Israel is waging a genocidal war of extermination whereas Palestine is waging a war of national liberation. These are very different tasks and they are, in essence, fighting past each other.

While Israel seems to be ‘winning’ its battle against Palestinian people, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc are winning street battles with the Israeli Army. The two sides have very different theories of war, with different executions (literally), and different outcomes (eventually). Using war footage, the participants' own statements, and a bit of history, I'll show that while Israel may be winning the genocidal battle against Gaza, they are losing the war for Palestine. Inshallah, Allahu Akbar.

Israel’s Total War (ie Genocide)

Israel is waging a genocide while the resistance is waging war, which are different things altogether. Israel has been relentlessly attacking the civilian population of Gaza, saying ‘we will turn Gaza into an island of ruins’, ‘the focus is on destruction, not accuracy’, ‘animal humans will be treated accordingly’, and ‘there is only one goal: Nakba (expulsion of Palestinians)’.

Genocidal incitement aside, you can tell from their actions. Israel targets hospitals, homes, bakeries, and water tanks; everything they can destroy to make Gaza unlivable. They have been killing children (the average age of casualties is 5) to crush the Palestinian spirit and destroy any future resistance. Israel is waging genocide, with the full backing of the original genociders in America and Europe.

Israel openly appeals to these Western Allies because this is what they did in World War II. The Western Allies massacred millions of civilians in a strategy called ‘Total War’ (also practiced by the Nazis and by the Americans in Indochina). Basically just bomb everything and everybody and try to break the will of an entire people, not just their military.

Americans call this ‘strategic bombing,’ which is an oxymoron. ‘Kill everyone’ is the absolute lack of strategy, it’s just ‘spray and pray’ industrialized and made into a doctrine. ‘Strategic bombing’ is in fact wildly indiscriminate and doesn’t work, everywhere from Germany to Korea to Vietnam to Laos. It wastes matériel on non-military targets, and makes opposing militaries fight more fiercely. The one place ‘just killing everybody’ works is in genocidal conquest, as the Europeans did all over the world, but this requires A) time and B) massive technological superiority. This ‘strategy’ doesn’t work against anybody with a military (guerilla or conventional), because it pointedly doesn’t destroy that military. It just kills civilians and hopes the blood ‘trickles down’.

After a competent military attack from Hamas et al on October 7th, this is the strategy Israel is pursuing. ‘Total war’, ‘strategic bombing’, or just “turn Gaza into an island of ruins,” as the occupation PM has said. They lie to the credulous western media about ‘fighting Hamas’ or ‘rescuing hostages’, but Hamas is underground and they’re bombing their own hostages. It’s obvious bullshit, and in Hebrew media they just come out and say the truth. Take a recent column from former National Security Council member Giora Eiland, in Yediot Ahronot (translated).

According to the American narrative, there are two groups of people in Gaza. One is the Hamas fighters, who are brutal terrorists and are therefore mortal. Most of the people in Gaza belong to a second group, innocent civilians who suffer for no fault of their own. Therefore Israel must not only avoid harming them as much as possible but also act to make their lives easier.

The other, and more correct, narrative is as follows: Israel is not fighting a terrorist organization but against the State of Gaza. The State of Gaza is indeed under Hamas leadership, and this organization managed to mobilize all the resources of its state, the support of the majority of its citizens, and the absolute loyalty of its civil administration, around Sinwar’s leadership, while fully supporting his ideology. In this sense, Gaza is very similar to Nazi Germany, where a similar process also took place.

After saying what is happening, and what is confirmed by other Israeli officials (the Finance Minister says he ‘agrees with every word’), Eiland gets into the historical justification (ie, the connection between today and ‘total war’).

Being that this is the accurate description of the situation, so it is also correct to manage the war accordingly. A war between states is not only won by military combat, but also by the ability of one side to break the opposing side’s system, the economic ability, and first and foremost the ability to provide energy, is of the utmost importance. The collapse of Germany at the beginning of 1945 was mainly due to the loss of Romania’s oil fields, and once Germany didn’t have enough fuel for its planes and tanks — the war was won.

