by Michele Nobile
1.
In the article *"Russia as Aggressive Imperialism,"* January 2024, I wrote that Russia's international position is now similar to that of the Third Reich in 1939. The invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated how far Putin is willing to go to reconstruct a Great Russian imperial identity and sphere (the precedent in Georgia did not hold the same significance). Economically weaker compared to "Western" imperialisms, Russian imperialism builds its sphere of influence primarily through the exercise of non-economic means and political subordination.
A Chinese imperialism has also been emerging for some time now, more cautious and modern than the Russian one because it is based on far superior financial, industrial, and technological capacities, but precisely for this reason, potentially much more dangerous (e.g., see my articles on the South China Sea, 2018). Russia and China are major powers that in historiographical and geopolitical jargon can be called revisionist of the existing regional economic-political structure, with the goal of creating or consolidating their own spheres of influence.
At first glance, this recalls the inter-imperialist conflicts of the early 20th century; and, as in those, inter-imperialist conflict overlaps with the struggle for the freedom of certain peoples: this is the case of Ukraine and the possibility of Taiwan. I agree with Roberto's idea of the existence of "horrible feudal (Iran), post-Stalinist (China), oligarchic-mafia (Russia) capitalisms, which are also the main aggressive powers in the world." However, this is only the beginning of the discussion.
Russia and China are unprecedented phenomena because they combine the worst of both worlds. On a macro-historical level, they can be considered regressive phenomena relative to the minimum levels of civilization achieved in advanced capitalism, which itself is not in good health.
Russia and China are social formations where remnants of the totalitarian pseudo-socialist world combine with decidedly oligarchic capitalisms. Despite their significant socio-economic differences, I group them under the label of oligarchic capitalisms because the intertwining of political and economic power is different from that of advanced capitalisms, a fact that is also expressed in particularly strong social inequalities, the repression of independent trade unionism, and constitutionalized or de facto single-party rule.
Although their prosperity is inseparable from what is called globalization and economic relations with advanced capitalist countries (undeniable in terms of foreign investment and international trade for China; for Russia, energy exports are irreplaceable), their particular articulation of economic and political power allows them to present themselves as alternatives to so-called neoliberalism: they can thus selectively adopt themes from pseudo-socialist and anti-colonial legacies.
Multipolarism is the catchword that for Russia and China represents their claim to be recognized as powers entitled to their own legitimate "pole" or sphere of influence; however, at the same time, they reaffirm the validity of the Westphalian idea (1648) of non-interference in the internal affairs of other sovereign states (summarized in the motto *cuius regio, eius religio*), what is today called sovereigntism.
Behind the pretense of the legitimate existence of a variety of national systems, sovereigntism is nothing but the ideology of defending authoritarian political regimes that fall below the historically acquired minimum level of political and legal liberal-democratic civilization, dismissed as hegemonic ambition of the so-called West. For this reason, unlike in the foreign policy of liberal powers, Russia and China can support autocratic regimes without incurring contradictions between ideal proclamations and real practice.
By minimum levels of civilization, I refer to a set of principles, regulations, and institutions that are the result of a historical process, of social and political struggles, and wars, even of horrors like the Holocaust; principles and achievements that in practice can be evaded, mutilated, and applied selectively and opportunistically, according to convenience, but which nonetheless remain criteria for evaluation and objectives of struggle.
From the pseudo-socialist legacy of Russia and China follows a second difference compared to the revisionist powers of the 20th century: their position toward former colonial or underdeveloped countries is very different. Although Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan contested the existing empires, their anti-colonialism was hardly credible; and the world at the time was still largely colonial. Today's Russia and China, by contrast, can claim to descend from "revolutionary" breaks with "Western" imperialism and to have long been subjected to containment while instrumentally supporting the decolonization movement.
Nationalist movements were a progressive phenomenon when colonial empires still existed, but once political independence was achieved or won, over time the new states either gave rise to authoritarian political systems while remaining socioeconomically underdeveloped, or fragmented along more or less ethnic and clan-based political-gangster lines, or survived under some form of political and ideological totalitarianism.
Sovereigntism, oligarchic statism, and anti-Westernism represent, as a vague ideology, the convergence of interests not only between Russia and China but between these powers and minor states and organizations that, for some reason, are not integrated into the normal functioning of the international system, e.g., North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, plus other more or less failed states. To these, I add India, with its ignoble caste system and the most archaic of the great religions, yet a nuclear power.
