Despicable Acts - Part 2
Israeli government decided to respond to violence with violence. The blood feud continues. There must be found another way, for the sake of both Gaza and Israeli people.
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I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
W.H.Auden, “September 1, 1939”
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Summary
The Israeli government responds to Hamas violence with further violence. Some fear escalation to a major global conflict due to the involvement of world powers, but later views suggest the incident will stay primarily between Hamas and Israel. The U.S. role has transitioned from an accuser to a moderator. There are questions surrounding Hamas's capability to carry out the attacks without external help. Hamas's actions trace back to the marginalization of Palestinians and regional politics. There's speculation about Iran's involvement, but recent reports challenge this. The perspective on Hamas and Israel has shifted globally, with concerns about the future strategies of Israel.
- 🇮🇱 The Israeli government's response to violence unfortunately was more violence.
- 🌍 Concerns arose about escalation to a global conflict.
- 🇺🇸 The U.S. initially blamed Iran but has now transitioned to a more moderating role.
- 🚧 Hamas appears to have had the capability to breach the Israeli "iron wall" without external assistance.
- 📜 The Abraham Accords and other regional agreements did not involve Palestinians, possibly motivating Hamas.
- 📄 It is difficult how Hamas could be involved because the Hamas Charter explicitly rejects peaceful solutions and international conferences.
- 📰 Media outlets made varying claims about Iran's involvement, with some later being refuted.
- 🇮🇱 The international community must ceate a peaceful exit that achieves punishment of the criminals without killing innocents. This is not only for the sake of the Gaza population but also for the future of Israel.
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Last week I asked if the Israeli government had the foresight to forego a kneejerk response in favour of a necessarily delayed but civilised process that still duly punished killers but would spare the innocents. Unfortunately, the Israeli government chose the path of answering violence with more violence. We will all learn once more that those to whom evil is done do evil in return.
This is not World War III
Some people (e.g. articles in News Corporation, The Times) worried that this could escalate to a major conflict involving regional and global powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia and USA.
I too was worried at first mainly due to the immediate American reaction that signposted Iran as the mastermind behind the attack. The US government has not maintained this view and it looks like the incident is now seen as something between Hamas and Israel. The US role has now become one of a moderator rather than a punisher.
US must now be believing that the act was planned and carried out by Hamas alone. This is my view too.
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Did Hamas manage the attack on its own?
There is the question of technical capability of course. Is it possible that Hamas planned and executed this operation on its own without outside help? The so-called “iron wall” on the Gaza - Israeli border is a combination of concrete barrier, steel fence, and sensors. The following sketch shows the main components:
On 7 October, Hamas first incapacitated the observation towers using drone bombers and then the attack started with rockets and fighters breaking the fence in many places using dozers and some flying over the fence with hang gliders.
It is not clear how many gliders were used and they were probably used for short flights just flying over the fence. On the day of the attack there circulated a video of paratroopers landing in the middle of an event and it was falsely labelled as Hamas fighters landing amongst the music festival crowd. Later it turned out that the video was two years old and was of a completely different event. Without the paratroopers, it is not inconceivable that the rest of the Hamas attack components are all within Hamas competence. Therefore, I do not have a problem believing that the event was organised and executed by Hamas alone with no Persian or other assistance.
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Why did Hamas do it?
Since the 2000 Camp David talks failed, successive Israeli governments followed a policy of gradually marginalising Palestinians. Israel signed Abraham accords separately with Bahrain, Morocco, UAE, Sudan, and was believed to be moving towards signing one with Saudi Arabia. The Abraham Accords aimed peace in Middle East but Palestinians were not involved. Even between Iran and Saudi Arabia there were signs of reconciliation apparently forced by China. It is likely that the Hamas aim was to break this processes and they wanted the Palestinian question to be back on the Agenda.
It is not clear to me what Hamas wanted to achieve from this act. Many in the West ask Israel for return to the Oslo accords. This cannot be the aim of Hamas. Hamas sabotaged the so-called Oslo Accords. As the Oslo process deadlocked, Hamas deployed suicide bombers against Israeli civilian and military targets (The Iran Primer). In fact, I cannot see Hamas being part of a peace process because they categorically deny Israel the right of existence. Here is what the Hamas Charter says about the peace negotiations with Israel:
[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.' (Article 13- Hamas Covenant)
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Can there with peace in Middle East with Hamas?
I must admit that until this attack, I used to view Hamas as a branch of regular Muslim Brotherhood, with similar views but with more military competence. I did not agree with the Americans declaring them as a terrorist organisation. I think different now. They unequivocally demonstrated that they are a terrorist organisation and should be treated as such.
In a Sky News interview on YouTube, the Hamas officer says that Hamas killed no civilians. When the interviewer asks “WTF, how about those killed on 7 October?”, he clarifies that the Israeli settlers on Arab land cannot be considered civilians; they are occupiers.
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Iran?
