Yves here. As much as the effort may seem futile, it still is important to keep confronting the Israeli genocide in Gaza, even if that consists only of publicizing its ongoing horrors. If nothing else, as Yanis Varoufakis explains below, the slaughter of Palestinians, while appallingly effective now, is also having a corrosive effect on Israel’s position economically and in the world.
Takes a new level of evil to both produce the largest number of child amputees ever recorded in modern history
AND simultaneously BAN CRUTCHES to maximize the suffering! pic.twitter.com/UavANNxtho
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) January 8, 2025
Varoufakis’ talk omits some wild cards: that the Houthis are keeping up their attacks. Advocates of the Axis of Resistance contend that Hezbollah has gone to ground, as opposed to has been beaten, and will resume strikes into Israel when the fake Lebanon ceasefire has formally expired. Indirectly confirming that view, Larry Wilkerson reported in a recent talk on Dialogue Works that fewer than half of the settlers on the Lebanon border, who had been evacuated, feel it is safe enough to return.
Similarly, Trump’s effort to implement his version of a Monroe Doctrine and his trolling of Netanyahu via posting Jeffrey Sachs’ correctly blistering criticism may signal an effort to pull back US commitments in the Middle East. Lambert features this tweet in Water Cooler:
Trump just reposted a video explaining that the wars in Iraq and Syria were manufactured by Netanyahu and had nothing to do with democracy.
“Netanyahu is still trying to get us to fight Iran to this day. He is a deep dark son of a bitch because he's gotten us into endless wars” pic.twitter.com/VfiI2UPD8p— Talha Ahmad (@talhaahmad967) January 8, 2025
Keep in mind, as we have pointed out, that Israel will be a vastly reduced force in the US two decades from now, if not sooner. Older Jews are very attached, while younger ones (as first controversially reported by Peter Beinart in the early 2000s, IIRC 2004) are indifferent. Israel funding and votes are destined to fall, one funeral at a time.
By Yanis Varoufakis. Originally published at his website
Watching, on the one hand, the Israeli soldiers’ video confessions of their genocidal intent and acts and, on the other hand, the Palestinians’ livestreaming of their own deaths and devastation, it is ever so easy to throw one’s hands up in the air, to despair, to want to shut the cruelty out, to find solace in oblivion and disengagement. But, it is not only ethically wrong to surrender to despair – it is also factually wrong that nothing good can be expected. Things change every day and, yes, the seeds of hope are already planted on the blood soaked soil of the ancient land of Palestine. They may be only seeds, but that’s how new life is born.
So, let’s take a look at the seeds of hope that are taking root underneath the rubble.
1. Israel Is Not Winning on the Battlefield
Gaza has been destroyed. Its population is on death row. And yet the smart people in the Israeli military know full well that the destruction they wreaked does not translate into a victory. Fifteen months after they re-invaded the open prison that has been the Gaza strip since 1948, they still cannot control more than a small portion of it at a time. Armed resistance, including the regular blowing up of Israel’s mighty tanks, is continuing. Israeli military officers also know that their political leaders’ stated aim, of eradicating Hamas, can never be demonstrably achieved, however many Hamas fighters they kill. As a former Israeli general put it to me: “Even if we kill most the Gazans before we declare victory, a single teenager raising the Hamas flag over a pile of rubble will prove that we failed.”
Similarly in Lebanon. Yes, Israel has killed much of the Hezbollah leadership and, yes, the ceasefire it imposed on Hezbollah succeeded in stopping the Hezbollah missile launches in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance further south. However, the ceasefire was also forced upon Israel by its army’s inability to venture without massive losses by more than a few kilometres into Lebanese territory. And, lest we forget, it is simply not true that Hezbollah had to accept the ceasefire because its missile arsenal was destroyed: Israel signed the ceasefire hours after missiles hit Haifa, and indeed Tel Aviv.
