Israel is Losing

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[0:20]The Prime Minister of Israel can claim a significant victory when it comes to selling Donald Trump on the Iran war. As I've said elsewhere, Netanyahu's government conceived of the plan to kill Iran's supreme leader in November 2025, which they initially planned to do alone. Trump, for his part, had declined a similar operation the year before. Pro-Israel Americans quickly claimed that suggesting Netanyahu authored the war and persuaded Trump to join him is to engage in anti-Semitism. And the blame as it's so often does was placed at the feet of the Jews. The columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote in New York Times opinion that this heavy-handed approach is doomed to fail because it's asking people to overlook provable facts. There have been numerous reports about Netanyahu's many meetings with Trump and even a White House situation room briefing led by the Prime Minister. Indeed, according to a New York Times report on the briefing, Trump sided with Netanyahu against the advice of some of his most important advisors, including hawkish ones. What's worse, the President was told that Netanyahu's predictions about a swift and decisive victory were farcical by the CIA director. His Vice President warned against launching another unpredictable Middle East war. Trump notably evolved his foreign policy from targeted assassinations of military commanders, maximum pressure economic sanctions and bombing of nuclear facilities, to a countrywide bombing campaign assisting the Israelis to kill practically the country's entire leadership. Trump's threat to kill Iran's entire civilization has renewed debate on Trump's cognitive decline. And he does look sick, and he does babble, and you know, sound like the brain's not doing too hot. Indeed, one factor I may have overlooked is Trump's mental acuity. Asked to clarify his remarks by the New York Post, Trump insisted that he was serious. That would make his pronouncement a legitimate genocidal threat. Cognitive abilities aside, Trump was forthcoming in an interview with the Times of Israel where he revealed just how much his decision to strike Iran was about Israel's security. Quote, Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it. We've worked together. We've destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel. And while he claims, against ample evidence, that Israel never talked me into the war with Iran, he says October 7th was when he realized Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. Underscoring further how Trump's rationale for the war is Israel's security. By now, Netanyahu's initial sense of victory has doubtless worn off. Iran's response to the US-Israeli bombing was reportedly unexpected, with missiles and drones fired in all directions. The regime closed the Strait, shutting off a fifth of the world's oil supply. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has since marveled at the ease with which the Strait was closed. A guy with a drone can shut it down, Trump has said to people, expressing belated irritation that the key waterway was so vulnerable. Now Trump, unsatisfied with the outcome, is attempting to reopen the Strait as fuel prices have surged. Evidently, Americans don't believe the price is worth it. So far, attempts to reopen the Strait have been fraught with problems. Israel responded to an announced two-week ceasefire with a massive bombing of Lebanon that killed hundreds of people. Iran promptly reclosed the Strait. Shortly after, Israel and Lebanon agreed to their own 10-day ceasefire. Iran then opened the Strait, but Israel's military quickly announced that they would strike targets in southern Lebanon anyway, flouting Trump's demand not to bomb the country. The following day, they followed through. But Iran ended up closing the Strait again for a different reason, the US Naval blockade. My last video focused on how many of Trump's objectives in the war are as of yet unfulfilled. It appears that Israel suffers a worse outcome. Two reports from Amos Harel, military analyst at Haaretz, provide a sobering audit of Netanyahu's achievements. Upon the announcement of a two-week ceasefire, an article he wrote declared Israel botched the Iran war and shattered its standing in the US. He described the results of the war so far as far from encouraging. He lists Netanyahu's goals as the fall of the Iranian regime, the destruction of its nuclear program and the elimination of the ballistic missile threat. So far, none of those goals has been achieved, though it cannot be ruled out that the war will resume in two weeks if the ceasefire collapses. This is now the fourth time in a row — in Gaza, once in Lebanon and twice in Iran — that his boasts of total victory and the removal of existential threats have been exposed as empty promises. More than a week later, Harel opined, Netanyahu will have a hard time persuading the public that the war's goals were achieved given that Hezbollah is not disarmed and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is still intact. Netanyahu apparently sought outright regime replacement. In closed forums he did not talk about only creating conditions. Harel mentions an article in the Wall Street Journal that warns Iran's regime has changed for the worse. The U.S. and Israel launched the war with the hope that killing top Iranian officials — starting with Mojtaba's father, Ali Khamenei — would create the conditions for regime change or at least the emergence of leaders more willing to bend to America and Israel's interests. In an address to the nation one month into the war, President Trump called the new leadership more reasonable. Jaber Rajabi, who served in the Revolutionary Guard and studied with Khamenei in a religious seminary in Qom before defecting in 2016, warned Iran's Arab neighbors about him before his elevation.

