While I am not a military person, after years of studying history, it now seems to me that the reading of the tea leaves in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict foreshadow a changing of the meme. The leaves now seem to align to a conclusion that Israel may now be committing suicide. The myth cycle is turning against Israel.
Coming out of the holocaust, Israel had a huge moral benefit of western guilt that enabled it to expand within Palestine and to concentrate the Palestinian population into increasingly more restricted areas. The PLO’s support of violence, coming to the fore during the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre and the continuing Islamist violence thereafter gave Israel a free hand to fill nearly all of the lands of historic Israel without providing any real justice to the displaced Palestinians. Immigration from Russia strengthened Israel’s power by increasing its population beyond its existing birthrate. That population growth pressured the forming of the West Bank Settlements that devastated the life of the West Bankers.
As the decades passed, more Islamist violence further estranged western sympathy away from the Palestinians. Israel was able to cast itself as the David standing up to the Islamic hoard and thereby captured the unquestioning support of most of the American polity. The meme was supported by the accommodation of Egypt and Jordan who did not want the Palestinians interfering in their nations and eliminated thousands.
No fairness, justice, or recognized nationality was ever afforded to the Palestinians. The whole world just turned the other way and mostly ignored their plight. This lack of humaneness, fostered extreme violence in return, is the genesis of the current suicidal acts. The reciprical violence returned by the Palestinians convinced a complicit press that all were terrorists and furthered the David against the Islamic hoards meme.
Team Spirit prevented development of any compassionate meme within the Jewish or western polity. That same Team Spirit corrupted American politics, purchasing the loyalty of most American decision makers and convincing them to turn the other way from viewing the growing desperation of the Palestinians.
The suicidal behavior accelerated as Israel pressed settlements into the West Bank and the constructed the Wall. Human compassion has been abandoned by Israel in its treatment of the innocent and the resisters, alike, all who are subject to the compression of Israeli rule in Palestine and Gaza. As the Palestinians became more compressed and their population expanded, more Palestinians joined the Palestinian diaspora. Slowly, word of the Palestinian plight became visible around the world. The internet has greatly expanded the access to information about Palestinian life and circumstances.
The Palestinians and the Gazaians seem now to be reaching a point where it is absolutely clear that they are all going to finish their lives as prisoners in bondage unless their whole nation sacrifices the thousands necessary to convince the world that David has become the Herod who murders the innocents.
This is a historic response common to a fully powerless underclass.
As the economic pressure placed on Gaza by the blockade and the increasing encroachments of the West Bank settlements progresses, the desperation of Gazaians and the West Bankers increases exponentially to the point where unacceptable sacrifices have become acceptable in the form of taking losses of children and civilians.
Since the Palestinians are so weak militarily, it is only unilateral death and destruction by Israel that can save it. The only real way the Palestinians can now save themselves, is to provoke murder by Israel as an ultimate weapon of non-violent protest. While the Israelis would argue otherwise, tossing rocks at armored riflemen and shooting fireworks into the desert does not rise to the level true violence. It is just primate demonstration of dare and bravado in the face of overwhelming odds.
Dead infants, by their deaths, function as soldiers in opposition to Israel. All Palestinians, women, infants, children, boys, and men will increasingly function as soldiers to be sacrificed. Children bombed, viewed in pieces on the internet, will increasingly be seen as murder victims. The more brutal the Israelis become, the more valiant will be the services of the Palestinian infants will appear, each of whose death will have more effect than a dozen men killed in a firefight. It seems now, that the Palestinians no longer really have to fight, they only need to invite a response that kills children. If Israel invades, instead of fleeing, the Palestinians may fill the streets en mass to invite death.
The morbid arithmetic will move the meme. Ultimately, and perhaps very quickly, people worldwide will increasingly believe that Israel has become a monster nation with no interest in anything except further extermination of the Palestinian people. As I have written often here before, the myth ideas, or memes, can change almost instantly when people gain the words to express what they tacitly know.
To the extent that people in the greater world know about the plight of the Palestinian people and are informed of the way they exist, those really aware of the plight of the Palestinians tacitly know a horrible crime is in process against them. It seems to me that once the language is invented and learned, Israel will be in a huge hurt with few avenues for rescue. Unlike at the time of Israel’s formation when news was printed or broadcast by a few, the whole world is watching now and can see the full gore on the internet. The pictures will scream against Israel.
