Last June, the US house of Representatives banned the State Department from using death statistics published by the Gaza Ministry of Health. The amendment was supported by most Republicans and many Democrats but the Senate has yet to pass on the legislation. The rationale for the amendment was best expressed by David Adesnik, Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the conservative think-tank, Fund for Defense of Democracies: “It’s a complete abdication of responsibility for the Biden administration to say it trusts the Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers because the UN considers them trustworthy. We’ve seen that the UN puts blind faith in the ministry’s numbers even when they’re completely implausible. As a result of trusting numbers from a Hamas-controlled entity, the Biden administration has become more focused on the restraints it can put on Israeli forces than how it can help accelerate Hamas’s defeat.” Israel has also criticized the Ministry’s statistics. The Anti-Defamation League published this analysis of the Gaza Minitstry of Health:
“ADL calls on all news organizations to properly caveat data and information cited from the Gaza Health Ministry with clear mention that it is controlled by Hamas and that it has shared false and misleading information in the past. Journalists and news organizations must acknowledge when their sources may be unconfirmed or unreliable.”
It turns out that the Gaza Ministry of Health undercounted the casualties (it only counts bodies that are visible, and does not search through destroyed buildings to find bodies that are covered by rubble). The amendment to legislation was According to the Lancet, one of the world’s premier medical journals, the death toll in the war against Gaza has been significantly undercounted. The study was limited to the period 7 October 2023 to 30 June 2024 so it does not include any reported deaths since July. The Lancet study came to this conclusion: “We estimated 64 260 deaths…due to traumatic injury during the study period, suggesting the Palestinian MoH under-reported mortality by 41%.” The Gaza Ministry of Health currently tallies about 47,000 deaths. If the undercounting of 41% holds from the period of 1 July 2025-11 January 2025, then a straight extrapolation would suggest a death total of about 67,000.
The Lancet study only looked at deaths attributed to military action. The report states that “our findings underestimate the full impact of the military operation in Gaza, as they do not account for non-trauma-related deaths resulting from health service disruption, food insecurity, and inadequate water and sanitation.” It is extraordinarily difficult to make precise estimates of these deaths (called “indirect” deaths in the literature), but the Watson Institute at Brown University has done a solid study. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has also done a report on the long-term effects of such conditions in Gaza.
It is very clear that we lack knowledge of the actual conditions in the Gaza Strip. But we should be extremely wary of attempts to undermine the credibility of sources by parties which have a vested interest in particular conclusions. It appears as if the Gaza Ministry of Health was, and is, the most reliable source in this dispute.
President-Elect Trump’s press conference yesterday was an excursion into the mind of a seriously deranged individual. National Public Radio reports in an interview with Laura Barron-Lopez of NPR:
“And in it, the president-elect talked about using force to gain control over countries and territories. He raised the possibility of using military force to secure Greenland and the Panama Canal. He also talked about using economic control to pressure Canada to acquire it.
“And he said that — as you played there, Geoff, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. And he also said that — quote — “all hell will break out” if Hamas doesn’t release hostages by the time he takes office.
“In addition to that, he said that he wants to use tariffs at a high level against Denmark to try to pressure it to cede control of Greenland to the United States. And on that idea of the annexation of Canada, Geoff, outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that — just outright rejected it on X, saying that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that it would happen.”
One never knows whether Trump is actually serious–he has a long history of making outrageous statements and never following through on them. But the mind-set revealed in the press conference is straight out of Nineteenth Century Europe when the balance of power was the operating system of global politics and manifested most dramatically in the carving up of Africa by the colonial powers. The period from 1870 to 1914 is commonly known as “The Scramble for Africa“.
After World War II, the US tried to create a different system, based upon multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, NATO, and various other organizations. The aspirations for this system were quite simple. Instead of the system of power politics characterized by Thucydides as one in which “The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must“, the hope was that international politics could be governed by rules and norms agreed upon by the major powers. That aspiration was never realized, and it seems clear that Trump intends to govern US foreign policy by the maxims of power politics and to return the world to the 1800s.
Trump should read some history. He would find that the US did in fact invade Canada in 1812 and gained nothing from that war (forget the Battle of New Orleans and focus instead on the British burning down the White House). He should also learn that the Gulf of Mexico was named the Gulf of Mexico long before the US was even a state. He also needs a refresher course on what it means to be an ally–if Russia or China would dare to invade Greenland, the NATO treaty would obliged the US to defend the island because Denmark is a member of NATO. THe US does not need to “own” Greenland in order to defend it.
What is deeply troubling is that Trump uses the phrase “national security” to justify his fantasies in such a sloppy manner. He seems to be worried that Chinese companies on each end of the Panama Canal gives China a strategic advantage (conveniently ignoring that China is 6000 miles away from the Panama Canal while the US has easy access to the canal). China would have the same problems defending its troops that Russia had when it tried to place nuclear missiles on Cuba in 1962. When confronted with American military power in the Gulf of Mexico, the Russians had no choice but to capitulate.
