Mohamad Hasan Sweidan

 

In a fight like this, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you make them fall into the hands of the enemy, you turn tactical victory into strategic defeat.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued this warning to Israel back in December during his address at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California. Drawing on hard-earned lessons from US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Austin stressed that winning battles on the ground does not guarantee a strategic victory and may even lead to a strategic defeat – if Israel refuses to look at the bigger picture. 

This is one of the main sources of Washington's pressure on Tel Aviv, especially in light of the allies' differing political visions for Gaza in the post-war period and the man-made humanitarian crisis Israel has imposed on the Strip. It's a philosophy rooted in foresight, echoing Robert Greene's wisdom from his 33 War Strategies: "Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead."

 

Israel's declared war objectives

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet has outlined two primary objectives for the Gaza war: dismantling Hamas' military infrastructure and securing the release of prisoners detained since 7 October. Netanyahu later expanded on these objectives, adding a crucial third goal: ensuring Gaza's inability to threaten the occupation state's security in the future. Consequently, the success of Israel's brutal military assault on Gaza hinges on achieving these pivotal objectives.

Despite their shared goals, disparities have emerged between the American and Israeli approaches. While both advocate for neutralizing Hamas, the Biden administration advocates for a more politically driven strategy, while Netanyahu seeks an almost entirely military-centric approach. 

Hamas, on the other hand, announced three main objectives of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood immediately following the events of 7 October. First, success in conducting a prisoner exchange with the enemy entity. Second, retaliation against Israeli aggression in the occupied West Bank and safeguarding Al-Aqsa Mosque from settler extremists. Third, placing the Palestinian issue back on the global stage. 

 

Tactics vs strategy 

Chinese General Sun Tzu's timeless wisdom in his Art of War distinguishes between tactical maneuvers and strategic foresight: "Everyone can see the tactics that are used to defeat the enemy in war, but what no one can see is the strategy from which great victory arises."

In warfare, tactical objectives focus on short-term gains – specific engagements or territorial advances. In contrast, strategic goals require long-term vision, aligning military actions with political priorities. In essence, tactics look to answer the "how," while strategy answers the "why" in military engagement, ultimately with a political endgame. 

Any state or party to a conflict can achieve tactical objectives by excelling in battlefield maneuvers, using superior technology, or having better trained and equipped forces. But winning battles – that is, achieving tactical goals – does not necessarily mean winning the war. 

This discrepancy occurs because the cumulative effect of tactical victories may not align with or contribute adequately to broader strategic objectives. While tactics are essential to winning battles, they must be used as part of a strategy aimed at achieving the ultimate goals of war.

History offers several sobering reminders of the perils of prioritizing tactics over strategy. For example, in the Vietnam War, the US achieved numerous tactical victories yet failed strategically. Despite inflicting heavy losses, the broader goal of fostering a non-communist South Vietnam remained elusive. The US's longest war, in Afghanistan against the Taliban, ended in another humiliating withdrawal, only for the Taliban to return to unprecedented political power across the country. 

Esteemed Israeli historian and critic of Zionism, Ilan Pappe, believes that the failures of the genocidal war on Gaza will ultimately lead to the downfall of the Zionist entity, with the war being the most perilous chapter in the "history of a project fighting for its existence." 

It's not the darkest moment in Palestine's history; it would be written as the beginning of the end of the Zionist project.

 

What has Israel achieved so far?

Today, after a record five months of Israeli military operations in Gaza, killing well over 30,000 civilians, injuring many times that, and demolishing most of Gaza's critical infrastructure, it becomes evident that Netanyahu's focus on tactical wins has led to a disconnect with the broader strategic goals of the war. 

The 'progress' made within the Gaza Strip, while significant on a tactical level, has not effectively advanced the strategic aim of eliminating Hamas, Tel Aviv's number one stated war objective. On the contrary, US reports claim that 80 percent of the Palestinian resistance's key military infrastructure remains intact.

This has left Netanyahu facing a critical dilemma: the pursuit of tactical gains has come at a steep cost, jeopardizing the achievement of his strategic objectives. His Gaza assault has resulted in the wholesale massacre of Palestinian civilians – predominantly women and children – widespread global censure, and thousands of dead and injured Israeli soldiers and officers. 