This is just historical idiocy. Eiland says Germany started collapsing after losing the Romanian oil fields but A) it didn’t and B) ‘total war’ didn’t do it. Germany started collapsing when the Soviet Army beat it in battle and chased the German (and Romanian) armies all the way back to the oil fields, paying in blood and physically taking them. The western allies tried carpet bombing Romania but this resulted in “no curtailment of overall product output” while just killing a bunch of people. Throughout the West, people today attribute victory in World War II to war crimes from the western allies and not war fighting from the Soviets, but this is historically wrong, and was also known at the time.80% of the Germany Army was destroyed by the Soviets. That’s how the war was won, not by killing randos in Romania or Dresden. The western allies have started believing their own propaganda, and this confusion extends to their own colony near the oil fields, Israel.

The Israelis really think World War II was won with war crimes against civilians and not actual war against combatants. It’s not just Eiland, this is endemic. Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, said: “I don’t want to go back to your history by targeting German cities. Dresden was a symbol of that because you knew that this is the only way to beat the Nazis and make them surrender.” Again, firebombing Dresden had fuck-all to do with ending the war. It was just a pointless abomination, immortalized in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Unfortunately, this false history leads to current atrocities across Palestine. Here’s Eiland openly justifying targeting the ‘mother, sisters, and wives’ of Gaza and encouraging a humanitarian disaster and epidemics, which is exactly what’s happening.

Israel must therefore not provide the other side with any capability that prolongs its life. Moreover, we say that Sinwar is so evil that he does not care if all the residents of Gaza die. Such a presentation is not accurate, since who are the “poor” women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas murderers. On the one hand, they are part of the infrastructure that supports the organization, and on the other hand, if they experience a humanitarian disaster, then it can be assumed that some of the Hamas fighters and the more junior commanders will begin to understand that the war is futile and that it is better to prevent irreversible harm to their families. The way to win the war faster and at a lower cost for us requires a system collapse on the other side and not the mere killing of more Hamas fighters. The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers. And no, this is not about cruelty for cruelty’s sake, since we don’t support the suffering of the other side as a goal but as a means.

Thus, based on the wrong and evil theory of ‘strategic bombing’, you get the current genocidal campaign against Palestine. Israel truly is an outpost of European values, which isn’t a good thing. As the President of Israel said, “It is an entire nation who are responsible. This rhetoric about civilians supposedly not being involved is absolutely untrue. We will fight until we break their backs.”

This is exactly what Israel is doing, while idiots in the western press pretend they’re not. Israel is targeting hospitals, refugee camps, homes, water tanks, UN offices, food stores, bakeries, journalists etc. They’re not hitting these places on accident. As Eiland said, “Israel must not provide the other side with any capability that prolongs its life.” It’s not even right to call this indiscriminate bombing, they’re going for the places it hurts, like bombing hospitals. This is all on purpose. They’re waging total war against a civilian population and trying to literally break their backs. Check their actions or their words.

These people are not waging war against militants. They’re trying to complete the genocide of the indigenous and take their land once and for all. It’s not that Israel commits war crimes, Israel is a war crime. They started by displacing lakhs in the first Nakba in 1948, and they’re quite openly talk about finishing the job. Ruling party MP Ariel Kallner said“Now there is only one goal: Nakba. A Nakba in Gaza that will dwarf the Nakba of 1948.”

However, this is 2023, times have changed, the geopolitical climate has changed, and most importantly, the people in the concentration camp have rockets, anti-tank weapons, and guns. Israel is not just facing a civilian population to be meekly genocided, they are facing a competent paramilitary which chose this battle, and which has even stronger allies all around. As Hitler found out to his chagrin, genocide takes a lot of time and resources. While you’re waging it, you can get completely overrun by a competent military, on multiple fronts. This is precisely the problem Israel is facing now.

Palestine’s Liberation War

What we have today is armies like the US and Israel acting like wild-eyed terrorists, and ‘terrorists’ like Hamas and Hezbollah acting like responsible armies. The world is topsy-turvy and, indeed, always was (once you step out of the western spin cycle). Whereas Israel is bombing hospitals, civilian airports, and killing babies, Hamas and Hezbollah are methodically dismantling the Israeli military. While Israel is waging actual genocide, these paramilitaries are waging actual war.