Unfortunately, Trump seems to be following the policies of Putin and Netanyahu: grabbing land when it appears to be a task with few immediate downsides. Both Putin and Netanyahu seem oblivious to the long-term costs of being an imperial power: the immense cost and the serious damage to the reputation of their states. Randy Newman wrote a song about the phenomenon which is macabrely funny:
And while we are at changing names, Trump should now start thinking about purging foreign names from American geography. We should call Los Angeles the City of the Angels, Baton Rouge should be called Red Stick, and by all means we should get rid of Native American names like Massachusetts (“Large Hill Place”) and Connecticut (“Long Tidal River”). I am not sure I can survive this stupidity for four years.
President-Elect Trump has nominated a distinctive group of individuals to serve in his Cabinet: With some exceptions, they are all wealthy individuals with little or no government experience but a lot of experience as hedge fund managers. We will have to wait to see how these individuals fare in the confirmation process, but their nominations suggest that Trump believes that such people will manage the economy well. That assumption will likely prove to be very wrong.
We have historical examples of similar decisions. For example, Venice was once a powerful city-state and a dominant force in the global economy in the 13th-15th Centuries. That wealth was based upon international trade and Venice’s ability to link Europe to Asia through the Silk Trade routes.
“This brings us to the great puzzle of Venetian history. During the period 1297–1323, a defining epoch in Venetian history known as the Serrata or “closure,” Venetian politics came under the control of a tightly knit cabal of the richest families. It was, in Norwich’s (1977, p. 181) words, the triumph of the oligarchs. Furthermore, by the early 1330s this political closure had spilled over into an economic closure that excluded poorer families from participation in the most lucrative aspects of international trade. Finally, by 1400 the political and economic closure had created a society characterized by a new emphasis on rank and hierarchy. In short, after 1323 there was a fundamental societal shift away from political openness, economic competition, and social mobility and toward political closure, extreme inequality, and social stratification.”
Ultimately, more dynamic economic centers emerged, such as Portugal, Spain, the Dutch, and Great Britain, finding a way to bypass the Venetian chokehold on the Silk Trade by finding alternative routes to Asia. Venice lost its economic vitality and declined into nothing more than a footnote in the history of the global economy.
The argument is straightforward: rather than continuing to innnovate under the pressures of competition (such as the need to find a sea route to Asia), wealthy individuals tend to use political power to protect their interests through laws. That political power is then used to insulate existing techniques and technologies from externally induced change. Those industries become less efficient over time and economic growth slows as a result.
That same process seems to be in play in the US today. Robert Reich outlines the process in the YouTube video, “Wealth Inequality Explained”:
The composition of Trump’s Cabinet fits into this mold perfectly. In a broader cocntext, the process seems to be affecting many different countries in the world, as globalization produces distorted economic outcomes. Trevor Jackson describes the dynamic in his recent essay on theNew York Review of Books:
“For decades now, the ideology of free-market liberalism has obfuscated the ongoing distributive conflicts of the world, but it has not blunted the material suffering of the people on the losing end. Since the 2008 crisis, the reality of ruthless distributive conflict has become impossible to ignore, but the failure of market liberalism to reconcile political equality and economic inequality has produced a global crisis of legitimacy and a growing constituency amenable to antiliberal figures like Trump, Orbán, Modi, and Bolsonaro.”
The anger against the prevailing patterns of wealth distribution is not only found in political outcomes. The astonishing amount of support for the alleged assassin, Luigi Mangione, reflects the degree of animosity toward the “undeserving” rich. If the Democratic Party needs to make a decision about how to orient its platform for the future, it would be well-advised to concentrate exclusively on the process of redistributing wealth and breaking up the political power of economic interests.
The Economic Innovation Group has published a new study entitled “The Great Transfer-mation” which is a report decrying the dependence of US citizens on income transfers from the government. There are many points in the report with which I strongly disagree and I found it personally useful to go through the mental exercise of critiquing flawed arguments and evidence. But the report does provide some information which I found quite interesting, the most important of which was the correlation between getting transfers from the Federal Government and votes in the recent presidential election in the US.
According to the report, in 2000 about 10% of counties in the US received significant income from the government; by 2022, that percentage increased to 53%. Those counties tended to be rural with a significant population of elderly people and considerably poorer than many other counties in the US. The transfer programs idenitified in the study include:
● Old age supports such as Social Security and Medicare
● Medical supports to low-income households such as Medicaid
● Veterans benefits
● Poverty alleviation and income maintenance supports such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
● Unemployment insurance (UI) compensation
● Education and training supports, such as Pell grants
The report is trying to make the case that the only way to address the growing dependence of Americans on income transfers is to stimulate economic growth through lower taxes and reduced regulation–in other words, a stronger commitment to the “trickle-down” myth of modern capitalism (despite all the evidence suggesting that that ideology is fundamentally flawed). But I found the link between income transfers and voting to be highly intriguing as reflected in the following graph:
The graph shows that those most dependent on income transfers were more likely to vote for Mr. Trump and that those who are less dependent on income transfers were more likely to vote for Vice-President Harris. That conclusion is not surprising and comports to my own understanding of why Trump was able to secure a popular majority.
