I was thinking about the Israel situation where everybody seems to be taking sides, so let me try to summarise my perspective.

I see people complaining about Israel making Gaza into essentially an open-air prison, and they are formally true: Gaza is a prison inhabited by the Arabs, where exits are managed by the Israelis. However, what people don’t get is that the Arabs wanted it that way. It was a choice. I saw it happen in real-time, when there were serious negotiations where Israel was ready to give Palestinians statehood, but the very fact of signing such a document would mean that they recognize Israel’s right to exist, and they didn’t want to do that. Their position is that Israel as a state should not exist, the Jews have no right to exist there, and they will fight to the last man, woman and child to make sure that Israel is destroyed and all Jews are either exiled or killed. Also, there is absolutely no political support among the Arabs for any kind of a peace with Israel; if one political party showed readiness for it, the others would kill them. Also, they don’t know what to do other than wage perpetual war against Israel; if by some chance peace broke out, they would be ruined.

So, the Jews decided that the other side is unable to sign a true peace deal and they basically contained them in an open-air prison. They can “leave” at any point by signing a peace deal whereby they recognize Israel’s right to exist; they would get statehood and international recognition, and their situation would start improving. Instead, they indoctrinate their children with anti-Israeli hatred propaganda, and the children indoctrinated in the 2000s are the Hamas militants killing the Jews now. They will never accept peace because they believe that their entire reason to exist is to destroy Israel and kill Jews.

Both sides believe in some kind of a non-transcendental religion that’s very political; they think God is on their side and gave them the right to rule the world, and if anyone stands in the way of that, he opposes God’s will. They hate, despise and dehumanise the other side and think genocide is a perfectly ok thing to do, if they are the ones doing it. The Jews have America on their side, the Palestinians have all other Muslims with their oil money on their side.

Strategically speaking, the Jews made a mistake moving to Palestine and forming the country of Israel. It places them on a very poor, exposed piece of real estate, with not much to gain and everything to lose. It also places them in a strategic position where they have to make so many other players experience a catastrophic strategic loss, in order to merely survive. Any kind of balance they attain will be precarious. However, since they already invested so much in this project, it makes them think that they have no alternative to success, which makes them desperate and prone to extreme moves.

I am not inclined to moralize based on the modern ethics based on the so called “human rights” and their “violations”. It’s not how I think. I think from the position of trying to see which side embodies transcendence and transcendental virtues based on God. That which is not based on the firm rock of God will perish and is not worthy of existence. So, which side is closer to God? From what I can see, it’s all a battle for this world, and who has the right to control which portion of it, and each side claims some right originating from God, and I see no truth behind any of it. Essentially, even Josephus Flavius conceded that God is with the Romans and against the Jews, that God’s wrath was against them and their claim to Palestine was forfeit, so any claim based on the Bible is silly – God gave, God took away. As for the Arabs, they call themselves Palestinians but that is a falsehood, because they are essentially conquerors and migrants originating from Arabia. They have no claim to this land other than having come there at some point. All those claims to divine right are hubris and materialism thinly covered with fake mysticism, and I accept none of it.

The entire conflict is a very cruel interaction of two tribal entities, both cruel, arrogant and prideful.

Of those two, I prefer the Jews, because unlike the Arabs, they actually have a tendency of doing good and useful things, at least some of them. They have science, technology and the economy, and I sympathise with their predicament, especially since they would want nothing better than to just have peace so that they could do good and useful things with a sense of security. As for the Arabs, their position of preferring perpetual war and murder to any kind of a peaceful compromise makes them completely unlikeable, and I cannot force myself to give a fuck about them whatsoever. They could have solved this situation ten times already and chose not to, because they plan to eventually solve it by means of genocide, if they just endure long enough. Their argument, that this was their land first, is nonsense, because their claim is based on nothing more than just finding a vacant desert after the Jews have been exiled, and starting to live there. They could have accepted a rational compromise whereby both sides get part of the land and cooperate peacefully, but no, there needs to be genocide of the Jews in order for the Arabs to be happy with the outcome.

This being the reality of the situation, I seriously can’t pity them if their arrogance meets something even harder.

My analysis is based on the following assumptions:

– Israel uses the USA to protect itself, however this has limits and is most effective if Israel is in an actual and acute danger. The limits of this were shown when Netanyahu was trying to convince the Americans that Iran is “this close” to having atomic weapons, and everybody was “naah, not convinced, but nice try Bibi, have a nice day now”.

