Israel Can’t Win All Out War Against Lebanon’s Hezbollah: Here’s Why
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 08.06.2024
Israel’s embattled prime minister has dropped hints that he doesn’t feel he has enough on his plate with the faltering war in Gaza and protests inside his own country demanding his resignation, threatening to expand the Gaza conflict into Lebanon against Hezbollah. A leading Lebanese political observer tells Sputnik why that’s a very bad idea.
Israel is “prepared for an extremely powerful action in the north” against Hezbollah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Wednesday, citing the recent dramatic escalation of cross-border skirmishes, which have included Hezbollah drone attacks inside Israel and the shootdown of a heavy Israeli drone over Lebanese airspace last week.
“Anyone who thinks that they can harm us and that we will sit on our hands is sorely mistaken,” Netanyahu warned, speaking to media in the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, which has been evacuated of most of its civilian population amid the fighting.
“Iran is trying to choke us and encircle us and we are fighting back directly and with its proxies. We can’t accept the continuation of the situation in the north, it won’t continue. We will return the residents to their homes and bring back security,” Netanyahu assured, referencing the Iran-led Axis of Resistance alliance, which includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria, Iraqi Shia militias, and Yemen’s Houthi fighters.
Israeli Army Radio reported this week that the government had approved the call-up of an additional 50,000 reservists in preparation of a possible escalation with Hezbollah. US and Middle Eastern media have braced for a full-scale all-out conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militia.
But whatever superficial similarities may appear to exist between Hezbollah and Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has managed to bog down Israel’s army using a Spartan combination of rifles, man-portable anti-tank missiles and simple rockets assembled in underground garages, political and military observers the world over agree that the Lebanese group is far, far stronger.
Hardened by years of running battles against the Israeli military and with US-sponsored terrorist proxies in Syria beginning in 2012, Hezbollah, unlike Hamas, also has access to an array of sophisticated missiles and rockets, which observers in Washington estimate to number up to 200,000 – enough to overwhelm Israel’s powerful air and missile defense network.
“Israel has threatened to start a military operation on the border with Lebanon because Hezbollah has been demonstrating growing sophistication and surprising capacities, driving Israel increasingly at unease and confusion about expectations on the northern front,” Dr. Imad Salamey, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at the Lebanese American University, told Sputnik, commenting on the rising tensions between Israel and the militia.
Israel can attack many Hezbollah targets at once and cause significant damage, but cannot remove or even dramatically reduce the militia’s capabilities, “which are widespread and mobile,” the observer noted.
“If Israel aims to seriously undermine Hezbollah, it would involve many years of operations to destroy infrastructure and weapons, push fighters out of the south, and cut off supply routes from Syria. Israel will not be able to achieve this fully,” Salamey stressed.
On top of that, the academic warned that “the threat of spillover is quite high, potentially implicating much of the Quds Brigade in Syria and Iraq, resulting in Israel fighting on multiple and wide fronts.”
That’s not the outcome Tel Aviv would hope for, according to Salamey, with Israeli officials and military leaders typically looking “for a quick military achievement with ambitious goals,” which, if that fails, prompts the IDF to resort to “collective punishment targeting civilians, which is the most likely scenario in this case.”
“The potential conflict will result in major losses on both sides without a decisive victory. However, Iran will likely emerge as a major winner, asserting its regional role in any future political settlements,” Dr. Salamey believes.
Hezbollah and Israel fought their last major war in July-August 2006, during which the IDF leveled much of Beirut’s infrastructure and caused up to $5 billion in direct war damage and lost output and income. Hezbollah emerged largely unscathed, however, with about 1,000 of its fighters facing off against between 10,000-30,000 Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, losing about 250 men while killing 121 Israeli servicemen and injuring over 1,200 others.
That conflict has been described even by Western mainstream observers as a loss for Israel, with Israel’s armed forces said to have been given a “bloody nose” and suffering reputational costs which Tel Aviv has proven unable to recover from to this day.
Hezbollah air defenses force Israeli jets to turn tail
The Cradle | June 7, 2024
Hezbollah announced in a statement on 6 June that it targeted Israeli warplanes over the south of Lebanon, forcing them to withdraw to their airspace.
