be able to fairly easily sweep everyone out of Gaza in time. However, it’s now almost a month into the ground operation and they have still not incurred into the densest parts of ‘Gaza City.’

Here’s a good writeup from an ex-IDF officer as to what the strategy and gameplan will be.

His key statement is that Hamas’ most fortified strongholds are actually all in the eastern portion of Gaza City, exactly the part you see no IDF presence at all in the map above. This is because Hamas always expected an invasion from the eastern side and naturally built up their fortifications there. Israel attempted to bypass this by going along the coast and hitting them from the ‘rear’.

But the point is this: we’re almost a month in and Israel has not even stepped into Hamas’ true lair yet. And this doesn’t even begin to count the southern half of Gaza, where Hamas may have in large part already moved. In fact Ehud Olmert has just stated that Hamas has already relocated to Khan Younis, all the way in the south.

As well as this new direct threat to Khan Younis,

So, first he admits “we haven’t even come to the heart of this operation,” then says that Hamas true headquarters is in the south. Then we have the following:

He goes on to compare the current operation to 2002’s “Defensive Shield” which saw the IDF invade West Bank, saying that the main stage took 6 weeks but it took a further 3 years to fully quell the “terrorist threat.”

Of course Olmert’s earlier words are likely propaganda meant to move the goalposts to justify Israel’s continued ethnic cleansing of the entire Gaza strip, as predicted and planned.

But even still, if Hamas does manage to move its operations south, slowly bleeding the IDF, and given that in a month of time the IDF has not appeared to have appreciably weakened Hamas at all, nor has even begun incurring into its northern fortress, we can begin to see how this may be a very long term war.

Thus, getting back to the original point, while it’s true that ultimately the IDF could wipe out all of Gaza—since 500k men are simply not realistically going to be substantially attritioned—it could take so long that by the time they emerge “victorious” the entire world would have drastically changed and realigned, and Israel’s economic conditions will have been so severely affected as to completely change the trajectory of Israel’s future as a nation.

Now, imagine for a moment, that this whole outline adds Hezbollah to the equation, with the opening of a major second, northern front. Now add to the equation the brewing mutinies in the West, the massive building political crisis and coming critical election cycle. Israel may find itself in extremely deep waters, with U.S. potentially unable to financially aid it.

Iran could very well be sitting back and waiting for Israel to weaken to a far more critical degree before initiating another phase of an operation to finish them off.

Given the building pressures, one potential way the conflict could seemingly resolve is a face-saving compromise where Israel manages to finally free its hostages and then, being pressured by global efforts to put some kind of halt to the operation, perhaps enact a security zone in the north of Gaza and call Hamas “effectively decapitated.”

The problem with this is that there are also mounting signs that a radicalized Israeli society has vast amounts of support for the full ‘final solution’ of the Palestinian question and return of Biblical Land of Israel.

Alastair Crooke actually has a new article on this from today, where he puts forth new evidence that Israeli elites are positioned to take it “all the way” because this eschatological cross-roads they’ve found themselves at is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

“Israel” is sensing the present crisis to be both an existential risk, but an ‘opportunity’ too – an opportunity to establish “Israel” across ‘its Biblical lands’ over the long term. There is no mistaking it — this is the direction of travel of Israeli popular sentiment, from both Left and Right wings, to bloody eschatology.

Crooke concludes that sentiment toward a new ‘Nakba’ for Palestinians has united Israelis from both Left and Right. Not only are mouths beginning to water regarding expelling Palestinians from West Bank as well—where IDF has quietly been performing operations—but according to him, ambitions even grow toward southern Lebanon—up to the key water source of the Litani River.

For those who’ve watched the leaked call of Aviv Kohavi above, did you catch the key moment at the end? His final words clinch the motif:

And I’m hoping we are on the verge of a paradigm shift

And we are in inflection point of the history of the Jewish people

That doesn’t sound like the offhand remark of someone merely satisfied to cleanse a few terrorist lairs. No, that is messianic end game dogwhistling to signal what the Israeli elites believe to be the final chapter of their eschatological destiny.

Crooke ends his article with a point I myself was planning to make. It revolves around the thesis taken up by many observers that the recent historic Arab summit at the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) was a major failure and let down, owing to its inability to generate some tangible blowback against Israel in the form of an embargo, etc.

This is superficial thinking from analysts and commentators who have a parochial and unlearned view of global mechanics. Because something did not achieve an unrealistic “big arrow” motion, doesn’t mean it was a failure. I side with Crooke on his interpretation:

The concomitant two conferences — the Arab League and the OIC (held concurrently in Riyadh) — underlined the complete collapse of “Israel’s” image across the Islamic world. The outpouring of anger and passion was palpable, and is metamorphosing new global politics.

In the West, the anger is splintering mainstream political structures, and causing wide convulsion. Global protests are massive.

Thus, as “Israel” swings towards a Biblical “Greater Israel”, the Islamic world turns increasingly uncompromising. Though the conferences did not agree on any action-plan, the image of President Raisi sitting next to MbS; and that both Presidents Erdogan and Assad were co-mingling at the conference, was arresting.

Only the truly intuitive can understand the significance of even a moment as that described above, of Raisi, Assad, and MbS projecting solidarity—or even Erdogan being in the same room as Assad, for instance.

You have to have your ear to the ground to truly understand the subtle changes percolating through the system, it’s not something that will be immediately evident. Remember, in most societies, true power resides just beneath the surface—the real movers, shakers, and influence makers hidden within the folds and gearworks of the visible sphere of ruling powers. This is the class of people being brought closer together ideologically, across previous bounds. A cultural identity separate from that of the West is slowly manifesting, which is synonymous to the new “pole” of the multipolar world described last time.

It’s not uniform, of course—but it’s a growing, reshaping tide that will have rippling effects on all spheres—it’s not about Gaza or Palestine, per se. It may not be as dramatic as some hope, but with the world hanging on a delicate tip of a seesaw, even the smallest change can drastically rebalance the current order.

One must be sensitive to these gradual but tectonic shifts being made to the historic structures of the international system. For instance, Erdogan and other Muslim leaders have now sworn to take Israel to the highest international criminal court, and not stop until they’re held accountable. These processes are initiating the gradual disintegration of the international system because it’s making apparent to the entire burgeoning and now-powerful global south just how obsolete and useless these systems are, which includes institutions like the U.N., amongst others. This will undoubtedly lead to a cascade effect to undo most of these aging colonialist structures in time, as the sheer unfairness and hypocrisy built into their very foundations have now been repeatedly exposed for all to see.

But given Crooke’s conclusion, that Israel’s radical extremism is pushing it to go “all the way,” it’s hard to envision any sort of de-escalation. Israel’s society may be ideologically positioned to accept any economic losses for this biblical fulfillment, so talks of economic damage could be moot. Recall Ukraine’s still functioning society after incalculable economic damage sustained from the war. Humans can handle a lot; so it’s likely that this will go on for some time, the only question is whether Hezbollah/Iran will end up choosing to enter.

We now know that the U.S. is not inclined to be the aggressor or the initiator/instigator itself. So if Iran were to get involved, it would likely be at the instigation of Israel. Perhaps faltering in its Gaza campaign after months of travail, they will choose to spark a much wider war to conceal their own economic losses and weakness. So that’s to say, one projection is that Israel could continue this status quo crawl through Gaza for half a year until two key things happen:

1. The West’s patience has run out, given months of outrage over IDF’s genocide. Western leadership can no longer control the internal turmoil against their Israeli policies, and pressure finally forces them to succumb, leading them to officially threaten to pull support of Israel if it doesn’t cease hostilities.
2. Israel, at the same time, may be weakening both economically and militarily to the extent that a large amount of munitions, materiel, and armor/vehicles of all types have been expended, with the West now threatening to end further support.

Given both of the factors above, projected to—let’s say—a 6 month period, Israel would feel chronically vulnerable. With waning support and munitions, Israel would know that Iran stands to catch them with their ‘pants down’ in an extremely weakened state by opening up a second front via Hezbollah.

Israel would then see no choice but to potentially stage a falseflag to bring the West fully into the war to stave off this threat from Iran. The falseflag would likely include both ‘Hamas terrorist attacks’ in Europe (carried out by Mossad) as well as some “Iranian” missile attacks on U.S. ships, in a replay of the USS Liberty episode. It doesn’t matter at that point what would transpire because the result would invariably lead to the West’s downfall. U.S. planners likely know this, which is why they’ll do everything in their power to prevent Israel from instigating down this route.

Perhaps out of final desperation, the U.S. will try to cobble together some type of Muslim coalition to curtail Hamas in order to stop Israel’s expanding operation. For instance, recruiting Egypt and Turkey to somehow go into Gaza and set up humanitarian and security operations, which if I’m not mistaken is something Erdogan had already volunteered, seriously or not.

Ultimately we can take example from the very “Defensive Shield” operation the IDF general referenced earlier, from 2002. There Israel waged a similar incursion to cleanse ‘Hamas’ and other groups. In fact, if you study that operation, it bears striking resemblance to everything currently happening. There were the same allegations of notable massacres (Jenin Massacre), there was the dubious moral outrage from the West, including threats of major sanctions against Israel for various humanitarian violations and war crimes, etc.

But the difference is, back then they used a small force of 20,000. This time, Israel mobilized everyone in a truly apocalyptic show that appears designed to convey that they are going “all the way.” In reality, the mass mobilization of reservists could never have been about Hamas or Gaza. Some sources report Hamas fighters number less than 20,000 and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s even much less than that. Israel already has an active force of 150k+ meant to easily handle this.

No, the 360k extra on top was always meant to be a precursor for some type of ‘total war’ against Hezbollah, which does seem to give credence to Crooke’s ideas about seizing southern Lebanon eventually, after instigating a big enough casus belli. But the issue is—Israel may not have read the cards right; they may have been counting on the full unconditional support of the U.S. and the West. They may not have foreseen the fatal ‘vibe change’ which has swept the rug from under their feet.

That’s why I’ll leave with this final “leaked call” of ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt going into full panic mode about what’s currently happening with Gen Z’s completely ‘off-script’ disavowal of Israel’s previously inviolable “Divine [Entitlement/Exceptionalism] Right”:

‘We have a major Tiktok problem.’

Leaked audio of ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt freaking out because global youth aren’t buying Israel’s propaganda anymore. #Gaza pic.twitter.com/tzU02bSXAm

— Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) November 16, 2023

Recall in the earlier General Kohavi leaked audio, he stated something so critical that I’m going to remind you again.

He states that the very cornerstone of Israel’s campaign is time, which can only be gained by “mitigating the conditions” for the U.S. If you read the cryptic message between the lines, what he’s essentially saying is that for the U.S. to provide the military and global political backing for Israel to conduct its operation, Israel in turn must provide the social and cultural narrative control in order to allow the Western elite class to continue pushing the moral justifications for Israel’s actions.

And this is the crux of everything: Israel appears to have heavily banked on being able to use its various social control technologies—which mostly consists of its various NGOs and global ‘anti-hate groups’ like the ADL—to dictate the narrative around this genocide.

But they failed miserably.

Israel did not appear to have a good bead on the pulse of the global awakening. They were sclerotically stuck just a few years behind the times, still thinking this was the late 2010s with the peak of Big Tech’s sprawling domination of our minds, and the omnipotent Leftist Narrative seizure.

Times have changed, things are unwinding, Israel is losing control:

Well, they helped create this shibboleth by pushing Leftist activism to always kowtow to the perceived ‘marginalized’ group. Now no group in the world has as much marginalization cachet as the Palestinians.

Israel made it ‘cool’ to be anti-establishment again, the real establishment, for a change.

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If you don’t know and haven’t guessed, “Zugwang” is defined as follows: Zugzwang  from German ‘compulsion to move’; pronounced [ˈtsuːktsvaŋ]) is a situation found in chess and other turn-based games wherein one player is put at a disadvantage because of their obligation to make a move; a player is said to be “in zugzwang” when any legal move will worsen their position.  A very striking image.