In reality, Gaza is now a death camp. The Gazaians are on an involuntary diet, subject to a malicious coriander blockade that deprives their entire society of any hope. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/17/israeli-military-calorie-limit-gaza Israel bombs and attacks helpless people with impunity, teased on by fireworks rockets that nearly never kill. Truly, Israel plays the role of the ultimate bully. It is just astounding that their leaders are so blind that they cannot see they are leading a Goliath to stand between the pillars.
Given the visual effect of tens of thousands of destroyed homes and pieces of dead children spread on the internet, soon the meme will grow that those who suffered the holocaust now are running their own death camp, devoid of human compassion. The world is not devoid of human compassion and once the meme changes, things will change rapidly.
My thought is that the whole people of Palestine know that protest by self imposed bombing of children is now the only way forward. Any “peace” on Israel’s terms means only self-imprisonment and ultimate self-annihilation. My prediction is that the fireworks-rockets will continue to fly. If Israel is suckered, we see more aerial bombing by Israel and it will cause the end of itself within a few months or years. If Israel invades, the Gazaians may, like the Blacks at the lunch counters in the 1960s, just stand quietly blocking the military targets, without resisting except by their physical presence, to be trampled or killed before the cameras.
Israel is acting suicidally. If it cannot learn how to change, it will kill itself. To survive, Israel must find a way to give justice to the Palestinians, starting immediately. Once the meme in America changes as it is now changing in Europe, Israel will have succeeded in destroying itself by its own hand.
Hopefully, the meme will change in Israel first, and the kind people there will regain control from the fanatics so the Jews can save themselves and their nation. If not, there will soon be another green revolution in the ME, the Coriander Revolution, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_scene_of_Coriander_leaves.JPG) and there will be a one state solution. Then, we will see whether the Jews in Haifa, Palestine get equal protection of the sharia laws.
Israel cannot win through suicidal activity. Israel desperately needs a suicide prevention counsellor.
"Any “peace” on Israel’s terms means only self-imprisonment and ultimate self-annihilation."
Why won't Abbas say this every day?
Posted by: Matthew | 16 July 2014 at 05:19 PM
Well said, but your hope is futile I think. The lunatics are running the asylum and the kind people have long fled it to pastures safe
Posted by: mo | 16 July 2014 at 05:42 PM
This may, in fact, be why Israel probably will not actually invade Gaza with ground forces. It is one thing to face a network of well-fortified bunkers and such (they probably will) but they will be "forced" into massacring (mostly) civilians with their own rifles. This may well break the morale of IDf soldiers. It will certainly break Israel's image worldwide. But bombing Gaza from afar does not require having to come face to face with the ugliness up front and (most of) international media can be kept away while the bombardment is taking place.
Posted by: kao_hsien_chih | 16 July 2014 at 07:03 PM
Yes well said and I hope for all concerned that the meme changes in the way you discuss in your two last paragraphs. But I am not optimistic, it seems to me that they're now so locked into what they're doing and what they believe that they are incapable of changing course. It seems to me that from now on they will plunge ever further down the nihilistic path of their own destruction. That they would rather see Israel perish than do what is needful to survive and that when they go down that they will do their utmost to drag as many they can into the grave with them. I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
Dubhaltach
Posted by: Dubhaltach | 16 July 2014 at 07:33 PM
"Never underestimate the spirit, resilience and tenacity of a people who decided they want to be free or just left alone. We may have COIN, shock and awe, and full spectrum dominance; but all that is no guarantee of prevailing in a multigenerational war of liberation."
I made this comment over four years ago to a posting I made of an old paper of mine concerning the Lithuanian resistance to Soviet occupation. The Lithuanians were, quite literally, thrice decimated in their struggle for freedom. The Palestinians will probably surpass this, if they have not done so already, before they attain anything resembling freedom. But make no mistake, they are willing to make this sacrifice to attain their goal. WP has captured this thought well.