The statement marked the Lebanese resistance group’s first acknowledgment that it possesses the ability to confront Israeli fighter jets, something which observers have speculated about for years.
“In support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and in support of their brave and honorable resistance, the Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance fired air defense missiles at enemy warplanes that were attacking our skies and broke the sound barrier [sonic boom] in an attempt to terrify children, forcing them to retreat to behind the borders,” Hezbollah’s statement read.
It did not elaborate further on the air defense weaponry.
The resistance group carried out several more attacks that day, including a Burkan missile attack on Israel’s Al-Baghdadi site.
Throughout the course of this war, Hezbollah has demonstrated its ability to down advanced Israeli drones flying over the south of Lebanon to carry out attacks. Several Hermes drones, made by Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems and worth several million a piece, have been shot down by Hezbollah in recent months.
“We still do not know much about the air defense missile itself, but it will restrain the ability of Israel to fly freely over Lebanon,” retired Lebanese General Amine Hoteit told The New Arab, referring to Thursday’s Hezbollah statement.
It is likely that Hezbollah has more advanced air defense weaponry than the missile launched towards Israeli warplanes on Thursday, Hoteit added.
US media reports from early November last year claimed that Washington has intelligence that Syria agreed to send Hezbollah a Russian-made missile defense system.
Hezbollah has turned up the heat on its operations against Israeli military sites in recent days, coinciding with the continued indiscriminate bombardment of south Lebanon and increasing Israeli threats of a wide-scale war against the country. A drone attack on Wednesday killed at least one soldier and injured around ten.
It has said that while it does not want a wider war, it is prepared to fight one if it is imposed on Lebanon.
Houthis to Try New Hypersonic Missile in Continued Targeting of US Carrier Group
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 07.06.2024
The Yemeni militia targeted the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Nimitz-class supercarrier in the Red Sea last week amid the continued intensification of American and British air and missile strikes inside Yemen, which have killed scores of civilians.
The Houthis will hit the American aircraft carrier parked in Yemen’s backyard harder next time around, militia leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has vowed.
“The American aircraft carrier Eisenhower will remain a target for our Armed Forces whenever the opportunity arises,” al-Houthi said in his weekly address on Thursday.
“The facts will become clear no matter how much the Americans try to deny the targeting operations, and the upcoming strikes will be more effective,” al-Houthi added.
Offering new details on last week’s Houthi missile and drone barrage targeting the USS Eisenhower amid American denials that the operation did any damage to the supercarrier or its escorts, the Houthi leader emphasized that the attack was more successful than Washington is letting on.
“The operation targeting the aircraft carrier Eisenhower was successful, and overflights stopped for two days following the attack,” al-Houthi said, referring to American attacks over Yemeni airspace. The official added that while the US warship was situated about 400 km from Yemen before the Houthi attack, it was forced to sail 480 km northwest to safety in its aftermath. The operation was “one of the most notable and important operations to be carried out this week,” al-Houthi said.
“American warships flee and change their source when the operations are successful,” the militia leader said.
US Central Command on Friday vociferously denied Houthi claims that the USS Eisenhower was damaged in the Yemeni militia’s attacks.
“There is no truth to the Houthi claim of striking the USS Eisenhower or any US Navy vessel. This is an ongoing disinformation campaign that the Houthis have been conducting for months. While the Houthis intend to target our vessels, we can confirm that there has never been a successful attack on any US Navy vessel,” CENTCOM told Sputnik.
The Houthi attack on the carrier followed a spate of joint US-UK attacks targeting Yemen in an attempt to degrade the militia’s fighting capabilities, with the militia saying last week that the most recent strikes had killed at least 16 people and wounded 42 others.
The Houthis reported Friday that US and UK forces had carried out four new air strikes targeting the airport in Hodeidah, and launched a separate attack on northwestern Yemeni seaport of Salif.
Houthis Go Hypersonic?
Al-Houthi’s comments Thursday came a day after the Yemeni militia released footage of a new “locally made” hypersonic missile called the Palestine being launched toward the embattled Israeli Red Sea port city of Eilat this week.
Israeli officials confirmed Monday that Eilat had been targeted, but indicated that there was no damage or injuries to report.
