Israel AI Says Wiping Out Hamas 99.9% Certain To Work
Israeli Kids Look Forward to Using World-of-Warcraft Video Game Moves In Gaza
Most intelligent people plan for the worst but hope for the best. Yet most Israelis are of one mind. Wiping out Hamas, no matter the cost, will lead to the best possible future! What pill did they take for such omniscience? They certainly didn’t worry about Hamas before 10/7. Yet away they go!
Israelis under-estimate the consequences of their actions in the past decade and how it has weakened Israel to the point that even a small crisis can lead to cascading failures.
Which will end in civil war.
[If you’re tired of my bloviating, spend 20 minutes watching this speech in 2015. It’s as if he traveled in time to 10/7, wrote a speech, and traveled back. Gideon Levy: Does unconditional support for Israel endanger Israeli voices? Transcript here:]
Despite all the hand-wringing, antisemitism is not an existential threat. Nor does one surprise attack make Hamas an existential threat.
Winning arguments on YouTube, about the righteous historical intentions of Israel won’t stop more Palestinians from picking up guns.
Israelis don’t ask: How many Israelis will die trying to get at Hamas in the tunnels? How many will die trading fire with Hezbollah? How many will die — no sleep for you, even in Tel Aviv — policing angry Palestinians in every part of Israel? How many will suffer or die of post-war suicide in the years ahead? How many will leave Israel to avoid all the above?
The biggest propaganda lie — Jews need Israel to prosper.
Israel isn’t large, rich…fat, dumb and happy like the United States. Able to absorb the hidden — but very real — costs of war.
Israel is weak internally. As Joshua Bender commented, “Israel squandered times of less hostility to reverse the austere conditions of apartheid, which is unsustainable anyway.”
A new generation of Palestinians have been so thoroughly alienated by Israelis that there is will be no benefit of the doubt. Israelis can do nothing that will mollify them, should they need to ratchet down internal conflict to focus on a two-front war.
Border risk. Egypt and/or Jordan may mass part of their militaries near the border, claiming security, further raising anxiety.
Nationwide paranoia. All over Israel, Israelis will become trigger happy, killing Palestinians in Telegram ready videos — posted by the killers! Israel will forbid most Palestinians to leave their home. Palestinians all over Israel will resort to more violence. The IDF will confront Israeli far-right settler groups, splintering the Israeli government, making it even more dysfunctional than it already is!
Israel’s economy is under stress. Remove the horror aspect of 10/7, and the border failure is simply a matter of budget cuts and vaporware.
Israel underestimates how difficult it may be to restart the economy after the war ends. Even the behemoth China is in dire straits, trying to recover from its Covid lockdowns and the number of businesses they bankrupted.
Israel is eating a poison pill, called Hamas, while making the environment toxic for foreign investment or help.
Let’s not forget Hezbollah. It has enough missiles to keep up the pressure in the North until the next global recession hits Israel.
Israel will experience a brain-drain. Netanyahu was already warned about this when he pursued a curtailment of Supreme Court powers. Yet he went ahead anyway. Rumor has it tech investment is already moving out of Israel. Momentum here can kill Israel’s golden goose.
Israel’s IDF might not fight as hard as Palestinians. Israelis should recognize that if the Ukraine war proves anything, it’s that the most advanced military cannot win a ground war against people who have nowhere else to go. Israelis can emigrate to many places. Palestinians can not. That difference in how hard each will fight is no small matter.
When the smoke clears from the bombed out buildings, Israel may wake up to a simple reality. On the ground Israel has accomplished nothing.
If I can rant for one second, the #1 problem of Putin was once he committed to the invasion he could not retreat. How Israelis can repeat this obvious mistake is truly beyond me. Again, just my opinion, Israel should not have invaded Gaza. I’ve heard all the arguments but nothing has remotely convinced me otherwise.
Why do Israelis believe they can subdue the Palestinians when Russia can’t do the same to the Ukrainians?
When, in recent memory, has Israel proved itself above-average at ground war? Most of its ranks today were typing away on laptops at cafes for the past 16 years.
Personally, I’d rather not rely on my kid’s safety on another laptop-kid next to him or her. We shall see.
Israel has pursued risky geopolitical strategies. Israel helped Azerbaijan take back control of Nagorno Karabakh. Why? For it’s oil/gas. Israel didn’t stand firmly behind Ukraine. Israelis touts the Abraham accords as proof it is making more peace in the region. Nothing could be further from the truth. Why would any country trust Israel? At some point Israel will have to choose sides in the Ukraine war. The loser will exact payment–again, can’t say this enough, at a time when Israel can least afford to pay it.
Israel will need to suppress liberals as the war increases. Extrapolating the past month, it’s not unreasonable to expect Israel to lose at least 100 soldiers a month. It will suffer from friendly fire. The Israeli public, having committed to all out war, will begin to act like Russians. (15% of Israel’s population originated there). Perhaps it’s no surprise the government is becoming more like the Kremlin.
As some Israelis come to their senses (or always had them) they will begin to protest. Far-right Israelis (dressed as civilians) will beat them up, perhaps shoot them. That’s what happens everywhere when an autocratic and theocratic tinged government doubles down on an unwinnable war.
Make no mistake about it. The war against the Palestinians is unwinnable. That’s not a prediction. That’s HISTORICAL FACT.
Israel’s public relationships effort will go from bad to worse to possible sanctions from European countries.
The Zionists, in conjunction with hawkish parties (tied to Western military industrial complexes), expertly use propaganda to force Jews worldwide into an “us vs them” narrative. The world is tired of all the lectures and history lessons. Israel fatigue is only a matter of time. I give it another month or two — if we’re not already there.
For years, Netanyahu has been setting conditions for Israel backlash in American domestic politics. The headaches Israel is causing the U.S. and EU (who have their own Muslim populations to content with) will lead to Western domestic political opportunities; that is, U.S. Congressmen will run on promises to cut funding to nations that aren’t useful for the U.S. Military support for Israel isn’t going to end any time soon, but Israel will end up paying more, in various ways, to get it.
EVERYTHING Israel is doing will drive down the value of its currency!
That some Israelis believe Trump is their friend, and when elected, will help them, goes against the experience of everyone who has ever done business with Trump. Sure, Trump makes people money. But every scheme is a pump and dump. There’s no place to dump Trump-assisted failures in Israel.
The Democrats, no saints, are the lesser of two evils. Israel has burned too many bridges with them.
In a few months Israel will have leveled most of the buildings in Gaza. Almost all Palestinians in Gaza will be living in tents. The Israelis will make slow methodical work of rooting out Hamas fighters from the tunnels.
Just as Israel could NOT COMPREHEND an attack like that on 10/7, it cannot comprehend a future where Israel becomes economically and socially poor — all from the unforced errors of alienating the West and entering Gaza prematurely.
Until the government of Israel changes, I see nothing good. Or maybe Israel has the government it deserves and wants. If true, I can’t handle it.
I hope you enjoyed this non-provocative essay about Israel. My predictions are worthless as predictions. But I hope, good food for thought. What are yours?