All of this shows how much the world has truly changed compared to the 20th century, especially compared to the first decades after World War II. The synergy of a set of processes that have affected all fields of social life, initiated around the 1970s and 1980s both in advanced capitalist countries and in various other geographic and social areas of the world, has matured in the first twenty years of this 21st century. For the purposes of this writing, what is important to note is that, in the face of political developments that can be called progressive—despite ambiguities and contradictions—such as the end of various dictatorships in Latin America and Asia, there are others that are regressive, if not catastrophic, such as those for various reasons labeled "failed states," particularly in Africa but also in the Middle East: Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
Overall, not only have the hopes placed in nationalist movements that for much of the last century reasonably promised to spread minimal elements of civilization and elevate the overall level of civilization in the world largely proven futile or been thwarted. Even worse, the ultimate results of those movements resist or actively move in the opposite direction to the progress of civil rights. Resistance to old and new problems created by the modernity of capitalism and imperialism often takes on regressive forms and content.
From this, two paradoxical facts:
1) More harm than good, the minimum levels of civilization are at least partially (for civil and political rights) defended by the old imperialisms of advanced capitalist countries. The reason is the end of the Cold War, but for a reason different from that of critics of "American hegemony." The point is that for structural reasons (the new and more advanced nature of U.S. capitalism), what is called "Wilsonism" (multilateralism, opposition to spheres of influence and colonies, "open door," preference for liberal regimes, an "anti-imperialist imperialism") is an integral part of U.S. foreign policy but, during the Cold War, was applied very selectively and poorly because the needs of containment required the "realistic" collaboration with any anti-communist regime, no matter how brutally repressive or incapable of enacting reforms. With the end of the Cold War, Wilsonism (or a unilateralist variant) gained new momentum, one of the reasons (ultimately the most important) for the dispute between Democrats and Trump. (On ideal and concrete Wilsonism: Tony Smith, America's mission. The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the twenty-first century, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1995; for the convergence and differences between Democrats and Republicans before Trump: John Ikenberry-Thomas J. Knock-Anne-Marie Slaughter-Tony Smith, The crisis of American foreign policy. Wilsonianism in the twenty-first century, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2009.)
2) The second paradox is that in the name of sovereigntism, multipolarism, and anti-Westernism, a part of the left, which considers itself more radical, supports regressive regimes and movements: it is a reactionary left.
Having posed the problem, two methodological observations, easier said than done.
The first, I will only briefly mention. Much of the world's problems are explained by the so-called neoliberal globalization or, if preferred, by the effects of colonialism and neocolonial power relations; or they are attributed to conflicting cultural or religious traditions deeply rooted in the lives of peoples. Obviously, colonialism, neocolonialism, and cultures always come into play, but it is crucial to specify how the global and the local, the past and the present, economy, politics, and culture concretely interact in a given situation. For example, both the Palestinians and the Zionists justify present actions with their respective past tragedies and with the historical continuity regarding the land, the latter being imaginary for non-Israeli Jews and real for Arab Palestinians. Therefore, it is important to beware of this historicism, but also of spatial generalization that bypasses local specificity: for example, reducing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a "clash of civilizations" or the malevolent influence of Iran.
The word "civilization" has two meanings that generate ambiguity. The first is normative: what is considered to be civil in a given time and space, which also serves to judge the distance between the ideal norm and the actual reality: freedom from oppression and want. Sometimes civilization is used as a synonym for culture, but unlike the latter, it tends to define trans-historical essential qualities, in a stereotypical way, often equating distinct cultures. And I would say that the common political use is precisely of this type. This is dangerous because, in practice, it not only translates into xenophobia but into the denial of the universal value of what today can be considered civil, under the logic of "everyone should stay in their own place." A "noble" example in this sense is Samuel Huntington's essentialist concept of civilization in the "clash of civilizations," derived from a fetishism that attributes the effects of historical human practices to the metaphysics of a compact and unchanging religious ideology, without considering differences between eras and different traditions, without considering internal differences and conflicts within various national communities and between countries, creating a mythical entity called "Islam" or the "Islamic world," as mythical as the "West," and even assimilating it to the Taliban and Hamas and the Iranian Shiite theocracy. As if Christianity could be reduced to Catholic fundamentalism or Protestant fundamentalism or Franco's Spain. Rather, it is interesting to ask why since the second half of the 1970s "The revenge of God" began. *Christians, Jews, and Muslims reclaiming the world*, the subject of Gilles Kepel's book, Seuil 1991. In Israel, Likud and religious parties took office for the first time in 1977.
Regarding civilization and barbarism, it is also worth remembering that as far as the most modern forms of barbarism are concerned, the so-called West is a model. The Holocaust was not a Muslim or Arab event, but a European one; the mass terror on an unprecedented scale and the introduction of slave labor in Stalin's gulags were decided in Moscow, not Baghdad. And in the "background" of what follows is the fact that the relationship between the Israeli state and Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank is a neocolonial power relation, an objective reality that is not undermined even by the harshest and most ruthless criticism of the policies of Palestinian organizations, past and present. If this reality is ignored, the battle against fanaticism and Hamas is lost from the start. Asking how to achieve the strategic defeat of Hamas and its allies is thus equivalent to asking how the Palestinian struggle for actual national freedom can be resolved and how Israel must change.