The question is why were people who relied so heavily on aid from the Federal Government were so willing to back a candidate who made such an issue of government deficits and the need to control the Federal budget. The answer is that Mr. Trump was able to make the case that Federal aid was going to the “undeserving” poor (“illegal” immigrants and people who benefit from discriminatory DEI programs) and that he would protect the income transfers to those that truly “deserved” the support. Presumably, those Americans who voted for Trump obviously believed that they deserved those transfers.
The Harris campaign tried to refute those assertions, but many people were not persuaded even though the idea that undocumented individuals without social security numbers could ever receive aid from the Federal Government was clearly ludicrous. The question that nettles me is why it was so difficult for so many Americans to clearly assess their own self-interest.
The question is important to me because I dedicated much of my life to a process that demanded close attention to evidence and logic and I am now confronted with the possibility that many people no longer believe those standards are valid. Give me a few more days to think this over, and I will post those thoughts in a few days.
The collapse of the Assad regime in Syria is rapidly changing the geopolitics of the Middle East. The Assad family had ruled in Syria for 50 years, but its collapse only took a few weeks. At this time, I would not hazard a guess about who will rule Syria in the future, or even whether Syria will remain a nation-state or devolve into mini-states ruled by different factions.
In reality, Syria fell apart 13 years ago as a popular movement known as the “Arab Spring” swept through many states in the Middle East in 2011. The Assad regime barely survived that movement and has been propped up by both Russia and Iran since that time. Russia, weakened by its war against Ukraine, and Iran, weakened by the Israeli attacks against its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, were unable to maintain that support as a rebel group in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, seized control of Damascus. But there are many groups within Syria, as described by the BBC:
“Among these groups – some now in Damascus – are rebel factions that once operated under the banner of the Free Syrian Army from southern towns and cities that had been dormant for years, but where the spark of rebellion had never entirely been sniffed out.
“Over to the east, Kurdish-led forces have benefited from the collapse of the Syrian army to take full control of the main city, Deir El-Zour. In the vast Syrian desert, remnants of the so-called Islamic State could also look to take advantage of the situation. And in the far north along the Turkish border, the Syrian National Army – backed by Ankara – could also prove to be a significant player in what happens next.”
In terms of the geopolitics of the region, the big losers are Russia and Iran. The big winners are Turkey and Israel. Turkish ambitions might be stymied by the strong Kurdish community in Syria. But the Israelis have taken advantage of the power vacuum in Syria by launching military assaults against virtually every Syrian military installation. Mondoweiss reports:
“Even as Bashar al-Assad was scrambling to get out of Syria, Israel was mobilizing its military to take advantage of the power vacuum that Assad’s ouster had created. After five decades of a low-level conflict between the two countries, Israel saw an opportunity to change the calculus, and it seized it.
“As of Wednesday, Israel had struck Syria nearly 500 times. Their goal with these attacks has been to essentially destroy Syria’s military capability, and they have already succeeded. Reports by Israeli media claim that well over 80% of Syria’s weaponry, ships, missiles, aircraft, and other military supplies have been damaged or destroyed.
“In essence, Israel has rendered Syria completely defenseless. “
Moreover, Israeli Defense Forces have seized territory in Syria which includes Mount Hermon, which offers Israel a critically important strategic location giving it the ability to monitor activities in Lebanon and Syria with great accuracy. The map of Israeli occupation is striking.
Israel has ordered the IDF to maintain its control of Mount Hermon throughout the winter and has suggested that its occupation is temporary. But, given its strategic significance, it is unlikely that Israel will return control of the mountain to Syria. Indeed, some in Israel have proposed that Israel should annex the terriroty, as reported by the Middle East Monitor:
“Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli yesterday called for Israel to occupy the summit of Mount Hermon in Syria.
“Chikli said: ‘The events in Syria are far from a cause for celebration. Although Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham and its leader, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, portray themselves as a new product, ultimately most of Syria is now under the control of affiliate organisations of Al-Qaeda.’
“’The good news is the growing strength of the Kurds and the expansion of their control in the northeast of the country,’ the Likud Party member said, noting that ‘Israel must operationally renew its control at Mount Hermon [in the occupied Golan Heights] and establish a new line of defence based on the ceasefire line of 1974 [with Syria].’
“Chikli’s statements come despite a call by the office Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, not to make statements about developments in Syria, while the Likud Party asked its members in the Knesset not to conduct interviews about Syria without the approval of Netanyahu’s office, according to reports by the Israeli public radio yesterday.”
Israel has now seized territory in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Syria. This is unquestionably a war of conquest.
“Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric” — Umberto Eco, 1955
Today has been very difficult for many. This post was written in a state of confusion, fear, and rage. So you should tread carefully here, because there are dragons.
We had hoped that Mr. Trump had effectively diminished his allure to voters, but that was not the case. Instead, we now face the prospect of a mob boss political system, bent on enriching only those who submit and disenfranchising those who do not submit.
This terrain will be difficult to navigate, and it creates a problem for those of us who opposed Mr. Trump. Knowing that he will punish anyone who disagrees with him and knowing that the Congress and the Supreme Court will not restrain his basest instincts leaves us in uncharted territory. The Supreme Court has completely abdicated its responsibility to maintain checks and balances in Trump v. The United States and has decided that it does not have the power to check executive power as long as there is some mention in the Constitution of the powers of the President, no matter how indirect or peripheral the reference. With the Republicans in control of the Senate and possibly of the House as well, there is no posssibility that that party will restrain Mr. Trump given his ruthless purge of malcontents in the party.
