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fog of war
Amid Genocidal Fury in Gaza, Israel's Zionist Ambitions Unleashed in the Occupied West Bank
This ongoing war is not primarily about security in Gaza or security threats posed by Hamas, but rather about something much more sinister and absurdly cynical.
Nov 04, 2023
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was recently pilloried by Israel because he stated a truism, observing that the 7 October Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum.”
Guterres was calling the world’s attention to Israel’s long record of severe criminal provocations in occupied Palestine, which have been occurring ever since it became the occupying power after the 1967 war.
The occupier, a role expected to be temporary, is entrusted in such circumstances with upholding international humanitarian law by ensuring the security and safety of the occupied civilian population, as spelled out in the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Israel reacted so angrily to Guterres’s entirely appropriate and accurate remarks because they could be interpreted as implying that Israel “had it coming” in view of its severe and varied abuses against people in the occupied Palestinian territories, most flagrantly in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
After all, if Israel could present itself to the world as an innocent victim of the 7 October attack - an incident that was itself replete with war crimes - it could reasonably hope to gain carte blanche from its patrons in the West to retaliate as it pleased, without being bothered by the restraints of international law, UN authority, or common morality.
Indeed, Israel responded to the 7 October attack with its typical skill in manipulating the global discourse that shapes public opinion and guides the foreign policies of many important countries. Such tactics seem almost superfluous here, as theU.S. and E.U. swiftly issued blanket approval for whatever Israel did in response, however vengeful, cruel, or unrelated to restoring Israeli border security.
Guterres’s UN speech had such a dramatic impact because it punctured Israel’s balloon of artfully constructed innocence, in which the 7 October attack came out of the blue. This exclusion of context diverted attention from the devastation of Gaza and the genocidal assault on its overwhelmingly innocent, and long-victimized, population of 2.3 million.
Extraordinary lapses
What I find strange and disturbing is that, despite the consensus that the Hamas attack became feasible only because of extraordinary lapses in Israel’s supposedly second-to-none intelligence capabilities and tight border security, this factor has rarely been discussed since that day.
Instead of the morning after being filled with vengeful fury, why wasn’t the focus within Israel and elsewhere on taking emergency action to restore Israeli security by correcting these costly lapses, which would seem to be the most effective way to ensure that nothing comparable to 7 October could happen again?
I can understand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reluctance to stress this explanation or advocate this form of response, as it would be tantamount to a confession of his personal co-responsibility for the tragedy traumatically experienced by Israel when Palestinian fighters flooded over the border.
In effect, the Palestinian people are being victimised by two convergent catastrophes: one political, the other humanitarian
But what of others in Israel, and among its supporting governments?
Undoubtedly, Israel is in all likelihood devoting all means at its disposal, with a sense of urgency, to close these incredible gaps in its intelligence system, and to beef up its military capabilities along Gaza’s comparatively short borders.
It is not necessary to be a security wonk to conclude that dealing reliably with these security issues would do more to prevent and deter future Hamas attacks, than this ongoing saga of inflicting devastating punishment on the Palestinian population of Gaza, very few of whom are involved with the military wing of Hamas.
Genocidal fury
Netanyahu has lent further plausibility to such speculation by presenting a map of the Middle East without Palestine included, effectively erasing Palestinians from their own homeland, during a September UN speech, where he spoke of a new peace in the Middle East amid the prospect of Israel-Saudi Arabia normalisation. His presentation amounted to an implicit denial of the UN consensus on the two-state formula as a roadmap for peace.
Meanwhile, the genocidal fury of Israel’s response to the Hamas attack is enraging people across the Arab world, and indeed the world over, even in western countries. But after more than three weeks of merciless bombardment, total siege and mass forced displacement, Israel’s discretion to unleash this torrent of violence on Gaza has yet to be challenged by its western supporters.
The U.S. in particular is backing Israel at the UN, using its veto as needed in the Security Council, and voting with almost no solidarity from major countries against a ceasefire at the General Assembly. Even France voted for the General Assembly resolution, and the UK had the minimal decency to abstain, both likely reacting pragmatically to the populist pressures mounted by large and angry street demonstrations at home.
Israel has seized this opportunity to fulfill Zionist territorial ambitions amid “the fog of war” by inducing one last surge of Palestinian catastrophic dispossession.
It has also been forgotten in reacting to Israel’s tactics in Gaza that from day one, the extremist government has initiated a shocking series of violent provocations across the occupied West Bank. Many have interpreted this undisguised unleashing of settler violence as part of the endgame of the Zionist project, aimed at achieving victory over the remnants of Palestinian resistance.
There is little reason to doubt that Israel deliberately overreacted to 7 October by immediately engaging in a genocidal response, particularly if its purpose was to divert attention from the escalation of West Bank settler violence, exacerbated by the government’s distribution of guns to “civilian security teams.”
The Israeli government’s ultimate plan seems to be to end once and for all UN partition fantasies, lending authority to the Zionist maximalist goal of annexation or total subjugation of West Bank Palestinians.
In effect, as morbid as it seems, the Israeli leadership seized the occasion of 7 October to “finish the job” by committing genocide in Gaza, under the guise that Hamas was such a danger as to justify not only its destruction, but this indiscriminate onslaught against the whole population.
My analysis leads me to conclude that this ongoing war is not primarily about security in Gaza or security threats posed by Hamas, but rather about something much more sinister and absurdly cynical.