Let’s start with the operation of October 7th, which the west branded as terrorism. It was not. Hamas et al’s Al Aqsa Flood was a disciplined military hit with clear strategic goals, and they achieved them. The Al Aqsa Flood targeted occupation military outposts and took hostages strategically (to exchange for the thousands Israel holds). Israel, in an incompetent panic, killed many of its own civilians with friendly fire, and spread lies about rape and beheaded babies to incite their own genocidal violence. While they lie in the credulous western press, in Hebrew they actually release the truth. October 7th was a military hit, and a very successful one.

On that day, Israel’s command and control around Gaza was hit directly and another front was opened in the north against Hezbollah. Weeks later, the army walked into a maze in Gaza, and Israel is internationally isolated now. Only the colonial powers support them, and their power (and support) is waning faster than ever. By Israel’s own admission, the IOF has killed far less Hamas commanders than UN workers, which is both militarily useless and not a good look. And Gaza is only one front.

Since October 7th, Hezbollah have been methodically attacking Israel in the north with increasing firepower, forcing colonial settlers to flee and blowing up occupation bases. Israel may have militarily occupied the north of Gaza, but they’re losing the north of occupied Palestine itself. Hezbollah is a much stronger force than Hamas, and has the advantage of operating above ground, with supply lines to Iran. Meanwhile in the south, Ansar Allah (the government of Yemen) has launched missiles through outer space and is shutting down Israeli shipping in the Red Sea. Then, to the east, Iraqi and Syrian militas are hitting American occupation bases (it’s one colonial White Empire, in the end). Like Hitler, Israel is trying to commit a laborious genocide while also fighting a war on multiple fronts. Historically, this doesn’t end well.

The resistance paramilitaries are objectively more competent, strategic, and proportional than the wild-eyed Israeli army, which is fundamentally only good at killing children. Most importantly, the resistance has a goal which is simply more achievable than the Israeli one. They are not trying to ‘kill everyone’ (ie the Jews). This is propaganda from the actual antisemites in the West. As the Hamas charter says,“the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage. The Zionist movement, which was able with the help of Western powers to occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settlement occupation which has already disappeared from much of the world and must disappear from Palestine.”

Hamas is simply fighting for their land against occupation, in a region which despises the occupation as well. And they’re not fighting with bow and arrow, they have anti-tank weapons and rockets, and their allies have ballistic missiles, drones, and standing armies. And none of these people are wasting their tinder on civilians. All of the stories about rape and torture on October 7th are both proven false by the evidence and common sense. Who has time for that shit?

While success is still difficult for the resistance, but it is easier than it is for the Israelis, who have defined themselves into an impossible corner. Total war has to end with total destruction which is, honestly, a lot of work. The resistance has simpler objectives, which are more achievable by definition. What are these objectives? As the political leader of Hamas (one of many resistance groups) said on October 7th,

Our objective is clear: we want to liberate our land, our holy sites, our Al-Aqsa mosque, our prisoners. We have no hesitation about this. This is the goal that is worthy of this battle, worthy of this heroism, worthy of this courage. Al-Qassam Brigades made the enemy lose its balance in just a few minutes, with this grand and blessed incursion; with this epic presence of men who write history with their blood and their guns; with their footsteps that crush the occupying invaders.

If you’re wondering what Hamas, more generally, wants, you can read their charter for yourself. In that they say they want the indigenous land of Palestine back, but also agree to a two-state solution. That is to say, they’re negotiable, reasonable actors, unlike the terrorist (by action, if not color) state of Israel.

20. Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.