In the footage, the new Yemeni solid-fuel missile’s warhead was painted in a checkered pattern reminiscent of a keffiyeh scarf. Western observers spotted outward similarities to the Fattah – an Iranian hypersonic missile unveiled in 2023 which can travel up to 1,400 km at speeds up to Mach 15. The range and speed characteristics of the Houthi missile remain unknown, but the distance between Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and Eilat is closer to 1,700 km.
Iranian officials have repeatedly rejected claims by the US and its allies that it has provided arms to the Houthis. However, Iranian media recently confirmed that the country does give its anti-US and anti-Israeli Axis of Resistance allies “technical knowhow” enabling the homegrown production of sophisticated missiles. It remains unclear whether this applies to the new Palestine missile or not.
The Houthis have been teasing their fledgling hypersonic capabilities since the spring, with an informed source telling Sputnik in March that the new Houthi missile could accelerate to speeds of up to Mach 8 (nearly 10,000 km per hour) and had a solid fuel engine, which means reduced launch preparation time and improved ease of transport in Yemen’s difficult conditions.
“Yemen intends to begin manufacturing it for use during attacks in the Red and Arabian Seas and the Gulf of Aden, as well as against targets in Israel,” the source, who was not at liberty to speak publicly, said at the time.
Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi warned in March that the militia’s enemies, friends and Yemenis alike would soon “see a level of achievement of strategic importance which will place our country and its capabilities in the ranks of few countries in this world,” promising that Ansar Allah had “surprises” in store for the US and Israel which have yet to be revealed.
Russian military observer Alexei Leonkov told Sputnik in March that if the Yemeni militia really has managed to speed a missile up to Mach 8 or more, “that will mean that the ship-based air defense systems of the American naval group will be powerless.”
“The air defenses of the carrier strike group presently parked off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula and sporadically firing at the Houthis will not be able to intercept these missiles if they approach at Mach 8. And if the Houthis have managed to make them even a little maneuverable, that’s it, they won’t be possible to intercept. If the Houthis learn to accurately hit warships with these missiles, we will see America’s defeat,” Leonkov said.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin signed an order last week to extend the Eisenhower carrier group’s deployment in the Middle East for a second time, holding off the rotation of the supercarrier and its three missile destroyer and cruiser escorts out of the region, where they have been stationed since last October.
Biden claims Israel ‘has not invaded Rafah’ as jets, tanks raze city
The Cradle | June 7, 2024
US President Joe Biden told ABC News on 6 June that the Israeli government has listened to his “concerns” about a major military offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah.
“They were going to go into Russia – into Rafah – full bore, invade all of Rafah, go into the city, take it out, move, move with full force. They haven’t done that. And what they’ve done is they’ve agreed to a significant agreement,” the US president said as Israeli warplanes continued their months-long blitz of residential areas and displacement camps in the city.
Residents of Rafah who spoke with Reuters on Friday morning described the latest raids as “one of the worst nights,” adding that “some people were wounded inside their homes before being evacuated this morning.”
Residents also said that Israeli tanks that have taken control along the border with Egypt made several raids towards the west and the center of the southern city.
“I think he’s listening to me,” Biden added when asked by ABC News if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heeded his warnings.
Elsewhere in the interview, Biden claimed Netanyahu will stick by his own ceasefire proposal. “He’s publicly said he is. Our European friends are in on it. We have to get a ceasefire.”
“What [Israel has] done is they’ve agreed to a significant agreement that if in fact Hamas accepts it,” the US president said before adding that the offer is backed by much of the Arab world.
“We’ll see. This is a very difficult time,” Biden said.
On Thursday, senior Hamas officials revealed that the Israeli ceasefire proposal “does not mention stopping the aggression or the withdrawal [of troops from Gaza].”
“The Israeli documents speak of open-ended negotiation with no deadline, and it speaks of a stage during which the occupation regains its captives and resumes the war. We had told the mediators that this proposal is unacceptable,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Thursday.
The Cradle columnist Khalil Harb earlier this week described the proposal presented by Biden as a “repackaging of last month’s Hamas-approved agreement, which he is now repositioning as an Israeli-sanctioned deal.