My only advice to the Palestinians is to insure that the diaspora includes experts and leaders that will be crucial to building a new Palestinian society once their struggle is won. Many will consider it a humiliation to not sacrifice their lives in the struggle, but that humiliation is the sacrifice that must be made to ensure the new society will bloom in the future. Think of it as saving the seed corn. This is not an original thought. After the last "dust up" in Gaza, I was in contact with a Palestinian hacker of considerable skill. He lamented that perhaps he should stop his IT studies and take up arms in the struggle. His compatriots quickly and vociferously advised him to not take up arms. His skills will be necessary to rebuild a future Palestinian society.
Posted by: The Twisted Genius | 16 July 2014 at 08:03 PM
Great analysis WP.
Here is a similar analysis from John Mearsheimer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq9PsXRbAzM
His advice to Palestinians towards the end (57:00) is eminently sensible.
Posted by: Farooq | 16 July 2014 at 09:05 PM
Interesting.
I wonder about two things here:
1. How much can change for Palestinians as long as the US continues to see Israel as our child who must be defended and protected as if OUR lives depended on it?
2. Their fellow Muslims and Arabs could have offered the Palestinians refugees permanent refuge and citizenship in their countries long ago but chose not to. Isn't this practical inaction in the face of decades of very fervently professed sympathy and solidarity by their own supporters also very hard to overcome?
I am sick of the status quo and find the whole situation maddening. I would love to see change. But I am uncertain that the world will react as you hope to increasingly desperate acts by the Palestians.
I'd like to hear more from others.
Posted by: jerseycityjoan | 16 July 2014 at 11:15 PM
Don't wait for the Israelis to relent. They know perfectly well, as well as anyone on earth with the exception of Palestinians, what they are doing on the ground. They're committed to their stance.
The only population of significance that is uncommitted, and probably somewhat uninformed too, is right here in the US. THAT can be worked on (despite the best efforts of our government and media).
Posted by: pbj | 16 July 2014 at 11:16 PM
Why should Muslims and Arabs offered the Palestinians refuge? They were/are not homeless.
The Israelis will never be satisfied... they will con't to steal land.
Posted by: crone | 17 July 2014 at 01:18 AM
In reply to jerseycityjoan 16 July 2014 at 11:15 PM
I have to echo crone's question. Why, for example, should the Jordanians have to accept what would amount being swamped by another ethnic group in their own country because a hostile and alien culture has violently taken over that group's homeland?
I hope you won't take this as an ad hominem but I've read comments from you here in which you give the strong impression that you are more than a little worried about the effects on American society of the current immigration situation. What Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, in particular would have to accept would be an order of magnitude worse than the situation that's worrying you and without the resources that America has. Put yourself in their shoes and tell us how would you feel about accepting a rapid influx of a couple of million of people from a different (but still North American) culture into your local economy?... What if the entire population of Quebec moved to your state? And did so moreover in a such a state of impoverishment that a hefty proportion of them only possessed a small suitcase worth of clothes? How do you feel about that prospect? - Would you resist it or would you accept them into your home?
Dubhaltach
Posted by: Dubhaltach | 17 July 2014 at 02:49 AM
WP:
I personally don't give a good perspiration inducing shit whether Israel survives or not. Perhaps Highlander, an efficient killing machine, can venture out and put his money where his mouth is
Sir Charles
Posted by: Charlie Wilson | 17 July 2014 at 05:58 AM
"Soon the meme will grow that those who suffered the holocaust now are running their own death camp, devoid of human compassion."
This is already a reality and a point of terrible pain for the few dignified souls that care about nobility of Jewish humanistic tradition.
The Israeli populace at large, brainwashed by the ideology of "chosen" and disoriented by the impunity, cannot stop the inhuman policies. The majority of Israelis became banal sadists.
I agree that Israel has been moving towards self-annihilation due to moral decline.
Posted by: Anna-Marina | 17 July 2014 at 07:40 AM
JCJ,
"Their fellow Muslims and Arabs could have offered the Palestinians refugees permanent refuge and citizenship in their countries long ago..."
The Europeans could have given up part of thier countries to create a homeland for the "Jewish People" to atone for the Holocaust. Instead they chose to give up Palestine.
Posted by: Fred | 17 July 2014 at 09:26 AM
Last week I asked: Is Hamas so stupid to throw futile rockets at GoI knowing they are going to draw F-16 reprisals?
That question drew the ire of Mr. Lang, who labelled me a "hasbarist" for asking it. But it also drew a number of very thoughtful responses. I think most of those responses are wrapped up in this article.