At this point, however, I think the two-state solution is moot, but there it is. At this point, Israel has engaged in such openly genocidal violence that it cannot be lived with any more than one could live with apartheid South Africa or Nazi Germany. The genocidal, apartheid Israeli state has to be defeated and dismantled to have actual democracy in Palestine. This larger, admittedly maximal, goal seems to be reflected in statements from Abu Obeida, spokesman of the Al-Qassam Brigade (Hamas military wing). He said, on October 28th:

The era of selling illusions to the world about the myth of the invincible army, the invulnerable Merkava (tank), and alleged military and intelligence superiority has ended after we shattered it in front of the world in the ‘Gaza envelope’ (the southern Israeli region that is adjacent to besieged Gaza) and all of Palestine. The era of Zionism’s decline has begun, and the curse of the eighth decade will befall them. (Repeated warnings by Israeli politicians that Israel might not live past its eight decades.)

The question, then, is tactically how. Even though the Palestinian objectives are smaller than genociding/cleansing everyone in Israel, they still need to defeat the Israeli military, which is huge, nuclear armed, and incredibly cruel. I won’t get into whether this is even possible, which is also a moot point. The battle is joined, the die is cast, only Allah knows where they roll. Regardless of the probabilities of success, what theory do these militants follow?

In this case, what they can do and should do are the same thing. Even if the Palestinians had genocidal intent (which they don’t), they don’t have the capability to act on it. Neither does Israel, really, genocide is a lot of work. Both Palestine and their allies have capable but limited munitions, and they need to make them count. They simply don’t have the thread to carpet bomb. They have to be more discriminating, which means they have to engage and annihilate the enemy army directly. This is, not incidentally, Clausewitz’s standard theory of war. As the Prussian military theorist said yonks ago:

What do we mean by the defeat of the enemy? Simply the destruction of his forces, whether by death, injury, or any other means — either completely or enough to make him stop fighting… The complete or partial destruction of the enemy must be regarded as the sole object of all engagements… Direct annihilation of the enemy’s forces must always be the dominant consideration.

As opposed to total war, just (as in only) war prioritizes the destruction of enemy forces, not the civilian population.Hence Hamas did not go on a wild killing spree on October 7th, they hit military installations around Gaza and took hostages for strategic exchange. Israel panicked and lit up their own positions with dozens of attack helicopters, but that’s not Hamas. They simply don’t have the firepower. They have to be more tactical.

With the Al Aqsa Flood, the Palestinian Resistance was able to stage a combined arms assault on the Israeli military which crumbled, using Hamas’s words, “like a spider’s web.” The Israeli Occupation Force was exposed as a force quite capable of genociding civilians from the air, but quite weak at fighting on the ground. And this hasn’t changed since.

Whenever the IOF engages Hamas, they get red-triangled and smoked. You can just look at combat footage from Hamas vs. Israel to see who is a force and who’s a farce. In the Hamas video, at left, fighters are tracking the enemy before eliminating them. In the IOF video, at right, soldiers are shooting up an empty school. There’s no comparison.

While the media is full of Israeli attacks on hospitals, refugee camps, homes, and defenseless children, you don’t see is them engaging Hamas directly. Because they don’t. The strategy is attacking the ‘entire nation’ of Gaza and ‘destruction, not accuracy,’ in their own words. This is incompatible with ‘direct annihilation of the enemy’s forces’ and it shows. Hence you get video of them shooting up air and planting evidence in hospitals. They can’t find Hamas, let alone engage them.

Meanwhile Hamas is finding the IOF every day. Every day Hamas releases footage of tanks and troops they smoke. They used to list how much men and matériel on an hourly basis, but now it’s so much that daily updates have to do. Take this update from November 20th, from Abu Obeida again:

Our fighters targeted 60 Zionist military vehicles in the past three days, including 10 armored carriers. Our fighters targeted an infantry force with anti-personnel devices on Saturday, causing significant injuries and hearing the enemy’s screams for help. Fierce clashes continue with the enemy on several fronts in the Gaza Strip. Our fighters heard the cries and pleas of the enemy soldiers. Our fighters carried out several qualitative operations against the enemy, resulting in fatalities and wounded among soldiers. When the enemy is unable to tow its damaged vehicles, it resorts to bombing them from the air to erase the traces of its failure. We suggest that the enemy may have bombed its own forces on the ground, thinking they were captured in the Rantisi Hospital operation.

