Israel: quietly fraying?
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
The Naked Capitalism blog is new to us, but it has been going since 2006 “as an effort to promote critical thinking through the medium of a finance and economics blog”.
In this article the author draws together evaluations of how the war is going for Israel, both militarily and in the economic and social conflicts it is generating internally. It identifies underlying tensions which could pose significant long-term threats to the country as a whole.
RK
This article was originally published by Naked Capitalism on Fri 8 Mar 2024. Read the original here.
Israel: quietly fraying?
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I remember reading several months ago in the Israeli and other Middle East press about numerous small mutinies amongst IDF soldiers in Gaza. The mutineers said they were taking heavy casualties, should go on leave and other units should replace them.
What interested me particularly was that IDF senior officers weren’t reacting to these mutinies in the ways senior officers typically do during an ongoing “existential” war. They seemed to be in “appeasing” mode. They weren’t attempting to raise morale and commitment in the disgruntled soldiery – or to take disciplinary action against soldiers mutinying while serving on the front line.
Perhaps the IDF senior officers shared the disgruntlement of their juniors?
The “war” in Gaza isn’t a war. It is ethnic cleansing / genocide and justifiable resistance to it.
Today Hezbollah has more than 10 times the fire power as of 2006, plus at least 100,000 hardened fighters, many of whom are ready to occupy the Galilee. They have at least 130,000 missiles [many precision] which can target Power stations, water treatment facilities gas rigs, the ports of Haifa and Ashdod which account for 80% of export and import trade, these ports will be closed, not only by barrages of missiles overwhelming the not so effective Iron dome, but cheap and plentiful naval mines launched into the sea lanes near those ports. Remember Haifa can almost be seen from the Lebanese border.
Nasrallah has claimed Israel is weaker than a spiders web, its vital infrastructure is known to Hezbollah and within the Tel Aviv and Haifa Metropolitan areas. they are all targets.
Years ago Ben Gurion airport was closed down for several days by the FAA, then Zionists claimed their economy would suffer tremendously to the tune of billions of dollars when an errant Hamas [bottle rocket] landed 1 mile from the airport. Today according to Uri Rubin top Israeli missile expert claims many Hezbollah missiles have precision capability since a £150 smart phone with all the coordinates and GPS, can transform a dumb missile into a precision missile for a fraction of the cost 25 years ago. Lebanon would take a huge hit [not for the first time], but in my opinion Israel would be defeated.
A war with Hezbollah [and friends] would make Israel unviable, most productive Israelis could depart leaving only fanatical Zionists.
Naked Capitalism is brilliant. Israel is a client state of the USA which arms it and has just underwritten the latest issue of Israeli bonds to support the fraying Israeli economy. It does this in order to maintain its global supremacy (rapidly fading), in the same way it supports Ukraine in its efforts to ‘weaken Russia’. BOTH ARE CONNECTED…..
It’s good to read that Israel has some negative issues due to its Genocide. As far as calling it a war, when it is massively one sided, is frustrating.
Netanyahu and his Party are confident that its financial future is going to recover quite quickly, the US sees Israel as its own Fully Armed, Middle East Military Base and will support Israel whatever the cost. The other thing that wasn’t mentioned is, Gaza sits on a Natural Gas Field that stretches out under the eastern Mediterranean, already Netanyahu has been giving Licenses to Oil and Gas Corporations including BP, (which Sunak’s Father in Law recently invested £1.5 billion). So I’m sure Israel’s economy will get an enormous boost.
This is a major factor in Israel clearing Gaza of Palestinians and Hamas, which could make life very difficult for the Gas extraction Companies.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiE16HgwvOEAxUPV0EAHURDAaYQFnoECDMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.timesofisrael.com%2Famid-ongoing-war-bp-and-eni-among-firms-awarded-gas-exploration-licenses-in-israel%2F&usg=AOvVaw2aZXi2dEW4yWvk5W6forSA&opi=89978449
I think the parallels with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are worth exploring more deeply. I see many of the same effects cited in this article: emigration of the most mobile individuals (who are often those a country can least afford to lose), disenchantment among some of the military, and the trend to talk of extermination of the enemy in the far right, as well as damage to the economy from the divertion of industrial effort and manpower to war fighting.
That said, I would not necessarily place too much reliance on Scott Ritter’s assessments. A week before the evacuation of Kherson by Russian forces, Ritter said that the Russians would never leave Kherson.