I do not think Iran was directly behind the Hamas act. Those who believe Iran was the enabler argue that Iran was threatened by the Saudi-Isaeli rapprochement, which, allegedly, would isolate Iran and therefore the Iranian leaders incited Hamas to undertake an act that would be retaliated by Israel which would enrage the Arab people and hence discourage the Saudis from getting closer to Israel. This is a plausible argument and it could be valid in the world of twenty years ago when the US was the indisputed hegemon and every country decided their position with respect to it. As I have been saying for the last couple of months (start reading from here, if you have not done so already), the world is becoming a more complex place.
Regarding the argument on Iran involvement, there is the confounding factor of the recent Saudi-Iran agreement. This agreement already is signed rather than being talked about. On 10 March 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran announced in Beijing their agreement to re-establish diplomatic ties. The two countries also agreed to reactivate an old security cooperation pact as well as older trade, investment and cultural accords. This was in March this year and it shows that Iran and Saudi Arabia was looking toward reconciling their differences rather than threatening each other. Admittedly, this was done with China’s insistence but it nevertheless shows the countries of the region seeking new alliances in the ROGUE world. Why would Iran jeopardise its relationship with China and even with the Saudis with a proxy attack on Israel with uncertain consequences? The argument of Iran being directly behind the Hamas attack does not make sense to me.
A worrisome development took place immediately after the attack. In fact, this was why I was more worried last week about the Hamas-Israeli conflict escalating to a regional and even global war.
Hamas attack started in the morning of 7 October, Israel time. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article published the next day unequivocally blamed Iran. This worried me that it was probably the US view that the Hamas-Israeli conflict was likely to escalate to a regional and even global war. While giving the news of the attack the next day, the WSJ seemed to have already established who was behind it.
The article started with the following categorical statement:
DUBAI — Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprisa attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirutlast Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group… (Wall Street Journal, 8 October 2023)
A newspaper cannot establish such categorical information in less than one day through its own independent reseaarch. It is obvious that Wall Street Journal got this from someone else. They probably would not print without further research such a significant claim from any source. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that the source for the above WSJ news was a US government agency. Identifying the enabler of a surprise attack within 24 hours to a level of confidence high enough to leak the information to the media is difficult even for the US government. If we accept this, then there are two possibilities:
The US government Agency that leaked the ‘information’ to WSJ invented it because they thought the Hamas act could be a good opportunity to get Iran; or
The US government Agency that leaked the ‘information’ to WSJ had prior information about the Hamas act but they had discarded it as spurious and unreliable
Some might point out that there is a third possibility that the US government Agency that leaked the ‘information’ to WSJ had prior reliable information but chose not to share it with the Israeli government. I do not think this is a likely possibility1.
Thankfully, the blame-Iran line was not pursued and on 10 October 2023, the New York Times reported that Iran was not the likely enabler according to the US government sources:
Early Intelligence Shows Hamas Attack Surprised Iranian Leaders, U.S. Says: The information has fueled doubts in the United States that Iran, a longtime supporter of the Palestinian militant group, played a direct role in planning the assault in Israel.
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An existential risk for Israel
I condemned Hamas without qualification in my last post. However, this should not prevent me from saying that the Israeli actions themselves made it possible for murderers like Hamas to take over the Palestinian cause and to become strong enough to attack Israel. Israel followed a policy of marginalising the Palestinian movement for twenty years. Successive Israeli governments kept ignoring Al Fatah, even though that was the only part of the PLO ready to negotiate with Israel. Emasculation of Al Fatah helped Hamas.
Israel did not mind Hamas becoming the face of the Palestinian movement because its maximalist views mentioned in the previous section enabled the Israelis to ignore the Palestinian problem because, they said, it was impossible to reach a solution with Hamas for whom the only solution was the disappearance of Israel.
This policy was based on the assumption that Hamas was a rational actor and, regardless of its fiery rhetoric, would not act to endanger its own existence. I think the Netanyahu government really believed that Hamas had become a status quo power and would not do anything to jeopardise its hegemony in Gaza. This is why the 7 October attack was such a big surprise to Israel.
Unfortunately for Israelis, this is all happening at a moment when the global sympathy for Israel is ebbing even in the United States. It is tempting to place blame on the recalcitrant and fraudulent policies of a series of Netanyahu governments. If this were the case then a new government a new face could help Israel regaining its lost popularity. But I think there is a deeper cause. By marginalising Al Fatah and appointing Hamas as the guardian of the Gaza jail, Israel may have managed to keep the Palestinian crisis in statis for two decades but, through this process, it also lost its moral authority. Israeli governments used to enjoy considerable latitude in the West. Not any more. The governments, at least some of them, are still paying lip service to the Israeli cause but the public opinion has been shifting. There are many reasons for this and good books have been written on the topic, e.g. My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit.
As a double whammy, while Israel is losing ground in the Western public opinion, the West itself is being diminished with a multipolar world order beckoning around the corner. I wrote about this before and will not repeat here.