– In case America disappeared from the world scene (for instance, due to financial collapse that would make it unable to project military power for decades) Israel would find itself in immediate danger of being destroyed by the neighbouring Arab countries and Iran.

– Israel’s approach to this problem includes efforts to divide Iran from the Arab countries, and Arab countries among themselves, in order to prevent the situation where all their enemies present a united front. Also, keeping the world in perpetual dependence of the American financial system makes the situation where any oil-producing country risks American sanctions a very good weapon of deterrence.

– Recently, however, the entire fiat currency system has been showing signs that usually indicate imminent collapse, due to American abuse of the system to sanction rival powers under every silly excuse. Also, the fact that America has been exporting its own inflation and financing their prosperity by exporting misery to the rest of the world has not been unnoticed, and the BRICS countries are very close to completely leaving the dollar-based financial system and migrating to something of their own design.

– Furthermore, China and Russia managed to broker peace in Yemen and peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia, mostly because Saudi Arabia has been pressured, blackmailed and abused by America one too many times and decided to seek refuge in the BRICS system, along with Iran, and they decided that they both have more issues with America than with each other. This is a very dangerous thing for Israel.

– Israel is having a problem with their own younger generations, who don’t understand the precarious position their country is in.

– Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is accused of corruption and if he leaves office, he is likely to go straight to jail. He is therefore highly motivated, for personal reasons, to cook up a serious war that would make it possible for him to avoid unpleasant personal outcomes. It just happens that the international situation of Israel is as dire as his own, and their high political, intelligence and military circles must be aware of this, and willing to cooperate with him in order to cook up a situation that will pre-empt the natural and highly probable outcome for Israel in case no aggressive action is taken.

– America needs a precedent where nuclear weapons are used in war, but they don’t want to do it first; they just want a green light for their own use, either in response or according to a precedent. So far, Russia proved resistant to being goaded into first use, which is seen by the Americans as a nuisance and an aggravation.

So, what does Israel want? They want America to destroy the enemy states that surround them, most importantly Iran, because everything else is either already degraded, or is merely a gas station masquerading as a country (talking about Saudi Arabia and the Emirates here) without any industrial capacity. Also, they want all of their potential enemies degraded to the point of not being able to threaten Israel. They are not threatened by goat herders with AK47s.

The most straightforward way to achieve those goals is to wait for Iran to organize one of those inevitable attacks they are always planning, via their sock-puppets Hamas and Hezbollah. This attack must be allowed to succeed, at least to the point where it creates a legitimate threat, but not to the point where the actual existence of the state is at risk. Israel will then be seen as justified in taking revenge upon the perpetrators, but as this revenge becomes severe enough, Iran will act to protect its assets in the region, and Israel will declare war upon it. America will become involved, of course, but will try to no get into an open war with Iran; they just want to protect Israel from unmanageable consequences. As situation in Israel gets worse, they will nuke Iran, and possibly also the Hezbollah central in Lebanon. America will use its international influence to present this as legitimate self-defence, and in order for this to look credible, it would be helpful if Iran sunk an American aircraft carrier, hopefully the new one that’s been plagued with issues and is a failure anyway. Once the precedent of using nuclear weapons “for defensive purposes” has been established, further nuclear escalation will ensue.

I can’t quantitatively assess probability of this course of action at this moment, but I believe it is not less than 30% or more than 70%. This means there’s a good chance for a more moderate outcome, but still a quite high likelihood of things getting really bad really quickly. My personal feeling says this is very serious and not business as usual.

Probability of oil prices going up is almost 100%.

Probability of a refugee crisis in Europe is over 90%.

Probability of nuclear weapons being used in the following year is over 60%.

Probability of a great economic collapse of the West in the following year is 50%, almost 100% in 5 years.

Probability of the West losing the ability to control the price of gold is very similar to the probability of the great economic collapse of the West.

Probability of a great supply-side collapse in Europe in the following year is over 50%.

My recommendations remain unchanged from before, because the specific events might be unexpected, but the entire situation was predictable.

Today the Palestinians performed a very well planned and executed attack on Israel, so successfully that I have to suspect Iran to have been behind it, and the most incredible thing is that Mossad didn’t sound a warning ahead of it, at all. Unlike the previous Palestinian attacks, which were purely terrorist exercises, this one actually looks threatening, and is at least revenge for general Soleimani and all those sabotages of the Iranian nuclear programme in the past years, and things might get even more serious in the following days. 

