Coop Scoop: From the River to the Sea is Now Netanyahu's Strategy

Ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians seems to be the core Israeli strategy

Banksy on Gaza

December 5, 2023

By Marc Cooper

I now make an appeal to my fellow American Jews to wake up, shed their blind chauvinism in support of the Israeli government and recognize –if they are really interested in Israeli security—that it is Benjamin Netanyahu who now poses as a great threat to Israel’s future as any regional foe. 

As a certified demagogue and warmonger, it’s impossible to predict just how wretchedly bloody and prolonged his renewed military campaign in Gaza will continue. What we do know is that he is setting the stage for another 50 years of conflict with the Palestinians not to speak of sparking even wider regional conflicts.

The Palestinians are suffering terribly, and Israelis will also continue to suffer and be insecure unless a final settlement is reached that establishes an independent state for the former. That so-called two state solution now seems a pipe dream, at best.

The resumption of the military invasion into southern Gaza – where just a few weeks ago the Netanyahu regime ordered Palestinians to go to seek shelter -- is now under relentless bombardment and attack, makes no sense.  That is, unless you support Bibi’s very clear strategy: continue the ethnic cleansing and push the Palestinians into the Egyptian Sinai desert where they don’t want to go, where Egypt doesn’t want them, where the U.S. this week warned Israel against and that would mean stranding more than 2 million civilians in a heartless desert.

One hint as to why this nauseating mass murder of innocent civilians resumed this week just might be tied to the little reported fact that the felony trial of Netanyahu resumed in Israel yesterday.  It has been suspended after the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7.

But it’s back underway now with Netanyahu facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Israeli prosecutors—not Hamas—accuse Bibi of taking $200,000 in bribes in exchange for personal and political favors.

France 24 News reports: In one of three cases the trial encompasses, prosecutors allege a plot between Netanyahu and the controlling shareholder of Israel's Bezeq telecom giant of promoting a tax project that would have brought millions of dollars to the comms company in exchange for more positive news coverage of Netanyahu’s extremist cabinet.

Just as Donald Trump is waging war on the American justice system and the media and now openly vowing to establish a dictatorial regime if re-elected so he can stay out of jail, it would certainly seem Netanyahu is following suit.  In the end, what’s more important to him; piling up 20,000 dead civilians and a devastated Gaza Strip, or keeping his ass out of prison – where he belongs?  That controversial slogan used by some Palestinians about “From the river to the sea” ironically now perfectly describes Israeli strategy.  Cleanse all Palestinians from Israel, from Gaza, and continue to allow extremist settlers on the West Bank to randomly kill Palestinians and take more of their land.

And I continue to be more sickened than amazed by so many putatively liberal American Jews who join cause with this bastard.  They are many of the same folks who would not be caught dead in the same state as Donald Trump.  But they engage in mental acrobatics to support an Israeli Prime Minister every bit as noxious, corrupt, dishonest, anti-democratic, extremist and surrounded by an overtly racist cabinet as was Trump.  In fact, Netanyahu’s current cabinet is worse than any crew Trump assembled.

Shame and double shame on those who cannot understand what kind of corrupt thug they are supporting.

Over the past 10 days or so we have learned much about the conflict that rarely enters the public conversation.  Let’s list some of them.

#1 Netanyahu tells the world to Fuck Off.  As a Jew I understand the reflex of many others to rely on our historic victimhood to now state we don’t give a flying fuck what the rest of the world thinks and we have always been on our own.  This is not only bullshit, but it is extremely dangerous, to Israel. Bibi is wiping his tuchas with the warnings to protect civilian life in Gaza coming from his chief arms suppliers in the persons of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Blinken. They might as well be talking to a wall.  For those who scoff at this, keep in mind Israel was in fact supported at its birth by a broad swath of the globe reaching from the U.S. to the former Soviet Union.  Going it alone might work for a superpower (not really), but it is ultimately perilous if not suicidal for a small state like Israel surround by larger hostile powers and one that is totally dependent on the US for billions a year in military and diplomatic support and cover.  While the Biden admin is talking tougher than previous US leaders about conditioning that aid to Israel, none of that conditioning is taking place at all. But as Biden sinks in the polls because of his embrace of Bibi and as more and more Democratic senators speak up against the ongoing massacres, a real shift in US policy toward Israel in the near future is no longer just plain impossible.

