Israel as a Conquering State
1973 to 2023, or Burning My Scrapbook
In 1973, I followed the Yom Kippur War as a ten-year-old. I kept a scrapbook of articles on the war and cheered for Israel to win. Back then, I thought of Israel as a beleaguered U.S. ally, fighting for its survival against superior numbers of hostiles armed and supported by America’s #1 enemy, the Soviet Union.
Things didn’t go well for Israel in the opening days of that war. Soviet-supplied SAMs shot down or damaged Israeli planes; Soviet-supplied anti-tank missiles inflicted a heavy toll on Israeli tanks that were rushed into battle without supporting infantry. Things looked bleak for the IDF. But a rush of U.S. replacement equipment to Israel helped to turn the tide as Israel’s enemies turned overly cautious, consolidating their gains rather than exploiting their initiative. The IDF was able to stabilize the fronts then counterattack, seizing territory until both superpowers intervened to broker a truce.
Fifty years later, Israel’s strategic situation is far different. In 2023 Israel is a regional superpower, no longer threatened by the militaries of countries like Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Forces like Hamas and Hezbollah have the capability to launch terrorist attacks, as Hamas did on October 7th, yet these attacks, gruesome as they often are, don’t pose a threat to Israel’s very existence.
Which is why the response by both Israel’s government and the Biden administration to October 7th is so over-the-top and indefensible. The reduction of Hamas does not require the reduction of Gaza to rubble. Conquest of land won’t conquer atrocity-driven hatreds. Anti-semitism won’t be alleviated by thousands of bombs and missiles, tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians killed and wounded, and the displacement of well over one million Palestinians from their homes.
Israel’s war against Gaza today isn’t being driven by concerns of national defense. It’s being driven by a desire for conquest. Israel is no longer a plucky underdog, if it ever was. Israel is now a death-dealing overlord exacting a Biblical level of destruction and revenge against a hated people, as Bibi Netanyahu himself admitted, and proudly so.
Shocking to me has been the total compliance, and I mean total, of the Biden administration. Whatever Israel wants, it gets: missiles, artillery and tank shells, bullets, drones, even a couple of aircraft carrier battle groups to deter other countries in the region from striking Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza. Biden and Blinken go to Israel only to embrace Bibi, flying political top cover for him as he launches all his kill missions.
True, we do hear from Biden and Blinken some concern that Israel may be ethnically cleansing too fast, too ruthlessly. Slow down a bit, Bibi. Don’t make it too obvious that you’re conquering Gaza while driving its people into the desert—or into their graves.
Fifty years ago, I rooted for Israel in what I perceived as its war of survival. Today, I refuse to accept the notion Israel is engaged in a righteous struggle against evil Hamas, which is how the war is being sold here in the USA. Israel, with its powerful military, supplied bounteously by the USA, is engaged in a war of conquest, a retrograde struggle where ethnic cleansing is clearly the goal. Never mind, we are told, all the innocent children who have already died and will continue to die as Israeli warplanes drop more bombs and fire more missiles as the tanks continue to roll firing all those tens of thousands of shells shipped from the USA so that the IDF can bounce the rubble in Gaza.
Israel may be mighty in war, but wars not make one great. In reducing Gaza to rubble, Israel has reduced itself to an imperious and immoral conquering force. In enabling that force, in feeding it the most deadly weaponry and supporting it unequivocally, the Biden administration has shown it can out-Kissinger Kissinger in the practice of amoral realpolitik while obsequiously licking the blood off Bibi’s boots.
If I still had my 1973 scrapbook today, I’d have to burn it.
Though I didn't keep a scrapbook and the war in which I cheered for Israel was in 1967, I can certainly identify with your opening account.
Now, in the latest favor for Israel, President Biden has said that American Jews are not safe! Add this to the weapons and UN shielding. Where is the limit? Is our government really ours? This is scary and the pro-Israel faction in America has been perfecting this control from within for decades while the American pubic hasn't seen it going on. Now it is in plain view and it is due to the current mess that all is revealed.
Re.: "Anti-semitism won’t be alleviated by thousands of bombs " ; no, and in fact I rather suspect it is greatly worsened by that steady rain of high explosives. I've never held any degree of animus towards Jews- having admired some and loved others. Yet recently I've begun to notice a degree of coolness, or even anger in myself; especially when I see some friend or another displaying an Israeli flag. Or especially, as in the case of pro-Israel activists at certain universities or in the House, I see them playing the victim card while dishonestly smearing as 'anti-semitic' those who dare speak out for Palestinians' rights and/or decry the genocidal ethnic cleansing in progress.
The truth of your observation that Israel's campaign is not at all about protecting Israelis has been made abundantly clear. It is clear that it is about wiping clean the land of Gaza, to provide for yet further expansions, control over certain resources and greater regional dominion- all inherent objectives of Zionism. And it is infuriating that enablers - in Europe and the U.S. deliberately conflate opposition to it as "anti-semitic"; specifically, a hatred of Jews. As many Jews of conscience, from Rabbis to survivors of the Nazi holocaust point out, that rabidly right-wing government does NOT represent them or Judaism. It is quite the opposite. See, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FNtMV2i8-8 .
At any rate, I would not be surprised, somewhere down the road, that Mossad itself, perhaps with an agent provocateur, had helped plan the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, in order to give the IDF the cover needed to accelerate its otherwise slow-steady expansion project. There is no evidence to this, yet- I'm just engaging in admittedly loose speculation. Yet we do know that Israel itself helped create Hamas and put it in the driver's seat. We know that Israeli intelligence had warned the government that attacks were planned- even giving the details thereof; and that those reporting were told to ignore them. And we know, from what has since transpired, that Israel clearly intended to clear Gaza and possibly beyond, for re-colonization. And we know that Israel didn't really care too much about hostages after all; engaging in what some are calling a Hannibal-like killing of a significant number.
So my speculation here may not be all that wild after all.