Knowwhy

For a change, here is an outlined attempt at a somewhat different explanation (see addendum below) of what is going on in what is called the Middle East here. To understand what is happening there, it is very helpful to take a quick look at the war in Ukraine, because the questioning by Russia, China, etc. of the post-World War II world order, which is practically carried out with the war in Ukraine, has changed the very practical view of all parties involved, especially the USA and its alliance, i.e. NATO, of the local wars, including those around Israel – with consequences that extend to the war in Gaza. 

There, in Ukraine, Russia is trying to break the US’s global monopoly on the use of force, which has been in place since World War II, because the US was on the verge of crushing Russia’s awakened ambitions for world domination since its return to capitalism. Russia, together with states that otherwise treat each other as normal competitors for power for their local or global domination projects, and which have joined forces for the project they share, called a multipolar world, with China and India leading the way, are in the process of rearranging the world. Other states, such as Iran, Brazil or North Korea, see this alliance of states as an opportunity to free themselves from US dictates and enter world politics with their own national goals, not dictated by the US, in order to interfere in the capitalist world for their own national political and economic benefit. The USA and its alliance of states, above all the Europeans, united in the military alliance called NATO, which to date has decided worldwide who is allowed to wage war with whom, against whom and for what, is naturally taking action against the challenge to its worldwide monopoly on the use of force over the world of states. In Ukraine, it is using the country’s national interests for its national sovereignty, which is being contested by Russia, to prevent Russia and other similarly ambitious states from building a multipolar world order. 

The war around Israel, and not only that, is becoming a local department for preventing this project of a multipolar world, led by Russia and China and India, through this question, raised with the war in Ukraine, of what the future world order of the world of states should look like. Both with the war in Syria, in which Russia successfully prevented the removal of a troublemaker of the West in the otherwise very successful integration of the entire Arab world, led by Saudi Arabia, under the command of the West, and thus established its world power ambitions in this area, and with the new alliance between Russia and Iran, which opposes the Western domination projects ambitions of an Islamic-ruled regional domination project. With these two projects, Russia has begun to implement its project of a multipolar world order in this part of the world, thereby giving the West a new meaning to the war in Ukraine and the local wars in the Middle East, which shows the West how serious Russia is about its post-World War II order of the world of states. 

Iran, for example, now has Russia behind it for its ambitions of an Islamic world of states. The project of the political group called Hamas, which is in command of the people in Gaza and which, obliquely enough in view of what all the wars between states mean for the people, believes that the founding of just such a violent apparatus called a state at war with other violent monsters of the same species is what the people absolutely need and for which they then promptly force the people to be blessed with such a political monster into the state-founding war (see the founding of the state of Israel), which has always been necessary for founding a state, along with its production of corpses. Iran, for its regional power ambitions of an Islamic world of states in this region of the world, this project of Hamas, with an Islamic Palestinian state to be established with the support of Russia at its back, by the way in contrast to the other faction, the Fatah, which for its state-founding project relies more on the West and the USA, as an opportunity for its Islamic state project and therefore supports this Hamas project of an Islamic Palestinian state. One can already see from these different calculations between Fatah and Hamas that state fanatics are quite flexible when it comes to choosing the state supporters of their state-founding projects and even more so when it comes to their ideological superstructure, which is primarily calculated for the political support of the citizens of their state projects (called ethnic entities and similar kind of concepts), also to study from how Turkey and Syria, from arch-enemies in the light of the new world situation, very quickly became best calculating friends again. And Hamas would also have no objection if the USA were to support its state-founding project. However, in this new world situation, they do not (any longer) support this project, as Hamas’ Palestinian state is one that, through the Russia/Iran alliance, advances Russia’s world power project. 

