Israel vs Iran: Proxy wars, long distance war and post-war depression

For most of 2024 Hezbullah were firing missiles into Israel, mainly into the north, emptying the population of various towns and villages. The populations of Kiryat Shemona, Metulla, Shlomi and the local Kibbutzim left as their towns were hit by missiles (about 100,000 people) and were mostly housed in the hotels emptied by the war. 

Hezbullah were supposed to have 150,000 missiles, mostly close to the border with Israel. 150,000 missiles is a missile for each 70 Israelis (including Arab-Israelis). Its a lot, about one or two missiles for each Hezbullah fighter (see this video of Hezbullah saluting (watch to end))

After the reality check of 7th October 2023, it was clear that Iron Dome didn't really eliminate the threat. We couldn't just wait for them to invade and/or fire missiles.  The sight of demonstrators around the world baying for our blood made the danger clear. So we stacked up on food, solar-powered phone chargers and water. I bought a 150 liter water container to store drinking water and prepared for a hard time. 

The war was an anti-climax. Hezbullah's beepers blew up, its leaders were killed and the massive threat turned into almost nothing. After that it was just the twice weekly missiles from the Yemen which mostly got shot down. They were unpleasant, and woke you up at night, but you could live with it and periodically, the government bombed them back.

Then, about a month ago, I read that Israeli war planes had bombed a drone factory the Iranians were setting up in Shia Beirut. At that point, it felt like Israel would have to attack Iran. They've been attacking Israel for decades through proxies, calling us Satan, hanging huge posters in Hebrew (in Tehran), promising the worst. They wanted a war and now was the time to attack, before Hezbullah and Hamas rebuilt.

The day before the war started, I heard the rumble of warplanes all day. Its a low base sound, and I have noticed that a lot of people can't hear it (actually it night have been civilian airplanes leaving Ben Gurion as they were all sent away). When I was kid, after the Yom Kippur war, when you heard a warplane, you would look up and say knowingly "Ah, F15e" like somebody identifying a stork flying overhead. I have a vivid memory of watching a low flying warplane break the sound barrier and hearing/seeing the sound fall increasingly behind it, the plane flew silently in front of the sound. But these day, the planes fly so high, you can't see them.  

The next day was supposed to be the gay parade. Perhaps Netanyahu sold the attack to his Orthodox coalition partners by saying he would get the Gay Parade cancelled (in 2019 it had 250,000 attendees). Caitlyn Jenner, the former men's Decathlon Olympic champion, now a woman, was in Israel for the event and got stuck in Tel Aviv, she eventually left through Amman.

We woke up to find ourselves "at war" with Iran, which is only 1500 kilometers away (or 2,000 depending on which bit you're aiming at).  Incidentally its a similar distance to the Yemen, so I guess that was a dry run. By now, we are accustomed to being "at war" and having missiles fired at us. My daughters would go down to the shelter during the night, and then go to school the next morning as if nothing had happened (I went to work). The people who suffered were those living near the borders who had to relocate (or had family and friends killed), or sons (occasionally daughters) fighting or flying. My partner had two nephews in the same commando unit, one her sister's son and the other her brother's son and both parents had difficulty managing. I worked with a religious woman whose son was in the infantry in Gaza, it seemed worse then commandos who are used sparingly for specific specialist missions and not wasted on brutal long term fights. Her son was there for months. After an initial enthusiasm the soldiers were all sick of military service.

My dentist's window was blown out

With Iran the scale of the missiles was different, school was cancelled and I stopped ignoring the sirens. Our building is a bit thin and clearly even a near miss would demolish it. 

A tower block near a missile landing point

The Iranians fired missiles every night and we have no "safe room", which meant going downstairs to the shelter.  The bomb shelter has a reassuringly thick steel door but is the size of a all bedroom. The first night I went down at 3am in a food-stained t-shirt only to find myself facing my neighbors, not the people you want to see in the middle of the night. After that I only went to bed in a clean t-shirt.  There are only 4 families in our building, one got stuck in the UK (he was quite pleased and happy to sit it out), another was in Arizona and got back towards the end of the war. When they did, they would send their sons down at a run to grab the best seats in the shelter. By then my partner had gone to stay with her sister (nearby) with one daughter and they slept in her sister's safe room. So me and the other daughter had to sit at the edge of the shelter, in the cheap seats. 