Pipeline v genocide: How Turkiye can legally block oil exports to Israel
By Suat Delgen | The Cradle | June 7, 2024
Israel receives 40 percent of its oil through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, a critical energy route running from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkiye to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and onward, via tanker, to Israeli ports.
The pipeline primarily transports oil from Azerbaijan’s Azeri–Chirag–Deepwater Gunashli (ACG) field and condensate from the Shah Deniz field. British Petroleum (BP) operates the ACG field on behalf of the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC), a consortium of international oil companies.
Another consortium, including BP, SOCAR, MOL, Equinor, TPAO, Eni, TotalEnergies, ITOCHU, INPEX, ExxonMobil, and ONGC Videsh, operates the BTC pipeline and markets the oil globally. On 10 May, BP announced this consortium’s involvement in the pipeline’s management.
Way back in 1999, a Transit State Agreement and an Intergovernmental Agreement were signed between the consortium and Turkiye, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, ratified by the Turkish Grand National Assembly, and officially came into effect on 10 September 2000.
Pressure to halve the oil flow to Israel
On 2 May, in the face of growing domestic pressure to sever ties with Israel over its brutal war on Gaza, Turkiye announced a complete suspension of all import and export transactions to the occupation state until uninterrupted humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza.
But what about the oil? With so many other states and global multinationals involved, can and has Turkiye stopped the oil being transported from Ceyhan to Israel?
Geopolitical importance of the BTC Pipeline
The BTC pipeline emerged from the geopolitical shifts that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. As newly independent states in the Caspian region, particularly Azerbaijan, sought to develop their vast oil and gas reserves, they sought to export these resources to western markets without relying on Russian transit routes. Washington explicitly backed the BTC pipeline to reduce Moscow’s influence and create an alternative export route for Caspian energy.
For its part, Turkiye viewed the BTC project as a strategic opportunity to boost its significance as a key energy corridor. Despite initial doubts about the pipeline’s feasibility, political commitment from the US, Turkiye, and regional states, along with investment from major international oil companies like BP, gradually propelled the project forward.
This collaboration led to the creation of the BTC pipeline, marking a major shift in the region’s energy dynamics and geopolitics.
Today, the pipeline is a crucial route connecting the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean and can shift 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd). According to recent data from the State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan, the volume of oil transported through the BTC pipeline increased by 1.6 percent in 2023, reaching 30.2 million tons.
Operated by BP, the BTC pipeline is the primary conduit for oil exports from the Azeri, Chirag, and Gunashli oil fields. Last year, Azerbaijan’s total oil transportation amounted to 39.7 million tons, with the pipeline accounting for 76 percent of this volume.
The pipeline also serves as a transit route for oil from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, with transit oil volumes rising from 5.1 million tons in 2022 to 5.2 million tons in 2023. Given the significant share of Kazakh and Azerbaijani oil in Israel’s crude oil supply, the BTC pipeline is pivotal in facilitating this energy trade.
A Bloomberg report from October 2023 highlights Tel Aviv’s heavy reliance on this pipeline for its oil supply, from which it received approximately 220,000 bpd of oil since mid-May 2023. Kazakhstan was the largest source, providing 92,500 bpd, followed by Azerbaijan with 44,000 bpd.
Data from the State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan showed that Azerbaijan exported around 1,021,917 tons of crude oil and products to Israel in the first three months of 2024 – a value of $621 million. These figures underscore the critical role of the BTC pipeline in maintaining Israel’s energy security and the potential impact of any disruption to this supply route.
Legal constraints on halting oil flow
Despite Israel’s dependence on oil from the Port of Ceyhan, Turkiye lacks the authority to stop the oil flow except under force majeure conditions, according to the agreement signed with the BP-led consortium. The “Host Government Agreement” (HGA) and the “Intergovernmental Agreement” (IGA) that underpin the BTC Pipeline Project legally bind Ankara to ensure uninterrupted oil flow.
These agreements contain provisions that commit signatory states, including Turkiye, to obligations beyond typical international treaty law. Specifically, the agreements make signatory states unconditionally liable for any construction or oil transport delays, irrespective of the cause.