The second methodological consideration is the practical side of the previous one and takes up the rest of the text: there is an immense, if not incommensurable difference at all possible levels, including the military, between confronting Hamas or China, Russia or India, North Korea or Boko Haram. As mentioned in the previous letter, in these discussions I do not approach the problem from an ethical standpoint but by reasoning with the objective of defeating the barbarism of Hamas and its local and international allies. The terms in which the ethical-political issue of the relationship between means and ends arises emerge from the facts. This is why I wrote that Hamas is an enemy of the Palestinian people. However, one must objectively consider the other side of the coin: that the Israeli government has fallen into Hamas's political trap, not by mistake, but voluntarily.
2.
Despite the fact that the Allies' war against the Axis was also a clash between imperialisms, sabotaging the Allies' military action practically meant favoring the adversary, who would have not only set back "bourgeois civilization" but annihilated decades of labor organization and achievements. Similarly, if Putin's Russia poses an aggressive threat to the acquired levels of civilization, then I demand a more direct NATO involvement in favor of Ukraine. I believe that Ukraine should be provided with not only weapon systems in quantity and without limitations on their use but also with qualified personnel to make the best use of the most advanced air defense and anti-missile systems, electronic warfare, precision artillery, and long-range missiles. For example: the F-16 jets could have been supplied much earlier and in larger quantities (more than just 10 or 20 by the end of 2024) and operated by already experienced pilots, possibly "on leave."
The conflict in Ukraine with Russia is conventional, based on operational, industrial, and technical capabilities, with defined front lines. The issue is politically and socially relatively simple. In the case of Ukraine, I am belligerent and inclined to be offensive as soon as the opportunity arises.
On the other hand, when dealing with other reactionary actors, such as the varied world of militant Islamism, unless abstract categories are used, the problems are more complex, due to the highly varied contexts that cannot be reduced to a single fact nor to monolithic and unchanging essences.
This is also true on the political-military level. Not only is conventional warfare with Russia obviously different from counterinsurgency, but given the differences in social and political frameworks, even the definition of war objectives and the post-war scenario cannot be the same. There is a huge difference between a conventional, primarily (but not only) land war like the one in Ukraine and an essentially naval-aerial war like the one that could occur in the case of Taiwan. And there is – and this is the central point – an even greater difference between a war between states and an unconventional conflict with a non-state entity like Hamas, even though it operates from a territory where it exercises quasi-state power.
This basic consideration leads to another well-known concept: that war is the continuation of politics by other means. This means that military strategy must result from a political vision and that a certain way of conducting war corresponds to a particular political vision.
In a conventional war, it makes sense to aim at destroying the enemy's human and material resources; as horrible as it may sound, it even makes sense to destroy their cities and population. Let's say that the extent of the enemy's destruction is also a measure of success if it manages to break their will and ability to fight. The enemy leaders will find themselves without resources, willing to accept an unfavorable compromise, even unconditional surrender.
In an unconventional conflict with a non-state entity, especially if fanatically religious like Hamas and its allies, the situation is completely different. The body count and physical destruction may not work against, but in favor of, the enemy. For Hamas, merely resisting the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is already a political success in view of gaining hegemony over the Palestinian national movement. It is one thing to say that Hamas uses terror and is potentially genocidal; it is another to consider it as if it were a small terrorist group without social roots, and therefore think that this organization can be destroyed simply by eliminating its current members, with an anti-terrorist operation taken to the nth degree. Hamas's rocket launch platforms and weapons depots can be destroyed, but terrorism can resume even more than before. Terrorism and guerrilla warfare do not need long-range rockets and missiles.
Aside from extreme cases, even in a conventional war between states, it can be controversial what constitutes "victory" or to what extent the war objectives have been achieved. Recent history should teach us that in unconventional conflicts with non-state entities, declaring victory may turn out to be the result of a completely wrong perception, and victory can become an elusive concept.
The duality of tactics and strategy has been surpassed for well over a century, undoubtedly since the First World War: it is no longer about directing forces toward a single decisive battle. With the expansion of theaters, the prolongation of conflicts, technological changes, and the total nature of war, an intermediate level emerged, later theorized as the realm of "operational art": if strategy is the level at which war objectives are decided, based on a worldview and a political assessment of the situation, it directs the conception of a series of independent and combined large-scale operations (the operational level), in turn, articulated into a series of battles and tactical engagements. Often ignored, also because political metaphors of military origin remain anchored to dualisms (strategy-tactics, mobile warfare-trench warfare, victory-defeat), this tripartition is important because if strategy is reduced to tactical success, there is a risk of thinking that what ensures victory is mere superiority in firepower, verifiable in certain episodes of destruction of the enemy's forces.