Israel has seized this opportunity to fulfill Zionist territorial ambitions amid “the fog of war” by inducing one last surge of Palestinian catastrophic dispossession. Whether it is called “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” is of secondary importance, although it already qualifies as one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes of the 21stcentury.
In effect, the Palestinian people are being victimised by two convergent catastrophes: one political, the other humanitarian.
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'The Fog of War Lies Thick': Critics Warn Israel-Gaza Crisis Is Repeating Bloody Mistakes of the Past
"It's so hard to sort out pebbles of fact from mountains of propaganda," wrote Canadian filmmaker Avi Lewis.
Oct 11, 2023
As officials and medical personnel in Gaza said Wednesday that the blockaded enclave faces a "humanitarian catastrophe," progressive journalists warned that policymakers are placing millions of lives at risk by rapidly making hugely consequential decisions while facts about what's taking place on the ground are not always immediately clear.
Canadian filmmaker and activist Avi Lewis used the military term "fog of war"—the difficulty of determining the on-the-ground realities and the correct decisions to make in military operations—to describe the current situation in Israel and Gaza following an unprecedented surprise attack by Hamas on Saturday, which killed more than 1,200 people, and Israel's deadly retaliation against the impoverished enclave that's home to more than two million civilians, about half of whom are children.
"It's so hard to sort out pebbles of fact from mountains of propaganda," Lewis wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, adding that he has been "appalled" by the suffering of civilians in Israel and Gaza and by the decisions that have followed by policymakers thousands of miles away from the conflict.
As Gaza faced intensifying strain on its healthcare system due to a lack of fuel for its sole power plant and the death toll reached at least 950, Lewis was among those condemning countries including the United States, France, and the United Kingdom for "reverting to simple-minded, one-sided Israel-right-or-wrong-ism."
His comments came less than a day after U.S. President Joe Biden said the Pentagon is "surging additional military assistance" to Israel, "including ammunition and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome," repeating that "we're with Israel" without urging a cessation of the airstrikes that have decimated civilian neighborhoods and healthcare facilities in Gaza.
"The dead and the rubble piling up in Gaza are the bitter fruit of this cynical, simple-minded worldview," said Lewis.
As Yumna Patel, Palestine news director for Mondoweiss, noted on Tuesday—citing The Times of Israel—policymakers including Biden are pledging support for Israel's assault on Gaza as media reports focus heavily on the human impact Hamas's attack had, but far less on the suffering unleashed by the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) retaliation.
"By taking only foreign press into these sites and feeding them information, Israel is again taking control of the narrative on the international stage," said Patel. "And by not allowing local, Hebrew-speaking media into certain areas, Israel is shielding itself from the criticisms and growing frustrations of a population that could easily eventually turn on the government for failing to protect them."
"It's a win-win situation for Israel," she added. "It gets to put out to the world the images that it wants (dead Israelis), while limiting what it doesn't want the world to see or hear (real-life Gazans as human beings), and preventing its own people from the truth of its colossal failure."
Germany-based Palestinian journalist Hebh Jamal added that "this misinformation, and fog of war is playing EXACTLY into Israel's favor."
Warnings of the difficulties of determining the reality on the ground in Gaza and Israel came as numerous right-wing leaders in Israel and the U.S. compared the Hamas attack to September 11, 2001, with both the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and a spokesperson for the IDF saying in recent days, "This is our 9/11."
At The Intercept on Monday, Jon Schwarz wrote that the analogy is apt, but perhaps not for reasons Israeli or U.S. officials would acknowledge.
Both Israel and the U.S. "generated their own enemies," Schwarz wrote, with the U.S. encouraging "fundamentalist Islamic opposition to "the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s," and Israel doing "the same thing in miniature in the occupied territories, encouraging the growth of Hamas to damage the secular Fatah." And like the George W. Bush administration, Israel apparently "ignored" warnings about an impending attack, as Haaretzreported Monday.
"Finally, the revenge that Israel will now exact will be hideous, as was that taken by the U.S.," Schwarz wrote. "There is nothing on earth like the fury of the powerful when they believe they have been defied by their inferiors."
At Open Democracy—which published commentary in the wake of the 9/11 attacks urging the U.S. not to rush into war—international security correspondent Paul Rogers also drew comparisons between the current moment and the time period following the World Trade Center attacks, warning that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's current outlook mirrors that of the Bush administration in 2001: "He sees no alternative but to launch a counter-attack," even against civilian families who had nothing to do with Hamas's brutal assault.
"The chances of a peaceful outcome may be remote, but the alternative will be years more of conflict," wrote Rogers. "Those few Western politicians calling for an immediate cease-fire may be shouted down, but they are right."
U.S. lawmakers including U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) were branded "disgraceful" by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre after issuing statements that both condemned Hamas' attack and criticized Israel's occupation. The lawmakers also called for a cease-fire and peace talks.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—the sole member of Congress to vote against the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force—was widely denounced for her vote after 9/11, and over the weekend also called for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
"Time eventually proved her wise, and that lonely stand built her legacy," wrote Intercept journalist Ryan Grim of Lee's dissent in 2001.
Over the objections of lawmakers like Lee this week, he added, "what Netanyahu is doing, and what Biden is encouraging, may spiral into one of the greatest mass civilian atrocities in a half-century."
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