This gives the international consortium a privileged legal position over national states and requires states to relinquish some sovereign powers, such as legislation and adjudication rights. Thus, even if Turkiye wanted to suspend oil flow to Israel for political reasons, the strict liability clauses and other provisions in the BTC agreements would likely prevent it legally.
Thus, Turkiye is contractually obligated to ensure uninterrupted oil flow or face legal consequences, even for foreign policy reasons. While the BTC pipeline’s strategic importance justifies accepting restrictive terms, the agreements reflect an imbalance favoring corporate interests over state interests.
Potential legal justifications using ICJ measures
However, it is worth noting that South Africa’s proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last December – alleging its actions in Gaza constitute genocide – may have an impact on multiple business and state legal arrangements everywhere.
Officially known as “Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v Israel),” the ICJ has already issued several provisional measures that Israel must undertake to prevent further harm to civilians while the case is being adjudicated.
The ICJ measures are legally binding, and Israel has thus far largely ignored the court’s demands.
It is, therefore, possible for Turkiye to use these ICJ provisional measures as a legal justification to prevent tankers from transporting oil to Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza is achieved.
Ankara could make the legal argument that, in line with the ICJ measures, the oil transported from Ceyhan is being used to continue military operations in Gaza and that, seeking to avoid complicity in a crime against humanity and assisting in implementing ICJ decisions, Turkiye cannot permit the use of its ports for this purpose.
Such a declaration by Turkiye could exert significant pressure on Israel and place the oil consortium on notice that genocide does trump business-as-usual.
While the complex and multifaceted nature of diplomatic and economic ties between Ankara and Tel Aviv make a complete severance of relations unlikely, Turkiye may now hold in its hand a unique legal opportunity to call the shots on oil supply to the occupation state.
Israeli lobby silencing anti-Zionist academics at Australian university
By Maram Susli – Al Mayadeen – June 6, 2024
Yet another University of Sydney academic has been targeted for offending the Australian Zionist lobby, a major funder of the university.
In a lecture to first-year students, Professor Sujatha Fernandes accused “Israel” of lying about “Hamas beheading babies and carrying out mass rape,” and accused the Australian media of spreading those lies to shore up support for “Israel’s” ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, demanded that Professor Fernandes be investigated, and the university has capitulated to the demand. The Rupert Murdoch media has also initiated a witch hunt against the professor.
This comes two weeks after the University of Sydney won its appeal over the unfair dismissal of Sydney Lecturer Dr. Tim Anderson, who was similarly attacked by the Zionist lobby for criticising “Israel.
When asked to comment on the case of fellow academic Professor Fernandes, Dr. Anderson, said:
“The Murdoch media claims she is being ‘investigated’ for her comments, exactly how they started with me. I am sure they will further target her for speaking the plain truth about the Israeli regime.”
Dr. Anderson fought a lengthy legal battle with the university, starting in 2019, after being dismissed for including a lecture slide that compared Israeli atrocities to those of Nazi Germany. The case began with university managers claiming Anderson’s social media comments had offended Israelis and their supporters.
Intellectual freedom in Australia is defined in industrial agreements. In Dr. Anderson’s case, the Federal Court initially affirmed the right to academic freedom, but its most recent decision has muddied that position. In particular, Judge Michael Lee now asserts that the burden is on the individual claiming intellectual freedom to prove that they were acting in the highest professional standards, without providing clear criteria. Overall, five Federal Court judges ruled in favour of Anderson, but the last two tipped the balance against him.
Regarding his dismissal, Dr. Anderson stated:
The reasons behind my sacking were:
(1) Pressure from the Israeli lobby, including corporate media and Israeli funding at the University of Sydney.
(2) Corruption by University of Sydney managers, and
(3) Reactionary politics at the Federal Court of Australia, which dismantled five years of previous decisions on intellectual freedom.
The power of the Zionist lobby in Australia comes from their direct funding of universities and their influence in the media. The National Advisory Committee on Jewish Education, which has donated more than half a million dollars annually to the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, exemplifies this. The committee’s chair, Emeritus Professor Suzanne Rutland, noted on her CV that the committee was a branch of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO), one of the groups instrumental in the creation of “Israel”. Additionally, the committee provided bonuses to all University of Sydney senior managers based on their performance, creating a financial incentive to target professors who criticize “Israel”.
