You wanted multipolarity. You're getting chaos.

The Hamas terror attack was aimed squarely at the rules-based order

Israeli troops in Kfar Aza - source https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67065205

The Hamas terror attack has triggered war in Gaza, a geopolitical crisis and now – from Sydney to New York City – outbursts of street-level anti-Semitism in the West. Unless it de-escalates quickly, it looks like a strategic turning point both for Palestinian nationalism and Israel.

I covered the 2014 war both from inside Gaza and on the streets with the Israeli peace movement. I’ve interviewed Hamas and seen how they operate up close. So, though I am no expert on the region, I can throw some concreteness into the current battle of abstractions.

Let’s start with the obvious: Israel has a right to defend itself, rescue the hostages, arrest and prosecute Hamas and engage in lawful armed combat with its enemy. But the international community has a right to demand proportionality, restraint, respect for international law, and condemn breaches of it.

People claiming the Hamas attack is the “violence of the oppressed” are deluded. Hamas rules Gaza like a mafia state: its operatives walk around neighbourhoods in twos, dressed in dark suits, prying into people’s business. They run the place on a mixture of terror, public service provision and the kudos of their fighters.

They are feared but there is widespread disrespect for them, especially among secular and nationalist sections of the population.

Paradoxically, the Western “anti-imperialists” trying to apologise for the terror attack, and the Israeli right calling for retribution against civilians, both need to identify Hamas with the Palestinian population of Gaza in order to justify violence. But there is no basis for doing so.

The fact that a violent action takes place in the context of a wider oppression does not make it either (a) just (b) lawful under international law or (c) effective in pursuit of social justice. In this case, Hamas’ act of terror looks set to achieve the opposite.

Khamenei’s 3 October warning

What does Hamas want?

Hamas has offered a truce and asked for negotiations, stating that it has “achieved its objective”. If so, it’s logical conclude that the immediate objective was to demonstrate proof-of-concept of an unstoppable pogromist terror. Do as we ask or we do this again, might be a fair summary.

The wider aim, according to numerous experts, is to force Hamas and Iran back into the power-broking process in the Middle East region, paralysing Saudi-Israeli rapprochement.

Iran’s leader Imam Khamenei, in a speech to the made International Islamic Unity Conference on 3 October, gave what now sounds like an early warning:

"The firm view of the Islamic Republic is that the governments that are gambling on normalizing relations with the Zionist regime will suffer losses. Defeat awaits them...Today, the situation of the Zionist regime is not a situation that encourages closeness to it. They [other governments] should not make this mistake. The usurper [Zionist] regime is coming to an end."

Hamas could only achieve the aim of ending Saudi-Israeli rapprochement with an attack designed to trigger massive retribution, risking a regional all-out war. So why, despite its formal turn in 2017 to "anti-Zionism", ditching the 1988 Covenant and its violently anti-Semitic language, did the attack take the form of a deliberate and extreme slaughter of Jewish civilians?

Here Zeev Sternhell’s rule applies: the pioneering historian of fascism taught us to “take fascists at their word”.

Both Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran have stated their aims of destroying the state of Israel often enough. But there's a line in Khamenei's 03.10.23 speech that, in retrospect looks explanatory:

"Thus, [the Zionists] are filled with grudge. They are filled with anger! Of course, the Quran exclaims: “Say, ‘die of your rage!’” (3:119). That’s right. Be angry, and die of your rage. And this will happen. They are dying. With God’s help, this matter of 'die of your rage' is happening now as regards the Zionist regime."

"Die of your rage" might actually be a good summary of what Hamas intends Israel to now do.

Enraged by the barbarity of the attacks, Israel unleashes unprecedented collective punishment against Gaza, triggering both Hezbollah and West Bank militants to join in the fight; this in turn prompts a wave of anti-Semitic demonstrations in Western cities, and draws the USA into a regional quagmire, testing the limits of American support for Israel. Meanwhile combat losses, and retribution over the complete failure of Netanyahu's strategy of "managing" the conflict, raise political divisions in Israeli society to the point where its democracy fails.

In a context where both Russia and China have complex hybrid destabilisation operations going on in Western democracies, and where the BRICS+ project is pursuing the active decomposition of the rules-based order, this objective does not look as mad as at first sight.

Multipolarity is chaos

Contrary to the homilies of the pro-China influence networks aimed at the global south, the “multipolar world” turns out not to be one of peaceful coexistence, but characterised by extreme conflicts and genocide.