The events of October 7 were the consequence of the brutish conditions of life Israel has imposed on the Palestinians over generations. Those conditions produced Hamas and produced October 7. Israel was, and is, content in imposing these brutish conditions of life and it expected the Palestinians to endure them until their will was broken by them. But their will was not broken by the brutish conditions of life, which had become intolerable, and they demonstrated their ability to resist them on October 7. Ever since then they have been made to endure extraordinary punishment for their resistance, which has been justified in the West by the phrase “Israel has a right to defend itself” used by the blackguard Sir Keir Starmer and his ilk.

Israel has a very low toleration of violence against itself. We are told that it has gone into a deep trauma after October 7 in which only violence inflicted on the Palestinians on a scale one thousand times greater than that which Hamas inflicted on Israel can sate its appetite for vengeance and future security. The Judenstaat (the original Zionist term for a Jewish State) seems to know no other way of responding to the consequences of its policy except through killing, which is indeed its chief talent. Peace-making is beyond it.

It has employed a strategy of decapitation of its enemies, and employed it very successfully, to the glee of the Western media. A strategy of decapitation was rarely employed by that most successful of states, Great Britain. Britain knew a thing or two about statecraft and nullifying an enemy through cultivating them as future friends and through this achieving beneficial settlements. This has been called pacification and it has been greatly successful in the world. If it had not been for the fateful decision of August 1914 Britain would perhaps still be on top of the world with it. But then again if it were not for that there would be no Israel, since the Balfour Declaration was one consequence of that catastrophe.

One can think of the time Britain employed a limited form of decapitation, after the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, and it did not work out well with the Irish. After that Britain reverted to the other way of skinning the Cat, with some success.

Israel is incapable of this kind of thing. It has only the one-dimensional strategy of assassination and extermination and nothing else. Its way of war are the exterminations of the Book of Joshua and only its limited size holds it back from its heart’s desire. And this is why Israel has been a catastrophe as a state throughout its history.

It is interesting that Israel did not introduce its decapitation strategy until after a year of carpet bombing of the civilians in Gaza. Surely this should have been its first gambit after October 7. The fact that it chose to first terrorise the civilian population of Gaza while preserving the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah must be significant. It suggests that Israel saw an opportunity to give the Palestinians a good dusting, killing 50,000, while keeping the Hamas and Hezbollah leadership intact, to justify its exterminating policy in the West. It was, therefore, a distinct part of Israel’s strategy.

Where does Israel get the money to act as it does, like a great power, when it is merely a nation of 7 million? According to RTE, the Israeli central bank has put the expenditure of the current 5 wars it has engaged in at “roughly $60 billion… so more than 10% of GDP in just one year.”

It can, of course, only sustain its appetite for warfare because of US subvention:

“On top of the $3 billion a year in annual military aid that the Americans provide, there was a one-off $14 billion package of aid, which was approved by Congress earlier this year. That takes care of close to half of those increased defence expenditures. But with the broader economy, economists believe they’re heading for a situation not unlike the one after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, where there was a prolonged period of high inflation and low growth. The vibrant Israeli economy may not be so vibrant in the years to come.”

Just like in Ukraine where Russia has depleted the enemy’s financial resources by hooking high-tech expense with low-tech projectiles “the very crude rockets that are used by Hamas or some of which are used by Hezbollah in Lebanon, cost only a few thousand dollars to produce, but they cost tens of thousands of dollars to defend against. That cost goes up significantly for the longer range, more advanced interceptors like the Arrow interceptors, which they used to fend off that barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles.”

The Israeli failure against the limited Iranian response to its provocations has led to it having to be bailed out by the arrival of new US air defence systems. Why no air defence for Lebanon?

The shortage of labour is also hitting Israel’s economy:

“The labour market is incredibly tight right now because of the frequent call ups. Reservists, due to the failure to defeat Hamas and the expansion of the war into Syria, been called up for further duty. And that’s putting a big strain on firms that are watching their workers constantly cycle in and out of the military… Unemployment is 2.7%, an incredibly low figure, reflecting the fact that there just aren’t that many workers around because so many people are being pulled in for repeated bouts of reserve duty.”