The past year, in other words, will be remembered as a cruel paradox: Israel destroyed Gaza and much of South Lebanon, mainly from the air, but failed abysmally to control the ground. The time is fast approaching when Israeli society will realise that the thousands of Israeli soldiers who died or were seriously injured were the victims of a leadership that, ultimately, placed the Israeli people’s interests very low in their own list of priorities. This is also confirmed by the readiness of Israel’s government to lie through its teeth about its own casualties on the battlefield: compare the low number of casualties officially admitted with the more than twenty thousand soldiers that Israel’s health authorities say have been admitted to veteran rehabilitation centres.
2. Israel’s Economy Has Entered a ‘Spiral of Collapse’
Turning now to the medium and long term impact of the war on Israel’s economy (which is of great importance from the perspective of the apartheid state’s capacity to reproduce itself through war and devastation financially), it is instructive to read a letter signed by Israeli economists, including Dan Ben-David who explain how Israel’s economic miracle hinges on a hi-tech sector that numbers at most 300 thousand people (including doctors, scientists, academics etc.) His point? If only 10% of these people leave the country, say thirty thousand, Israel’s already hugely indebted economy will fade. In Ben-David’s even starker words,
We won’t become a third world country, we just won’t be anymore. Only 0.6% of the population are doctors, but who trains them? The senior staff in research universities are 0.1% of the people. High-Tech workers are 6% of the population. Altogether it’s 300,000 people. It’s enough that a critical mass of this group chooses not to be here tomorrow morning, and the State of Israel leaves the developed world.
Are they leaving? You bet they are – leaving behind them more influential, more dominant than ever before the low-productivity bigots who are driving the fascist settler movement. And, the more dominant these low-productivity bigots are in government and in society, the greater the exodus of the high-tech, secular more liberally minded Israelis. This is the definition of a spiral of collapse.
Israel has lost in the court of public opinion – the illusion of a liberal democratic state is gone
Meanwhile, the genocide of Palestinians, and in particular the manner in which so many Israeli soldiers and politicians celebrate it in videos, speeches and posts, has claimed what is left of the illusion of Israel as a European liberal democracy embedded in a hostile Middle East. That illusion has been a central underpinning of the propaganda that helped Israeli lobbyists succeed in Washington and Europe. Now it is gone. It has drowned in the sea of flesh and blood the Israeli military has strewn all over Gaza – and the trail of destruction, hatred and viciousness that the settlers have unleashed in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. Once Israel’s cleverly constructed reputation was gone, sullied, it cannot be reclaimed. And that is good news in the sense that the first step toward a just peace is the ethical fall from grace of the aggressor.
3. The Situation in the Occupied Territories
Turning now to the situation in the West Bank, it is heart-wrenching to watch the non-stop violence against the Palestinians living under brutal apartheid conditions there. The violence against them comes from three quarters: From the Israeli military. From Israeli settlers. And, most tragically, from the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) own security forces who are, in the midst of the genocide of their people by the apartheid state, are cooperating fully with the security forces of that apartheid state. Why the army is doing this, we know. Why the settlers are doing it, we also know. But why is the leadership of the PA doing it?
This is not the first time the PA has cooperated fully with the Israeli occupiers who steadfastly reject any prospect of a Palestinian state – the stated objective of the PA. Sure enough, the PA’s leadership have been doing this for years. But, now, in the face of the fully-fledged genocidal campaign by Israel, the PA’s excuses are becoming transparent. The unelected, unrepresentative, patently corrupt leadership of the PA is behaving as if to impress Netanyahu and Trump that they can do their dirty work for them, with a veneer of legitimacy courtesy of being Palestinians themselves. That they have a role to play. It is a pathetic plea to the genocidal US-Israeli establishment to give them a job to do against the Palestinian Resistance now that the Palestinian people has seen through them. Nothing else explains why they are turning even against Fatah members who continue to resist in Jenin and elsewhere.
This is the saddest, most depressing, aspect of the Palestinian tragedy. So I shall not dwell on it further except to reiterate the urgent need for the election of a representative and thus legitimate leadership of the Palestinian people. No peace can be imagined, let alone negotiated, otherwise. I hope and trust that the Palestinians will find a way to speak with one non-sectarian voice. Nothing short of succeeding in this will curb the genocide they face. As for the rest of us, we must stand by to help give this voice, their voice, a chance to be heard.