We should place the blame for this situation squarely on the Republican Party which has completely abandoned its responsibility to defend the Constitution. The Democrats ran a very effective campaign which was not sufficient. What does the failure of opposition to Mr. Trump mean?
The election of 2024 was essentially a rerun of the early 20th Century. The end of the 19th Century brought about a wave of globalization powered by advances in refrigeration, telecommunications, shipping, and transportation. The result was a phenomenal explosion of wealth at the expense of those with limited access to capital and whose only link to the global economy was the sale of their labor. The growing inequality between rich and poor ultimately led to widespread dissatisfaction which resulted in the abandonment of traditional political norms and the adoption of new ideologies, fascism and communism, which channeled that dissatisfaction into acceptance of authoritarian rule. That inequality also led to the Great Depression.
Similarly, the technological revolutions of the 1980s and 1990s led to the creation of fabulous wealth–think Gates, Musk, Jobs, and Zuckerberg. But that wealth was accumulated by tapping into the labor markets of poor states such as China and Vietnam, leading to a massive loss of manufacturing jobs in the developed world. Those unemployed by the 2nd wave of globalization are the ones who abandoned traditional political norms, not only in the US, but in India, Hungary, Italy, France, Sweden, Denmark, and the Cech Republic. They have reasons to be angry.
The pattern of the early 20th century is repeating because the conditions are roughly similar. And, I suspect, the outcome will be the same: economic collapse and war.
The question for me is how do I respond to this situation? My gut instinct is to resist as Trump attempts to create a White, Male, and Christian Republic. I should resist any attempts to cut Obamacare, Social Security, health and safety regulations, and the proposed deportations. These are the issues that Trump used to secure the support to win the election. My suspicion is that those who supported Mr. Trump did not believe that he would truly implement those policies. But they knew exactly who Mr. Trump was: a person who cheated on his taxes, who assaulted women and bragged about his conquests, who punished anyone who did not support him, and who showed little regard for the rule of law. He will, I am certain, insure that everyone appointed to his government will share the same contempt for integrity and lawfulness. Those who voted for Mr. Trump cannot plead ignorance of who he was and how he defined his interests as the single guide for public policy. They knew what they were buying when they voted.
I fear, however, that, for the next two years, resistance will be futile. So I think there should be a second course of action, a course of action which deeply offends my sensibilities as a civic person. The Democrats should simply withdraw from the process of governing. It will be a huge waste of time and, ultimately, counterproductive. The Democrats should simply sit in Congress and refuse to vote or participate in any hearings. Those who supported Mr. Trump should live in the world they voted for. And with tariffs, deportations, and the lack of income security and health insurance, they can figure out how to survive. That economic collapse is inevitable given the obscene inequalities of power and wealth that Trump’s Administration will foster.
Then the Republican Party will have to decide whether it cares more about the Constitution than raw power. And the American people might learn to appreciate the idea of Justice and Equality and to temper their infatuation with unaccountable freedom.
In 1935, Sinclair Lewis published a book entitled It Can’t Happen Here about the election of a Fascist President in the United States. It is a creepy read (and not a particularly good book, but I do not think that Lewis really wanted to write great book–just a book with an important warning to Americans. Americans very rarely think about Fascism in the US, but that is due to willful amnesia. Former President Trump’s rally in Madison Square Garden reminded some of the Nazi rally that was held there in February 1939.
Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden, 20 February 1939
The Nazi movement grew out of the virulently racist period after the Civil War that spawned the Jim Crow laws that institutionally segregated African-Americans. We are familiar with the images of the Ku Klux Klan, but there was a more explicit movement marrying fascism with institutionalized racism which was known as the Black Legion:
“The Black Legion was a spinoff of the so-called Second Ku Klux Klan, which flourished in the 1920s, fusing anti-Catholicism and antisemitism with anti-Black racism. Strongest in the North — with 500,000 members in Ohio alone — it fell apart by the decade’s end in the face of internal scandals and public denunciations. A doctor in Bellaire, Ohio, named William Shepard founded the Black Legion in 1924. He painted KKK robes black and added pirate imagery and an even greater obsession with militarism and secrecy. By 1935 the Black Legion had grown to hundreds of thousands of members nationwide, largely in the Upper Midwest but spreading to at least 21 states. No one really knows how big it was.”
The Regalia of the Black Legion
The Black Legion grew as Fascism became prevalent in Europe in the early 20th Century. It was a dynamic movement, starting with the first Fascist state in Italy in 1920 (although one could argue that Hungary was actually the first after the collapse of the Soviet Republic of Hungary founded by Béla Kun). By 1940, the only European states not ruled by a fascist party were Great Britain and Switzerland (one could argue that the Swiss worked closely with the Nazis). It was an amazing transformation in the space of only 20 years, counterbalanced by the emergence of the communist brand of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union.
