Some Thoughts on the Medium-Term Effects of Israel-Palestinian Conflict

About two years ago, I wrote a post about the likely fate of three nation states which are vassals of the American Empire after the ongoing decline of the later. One of those three nations was Israel. In it, I pointed out that the supposedly “special” relationship between USA and Israel has only existed since the 1980s. Prior to that the relationship between the two has ranged from lukewarm during 1950s-1960s to somewhat good in the 1970s. In that post, I also made the point that since Israel had put all its proverbial eggs in the USA basket, they had no real option other than attempt to expand trade with other countries- but that these countries would provide basically zero support for the military and strategic interests of Israel. My analysis concluded with what can be best summarized as “It will be interesting to see if Israel will still be around in its current form a couple of decades from now, because the changes necessary to make that possible will be quite drastic and highly unpleasant.”

Then the Hamas attack of October 7th, 2023 and its aftermath happened. A week after that event, I wrote another posts about how the success of the October 7th attack had exposed Israel as a mediocre middling country still living of its past glories from five decade ago- even as the world around it had changed to its disadvantage. I also made the point that Hamas attack on October 7th was tactical and strategic genius because it forced Israel to act in ways that were diametrically opposed to its best medium and long term interests. While the human cost for Palestinians has been high, the global revulsion towards Israel due to its killing thousands of defenseless Palestinian women and children has been epic and unprecedented. Furthermore, even at the eight month mark, Israel has been unable to force a military solution to the Palestinian “problem”. As things stand right now, those two million in Gaza aren’t going anywhere nor is any nation willing to accept them. The plan by Israel to ethnically cleanse Gaza has failed, which is bad for them, as they had no other remotely viable exit strategy.

On the contrary, the dumb and tone-deaf manner in which Israel and its armed forces has behaved in this war had done immeasurable and irreversible damage to its image, whatever was left of it. Then again, trying to conflate Zionism with Judaism was never going to end well. As a side note, the successful selective Houthi blockade of the Red Sea side of Suez canal has exposed the serious inadequacy of American Navy against a determined adversary with some missiles and drones. How many people, even five years ago, could have a foreseen a world where the deterrent power of the “greatest navy to ever exist” could be made irrelevant by what is basically a paramilitary group with some support from Iran. Alternatively, Hezbollah (another paramilitary force) in Lebanon can create a situation where they have forced about a quarter of million Israelis to relocate from settlements near the Lebanese border to other parts of Israel without starting a full-scale war. The fact that Israel cannot guarantee the safety for so many of its Jewish citizens inside its borders should tell you all you need to know about its real military capabilities, or lack thereof. Imagine if USA had to evacuate all its citizens from El Paso, Laredo or San Diego because of threats from Mexican cartels. But why am I using a map of apartheid-era south Africa for this post?

One of the favorite talking points of Zionists and their western supporters is that Israel as a nation state is here to stay because it has nuclear weapons. As it turns out, there was once another apartheid state with a few nuclear weapons and many western backers which is no longer around. Sure.. there is still a nation state known as ‘South Africa’ which is the successor of its apartheid-era namesake. But it is a rather different place, both in terms of who runs it and their demographic profile. To make a long story short, the previously dominant racist white minority is now just another minority and many have left for other countries such as UK, Australia, Canada and USA. The point I am trying to make is that having nuclear weapons might protect you from a conventional war but it cannot protect your system from falling apart. Let me explain that part with reference to Israel. A small country with zero natural resources can only remain somewhat prosperous through continued commercial activity with rest of the world.. However, situations such as wars and other armed conflicts (especially serious chronic ones) have a very negative impact on commercial activity, but especially for small countries with almost zero natural resources or basic self-sufficiency.

At this point, some of you might say that USA will prop up Israel economically for as long as it can.. maybe years or even decades. While I don’t doubt that AIPAC and ADL worshipping American politicians will try their hardest to support Israel, they can only keep doing so under certain conditions. As you might remember from some of my previous posts, USA is in a very obvious downward spiral with no realistic chance of regaining its previous position in the world. The speed of its decline has been accelerating over the past two decades, but especially in past few years. Moreover the conflict in Ukraine has revealed that USA is not much of a military power either as it seriously lacks the industrial base or corporate culture to produce weapons on a large scale. As things stand, USA is incapable of making anything beyond incredibly expensive and mediocre weapons on a limited scale. While there are many reasons for how things reached this point, that is best left for another post. The relevant point is that Israel is also not good at producing a lot of decent inexpensive weapons and had to obtain a large amount of weapons from the rapidly depleting American stockpiles- and they aren’t even in a full blown war.

But why is the decline of USA such a major factor for the future of Israel? Isn’t the whole “West” supporting them? Well.. the short answer is that support offered by every western country other than USA is soft and very fickle. To understand what I am getting at, we have to talk about recent Jewish history and changes in their numbers as a percentage of population for different countries. Prior to 1939, the majority of global Jewish population lived in Europe- specifically Central and Eastern Europe. This remained the case even after a few decades of significant immigration to USA from that part of the world. There was a smaller concentration in Southern Europe, North Africa and western parts of erstwhile Ottoman Empire. The other significant concentration was in the Levant, Syria, Iraq and Iran. After the events of WW2, this distribution changed with most remaining European Jews (Ashkenazi) either moving to USA, staying put in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine or relocating to Israel. The vast majority of Sephardic and Mizrahi also moved to Israel. By the mid 1950s, only three regions of the world had the vast majority of Jewish population- namely, USA, Israel and core states of USSR. After the fall of USSR, most Jews who lived there moved to Israel. If you have some time, take a look at the census figures of these countries over the decades as the data is rather interesting.

The point being made is that since the mid-1990s, USA is the only country (other than Israel) where Jews have the numbers and influence to actually affect governmental policies. Some of you might bring up countries such as Argentina, UK, France or even Russia- but the matter of fact is that they simply do not anywhere near the levels of influence seen in USA. The next relevant part is that USA has been a superpower since end of WW2 and appeared to the only global superpower between 1991-2008. However that situation has been changing since 2009 and in 2024 everyone can see that USA is a spent and rapidly declining power coasting along on system inertia. Even without the events following October 7th, the ability of USA to keep propping up Israel has been falling rapidly- not for lack of desire, but due to a serious deterioration of its previous capabilities. However both parties kept acting as of they were still living in 1991. To make matters worse, lobbying organizations such as AIPAC, ADL, SPLC etc have been busy maintaining the bipartisan consensus about unconditional support for Israel. The point I am trying to make is that due to a number of bad decisions made after 1991, deindustrialization and financialization the most that USA can do for Israel is prevent its destruction in a major war. It cannot however prevent or deter a slow motion grinding conflict that will make that country economically unviable to invest in or live in safely. And this is very relevant since a significant percentage of their population have dual loyalties.. I mean citizenships. If things keep getting bad without any hope of resolution and return to previous levels of safety etc, a significant minority of the population might come to the conclusion that moving back to USA, Germany, France or somewhere else is a better choice than staying in a place where things are continuously going south. As things stand right now, USA is unable to prevent that outcome and other western countries are not going to provide much more than verbal support.

Unless something miraculous or truly unexpected occurs, we are seeing the beginning of a process of decline for Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. While this process will, likely, be gradual, an ill-advised new war or conflict front could speed it up. The end result will probably end up looking somewhat like South Africa after apartheid.

What do you think? Comments?