Summary
To sum up, days before Donald Trump enters the White House – a man who has never not liked any war crime aimed at eradicating the Palestinian resistance, the Palestinians as a people native to Palestine – we are at a crossroads. Mega Death and uber destruction on the ground wreaked by a US-armed and EU-supported Israel. A spiral of collapse within Israel’s social economy. Arab countries split between complicit regimes and enraged citizens. A Global South that is becoming increasingly powerful and intolerant of the Western-Israeli self-awarded right ethnically to cleanse the non-Jewish native population. And a Western public opinion that can no longer pretend to not know. What is the upshot of these ingredients?
If I were to issue an educated guess, it would be this: Things will get even worse for the Palestinians in the short run. But, in the longer run, the possibility of liberation, of a just peace for both Palestinians, who refuse to go gently into the good night, and for Israelis, who understand the trap into which Netanyahu has ensnared them, seems stronger than it has been for thirty years.
So I shall not dwell on it further except to reiterate the urgent need for the election of a representative and thus legitimate leadership of the Palestinian people.
Amen. And I would add that I hope at some future date we get true representation and legitimate leadership in the U.S.
UKUSA are the ones driving the existence and expansion of Israel. Oil and gas, of course.
Israel disappears once the subsidies and arms stop flowing.
Israel is a prison state, an artificial colony with most unwholesome duties to fullfil. They still cannot accomplish the aims without significant direct assistance from UKUSA. Cyprus etc. Many cannot flee.
Israel and not Judea … ?
Those in the controlling states are being squeezed by the existence of their coreligionist settlers there. In turn, the banking cabal and other industries are being milked to supply Israel.
An intricate web in a time of economic turmoil.
What could possibly go wrong for them?
Israel is a CIA outpost masqaurading as a nation, tasked with taking away all the oil and gas owned by non white colonialists in the area.
But one can wonder if there is a net “taking” after all the oil and gas expended in the effort by the USA is accounted for.
The effort has employed many people and likely has made many wealthy, but perhaps is an abject failure in actual hydrocarbon energy acquisition terms.
The USA could have had a simpler, less energy intensive, society, that used far fewer resources but instead promoted the rapacious society we have.
What could go wrong?
We’re seeing that now.
YV comment on the Palestinian Authority is telling and says a lot about the elites in Arab societies as well as Arab societies as a whole, i.e., corruption is stunning. Nothing aids the Israeli cause more than this reality. Also, the notion that the long-term trend for Jews is to distance themselves from Israel is questionable as I’ve seen many agnostic Jews wanting to recapture Jewish rituals and traditions.
Having said that, it is clear that the West’s (i.e., the Empire) tendency for amorality extends to what we once called “human rights” and “international law” which no longer exists and allows Israel and the USA to almost completely ignore (other than lie about other countries) the whole post-WWII moral structure that the US at least pretended to honor. Israeli leaders are fierce and believe morality does not extend to non-Jews thus, reprising the OT morality, people can be morally massacred if it helps Jews.
I don’t think VF is right–his Euro-brethren, on balance, simply don’t give a f*ck about Palestinians. Will this change? So far the sorts of changes VF has bravely been fighting for have met with no success–why should the Palestinian cause be any different?
Only some kind of spiritual “awakening” in the West will change the brutal practices of the Empire and its servants. Maybe Trump will be a force for that? I’m not counting it out.
I believe the Germans had jewish capos in their concentration camps. And I don’t think they invented the idea either.
I must comment that the fact that some Jews may want to recapture rituals and traditions does not necessarily have anything to do with supporting the criminals running the illegitimate state of Israel. Yes, there are many textual references to “Israel” recited in rituals but they were viewed as metaphorical for thousands of years and should (and can) still be. The Zionist ideology took them literally. Judaism is not Israel.
100%. Israel is full of non-practising Jews. Recapturing rituals (something my family did and still does for a bit) has nothing to do with Israel, which I despise and speak out against whenever I have an open ear.