#2 The taking of hostages by Hamas was a crime against humanity with no justification whatsoever. Enough said about that.  I am not going to engage once again in the preliminary extended condemnation of Hamas as a pre-requisite for criticizing Israel as I find the demand to do so demeaning.  During the hostage release, during “the pause,” lo and behold we discovered that Israel is also holding hostages – though the media prefers to call them prisoners.  Many of those released by Israel in the last two weeks we learned were 13 and 14 year old Palestinians being held in “indefinite administration detention” – an Israeli euphemism for imprisonment with no due process and no legal recourse and mostly for throwing rocks.  That pretty much fits the definition for me as “hostage.” And it’s no surprise that Israel is willing to give up three for one as Israel is holding many more than Hamas.  There are about 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons and about 1/3 of them – just under 1500—were in “administrative detention” at the time of the Hamas attack.  Just as a note of comparison, at its peak the extra-legal US facility in Guantanamo never held more than 450 or so detainees with no due process.

#3 Not only has this campaign not destroyed Hamas, but it has also made it bigger and more popular.  Multiple reports from Gaza indicate that while Hamas has imposed an iron dictatorship since it took over in 2006, popular support for it is now increasing for rather obvious reasons.  There are no Gazans standing on rooftops cheering on Israeli war planes dropping two-ton blockbuster American bombs, that is if any rooftops are still standing in Gaza. Worse, over on the occupied West Bank where the secular and much more moderate Palestinian Authority is based, Hamas is gaining significant strength and sympathy.  I can’t think of a worse outcome for Israel if this trend continues as it seems destined to happen.

#4 I’m not completely sure that it is even proper to call this conflict a war.  It’s more of a unilateral bombing campaign coming as a reprisal for October 7… like an oversized Charles Bronson revenge flick.  According to the IDF, about 400 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza.  The Palestinian death toll as of December 3, is 17,000.  If the absolute overwhelming number of those dead were NOT civilians, the IDF casualties would be ten to twenty times greater than the current 400. Israel is showing rampant disregard for civilians and are committing war crimes in their massive murder.  I heard a former Israeli Consul in New York the other day on the radio patting the IDF on its back for “being the only army in the world who gives civilians advance warnings of attacks” and even directs them to “safe zones.” What an overflowing crock of shit.  When the IDF began levelling northern Gaza, they told Gazans to flee to the south where they would be safe.  That is if they were not killed by the bombs Israel started dropping on the main road to the south!  And now, we see, Israel is bombing the major population centers in the south but it claims it is providing new digital maps letting Gazans know of new “safe zones.”  My friend Bill Bradley of New West Notes and a former Naval Intelligence operative had this to say in a post yesterday: “Hundreds more Palestinian civilians killed every day, more housing and infrastructure wrecked, the only difference is that it is now increasingly in the south of Gaza, which was supposedly a safer place. [Secretary of State] Blinken’s apparent entreaties have had no effect on Israeli actions, though it does appear to have resulted in the darkly amusing dropping of evacuation leaflets with QR codes designating a complex grid of supposedly safe zones. With power and comms thoroughly disrupted, not to mention the scarcity of smartphones in a poverty-stricken place, it’s obviously problematic. Then there is the complex grid form map itself, which even I find difficult to decipher from the relative luxury and ease of my home office.”

#5 The story about massive Hamas command centers operating under the Al Shifa Hospital and the Indonesian Children’s Hospital turned out to be fairy tales used to justify the devastation of Gaza City.  A few rifles, one vest, and a couple of laptops, and a shaft in the ground that Israel never revealed what it led to, do not constitute command centers.  Maybe that’s why the IDF shifted its rhetoric from “command center” to “command nodes.”  So much for the vaunted omniscience of Israeli intelligence.  Carpet bomb first.  Dig through the corpses and rubble after to see if you were right.

#6 On a related topic. We learned that the Netanyahu regime actually learned of Hamas’ attack plan over a year ago and then seemed to file it under: who gives AF. At the time Netanyahu was fighting for his political life as hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to demand his ouster, accusing him of trying to wreck the judicial system which is the only check on his political power (The Knesset is but a rubber stamp for him).  One more uncomfortable reason for him to prolong the conflict to distract attention from his own debased personal and political character.

And here’s something that we did not learn last week but that serious observers have always known.  It is an absolute fantasy that Israel will “dismantle” Hamas.  It’s impossible. Just as it was impossible for the US to dismantle Vietnamese Communists still in power a half century after the American defeat in Vietnam.  Just as it was impossible to eradicate the Taliban who are still in power 22 years after Dubya vowed their extermination. 