[7:11]Aside from Khamenei, the IRGC appears to be all but running the country.

[7:18]The journal also reported that the country's diplomats, considered more liberal, are being overruled by the Revolutionary Guard. A day after the country's foreign minister announced that the Strait was open, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired on at least two commercial ships in the Gulf. While mediators say the U.S. and Iran have shown some flexibility in talks and Trump has proclaimed that a deal is right around the corner, the episode in the Strait shows that those expressing a willingness to compromise might not have the full backing of Iran's newly empowered hard-liners. The incident erupted Friday, April 17th, when Iran's foreign minister tweeted that the Strait was, quote, completely open. That same night, a person identifying himself as a member of the Revolutionary Guard's navy, broadcast a message on marine radio saying the Strait remained closed and that ships needed its permission to pass. We will open it by the order of our leader, Imam Khamenei, not by the tweets of some idiot. I'm inclined to think that the United States and Israel have created a far more difficult enemy for themselves. Israel's I24 News reported the words of a senior IDF official, who was speaking to journalists. Iran was dealt severe blows by Israel and the U.S., yet it has the potential to restock its arsenal of ballistic missile and even relaunch its nuclear program, which could necessitate another military intervention in the future, a senior IDF official told journalists on Friday. The outlet also reported on the ceasefire with Hezbollah. Iranian officials have been pressing Washington to advance a ceasefire in Lebanon, linking it to broader talks with the United States. Senior Iranian officials conveyed through mediators in recent days that without a ceasefire in Lebanon, there is no chance for progress in the talks between Iran and the United States. After a ceasefire was reached, an Israeli official told i24NEWS that the linkage between the Lebanese and Iranian tracks is a central concern. This is what should be of main concern to us. The fact that Iran has managed to link the negotiations on Lebanon with the negotiations on Iran, the official said. It appears Iran was successful in pressuring Trump to call for a ceasefire with Hezbollah. Though Netanyahu has his own reasons for agreeing, at least officially, to submit. An analysis for Ynet News posits, from Netanyahu's perspective, he agreed to accept the ceasefire in Lebanon to avoid being blamed for derailing U.S.-Iran negotiations, which are critical for Israel. While linking Iran and Hezbollah poses challenges, Netanyahu effectively sacrificed a pawn to protect the queen, prioritizing the Iranian nuclear issue. However, Israel's adherence to the ceasefire has proved complicated. The day after the ceasefire was announced, Trump asserted on Truth Social, Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!! Thank you! President DJT That same day, however, the Israeli military said that they would continue to strike, in their words, Hezbollah terrorists in the southern part of the country unless they surrender. Behind the scenes, i24 reported that Trump's Truth Social post sparked uproar within the Prime Minister's Office. According to sources directly to from i24NEWS, the concern was twofold: the rhetoric appeared to undermine signed agreements regarding Israel's "freedom of action" against Hezbollah, and the blunt, authoritative language was viewed as exceptionally harsh for a close ally.

[11:09]Afterward, President Trump appeared to shift his tone significantly, praising Israel's military prowess amidst the ongoing broader conflict with Iran. Indeed, Trump called the Israelis a great ally of the United States of America. They are courageous, bold, loyal, and smart. And the Israelis continued to strike targets in southern Lebanon. While these may appear to be at least small diplomatic and military successes, Israel's overall strategy in Lebanon and elsewhere has suffered a setback. A 2013 article from two researchers at the Israeli Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies is quite optimistic about what was then a novel idea. The paper was called Mowing the Grass, Israel's strategy for protracted intractable conflict.

