Cheap Propaganda, Masquerading as Art, Comes to a Boutique Hotel in the West Bank

To some fanfare, a new hotel has opened in the West Bank city of Bethlehem decorated with the work of the British graffiti artist who goes by the name Banksy. The artist describes his “Walled-Off Hotel,” which overlooks the security barrier cordoning off parts of the West Bank, as having “the worst view in the world.” Reuven Berko comments:

Banksy (who has never revealed his true identity) is calling for courage, but is protesting anonymously. His people explain on Facebook that he has taken the “loaded” view and turned the hotel into an “installation” against the occupation. They explain that the artistic boutique hotel creates a different reality through melting walls, courage and wisdom, creating change, and making art. What lofty . . . expressions to describe an anonymous anti-Semitic coward who refuses to identify himself or appear in the media, [and] who came here from England to operate against Jews. . . .

If Banksy looked out from his hotel at Bethlehem itself, he would see a particularly ugly view: the ghosts of a large Christian community that was wiped out by Bedouin rapists and Islamists from Hebron who stole the Christian bodies, souls, and property.

If Banksy had wanted to gaze at an ugly view, he’d look at the glass façade of the Park Hotel in Netanya, where he can envision the bodies of the Jews murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber while celebrating Passover there, when there was still no fence. Banksy might call the blood spilled on the walls and the floor “psychedelic conceptual art in a hotel of occupation.” He hasn’t shown his face there.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Art, Idiocy, Israel & Zionism, West Bank

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