As the sole political power in Gaza, thanks to Israel’s’ conscious decision to hand Gaza over to them in 2006, every major political, social and neighborhood association in Gaza is run by Hamas.  I mean everything. They run all the social, medical, sports and cultural institutions in the Strip.  From the militants who launch rockets, to the highly trained combat units to the traffic cops and meter maids.  It’s much more complicated than the ignorant American media cliché that they use “human shields.”  It’s much deeper than that.  Just like the VC in Vietnam, Hamas is 100 percent interwoven into every aspect of Gazan society.

For sure, Israel has demolished the Hamas governing regime because it has demolished much of Gaza.  That’s not nearly the same as dismantling Hamas. But just exactly where are the expected IDF “trophies” of captured or killed Hamas fighters and leaders?  No doubt there are some here and there in that pile of 17,000 corpses but the only way to eliminate Hamas would be to eliminate the near entirety of the Gazan population. Period. 

Sorry, my fellow Jews, I do not trust the information coming from Israel as much more reliable than that from Hamas.  That said, Barron’s reports: Asked about media reports that 5,000 Hamas fighters had been killed, one of the senior officials told reporters at a briefing: "The numbers are more or less right.”"I'm not saying it's not bad that we have a ratio of two to one," one of the officials said, adding that the use of human shields was part of Hamas's "core strategy".

I see, because the core strategy of the IDF seems to be simply kill as many Pals as you can and guess 1/3 of them are actual targets. I will attach two quick addendums to this sickening Israeli statement.  If Israel has really killed 5,000 fighters, then I am right in saying this isn’t much of a two-sided war as Israel has reportedly only lost less than 10 percent of those fighters on the other side. That’s what happens when you say war instead of bombing campaign. Second, estimates of Hamas fighters run between 25,000 and 40,000.  By simple Israeli arithmetic, we should not be surprised if the Gaza death toll surpasses 50,000 or even 100,000 with Bibi saying, sorry, it was inevitable.

For those who support, sympathize and love Israel, please be aware that Prime Minister Netanyahu is systematically driving Israel’s reputation into the toilet. Israel, even for many non-Jews, once occupied a special place in the hearts and minds of millions around the world. It’s very name was associated with many of the more appealing aspects of humanity.  Even for non-Zionists like me, from a family that had no agenda either way about Israel, and even with knowledge I had that has long been critical of the Israeli state, I could still admire at least some of the impulses and dreams of the Israelis.  I was fully aware of the Nakba and the Israeli seizures of land during the war of independence. But as some minimal counterbalance, I also knew that Israel was a refuge for those who escaped the Holocaust, that the Kibbutzim were humanitarian and often socialist communities that operated on principles of solidarity and peace.  And even as a non-believer Jew, I was proud and remain so of the prominent role that so many Jews have played in higher education, in medicine, in the arts and more importantly in global causes of social justice.  Jews are always disproportionately in the leadership in these areas, and it continues to be something I admire and take pride in.

But that no longer has much if anything to do with the Israeli state.  Anybody not blinded by religious bias or just plain ignorance, knows that two nations cannot occupy the same piece of land, especially when the more powerful one drives out and persecutes the other.  It’s dead obvious that this 80 year conflict will have no ending, it will have no military solution, it will conclude, if ever, only if Palestinians are given the chance of self-determination and statehood.

One of the most hypocritical contentions of the current defenders of Israel is that they would just love to negotiate with the Palestinians if only they could provide a rational leadership to bargain with.  The Israelis had that partner in the end days of the PLO and its replacement with the Palestinian Authority.  But Israel decided instead to politically divide the Palestinians by initially supporting and even funding Hamas, hoping it would undermine the secular PA and instead distract them with the Islamic Fundamentalism of Hamas.  

Prime Minister Netanyahu is not exactly a rational negotiating partner either. He is openly disdainful of any settlement and was arrogant enough to demean any two state solution. And his appointed cabinet ministers for security are loudmouth racists who openly deem Palestinians and Arabs as being beneath dogs.

How about a better leadership for Israel too?

At the moment, the two biggest impediments to even any remote hope for a settlement are Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu and his proto-fascist cabinet. 

Israel, which for many had been a beacon of hope and humanity after the horrors of the Second World War is now, tragically, on its way to become nothing more than a belligerent rogue state with the full support of the world’s only superpower. 

Talk about the tragedies of Jewish history, welcome to the latest chapter. ++

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