but see to it that you are alarmed.
You cannot kill an idea
You can only kill its adherents. You can kill people and destroy their materials, but ideas cannot be stopped. In the same way it is difficult to “force” a meme into the zeitgeist, even for a cultural split second, it is just as difficult to “kill” a meme still teaming with life and energy. To properly engage with the threat, the idea must be co-opted, changed, or otherwise hybridized into something else. If the Israeli government was truly in the business of keeping its citizen safe and itself, the state, preserved beyond the next decade, the war they would fight would be something completely different from the one being prosecuted now.
This war, this properly conducted war, would illicit buzz words like fifth generation warfare, or grey-zone operations, hybrid ops or wars, so on and so forth. And while we all pray God would punish these terminally online Redditors, the phrases themselves are useful to a degree to describe what should have happened here. The military should have embarked upon a campaign of quiet and persistent precision without end but without any notable beginning either. The military to truly hold full domain dominance over Hamas was never going to happen, however. The same Israeli government and its military men that thought themselves invulnerable to paraglider air assault also had no other solution than the last one that didn’t work: To simply cut the grass from 30,000 feet up and nowhere near the Gaza metro.
Perhaps if the Israeli’s had been more malleable to the state of warfare today, more flexible to the comings and goings of insurgent warfare, or less prideful in their perception of themselves and their honor, the war would have been over by now. Or it would have appeared to have been over, though operations could have persisted in the shadows away from prying eyes of the old school media or war bloggers. But now it’s over, and not because Israel wanted it to end, not because it was the Gazan’s want for it to end, but because the Orange Emperor simply decreed it so. Because he knew the war was lost and would have likely, if not finished soon, spiraled out of control. Something Tel Aviv still does not understand or appreciate. Something they finally share in common with the masses of evangelical Christians in America.
Feelings do not care about your ‘facts’
Even if one were to disprove every shitlib or Gazan citizen’s take and opinion of the conditions present, the way they perceive the world is what they act upon. Perception may not be reality, but it absolutely affects it as though it were. The sky may not be red, truly, but if everyone else agrees that it is, or simply that blue is to be called red, poems will be rewritten, phrases will be changed to fit the new reality, and the world changes. Make no mistake, even if it all is some illusion crafted by Hamas necromancers and sorcerers in their underground dungeons, this is what motivates Gazans to action, and this will not change until their perception changes. There are only three options, and only two are feasible. You can kill them all, which Israel is incapable of doing, or you can change their minds or change their lives. There is no other option. Cry about it as much as you want, howl to the universe how unfair and awful it is. Truly, how could life be so uncaring and mean to the Israelis? But life isn’t fair. Just ask the innocent civilians in Gaza.
There will only be bargaining frictions so long as the population of young men in Gaza perceive their lot in life to be that of being stuck in an open-air prison that their wardens swear up and down is basically its own country. One without an airport, or sovereign borders, or even a proper port on the ocean. But basically, a state no longer under (permanent) occupation. The current occupation notwithstanding, of course.
So long as this perception remains and stays potent and popular, there will be no end to the amounts of confirmation bias, legitimate or otherwise, to reinforce this idea to them. Fact: Hamas has now recruited more personnel than they have lost since October 7th and all preceding encounters with Israeli infantry, armor, or air strikes. The popularity of Hamas inside Gaza is now beyond reproach. One man’s terrorist really is another man’s freedom fighter. Kill a boy’s mother and sister with a 15,000 pound bomb, laser guided or not, it’s not going to matter to him. A pilot killed his family because the building they lived in was a little too close to a tunnel opening or an ancient Greek Orthodox Church. A military pilot. A Jewish pilot. And as foreign an idea though this may be to a westerner, in the Arab world not all of their heroes are dead. Just most of them. Who on earth would say no to being recruited by their personal hero after your entire life is gutted and ended like that? Nary a soul, not even you dear reader.
15 months for unlimited objectives
Nearly two years of ongoing combat operations against this microstate and its militia have given the Israeli government only one thing: a pause on the ongoing constitutional crisis at home. The rally round the flag, while wearing off, is not gone yet. This new ceasefire, borne out of the reality that Israel cannot actually achieve its ridiculous objectives, international pressure, and frankly much more important affairs abroad, has given this effect one last shot in the ass. Likely it will keep Bibi safe for another six months, but that is only a cynical guess. The courts are likely to stir up trouble for themselves once again after the media hype returns to ‘normal.’ That too is another cynical guess.
Think about that. The premiere counterterrorist force in the world couldn’t find and relive 34 hostages in a microstate, with no standing army or airport, nearly the size of Philadelphia, in two years. We waste billions of giving these fools weapons, stealth jets, and walls, and still yet send our SWAT teams to train COIN and other police work on our dime, and now the emperor has shown to wear no clothes. The embarrassment of the Israeli government, and its citizens, is real. The humiliation of the bloody nose from two years ago, and the ongoing slug match that should have never been this difficult for a modern military, and the peace deal drawn up by a man not even president yet and forced down the Israeli throat is nothing short of a castration to the Israeli popular consciousness and culture. But it didn’t have to be this way.
