James Howard Kunstler

“The post-mortem on the disastrous Biden years will be one of incredulity at how Joe Biden, of all people, was ever placed in charge.” —J. White

The fog of war has never been so dense, what with the years-long sustained psy-ops of the US Intel “Community” against the American people . . . the lawfare operations of the Democratic Party against innocent patriots . . . the homicidal depredations of the pharma-government complex . . . the Cultural Marxists’ weaponizations of language against common sense and common decency . . . the Neocon warhawks’ serial failed crusades to control faraway lands of dubious national interest . . .and the relentless mendacity of the sell-out Big Media. . .

It’s a wonder that anybody might venture a coherent thought, or that such a thought might survive transmission from person to person intact, without a sadistic beat-down or a dishonest, tactical inversion of meaning along the way. A thought such as: the Jews have a right to exist in a place called Israel. This is now up for debate around the world, whereas it had been accepted as self-evident by many civilized states a few weeks ago.

The military pundit Scott Ritter acted out a spectacular mental melt-down on video the other day. Among the statements he made were: “We need the Israeli army to be destroyed, to suffer defeat” . . . “Israel is the greatest threat to peace in the world” . . . “Political Zionism is a rabid dog and must be killed” . . . “I’m glad Hamas is winning” . . .

It’s far from clear what Scott’s definition of Zionism is, but Dictionary.com says: “a worldwide Jewish movement that resulted in the establishment and development of the state of Israel and that now supports the state of Israel as a Jewish homeland.” That’s pretty standard across many dictionaries. So, is Scott Ritter calling for the cancellation of Israel? Sounds like it, a little bit. He’s not alone. That has been the dream of most of Islam in the region for seventy-five years. Now, a great multi-nation jihad rises to expel what the Iranians like to call “the Zionist Entity,” as if it were some scaley thing that slithered out of a UFO. Even the American Ivy League is rooting to drive Israel into the sea.

Among the reasons Scott Ritter reviles the Israelis is that they are too weak and incompetent to defend themselves. Their stand-by army of reservists, he says, are too soft and flabby to hump a standard-issue soldier’s kit into a war-zone — and Gaza is the worst sort of urban war-zone. They’ll fall down and have heart attacks the first time they try to run a hundred yards (which could be true, considering Israel’s 90 percent Covid vaxx uptake and the likely resulting non-symptomatic myocarditis present in young men there). Israeli intel sucks, he says. Israel’s sense of superiority, their notion of being the chosen people, must be smashed. Israeli soldiers should go into Gaza and be shot to pieces, he advises. Scott’s intemperance is… something to behold.

Three weeks ago, the Middle East was on the verge of putting through the Abraham Accords that would have “normalized” relations between Israel and several states of the Arabian Peninsula, exchanges of ambassadors, openings to trade and such. Other Islamic nations in North Africa were expected to join anon. And just before the October 7 Hamas attack, Saudi Arabia was about to hold normalization talks with Israel. That’s all out the window.

Scott Ritter’s proposed initiative goes like this: Call a cease-fire and halt the bombing of Gaza. Israel must commence direct face-to-face negotiations with Hamas — no intermediaries! — for the exchange of hostages and prisoners and to begin groundwork toward a two-state solution, that is, the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. For decades, that two-state solution has been hung up on two sharp thorns.

One is the practical question of where that Palestinian State would be. The common idea is that it would be the disputed zone called the West Bank (of the Jordan River) plus Gaza. The West Bank was occupied by Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, as was the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights on Israel’s northern border with Syria. Israel eventually returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1982, and Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005. Gaza has been self-governing since, with internal conflict between its Hamas and Fatah factions. Gaza has been used as a launching site for rocket attacks in Israel ever since, regularly upending attempts to negotiate a lasting peace. Israel, on the other hand, has installed over 600,000 settlers in the West Bank, said to be in violation of international agreements.

The second thorn that hangs up any plausible peace is the Palestinians’ overt declarations in the Hamas charter, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist and must be destroyed. Iran, too, has for years notoriously declared its intention to “wipe Israel off the map.” That is hardly a viable pre-condition for settling this long quarrel. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” goes the chant. Notice that the Islamic nations surrounding Israel refuse to admit any Palestinian settlers. Egypt, Jordan, Syria will not take them. Why is that? I’ll tell you: because they understand that the bellicose, fractious Palestinians will bring them trouble.

Western Civ, weakened, broke, and mind-fucked, now faces a fast-unifying multi-nation Jihad that looks more and more like World War Three. The pressure is on for Israel to re-think its furious response to the savage attacks of October 7. Yet, the threat to its survival has never been so stark. There is little appetite for the US to get involved, though reports out of the war fog indicate that there might be as many as 5,000 US soldiers already inserted into the Gaza campaign alongside IDF soldiers. We have plenty of reason to worry that US towns and cities could be the next target, since no one really knows how many Jihadis have crossed into our country from Mexico under “Joe Biden’s” wide-open border policy. What a moment to be leaderless!


Source: kunstler.com. IMG: © N/A; abc.net.au