Wading into the toxic sludge of the Gaza conflict, and other no-go zones

An opinion

So, I wrote a series of essays on the history of the primary conflict in the Middle East – that of Israel and its supporter, the United States, versus the Palestinians and its backer, Iran, titled MIRE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. You might remember it (and if not, it’s available to read and listen to at davidrollins.substack.com). It was largely appreciated by you, my Substack publication readers, that the essays took a balanced position, not favoring one position over another. However, as the war between Israel and its opponents, Hamas and Hezbollah, has intensified, I’m being asked pretty regularly what my position is on this war. In short, who do I support? If you even care, I’ll come to that specifically in a moment, but before I do, let me say that there’s actually no good answer. Whatever anyone says on this subject is likely to inflame one group or the other or perhaps several groups. Or maybe everyone. That said, I’m going to have a crack at it because that’s the kind of idiot I am. If I were to have a conversation with someone about this in the park while walking the dog, for example, my main points would be these:

Yaya Sinwar and Benjamin Netanyahu. Lock ‘em both up and throw away the key.

I think both Yaya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, are criminals who need to be tried, found guilty, and jailed (and I’d include their enablers). Both have an interest in continuing the bloodshed. Sinwar wants it to go on because Israel has comprehensively lost the public relations war over a relentless bombing campaign that has killed thousands of innocent people who have nowhere else to go (other than into the vast network of tunnels created by Hamas, which are extensive enough, apparently, to shelter the entire Gazan population). Global public opinion swinging against Israel gives Hamas the best chance of ending military support for Israel and thus evening the playing field enough for it to potentially sweep Israel off the map and allow it to re-create ancient Palestine — Hamas’s ultimate objective. I’ll return to this “dream.”

Netanyahu wants to keep the war grinding on because when it’s over, his political career will end. And given that he was charged with breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud in 2019, well before the events of October 7th, 2023, once he leaves office, the courts will have at him (leaving aside his other crimes arising from the war).

So, who do I support? Actually, I think this kind of absolutist question is part of the problem. You’ll hear thousands of people who know very little about the conflict instantly say they’re behind the Palestinians. Why? Mostly, I’ve found these opinions formed by a mish-mash of factoids gleaned from biased, unreliable sources. And exactly how they’re backing the Palestinian cause hasn’t been given a great deal of thought. What do they actually want?

Far fewer people support Israel in this fight because, as I said, Hamas has won the battle for hearts and minds, being perceived as the underdog against its bullying, nuclear-armed, and first-world defense-force-wielding neighbor.

One of my dog park friends observed recently, “Israel has done a lot to inflame antisemitism.” Given the fervent support for Hamas, despite it being an Islamist organization not unlike ISIS with a written charter that commits it to the destruction of Israel and the eradication of Jews from the region, it’s hard not to agree.

Perhaps the exuberant support for Hamas is born in the notion of equivalence. Hamas, supplemented by Palestinian civilians, reportedly killed 1,139 Israelis, including 815 civilians, many of them young men and women enjoying a music festival on that fateful October day. Many of the killings were savage, even bestial, and filmed joyously for the pleasure of TikTok audiences. But then Israel’s response, killing multiple tens of thousands, a fair proportion of them not Hamas fighters but innocent men, women, and children, and flattening Gaza in the process, had been way out of proportion.

These points underscore my opinion that Sinwar and Netanyahu need to be tried and jailed, and I’d put them in the same cell for the duration. That would be fun.

The equivalence question is one of the totally fucked-up aspects of war. To give you an example – the al-Qaida attacks on New York’s World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001, killed 2,996 people. The United States and its allies then went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The retribution didn’t stop once the US and its friends had killed 2,996 Afghans and Iraqis but went on and on and led to the deaths of millions.

Then there’s the question of the moral equivalence between Hamas and the Israelis. Here, one can’t help but see it as more black-and-white. Hamas (and other Palestinian groups) took 251 Israelis and foreigners hostage on October 7^th – men, women, and children. Yes, children have been released, but quite a few hostages have been found dead, some by Israeli bombing, others killed directly by Hamas/Palestinian fighters when pressed. This doesn’t seem to outrage the wider world as it rightly should. Ask yourself what the global response would be if it were the Israelis who had gone into Gaza, murdered a bunch of people, and then withdrew with hostages, killing some when it suited them.

So, coming back to the question of whose side I’m on. This is not a dodge, but I actually feel that support for either antagonist isn’t helpful and probably even prolongs the conflict. Certainly, I believe that the demonstrations around the world vowing support for Hamas have vindicated Sinwar’s approach.