This tragic toll has permanently tarnished Israel's international image, undermining its fairytale narratives of 'democracy' and 'victimhood' and casting Tel Aviv instead as a leading perpetrator of state-sponsored terrorism in the world. Moreover, Israel's actions have led to accusations of genocide and human rights violations on the international stage, most notably the recent high-profile case at the International Court of Justice.

Netanyahu and his war cabinet have fallen into a classic trap: allowing pyrrhic wins to distract them from an overarching victory.

As Edward Luttwak says in his book The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, strategy "is not about moving armies across geography, as in the game of chess. It involves the entire struggle of hostile forces, which need not have a spatial dimension at all."

What is happening in Khan Yunis today is ample proof that the occupation army is still far from achieving its strategic goals. Despite Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant's boast that Hamas has been 'dismantled' in Khan Yunis, continuing clashes in the area between occupation forces and resistance fighters invalidate these Israeli claims.

Furthermore, Netanyahu's defiance of the Biden administration's marginally more moderate approach has strained relations between the two allies. Leaked communications and official statements highlight Washington's deep concerns over Israel's conduct. 

While Israel remains a key strategic partner for the US, the discord stemming from the 5-month war in Gaza threatens to impact future bilateral relations, especially with continued extremist governance in Tel Aviv.

 

The Resistance understands strategy 

On the flip side of the war, the Palestinian resistance maintains its strategic objective of resisting occupation and thwarting Israeli military objectives. Hamas' willingness to engage in negotiations on its terms also demonstrates its continued resilience and strength. 

Additionally, support from allied factions in the region's Axis of Resistance has intensified pressure on both Washington and Tel Aviv, including the gradual decolonization of northern Palestine by the Lebanese Hezbollah, the ongoing Red Sea naval blockade imposed by Yemen's Ansarallah-led forces, and routine drone strikes against US and Israeli targets by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. 

With Tel Aviv struggling to reconcile its objectives with its methods, Washington has intervened to prevent its ally's strategic defeat. The US proposal for resolution emphasizes a long-term political strategy aimed at integrating Israel further into the region via normalization agreements while sidelining Palestinian resistance through diplomatic and soft power channels.

History teaches us that tactical gains, without alignment with strategic objectives, are inadequate for long-term success. The crucial question that looms is whether US intervention will indeed succeed in preserving Israel's strategic aims. 

https://thecradle.co/articles/chasing-tactical-wins-israel-now-faces-strategic-defeat

 

 

 

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By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk

 

I have known George Galloway my entire adult life, although we largely lost touch in the middle bit while I was off diplomating. I know George too well to mistake him for Jesus Christ, but he has been on the right side against appalling wars which the entire political class has cheer-led. His natural gifts of mellifluence and loquacity are unsurpassed, with an added talent for punchy phrase making.

He can be fiercely pugnacious in debate and always refuses to let the media set the frame of discussion, which requires an appetite for confrontation that is harder than you might think; it is not a skill I share. 

But outwith the public gaze George is humorous, kind and self-aware. He has been deeply involved in politics his entire life, and is a great believer in the democratic process as the ultimate way by which the working classes will ultimately take control of the means of production. He is a very old-fashioned and courteous form of socialist.

I have to confess I have never shared the romantic view of the working classes, and have always found them in reality more likely to follow the doctrines of Nigel Farage than those of John MacLean. 

But George Galloway is imbued in a native democratic socialist tradition. He is a descendant of the Chartists. You cannot get more British nor more ardent a democrat than George Galloway.

Which is why I found surreal the panic at his election in Rochdale and the claim, by the prime minister no less, that this was an assault on “British values” and even on democracy itself.

The idea that democracy — i.e. voting for somebody — is an attack on, err, democracy was so crazy that, had we any kind of independent media, it would have been ridiculed to death.

That of course has not happened. We are sonorously told we are a nation in crisis. Ordinary forms of democratic activity — free assembly, free speech and free voting — all threaten our society.