Map of Fascist regimes in Europe in 1940
As Americans vote today, we should all be reminded of the Fascist history in the US. It is not necessarily a fluke in American culture, but rather a persistent presence. It can happen here.
Israel continues to force Palestinians to leave northern Gaza. Mondoweiss reports:
“Israel’s siege and offensive on northern Gaza have been ongoing for 20 days, as part of what has been described as the implementation of Israel’s ‘Generals’ Plan,’ which aims to forcibly depopulate northern Gaza through deliberate starvation and extermination. Although the Generals’ Plan doesn’t include plans for settler colonization of the area after its ethnic cleansing, far-right Israeli politicians and settler groups have been advocating for settling Gaza since December of last year.
“On Monday, Israelis rallied at Kibbutz Be’eri 3 kilometers away from Gaza’s fence demanding to be allowed to settle in the Strip. The rally was attended by several Israeli ministers, according to Israeli media. Reports indicated that some 700 Israeli families at the event had signed up to move to the prospective Israeli settlements in Gaza.
“Northern Gaza was home to some 700,000 Palestinians before October 7, 2023. According to estimates, some 200,000 Palestinians continue to live in the area, which includes Jabalia, Beit Lahia, Twam, Sheikh Zayed, and Beit Hanoun.”
The “Generals’ Plan refers to a plan devised by Israeli Major General Giora Eiland, although parts of the plan have always been part of Netanyahu’s overall strategy in the Gaza. The plan, however, is most explicit on the forced relocation of Palestinians to southern Gaza. Middle East Eye reports:
“Once Palestinians have been removed from northern Gaza, which the plan anticipates will take a week, the second phase can proceed: the transformation of northern Gaza into a closed military zone.
“The area will, says the plan, be subject to a ‘full and tight blockade, which includes preventing movement to and from it, and preventing the entry of supplies, including food, fuel and water’.
“Anyone remaining will be treated as a combatant. The plan’s YouTube video states that the Hamas operatives who remain can choose to ‘surrender or die of starvation’. After that, ‘it will be possible to enter and cleanse the area of Gaza City with almost no enemy’.”
Middle East Eye interviewed Abdullah al-Muqayid, a resident of Northern Gaza, who eventually left for the south. The report is chilling:
“After an interrogation that lasted until sunset, the Israeli army ordered the residents to evacuate to the southern Gaza Strip. However, reluctant to leave northern Gaza entirely, they moved to the adjacent Gaza City instead.
“‘One of the phrases the soldiers told us was, ‘Go south; you will never return to the north. The north will be ours, and we will build settlements there,'” he said.
‘There were martyrs and wounded people whom no one could help along the way’
“But we came to Gaza City. Along the way, there was a massive number of soldiers and tanks as far as the eye could see, as if they were invading a country, not merely civilians and unarmed individuals. We saw the bodies of martyrs on the ground, with dogs mauling them.”
“Muqayid managed to leave Gaza City, but he had to leave his elderly mother behind.
“She remained in Jabalia; she cannot leave, she cannot walk such a long distance and face the humiliation and insults we faced.”
The “Generals’ Plan” is not official policy of the Israeli government at this point, but The Times of Israel reports that in a recent meeting between US Secretary of State Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Prime Minister refused to rule it out publicly:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top aides sidestepped US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s request during a meeting Tuesday to publicly clarify that Israel is not seeking to lay siege to northern Gaza, a US official tells The Times of Israel.
Netanyahu and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer insisted during the meeting that Israel is not implementing the so-called General’s Plan aimed at isolating northern Gaza and argued that claims to the contrary have been detrimental to Israel’s public image, the US official says.
Blinken urged Netanyahu to clarify this publicly, but he and his aides demurred, the official adds.”
The Generals’ Plan is a clear violation of the Geneva Accords which forbids the forcible displacement of civilians in any occupied area. It is also completely inconsistent with US foreign policy which still calls for a “two-state” solution to the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. But Netanyahu likely sees the coming months as a window of opportunity: Americans are transfixed by the upcoming presidential election and the period between election day and the inauguration is a very difficult time to make significant foreign policy changes. Further, Netanyahu probably thinks that, if Israel quickly makes the annexation of northern Gaza a fait accompli, a President Trump would approve and a President Harris would be powerless to dislodge Israel until after inauguration, at which point US opposition would be moot.
The Generals’ Plan is not possible without US continued support. That support has two components: massive military and financial assistance; and the US missile interceptor systems which prevents Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran from inflicting heavy civilian casualties in Israel. Both are indispensable to the Generals’ Plan, but the US protective shield gives Netanyahu the freedom to do whatever he, or his right- wing cabinet members, Ben-Givr and Smotrich, want.
The US is a clear accomplice in this crime. If Netanyahu had to worry about significant civilian casualties (on the scale of the near 43,000 identified Palestinians bodies, not to mention the bodies buried under the rubble in Gaza), I doubt that he would currently be bombing the Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran with such abandon.
This circumstance places the US in a very delicate moral dilemma. In order to restrain Netanyahu, the US should lift its protective missile shield and allow civilian casualties at a scale necessary to change Netanyahu’s calculations. But that tactic is morally indefensible: innocent civilians cannot be used as a diplomatic tool. The US needs to continue to shield Israeli civilians.
