The Upside Down

A brutal and inhumane attack throws gasoline on the tire fire that is the Middle East

I thought I’d write about Congressional dysfunction this week, then Hamas launched its surprise attack against Israel, and suddenly, we were starring at an unplanned new season of “Stranger Things.”

Congress was the odds-on top story, considering a tiny minority of eight radical Republicans overthrew their own speaker, ensuring a legislative standstill at a moment when we most need a functioning House. The 45-day Continuing Resolution funding the government will expire just before Thanksgiving, causing a government shutdown with economic and military implications.

Simultaneously, a point more and more Republicans are forwarding, is an end to aid to Ukraine. They say money is their concern, but historically, they say that as they spend like newly minted Lotto winners. They’ve chosen not listen to outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley who is warning that letting Putin win will so threaten sovereign order that a doubling of the defense budget in coming years may be inevitable. General Milley thinks the risk of a “major powers war” would become inevitable as Russia, flush from overtaking Ukraine, cozies up to China and North Korea, and our commitments to NATO and the Indo-China region get much more expensive. If they don’t like the FY 2023 number of $851.8B, what would they say to a doubled defense budget of $1.7T?

The world is full of bad actors. Sometimes, the bad actors find strength in numbers and, as in WWII, they combine. There will be speculation over the current Mid-East war, but at its inception, some things seem obvious. Nothing more so than Iran’s involvement.

Saudi Arabia, Islam’s greatest Sunni power was on the verge of an historical peace and economic alignment with Israel. Iran, dedicated to Israel’s demise, is the most powerful Shiite nation, the historical enemy of Sunni Islam, and Saudi Arabia in particular. It fears such an alignment. Iran props up Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Hezbollah, which controls Southern Lebanon, including large swaths of Beirut.

It's hard to understand how Israel could have been caught so flat-footed. Fifty years to the week after Egypt and Syria invaded Israel on the Yom Kippur holiday, here came Hamas as Israel was observing Simchat Torah, or “celebrating the Torah.” Revelers were on the road, at music festivals, and gathering in homes across the country. I won’t estimate the body count, as it is bound to rise, but it’s big. The invasion by air, land, and sea, was unprecedented, and has resulted in large numbers of hostages being taken and used as human shields in Gaza. Hamas loyalists invaded Southern Israel, killing civilians waiting at bus stops, and stripping and parading an Israeli woman through the streets.

One guesses Hamas and Hezbollah see this as both revenge and perhaps an end to Israeli expansion in the West Bank. Iran is all-in on anything that hurts Israel. Over the decades, the US has tried to facilitate peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Formal accords from Camp David and Oslo, as well as a lot of “shuttle diplomacy,” much of it carried out in secret, has yielded little progress on the core issues of Palestinian rights in Israel, and the settlements on the West Bank of the River Jordan.

Our official position supports the “two state solution” which has been on life support since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who owes his power to the fundamentalist Israeli right-wing, abrogated those agreements and allowed the expansion of settlements. Like so many American Jews, I’m no fan of Netanyahu. His efforts at taking power away from the Supreme Court and bestowing it on the executive, which already controls the legislature, has fostered a first-of-its-kind civil rebellion. Every week for months now, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have protested his attempted power-grab.

The Palestinians have justifiable gripes, but mass slaughter is not a justifiable remedy. They know they’re being used by Iran for its own purposes, but as the Arab saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

The US will inevitably be drawn into the military conflict. We are bound by our long term commitment to Israel’s survival. It’s safe to assume that Russia, one of Iran’s few allies, hopes this conflict will distract us from Ukraine.

The more cynical (realistic?) among us speculate that Bibi, himself in dire need of rescue lest he be imprisoned on the corruption charges he keeps managing to duck, has sacrificed the country for his personal well-being.

And that brings us full-circle. A desperate leader in Israel, and desperate leaders in the U.S., propped up by an off-the-rails party that is nihilistic to the degree that they’d rather have no government than a majority one they disagree with, have all put politics and personal advancement (and preservation) over country.

It’s no wonder both are being taken advantage of.

©2023 Jon Sinton