Eric Walberg
Eric Walberg(Review of Steinbock’s book, Part II: The Fall of Israel: The Degradation of Israel’s Politics, Economy & Military, 2025.)
Israelis’ tactics are violence, murder, theft. In short, terrorism. But this has been its strategy since 1948, along with ‘divide and conquer’ of its Arab neighbors.
Steinbock doesn’t take seriously the option of total erasure of the Palestinians, though that is the stated goal of Israeli rulers. The victory of the dead. But even if they could dump the Palestinians in Sinai, that is not a strategy which can bring peace, which would require negotiating with your own dispossessed citizens, and neighbors. In good faith. Which is impossible for Israel, as it is terrorizing its own Arab population and its neighbors. In short, Israel can only survive through 24/7 terror, which is very expensive and means 24/7 US military aid.
This can continue only as long as the US can keep printing dollars to cover its own massive debt; 18% of government spending is just to pay interest on this debt. As this continues to increase, eventually the US will be bankrupt, unable to function under the mountain of debt.
This inevitable bankruptcy of the US will finally hit Israel, bringing to an end the blank cheque on its daily horrors, but I keep reminding myself, it took Rome four centuries to finally collapse.
What is particularly creepy is how Israel has used Palestinians as guinea pigs for testing its weapons of crowd control, now touting itself as the leader in the technology of totalitarian mind-body control. The only growth industry now for Israel is producing weapons, spyware, i.e., anything disgusting and lethal.
This also began in the 1950s as Israel settled in to its schizoid de facto one-state- Jews-only state. The Israel Military Industry (IMI) began collaboration with the IOF, aiming to develop the most technologically advanced small arms systems for troops fighting in urban areas and harsh environments.
The state-owned IMI (i.e., socialized death toys) was privatized in 2018, when it was taken over by Elbit Systems. (Poor Elbit is now the victim of western activists, who forced it to close shop in Britain. Elbit has become our calling card for smashing windows and splashing red paint.)
Israel has had to work very hard to overcome its notoriety as terrorist and mass killer. And it worked! By the early 1980s, more than 50 countries on five continents had become customers for Israeli killing technology.
Israel added some sugar to its military toys, famously bragging about its agricultural successes in ‘making the desert bloom,’ and uses that as PR abroad about how nice Israel really is.
That and weapons, ‘butter and guns’, though its ‘butter’ is all milked from stolen land, and its guns are used not to defend, but to suppress popular uprisings in oppressive Israel-like regimes around the world.
Yes, Dahiya and Hannibal, but these ‘doctrines’ are merely (disgusting, inhuman) tactics rather than winning long run strategies. Israel’s tactics/ strategy is violence, denial, theft with the goal of a Jews-only state, ignoring the natives who live there, and then more violence. Which apparently works for world elites, including not just the US, but Chinese, Indians and Russians. No one besides plucky Colombia and Bolivia have broken relations with the monster, despite rivers of crocodile tears.
The Palestinian strategy is primarily nonviolent resistance with a militant wing occasionally fighting back, which is fully legal for a people under occupation but condemned as ‘terrorism’. Funny how the real terrorists call the shots. The militants address the egregious crimes of the occupiers; they do not target civilians, even medevac helicopters (There may be an implicit pact here: you let us retrieve our wounded soldiers and we will not starve you to DEATH).
This strategy of compassion for the wounded is based on Islam, where rules of engagement with the enemy are nonnegotiable. Another religious principle rejects assassination of enemy leaders.
Such ethical behavior is alien to Israel, which has assassinated hundreds of Palestinian, Lebanese leaders, ‘rationally’ reasoning that the enemy will collapse without them.
When Israel assassinates Palestinian leaders, they are mourned, they become martyrs, inspiring the next generation. In Seyyed Nasrallah is now a saint, an inspiration to all freedom-loving people. His body parts were gathered and temporarily hidden to prevent Israel from bombing them, and eventually will be buried probably in Karbala.
Yahya Sinwar’s body was captured by Israel and most likely will not be returned (maybe dumped from a plane over the ocean like Bin Laden) as it will be a potent sword hanging over Israel’s head.
Israel’s mass murderers, such as Meir Kahane are gruesomely worshipped, but only by nutcase illegal squatters. Israel has few such martyr-heroes, but then neither the Palestinians nor their Muslim allies target Israelis for assassination, not believing that it is a useful tactic or strategy, rather giving a romantic aura of martyrdom to any victim as indeed is the case when Israelis target Palestinians.
The Palestinians’ goal is jannah, the path/ strategy is moral and ethical living, prayer, jihad, martyrdom. Tactics are waging war to the death against the enemy, picking up unexploded Israeli bombs and reusing them. All the time, appealing to humanity, to the basic decency of the outside world, calling on world opinion, boycotting, bringing criminal charges to bring peace.
Steinbock introduces necrotization, which seeks to transform a world of life into a world of death, because that is what displacement, dispossession and devastation ultimately require. It is the collective psychological obliteration of those who have nothing to lose, and therefore fight for their homes, refuse to move away, risk nothingness for being (p.126).
Is this a strategy, or again just a tactic meant to kill or so disillusion Palestinians, so that whoever remains alive will be glad to leave. Whatever. It ignores the ‘last stand’ psychology of the dispossessed, who prefer to die fighting for their homes than to flee to a desolate refugee camp, so it really just amounts to genocide. A crude policy of terror, dispossession and genocide doesn't need any subtleties like tactics vs strategy. The victory of the dead.
Jew vs Jew, Arab turmoil
The real showdown should be between the more universalist Jewish diaspora and the nationalist, racist Israeli Jews. Even as Donald Trump is showered with Adelson’s millions to complete the Israeli dream of total control of the Middle East, some Jews are protesting, but have made zero difference politicly as the Democrats and Republicans are still in lockstep.
So much for that strategy. What’s left? The brain-drain and increased emigration of Jews from Israel as the crisis deepens. But that leaves the Kahane-ites in control. So much for that strategy.
He considers the rise of Islamic movements, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt under Hassan al-Banna, which spread to all the Arab world, rivaled by Arab nationalism under Nasser and Hafez Assad. In all cases, the MBs were crushed by neocolonial regimes, and then attempts to promote Arab nationalism failed, descending into personal dictatorships.
Muslims make poor nationalists. Islam rejects ideologies that interfere with being good Muslims. In Iraq the Baath party reformers finally ending in the humiliating defeat of atheistic Saddam Hussein (who called on Allah in a panic at the end). Though battered, the MBs remain the only survivors of a century of anti-imperialist struggle, still determined to face off against the zionist occupiers.
With Israel commanding everyone’s undivided attention, the Arab world remains shamefully ‘divided and conquered’, resentful, even hostile to Shia Iran’s lifeline to Gaza and Lebanon. Jordan and Saudi assistance to US-Israel to shoot down Iran’s missiles will never be erased. Jordan and Saudi rulers have a lot to account for before their people. Only when Israel is eventually brought to justice, can the Middle East develop more naturally.
Islam remains the bedrock, and Islamic reforms will be the way forward, based now on the experience of the past century, including Egypt’s MB, Islamic Iran and Afghanistan. The Saudis and Gulf emirates are remnants of 19th century British imperialism and do not represent the future of the Egyptian, Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian masses. But until the enemy is defeated, we must stand shoulder to shoulder (though the Saudis et al should keep a look out over theirs).
(Continued in Part III, and concluded)
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