Israel, of course, has another talent aside from assassination and extermination, and that is long-term planning for assassination and extermination, through its extensive intelligence agencies. The Lebanese campaign has evidently been planned for a very long time. That can be seen in Israel’s preparatory actions in organising the pagers and walky-talkies attacks and in gaining the plans, many years ago, that enabled the bombing of the Hezbollah HQ bunker and killing of its high command. This was years in the planning and making and pre-dated October 7 by a long time.

But it is, of course, in essence a joint enterprise – a collaboration between Israel and the United States. Adam Tooze, the respected author of The Deluge, the book about how the Great War of 1914 remade the global order, writing in the Guardian (10.10.24) sees Washington’s hands as all over what Israel is doing, despite the distance it tries to maintain from its policy of extermination:

“In the Middle East… the Biden administration was not looking to escalate. Trump’s Abraham accords between the United Arab Emirates and Israel had opened up a promising vista. But Russia’s growing ties with Iran, and China’s involvement in the region darkened the picture. Once Hamas launched its attack on 7 October, and once the Israeli government’s determination to end the modus vivendi with Hamas and Hezbollah became clear, Washington gave the green light. The US is paying for more than 25% of Israel’s rampage as it physically annihilates Gaza, victimises the West Bank and sets about uprooting Hezbollah. It has pulled allies such as Germany and the UK into line. It is shielding Netanyahu against the reach of international justice. Of course, unlike in Ukraine, the US has continued diplomacy. But to what effect? First and foremost to keep Iran boxed in and the powerful Gulf states on side. Meanwhile, Israel is wiping out Iran’s network of influence and annihilating the 1990s vision of a two-state solution. In all three arenas – China, Ukraine and the Middle East – the US will say that it is responding to aggression. But rather than working consistently for a return to the status quo it is, in fact, raising the stakes. While insisting that it supports the rules-based order, what we are witnessing is something closer to a revival of the ruinous neoconservative ambition of the 1990s and 2000.”

Tooze continues:

“First the Trump and now the Biden presidencies are willing contributors to the controlled demolition of the 1990s post-cold war order.”

After the Cold War ended Israel was worried that the US would remove its forces from the region and cut down its aid. Therefore, after 9/11 and promoting the Iraqi menace, Israel trumpeted the idea that Iran was a serious threat to the region and US interests there. Israel has tried ever since to poison US/Iranian relations, subverting any attempts to make an accommodation between them. They achieved this through their lobby and their war hawk allies in Washington. And Israel’s incitement and Washington’s “war on terror” against Iraq, and the Muslim world, resulted in a great expansion of Iranian power across the region, making it a much greater threat to US interests than it had ever been before.

Having made Iran a power in the region Israel is now attempting to escalate its war to Iran and provoke regime change in Tehran. It sees the post-October situation as its big chance and it is unlikely to let it slip. Its inevitable attack will be closely coordinated with the US, pinpointing military bases, infrastructure and governmental institutions including those of the Revolutionary Guard. It is likely that, unlike in Gaza and Lebanon, civilian targets will be omitted to avoid cohering the population around the state. If Iran responds it has been warned by Washington that its oil infrastructure and water supplies will be taken out by Israel/US.

Israel wants to turn the narrative from one that sees it indisputably as a rogue state, destabilising the region and attempting genocide in Gaza toward one which presents Iran as being the primary source of instability and danger. There are many in Washington and London who already promote that version of things to give cover to Israel’s activities. They also wish to remake the Middle East, cowing the Muslim World and neutralising all resistance to Greater Israel’s aims.

America’s real “special relationship” in the world is not with Britain, the faded Imperial power, but with Israel, the vigorous offspring of its Balfour Declaration. Israel, a country of 7 million Jews, is confident in fighting a 5-front war without fear of the consequences. That is truly astounding – and it is only possible because of Washington, or rather the view in Israel that no matter what it does, whatever destruction it brings, whatever trouble it gets itself into, America has its back and will bail it out. That is what makes Israel reckless and liable to bring the whole house down someday.