Invasion of Gaza and destroying Hamas and ignoring all collateral damage is from a 20th century notebook. If this were 1993, Netanyahu government would probably be able to bulldoze Gaza and kill hundreds if not thousands with tolerable backlash from the rest of the world. It would be different today and the backlash may even lead to questioning the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
Another solution must be found to punish Hamas without causing the deaths of many more innocents. This is not only for the sake of the Gaza population but also for the future of Israel. I hope the friends of Israel will make them to recognise this fact.
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Short Takes
U.S. Government unveils seven regional Hydrogen Hubs to “kickstart a national hydrogen network”. The total award is $7B to be matched by at least 50-50 by the recipients.
Regular readers would know that I have been sceptical on Hydrogen energy for transport because I thought the required infrastructure investment would be prohibitively expensive. If these hubs go ahead and deliver their promise, I may be proven wrong.
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You Tube
Introducing this week’s video, I will quote from Ben Burgis’ Substack page.
Slavoj Žižek, was at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week. The organizers had just made the grotesque decision to deplatform a Palestinian novelist, Adania Shibli, who they’d previously planned to award a prize at the Fair. Officially they were “postponing” the prize but they also canceled a panel with Shibli and her German translator and announced that, in the light of Hamas’s attacks two weeks ago, they were going to “give Israeli and Jewish voices additional time on our stages.”
The fact that what Israeli officials themselves described as Israel’s Dresden-style bombing of the Gaza Strip had killed rather dramatically more Palestinian civilians by the time the Book Fair than the number of Israeli civilians killed in the Hamas attacks, and indeed that Israel was well on its way to achieving that result within a day of the Hamas incursions, doesn’t seem to have given the organizers much pause about their decision to give Palestinian voices less time on those stages than was initially planned.
Žižek took the opportunity of his own speech at the Fair to forcefully assert the basic humanity of the Palestinians, to call the decision to deplatform Shibli “scandalous,” and to confess that it made him a “little bit ashamed” to be there at all. He also expressed some fairly mainstream opinions on Israel/Palestine, some of which I’d take issue with, but this didn’t stop him from being repeatedly heckled by a “local politician” (apparently “the antisemitism commissioner of the German state of Hesse”) who seemed deeply offended by any hint of Žižek “comparing” the killing of large numbers of Palestinian civilians to the killing of large numbers of Israeli civilians.
Žižek says it very eloquently and I agree with him 100%. I conclude again quoting Ben Burgis:
By the time you get to the end of the video, when one of the principal organizers of the Book Fair gets on stage for a couple minutes of impromptu remarks praising the heckler, if you don’t feel some level of admiration for the moral courage Slavoj is showing in saying what he said in that particular room, you and I probably have fundamentally incompatible value systems. I thought he was fantastic.
You can read the rest from his Substack page.
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Pascal - Hagi
This entry is not about Pascal and Hagi but about a crow that seems to have decided that it owns the water bowl we have on the garden. The water bowl is close to the outdoors living area of Pascal and Hagi and they usually like it when other birds come around to use the water bowl. But this crow (more like a raven actually), drops its food stuff into the water soon after I replenish the water and after that, probably because of the scent, the other birds do not come near the water bowl. What is dropped is stuff like seeds etc. They probably get softer in water and become easier to eat.
The crow does not know it yet but I am onto him. I will keep replacing the water as soon as he puts his stuff into it. If my hypothesis is true, this should attract the other birds again. Funny enough Pascal and Hagi do not get affected much by the crow.
Pascal was tapping from outside on the window glass when I am writing this down:
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Diary
Two weeks ago, I had a short trip to Wollongong to attend the opening of a Research Centre. It has been more than three years since I travelled anywhere and the less you travel the more reluctant you feel to travel. This one I had to attend because I am a member of the Advisory Board, so I did. The Brisbane Airport seemed less crowded compared to the days before Covid but the Departures display panel showed as many flights as before.
Approaching Sydney, the sky was very clear and I could not resist taking this picture.
We had to circle around Sydney for 10 minutes before landing permission was given, as in the old days. This probably means that the Sydney airport traffic is as busy as it always has been.
I had a rental car booked at the Sydney Airport and I drove to Wollongong. In the past, it used to be a problem to negotiate your way out of Sydney because of traffic and unfamiliarity. The traffic was still there but navigation was no problem thanks to Google Maps on my phone. Approaching Wollongong, I took this picture at a lookout with the guard rails populated with lovers’ locks:
Who knows how many of them are still together.
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Zika Bread Statistics
I bought sourdough rye bread again this week. I think it was the third week of the sourdough culture which I deduce from the bread height. See my last week’s post if you do not understand what I am talking about.
Here are the measurements for the last two weeks:
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The US government has been blamed in the past with all sorts of chicanery. But I do not think they would choose not to forewarn a strategically friendly nation against a dastardly attack on which they have reliable intelligence. This would not be an option even if for the purely selfish reason that such an omission in care surely would leak and the consequences would be enormous not only for USA but also for the agency and the people who make that choice.