For the planning of resources and objectives for multiple simultaneous operations over a prolonged period across large geographical areas, the operational level is far more complex than the tactical level, and achieving strategic objectives depends on its execution. Due to the immediate significance of all aspects of social life, the complexity of operations grows exponentially in unconventional conflicts. When fighting a non-conventional enemy, the history of counter-guerrilla warfare teaches that the political and reconstructive dimension must be directly incorporated into military conduct. An example of this is the establishment of local militias and an allied, efficient state apparatus; but for this to work, force alone is not enough. It is necessary to offer a political and social perspective that separates the enemy organization from the class or population it represents. Failing to achieve this is the primary reason for the failure of U.S. military interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan (and earlier, the Soviets). The same applies to Palestine. In fact, despite tactical successes (the destruction of enemy forces), the conduct of operations can lead to a political disaster, one that could potentially exacerbate the original problem.
3.
There are those who point out that the IDF does not act like Hamas, distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants, and warning Palestinian civilians before bombings. And certainly, there would be an explicit failure to maintain that distinction, in open violation of jus in bello... This is not what one should expect from Israel. However, satellite photographs tell a clear story. The level of destruction in the Gaza Strip is such that it creates tactical problems for the IDF itself, e.g., in identifying buildings and landmarks, thus making it harder to correctly designate targets. For the same reason, there is a higher likelihood of military squads straying beyond their assigned areas, risking friendly fire incidents. Craters and rubble obstruct the movement of armored vehicles. The level of devastation surpasses the IDF’s previous experiences of urban warfare to the point where a new term has been coined: "devastated terrain warfare." (From a strictly military perspective, see: Jack Watling-Nick Reynolds, Tactical lessons from Israel Defense Forces operations in Gaza, 2023, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, Occasional Paper, July 2024.)
The extent of physical destruction, along with what it implies and will imply in the coming years for the worsening of the already dire social and economic conditions in the Strip, is an indicator of the human cost. Civilians may not be able to move out of the areas designated for bombing by the IDF, may not be clear on the nearest safe zone, or face safety issues in movement corridors. And this only concerns the targeting of pre-planned strikes, not those encountered during combat, in zones where it is impossible to assess "collateral damage" and where rapid action is required. The use of artificial intelligence in the target selection process does not seem to work in a way that discriminates targets by accounting for "collateral damage," but instead simply increases the number of targets; moreover, it seems that the rules of engagement have been changed to raise the acceptable number of non-combatant casualties. If this is true, as all indications suggest, it means that several dozen non-combatants are considered "collateral damage" for every combatant.
In my October 2023 article, before the ground offensive, I wrote that between 12,000 and 24,000 Palestinians, both combatants and civilians, would die (depending on the intensity and duration of the attack). Inside, I assumed at least the upper figure. I don’t know the actual number at the moment. However, even before it started, it was clear that during a war fought in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, with no real refuge available for civilians, they would pay an extremely high blood price. Understanding when and how much of this is deliberate is difficult, if not irrelevant. This reiterates my view that it is hypocritical and laughable to absolve Israeli warfare conduct by pointing out that leaflets and warning messages were distributed to the population before bombings. The structural situation clearly creates the conditions for war crimes by both Hamas, which uses the population as a shield, and Israel, which bombs Hamas and civilians alike.
Can the human cost of war at least lead to the strategic, i.e., political, defeat of Hamas? Or to put it differently: will the actual conduct of military operations achieve the four war objectives formalized by the Israeli war cabinet on October 16, 2023: destroying Hamas’s military capacity and governance in the Strip, removing the terrorist threat, resolving the hostage issue, and defending Israel’s borders and citizens?
With its ferocity, the pogrom of October 7 aimed to demonstrate that no matter how much the grass is mowed, it can grow back stronger. This shows that without a political solution, there is no military solution either: the problem didn’t erupt by chance, and it’s certain that it will remain for a long time, thanks to this invasion and the way it is being carried out.
Killing Hamas leaders and militants and destroying their heavy military equipment is the easy part of the job. The hard part is removing the political and social conditions that have been and will continue to fuel the Palestinian armed struggle. I would say this is a basic principle of counter-insurgency effectiveness, something that internationalists should have fully internalized. And the inability to apply it is also why, despite massacres and destruction, extremely powerful military forces have been bogged down for many years and eventually forced to withdraw.
In other words, as seen in the last cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, it is misleading to think that victory is achieved through mere human and material destruction. Despite the reduction in Hamas’s military strength, the outlook is one of a vicious circle that reproduces fanaticism and terrorism, without even resolving the threat from Hezbollah, which is much more heavily armed than Hamas and allied with Iran. And this disaster is the direct result of a mentality structurally incapable of positively resolving the Palestinian issue, as evidenced (aside from the distant past) by what has been done and not done over the last thirty years (since Oslo) and after the pogrom of 2023.
