The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has declared that Israel has suffered a "total defeat" in their war on Gaza as "the war's aims won't be achieved, the hostages won't be returned through military pressure, security won't be restored and Israel's international ostracism won't end."
Saying What Can't Be Said: Israel Has Been Defeated – a Total Defeat
The war's aims won't be achieved, the hostages won't be returned through military pressure, security won't be restored and Israel's international ostracism won't end
by Chaim Levinson | Apr 11, 2024 8:13 pm IDT
We've lost. Truth must be told. The inability to admit it encapsulates everything you need to know about Israel's individual and mass psychology. There's a clear, sharp, predictable reality that we should begin to fathom, to process, to understand and to draw conclusions from for the future. It's no fun to admit that we've lost, so we lie to ourselves.
[...] We can't say it, but we've lost. People have an inclination to believe in the best and be optimistic, hoping that tomorrow will be okay, that we are in a process that in the end will be more successful. That's the most fundamental failure of human thought: the notion that the direction we are taking is a good one, that we just need to get there already – that in just a little more time, with a little more effort, the hostages will be returned, Hamas will surrender and Yahya Sinwar will be killed. After all, we're the good guys, and good will triumph.
It's the same mentality that leads to the notion that "the Iranian regime will soon implode" and other notions that have more to do with Hollywood scripts than life itself. They're not the truth and it relates to something that's uncomfortable. After all, it's uncomfortable telling the public the truth.
[...] No cabinet minister will restore our sense of personal security. Every Iranian threat will make us tremble. Our international standing was dealt a beating. Our leadership's weakness was revealed to the outside. For years we managed to fool them into thinking we were a strong country, a wise people and a powerful army. In truth, we're a shtetl with an air force, and that's on the condition that its awakened in time.
[...] Rafah is the newest bluff that the mouthpieces are plying to fool us and make us think that victory is just moments away. By the time they enter Rafah, the actual event will have lost its significance. There may be an incursion, perhaps a tiny one, sometime – say in May. After that, they'll peddle the next lie, that all we have to do is ________ (fill in the blank), and victory will be on its way. The reality is that the war's aims will not be achieved. Hamas will not be eradicated. The hostages will not be returned through military pressure. Security will not be reestablished.
The more the mouthpieces shout that "we're winning," the clearer it is that we're losing. Lying is their craft. We need to get used to that. Life is less secure than before October 7. The beating we took will sting for years to come. The international ostracism won't go away. And, of course, the dead won't be coming back. Nor will many of the hostages.
For some of us, life will get back on track, with the petrifying fear of an imminent repeat. And for some of us, life won't get back on track. Those people will walk among us like the living dead. That's what we voted for. That's how it is. We need to get used to the sad reality in our homeland.
Regardless of what happens on the battlefield, the decision to bomb Gaza into the Stone Age and kill civilians en masse rather than fight Hamas on the ground and risk higher IDF casualties has alienated Israel from the entire world.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has declared that Israel has suffered a "total defeat" in their war on Gaza as "the war's aims won't be achieved, the hostages won't be returned through military pressure, security won't be restored and Israel's international ostracism won't end."