Mounting Crises in Both Israel and Ukraine.

Palestine

My posts will be erratic over the coming weekend. We have now entered a period of extreme crisis, in two of the three major axes of the collective West’s counterrevolution against multipolarity. And I believe that the future of the human race now hangs on a thread. So I shall want to call my readers’ attention to any very important developments, even if my reports will need to be somewhat more impressionistic than usual.

I hear (from Max Blumenthal, talking yesterday with Judge Napolitano) that Israel’s electricity grid (heavily dependent on coal, supplies of which are being squeezed by Colombia) will not survive a Hezbollah attack, and that highly dangerous ammonia plants (the impact of whose destruction would be comparable to a nuclear bomb) in northern Israel have been shown to be vulnerable to Hezbollah drones.

Israel’s government under Netanyahu, remains totally dependent on a continuing flow of weapons from the US. Yet, Netanyahu becomes more outspokenly critical of US President Biden. This is despite the fact that Biden and almost the entire US government apparatus is considerably funded and controlled by Likud so far as Likud interests are concerned. This Likud manages to do by means of privileged influence over US policy makers, over the US Department of State, and over US politicians, from AIPAC and other financial pro-Israeli donors and the manipulation such funds to dominate the narratives of mainstream media and to squash academic freedom of speech. Like Zelenskiy in Ukraine, Netanyahu is ever more petulant and demanding (for more weapons, for more attacks on Iran, for more US sailors in the Red Sea, etc.).

This is in a context in which declarations against Israeli genocide in Gaza and in the West Bank have now been endorsed, in one way or another, by the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and multiple other sources. Yet, according to Scott Ritter, speaking to Judge Napolitano yesterday, Israel has not even won its war against Hamas in Gaza or anywhere else. The spokesman for the IDF has been quoted as saying that Israel cannot defeat Hamas because Hamas is an ideology. Yes, indeed, an ideology of resistance against seventy years of colonial murder, torture, imprisonment and suppression, with tens of thousands of Palestinians languishing without justice in Israeli prisons and subject to Israeli abuse.

The IDF has suffered the loss of 9,000 seriously wounded or dead soldiers. Yet in a desperate bit to draw the US ever more intimately into the conflict, Israel is provoking Iran and, by implication, Russia, by its advanced planning for and probable execution of an invasion of southern Lebanon for what I would expect to be an air, land and sea war against Hezbollah, that could also involve Cyprus (although Cypriot leaders are trying to assure Hezbollah that they are committed to a peaceful relationship with all its neighbors) and, through Cyprus, with the warring lions of the eastern Meditteranean, Greece and Turkey. The Greek sector of Cyprus has always been a NATO proxy. There is more than a strong chance - and Ritter (whose erudite passion I admire, even if his certainty about things often makes me nervous), says that Israel has already lost the war and that it will be overwhelmed by Hezbollah missiles and fighting forces - that the IDF will actually be defeated.

In the meantime, Netanyahu clings on to power in order to save himself from having to go to prison once his term ends; he has dissolved his war cabinet; he faces a highly explosive electorate whom he has done the most to polarize in the earlier years of his administration. This is a situation that can lead to civil war. Scott Ritter does not expect to see Israel survive as a nation.

Ukraine

Meantime, in Ukraine, I don’t see that things are particularly encouraging for Russia on the ground, despite its recent advances, but I concede that the mathematics continue to point to ultimate Russian victory. In addition to the stalling of Russia north of Lyptsi, the loss of Starytsia, the loss of Tyke, and Russia’s continuing struggle for the northern sector of Vovchansk, I note that analysts who are close to sources of movements on the battlefields are now saying that Sokil, west of Ocheretyne, is not, after all, under Russian control but that Ukraine continues to control more than fifty percent of the territory. This is a considerable backstep, and a reminder of the toxicity of the fog of war.

Furthermore, Dima of the Military Summary Channel reports of Ukrainian missile and drone strikes on Russian fuel depots “across the entire territory of Russia.” This capability, greenlighted of course, very recently, by NATO, is shocking, and it threatens to impede Russian capability to fuel its air and land forces in response to the upcoming second Ukrainian counteroffensive.

President Putin in Hanoi yesterday, in a public address that marked the conclusion of what I might loosely describe as a watery mutual security agreement, made remarks that, on first hearing at least, struck me as less confident than usual. He talked of a war in which, if Ukraine lost, would change nothing, but that if Russia lost, would (by implication) be catastrophic. He was saying, I think, that if Russia lost then of course it would mean the end of Russia as we know it. That, after all, is the declared intention of those who were most responsible for goading Russia into its SMO. Russian people know and understand this, they have right on their side, and they will resist to the end.

Putin also said, unwisely, I think, that Russia did not need to be the first to use nuclear weapons since its response to any first strike from its enemies would annihilate them. I thought that this comment reflected the innermost reasonableness of Putin that is also, when displayed to the world, an exhibiton of a certain weakness that might encourage rather than demotivate Russia’s enemies. Others, I know, will disagree.

Well, that is it, for now. But I shall return to these posts as soon as an opportunity permits.