Jeremy Bowen of the BBC, its best journalist by a country mile, told listeners to Radio 4 on 12 October:

“The suspicion among Palestinians, the UN and relief agencies is that the IDF is gradually adopting some or all of a new tactic to clear northern Gaza known as the “Generals’ Plan”. It was proposed by a group of retired senior officers led by Maj-Gen (ret) Giora Eiland, who is a former national security adviser. Like most Israelis they are frustrated and angry that a year into the war Israel still has not achieved its war aims of destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages. The Generals’ Plan is a new idea that its instigators believe can, from Israel’s perspective, break the deadlock.”

Bowen explained what the Generals’ Plan was:

“At its heart is the idea that Israel can force the surrender of Hamas and its leader Yahya Sinwar by increasing the pressure on the entire population of the north. The first step is to order civilians to leave along evacuation corridors that will take them south of Wadi Gaza, an east-west stream that has become a dividing line in Gaza since the Israeli invasion last October.”

He noted that from the start of October Israeli forces had stopped all food from entering Gaza and its air force had been bombing those distributing any food that was available, presumably to promote general starvation in the populace.

According to Bowen the Generals’ Plan was deemed necessary because Netanyahu had refused to get the hostages back in return for a ceasefire:

“Giora Eiland believes Israel should have done a deal straight away to get the hostages back, even if it meant pulling out of Gaza entirely. A year later, other methods, he says, are necessary. In his office in central Israel, he laid out the heart of the plan. Since we already encircled the northern part of Gaza in the past nine or 10 months, what we should do is the following thing to tell all the 300,000 residents [that the UN estimates is 400,000] who still live in the northern part of Gaza that they have to leave this area and they should be given 10 days to leave through safe corridors that Israel will provide.”

The General told Bowen:

“After that time, all this area will have to become a military zone. And all the Hamas people will still, though, whether some of them are fighters, some of them are civilians… will have two choices either to surrender or to starve.”

Bowen continued:

“Eiland wants Israel to seal the areas once the evacuation corridors are closed. Anyone left behind would be treated as an enemy combatant. The area would be under siege, with the army blocking all supplies of food, water or other necessities of life from going in. He believes the pressure would become unbearable and what is left of Hamas would rapidly crumble, freeing the surviving hostages and giving Israel the victory it craves.”

Bowen concluded:

“It is not clear whether the IDF has adopted the Generals’ Plan in part or in full, but the circumstantial evidence of what is being done in Gaza suggests it is at the very least a strong influence on the tactics being used against the population. The ultra-nationalist extremists in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet want to replace Palestinians in northern Gaza with Jewish settlers. Among many statements he’s made on the subject, the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has said “Our heroic fighters and soldiers are destroying the evil of Hamas, and we 9will occupy the Gaza Strip… to tell the truth, where there is no settlement, there is no security.”

It is certainly the case that Israel has to kill large numbers of the Palestinian civil populace and make Gaza unliveable in order to win its current war. Because the Israelis, for all their successful assassinations and killing of the civil population, have failed to defeat Hamas, and the Palestinians have not lost the will to exist, despite all that Israel has done to them, the only way to victory for Israel is to actually end the Palestinian existence itself.

Gaza is often called a vast open-air prison. After the war it will be made into a series of cell blocks or reservations for the survivors of Israel’s extirpating campaign. Work has already started on constructing the reservations with bulldozers clearing the buildings the Israeli air force have turned into rubble. The remaining Palestinian population, once it has been whittled down by destruction from the air and ground, starvation and disease, will be confined to 4 or 5 compartmentalised reservations. There will be constant surveillance of these reservations from the roads and corridors Israel is building to dissect and break Gaza up. Life will be more confined for any remaining inhabitants, and Jewish settlements will probably appear around the military outposts.

