Is The Western Colony in Israel Coming to an End?

 

I have been contemplating the fate of the nation of Israel recently, because the war against Hamas in Gaza is not going well. Foreign policy experts like John Mearsheimer, Douglas McGregor and others have done some excellent presentations showing how the war in Gaza is not working out for Israel. They have not been able to defeat Hamas in nearly a year, and their bombing campaign has caused outrage across the world and isolated them both in their region and beyond. I have written about these things before. But what is interesting to contemplate now is that the very future of the nation of Israel appears to be in doubt.

I just want to state here that I support wholeheartedly the existence of the nation of Israel. I believe that all nations should have the chance for self-rule and self-determination, and for a variety of reasons having a Jewish state where the Jewish people can build their own farms, grow their own crops, make their own products, and build homes for generations of their descendants is necessary thing. But it becomes complicated when you need to do this at the expense of another people, and herein lies the source of the conflict between Gazans, wider Palestinians and Israel. Palestinians and Israelites both claim sovereignty and ownership of the same land. Palestinians have as much right to a sovereign state as do the Jewish people.

But something I have been contemplating lately is how Israel got into this situation. Over the course of the last year I have written many different theological, political, and philosophical posts on the war in Gaza, looking at it from different angles, but I have consistently pointed to it as being an unjust and foolish war. At one point I even shared an article from William S. Lind, the notable military strategist, which showed that state militaries cannot win wars against fourth generation, or non-state forces, using second generation, or conventional military tactics. This is not my opinion, it is the informed opinion of military experts like Lind and others, and these guys know what they are talking about.

But a consistent interesting response I got from some people either via email, or in comments, or in person, over the last year is how upset some people were that I was not acknowledging that Israel is in a battle for its very statehood here, and therefore, it is justified in using extreme methods. I always thought this comment was strange, because when you compare the IDF to the forces in Gaza, it is the Palestinians who appeared to be facing the imminent destruction of their state. I thought people had the situation completely backwards. But some of these people were extremely emotionally triggered about their concern that Israel was in the fight of its life. Ironically, one thing that has become more and more clear over the last few months is that the way Israel has conducted this war, by treating the attack on October 7^th as a justification for this bombardment of Gaza, has to some degree weakened its position in the region.

I had been considering writing something about this self-fulfilling prophecy, but others with far more knowledge of the situation have already outlined the situation that Israel is in better than I could. For instance, Simplicius has recently addressed the issue,  

“Netanyahu, who faces growing international pressure to agree to a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, has repeatedly said that Israeli forces are nearing their stated goal of eliminating Hamas and destroying its military capabilities. Addressing a joint meeting of Congress on July 24, he said: “Victory is in sight.”

But forensic analyses of Hamas’ military operations since it led attacks against Israel on October 7, which draw on Israeli and Hamas military statements, footage from the ground and interviews with experts and eyewitnesses, cast doubt on his claims.

Despite having its leader assassinated and taking all the other ‘blows’ Israel has claimed to have dealt, Hamas, CNN writes, continues to make a comeback:

And yet, the research, which covers Hamas’ activities up until July, shows that the group appears to have made effective use of dwindling resources on the ground. Several units have made a comeback in key areas cleared by the Israeli military after pitched battles and intensive bombardment, according to the new analyses, salvaging the remnants of their battalions in a desperate bid to replenish their ranks.”[1]

Despite facing superior numbers with superior firepower, the Palestinian forces in Gaza are increasingly replenishing themselves, and succeeding in refilling and re-equipping battalions for further action. Israel is not diminishing the enemy in any significant numbers. This is the exact opposite of what Russia has been achieving in the European front of this growing clown world war.

“One year of “the world’s most advanced military force”, and they can only degrade 3 enemy battalions? Meanwhile, Russia destroys that many Ukrainian battalions on some days.

They do go on to clarify that 8 of the 24 battalions are considered fully “combat effective”, while the remaining 13 have been somewhat degraded but continue to function in a more sporadic, guerilla style. But they admit that Hamas is actively working on reconstituting all of the degraded battalions.

While Israel naturally dismissed these findings, US military figures continue to poke back:

“If the Hamas battalions were largely destroyed, Israeli forces wouldn’t still be fighting,” said retired US Army Col. Peter Mansoor, who helped oversee the deployment of an additional 30,000 US troops to Iraq in 2007 – a counterinsurgency strategy known as “the surge.”