You never hear this sort of military breakdown from Israel because they’re not doing it, and it shows. They just bomb a hospital and pretend Hamas was there, but Hamas themselves are not playing around. The IOF is fundamentally not fit for actual ground warfare against militants, preferring to bomb hospitals from the air. Their point of reference is not actually World War II, but genocidal colonial violence against indigenous people. However, that’s a bit different when the natives have rockets and anti-tank weapons. And Hamas is just one front.

Hezbollah is much more powerful, and is systematically destroying Israeli forces on the northern border. As their leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrullah said on November 3rd:

Those who think that Hizbullah should wage total war on Israel — they should look at what is taking place on the Lebanese front. It is unprecedented. It will increase. All of Israel’s positions are under siege. It is a different battle than in 2006 in tactics and weapons.

On the border line since October 7 the Israeli army moved out. It pulled all troops to the Gaza front. It called up reserves. Our operations keep the Israeli’s army at our front and away from Gaza. A third of the Israeli army is now at our border line. Half of its navy is dedicated to our front. A quarter of its air force is. Half of its Iron Dome missiles. Forty three settlements were evacuated.

As Nasrallah says, Hezbollah should not (and cannot) wage ‘total war’ on Israel, because that is not the tactics and weapons required in this context (or in any context, really). Instead of wasting resources for a genocidal goal they don’t have, Hezbollah has been steadily taking out Israeli intelligence positions and has moved onto hitting entire bases and troop concentrations. This is all documented daily with counts of vehicles destroyed and casualties, accompanied by video (here’s one source, on Telegram). This isn’t covered as much as Israel’s daily atrocities, but these military attacks are more (militarily) significant.

Israel censors its own casualties, but they are likely significant now. The IOF has lost or damaged hundreds of vehicles, and they don’t actually have that many. Maybe 650 functional tanks, total. All of the grinding damage adds up, especially since their army is conscripts and their economy is also cratering. In response Israel is killing civilians in cars in Lebanon or everybody in Gaza, but these are not military responses. It’s just terrorism, and how can you terrify people with nothing to lose?

What Israel actually has to do is find and engage the enemy which they are terrified to do. So they engage in genocide from above, like cowards, but they can’t do this forever. Israel acts like they have the munitions, diplomatic cover, and internal stability to do this forever and they just don’t. It takes a lot to genocide 2+ million people, Israel is internationally isolated besides the colonial west, and western populations are protesting against their corrupt governments. Israel has limited time and resources and they’ve already wasted it on genocide and propaganda.

As Nasrallah said, “What happens on the battlefield is more important than my speech. Time is important for the resistance. It helps to grow until the enemy admits defeat. When all the pressure comes together the enemy will have to settle. Netanyahu is changing his aims on an hourly basis. It shows the pressure Israel is under. Its military failure on the ground and the protests are all pressing on it. The time for it is limited.”

Indeed, time is already being called. Israel has already had to settle, agreeing to a ceasefire and hostage exchange with Hamas, though they already seem to be breaking it. The fact is that Israel could have made a deal for hostages before all the killing but, as we’ve gone over, that was never their intention. They honestly don’t seem to really know what they’re doing. What we can see is that the Palestinian Resistance has a strategy, while Israel just has the oxymoron of ‘strategic bombing’. Israel is murdering babies in hospitals while the Resistance is blowing up tanks at point-blank range. Ask yourself, who’s the terrorists?

Conclusion

None of this is to say that Palestine will necessarily win. Allah only knows, and he obviously operates on a different timescale. All I am saying here is that Palestine and Israel are fighting entirely different wars. Israel is trying to genocide a whole population while Palestine is trying to destroy the occupation forces. Israel may look like it's winning its bloody battle with big bombs, but it’s losing the actual war by not standing and fighting. While the Resistance may make only small gains every day, they’re militarily relevant, and they add up after a while. Both Israel and the greater White Empire have limited time, and they’re wasting it in a final paroxysm of genocidal violence. Israel has to fight on multiple fronts, America has to fight on even more, and genocide, honestly, is a bit of a distraction. The White Empire is at war, and they’re losing. They’re winning battles against babies and losing wars against men.