[12:05]Mowing the lawn, or Kisuah Hadisha in Hebrew, is a policy of forever war. The strategy assumes that Israel's enemies cannot be defeated and there can be no peace with them either. The result is a routine of massive military campaigns in the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon, in order to, as the authors describe it, create periods of quiet along its borders. The policy is aimed principally at non-state actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah in order to degrade their capabilities, but only temporarily. As large-scale operations do not prevent subsequent rearmament and build-up, which necessitates the continuation of Mowing the Grass. Tellingly, in the twenty-first century, Israel is not aiming for victory or for ending the conflict; it realizes that radical ideologies cannot be defeated on the battlefield. The authors review classic counterinsurgency strategy, including enemy-centric approach and population-centric approach. In Vietnam, the imagined crossover point, in which more communist forces would be killed than could be replaced, was an enemy-centric approach, while the attempt to separate millions of Vietnamese in fortified camps to cut off their contact with guerrillas was population-centric. The article's authors don't believe that there's any use in trying a population-centric approach, saying it doesn't apply to Israel's reality. They're generally dismissive of the idea altogether.

[13:37]Though, from what I understand about Chechnya, a population-centric approach is not impossible and was utilized quite effectively with the Kadyrovites. An arrangement that ultimately ended the insurgency there. That process involved choosing a powerful Chechen leader, amnestying fighters with Russian blood on their hands, allowing Ramzan Kadyrov a considerable amount of autonomy to rule the country firmly with his personal army, and showering the client warlord with enormous sums of cash to rebuild the destroyed territory. In the current climate in Israel, there is no political will to do anything like this. Returning to the article, in contrast to current Western thinking and practices, long-term occupation and a population-centric strategy is not an option for Israel. They explain, Israel shied away from adopting a population-centric approach when it ruled over Arabs in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), Gaza and southern Lebanon. It basically viewed its military presence as temporary until a political settlement was available. Moreover, Israel, with very few exceptions, did not entertain the illusion that it could generate sympathy from the Arab occupied population.

[14:58]The article is referring to a pre-1994 reality with a full-fledged Israeli military presence inside Gaza, southern Lebanon, and across the West Bank before there was a Palestinian Authority. It's noteworthy they believe that a return to this period is not an option for Israel. The principal reason the Israeli military pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000, after an 18-year occupation, was because of the cost in dead troops. The withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 was seen by Ariel Sharon's government as a means of freezing the peace process. Yitzhak Rabin agreed to the Oslo process in order to maintain Israel's Jewish majority. For various reasons involving demographic and national security concerns, Israeli leaders believed that a permanent military presence in these territories was not advantageous for the country. What emerged from the withdrawal from these territories was mowing the lawn. Perhaps Israel could have eased the blockade of the Gaza Strip, an outrage that fueled the protest there in 2018. But rather than addressing those grievances, they dispersed the demonstrations with gunfire, killing hundreds of people. On top of the routine of bombings every couple years with the occasional ground invasion, the adversary that emerged became bolder and less contained. Culminating in the October 7th attack, with Hezbollah quickly joining to assist them. The Mowing the Lawn strategy, that was designed to prevent a long-term occupation on the ground, has set Israel back decades, with a deeply entrenched military presence in southern Lebanon and Gaza. As we shall see, Israel's Finance Minister recently boasted of his efforts to dissolve areas A, B, and C in the West Bank. At this rate, Israel will soon be back to its pre-1994 reality. If we recall the senior IDF official saying that Iran's continued pursuit of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons could necessitate another military intervention in the future, we can identify the tell-tale signs of a new arena for lawnmowing. As we've seen, these first few rounds have backfired. Barring an Israeli military presence in Iran, their flawed mowing strategy will presumably continue there. Yaniv Kubovich recently embedded with the Israeli military in Lebanon. He wrote for Haaretz, the IDF avoids using the term security zone as much as possible. These words are laden with the difficult memories of 18 years in southern Lebanon, convoys moving on exposed routes, isolated outposts, a routine of continuous friction that exacted a heavy price. As a result of this history repeating itself, one would be forgiven for thinking that instead of coming full circle, we have simply returned to the same place and the same quagmire, 20 years later, and who knows when we will leave again. It appears Israeli forces are pursuing an aggressive enemy-centric approach in the country, as revealed by a reporter from Ynet News who embedded with the military. He spoke to Colonel Eric Moyal, the commander of the Nahal Brigade, who spoke of shooting threatening figures, even people not carrying weapons. Right now, any threat I identify that endangers the forces, we open fire on it, he said. We've seen people moving in the area even without weapons, but the directive is clear: if there is a threat, it is removed. Even if we have to apologize later. Mainly, we need to be careful not to make mistakes, but any character he identifies here, as far as we're concerned, is a terrorist. As for the population, to put it plainly, the military is demolishing their towns and expelling them. We will clean Hezbollah and its supporters from Southern Lebanon with security control of the IDF over the entire Litani area. Israel's Defense Minister said at the end of March that all houses in villages near the border with Lebanon will be demolished in accordance with the Rafah and Beit Hanoun models in Gaza to remove once and for all the threats near the border. Kubovitch just recently reported on this demolition, which includes civilian contractors being paid to destroy buildings using excavators. He writes, Army commanders testified in a conversation with Haaretz that civilian structures are being systematically destroyed in villages where the forces are operating, what's more, the activity is characterized by the widespread demolition of homes, public buildings, and even educational institutions. Sources familiar with the details claim that schools and civilian sites are also being demolished after receiving permission as part of a broader policy intended, they say, to clean up the area.