The intention is the panopticon. Bentham’s panopticon was a circular building with a central tower and cells around the outside walls. Each cell had one side that faced the tower, with bars over it, but otherwise exposed. The idea was that prisoners would modify their behaviour to avoid punishment because they believed they are under constant surveillance. Gaza will be a panopticon reservation. A suitable Israeli-American joint venture.

In a polite letter the Biden administration has attempted to persuade Israel to moderate its excesses against the population of Gaza. These excesses are indeed harming the US moral standing in the region and the world and assisting the return of Trump to the White House. All the propaganda about Russia is dust, with Putin’s men seen as clean fighters in comparison to the annihilators of civilians in Israel.

Netanyahu clearly has the measure of Biden and Blinken and is playing a game of brinkmanship against Washington. It is they who are in Israel’s pocket. After the heroic death in battle of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, when the West smelt an opportunity to restrain the Israelis, for the US Presidential election, Netanyahu quickly dashed their hopes, and declared business as usual on the Palestinians. To get across this message Israel bombed Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, on 20 October, a week after Sinwar’s death, killing around 100 people.

It is the case that the West do not know what Israel is, and what the people are they are dealing with. That is what happened to Britain when they set up the “little loyal Ulster in the Middle East” and expected the Zionists to behave like Ulster Protestants, living out their lives within Britain’s grand plan. But the Zionists had a much older and higher mission than serving the cause of British Imperialism.

A good description of Israel comes from the outspoken Simon Webb, a British (probably Jewish) writer, who has a no-nonsense YouTube Channel called History Debunked. In explaining why he thought the situation was heading toward World War III, he concluded:

“The reason that Israel has pushed Iran into attacking is simple enough. There have been missiles fired from Lebanon, for example, into northern Israel from 47 years, in my certain knowledge. For most of 1977 I was living at a place called Beit Zera, within sight of the Golan. Many nights we could hear the exchange of artillery in the north.

Israel has finally determined to end this menace once and for all. It’s been going on for half a century, you see. They also intend to destroy the Iranian uranium processing plants and, if necessary, by using nuclear weapons themselves. If that brings about a world war that’s not really a major consideration for Israel.

There is a saying, “Sheynit Masada lo tipul” or “Masada shall not fall again.” When the siege of Masada (72-73 CE) by the Romans ended, the surviving Jewish defenders killed themselves. But it’s not going to happen again! Even if other parts of the world are brought to ruin and turned into a smoking wilderness Israel will still stand.

I’m guessing that we are entering a time when many old scores will be settled, not just in the Middle East, but across the world. I think personally we are entering a world war, and the prospect is not a pleasant one to me. I cannot, however, see how we are likely to escape this awful situation.”

By tradition, the inductees to the Israeli Defense Forces take their oath of loyalty to the Jewish state on top of Masada. Others take it at the Western Wall, the remnant of the sacred Temple in Jerusalem. But wherever they take it, the oath ends: “Masada shall not fall again.”

The character of the Judenstaat, began by the Balfour Declaration, has now made it a case of extermination or world war. That seems to be the stark choice facing the West by its enabling and allowing of Israel to do its worst.

(Published in Irish Political Review of November 2024)

Postscript: The Last Will & Testament of Yayah Sinwar.

I am Yahya, the son of a refugee who turned exile into a temporary homeland, and turned a dream into an eternal battle. As I write these words, I recall every moment of my life from my childhood in the alleys to the long years in prison, to every drop of blood spilled on the soil of this land.
I was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in 1962, during a time when Palestine was a torn memory and forgotten maps on the tables of politicians.

I am the man whose life was woven between fire and ashes, and I realized early on that life under occupation means nothing but a permanent prison.
From my earliest days, I knew that life in this land is not ordinary, and that whoever is born here must carry in their heart an unbreakable weapon, understanding that the road to freedom is long.

My will to you starts here, from that child who threw the first stone at the occupier, who learned that stones are the first words we speak in the face of a world that stands silent before our wounds. I learned in the streets of Gaza that a person is not measured by the years of their life, but by what they give to their homeland. And so my life was, prisons and battles, pain and hope.