For Israel, too, things are changing as a result of the new treatment of its wars as part of the newly emerging world power conflicts in the direction of World War III, and Israel is trying to make the best of it for itself. First, Israel very quickly realized that it has now been put in the responsible position of enforcing for the US in the area nothing less than the US world power position in the Middle East now against the world power ambitions of the Russia/Iran connection with China behind it. Israel has served the US well in its efforts to make the Arab world part of its world domination, with all its too obvious verbal concerns, but in its practical approach to the realization of its national ambitions in the matter of completing its state-founding project with a diplomatic wink in the direction of the West, which is recognizable and accepted by everyone – and from which it receives all the weapons and political support because, from the West’s point of view, the establishment of the Russia/Iran connection has now to be prevented. The rest is, with all the memories of international law, diplomatic accompaniment music of Israels war for the Arab friends of the USA because they have them on their side anyway, a war for which they not only equip Israel with weapons, but also militarily enforce it with their military apparatus on the ground together with Israel. On this basis, Israel can pursue its national state program with the same consistency in relation to those who, in the eyes of the USA, have now become the auxiliaries of the new multipolar world power order. This also applies to those whom Israel has always regarded as the enemy for its state project, that is to say, all the surrounding states with their disruptive apparatuses of violence, and to eliminate them, and now more than ever Iran as a partner in Russia’s multipolar world order; the whole thing always commented on in the West as a war expansion threatening Israel of a multi-front war that Israel is opening up to all these countries, thus expressing concern as to whether they will be able to manage all this successfully. And the way the Israelis wage war also testifies to the new mission, which Israel, now fighting in the interest of the Western world, knows is unreservedly on its side: Israel is served up violations of the law of war daily by its friends and by the UN, and it understands these admonitions as they are meant, at least from the West: keep it up, but please don’t lose sight of the global mission while you’re mowing down everyone that Israel has always had in its sights. They will manage that if they keep talking about when, what and with what everything should be shot up in Iran and elsewhere, everything will be discussed in detail and even the local consumer of Western press etc. will usually be informed in advance and in detail and will also be allowed to participate in the celebration of the killed enemies, who are all “terrorists”. 

Netanyahu’s statement to Macron that Israel owes its existence to the blood of the martyrs in the war against its enemies and not the United Nations makes clear what guides Israel’s policy in its current wars and what they are aimed at. That war and nothing else counts, and certainly not the UN with its ideas of coexistence between nation-states, which is an outdated idea of the post-World War II world, is a fully shared view of the entire West on the world: see again the war in Ukraine with its mission to crush uncompromisingly the questioning of the Western world order by Russia with war. Peace is submission to the enemy and, as an idea, must be fought with all kinds of war. Celebrating war as a good reason for everything makes it clear that Israel’s goal in its wars is to see itself in a mission of the prevailing world order and to establish itself in the service of maintaining this world order as the dominant state in the region, a state that does not tolerate any other states in the region that have the means of violence to challenge this domination. 

The founding of the state of Israel, unhampered by the United States’ reservations about the US’s consideration for the Arab states, continues unabated, with the slaughter of inhabitants in Gaza and the West Bank, a slaughter that makes expulsions seem almost harmless, because the people there are left alive. Israel is more radical in this respect, in that it bombards away the inhabitants of Gaza, who have been defined as human shields, across the board, and systematically destroys everything from apartment buildings to hospitals to water pipes, the infrastructure necessary for the existence of the inhabitants. The offer to the inhabitants of Gaza, all of them refugees from previous Israeli wars, to become citizens of the Israeli state is not on Israel’s agenda in any case. 

The opposite side, Israel’s opponents, are closed to the idea of opposing the religiously fanatical monopoly of power of a state called Israel with a different model of politics that breaks out of the logic of violence of states and makes the vital interests of the people the guiding purpose of politics, such an idea is closed to the opponents of Israel, who are trapped in the medieval religious logic prevailing on both sides, of answering war with the war of heroic martyrs in a religious mission, for whom all material interests of life are null and void. 

That therefore the old project in the Middle East, called the two-state solution, that is, the coexistence of religiously defined states, that is, political powers that, with this definition, fall behind the idea of a citizen nation states, and which, thanks to their sovereignty defined by a monopoly on the use of force and their economic rationale, for which every national border is already an economic demarcation to be crossed, and which then, through the demarcations of their exclusive religious state rationales, must also see neighboring countries as questioning their state rationales, that the coexistence of such monopolies of violence can only be enforced by a third powerful monopoly of violence , is just as obvious as the fact that, in view of the new assignment of these state projects to parties in the global conflicts over a new world order, their prosecution under the conditions of a newly established world order of the world of states, that all this is, above all, initially the burning of people for these local state-founding projects. This applies to the wars around Israel as well as to the Ukraine and elsewhere. The great world power rivals let the local powers do their job, supply the weapons and make the people of the local states, in and around Israel as in the Ukraine, bleed for their great world power projects. (Exemplary here again the USA, which does not want to understand why the Ukraine does not prescribe military service like they once did in Vietnam from the age of 18.) 

Until it comes to the real thing, and that means World War III. 

Addendum: Of course, when you think about the war in Gaza etc., about what states, sovereignty, reasons of state etc. are and argue about this very fundamental stuff everywhere, you can also think about what is currently going on around Israel. Whether this dispute about these very general theoretical foundations helps you to understand what is currently going on around Israel, well, I don’t know. But of course, you can’t do without these fundamental things either.