The idea, as I understand it, is to provoke GoI to the point they will kill Palestinian children, who are then photographed and shown to the world. Like the children butchered on the beach:
http://scontent-a-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hvideo-xfa1/v/t42.1790-2/10355059_672786999480679_1905073620_n.mp4?oh=cfc938a5908b9d46fcc254b17b893903&oe=53C8A9C4
The world absolutely has to hold the Israelis responsible for this kiddie-carnage, and for decades of brutal apartheid. And I stand with the Palestinians on that.
But the Americans are complicit by their blind support of GoI as well. (The 155 rounds I see are all marked in English, BTW. I'm not sure what that tells us.) America has been funding this travesty big-time from the beginning, and the volume must be turned up on Congress' role in this travesty.
But if it is the policy or strategy of Hamas to bait the Israelis so that they will kill Palestinian children for photo-ops, then, I'm sorry, I can't support that. Intentionally making martyrs of children is where I draw the line. There has to be a better way to turn the world against the creeping cancer of Zionism.
Posted by: Denis | 17 July 2014 at 10:37 AM
Thanks for the very pertinent and penetrating essay. I'm curious as to who or what "WP" is. I didn't find this on the Washington Post site when I looked for it there and, frankly, although I don't read that paper's website often, I find it hard to believe that the new meme has penetrated that institution enough to induce them to publish something like this.
Also the initials "WP" didn't jump out at me as being ones I see on this website except as the first two initials of our host. Was this written by you, Col.?
Posted by: ex-PFC Chuck | 17 July 2014 at 10:56 AM
Denis: Your point is legitimate, but allowing children to play outside is not using them as "bait."
As I've written, Israel wants to maintain the siege until the Strip becomes uninhabitable, so that Israel gets the result (ethnic cleansing) with having to kill Palestinians directly.
When the Palestinians die quietly, they are quickly forgotten. When Israeli snipers shoot children scavenging for scrap metal inside Gaza, the USG does nothing. When Palestinians fire rockets at Israel, the world pays attention. That is the real moral calculus.
And after one week of slaughter Western politicians begin to feel guilty. See http://forward.com/articles/202263/british-deputy-prime-minister-nick-clegg-blasts-is/?
Posted by: Matthew | 17 July 2014 at 11:01 AM
Israeli doesn't need to Hamas to tempt them. They do what they wish, anywhere they wish!
They need to be stopped in their tracks! How?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-neocons-grand-plan-and-obamas-blundering-foreign-policy-an-actor-playing-the-role-of-a-president/5390624
Posted by: Cee | 17 July 2014 at 11:23 AM
FWIW I used the trackback link on my blog when I linked to this excellent piece, and got an error message that trackbacks are blocked in typepad.
Posted by: Bill H | 17 July 2014 at 11:30 AM
All
How Israel came to be is in the past. The evils that brought it about are obvious and manifest. Those evils have occurred and cannot be erased or changed. We do not now need to continue to make points discussing them to death. I focus here on the present and future possibilities and likely outcomes.
The reality today is that Israel was formed from the territory of a people who no one wants to absorb into their own state and who now live in a prison state, controlled by a people who few like and many hate, but to whom many in the outside world have a deep loyalty. Many view the Israelis as monsters while others view the Israelis as beloved allies against the terrorist hoards. Many view the Palestinians as terrorists and sub-humans who are not entitled to any real rights. Others view the Palestinians as the ultimate victims. All of these views have foundation in fact.
The situation is simply untenable and will not last.
For more than seven decades, the world has stumbled without finding a solution. I am an old guy and the headline of the newspaper on the day I was born featured battles between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The fact that this struggle continues without resolution is proof of a major failure of imagination and leadership skills worldwide. This thing does not need to go on for more generations.
There are historical examples of similar, intractable crises being mitigated or solved: Northern Ireland, American slavery-segregation. and South African Apartheid. In each of those cases, people of wisdom, acting on both sides of the issue, found new memes that allowed reconciliation. Internal memes rarely change the actuality. It is the external meme that forces change. In these cases, the top group was ultimately corrected when a large group outside the affected region and in the greater world simply decided that the dominant group’s conduct would not continue. In each case, the new meme developed outside of the polity of the dominant group and destroyed the dominant group’s ability to continue as before.