I entered prison for the first time in 1988, and was sentenced to life, but I never knew fear.
In those dark cells, I saw in every wall a window to a distant horizon, and in every bar, a light that illuminated the path to freedom.

In prison, I learned that patience is not just a virtue, but a weapon…a bitter weapon, like drinking the sea, drop by drop.

My will to you: Do not fear prisons, for they are just part of our long journey to freedom.
Prison taught me that freedom is not just a stolen right, but a concept born from pain and shaped by patience. When I was released in the “Wafa al-Ahrar” prisoner exchange deal in 2011, I did not emerge the same. I emerged stronger, with a greater belief that what we’re doing is not just a passing struggle, but our destiny, one that we carry until the last drop of our blood.

My will is for you to remain steadfast, clinging to your dignity, and to the dream that never dies. The enemy wants us to abandon resistance, to turn our cause into endless negotiations, but i say to you, do not negotiate over what is rightfully yours. They fear your steadfastness more than your weapons. Resistance is not just a weapon we carry, but it is our love for Palestine in every breath we take, it is our will to remain despite the siege and aggression.

My will is for you to remain loyal to the blood of the martyrs, to those who have left us this thorn-filled path. They paved the road to freedom with their blood, so do not waste those sacrifices in the calculations of politicians or the games of diplomacy.

We are here to continue what the first generation began and we will not stray from this path no matter the cost. Gaza was, and will remain the capital of steadfastness, the heart of Palestine that does not stop beating, even if the world closes in around us.

When I took over the leadership of Hamas in Gaza in 2017, it was not just a transfer of power, but a continuation of the resistance that began with stones and continued with rifles. Every day, I felt the pain of my people under the siege, and I knew that every step we take toward freedom comes at a price, but I tell you, the cost of surrender is much greater. 

So hold on to the land as firmly as roots cling to the soil, for no wind can uproot a people who have chosen to live.

In the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle, I was not the leader of a group or movement, but the voice of every Palestinian dreaming liberation. I was driven by my belief that resistance is not just an option, but a duty. I wanted this battle to be a new chapter in the book of Palestinian struggle, where the factions unite and everyone stands in the same trench against an enemy that never distinguishes between a child and an elder, or between stone and a tree.

The Al-Aqsa Flood was a battle of spirits before it was a battle of bodies, and of will before it was a battle of weapons. What I leave behind is not a personal legacy, but a collective one, for every Palestinian who dreamed of freedom, for every mother who carried her son, as a martyr, on her shoulder, for every father who wept bitterly for his daughter, who was killed by a treacherous bullet. 

My final will is that you always remember that resistance is not in vain, nor is it just a bullet fired, but a life lived with honor and dignity. Prison and siege have taught me that the battle is long, and that the road is hard, but I also learned that people who refuse to surrender, create miracles with their own hands.

Do not expect the world to be just to you, for I have lived and witnessed how the world remains silent in the face of our pain. Do not wait for justice but be the justice. Carry the dream of Palestine in your heart, and make every wound a weapon, and every tear, a source of hope. 

This is my will; do not lay down your weapons, do not throw away stones, do not forget your martyrs, and do not compromise on a dream that is rightfully yours.

We are here to stay, in our land, in our hearts, and in the future of our children.

I entrust you with Palestine, the land I loved until death, and the dream I carried on my shoulders, like a mountain that never bends.

If I fall, do not fall with me, but carry the banner that never falls, and make my blood a bridge for a generation that rises from our ashes, stronger. Do not forget that the homeland is not just a story to be told, but a reality to be lived, and with every martyr borne from this land, a thousand more resistance fighters are born. 

If the flood returns and I am not among you, know that I was the first drop in the waves of freedom, and I lived to see you continue the journey.

Be a thorn in their throat, a flood that knows no retreat, and will not rest until the world acknowledges that we are the rightful owners, and that we are not just numbers in the news. 

Yayah Sinwar, born October 29th, 1962.
Died, as a martyr, October 16th, 2024. 🇵🇸