The cause of all of this political panic is of course the genocide in Gaza. It is essential to join the dots here. We live in a situation where the wealth gap in society between the rich and the poor is expanding at its fastest ever rate. Where for the first time in centuries, young adults can expect to have lower life expectations in terms of employment, education, health and housing than their parents. Where the nexus of control by the ultra-wealthy of both the political and media classes is tighter than ever.

Where the Overton Window has shrunk to a letterbox.

Briefly, the chance of the kind of democratic triumph of the working people of which George Galloway dreams, became real with the popular uprising that led to Jeremy Corbyn being placed as Labour leader. Corbyn’s chances were destroyed by an entirely fake narrative of anti-Semitism. 

Demonizing Criticism of Israel  

Since the Holocaust, anti-Semitism has understandably been the most potent charge that can be levelled against anybody in politics. A deliberate and calculated campaign to apply the term to any criticism of Israel was ultimately successful in destroying Corbyn and his supporters as a short term threat.

So the demonisation of criticism of Israel was not an incidental ploy of the ruling class. It was the most important tool, by which they managed to kill off the most potent threat to their political hegemony to arise in a major Western country for decades.

They succeeded because, bluntly, most people were not paying attention. Many ordinary people saw Israel as they had been taught to see Israel, as a victim nation and therefore criticism of it as generally reprehensible and plausibly anti-Semitic. 

On top of which, the defence of the idea of Israel allies with the Islamophobia which is closely correlated with the racism and anti-immigrant sentiment that remains a strong undercurrent in Western politics, and especially in England.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza has collapsed this narrative. Too many people have seen the truth on social media. Despite every attempt by the mainstream media to hide, obfuscate or distort, the truth is now out there. The reflex hurling by the Establishment of the “anti-Semitic” slur at everybody who opposes the genocide – from the United Nations, The International Court of Justice and the pope down – has finally killed off the power of that slur.

A critical mass of ordinary people have even learnt of the history of the slow genocide of the Palestinians this last 75 years.

The political Establishment, having established support for Israel as the fundamental measure of political respectability which could neatly be used to exclude radicals from political discourse, have been unable to shift ground and drop it.

They are clinging to Israel, not because they have a genuine belief Israel is a force for good, not because they believe in religious Zionism, not even because they believe it is a necessary colonialist project in the Middle East, but because it has been for decades their totem, the very badge of political respectability, the membership card for the political country club.

Israel is now toxic to the public and the entire history of ethnic cleansing, massacre and long genocide on which the very existence of Israel is based, is now laid bare. 

The political class are now in a panic, and lashing out everywhere. Police powers to limit free assembly were already hugely increased just last year by the Public Order Act 2023, where any demonstration which is noisy or causes inconvenience can be banned. Now we have calls from the responsible ministers for pro-Palestinian demonstrations to be banned because they offend their sensibilities in a way they are finding difficult to define.

The proscribed organisation model is being considered now to limit freedom of speech and assembly. They are looking at banning the Muslim Council of Britain and Palestine Action. But you cannot ban an idea, and defining anyone who disagrees with you as an “extremist” is unlikely to stand up in the courts. Indeed anyone currently not being branded as an extremist ought to be deeply ashamed.

So far as I can see, only active supporters of genocide are not in the official view “extremists.” As all the main U.K.-wide political parties do support genocide, that of course makes sense.

It is worth noting that all the big attacks on liberty this last couple of years — including The Public Order Act, The National Security Act, and (in process) the Rwanda Safety Bill — have the support of Keir Starmer. I fully expect that whatever form the government move to make opposing genocide illegal finally takes, Keir Starmer will approve that too. Remember Starmer claimed that it is legal for Israel to starve Gaza.

Our hearts and minds remain with the people of Gaza. Their suffering and their heroism not only shines in itself, but it has cast a much needed light on the complete failure of the model of Western democracy.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/12/craig-murray-the-panic-of-the-british-ruling-class/

 

The ruling class keeps Julian Assange in prison....