“The fact that they’re still in Gaza, still trying to rout out elements of the Hamas battalions shows me that Prime Minister Netanyahu is wrong,” he added. “The ability of Hamas to reconstitute its fighting forces is undiminished.”[2]

This ongoing situation vindicates the position of Lind, whom I quoted above. Lind argued that in fourth generation conflicts the power for non-state forces to continue fighting comes down to their being perceived as the plucky David facing off an unjust Goliath, which motivates new soldiers to join their ranks. This creates a situation where the more a state force uses conventional methods to fight a non-state force the more the non-state force recruits new fighters, creating a quagmire for the state forces involved. This appears to be exactly what is happening in Gaza.

“Expert Robert Pape tells CNN that Israel’s actions are only making Hamas stronger:

“Israel is generating exactly the kind of additional political anger, the additional grief, the additional emotion that will lead additional people to become fighters,” said Pape.

“The actual strategic power of Hamas is growing,” he said. “The power of Hamas is in its power to recruit.”[3]

I know my blog does not have much effect on world affairs, I get that. But for those of you who simply brushed aside Lind’s analysis and prediction, you should now be able to recognize that the man knew what he was talking about. And he was not the only one. By going after a terrorist attack with planes, tanks and assault rifles instead of advanced policing and cultural and social tactics, you end up losing the moral high-ground in the eyes of many. This is happening with Israel right now. The United States did this in War on Terror.[4] It sowed more terror around the world than any other actor, I have addressed this previously as well. And this caused much of the world to lose faith in the moral uprightness of the United States as the leader of the world. It had lost the Mandate of Heaven, as the Chinese would say. The difference between the U.S. and Israel is that America is far more powerful and resilient, at least at the moment. 

Of course, people in Israel can see how badly this war is going, and are leaving, as Simplicius also notes,

“Hundreds of thousands of essential Israeli farmers and citizens from the north have fled, many of them stating openly they will never return. Israel’s economy is in freefall, with its only port on the Red Sea, Eilat, having been in complete shut down for months with the port operator announcing the lay off of most of the workers.”[5]

Israel is a nation that relies heavily on international support, particularly from the United States, tourism, religious pilgrimages, immigration into its new colonies, and military supplies from nations with larger productive capabilities. It is losing much of this because of the way the war is going.  

There are those within Israel who are recognizing the bad position this war has put Israel in, as this opinion piece from the Israeli Newspaper Haaretz notes,

“I assume that Defense Minister Gallant already understands that the war has lost its purpose. Israel is sinking deeper into the Gazan mud, losing more and more soldiers as they get killed or wounded, without any chance of achieving the war's main goal: bringing down Hamas.

The country really is galloping towards the edge of an abyss. If the war of attrition against Hamas and Hezbollah continues, Israel will collapse within no more than a year.”[6]

I have no idea if this man’s prediction will be correct, as I am not an expert on the situation of Israel. However, it is clear that things are not going well. These are not the only sources that are tolling this bell as well, John Mearsheimer has been consistently outlining how bad the war in Gaza is going, and so have many others.

I know some of my readers are those who are of the persuasion that Israel is the land of the people of God, and they likely also believe that he will step in and miraculously crush Israel’s enemies. But even if you were to do the biblically impossible and mount a successful case that the modern state of Israel was in the lineage of the Israel of David, the Israel of David was not guaranteed success across its history anyway. Success was contingent on faithfulness. This was true for Abraham, and true for his descendants. Notice the conditional way in which the people of God experience blessing according to the Bible, “4 I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, 5 because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws” (Gen. 26:4-5). Isaac was blessed because of his father’s obedience, and it was obedience which would carry this blessing down the family line. It is not automatic.

My contention for some time has been that Israel is simply a colony of the West in the Middle East. Now that this western globalism is failing, it should not surprise us that we see aspects of this unravelling. Israel’s existence in the Middle East depends upon either friendship with its surrounding nations, or complete military dominance. With both of those things fading, this now makes the situation a lot more difficult. The United States might pledge full support and aid to Israel, but it is not the force it once was, either in the Middle East or elsewhere. So, that support does not guarantee success.

Theologically I do believe that God has some future plan for salvation for ethnic Israelites, but I do not believe that the true Israel is anything other than the Church of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I have made the biblical case for this in other pieces on my blog. But putting my theological beliefs on that issue aside, we should draw our attention to another biblical issue of note, Just War.

The Bible shows again and again that God judges nations who engage in wickedness. The West collectively has done much evil in the Middle East, rather than increasing this or supporting more of it, we should be calling for repentance from our nations and our leaders for the evil already done. Foolishness is seen in its fruit, after all. Look at the fruit of these wars. Western nations across the world are in decline, and so are their satellites. It is time to withdraw from supporting these wars.

---

[1] https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/israels-path-of-peril

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] One of the most mocked terms in the history of the world.

[5] Ibid, Simplicius.

[6] https://archive.md/r8nP9#selection-1133.0-1149.173