Growing concerns arise regarding evidence of foreign interference in Australian universities due to these practices. The witch hunt against these professors has caused a chilling effect, and academics may begin to self-censor in future academic discourse on “Israel”.
The Israeli and US funding for the University of Sydney has corrupted managers and killed intellectual freedom at Australia’s oldest university.
The continued attacks on these academics come in the context of the International Court of Justice ruling that there is credible evidence that “Israel” is committing a genocide in Gaza. The story of babies being beheaded on October 7th has been conclusively debunked, and the story of rapes on Oct 7 was found to have a lack of evidence. After examining all of the 5,000 photos, 50 hours of videos, and audio from October 7, the UN Secretary General’s report said, “No tangible indications of rape could be identified.” The report goes on to say that the UN did not find a single victim of sexual violence on Oct 7, despite their best efforts to encourage victims to come forward.
In spite of the control that the Zionist lobby has over the faculty, students of Sydney University continue their weeks-long protest against the genocide in Gaza, demanding that Sydney University divest from “Israel”.
Hundreds killed by Israel in south Lebanon since 8 October
The Cradle | June 6, 2024
According to statistics published by the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, Israeli attacks on south Lebanon have resulted in a total of 1,603 casualties, including 401 deaths, since 8 October.
The data published on the ministry’s website indicates that 87 percent of casualties were men, 96 percent were Lebanese nationals, and 57 percent were aged between 25 and 44 years.
The primary causes of these injuries are evident, with 44 percent resulting from blunt trauma, 35 percent from the blast radius of bombings, and 16 percent from chemical exposure – in many cases, white phosphorus.
The data additionally underscores a daily average of 18 casualties, five of them requiring urgent medical treatment at local hospitals, and one fatality.
According to Hezbollah’s military media, around 330 of its fighters have been killed by Israel on the battlefield. Going by the numbers reported by the Lebanese Ministry of Health, the remaining 71 deaths are those of civilians and journalists.
Additionally, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported that 94,126 residents of southern Lebanon have since been displaced.
Israeli aggression has caused significant damage to Lebanon’s forests and agricultural land.
Earlier this week, Hezbollah rockets ignited massive wildfires in the Israeli north, resulting in extensive damage to forest reserves and several hospitalizations due to smoke inhalation.
Hezbollah has been gradually escalating its daily operations against Israeli military sites and settlements since October. The movement opened a front against Israel on 8 October, one day after the start of the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, in support of the Palestinian resistance factions.
Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem have made it clear that Hezbollah’s operations will not stop until Israel stops its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Beyond Rafah: What the Zionist entity is headed toward
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | June 5, 2024
The tunnel systems have not been destroyed, the weapons capabilities of the Resistance remain, and the fighters have survived some of the toughest onslaughts the Israelis are capable of mustering.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has set the invasion of Rafah as the route to a comprehensive victory against the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza. This is a lie, and the Zionist regime will not achieve its war goals, so what comes next when the Israeli public is faced with the truth?
The Zionist entity launched its genocidal military campaign against the Gaza Strip, claiming that it sought to both dismantle Hamas and retrieve its captives by force. Neither was achieved in around 8 months of confrontations, despite having inflicted massive death and destruction on a scale that hasn’t been seen since the Vietnam War.
Before the Israelis launched their ground incursion into the Gaza Strip, the line of propaganda was to pretend as if their unprecedented bombing campaign was going to dismantle the Palestinian Resistance’s complex web of tunnels underneath the besieged coastal territory. We heard about all the various munitions that were supposedly going to penetrate the tunnel systems and destroy the majority of them, prior to any face-to-face fighting.
When “Israel” did invade the Gaza Strip, it soon became clear that they were not even trying to penetrate the majority of the tunnels, despite their propaganda. The Zionist army came in on the ground, choosing to set up positions in open areas, before packing their soldiers in armored personnel carriers, tanks, and militarized bulldozers, refraining from using infantry to clear areas prior to penetrating them. They were subsequently met with tough resistance from the Palestinian armed factions. As for the tunnels and the attempts to recapture their captives, the rescue missions were all foiled, and the Israelis seemed to only be sealing off tunnel entrances they found, instead of sending forces underground to fight face-to-face.