 

Gaza’s agony: the hinge point in the loss of Western dominance    By Tony Kevin

 

The scale of deliberate Israeli cruelty against the Gazan people over the past five months is still difficult for Australians to absorb. But internationally, a key political fact has clearly emerged: that Israel, the US and their supportive Western allies (like Australia, to our nation’s shame) have now shredded any moral standing on the issue of the war in Gaza.

It has become clear to millions of voters in the West that Israel’s government under Netanyahu, sustained in a rabid pro-war coalition by extremist Zionists whose ideology can fairly be described as Zio-Nazi, behaves in practice as a ruthless anti-Palestinian cult determined to expand Israel’s lands and with zero concern for human rights of Palestinians whom they regard as sub-humans. The test is in Israel’s deeds, not her endlessly inventive false words.

Biden has clearly emerged as Netanyahu’s ineffectual puppet, wholly ideologically captured years ago by Zionist Israel, and in any case financially dependent on wealthy single-issue US Zionist billionaires for any hopes (fast diminishing) of his defeating Trump in November.

Netanyahu still has not entirely given up on his genocidal dream of forcing a panic-stricken Gadarene rush of nearly 2 million starving Gazans from desperately overcrowded Rafah in the far south of Gaza across the border to permanently encamped exile in the Egyptian Sinai desert, in another phase of the Nakba (catastrophe) for the Palestinian people which began in 1946.

But this seems a little less likely now than a few weeks ago. The rate of deaths by Israeli fire on civilians in Gaza seems to have declined, but the deaths by starvation, infectious disease, and closure of all hospitals in Gaza are climbing. Miraculously, and as a result of the world witnessing sustained incredible courage by the grief-stricken but stoically defiant Gazan people, international political counter-pressure is building on the Zionist Democrats and on Israel which Biden cannot as an American politician ignore.

In the past five months, Zionism has permanently lost a majority of voters under 30 in every Western country. The Holocaust card has been played to final excess by Zionists in the Western mainstream and online media. These days it only serves perversely as a reminder that Zionist Israel is daily perpetrating new Holocaust-comparable atrocities against defenceless starving civilians in Gaza. The videos speak for themselves: of triumphantly grinning Israeli soldiers taking selfies in front of destroyed homes and humiliated captives, of snipers glorying in their street kills of civilians. It is constant and utterly without shame.

The myth of Israeli moral exceptionalism has been punctured. For Warsaw Ghetto, now read Gaza.

The images of gleeful Zionist Israeli teenagers singing and dancing, as they sit down comfortably on roads at the Gaza-Israel borders to block food trucks from reaching Gaza, with the IDF standing by approvingly, are engraved unforgettably on our minds. A few kilometers away, infant Gazan children are starving to death: but these Israeli kids are having a whale of a time.

In years to come, maybe sooner than this, what is happening now in Gaza and Ukraine will become known as the hinge moment in the loss of US/Western dominance in world affairs.

A few noteworthy news and analysis events on Gaza this past fortnight :

Aaron Bushnell martyred himself in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington for the Palestinian cause on 25 February. Nothing has emerged in the two weeks since to suggest that this USAF serviceman was extremist-anarchist or mentally disordered. His act of extreme self-sacrifice continues to resonate politically in the US, as he intended it to do, in the run up to the November Presidential election.

The ‘flour massacre’ of 29 February in Gaza also continues to resonate to Israel’s discomfiture, as much for the successive failed Israeli attempts to construct false disinformation narratives about it, as for the sheer brutal scale of the IDF slaughter of Gazan civilians struggling desperately in the streets for food.

More continues to emerge in the Israeli and international press (especially through Al Jazeera) on the core fact that many of the Israeli hostage civilians killed on 7 October in Negev area died from bombings and missile attacks by Israeli aircraft and tanks, along with their HAMAS captors, either in besieged houses or in HAMAS cars trying to return with hostages to Gaza. These emerging facts reduce the credibility of the Israeli baseline narrative that whatever cruelties the IDF has inflicted on the Gazan people since 7 October are justified by HAMAS atrocities against Israeli hostages on that day. This core myth has been seriously compromised now.

The Israeli allegations of HAMAS mass rapes of Israeli women and of HAMAS killings of babies on 7 October have similarly been completely discredited now internationally and in Israel, as Israeli government propaganda constructs.

