What is Israel's theory of victory?
Why Western allies are right to urge proportionality and restraint
I’ve thrown these notes together in an attempt to look beyond short-term thinking on the Gaza crisis. In a future post I will deal with the appalling response of some people on the far left, but for now I cannot say it better than Joshua Leifer’s recent contributions in Dissent.
What do we know about 7 October? Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel that was two years in the planning, having practised strategic deception to exploit (a) the crisis of Israeli democracy (b) America’s focus on Ukraine (c) Netanyahu’s strategy of tolerating Hamas and playing it off against the PA.
Iran knew about, aided and gave the go-ahead for the attack. Days before it happened, Imam Khamenei made a speech signalling the Israel-Saudi rapprochement would soon be ended, that conditions for destroying the Israeli state would soon be ripe, and that Israel would “die of its rage”.
What do we not know? First, is Iran also practising strategic deception? That would be my number one concern.
Has Iran spent years trying to convince America it will abjure the development of nuclear weapons, and keep its proxies in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria under control, only to unleash a regional war?
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