[20:11]From the Hebrew word Lanakoot, which literally means to clean. It's the term that Benny Morris used to describe expulsion operations during the 1948 war, in a 2004 interview for Haaretz. It was published in English as follows, quoting Morris. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.

[20:46]The interviewer responds, the term to cleanse is terrible. Morris countered, I know it doesn't sound nice, but that's the term they used at the time. I adopted it from all the 1948 documents in which I am immersed. The interviewer responds, what you are saying is hard to listen to and hard to digest. To this interviewer, an everyday word that refers to cleaning, being applied to expelling a population, was hard to listen to. That this term was used during the 1948 expulsions and is now being used by military commanders when referring to the destruction of villages and expulsions in southern Lebanon, there's little doubt that the objective of the operation is ethnic cleansing. BBC Verify reviewed videos and satellite images of the destruction. They say there are more than 800,000 people displaced from the south. Of course, applying the Gaza model is not only a doomed military strategy, it is also terrible for Israel's public relations. There have been strong reactions from editorial writers and analysts in Israel over the decline of popular support for the country. One of them, Ben Dror Yemini, wrote for Ynet News that diplomatically, Israel's situation has never been worse. More specifically, public opinion in the United States was a strategic pillar of strength. We have lost it. He sounds the alarm that the leading candidate in the next U.S. presidential race for the Democratic Party is California Governor Gavin Newsom. The current leadership in Israel, Newsom said last week, is leading us down a path where I don't think we have any choice but to reconsider aid to Israel.

[24:32]If Newsom, a frontrunner to be the Democrat's presidential nominee, is choosing this messaging, expect others to follow. Some candidates will inevitably lean harder into their support for Israel, but even then, the days of being "progressive except on Palestine" are over. A Democrat can no longer be considered a viable national candidate without clearly articulating criticism of Israel as it stands. He closes with a summary of Netanyahu's diplomacy. He has spent decades eroding bi-partisan support for Israel in Washington in favor of partnership with increasingly extreme elements of the Republican Party, at least partly in pursuit of that goal. He finally got what he wanted. What happens now that Pandora's Box has been opened remains to be seen, but it's hard to envision any scenario that serves Israel's long-term interests in America. Despite a growing tide of frustration with pro-Israel lobby groups like AIPAC, Samuels reported less than two weeks later that the group spent $21 million on four House races in the state of Illinois. Sorely needed victories, as Samuels described them, but disillusioned voters wanting a new Middle East policy are up against an adversary of considerable means. Well, I appreciate the relationship that I've had with A pack from the very beginning of my congressional journey.

