!Listening to myself
---
agk's diary
20 December 2023 @ 14:40 UTC
---
written on GPD Win 1
in bed while Evy puts away dishes and daughter
announces the coming of the Lord
---
Enough with the flowery language. Let me listen to
myself with the plain speech I ask friends to use
with me. Does what I think even make sense?
1. How do I describe what's happening in Israel and
Palestine?
There's a hot decolonization struggle, hot and
brutal as Algeria in the 1960s, Kenya, Ireland,
Rhodesia, Vietnam.
Israel uses overwhelming American firepower for
standoff warfare to "mow the grass," genocide
(killing) and ethnic cleansing (displacing) by
thousands of civilian massacres and kidnapp-
ings. They hope this will deny the resistance
cover or magically lead to a win.
Israel uses "AI" LLMs to produce unusually big
daily target lists, and drops about 500 bombs
daily, directly killing and injuring 5.000
people daily. They made Gaza unlivable. 98% of
Gazans can't eat daily, 60% are starving. Most
are homeless in cold rain. Diarrheal diseases
and nutritional diseases like pellagra and
anemia are common. Tens of thousands of
pregnant women may bleed to death in childbirth
and birth defects are likely. Hundreds of
thousands of children are maimed.
Israel accomplished all this with an air bridge
mostly from the US delivering bombs, shells,
missiles, etc on 10 C-17 flights daily, every
day, and US obstruction of the world's will
that a political solution be sought.
Israel's "AI" builds target lists from big
databases of infrastructure (bakeries, hospit-
als, solar panels, water infrastructure, gener-
ators, civilian cellular/internet, UN schools),
cultural workers and sites (mosques, churches,
archives, universities, journalists, poets,
academics), addresses of all known resistance
fighters' immediate and extended families,
political representatives and sites (city hall,
courts, police stations and academies, and the
homes of all municipal employees and elected
representatives).
While it draws the world's horror for all this,
Israel mostly lacks military targets. Their
ground offensive is sloppy and flying blind.
They commit atrocities like cutting power and
water and besieging hospitals, preventing
ambulance movement till injured people die,
sniping women and children in church compounds,
lining up women and children in UN schools and
executing them en-masse with bullets in the
backs of their heads, abducting hundreds or
thousands of men (including doctors, UN
employees, and journalists), humiliating and
torturing them by making them strip naked in
the cold in public, transporting them by truck
to earthen or sand pits dug by bulldozer,
interrogating them, burying them alive with
bulldozers, digging some out with broken bones
and keeping them as hostages or sending them
to walk back to other Palestinians to tell the
tale. Israel uses different approaches toward
the same end in the West Bank.
The resistance in Gaza is hundreds of thousands
strong, well-organized and well-supplied, with
a "poor man's airforce" huge tunnel network. It
has good intelligence due to the documents and
servers it seized from 5 military sites on 7
Oct. That operation wasn't meant to spark this
intensity of response. The goal was to kidnap
soldiers and exchange them for all Palestinian
prisoners and hostages held by Israel, to move
Hamas back into a resistance stance and estab-
lish its political legitimacy in Gaza and the
West Bank.
Israel's ground offensive is stuck, suffering
huge losses. The resistance has partially or
fully destroyed a third of Israel's tanks,
killed a disproportionate amount of officers,
and killed or removed from combat by serious
injury thousands of Israeli soldiers. It has no
anti-aircraft capabilities, but Israel can't
win by aerial bombardment alone unless the
world lets the siege and bombardment last long
enough to starve out the resistance onto open
terrain.
The resistance's short-term goal is to end
Israel's bombing campaign and invasion, open
border crossings to humanitarian aid, and
exchange its hundred or so captive Israeli
soldiers for the many thousands of Palestinians
held as prisoners and hostages by Israel.
Israel's short-term goal is to make all the
people of Gaza, and all trace of their history,
go away for good. Then do the same in the West
Bank, expand its borders, demolish Al-Aqsa
Mosque, build the third temple where it was.
A partial win is acceptable to the resistance
because it will be a political victory and
they're fighting a political war. If Gaza's
still peopled with Palestinians after this war,
it'll be a military loss for Israel.
I think of Israel as like Rhodesia, a British
colony broke loose into an independent racist
ethnostate dependent on camps, massacres,
apartheid, militarization, racist education,
and international support to maintain the high
standard of living of the colonist-citizens. I
think within 30 years it'll be renamed to
Palestine like Rhodesia was to Zimbabwe, and
most of the colonist-class will have made
reverse aliyah to the US, Europe, Russia, or
move to Cyprus.
I think Israel is flailing about like a dying
state and the resistance is conducting itself
like the kernel of a rising state. Hamas has a
stable coalition with the other Palestinian
resistance groups. Internationally, former
allies are peeling away from Israel, and so is
popular opinion, especially among young people,
in remaining allies.