Unlimited measures will not gain you unlimited objectives
It could have been so easy. A slow and deliberate information gathering campaign, a slow and methodical reassurance to Saudi Arabia and America that any military moves against Hamas would be surgical and quick. Assassinations, blackmail, and some seizure of military hardware and personnel in cross border raids to trade for hostages would have been perfectly adequate for all parties. Israel gets to look strong, mysterious, and fair. Hamas gets to have its war and gain new blood and praise for its cause and Authority. Saudi Arabia gets to play the mediator and bring “peace” back to the region. Iran gets too bloody IS nose, if only a little. It could have been over in four months. All the planning, all the gathering, all the preparation, all the closed-door meetings, and all the narratives could have been crafted for a single weekend of violence and action. It really could have been so much less of a mess. Nowhere near the mess it is now.
Frankly, the current government is lucky that America, the West, and Christendom globally did not take any of this as poorly as Iran or Saudi Arabia. Doubly so if one were to consider how much quieter Turkey was on the situation than the Pope. Indeed, a major part of Israel’s means to prosecute this war comes from the American taxpayers. But instead of counting their blessings and many, many second third and fourth chances, the ungratefulness and conceit floweth over like a river.
Suddenly America is not an ally, but a “foreign government.”
See, it was never a problem for the Israelis to take our guns, to take our triple seven shells, satellite photography, stealth fighters, bombs, or other intelligence products. Not even American taxpayer subsidized Israeli healthcare was an issue. But now that America has, for once in its life, taken a slightly different stand from Israel, now it’s some sort of problem. America is no longer Israel’s closest ally. We’re just a foreign government.
Great. This really could be, but likely isn’t, the road to recovery for the American civic spirit. I speak for all internally honest and consistent America-First-ers when I say America First does not mean anything or anyone else before us. No America first, but only after Mexico. Or America first, but let’s ask Ukraine. Neither America first, and let’s see what Israel thinks nor America first, but let’s ask the bankers or illegals in the country what they’d want before the taxpayers. Fuck that. Those things are not “America First” and they never will be. These things are unacceptable and reprehensible to disseminate and celebrate. Anyone who doesn’t treat Israel as a foreign government, literally what it is, is a charlatan and a huckster. Be very, very weary of strangers telling you otherwise.
If it’s somehow a problem if the RuSsIaNs are InTeRfErInG with our eLeCtIoNs, and a national security concern that members of the DoD and the public are using Chinese spyware on their phones, but APAC gets a pass because being a Zionist is as American as apple pie? One of these things is just like the others, and it’s time we put that shit back in its box.
Warmongers, I bring with me a shitpost of peace
A tidal wave of otherwise Trump supporters on Twitter and a few (rare) principled liberals have switched sides online as they post about the (already broken) ceasefire yesterday and today.
Rabid shitlibs, now turned their heads to the sky and realized the sun was out, and the air was calm again. The thing they had wanted from the Biden admin and hoped (but knew better) Kamala would provide had finally happened. And Trump, not Biden they acknowledge, is responsible. Huzzah! At least the one thing they wanted finally happened. And they didn’t even vote for it! No more needless civilian casualties. No more war in the Middle East. Perhaps now the GDP line might go back up and up and up if the Houthis would stop sinking ships int the Red Sea. How strange and fortuitous? Trump? Wonders never cease in the mind of the liberal.
But the skies turned dark and gray for the conservitards. The news: grim. The Israelis lost the war! Oh! The humanity! How could God’s chosen people lose to a bunch of teenagers with rocket launchers and sandals? It’s a mockery of justice! Trump has BETRAYED the Jews! How could he? God will certainly rain down upon him six billion frogs and turn his diet coke into blood. The innocent blood that will surely be on Trumps hands when the Hamas ninjas return for more blood for their blood god!
It should go without saying that it’s a real miscarriage of common sense that conservatives and Christians can get so wildly upset about a foreign power losing face in a war that wasn’t existential in nature, paid by their hard-earned tax dollars. You would think that such “pig headed ultra-right-wing bigots” would care about their own borders, their wars and warriors, and perhaps their own country just as much. But you’d be wrong. I’d ask the reader to make it make sense, but I’m frankly not interested in helping myself to a brick to the head.
A warning to Zelensky: Make peace, or the peace shall be made for you.
There is no guarantee that Trump can convince the Russians that there is any need to stop now, not with the Russian momentum at present. Nor is there any guarantee that Trump truly understands how to entice the Russians with the appropriate amount of give. What could be worth all the blood spent to the Russian state? Could such ground ever be returned? What on earth could Trump offer for that? Again, there is no guarantee that Trump can do what he says, and likely believes, he can do. He just happens to be the most likely American to be able to do it. But there is another.
Not another American though, a Russian. Vladimir Putin. Putin and his aids, if Trump cannot successfully diplomatically intervene, will dictate terms to Kiev someday. It will not be today, and it may not be day 2,000 of the special military operation. But if Zelensky refuses to play ball with Trump, and if Trump fails to grasp the significance of all of these things to Putin, Putin will ultimately have the last laugh on the western side of the Dnieper.
Peace is coming.
