Witold Jurasz: Netanyahu clearly won. Just like Bush in Iraq [KOMENTARZ]
In 1996, Iraq was already ruled by a toothless, but hostile to Israel Saddam Husejn. In 2022, Husejn was already a distant memory, but Syria was ruled by an Israel, Bashar al-Assad, the powerful force in Lebanon was the hatred of Israel Hezbollah, the Gaza Zone, the Gaza zone, was ruled by the hattha-hated Israel Hamas, and Iran, and Iran was in priest. Then they stopped, and the authorities remained, the Mulłów hated Israel.
Less than three years later, Assad lives in emigration in Moscow, Hezbollah and Hamas were, if not broken, they are essentially weakened, and the Mullads still hate Israel, but they have just convinced that it is better that they would limit their hatred only to words.
Over the past, just over a year and a half counting from the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, the world around Israel is supposedly the same, but at the same time it has changed fundamentally. Whether the plans to change it so fundamentally were born in the head of the Israeli prime minister on October 7, remains unclear, but we know that Netanyahu has managed to turn the greatest defeat in Israel's history into the most successful success. Netanyahu won so strongly that he could probably, appearing before Knesset and if you want to quote the Polish classic “checking the task”. In English it would sound “Mission Accomplished”.
Bush and US victory in Iraq
Exactly these words were used by President George W. Bush in 2003 on board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, when he wanted to inform the world and Americans about the success of the American invasion of Iraq. In fact, the Americans won the war. The problem is that the American victory was, as it was soon to show, convinced of everyone except the Iraqis.
American intervention in Iraq, however incomparably less bloody (at least for the United States) than many other wars fought by the US, was, as it was supposed to show, a breakthrough moment. Exactly during the war in Iraq, American power reached its peak. Exactly from her, however, her crisis, which is still ongoing to this day, dates back to her.
George W. Bush
Two years after Bush's speech, one of the most influential political science and theorists of the international relations of the last half -century, died on May 6 this year. Joseph Nye, commenting on his actions in Iraq, stated that Bush had excessively entrusted naked (so -called hard) strength. He also expressed the hope that in the second term the president would remember that states, in order to achieve success, must also refer to the so -called soft strength (whose concepts Nye was otherwise a creator and theoretician).
In 2011, in his speech at the Camnegie Council forum, he stated: “In the information era, the measure of the great power is not only whose army wins, but also – whose story wins.”
Israel's story loses
The problem with Israel's victory is that he won the war, but his story loses like never before in history. Israel, being at the peak of military power, politically begins to lose dramatically every day.
It does not change the above that none of those who have defeated Netanyahu arouses a shadow of sympathy. Iran was and is a theocracy using terror to his own population. Hamas is a totalitarian terrorist organization responsible for a genocidal attack on Israel. Hezbollah never shunned terror, and Assad in the name of maintaining power drowned his own country in his blood.
Meanwhile, the strength of Israel has always been that, apart from a great army, excellent military equipment and precise bombs, something was objectively different from his enemies. Even the fact that Binjamin Netanyahu won power and then lost in elections. Above all, however, that Israel – yes – was known for his brutality towards enemies, but unlike his enemies, this brutality, as it seemed, had some limits.
Time in the previous sentence is the cause of which Israel is not necessarily the winner as it looks. It is impossible to abolish Israel's wars with Iran, from the way Israel is fighting in the Gaza Strip. When writing about it, you can and even should be reminded of the Hamas genocidal attack on Israel of October 7, 2023. You cannot, when writing about it, ignore the fact that the war goes on in a densely urbanized area and it must be bloody by nature. It is difficult to disagree when the argument is raised that the Allies, foughting war with the Third Reich, were bombarded not only industrial facilities, but also cities, and civilians died in carpet raids. The thing is that today these bombings are increasingly assessed as war crimes. Exactly these words are used by the former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who accuses his own country of committing war crimes in the Israeli Haaretz daily.
Over 54,000 have already died in the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip. people, of which two -thirds are probably civilians. Israel not only uses force, regardless of civil sacrifices, but also began to use hunger as a method of fighting.
As a result, the world begins to turn away from Israel. The condemnation of Israel has already gone beyond the walls of university campuses. Sometimes it happens that this condemnation results in a primitive and unworthy anti -Semitism, but a trick involving naming anyone who criticizes an anti -Semitic, just doesn't work anymore. Israel loses in the eyes of those who have nothing to do with anti -Semitism. The measure of the collapse of the authority of Tel Aviv is the fact that UK, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand on two members of the Israeli government are the fact that the authority of Tel Aviv is imposed. Also in the United States, voices condemning Israel are starting to be louder.
Israel's burning flags and a photo of Binjamin Netanyahu in Spanish Pamplona
Israel, without the help of the US, would, as we already know, would not win. In 2012, the successor of the aforementioned President Bush, Barack Obama in a speech at the congress of a very influential pro -Israeli lobby organization Aipac stated that the US would always be stood alongside Israel. His speech was, as the US presidents have, solemn and pathetic.
What is most important, Obama said between words. The most important thing was that the US support for Israel was to be de facto almost unconditional. The loss of Netanyahu is that it is easier to imagine a situation today when one day it turns out that this support is no longer unconditional. It is also easier to imagine a situation in which one day an advisor, whether a presidential candidate or the President of the United States, will advise him that supporting Israel may not pay politically. That's exactly why Binjamin Netanyahu is not so obvious.