A friend told me that the building opposite has no shelter and every evening, by the time he got down, he would find the people from the other building sitting there, and nowhere for him to sit. It is illegal to refuse entry to your bomb shelter. Our dog also go into the rhythm, rushing into the garden to pee first and then heading to the shelter.  Fortunately everybody likes him.

A bus that was near a missile hit

When the long distance war against Iran ended, I found myself feeling a little depressed. It amused me to reflect that I was experiencing a post-war depression and was astonished to find that everyone I said this to said they were experiencing the same thing.

We are very practiced at "being at war" and everybody gets on much better while it happens. War with Iran is quite simple compared to dealing with Israel's coalition politics. I expect Netanyahu feels the same way.  Making peace is a lot harder and more divisive.

On reflection, I think Netanyahu did quite a lot to avoid war before 2023, including allowing vast amounts of money and aid to enter Gaza. Israel did not initiate war. Unfortunately it all blew up in our face. I think we/he spent the last 20 years preparing for war with Iran and Hezbullah and completely underestimated the threat posed by Hamas and the Palestinians in general.  The airforce got a lot of money, and the ground troops prepared for Hezbullah, but nobody thought about the Palestinians.

The Iranians saw two principle Israeli weaknesses: 1. Israel has no strategic depth: We can only lose once, they can be defeated many times. 2. We couldn't sustain a long war with a civilian army. Netanyahu has put number 2 to bed.     

 

 

The razor thin difference between opposing and supporting genocide

 Early on in the current conflict in Gaza, we witnessed the amazing spectacle of three heads of Ivy League universities having problems saying that calling for genocide is wrong (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VtAZBvmzcQ_). It was bizarre, even amusing,  that such seemingly brilliant people could be so stupid.

Now Gary Lineker, an old hero of mine, has got into trouble for sharing a post about Zionism which prominently featured a rat on the screen. For some time now, Lineker has used his 9 million-follower X / Twitter feed and 1.5 million Instagram account to post against genocide in Gaza or against Israel. I don't follow him and his political opinions don't really interest me, but the rat image was of interest. I tried searching for the video he shared, but all I can find is talk of Lineker himself. 

In 2004 I did a one year MA course on the Holocaust with Professor Dan Stone of the University of London (Royal Holloway), who is now one of the world's most prominent experts on the topic. Dan showed us at least one Nazi propaganda film, which is usually banned, but which in the context of the course we could watch. I looked for the video, this film has a very short extract from it towards the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UF6zAqDSJE (most of the scenes shown are from my father's hometown). This article is about the film: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/der-ewige-jude.

The film is definitely disturbing, but of course, why would a famous footballer know about it? Apparently whoever posted it did though. 

Image from an Austrian newspaper, taken from https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/photo/201511191600190569/cartoon-depicting-jewish-refugees-rats-thrown-out-germany-and-nazi-occupied

From written descriptions of Lineker's movie, it sounds like it describes Zionists as rats who invaded Palestine and it sounds plausible that whoever posted it had seen the Nazi film. The kind of mistake Lineker made happens frequently to liberal supporters of the Palestinians, as there are many not-so-liberal supporters also getting their voice in and the people they are supporting are not exactly paragons of virtue. During its short invasion of Israel in October 2024, Hamas or Hamas supporters went house to house in Israeli villages and towns killing occupants or taking them as hostages, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the long-term aim of Hamas is either genocide or ethnic cleansing. So it's very easy for someone, seeking to oppose "Israeli genocide" to find themselves either actively calling for genocide/ethnic cleansing or inadvertently supporting calls for genocide and ethnic cleansing (if there is a difference between calling for something and supporting it). 

Netanyahu is also opposing genocide: In his case, the apparent threat of future genocide and ethnic cleansing of Israeli Jews, which would seem to be validated by the widespread support for Hamas and opposition to Israel and calls for its destruction. Antisemitism was once, and apparently is now, a path to popularity in Europe. Massacres in Rwanda, Iraq or Sudan don't get much response, but when it happens in Israel - The hatred is vivid. 

600,000 Iraqis died during the Anglo-British invasion of Iraq. The Arab-Nationalist Saddam Hussein gassed 200,000 Kurds and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis during his rule which never stopped many prominent British leftists from supporting him, including most famously, Vanessa and Colin Redgrave (worthy of a post in itself). Arab-Nationalist Assad killed some 600,000 Syrians during the recent civil war (and used chemical weapons against his own people). Nasser, the most popular of Arab-Nationalists used chemical weapons in the Yemen and in 1967, Egyptian radio boasted of the coming massacre of the Jews in Palestine. 50,000 German civilians died in one night in Dresden, very few of them would have been fighters. About a third of the dead in Gaza are fighters. In Sudan, Arab nationalists have murdered many hundreds of thousands of Black-Africans - possibly millions -  in an attempt to drive them out of oil-rich Darfur.

I haven't seen anybody calling for attack on Alawites, though Assad's regime is largely Alwaite, or on Sunni-Arabs, although Saddam was Sunni-Arab. 

When Israel proposed that it handle the distribution of food in Gaza, there were, naturally a lot of appalled voices. Hamas certainly opposed it. Hamas and many socalled "aid-agencies" and European leftists are often happier to see Palestinians starving (which they can blame on Israel), then to have Israel dela with the problem at the xpense of Hams. I assume that is because, in the end, they are more interested in exterminating or driving out the Jews, then they are in Palestinian welfare. 

Who is an antisemite: Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice vs Marx's Jewish Question

One of the curious things about both The Merchant of Venice (1597) and On the Jewish Question (1843), both of them seminal texts of Western civilization, is the number of people who insist that they aren't antisemitic. 

The introductions to their Wikipedia articles end with a reference to debates but imply that this is of marginal significance: 

• "Debate exists on whether the play is anti-Semitic..." (Merchant of Venice) 
• "A number of scholars and commentators regard On the Jewish Question... ...as antisemitic, although others do not [I cut the long prevarication in middle]. 

In both cases, the arguments are the same: That the antisemitism is debatable or is a claim made by [some] oversensitive Jews. 

Shakespeare, it is said, was keen to portray Jews as fellow humans, but then Shakespeare always provided deep insights into his characters' psychology: However bad they are, they always have human motivations. The fact is though, that Shylock is an unpleasant, antisemitic, vengeful caricature and the "pound of flesh" metaphor has often been used against Jews, both as individuals and as a group. Just because Shakespeare also shows Shylock's motivations, doesn't stop it being a caricature. I am not suggesting that the play should be banned, but pretending it has no antisemitic characteristics is ridiculous.

As for Karl Marx, the point made by his defenders is that the article seeks to argue that Jews should be given equal rights. Yet the article is just as bad as the Merchant of Venice: "Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money[...] An organization of society which would abolish the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible" [quote copied from Wikipedia, this is not the only quoted text].

There are a couple of points to be made about the Wikipedia articles that reflect British attitudes to these texts: 

• The complete denial of obvious antisemitism by claiming positive intention.
• The insistence that the antisemitism claims are debatable and therefore suspect.
• The assumption that evidence of antisemitism invalidates the text.

In contrast, the article on Geofrey Chaucer's "The Prioress's Tale" is very explicit about its antisemitism, but that story has no redeeming features. The article about Chaucer makes no mention of this tale or the antisemitism.

I think it is a feature of what is currently being called "Woke culture" that if a text contains racism, then the author is completely invalid. So if we describe Marx or Shakespeare as antisemites, the implication is that all their texts are antisemitism. 

I found a Universities UK document "Tackling racial harassment in November 2020" (written by Professor David Richardson,  Chair, UUK Advisory Group on tackling racial harassment in  higher education). The text is very persuasive and aggressive in its nature: 

"In a university, institutional racism is not just the problem of those suffering from the injustices that result from it. It is a problem of the whole university community, and so the whole community must own the challenge together, led by the vicechancellor or principal. University leaders and governing bodies must recognise addressing racism as a strategic priority. This will benefit students and staff, but also society as a whole as we shape the minds and attitudes of the next generation. Some have argued that we need patience, and that cultural change takes time. However, it is clear that people have run out of patience – and rightly so. The sector demonstrated how quickly change is possible when it adapted its entire delivery model within a few days in March and April this year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. My challenge will be to see similar fast progress in turning words into action on tackling racial harassment in our institutions. We cannot afford not to."

He never uses the word "Jew" (I searched for it), just "students and staff from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds". 

Antisemitism in the UK is deeply embedded in the fabric of society and, as Chaucer shows, goes back to the very origins of the English language. In effect, it cannot really be removed from British culture. It can, however, be acknowledged. 

Netanyahu: The loser who always wins.

Netanyahu has led the Likud in 12 Knesset elections, over 33 years: More elections than any other Israeli politician, although Begin was leader of the Likud or Herut for just as long. Under Netanyahu's leadership, the Likud did not always emerge as the largest party and he did not always become prime minister. 

Ben Gurion particpated in 5 elections over 15 years, winning them all. Begin led the Likud (or its earlier version called Herut) in all 10 elections from 1948 to 1981. Over 30 years (since 1951), Begin's share of the vote either increased or remained static in every election: He never won less seats than in a previous election.

Elections	Likud seats under Begin	Labor Leader	Labor Seats
1949	14	Ben Gurion	46
1951	8	Ben Gurion	45
1955	15	Ben Gurion	40
1959	17	Ben Gurion	47
1961	17	Ben Gurion	42
1965	26	Eshkol	45
1969	26	Golda	56
1973	39	Golda	51
1977	43	Peres	32
1981	48	Peres	47

In 1982 Begin resigned and Shamir took over, leading the Likud in 3 elections (winning one). Since winning leadership of the Likud in 1992, 33 years ago, Netanyahu has contested 12 Knesset elections as head of the Likud. In 7 of those elections, Netanyahu became Prime Minister . Curiously he has won the most Knesset seats only 5 times in 12 elections, but still managed to become (or remain) Prime Minster 8 times.

Netanyahu has never lost a contest for leadership of the Likud. Sharon became leader because Netanyahu resigned in 1999, after he lost a general election to Ehud Barak.
Ariel Sharon left the Likud in 2005, creating a new party called Kadima, and Netanyahu has led the Likud ever since.

Since 1992 there have been three direct election contests for the role of Prime Minister. Netanyahu contested those twice, winning once and losing once.

In only one election in the last 28 years, was the Likud not led by Netanyahu: Ariel Sharon won the 2003 Knesset elections and accompanying direct election of the Prime Minister.

When has Netanyahu lost?

The first election Netanyahu lost was in 1999. At the time, the Prime Minister was elected directly (a bit like US presidential elections) and one voted for the parties separately. Netanyahu faced two rival candidates, both highly decorated former Generals: Yitshak Mordechai (representing a new center party) and Ehud Barak (leading the Labor party). Netanyahu lost.

The second election Netanyahu lost was in 2006.  Sharon had taken most of the Likud into a new party and then had a stroke. Ehud Olmert led Kadima (Sharon's new party) and the Likud led by Netanyahu came third, with a mere 12 seats.  Technically, Netanyahu also lost to Tzippi Livni in 2009, by a single seat: But she was unable to form a coalition and he became Prime-Minister. 

 
Why did Netanyahu not win?

Well, Netanyahu has only once won an election in which his chief rival was a former Army Chief of Staff: He lost to Barak and he has only beaten Gantz once.  He lost two elections to the leaders of Kadima before that party disintegrated and vanished from the scene: Maybe the auora of the comatose Sharon was enough to keep him down. 
Most importantly, Netanyahu's record in Knesset elections was not stellar until 2013: He was, however, very effective at forming coalitions. Until 2013, Netanyahu never led the largest party or won over 30 seats, since 2013 he has consistently won at least 30 seats and, except for once, always led the largest party.

Data sourced from Wikipedia.  From 1996 to 2003, the Prime Minister was directly elected, a system which disastrously fractured Israeli politics. The system was abandoned after that. 
 

Elections	Leader of  Likud	Knesset  Seats	Became   PM?	Largest party?	Winner or opposition
1996	Netanyahu	32	Yes	No	Peres (Labor) 34
1999	Netanyahu	19	No	No	Barak (Labor) 26
2003	Sharon	38	-	-	Mitzna (Labor) 19
2006	Netanyahu	12	No	No	Olmert (Kadima) 29
2009	Netanyahu	27	Yes	No	Livni (Kadima) 28
2013	Netanyahu	31	Yes	Yes	Lapid (Yesh Atid) 19
2015	Netanyahu	30	Yes	Yes	Herzog (Labor) 24
2019(1)	Netanyahu	35	Yes*	Tied	Gantz (Blue & White) 35
2019(2)	Netanyahu	32	A new election was called	No	Gantz (Blue & White) 33
2020	Netanyahu	36	Yes*	Yes	Gantz (Blue & White) 33
2021	Netanyahu	30	No	Yes	Lapid (Yesh Atid) 17
2022	Netanyahu	32	Yes	Yes	Lapid (Yesh Atid) 24

A Manifesto for the Advancement of Peace in Eretz Israel - Palestine

 Jews and Moslems worship the same God.  Most Jews have no problems with Moslems praying in their Synagogue and most Moslems have no problems with Jews praying in their Mosque. This I believe provides a framework for co-existence:

1. Any Jew or Moslem who kills a member of the other religion with the intention of driving them out of Palestine - Eretz Israel or eradicating their religion will be punished and then exiled from the land.

2. An annual day of mutual prayer will be agreed between leaders of the two religions, in which both religions will pray together for peace.

3.  Jews will accept the right of all Moslems who are born in Palestine, and their children, to live in Palestine and to own whatever property is rightfully theirs.

4. Moslems will accept the right of all Jews who are born in Eretz Israel, and their children, to live in Eretz Israel and to own whatever property is rightfully theirs.

5. One day in the week and a space will be allocated for Jews who wish to peacefully pray alongside Moslems, on the Temple Mount.

6. One day in the week and a space will be allocated for Moslems who wish to peacefully pray alongside Jews, at the Kotel.

7. Moslems will accept that parts of Palestine are for all time a sanctuary for Jews who feel persecuted. 

8. Certain agreed areas will be open to residence of any Palestinian Moslem or Israeli Jew.

9. A joint parliament will be created with the elected representatives of all the residents of Palestine -Eretz Israel. No party or candidate will be permitted to join this parliament unless they agree to accept the principles of this manifesto.

Why racism and anti-Semitism are not the same

Skin color is only meaningful at the extremes of human settlement: Northern Europeans are easily described as white (mainly because they see little sun) as are sub-Saharan Africans who have a very different skin color. On the other hand, people who live close to the Mediterranean are hard to categorize: Southern Italians, Spaniards, Syrians or Algerians are likely to look the same and because the area is a  mixing pot of peoples from Africa, Europe and Asia you can usually find many different colors in a single country.  

People who live at the far East end of Asia look very different from Europeans but when you get into Iran or India the differences start to fray. Many Palestinian Arabs are descended from Crusaders - red heads are not that rare, while Jews belong to a hodgepodge of different "races".

I have always taken the view that race is not a meaningful way of categorizing people and has no scientific validity: You cannot judge "the strength of someone's character" (to paraphrase Martin Luther King) by the color of their skin. In my view, ethnicity is a far more flexible and useful definition.

 Of course many people in the West have experiences which are influenced by their skin color, including the experience of prejudice, but does that make it a valid way to judge people? Jews face prejudice based on a mixture of religion and the assumption of race, outsiders impose on us an assumption of racial categorization which, in my experience, is only very rarely shared by the Jews themselves. 

As Jews we regard ourselves as having a common ancestry - it is, in a sense, a requirement of the religion but any system which categorizes people on the basis of skin type is clearly irrelevant to Jews - as it is to almost anybody who lives in the Middle East.

