Why the Current Middle East War is Different and About to Get Much Worse

David Haggith recently wrote: "Existential Crisis Envelops the Middle East: Israel's whole war paradigm has changed. The stakes are altogether different than any Middle-Eastern war in recent history." I think he makes an excellent argument and will quote him extensively here; for his full version clink the link.

"The old paradigm for Israeli wars focused on deterrence, which meant retaliation had to cost enemies more than anything they gained to make it clear that attacking Israel comes with a heavy cost and to limit Israel’s enemies’ ability to repeat their offense. Israel’s friends and foes always used the UN and other means to try to hold Israel back from all-out war, and Israel stayed within, at least, the outer limits of what many nations would consider just deterrence against terrorists in order to retain global respect.

I believe that has now changed, and I think one has to understand that in order to realize the true gravity of the present situation. I think Israel is finally done with deterrence or justice or revenge as its objective in these conflicts, so it will do whatever it believes is necessary to change the Middle-East situation around itself entirely and for good."

I have to agree that deterrence has failed to bring peace, though it has so far allowed Israel to continue to exist as a nation despite being surrounded by numerous wealthy and more populous nations which are politically, religiously, and ideologically devoted to its destruction. But if the alternative is war on a much larger scale, can Israel, with it's small population, possibly win? And if it can't win conventionally on its own, is the plan to bring the United States in on their side? Would there have to be an attack against the United States in order to achieve that goal? Would one be staged if Israel's enemies like Iran won't initiate a massive attack on American assets itself? Failing this, is Israel's only alternative for survival to push to the brink of, and with the threat of, mutually assured destruction? Are Israeli leaders at the point of saying we either get to neutralize the enemies devoted to our destruction, or we all go down together?

Haggith continues: "The old approach never resolved anything. It was a constant world-enforced stalemate that resulted in decades of Israel’s enemies regrouping and always making renewed attacks down the road.... It became an endless war and always would remain so because of Israel’s attempts at some measure of proportionality to the immediate security need. It never led [anywhere, except] to generations of negotiations that never closed a deal after more than seventy years.

Under the deterrence approach, Israel was always expected by the US and other nations to limit its response to simply ending the immediate security problem but never use war to end its enemies. However, I think Israel’s position has changed, and its new objective has moved to winning a war that actually resettles matters in the Middle East for good."

Such a war could end with Greater Israel and the leadership and military might of Israel's enemies destroyed. But it seems more likely such a war could lead to a pan-Islamic alliance defeating and destroying Israel, and in the exuberance of victory in Jerusalem, setting their eyes on Rome and the rest of Europe.

(Western Europe is already being gradually taken over by Islam demographically, but not militarily yet as Islamic prophecy promises: "You will attack Arabia and Allah will enable you to conquer it, then you would attack Persia and He would make you to conquer it. Then you would attack Rome and Allah will enable you to conquer it." Nostradamus also has about 60 prophecies detailing the Islamic conquest of Southern and Western Europe after Israel falls, for at least a few years during WWIII.)

Unfortunately for those Arabs who support Hamas and its goal of removing Jews "from the river to the sea" they have clearly and repeatedly made it clear that their existence and Israel's existence are mutually incompatible. Both Jewish Palestinian and Arab Palestinian leaders understand this, despite the more human acceptance of millions of people on both sides who never want war. "If eye-for-an-eye revenge is the goal, then, yes, Israel’s response to Hamas has been unjustly disproportionate; but that’s just it. I don’t think that is Israel’s objective at all anymore. Israel is looking for a total game-changer at this point and is willing to pay whatever cost in global opinion it needs to in order to change its situation entirely so as not to keep fighting the same war over and over again.

Israel is now seeking total eradication of its enemies.

If winning a war against people who constantly say they want to annihilate your nation is your objective, then a thousand lost by the enemy to one lost by you is your goal, or even ten-thousand if you can achieve it. You are guaranteed to lose any war if you seek a balanced number of losses or to endlessly fight that war as Biden is saying he expects Israel to do. That has always been the coerced approach, but it is like trying to win football by making certain not to outscore your opponent.

I think it is clear at this point that Israel did not respond to Oct 7 in order to right a wrong with eye-for-an-eye vengeance. It has determined it will settle this matter once and for all by war — to annihilate its enemies — not the Palestinian people or the Lebanese or the Iranians or the Syrians but the powers within each of those nations (and others) that seek constantly to harm Israel. Netanyahu probably had that in mind when he conveyed that regime change in Iran is not as far away as people think.

What is important for understanding our new times in the Middle East is that, for Israel, the paradigm has changed entirely from restraining evil attackers to annihilating all of them with whatever level of wars it takes. Its existential.

So, we’re witnessing a much more desperate fight than we’ve seen in the past. I think Israel has decided this is a war that will eliminate its enemies or else end in abject Israeli failure trying. They are all-in....

I don’t believe Israel will be able to deliver what its people believe was promised to them by their own power to wage war. I believe their fighting will take them to a point of ultimate desperation. The living at peace in the Promised Land is just not attainable by shear human strength, though many Jews believe God will aid them on their terms so that their cause will prevail due to God being on their side.

I think over time, this is the start of a change in war in the Middle East that is going to become very scary for them and everyone in the land because the other side also believes God will deliver the land to them. I don’t think either side is asking “are we on God’s side?” They are presuming God is on theirs, no matter how much they act by their own initiative. That is likely to build a lot of amplitude in the conflict between the two sides.

So, we are seeing something much different than we’ve seen in my lifetime. This has become existential. Israel is going to make sure it is existential for its enemies, too." (Click here for David Haggith's full commentary.)

I'd love to delve more into Israel's Samson Option, but this is already a long post so I'll keep it very brief and expand on that topic in a later post. Samson was an old testament Jewish strongman who could rip a lion in half when he was strong but was robbed of his strength, blinded, and chained between the two central pillars of the temple of his enemies - the Philistines - in Gaza. (See Judges 16:29 for details.) God grants him strength one last time for revenge, and he tore down the pillars and destroyed their temple, killing 3,000 of them along with himself. (An in-depth analysis would explain the links between his eyes being torn and and the sun and moon going temporarily dark, and the two pillars being the poles of Earth's axis, and the destruction being a metaphor for the last pole shift catastrophe in the Age of Leo over 12,000 years ago.) But Israeli leaders chose this name - the Samson Option - to make it clear that if they're losing WWIII against their Islamic neighbors, they will go the route of mutually assured destruction before sheepishly accepting the end of their nation and most likely a second holocaust.

I think Haggith is right - the current war in the Middle East is not like past Arab-Israeli wars and because it is existential - Israel's existence as a nation is at stake - they are likely to raise the stakes and though no one wants it, even a nuclear WWIII could flare up soon. Obviously even a large conventional war with Iran will spike oil prices, crash economies, and lead to further action by major powers. I expect absolute chaos by November.