[26:10]Republicans, for their part, aren't budging and aren't even attempting to reflect the growing chorus of criticism of Israel and forever wars among their base. Republican voters have an even taller task ahead of them. As their lawmakers aren't adjusting to their grievances nearly as much as Democrats have been. Recently, a couple of votes in the Senate set off alarm bells in Israel, where it was widely reported on. An analysis in Haaretz by Joshua Leifer read, just four years ago, it would have been unthinkable that three-quarters of Senate Democrats would back resolutions to block selling weapons to Israel. But that is what happened on April 15th. 40 of 47 Democrats voted to block the $300 million sale of Caterpillar bulldozers to Israel. 36 of 47 Democrats voted to block the $150 million sale of 1000-pound bombs. It would be hard to conjure incontrovertible evidence of the death of the bi-partisan pro-Israel consensus than this. Unconditional support for Israel was once the mainstream position within the Democratic Party. No longer. On the other side of the aisle, however, for all the immense attention given to rising anti-Israel sentiment on the right, Republicans voted in lockstep to reject the attempt to cancel U.S. arms sales to Israel. While there may well be a growing constituency within the Republican base that also backs restricting military support for Israel, it has yet to find significant representation on Capitol Hill. For good reason, Israeli journalists are making clear the importance of US support for Israel. These developments are considered a grave threat to their national security. Leifer lists several reasons for this declining support among Democrats. Against the backdrop of Israel's destruction of Gaza, the ongoing bombardment of Lebanon and the war in Iran, Democratic presidential hopefuls — of which there are many — will not want to be on the record having supported weapons sales to Israel. There are other reasons as well, namely Israel's gradual annexation of the West Bank. The degree to which this is occurring was described in great detail by Israel's Finance Minister in March. In an article for Ma'ariv Rishon newspaper, he boasted that in the last few years, I have been privileged to lead, with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Settlement and the rest of our members of the government, a real revolution in settlement in Judea and Samaria. We are practically eliminating the idea of dividing the land and establishing a state of terror at its core. We strive to cancel the Oslo Accords and erase the distinctions between Areas A, B, and C, and to apply full Israeli sovereignty to all areas of the homeland. As former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak described the one-state reality that would emerge from such a scenario, as long as this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel, he said in 2010, it is going to be either non-Jewish or non-democratic.

[29:38]If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state. Gideon Levy says not to expect much to change if Netanyahu loses the next election. He has a gloomy forecast for a government led by either one of Netanyahu's biggest contenders. Naftali Bennett and Gadi Eisenkot. Levy doesn't think they'll evacuate any of the outposts set up in the West Bank in recent years. Who exactly would evacuate them? Former head of the Judea and Samaria Council Naftali Bennett? Former commander of the IDF's Judea and Samaria division Gadi Eisenkot? The Holocaust historian Omer Bartov recently published a book called Israel, What Went Wrong? His predictions for Israel's future are grim. How long will Israel be able to exist as an authoritarian apartheid state? I am unlikely to see the end of it in my lifetime. It could last for twenty or thirty years. In the long run, however, it will not be viable. Israeli society will progressively weaken; many of its better educated, skilled, and creative people will leave it, as they are already doing. Internationally it will become a pariah state, increasingly isolated from its allies and the Jewish diaspora. Though it may never be defeated, it will fight more and more wars that it cannot win. Eventually, I expect, Israeli apartheid will implode, as happened in South Africa under the pressure of mass protests, violence, an arms embargo, and economic sanctions by the international community, and perhaps some sort of binational state will emerge from the ruins. But that will come after immense suffering and pain for everybody involved, and much more for Palestinians than for Jews. It is a recipe for turning the dream of Zionism into a nightmare.