For there to be peace, Hamas and the Palestinians have to give up on the wholly unrealistic and unattainable dream that Israel can be eliminated. I do think it’s true that if Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other Iranian-promoted groups stopped rocketing and killing Israeli territory, the fighting would stop. And, perhaps ordinary Palestinians would be prepared to live with Israel if it, in turn, was prepared to equitably share the resources of the area, including the land.

But this, too, is simplistic and ignores the fact of religion, which has poisoned all reasonable thought on the subject on both sides of the argument.

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Your own personal IED, an innovative take on an old strategy

The world has gawped in astonishment at the recent reports of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies distributed among Hezbollah personnel that detonated in a coordinated attack. The word “audacious” was put forward uniformly in the media coverage. As some outlets proclaimed, it was like something out of a James Bond movie. Unlike a movie, though, quite a few children and innocents were maimed and killed, which, to my mind, precludes giving Mossad, the Israeli agency that is believed to have conceived and conducted the operation, a chirpy interview on the red carpet. (I should point out that, at the time of writing, Israel had not accepted responsibility for all these personal Improvised Explosive Devices - IEDs.)

The question of “why now” was widely asked following the attack that killed, maimed, and injured more than 2000 people when between one and 60 grams of PETN (a demolition explosive) detonated in the devices, triggered by an incoming call. Given the concomitant bombings and assassinations of Hezbollah buildings and personnel in Beirut that happened just days later, along with the massing of Israeli forces on the Lebanon border, this “Red Button event,” as the Israelis have called it, is clearly a novel way to knobble your opponent prior to launching a war. Apparently, the pager attack took out numerous people specifically involved in Hezbollah’s logistics chain, making it extremely difficult for the organization to mount a coordinated response/defense to the looming Israeli invasion that looks set to roll at any moment.

But that’s not what I want to write about here. Mossad infiltrated Hezbollah’s inventory with a created range of shell companies, distribution agencies, and cutouts across Asia and Europe, sourcing and supplying the units in a long-planned operation that’s bamboozling in scope (and patience). Supply chain compromises involving the spy agencies of sovereign nations have not been uncommon; however, not a single instance of them has ever been declassified. Doing so would reveal all kinds of intelligence methods that the perpetrators of these kinds of operations want to remain secret.

That said, another great example of supply chain compromise happened in the early ‘60s. The United States wanted a platform that could spy on the length and breadth of the Soviet Union. It had to be fast and have a ceiling that would allow it to outrun surface-to-air missiles and other aircraft — a seemingly impossible brief at the time. The project was handed to Lockheed Martin’s “Skunk Works,” which was little known at the time.

Up to that point, the Skunk Works had been responsible for creating breakthrough aircraft such as the WWI twin-engined P-38 “Lightning,” the P-80 “Shooting Star,” the first operational fighter jet to see service in WWII, and the high-flying U-2 spy plane.

The aircraft Skunk Works came up to answer the CIA’s tricky brief. It was a radical design called the A-12, which, on paper, was capable of speeds in excess of 2000mph at a ceiling well above 70,000ft. However, the aircraft had to be fashioned from titanium because, flying so high and fast, it would essentially be operating for much of its flight plan like a re-entering spacecraft, enduring temperatures that would melt aluminum and steel, and that presented a significant problem. US titanium was third rate and well short of being up to the task. But there was one place that had plenty of titanium. Indeed, so much of it and of such great quality that they were even launching submarines whose hulls were made entirely of the stuff — the Soviet Union. So, the CIA set up a fake supply chain with a fake non-military requirement (the building of a hydroelectric power station, for example) in a non-threatening country, paid for with US-laundered money. Many tons of the metal were required.

The operation was a huge success — the titanium was duly obtained, with the Soviet Union none the wiser. The A-12 was developed into the SR-71 “Blackbird,” designed to spy on the Soviet Union and built with Soviet titanium.

The SR-71 “Blackbird.”

Ironically, the SR-71 never did get used to spy on the CCCP. It was overtaken by satellite technology. The aircraft was, however, utilized extensively elsewhere for intelligence gathering. Its final flight was in 1999. Today, it still holds the record for flying faster and higher than any other manned aircraft @ 2,193.167 mph and 85,068.997 feet.

As I said, like all supply chain operations, this one to obtain titanium, conducted in the early ‘60s, is still classified.

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The US is clearly unsure about wanting Ukraine to win

Since the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, the United States and its allies, indeed over 50 nations, have come to Ukraine’s aid in its existential battle with billions of dollars in weapons, ammunition, and other warfighting materiel. Along with the aid has come the assertion that “We’re with Ukraine in its fight against the aggressor for as long as it takes.” Sounds good, but at no time has the US, Ukraine’s principal backer, stated unequivocally, “We want Ukraine to win.” And neither have Britain, France, or Germany.

