On becoming a global pariah – Alon Pinkas in Haaretz:

‘For weeks, Israel has been half-threatening to launch a massive operation in Rafah, on Gaza's southern border with Egypt. "There are four Hamas battalions there and destroying them is the key to eliminating Hamas" is the official line. The Hamas military wing's center of gravity is in the south, Israel Defense Forces generals explained to their U.S. counterparts in October and November, failing to provide an adequate reason as to why, in that case, Israel was planning an invasion of northern rather than southern Gaza.

Since the war descended into pointless, goalless attrition, Israel has been raising the Rafah invasion as some imaginary tipping point that would end the war decisively. Yet Rafah is not Stalingrad, nor is it the Battle of the Bulge – certainly not from a strategic point of view while Israel is contemplating an offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon.[

(…)

‘"This is one of the most fateful choices Israel has ever had to make. And what I find both disturbing and depressing is that there is no major Israeli leader today in the ruling coalition, the opposition or the military who is consistently helping Israelis understand that choice – a global pariah or a Middle East partner – or explaining why it should choose the second," wrote Thomas Friedman in The New York Times on Friday.’

Read the article here.

A global pariah can become (more or less) respectable in no time, but still it’s good to remember that the powers that be in Israel – some of which lean towards political messianism or are openly supporters of political messianism – appear to be happy to have turned Israel into a global pariah.

Zionism failed in providing security for the Jewish people, for the time being at least.

As with capitalism and bolshevism it became the rationalization of Jew-hatred.

No, antizionism is not the same as antisemitism.

But still, as George Steiner pointed out many years ago, the lessons that the Jewish people learned from the Holocaust – the fear of being weak – were fatal.

The fear of weakness is the beginning of aggression.

An individual has the option to turn this fear into let’s say a novel.

Alas, a state doesn’t have this option.