The alternative is to use the military and financial support as a bludgeon. Netanyahu would then have to calculate how long he could continue the military operations without the infusion of weapons and wealth. That course of action lacks the immediacy of the costs of civilian casualties, but Netanyahu has got to start worrying about the long-term capabilities of Israel without US support.
In order to implement this tactic, US President Biden should immediately announce the suspension of US support unless Netanyahu publicly commits to no annexations of land in the Gaza and in the West Bank and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. It is long past time for the US to indulge Netanyahu’s political survival which is dependent on Ben-Givr and Smotrich. And the US needs to more vigorously pursue its own foreign policy interest which is a peace based on the two-state solution.
As we approach the one-year anniversary of the brutal Hamas attack on Israel, the conflict is also nearing a critical point in the escalation cycle. After the Iranian missile attack last Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that:
“This evening, Iran again attacked Israel with hundreds of missiles. This attack failed. It was thwarted thanks to Israel’s air defense array, which is the most advanced in the world. I commend the IDF for the impressive achievement. It was also thwarted thanks to your alertness and responsibility, citizens of Israel. I also thank the US for its support in our defensive effort.
“This evening, Iran made a big mistake – and it will pay for it. The regime in Tehran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and to exact a price from our enemies…
“We will keep to the rule we have determined: Whoever attacks us – we attack them.
“This is true wherever we fight the axis of evil. It is true in Judea and Samaria. It is true in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria – and it is also true in Iran. We are fighting the axis of evil everywhere, including in southern Lebanon and Gaza, where our heroic soldiers are active.
“Today, more than ever, the forces of light in the world must unite and work together against the ayatollahs’ dark regime, which is the source of terror and evil in our region. They must stand alongside Israel. The choice has never been more clear, between tyranny and freedom, between the blessing and the curse.”
Both Israel and Iran face a very serious problem–their efforts to deter each other have failed. Iran thought that by arming Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel would not take actions to endanger their citizens. Further, Iran believed that its missile forces would deter Israeli action against Iran. Israel proved these assumptions to be incorrect. Israel believed that its anti-missile systems, buttressed by US forces in the region, would lead Iran to believe that a missile attack on Israel would fail. That assumption is less certain now than it was before 7 October.
Both Hamas and Israel miscalculated. Many observers, including me, were shocked by the intensity of the Israeli response to the 7 October atrocity. And many, including me, believe that the Israeli response in the Gaza (and now in Lebanon) to be wildly disproportionate. After the Iranian missile attack last April, which consisted of about 300 missiles most of which were intercepted by the Israeli and US forces, Israel determined that its civilian population was sufficiently protected to permit extensive Israeli military actions, including the missile attack on Tehran which killed the leader of Hamas, Haniyeh. But that assumption now looks to be problematic.
The Iranian missile attack last Tuesday consisted of 200 missiles, but about 20 of those missiles actually hit Israeli military bases., suggesting that the Israelil missile defense was not as robust as was assumed. The Israeli Defense Force first announced that the Iranian attack had been unsuccessful and that damage was minimal. But National Public Radio quotes Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey:
“Lewis notes that although over 30 missiles landed inside the base perimeter, the damage caused was still somewhat limited. That’s notable because Iran is believed to have used some of its most advanced Fattah missiles.
“‘Even these missiles, which look substantially more accurate, still struggled to do damage,’ he says.
“Still, he thinks the attack has shown that Iran can strike at targets well inside Israel. ‘They can definitely get missiles through,’ he says.”
If Iranian missiles can penetrate the Israeli missile defense system, then the Israeli civilian population is at risk. The missiles on Tuesday struck Israeli military bases. Iran clearly made a decision not to target civilian population centers. One such missile hitting a city like Tel Aviv or Haifa could be damaging (but not catastrophic), and would change the calculations of acceptable losses for Israel.
There are, however, questions to be raised before the expected Israeli counterattack. The Iranians launched 300 missiles last April, but only around 200 on Tuesday. That difference is significant. It could signal that Iran’s response to the assassination of Nasrallah was not so important and that the Iranians felt they could be restrained. Or it could be that Iran was trying to preserve as much of their missile force as possible for future asttacks. Or it could mean that Iran was only trying to get a better read on the effectiveness of Israeli missile defenses. I personally believe thats Iran’s decision to avoid population centers was a clear signal that Iran did not wish to provoke a major escalation, even though it was bound to retaliate for the assassination of Nasrallah.
Now Israel has to send some messages as well. Interestingly, US President Biden indicated to journalists that he did not think the Israelis should attack the nuclear facilities in Iran, nor should it attack the oil production centers in Iran. An attack on Iranian population centers would be roundly condemned by most in the world. So Israel has to think about what message it wishes to send to both Tehran and Washington.