There are also issues with the delivery of aid. Plenty of promises of support in terms of this war-fighting hardware have been made in front of cameras, but the delivery has often been slow and sometimes, apparently, non-existent. Germany seems to have been pinged as the worst culprit here.

A further example of Western timidity is US President Biden’s reluctance to allow Ukraine to use supplied long-range weapons like the ATACMS (range: 190mi/300km) against Russian facilities deep within Russian territory. The US is also refusing to provide Ukraine’s armed forces with targeting information necessary to fully utilize the potential of the British “Storm Shadow” and French “Scalps” cruise missiles (range: 340mi/550km).

Why? Why the slow weapons delivery, and why not allow Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia?

The only conclusion you can draw is that the West doesn’t want Russia defeated. Not really. Or maybe not emphatically. Again, why? Perhaps because societal collapse seems to follow regime collapse in Russia: the radical changes in government that followed defeat in the Russo-Japanese war or 1904, the Trotsky/communist revolution following the end of the Romanov monarchy in 1917, and the upheaval that followed the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991 (and led to the rise of Putin and the Oligarchs). What will the collapse of Putin’s regime bring? Are we prepared to spin the roulette wheel and find out?

The last time around, back in 1991, when the Soviet Union hit the wall, the West was concerned about Russia’s nuclear, chemical, and biological arsenals left unguarded. There will, of course, be the same fear if Putin’s madness ends, only this time around, global terror networks are far better organized and funded and probably far more astute in the ways and means of getting their mitts on unsecured Russian WMD. Do we want to risk it?

There’s also the threat of massive waves of Russian refugees if things go south. You can bet they won’t be heading to Iran or North Korea. The West’s cohesion barely withstood the onslaught of refugees from wars in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East, leading to BREXIT and the election of far-right governments throughout Europe. Millions of Russians stampeding to find a new home in the West would utterly swamp European economies and societies.

You can bet all this and more will have been war-gamed, and the conclusion could be what’s underpinning the White House’s reluctance to let Zelensky have at it.

Which brings me back to Ukraine. If it’s not given permission to extend its reach well beyond its borders and into Russia, it will lose the war currently being fought. Why? The Russian glide bomb. If you’re looking for a wonder weapon in the present conflict, this is it. Russia has literally tens of thousands of 500, 1500, and 3000kg Soviet-era bombs originally designed to be dropped by bombers on top of targets. These bombs (FAB 500/1500/3000) have now been equipped with crude (UMPK) strap-on wings and satellite guidance systems, giving them a range of up to around 53 miles (85 km) so that they can be released from aircraft in safe Russian airspace well away from the reach of Ukraine defenses. Around 3500 of these glide bombs were launched last month alone. Their accuracy isn’t pinpoint, but it’s good enough when 3 tonnes of military-grade explosives go boom, and they’re simply pulverizing Ukrainian resistance unchecked.

Russian glide bomb. Old tech with a strap-on.

Only through the extensive use of these glide bombs have Russian forces been able to breach Ukraine lines east of the Donbas city of Povrosk, which is critical to the Ukrainian defense of the entire oblast. If the city should fall and the inevitable Ukraine counter-offensive fails, this could well spell the beginning of the end of national resistance.

So now, as I write, Ukraine President Zelensky is in talks with President Biden, and he’s literally begging for permission to use American-made long-range weapons and go after the airfields in Russia from which the aircraft that launch these glide bombs take off. It really is an existential moment for a free and democratic Ukraine.

Putin is aware of the stakes, too. If permission is given, perhaps the key weapon in the Russian arsenal will no longer be of any use, evening the playing field or perhaps even tipping it slightly in Ukraine’s favor. And perhaps this is why, overnight, Putin has announced a change to Russia’s nuclear doctrine. Now, it will be permissible for Russia to justifiably use nuclear weapons if a non-nuclear state supported by a nuclear power invades its territory or, if you remove the generalities, Ukraine supported by the US, which is the case in Russia’s Kursk region.

In short, take another step, Ukraine, and we have every right to nuke Kyiv. Russia has stated plenty of red lines in the past, and Zelensky and his allies have marched past them all — eventually. Will the same happen again here, or will the West back down?

So, this is the question, and it has to be answered now — it really is that critical. Does the US want Ukraine to win, or does it like the alternative, whatever that unknown is, that will come to pass following a Russian victory? Either way, it’s a tough call for the president, but that’s why he’s paid so much.