Many commenters have correctly stated that the Israelis are set in their ways and that they know what they are doing. I and others have focused upon the desperation of the Palestinians that draws in children as soldierly sacrifices. I view the Israelis and the Palestinians as victims of the world’s failures in need of help.
I do not view Israel as being successful in controlling the meme much longer. Israel cannot control the developing meme because its ruling elite and many of its people are blind to see how its aggression is viewed from the outside. A reading of the comments in the Israeli press graphically demonstrates the viciousness of the internal meme against the Palestinians by the Israelis.
The tacit knowledge is growing that the Palestinians became terrorists, not because of some character or cultural defect, but out of simple desperation because of their impotence. The cognitive dissonance against the long- prevailing world meme favoring Israel as David against the terrorists is becoming so obvious that it cannot be longer ignored. Israeli bombing of innocents just proves Palestinian impotence and accelerates the break toward a new meme.
Israel is a dependent country. It cannot survive without the largess and support of Europe and the U.S. Europe and the U.S. actually have the power, quickly to stop the disintegration simply by stopping the flow of money and military support and demanding the initiation of a western managed reconciliation process. Those who would propose such are deemed to be Anti-Semitic and enemies of Israel. On the contrary, true friends of Israel can see that support of Israel’s current policies will ultimately doom it.
The theme of the developing meme is that Israel needs to be saved from itself.
Memes always control, not policies.
WP
Posted by: WP | 17 July 2014 at 11:46 AM
I am not Col. Lang. I am an observer of life and politics who has been commenting on this blog for many years. I am a civilian who is not associated with the military or the intelligence community.
Thanks for the compliments! I always hope what I write will help somehow.
Posted by: WP | 17 July 2014 at 11:50 AM
Only a few children were killed on the beach. Many have been killed in their homes. So far, I have not observed Hamas intentionally placing innocents in the line of fire. However, the rockets do invite bombing of homes where children do live. The Gazians have not developed their will sufficiently yet. They run and evacuate when Israel threatens bombing.
If the Gazians were to decide to flood the areas Israel demands to be evacuated for bombing with a hundred thousand women and children sitting and dancing in the street, that would be a real statement. I witnessed and participated in sit-in during the late 1960s. A well videoed, very peaceful sit-in is a powerful weapon for change. The best weapons are words, thoughts, feelings, and non-violent physical courage, not those propelled by explosives.
System change is always a balance between will and fear, coupled with information. We will see where the wills and fears are in action.
Posted by: WP | 17 July 2014 at 12:18 PM
Because Abbas--or, as I call him, Mini-Mubarak--is basically Israel's puppet.
Posted by: Seamus Padraig | 17 July 2014 at 12:19 PM
Thanks for this, I'll be sending it around.
How does one save a nuclear armed true believer? Whose many fervent Christian supporters' sacred texts ordain Armageddon?
Posted by: Charles I | 17 July 2014 at 12:21 PM
WP:
I just do not think that the state of Israel is suicidal or is taking that route.
They are supreme Realists: they know that they have been in a permanent state of war and like the denizens of the legendary Fort Apache, they have to send punitive expeditions every once is a while.
Expecting the demise of that state is wishful thinking, just like so many Arabs looking for another Saladin.
Israelis can continue in this fashion for decades, they will change only if they lose the support of American people.
Not like any time soon, in my opinion.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 17 July 2014 at 12:31 PM
It could be argued the Holocaust was a prerequisite to the establishment of a Jewish State. Now its destruction is the religious conviction of many of its most ferevent supporters. While inducing it was not a Zionist tactic,(tho I just assume there are Nazis out there who hold the very thing) the sequelae have been adeptly used for political purposes conducive to the maintenance and unfettered expansion of the democratic miracle in the desert.
History is to learn from, not just repeat. There are gruesome existential lessons abounding that could apply to particular circumstances with a terrible irony, perhaps revealing the joke and changing the meme.
In my moral universe, just war legal collateral damage and all, I draw the line with the one who pulls the trigger aimed at a child trapped in its own miserable home, and stand with the child against the intentional moral agents - the killers.
Martyrdom is a sequelae of the murder, not the cause of it.
Posted by: Charles I | 17 July 2014 at 12:40 PM