The Zionist entity then set its sights on Gaza City, choosing to target the northern sector of the coastal territory in the initial stages of the invasion. Despite their attempts to completely ethnically cleanse the north, hundreds of thousands remained steadfast on their lands and refused to leave. Petty tactics were then employed by the Israeli ground forces, such as flying their flag in areas they managed to reach temporarily in their armored vehicles and tanks.
All this was going on as their leadership claimed that the “Hamas headquarters” was situated under the Al-Shifa Hospital, for which they released a CGI video depicting a multi-layered tunnel system. After finally invading the Shifa medical complex, the Zionist regime was outed as a bunch of liars as no headquarters was found there. Nonetheless, their evidence-free conspiracy theories about Hamas using hospitals as military headquarters’ and bases continued to drive the invasion of the north.
Suddenly, after being pointed out as having fabricated evidence in the north of the alleged “Hamas bases” and “Hamas headquarters” underneath hospitals, they began to pivot to Khan Younis. Khan Younis is the “real Hamas headquarters” they told their own settler population and the international community, deciding to invade the city in December, after the conclusion of a brief cessation of hostilities and prisoner exchange. In early January, they had already besieged the city of Khan Younis completely, finding no “Hamas headquarters”, and then began to obsess over the southernmost city of Rafah.
For months, the threats to invade Rafah were constant, and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, asserted that his regime could not win the war without invading Rafah, and we repeatedly heard about the authorization of the operation to force a ground incursion into the area. This was met with international condemnation and a series of contradictory remarks from the US President, Joe Biden, who still can’t decide on what his “red line” actually is.
On May 6, Hamas called the Israeli-US bluff and accepted a ceasefire proposal. This was despite the fact that Netanyahu had been talking about his unwillingness to accept any ceasefire with Hamas for over a week prior. Although the Israeli premier was promising an invasion of Rafah, the US Secretary of State was publicly lauding the ceasefire proposal and urging Hamas to take it during his visit to West Asia. When Hamas decided to accept the proposal, which was almost identical to the one that was promoted by the US and elements within the Israeli regime’s leadership, it caused shockwaves, and the Zionist military responded by launching its invasion that same day.
The Israelis made a fatal mistake, however, deciding to also invade the al-Zaytoun neighborhood near Gaza City and Jabalia, both located in the north of the Gaza Strip. The invasion of Jabalia appeared to be an attempt to try and pull off a propaganda victory, by extracting the bodies of Israeli captives killed by their own airstrikes. However, they were surprised by the level of fighting waged against their soldiers by the Palestinian Resistance, who not only inflicted heavy losses on the Zionist invaders but, in the case of Jabalia, managed to pull off one of the toughest battles of the entire war as well.
The Zionist entity is renowned for concealing its casualties, but it could not hide all of them, and the public was exposed to daily reports about incidents in which their soldiers were killed and dismembered. This was a major embarrassment because the Israelis had told their own people that they managed to dismantle all of the Resistance battalions in the north months before, which clearly was not true.
Then came the announcement last Saturday from Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, who informed the world that an ambush had taken place in which the Resistance group managed to capture, kill, and injure the members of a force that they lured into a tunnel. The very next day, after increased rocket fire into the surrounding settlements during the weeks prior, al-Qassam launched a barrage of rockets from Rafah that struck north of “Tel Aviv”, managing to cause impacts and bypass the Iron Dome system. Embarrassed and in disarray once again, the Zionist entity decided to commit a series of massacres against civilians, the most egregious taking place against refugees sheltering in tents northwest of Rafah City.
All of this is to say that the Zionist regime is now faced with a dead end, as it will not find victory in Rafah and will fail as it did everywhere else. Not one of the dozen armed Resistance groups operating in the Gaza Strip have been defeated, let alone Hamas. The tunnel systems have not been destroyed, the weapons capabilities of the resistance remain, and the fighters have survived some of the toughest onslaughts the Israelis are capable of mustering. Moreover, the captives have not been extracted by force and now they have lost even more in Jabalia. So what is next?