Meanwhile, we daily – those of us who can bear to look and seek out reliable alternative news sources – see on YouTube and other free server channels horrible haunting videos of the faces and bodies of starving kids on the point of death in Gaza and now beyond saving. Where all the hospitals are now closed, food supplies deliberately blocked by Israel, and sick hungry people try to survive on the streets amid mud and sewage in cold wet makeshift shelters.

We see heartbreaking personal accounts with photos of journalists and their families in Gaza deliberately targeted and murdered by Israeli precision fire, to try and block the flow of authentic human accounts of what is happening to the Gazan people.

Will compassion fatigue blunt the impact in the West of these stories? Will alleged Western anti-semitism re-emerge as the dominant Western media narrative, as it has always done in past years after Israeli military excesses in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon?

Zionists and their indoctrinated sympathisers who continue to occupy key positions in Western MSM including the ABC certainly hope so, and are striving to make it so. Mainstream media censorship by omission continues especially in Australia. The passive voice is dominant, we are not being encouraged to think about who is perpetrating the daily horrors of life in Gaza. By clever manipulation of language, we are encouraged to believe the unstated implication that it is HAMAS, not Israel.

However, reality has started to break through. The Antoinette Lattouf affair has stirred Australian journalists’ professional consciences. John Lyons’s credible and authoritative Four Corners feature on Gaza and Israel on 11 March will hopefully begin to open many closed minds...

People are reading alternative news.

Even WaPo and the NYTimes are beginning to allow some of the awful reality of Gaza to seep through. Their language reflects a slight softening in the Washington beltway consensus. The forced resignation of Victoria Nuland has an Israeli-Gaza dimension as well as a Ukraine dimension. But Blinken and Sullivan are still there, writing Biden’s cue cards and shaping the US and Western allies’ media narratives.

Under mounting voter pressure at home, Biden has now approved a stop-gap measure of a US-controlled floating offshore food pier on the coast of Gaza. It won’t be operational for two months – how many more Gaza kids will have died of starvation, disease and lack of medical care in those two months? – but it will help to salve American consciences a little.

The Israel military will continue to control disembarkation of food supplies off the American food pier into Gaza but at least there won’t be Israeli Zionist kids there, blocking food relief trucks offloading from the pier.

https://johnmenadue.com/gazas-agony-the-hinge-moment-in-the-loss-of-western-dominance/

 

 

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 Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza    By Jeffrey D. Sachs Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. Starved. I’m not using an exaggeration, I’m talking literally starving a population. Israel is a criminal and is in nonstop war crime status now. I believe in genocidal status, and it is without shame, without remorse, without truth, without insight into what it’s doing. But what it is doing is endangering Israel’s fundamental security because it is driving the world to believe that the Israeli state is not legitimate. This will stop when the United States stops providing the munitions to Israel. It will not stop by any self-control in Israel – there is none in this government. This is a murderous gang in government right now. These are zealots. They have some Messianic vision of controlling all of today’s Palestinian lands. They’re not going to stop. They believe in ethnic cleansing, or worse depending on whatever is needed, and it is again the United States which is the sole support. It’s our mumbling bumbling president and the others that are not stopping this slaughter. https://johnmenadue.com/israel-has-deliberately-starved-the-people-of-gazavideo-plus-transcript/ 

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David Cameron has said the BBC report about Palestinian medical staff in Gaza being beaten and humiliated by Israeli troops is "very disturbing".

The foreign secretary called for "answers from the Israelis".

Three medical staff told the BBC they were humiliated, beaten, doused with cold water, and forced to kneel for hours. They said they were detained for days.

Israel said "any abuse of detainees is strictly prohibited".

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68546268

 

IS CAMERON A DISTURBINGLY MODERATE IDIOT EMPLOYED AS A DUMB JANITOR FOR NETANYAHU?....

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wp5R6tUl4w

Defense Secretary TELLS THE TRUTH About Gaza Horrors & Gets In Trouble!

 

 

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 Max Blumenthal : (The GrayZone) - Who Runs US Foreign Policy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_s7UZgr4lE

 

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