To Chris: I wouldn’t pin hopes on a spiritual awakening. These aren’t mass events. What’s needed is to build a base of people who understand the motivations of the forces producing this campaign of extermination and erasure, and what it will take to fully confront them. Using existing base-building entities like militant labor unions will be important in this, since they already understand that there’s no way to slow down/defeat destructive and exploitative forces except by threatening to withhold participation in their system
Not sure if you can say spiritual awakenings were not traditionally mass events (the apparition of Fatima for example did have a few thousand people report the sun dancing across the sky), if this were the case, there’d be no such thing as any of the major religions after all what does the emergence of any religion point to but a kind of mass spiritual awakenings (albeit the religion that ends up taking its place may be a structure designed to control or repress it (you could see the Catholic Church as a kind of Meta/Alphabet that buys and swallows start ups, such as how the Franciscan movement, or the various desert fathers were incorporated into it) once heard an orthodox monk say that. Christianity was a religion of change and revolution until it became the official religion of the Roman Empire then it became one of convention), the existence of the internet creates a kind of interconnected barometer that hasn’t previously existed (you wouldn’t have the Protestant reformation without the printing press) never in known human history have so many archaic and obscure texts been so freely available. Similarly the massive uptick in UFO type phenomena in the last few months, which of you read Diana Pasulka’s American Cosmic (or even Jung) has overlaps with religious phenomena. Which isn’t to say it is a likelihood, but I wouldn’t write it off fully either.
Jeffrey Sachs: “Obama tasked the CIA to overthrow Assad in Syria.” I want to know who tasked the CIA-FBI to kill JFK?
Allen Dulles?
Some say LBJ, but my understanding is that it was a group effort of industrialists, CIA, organized crime, and those who believed JFK was too much of a loose cannon who might end the Cold War which was too profitable for everyone to end including the Russians. Peace was, as it is now, an enemy of the State.
JFK had recently signed a bill that would return the power to print money to the government, as opposed to the Federal Reserve, thus breaking up that banking cartel. I believe that was abandoned when Johnson became president.
https://prepareforchange.net/2019/01/29/president-kennedy-the-fed-and-executive-order-11110/
Another shady character I’ve heard mentioned as a suspect is James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s Counterintelligence director, who was extremely chummy with the leaders of the new state of Israel (Ben Gurion and several Mossad officials), and may have either pointedly looked the other way, or actively helped, when Israeli agents stole nuclear grade material from a US firm. Kennedy, like Eisenhower, did not want Israel getting nuclear weapons, which may have made him persona non grata with yet another branch of the unofficial Establishment. He certainly made a lot of enemies during his time as President. But between Angleton and Meyer Lansky, the talent was there for an executive action on behalf of Israel. For whatever reason, Angleton was keeping a close eye on Lee Oswald long before anyone else had ever heard of him.
The State Department has declared a genocide in Sudan, so at least they do know how to spell the word.
:-(
Re Sudan, every now and again I see a comment on X that there is a genocide in Sudan. To date, I have seen no visual evidence: no photos, no videos, that would support such a claim. Meanwhile, evidence from Gaza is unrelenting. This seems to be another Uighur genocide, and since the State department deems it such, it’s surely not a genocide.
The reporting on Sudan is very spotty, Democracy Now has some coverage. They report that 11 million have been displaced and some 150,000 killed. But it is not being live streamed as is the case with Gaza. So to find things out one must do much extra work.
Here are some points in the work one can do:
https://www.state.gov/genocide-determination-in-sudan-and-imposing-accountability-measures/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_civil_war_(2023%E2%80%93present) *
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Support_Forces *
My point is that the State Department will not determine that there is a Genocide in Gaza (there most certainly is) since it would invoke a cascade of measures they would be required to take, first of all to suspend all military aid.
*I do not mean to suggest wikipedia as a definitive source.
Whenever we were walking a picket line and drivers passing by would honk, it gave us a lift. Didn’t affect the negotiations or deter mgmt yet it buoyed us. Extremely imperfect analogy but since otherwise we can do nothing I’d urge people to join those in the streets. People in occupied Palestine may see videos which provide a modicum of hope. If nothing else it’s doing the right thing when there’s nothing else we can do.
