Dear World: He’s Not Listening To Us Anymore. You’re On Your Own.

5 thoughts on “Dear World: He’s Not Listening To Us Anymore. You’re On Your Own.”

1. Israel isn’t listening because we are content to whisper a message and have it be disregarded. It’s convenient for our politicians to be able to throw their hands up in mock frustration. Thoughts and prayers and all that…

   It’s well in our capacity to send a loud and clear message to Israel, I doubt Israel would have much luck sourcing future weapons packages from China.

   1. “I doubt Israel would have much luck sourcing future weapons packages from China”

      This is glossed over by most. Western supplies of missiles and Patriot refills were already being run down to zero thanks to Ukraine, Gaza and those pesky Houthis. There may not be enough to go around if Israel has to continue dealing with daily missile barrages over an extended period.

      Add in the upcoming US elections just weeks away, it all points to Netanyahu having every incentive to act quickly. (It also gives Bibi the chance to give Joe Biden a final middle finger salute as a farewell gift.)

2. Really appreciate articles like this analyzing and summarizing situation in the Mideast, they help me stay informed amidst noises that lack in-depth understanding of that region. Looking forward to more in the future.

3. My understanding, and please correct it, was that Sinwar, et al, pulled the pin last October 7 because, for a long period prior, there was a quiet, but growing rapprochement between more moderate Arab states and Israel. Live and let live, good for business, etc. That, for someone who is in the terrorism business, means being out of work (and backers). October 7 functioned, in part, to keep the doors of “Terrorism ‘R’ Us” open. No?

   1. Yes, that effort to normalize ties was absolutely a factor. Here’s the above-mentioned editorial from the September 25 Daily:

      On some accounts, Yahya Sinwar achieved much of what he set out to accomplish. The October 7 attack on Israel thrust the Palestinian issue back to the fore internationally, shattered Israel’s sense of national security, dealt a grievous blow to the IDF’s aura of invincibility, upended Washington’s designs on normalizing ties between Israel and Arab nations and pulled Hamas’s inter-sectarian allies in Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” into a full-on, armed confrontation with their common enemy. But Sinwar’s victories, such as they are, came at a terrible cost. Most obviously, nearly 50,000 are dead in Gaza. Of course Sinwar, by his own account, was willing to sacrifice at least that many Gazans for the “cause,” but was he willing to sacrifice Hamas’s capacity to exist as anything other than a remnant capable of organizing little more than a low-level insurgency? Perhaps. But the West Bank uprising he likely meant to trigger is instead morphing into an even harsher Israeli crackdown in the territory. And the wider struggle has hollowed out Hezbollah’s fighting ranks. Of the triarchy atop the group’s military council, two are dead, and virtually all of their immediate subordinates are too. The IDF looked poised mid-week to invade southern Lebanon. By the time Iran pauses for the fifth anniversary of Qassem Soleimani’s assassination in January, the network he spent two decades building across the Shiite Crescent will be for all intents and purposes destroyed. Yes, the cost to Israel in all of this was high, and the list of unanswered existential questions long. But in the final analysis, Iran and its proxies are no match for the Israeli military-intelligence apparatus. Sinwar’s fever dream was a suicide mission, and if past is precedent, the plight of Palestine will fall by the wayside in the global consciousness sooner or later. And anyway long before any failure of the Israeli state.