The most important thing is that both Israel and their allies depleted their heavy artillery stockpiles in their misguided attempt at weakening Russia and helping Ukraine, and they might have critically weakened their ability to defend themselves against this, and nobody will be there to help them, because all of their allies are in the same pickle. 

As for Ukraine, judging by the changing tone of the Western press, the public in the West is being prepared for either the inevitable Ukrainian defeat, or for the next round of extreme NATO escalation. However, there have been clear signals sent from Russia and Belarus that providing Ukraine with long-range missiles that can target the interior of Russia will have a nuclear response.

ps.:

I’ve been thinking about the most likely explanation for this.

Mossad seems to have failed. However, this is very unlikely, since lots of things must have been in motion on the Palestinian side, lots of weapons were imported, lots of communications must have been going on. Then I thought, what if Netanyahu told them to sit on the information, after he’d been informed? What if he deliberately allowed it to happen, so that all this chaos would erupt, and he’d go into Gaza, kill everybody and be the saviour of Israel? Possible, but what would have been his motivation, considering the cost to Israel, in lives, equipment and prestige?

Then I thought – hmm, he’s been having a serious investigation/trial against him over there, for bribery, fraud and what not, and a trial is still ongoing. He must think that if he leaves office, he’s going straight to jail… unless he does something that will make him so popular, that his political opponents will prefer to drop charges against him. Or he just keeps riding the emergency powers forever.

I don’t know whether this is true, but it certainly makes more sense than Mossad not seeing this thing while it was still in the planning stage.

Yesterday, a private plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group, and 9 of his staff, crashed, with no survivors.

There are several interpretations of this. The first is that it was an accident. Accidents are always possible, but somehow I don’t think so.

The second interpretation is that Prigozhin’s political ambitions turned him into a very serious source of strife and contention in Russia, where he actually tried to take his private army to Moscow in order to try and pressure the government to basically put him in charge of the military. They shot down several aircraft and got some good men killed. Putin defused this very volatile situation very carefully, and I still don’t know what the fuck that was all about. The entire thing stinks of hidden games and double play. So, the second interpretation is that Prigozhin had further plans for his Wagner group that would further his political ambitions, unlike the rest of the Wagner soldiers who had no problem being absorbed in regular military forces, and Putin basically ordered the FSB to get rid of him, so they shot down or sabotaged his plane, killing him and some of his inner staff. If this is the case, it’s a huge exception from the way Putin usually deals with bad actors who threaten Russia’s political stability; he usually publishes discrediting facts about them, finds some conventional crime they committed, has them arrested, tried and put in prison. The idea that Putin kills his political opponents is nonsense only the Westerners believe in. He’s a legalist, and has powerful legal instruments at his disposal, and he’s very proficient not only in real Judo, but also in political Judo. He doesn’t use blunt instruments if there are alternatives. However, Prigozhin might actually be an exception, because if true things are published about his likely crimes (have in mind that he had two private jets in the air at the time, which means he was working with incredible amounts of money that didn’t really go into the armament and salaries of Wagner soldiers), this might put a bad light on the Wagner group, whose soldiers are seen in a positive light in Russia, and this would create unnecessary internal strife that Putin doesn’t need, and Prigozhin already abused this fact. Taking him out and then absorbing his private army into the regular armed forces might have been desirable. However, this doesn’t mean that it was actually done. It only means nobody will cry over his fate very much.

The third possibility is that he was taken out by the same Ukrainian/CIA assets that have already been killing “undesirables” in Russia, and the Ukrainians already put him on their list. This is certainly a possibility, because it fits the modus operandi of Ukrainian intelligence – they use classic terrorist acts with bombs and don’t really care about collateral damage. They hate, they kill those whom they hate, and intimidate the rest.

To be honest, I initially thought the second option was the most likely one, but now I am rather partial to the third one. It’s interesting that there are still no official statements from the Russian government, which would mean that they don’t know how to handle this – they don’t have a prepared story to run, and don’t know whether to go with “good riddance” or “they killed our hero and now there’s going to be hell to pay”. I am certain that the black boxes from the airplane are being analysed and if the crash was due to an explosion on board or a missile strike, things are going to get very interesting very quickly. However, if the crash was due to a technical malfunction and the Ukrainians don’t admit they caused it, the entire thing will be shrugged off, because Prigozhin was an unbalanced person on an ego trip and nobody will miss him.

I’ve seen a video of the crash and it’s consistent with either a missile strike or an explosive device.