When you fill out forms related to "ethnicity" or "race" in British job applications, "Jew" is not a recognized category and you are left to choose from a number of skin-color based categories, which may work for many Britons but just leaves Jews feeling that the form does not define them. There is often an "Other" field, but then to say you are Other - Jewish is to imply that you accept physical categories, and especially skin color, as a valid category to define yourself and also that you accept that Jews are a race.

Yes, the religion suggests a common ancestry - something which is common among ethnic groups - but it is just as much about a common culture, a common religion, a common history and a lack of a recent location-based origin. You will find few Jews where both parents are descended from people who have lived in the same region for more than 3 generations.

I don't think anti-Semitism should be defined as a form of racism. Firstly Jews are not a race and "racism" implies prejudice based on race. Secondly, the whole experience of prejudice is different: Jews can "hide", we/they are not physically visible to everyone in the same way as black people in Europe, unless the Jews are very Orthodox and wear distinctive clothes. 

By the way, a lot of what is defined as racism is really about clothing. Most people can avoid standing out by dressing the same as everyone else. Also there is an issue of names. When filling out forms, in some countries it is easier to identify who is Jewish then who is black. 

Did the Nazis kill Jews because they were "racist"? Its not that clear. In truth Nazi race theory was a bit muddled, the whole Aryan thing implied that Germans originated in Central Asia and in reality only black Africans, Jews and Gypsies were definitively defined as problematic, with Slavs added later. Arabs, despite being Semitic, the Nazis defined as acceptable people. Of course the Nazis always put the "native" Germans at the top of their imaginary (and inconsistent) tree. In the end, Jews were killed as much for their religion, as for their race and converts usually got killed too. So while racism played a role, I think anti-Semitism - hatred of Jews - was more important to Nazi policies then "race". While being blonde haired and blue-eyed might have helped one hide, it would not have protected you from the gas chambers.

Many countries collaborated with the Nazis in their policies: Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Italy, Vichy France all at some point rounded up their Jews and delivered them to the Nazis for extermination. In many of these countries, what the English always refer to as a "Swastika" was widely called the "Hooked Cross". According to Google: "the actual Nazi and Neo-Nazi symbol is correctly labeled as a 'hakenkreuz', the German word for 'hooked cross".

Locals in Austria, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine and Holland helped with the round-ups of Jews. Did they do so because of racism?   I think anti-Semitism was the driving force, and also in many cases anti-Communism: In some countries Jews were associated with communism and that played a role in the willingness to assist the Nazis. 

It took the Germans and their European allies about 4 years to wipe out a third of the world's Jews. Given another ten years and occupation of the USA and the Mediterranean basin, it could have been well over 90%. But at that rate, wiping out the entire population of Africa would have taken over a Century: They would still be at it, there simply are too many Africans.  That is a crucial difference. Exterminating the Jews was and still is an extremely unlikely and yet viable option. Especially if you could rope in the UN to assist you. The UN would not assist against Africans (too many nations) but against Jews it's not inconceivable.

In recent "Holocaust Day" memorials in the UK and Ireland, the Jewish Chronical has reported local Jewish communities complaining that they have been sidelined or pushed to side venues while the main event was managed by non-Jews and sometimes the word "Jew" wasn't even mentioned: 

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/jewish-community-excluded-lowestoft-hmd-event-pkr72zbj

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14337643/Good-Morning-Britain-viewers-complain-Ofcom-failure-mention-Jews-Holocaust-coverage.html

https://www.thejc.com/opinion/this-was-the-year-the-jews-were-told-the-holocaust-is-not-about-you-fjtnb1q0

https://www.thejc.com/news/world/protestors-dragged-out-during-irish-presidents-politicised-holocaust-speech-l5jk413v

Of course, that is not the only story, the liberation of Auschwitz was widely celebrated: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14331601/london-eye-parliament-lit-purple-holocaust-memorial-day.html

The gas chambers were erected because of a range of ideas in which anti-Semitism clearly played an important role. The Hutu massacre of the Tutsi was clearly not about racism.