This is not my opinion alone. Even putting aside the protests over the hostage situation, for many months there have been criticisms in Israel about the military operation’s conception, not from peace doves but from high-ranking retired military officers, and even discreetly from active-duty officers, not to mention civilian commentators. Added to this are criticisms from non-Israeli specialists who are certainly not pacifists, including timely criticisms from the U.S. administration (and not only for electoral reasons, as they are familiar with this issue). The key point (though not the only one) that demonstrates the political failure of the military operation is that Netanyahu now doesn’t know what to do with Gaza. The alternatives before him are all worse than the others, and the ones Netanyahu can pursue are by far the worst. I have already provided some Israeli arguments; I will add another one, an excerpt from a comment published in the conservative Jerusalem Post on May 28, 2024, which is a sad but true assessment whose causes we must understand:
Yes, Israel has lost the war in Gaza. No, it’s not the bitter, bloody end of the Jewish State. [riprendendo una frase di Golda Meir 1973]
It can also be said that Hamas won by continuing to exist as a force in Gaza despite the devastation wrought by the Israeli military, which has killed many top Hamas commanders and thousands of lower-ranking terrorists, ...
Most of all, Hamas has won by putting the Palestinians back on the international map after years of neglect, making Israel a pariah in the world again, and endangering the grand US plan of forging an alliance between Israel and moderate Arab nations.
Does it make sense for Israel to continue pressing for the achievement of its unachievable goals? Or should it shift gears and work toward something attainable? If the answer is the latter, then Israel needs new leadership. ....
First, Israel must accept these principles:
Israel cannot go against the world alone.
Israel should not fight Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran by itself.
This freedom of criticism honors the Israelis and should be taken very seriously; otherwise, there is a risk of going astray. Just to point out something more recent: the headline of a Haaretz commentary on August 30 was "A rogue prime minister is turning Israel into a rogue State." The crucial issue is not the rogue state accusations from Hamas supporters or compassionate pro-Palestinians, but the justified irritation of allies, particularly the U.S. For example, it is interesting to note the rationale behind the executive order issued by Biden on February 1, 2024, to sanction Israeli settlers in the West Bank responsible for violent actions, implicitly criticizing the Israeli government as follows:
“High levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction - has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region. These actions undermine the foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a two-state solution.”
The answer to the two questions is therefore a strong no. Blood and destruction in the Gaza Strip will not lead to the strategic, i.e., political, defeat of Hamas, which is already recruiting new members among the youth of Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, and according to a public opinion survey, has not seen a reduction in support (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Ramallah). Furthermore, another recent study found that as of July 1, eight of the original 24 Hamas battalions still have combat capability with the use of sophisticated means, 13 can conduct small guerrilla actions, and only three have been militarily incapacitated; seven battalions located in northern Gaza—the most heavily hit area—have reportedly reorganized at least once over six months (Qiblawi et al., "Netanyahu says 'victory' over Hamas is in sight. The data tells a different story," CNN Special Report, August 5, 2024, CNN-Critical Threats Project-Institute for the Study of War); and after theoretically "cleaning" it, in early August, the IDF returned to Khan Younis for the third time (400,000 civilians in the area). Far from a victory in sight, as Netanyahu claimed to Congress!
In his address to the U.S. Congress, Netanyahu reiterated the mantra that for nearly four thousand years, the land of Israel has been the homeland of the Jewish people, the land where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob prayed, but he did not address the issue of a Palestinian state, except in the form of a demilitarized and deradicalized Gaza, with an administration of Palestinians who do not want to destroy Israel. This suggests either occupation or a puppet regime, which would face a destabilizing guerrilla movement, certainly not something resembling a transition to a Palestinian state, which, at the moment, should involve the PA [Palestinian Authority] and could have some chance of reducing the pool of potential fighters. He spoke of Arab friends but not Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s greatest responsibility is not having prevented the pogrom but another, from which the first follows: since the mid-1990s, he has been the single politician who has most contributed to worsening the situation. It’s not that Israeli governments over the past twenty years have been too gentle with Hamas or that they haven’t periodically beaten Gaza, Hamas, and their associates according to "a careful preventive policy." What else could they have done, militarily speaking? Reoccupy Gaza? Atomize it? They have been perhaps too lenient with Hezbollah, a fact they are paying for now and will continue to pay in the coming years.
The point is that, with the precise aim of preventing the formation of a Palestinian state, the Zionist logic was perfectly fine with a state of creeping war with some peaks; and for the same reason, the operation against Hamas was conceived as if it only involved annihilating a conventional army.
Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was self-exonerating. It aimed to unlock military aid but without an ounce of constructive vision, simultaneously drowning the core issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the broader geopolitical issue of Iran. But if in the Middle East, Iran is virtually behind all the terrorism, all the turmoil, all the chaos, all the killing, then priorities should have been defined differently. The most direct way to diminish Iran was not to invade Gaza but to target southern Lebanon, possibly with a multinational coalition, with the aim of destroying Hezbollah’s arsenal—a militarily much more demanding campaign—and dangerous for Israeli civilians given Hezbollah’s significant rocket and missile stockpile—but also more important, because Hezbollah is much stronger than Hamas. Therefore, incapacitating the most significant Iranian agent and supporting Hamas would ensure greater security for Israel, demonstrate strength to show Hamas militants what they can expect, but with less risk of civilian massacres like those in Gaza. This is one of the criticisms directed at Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s tirade about Iran primarily aims to shift attention from the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy to the clash between barbarism and civilization, where Iran is the deus ex machina of everything, thus excluding the Palestinian issue and exonerating Israel. The clash exists but is not to be treated this way. It becomes eternal. In his speech, Netanyahu referred to the demilitarization and de-radicalization of Germany and Japan after World War II that led to decades of peace, prosperity, and security—a risible reference given that unlike the Germans, Palestinians may face military occupation but not a state, and prosperity remains a distant dream. Other Zionists have referred to Allied bombings of Germany and Japan to justify the bombings of Gaza in the name of the existential threat to Israel. These comparisons are morally disgraceful and only serve to exclude the possibility of an independent Palestinian state.
The result of Zionist logic is that Netanyahu doesn’t really know what to do with the Strip, has no intention of moving towards the two-state solution, and has consequently contributed to discrediting the PA instead of making it a partner.
No matter how abominable his ideology, how horrible his actions, and ultimately how historically unsuccessful his strategy (though the road to failure can still be very long), Hamas’s strength lies in the fact that it is a response to an objective historical problem: that of Palestinian nationality. Certainly, Hamas does not want two states because it aspires to all of Palestine; I don’t know what else might be on the minds of its leaders, but it doesn’t matter. What really matters and is crucial even for the fight against Islamism is what the millions of Palestinians think who expect the end of a non-state existence and aspire to a real state (and I hope they can aspire to a common state with Israelis). Even if a bigot like Arafat were a KGB creation and Hamas were merely an Iranian puppet, that would not explain the nationalism of millions of Palestinians nor allow for the liquidation or dilution of Palestinian nationality and nationalism into vague discussions about Islamic ideology, the Umma, and the “greater Arab nation.” The Israeli governments' policy comes into play when considering that in October 1995, only 16% of Palestinians opposed negotiations with Israel, but in September 2023—thirty years after the accords and one month before the pogrom—68% believed that the Oslo accords had harmed Palestinian national interests, 63% thought they should be abandoned, and 76% felt Israel was not implementing them (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in collaboration with Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung).
Amid opposing fanaticisms, decisive conflicts, and internal party and organizational constraints on both sides (a factor I would say is highly underestimated), negative external interference, and objective severe problems exacerbated by diplomatic stubbornness, to say that the issue of direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations has been and will be a hornet's nest is still a gentle euphemism. Islamist and anti-Semitic fanatics may indeed exist for centuries. I have no doubt that Palestinian organizations and Arab states up to Persian Iran have enormous, decisive responsibilities. However, Israelis must decide whether to allow fanatics and terrorists to proliferate in a vast and fertile sea or to reduce them to a sterile puddle where they can be suffocated or easily caught with a net. It may seem paradoxical, but by denying a state-based existence for Palestinian nationality, Zionism fuels a large and fertile sea for fanatics and terrorists. No amount of terrorist slaughter can remedy this structural fact. It’s a vicious cycle that may have ups and downs but continues to reproduce. When I wrote about Hamas under an atomic mushroom, I wasn’t joking: Hamas could disappear with the inhabitants of Gaza, but this would only create a positive feedback loop, multiplying anger and hatred.
In summary: Israel is not fighting for us against Iran, etc. Netanyahu and his associates are making young Israelis fight to stay in power and perpetuate the conditions that produce the fanaticism of desperation and terrorism. On the contrary, the result of the Gaza operation is a disaster not only for the possibility of a strategic (i.e., political, not just military) defeat of Hamas and for the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations but also for the cause of containing Iran and Hezbollah, which are far more dangerous than Hamas.
At this point, I hope the Israelis kick Netanyahu and his associates out. And then I hope that in Israel, the idea will prevail that a true Palestinian state must be established without dragging it out with fake negotiations for another thirty years, with an international Marshall Plan both for the Palestinians and to remove a good portion of settlers from the West Bank. It is not the best solution, but it would at least leave Zionism behind, understanding that the damage it causes far outweighs the benefits.
However, for now, having given nothing and promised nothing politically to the Palestinians, frustration and anger will continue to grow among them, reproducing fanaticism and terrorism, fed by the new civilian massacres and the misery exacerbated by the destructions.
Putin's special operation is an example of idiocy of which I am pleased; the Israeli operation in Gaza is idiocy of equal magnitude, and I am dismayed by it. At the base, the same problem: a wrong strategy due to a fanatical political mindset.