There are other considerations as well. The Israeli missile defense system is mostly effective, but it is truly expensive. Offensive missiles are reltively cheap; defensive missiles require a great deal of infrastructure,, including extensive radar systems and very sophisticated targeting mechanisms. Offensive missiles can be used for a variety of targets. Defensive interceptor missiles have only one objective, but an objective that has to be perfectly targeted to be considered a “success”. The drain on the Israeli economy will be substantial and Israel’s economy is already suffering from the costs of the war. The Economist reports:
“Stronger economic growth would ease the pain. Although reservists have returned to work and consumption has returned to pre-war levels, Israel’s economy remains smaller than it was on the eve of war. Mr Smotrich has cushioned the least productive parts of society and starved industry of resources. The labour market remains ultra-tight, with the unemployment rate at just 2.7%. Firms are struggling to fill vacancies and Israel’s small high-tech companies are under strain. They are losing out on funding owing to the war, warns Startup Nation, a local think-tank.
“Some 80,000 Palestinian workers were denied permits after October 7th, and have never been replaced. As a consequence, the construction industry is 40% smaller than it was this time last year, greatly impeding housebuilding and repairs. For now, the biggest impact has been on inflation, which hit an annual rate of 3.6% in August, having accelerated over the summer. Should the scale of Hizbullah attacks increase, the lack of construction workers will become an even bigger problem….
“Then there is the nightmare scenario. Few investors are preparing for a war that would engulf all of Israel, including Jerusalem or Tel Aviv—even though Hizbullah may be capable of launching such an attack. In these circumstances economic growth would be hit hard, perhaps even harder than after October 7th. Army outgoings would soar. Fleeing investors would probably topple banks and send the shekel plummeting, forcing the Bank of Israel to intervene and spend its reserves.
“Whatever happens, Israeli economists are resigned to things getting worse. Even Mr Smotrich, generally a bullish type, now emits an air of exhaustion: ‘We are in the longest and most expensive war in Israel’s history.’ Previous conflicts have come at a heavy cost to Israel. Do not be surprised if this one does, too.”
Israel is also free to ignore President Biden’s caution, but the price of that tactic could be substantial. Prime Minister Netanyahu has already ignored several US proposals for a cease-fire, and the cumulative effect of indifference to US preferences could lead many in the US to consider Israel to be an unreliable ally–a problem that could get very difficult for Netanyahu if Kamala Harris wins the Presidential election. In many places in the world, Israel is already becoming a pariah nation.
Finally, a massive Israeli counterattack would send a clear message to Iran that its reliance on conventional weapons is dangerous. A unfortunate paradox of Israeli miltary prowess is that it may lead Iran to the decision that its only effective defense is to build a nuclear weapon–exactly the most troubling scenario nettling the Israeli defense establishment.
Deterrence has failed for both sides. Re-establishing deterrence is a very tricky business, fraught with the possibility of serious misreadings of intentions or inaccurate calculation of risks and costs. Israel’s response to Iran will determine the course of this wretched conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has established Israel as a rogue state with no red lines. It has attacked the Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran with few repercussions to its own security. And it has launched these attacks with no hints whatsoever as to what would be acceptable terms of peace. Consider: the Gaza Strip has been almost completely destroyed and its inhabitants do not know how the devastation might stop. The US and its allies have all stated that the only possible resolution to the conflict would be the implementation of a two-state solution. Netanyahu has explicitly rejected this approach, according to the New York Times:
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel doubled down on his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state this weekend, again rebuffing pressure from President Biden to agree to that path after the war in Gaza is over.
“My insistence is what has prevented — over the years — the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have constituted an existential danger to Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement in Hebrew on Sunday. “As long as I am prime minister, I will continue to strongly insist on this.”
“The statement reiterated comments he made on social media the previous day, when he said in Hebrew that he “will not compromise on full Israeli security control of the entire area west of the Jordan River — and that is irreconcilable with a Palestinian state.”
Because it has offered no alternative, Israel only offers continued occupation, and it demands that the “elimination” of its enemies is the price that the Palestinian people have to pay for those terms if they want peace. And now the same terms are being offered to Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Moreover, there are apparently no limits on how Netanyahu defines “elimination”. The current war in Gaza was precipated by a heinous Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis but the counterattack on the Gaza has killed almost 42,000 Palestinians, the majority of which are women and children. The disproportionate ratios are also reflected in the losses suffer by the Lebanese in the current escalation, as demonstrated graphically byBloomberg:
The one-sidedness of this conflict means many things, but the one point most relevant to any possible settlement is that the terms of a settlement acceptable to Israel is the complete and utter capitulation of the Palestinian people and that Israel is willing to kill as many people and to attack any state required to achieve that capitulation.
As I have argued before, Israel is only able to follow this strategy because the US continues to arm and financially support Israel with no conditions and that the US is willing to provide the necessary shield to prevent any Israeli civilian losses from attacks from any state in the region. The attack on the Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut was likely done by a 2,000 pound bomb supplied by the US, even though President Biden had earlier banned the export of such bombs to Israel because of their indiscriminate destruction. The Israeli air strike against Yemen yesterday was especially significant because it was a difficult mission that demonstrated the geographic reach of Israeli power as described by The Jerusalem Post:
“Until July, the IDF had outsourced responses to the Houthis to the US, which was fighting the group over various maritime aggression issues. However, after the Houthis killed a civilian in Tel Aviv, the Jewish state struck back directly for the first time.
