Responding to British Marxists’ “Papal Edict” against Israel

In December, the British journal the New Left Review published a piece by its long-time editor Perry Anderson entitled “House of Zion,” calling for the destruction of Israel. Given the publication’s influence on the Western left, the article amounted to “the Marxist equivalent of a papal edict,” in the words of the editors of Fathom. Michael Walzer notes its author’s sympathy for violence and contempt for those who desire peace:

Whether [Anderson] favors a purely political or also a military fight, violence or non-violence, is unclear. He doesn’t talk about terrorism at all, though he hints at the usual apologetic account of it (“an explosion of frustration and despair”). His last paragraph seems to call for Arab states to threaten war against Israel (once they are in full control of their “strategic emplacements”). But his militancy is non-specific.

What is certain is that he has nothing but contempt for any Palestinian politician who isn’t actively engaged in “resistance.” All those who hope for mutual accommodation between Jews and Palestinians, who are ready to accept a state alongside Israel and to call for the end of the conflict, who are engaged in a common struggle against terrorists and religious fanatics, who are trying to turn the Palestinian Authority into a nascent state—these are the chief villains in Anderson’s story. The sentences about them are one long angry sneer: they are “compliant notables,” “placemen,” “cost-effective surrogates for the IDF,” bloated with “the proceeds of collaboration.” . . . Anderson is superior to all this. He says it’s war, and he wants them to fight.

Read more at Fathom

More about: Israel & Zionism, Marxism, Michael Walzer, New Left

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF