The slaughter in Gaza seems to have caused a breakdown of the much-vaunted Zionist propaganda machine. The powerful pro-Israeli press can simply not put a positive spin on the killing of Palestinians, who have death rained on them from the skies. With the number now having crossed 11,000 there are too many dead to hide. It seems that the initial Hamas attacks, which killed as many as 1100 Israelis, have now been exceeded by the number of Palestinian children killed, about 4500, which is more than four times the number of Israelis killed. Though Israeli forces are moving into the Gaza Strip, they have only suffered 32 fatalities so far, which makes the initial hesitation about moving in seem a little exaggerated. At the same time, those forces have violated the very humanitarian pauses that it itself agreed to. These pauses are meant to allow people to leave northern Gaza, where fighting is going on, and have been conceded only after US pressure. However, the USA is also so firm that there will be no ceasefire, that Israel does not have to do the rejecting.
The spirit of vengeance thus seems very much alive in the hearts of Israel and its Western backers, but it does not point towards a solution. Israel cannot very well annihilate all Palestinians, or even all Gazans. Its own reaction to the October 7 attacks, more so than the attacks themselves, have ruined all of the work that had gone into the Israeli normalization of relations with Arab countries. With countries that have already recognised Israel, like Egypt, Jordan and the UAE uneasy about the reaction of their publics, there is now virtually no chance of any swift recognition by the Muslim countries Israel was hoping would do so, before this crisis erupted. Israel seems to have embarked on a path of mindless violence, one from which it cannot withdraw without engaging in much more slaughter. The only way out can only come if the powers presently backing Israel mindlessly, like the USA and the European powers, were to make Israel see reason, and work towards a ceasefire. A ceasefire becomes all the more essential because the longer fighting goes on, the greater are the chances than the region. That it would lead to a more general conflagration in the entire region. And one it was become a regional war, would it take that much time to turn into World War III?
