Of Elections, Retaliations, and Simulations

It's still all fake, even though real people are dying

We are now a little over six months into this latest outbreak of fighting between Israel and Palestinians. Since Hamas launched its raid into Israel on October 7, 2023 that sparked this latest conflict, the underlying issue of how Israelis and Palestinians can live peacefully next to one another has not been resolved. Not only has it not been resolved, no movement towards such a resolution has been made by any of the parties to this conflict.

Hamas does want to end the Israeli state, but it is incapable of doing so. It is relegated to such self-sabotaging acts as the October 7th raids and hostage taking. Israel would be very happy to see the Palestinians permanently leave the Gaza Strip, but it is incapable of making this a reality due to the objection of its American sponsor. It is relegated to bombing Gaza and inflicting a massive amount of suffering on the Palestinians, with deaths in the five figures and famine now being reported by various agencies and organizations, such as the EU.

Hezbollah would love to invade Israel and wipe out the Jewish state, but it is incapable of doing so, and lives in fear of what the Americans would do to them should they ever launch an attempt. Hezbollah is relegated to lobbing firecrackers here and there against isolated Israeli positions.

Iran repeatedly states that it would like to end the “Zionist state” once and for all, but it cannot do so out of the same fear that its Hezbollah proxy shares with it. Instead, Iran is playing a very, very long game in which it sponsors its anti-Israeli proxies and waits for an anticipated decline in American power/American support for Israel in order to strike at some point in the future. Iran and Israel have been engaged in a tit-for-tat struggle for some time now involving proxies and targeted assassinations, with Iranian military figures in Syria bearing the brunt of the attacks courtesy of Israeli forces. It was the recent Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus that killed two Iranian generals and several officers that sparked the retaliatory action from Iran this past weekend.

The Iranians vowed revenge for this attack, one perceived to be an escalation, and one that many feared could lead to the outbreak of a regional war.