The Zionists are out of real options in the Gaza Strip, they have not found any reasonable plan for a day-after scenario, and once they meet failure in Rafah, there is nowhere else they can claim is the “real Hamas headquarters” any longer. This is why they have to pivot away from Gaza and find another target.
The single biggest thorn in the side of the Israelis right now is the Lebanese Resistance. Over the course of the war, Hezbollah and its allies have annihilated the Israeli monitoring and defense capabilities, smashed their military sites to pieces, destroyed many settler housing units in the bordering settlements, and forced over 100,000 Israeli settlers to flee in fear. The Israeli economy in the north has been paralyzed and the image of the Zionist army has been dismantled, as Hezbollah uses Israeli soldiers and military bases as test subjects for its military equipment.
What the Israelis could do is to either wrap up their invasion of Rafah quickly or continue it in a slow fashion, while deciding to launch a limited military operation against Lebanon. In the event that this occurs, it is not likely for the Zionist regime to commit suicide, and so, it is more likely that, despite the propaganda that they will release about such an operation, they would attempt to prevent it from spilling over into a full-scale war.
If “Israel” chooses this option, it understands well that Hezbollah will respond with unprecedented strikes that will shake the entity to its core, which will result in the sidelining of the Gaza war. Not only will the Israeli settler population be focused almost entirely on Lebanon, but so too will most of the world and certainly the international community. This would provide them with the opportunity to bring a close to the Gaza war and conclude a prisoner exchange while ensuring that it looks like they are attempting to restore their broken image. Such a scenario would also buy Netanyahu and his leadership more time in power.
If this happens, the course of the struggle will not come to a conclusion, however, as there is another very obvious front and that is the occupied West Bank. It is possible that the Israeli leadership could then shift its focus again, this time to the usurpation of what is known as area C of the West Bank; an area which constitutes around 60% of the total territory. For a long time, the Zionists have sought to seize this area, but due to external pressures from their allies, they have refrained from doing so.
The excuse in the West Bank will be the Resistance groups, which are primarily operating in the north of the territory and would work to justify a large-scale military campaign. In the event that a ceasefire is already concluded in Gaza, they could then go in without the fear of the resistance in the Gaza Strip pulling off a major defensive attack and seizing the land they seek. This would be the embodiment of their decades-long plot to divide the four parts of Palestine from each other, that being the 1948 territories, occupied eastern part of al-Quds, the West Bank, and Gaza. If Netanyahu manages to end his bloody campaign of terrorism and genocide in the West Bank, it is the one place where he can actually extract what appears on paper to be a victory and it may be enough, in his mind, to save him from the inevitable political death he is slowly dying today.
What is mentioned above may not occur in the exact order listed, but it is almost inevitable that the war on Gaza is going to shift to Lebanon and the West Bank in the foreseeable future. Unless the Zionist regime comes up with another excuse to maintain the course of the war in Gaza for a longer period of time, which will delay the pivot to other fronts, it seems like what lies beyond Rafah will be Lebanon and/or the West Bank. The decision to delay the invasion of Rafah for so long seems to have been down to the fact that this will be the end of their justifications for remaining at war in Gaza. The response to what the Zionist Entity is planning will be in the hands of the resistance.
Laws of War – Matt Orfalea
Matt Orfalea | May 25, 2024
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Book Review
Palantir CEO Calls for Draft to Fight the Empire’s Wars
Involuntary servitude is good for business
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | April 20, 2026
In 2025, Alex Karp, the CEO of government and military tech contractor Palantir, published The New York Times best-seller, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. The Wall Street Journal praised the book as a cri de coeur, a passionate appeal “that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies,” while Wired praised the book as a “readable polemic that skewers Silicon Valley for insufficient patriotism.”
On April 18, 2026, Palantir posted twenty-two points to social media summarizing the book. In addition to taking Silicon Valley to task for insufficient patriotism, advocating a role for AI in forever war, and denouncing the “psychologization of modern politics,” the Palantir post on X declares: “National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.”
National conscription, a form of involuntary servitude, and the wars it portends, is good for business, especially for corporations within the orbit of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security state. Palantir fits comfortably within this amalgamation. … continue
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