Maybe what this planet of the humans needs is a Green Dome.
The theory of Israel’s collapse is similar to the theory of China’s collapse. Both countries show many signs of collapse, yet they still exist. The Jews and the Chinese are some of the smartest people in the world, and they will not lose their ability to govern so easily.
1. The entire history of Judaism, if you believe their texts, is hubris followed by very bad outcomes. So if they don’t learn from mistakes, how smart are they in practice?
2. The English subjugated the Chinese via opium, which remains a sore point.
3. Until the last 20 years, the Japanese were accurate when they said: “China. 5000 years of not living up to its potential.”
Maybe somebody should look at the Tang dinasty…
The Japanese still use Chinese characters in their writing…
Check the background of the scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtEROmL0NzQ
Electronic Intifada Podcast is live now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z76bFnkpWiw
Liberation movements often accompany losses of a million or more civilians – given the economic death spiral suggested by YV (ColWilkerson suggests a million Israeli’s have left already), and the Israeli inability to succeed militarily everywhere will hopefully lead to the genocide ending in 2025.
Also, the narrative that the ratlines through Syria are now shut down (they weren’t for the last 6 months when Assad was informing the IOF on Iran weapons shipments) seems unlikely (aside from Simplicius suggestion Turkey is now facilitating). OTH, the US and West stocks are dwindling as industrial production capacity can’t even come close to keeping up with weapons demands for its various wars.
Something is not going well for Israel…
https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/09/ireland-formally-joins-icj-genocide-case-against-israel/
https://www.rt.com/news/610619-netanyahu-cancels-trip-trump-inauguration/
An interesting post as usual. Some minor thoughts:
It might be missing the point to say that the Israelis killed the senior leadership of Hezbollah with their exploding pager attack. It seems likely that Hezbollah had been infiltrated by Israel agents. It seems likely that the pager attack did not target the Israeli agents. Perhaps what really happened, is that Israel took over Hezbollah? Or at least, compromised it so severely that it will never be very effective again. Or maybe not…
“Older Jews are very attached, while younger ones (as first controversially reported by Peter Beinart in the early 2000s, IIRC 2004) are indifferent. Israel funding and votes are destined to fall, one funeral at a time.” Well, so what? “The Jews” are hardly a monolith. What really matters is the Jewish billionaires. If they want something bad enough they will get it regardless of what non-billionaire Jews want. Exactly as how it works with non-Jewish people. So where are the billionaires trending?
No, no, no. There were many rocket attacks by Hezbollah into Israel after the pager attack.
The pagers were not used by Hezbollah for their comms. They were used by the civilians providing Hezbollah civil services. But it appears quite a few Hezbollah fighters were killed, on top of even more civilian holders. Perhaps many Hezbollah fighters had spouses in the civilian wing, or alternatively, had those pagers to reach medics quickly.
Biden’s Legacy in a word: USA Genocide Joe. It’s surprising that Carter, for all his virtues, hasn’t been called anti semitic for his book: “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” Is it banned in Germany and England? Would he have been able to teach at Columbia? It’s surprising that the NYT actually published an article about Carter’s funeral.
Obama was there, so they had to mention it?
I thought Carter was accused of antisemitism when that book was published. But little point bringing it up again, now that the bell has tolled for him.
As much as I like Jeff Sachs as one of the good guys he’s got the Netanyahu thing arse about. Bibi is the USA’s proxy and will be dropped as soon as it suits the security state neocons. The narrative keeps loading him up with responsibilities while he’s actually just a proxy and will be dropped when he’s served his purpose. Sachs is diminishing the US actuality (who keeps send armaments to the IDF?) and needs to see what Larry Wilkerson has finally worked out.
There is a common perception that Israel was founded on some sort of legitimate process, generally held as the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 1947. Joseph Massad illustrates how this is incorrect:
The future of the Nakba
Joseph Massad The Electronic Intifada 13 May 2018