If Netanyahu's political catastrophe is not taken into account, the discourse on the international context will also be distorted.
4.
The October 7th pogrom did not threaten the existence of Israel, but symbolically I think it is the most traumatic event in its history. It was an extreme action of a Nazi-like nature never before seen. Israel could have asked its friends and semi-friends to help it eliminate the most concrete, clearly anti-Semitic, and genocidal threat since the time of Nazism.
Here, the legitimacy of a military response to the pogrom or the goal of defeating Hamas is not in question, but rather the strategy. I am not competent to formulate alternative military scenarios; what is interesting in the counterfactual discourse is to highlight a political logic from which a different way of conceiving the war against Hamas could have been derived. Conversely, it helps to understand how deeply rooted a certain logic is in the Israeli political class, which requires the most severe criticism, not mere acceptance as if it were a natural and irrevocable fact.
Moreover, apart from immediate self-defense measures and limited deterrent retaliation, the Israeli military response should have been conceived with realistic war objectives, not with the illusion of being able to militarily annihilate Hamas without severe repercussions on the population and thus on the management of the post-war period. In the other letter, I wrote that
«facing an unprecedented Nazi-like action, Israel should have held back the fist, been patient (which means not invading immediately, not doing absolutely nothing) and put the world in front of a question: what concretely do you want to do to eliminate an organization predisposed to the genocide of the Jews? It was Israel that should have put Hamas on trial for genocide in every way possible and, I insist, demand action from friends as well as the PA and Arab states.»
Demanding an answer to the question I have italicized here means immediately defining what to do with Hamas but implicitly also what to do with the "axis of resistance" that supports it: Iran, Hezbollah, Houthis, etc. Not only in terms of international alliances but also in terms of local political measures functional to military success and, conversely, military conduct consistent with the political vision. In the absence of a radical political solution, this will happen again. It is on this basis that various powers, from China to Russia to Iran, play their game, not the other way around, neither in the past nor in the future.
The Palestinian issue is not just one among many that from Southern Africa to the far end of Asia make up a vast zone of crises and local conflicts, which, simplifying and abstracting from specific ethnic, social, and political roots, can ideologically be labeled as factors of militant Islamism. The Palestinian issue is what catalyzes and unifies, and in part also motivates, a large part of these movements. It is also for this reason that it cannot be drowned out in the broader context. On the contrary, in the absence of explosions for internal reasons such as the so-called Arab Spring (which in the broader background should not be forgotten, even for future possibilities), solving the Palestinian issue is an essential step to radically change the context because it would remove space and excuses for reactionary regimes and organizations. It does not seem to have been understood that the positive resolution of Palestinian statehood is an integral and important part of a regional framework that exceeds the few square kilometers of Gaza and Israel. Whether the Palestinian issue is resolved one way or another—whether two states or a binational state—anti-Semitism will have to present itself in its pure form, without instrumental excuses.
By "holding back the fist," I meant the development of an operational plan appropriate to the application of the three anti-guerrilla rules: it is not only about clearing the territory but also holding it and rebuilding it, in every sense. This requires knowing who and how will govern Gaza after the destruction of Hamas's heaviest military capabilities. It was necessary to think about the post-war period even before the war, about managing Gaza and the relationship between it and the PA and the West Bank.
According to (illusory) expectations, Palestinians and the so-called "international community" would eventually have to establish a true Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, meaning a truly sovereign and integral state. Instead, thirty years after Oslo, the West Bank remains a Polynesian archipelago and the settlements have grown to the point of being the main reason why the two-state idea no longer holds. I recall that Hamas won the Palestinian elections of 2006 (the only ones) because in the years following Oslo, Palestinian state expectations were mocked and the PA had become characterized by corruption, opportunism, and collaboration with Israeli services. This fueled fanaticism and Hamas, and this was the problem that the Israeli government should have addressed before conceiving a military response to Hamas.
Consequently, at the center of the political strategy should have been the issue of the birth of the Palestinian state, accompanying it with some immediate measures to show that it was serious: for example, canceling incentives for settlements, ceding roads and areas with dual territorial jurisdiction to the PA, blocking settlements. Under these conditions, the Israeli discourse on Gaza would have had a different dimension: it would have been about freeing Gaza from organizations that prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. In the best case, this could have created a coalition of "willing" - potentially even against Iran, supporter of Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. - including Arab forces that could have contributed to the post-war period. In any case, this would have left Israel with greater political freedom and more flexibility in military action.
Of course, this is part of the dream book. This did not happen and could not happen, given the nature of the Israeli government personnel, which has squandered the enormous political capital available to Israel after the October 7th pogrom. On the contrary, the military operation has become a political catastrophe that will be very difficult to remedy. No massacre of terrorists or back-and-forth with Iran can console one for this.