“During Israel’s July counterstrike, it took two hours and 50 minutes for the IDF’s F-15s, F-35s, and other fighter jets, which carried out around 10 airstrikes against the Houthis, to reach their targets in the Hodeidah Port area. Those aircraft took off around 3 p.m. on July 20 and struck their targets around 6 p.m.
“Although the IDF kept classified the exact number of aircraft it used to refuel its fighter jets to make the 1,800-kilometer flight and return safely during that July attack, it provided a dramatic video showing some of the mid-air refueling in real-time.
“Sunday’s flights and refueling were equally complex, intended to completely destroy the Houthis’ capability (as opposed to a partial cut in July) to receive refined products, including weapons, from Iran.”
The significance of the attack was not in the destruction it caused in Yemen, but rather the message sent by Israel to Iran that it had the capability to attack Iran (also because the Saudis allowed Israel to use its airspace to make the flight). Reuters highlights Netanyahu’s objective:
“Israel warned Iran on Monday that nowhere in the Middle East was beyond its reach and hinted at a land invasion of Lebanon after assassinating the leader of the Tehran-backed Hezbollah group, one of its biggest adversaries, in a Beirut suburb last week.
“‘There is nowhere we will not go to protect our people and protect our country,’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a three-minute video clip in English that he addressed to the Iranian people.”
The Iranians have taken actions, such as hiding high-ranking officials, in anticipation of such an attack. I doubt, however, that the Iranians want such a war–the country is weak economically and suffering from drought, a weak economy, and questions about the legitimacy of the regime. More importantly, however, Iran does not have a viable military option. As long as the US is committed to the aerial defense of Israel, there is probably nothing that the Iranians could do do change Netanyahu’s determination to eliminate Israel’s enemies. This is particularly true given that Israel has demonstrated that its has pierced Iranian intelligence by its assassination of Ismail Haniyeh right in the heart of Tehran. Israel also compromised the communications network of Hezbollah by its bold tactic of planting explosives in the pagers and walkie-talkies of Hezbollah activists.
There is, however, one course of action open to the Iranians. It could take to heart the lesson of the fate of the “axis of evil” identified by US President George W. Bush after the 11 September attack on the US. The axis consisted of Iraq, North Korea, and Iran. Iraq had no nuclear weapons and was invaded by the US in 2003 and its government was overthrown and the country occupied by the US for a number of years. North Korea, on the other hand, did have nuclear weapons and does not have to worry about an attack by the US or its allies. The lesson seems clear: if one is worried about an attack by a state that is militarily superior and has indicated that it has no constraints on the use of force, then possession of a nuclear weapon is the best defense.
I sincerely doubt that Iran wants a nuclear weapon. The late Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, called nuclear weapons inconsistent with Islam in 2010. But Iran exists in a dangerous neighborhood. Some of its closest neighbors–Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel–already have nuclear weapons and the US is constantly patrolling the Persian Gulf with ships that are nuclear-capable. Iran unquestionably has the capability to develop a nuclear weapon. but would have to develop a nuclear weapon secretly so that Israel would not launch a pre-emptive strike against its nuclear facilities. A nuclear test conducted by Iran would quickly raise the costs of any Israeli action against it. The outcome of a nuclear Iran is decidedly against Israel’s and the world’s interest. But territorial integrity and sovereignty are attributes without which a state cannot exist, and Israel is currently threatening both of those attributes.
The US must immediately announce that it is suspending all military and financial assistance to Israel until Israel puts forth a proposal for the two-state solution that effectively creates the opporunity for the Palestinians to exercise their inherent right of self-determination. That aspiration will never die no matter how many leaders in Hamas, Hezbollah, Yemen, and Iran that the Israelis succeed in assassinating. This has been the official position of the US ever since the war in 1967, and it is second only to the Cuban Embargo as a bootless policy–it is an objective that has been purely rhetorical and meaningless to the countless number of people who have died in the region. Fifty-seven years is a very long time for a power to remain impotent, and Netanyahu has apparently no compunction to disregard American counsel or interests.
The situation is reminiscent of the difficulties the US had in floating peace proposals during the Vietnam war. In 1972, the US had reached agreement with North Vietnam on a cease-fire, but South Vietnamese President Thieu rejected the proposal as a “surrender to the Communists”. Rather than using its formidable levers to change Thieu’s mind, the US instead chose to amplify its military commitment to South Vietnam and the war expanded and dragged on for two more years. President Nixon chose the military path because he did not wish the US to appear as a “pitiful, helpless giant”. The US became a hostage to its weaker ally and many died because of US inaction on the diplomatic front. In the immediate case, choosing a diplomatic path is the only effective course of action. The US must clearly tell Netanyahu that that path is the only one it will support even as it promises to defend Israel against any attack on its territory, but it will not support any further expansion of the war.
Like Thieu, Netanyahu can ignore the US, but the US needs to make clear to its ally that it means what it says. If Israel wants to continue the carnage, then the US should no longer be an accomplice to the war crimes being committed. Israel is a sovereign state and the US should not dictate to Israel what it should do. But Israel also should not tell the US that it has to support actions that do not serve US interests.
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