The military capabilities of the Palestinian
resistance's allies have matured. Ansar Allah
in Yemen has succeeded in its naval blockade of
Israel's Red Sea port, Eliat. They consistently
communicate a clear path to de-escalation. When
Israel stops bombing and blockading Gaza, Yemen
will stop blockading Eliat.
Hezbollah have caused hundreds of thousands of
Israelis to evacuate the north of the country,
killed soldiers, and destroyed radars, bases,
missile batteries, and other military infra-
structure. They hold most of their force in
reserve, to be used only when they feel the
resistance in Gaza is seriously threatened.
They are capable of blockading Israel's Medi-
terranean ports, leaving only a land route
through Jordan for international trade.
In Syria and Iraq the resistance harass US
bases, mostly destroying infrastructure. I
think they're also holding most of their force
in reserve. Iran provides targeting data to
Ansar Allah and international diplomatic
support, while demonstrating its ability to
control its waters and airspace, including
against the US Ike aircraft carrier group. It
also has much force held in reserve.
US support for ceasefire is important, because
if my country stopped supplying Israel, the
bombing would stop, and the conflict could
de-escalate from a military to a political
conflict. The political conflict would look
different than it has in the past due to the
war demonstrating that the balance of power has
changed.
The comparison with Rhodesia and Algeria points
to the generational dangers of this kind of
total war on the one state of Palestine I think
will replace Israel within 30 years. Total war
is survived by paranoid, traumatized people
under military governance. The pillars of
normal life are wiped out. Moderates are killed
by both sides. Bureaucrats and bakers, teachers
of poetry and history who instill nuance and
compassion, kind religious leaders, nurses and
reasonable politicians, farmers and amiable
shopkeepers, journalists and humanitarians all
die.
What kind of a state, what kind of society
follows decolonization opposed by total war?
No infrastructure, mass poverty and poverty of
spirit, international isolation, coups,
political assassinations by the former colonial
government's remaining friends, serial civil
wars. Limiting Israel's capability to conduct
total war preserves a more functional remnant
to govern the state that will in any case
replace Israel.
2. How do people in my family, at work, at my
church, and in my friend circle describe what's
happening?
* It's too complicated. I don't understand it.
* It's bad, I need to do something.
* I need to read more, become an area expert
(I wish I had the time).
* Israel is killing defenseless noble savages
in Gaza. It's awful.
* The Jews and Muslims have been killing each
other for millennia.
* Both sides etc.
* Hamas are terrorists. Israel has a right to
exist.
* This is like the holocaust. Israel (or Hamas)
are Nazis.
* I visited over there and recall my personal
experiences. Or I have family there.
* This is what the Christian book of Revelation
is about.
* World War III is around the corner.
* Jews control the world.
* Americans control the world.
* If more people knew how bad it is they'd stop
it.
* Arguing over details, or transfixed by a
particular atrocity.
* Hamas beheaded babies, raped women en-masse,
burned bodies beyond recognition, etc.
They're human animals.
* It's hopeless.
* It's not our problem if they kill each other
over there.
3. What words, phrases, or stories emerge over and
over in narratives or discussions about what's
happening?
Pet atrocities, particularly death toll numbers
and flattened buildings. It's complicated and
I'm stupid. Slogans like free free Palestine.
You have to remember they're not Christian like
us. Fear of judgment by family, fear of talking
about it, fear of repression for pro-Palestine
opinions, limited capacity, isolated, guilt.
4. What is unsayable, unthinkable, or scary to say
or think?
Every time I open my mouth at church in prayer
or discussion, at open mic to read, or in
discussion at a party or a meeting, it's scary.
It's almost unsayable that Hamas is fighting a
non-sectarian freedom struggle. It's almost
unthinkable that Israel's days may be numbered.
Especially when I am among people who I most
expect to have a similar read on things as me,
it turns out we get anxious and defensive,
talk at best about details and conceal the
framework we use to interpret them. Why are
we afraid? We are in almost no danger.
I wish I knew how other people around me would
answer these four questions. I think my opinions
are unusual for someone in my country, but I don't
know. People talk, if they talk at all, in lists of
facts or slogans. That conceals our opinions, which
I think is because we think our opinions are stupid
and we'll suffer ridicule.
I want a ceasefire and de-escalation to preserve
civilian lives. No more munitions shipments. No
strikes on Yemen. No attempt to push Hezbollah
north of the Litani river. I think the chance for
a democratic multi-confessional state has passed,
no permanent peace can be negotiated between the
belligerents, and war will return until Israel is
dismantled. But not total war. Let them fight with
guns and count their bullets. No more bombs, no
more camps, no more collective punishment.
Let swords be turned into plowshares. Let everyone
beneath their vine and fruit tree live in peace and
unafraid.