It is legitimate to think that behind the pogrom is Iran, although I am not convinced of this until proven otherwise, not in the sense of an order from Tehran to sabotage the Abraham Accords initiative. But I really cannot understand how the Iranian nuclear bomb could be the key - I imagine causally - to October 7th. For the development of the nuclear program, Iran needs tranquility, not to provoke others' wrath and risk an actual destructive attack on its facilities.
Iranian nuclear sites can be bombed. Fine, but can one seriously think that this will end Iranian subversion or the theocratic regime? I would exclude it, unfortunately. Although eliminating terrorist leaders and bombing Iranian nuclear sites may be a good and right thing (aside from considerations of opportunity), this is only tactical. These back-and-forths can go on for centuries. They are not the radical solution, and by this, I do not mean that the solution is to invade to export democracy.
Afghanistan and Iraq should teach something. The Iranian theocracy will not end with bombings and at worst it could even buy a warhead from North Korea or manufacture a simple "dirty" nuclear bomb to bring to Tel Aviv. That theocracy will end when Iranians themselves make it end, with external help if necessary.
Clarifications regarding Palestinian nationality:
In the other letter, I wrote that nationality appears simple and natural, but only when one has a narrow idea of it. This is also because, unless one has an essentialist and idealistic conception of culture and nationality (the "eternal Jew," "eternal Arab," Occidentalism, and Orientalism), no national issue anywhere in the world has existed or exists "as such" but always in a more or less broad and fluid ethnically and geopolitically processual context. For example, there is now the issue of the relationship between individual nationalities and the European Union. Will we arrive at the United States of Europe? Will a coherent or tense supranational sense of belonging emerge alongside the national one?
As Zionism is a movement aimed at creating a Jewish nationality, Jewish immigrants in Palestine had from the beginning - early 1900s - a clear sense of emerging national group, although there were those who immigrated for purely religious reasons and did not aspire to a Jewish state at all; equally obviously, they brought with them European cultural and political modernity - even collectivism, besides capital - and also had their international organization.
It can be said that a specific Arab-Palestinian consciousness, encompassing both Muslims and Christians (common leagues arose), formed later compared to the Zionist one and precisely in opposition to Jewish immigration; the sense of distinction from the broader Arab context was accelerated by the Balfour Declaration and the particular fate of Palestine compared to other former Ottoman territories immediately after World War I. A sense of national distinction certainly arose first in the press and cities, but in the 1920s and 1930s, it was also extended to the countryside, in relation to the land issue. In this regard, the revolts speak clearly.
In the face of the diplomacy of the international Zionist organization and the support of the mandatory power to the Zionists (contradictory but real), Palestinian nationalism has always had to rely on the decisive support of Sunni Arab states (a type of support that is not exclusive: against Austria, for Piedmont, French victories and later Prussian victories and British sympathy were decisive) which then, despite the "great Arab nation," followed their own policies, even massacring Palestinians (Jordan, Syria); and therefore, after Fatah's failure with the mockery of the Oslo agreements, it was the turn of the Islamist turn and Shiite Iran. However, whatever the criticisms, a Palestinian identity and nationalist political movement are tangible realities regardless of the ruling groups.
Secondly, national identities are multifaceted because they are always defined also byother influences or sub-national and supranational affiliations and by social class or caste interests and non-national cultural references. However, this does not make them less real and determinant: I am from Bari and European but also undoubtedly Italian, even though my political consciousness may place me in total contrast with other Italians and in brotherhood with those who are not Italian or even make me feel culturally a "citizen of the world."
Islamists have the problem of reconciling local identity and the community of believers, certainly, but this does not mean that Palestinian Arabs do not exist as an "ethnic-national" group. Hamas originated in the Muslim Brotherhood, but it is also a Palestinian nationalist organization, which at the time polemicized with ISIS. Do Egyptian, Indonesian, or Malaysian Muslims not exist as nationalities? Like all others, these nationalities were "invented" or created in peculiar historical processes, but this does not make them unreal, especially if, like it or not, they are demonstrated with arms in hand or by throwing stones (said by someone who is warm about the so-called national or ethnocentric state, even more when it has a state religion).
The Palestinian issue partially fits into the discourse about Islamism, but it cannot be reduced solely to the issue of Iran, overlooking its concrete specificity. If the theocratic Iran were to disappear, the Palestinian issue would not disappear. It would not even disappear if all Palestinians were atheists. Palestinians cling to their piece of land for the same reason that billions of other individuals do, not for some Quranic commandment. The promise of Paradise after martyrdom (for those who believe in it, and there will be many but not all) is a specific form of fanaticism at a certain stage, not the primary cause.
Another consequence of culturalism that drowns out local or regional specificity in spiritual metaphysics is that it cannot adequately conceive or address contradictions and oppositions within the opposing field, thereby denying itself an essential political condition for the effectiveness of the military path and strategic success: the construction of alliances with movements or groups placed in the opposing field.
