"They can't even imagine Israel being in the wrong, even though it is. They can't imagine Hamas being noble and chivalrous fighters, and Israelis being cowardly child-killing terrorists, though such is the case," he lamented in his recent Substack entry. "They can't acknowledge that the vast majority of the world disagrees with them for very good reasons, not because of 'anti-Semitism.' And above all, they can't imagine that Israel, despite (or because of) its genocidal assault on civilians, is losing the war."
Israeli leaders have been "romanticizing" their catastrophic retaliation to the Hamas attack on October 7, which started it all. Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy said, "We are waging a war with a cruel enemy, and this war has a painful and heavy price." Its Defense Minister Benny Gantz sums up the difficulty of the ground war: "The images coming from the ground battle are painful, and our tears are falling when we see our soldiers falling." However, facts prove that the conflict started on a weak footing. Israel launched the war on Gaza when it had the confidence of only 27 percent of its people, while only about 51 percent trusted the Israeli army. Added to this are the burdens of 250,000 people seeking refuge from the Gaza region and the northern areas near Lebanon, as well as the more than 240 Israelis held prisoner by the resistance in Gaza, according to Al Jazeera.
Israel is also suffering huge daily losses and erosion of resources, including soldiers, equipment, time, money, and legitimacy. As the war drags on, costs will continue to rise. "The resistance forces are very far from being broken. Despite the liquidations and assassinations, Hamas is succeeding in most cases in maintaining an organized method of fighting, based mainly on tunnel fighting, exiting from hiding places and launching missiles at our armored vehicles," newspaper Maariv wrote.
AlJazeera's Zuhair Hamdani and Talal Mushati commented: "Considering previous wars including 2008 and 2014, we find that 'destroying Hamas' was always a basic goal that was never achievable. There is no reason to believe that it will be achievable this time, especially since the movement is now much stronger, with much deeper roots in the Gaza Strip than before." Despite Defense Minister Yoav Galant's battlecry that there is no place for Hamas in Gaza and that at the end of the battle, "there will be no Hamas," Hamdani and Mushati opined that theirs was an unrealistic goal based on experience and the current realities on the ground. "Its military defenses and arsenal have been strengthened to the point of being difficult to penetrate, and in the end, it is not a state or a regular army that can announce its surrender, but rather an extended popular resistance movement in the path of a protracted Palestinian struggle," they emphasized.
Biden's support for Netanyahu possibly eroding
Analysts speculate that Israel is losing the battle, not because of its technical military capabilities, as weapons alone do not resolve wars. It is failing at the leadership level. Recent polls show that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is extremely unpopular. A public opinion survey conducted found that only 27 percent of Israelis support his political survival, and his political and military decisions are not accepted and are subject to widespread criticism.
They also dislike Netanyahu because he refused to accept responsibility for the security failure on October 7. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid warned that the prime minister's attempts to evade responsibility and blame the security establishment weakened the Israeli army and amounted to "crossing red lines."
The issue of prisoners held by the resistance has also sparked internal divisions, especially after Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu called for bombing Gaza with a nuclear weapon, saying, "What does hostage mean? In war, the price is paid. Why are the lives of hostages more precious than the lives of soldiers?" Israelis considered this to be "an abandonment by the government of its commitment to returning the hostages."
In the beginning, the administration of President Joe Biden showed all-out support for Netanyahu's goals. However, lately, Biden has began to re-assess this for fear that things would spiral into a wider regional war. Reportedly, the White House is considering crazy scenarios that Netanyahu may create to save his future at America's expense. Col. Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran of the first Gulf War, commented: "Israel is losing everywhere. Eventually, they will lose support from the United States."
Biden has been calling for a "tactical humanitarian pause" or a ceasefire, both of which Netanyahu rejected. "Well, there'll be no ceasefire, general ceasefire, in Gaza without the release of our hostages. Regarding tactical little pauses, an hour here, an hour there. We've had them before, I suppose, will check the circumstances to enable goods, humanitarian goods to come in, or our hostages, individual hostages to leave. But I don't think there’s going to be a general ceasefire," Netanyahu said in a recent interview with ABC News's "World News Tonight." (Related: CANCELED: Biden's scheme to help Israel ethnically cleanse Gaza of all Palestinians is a NO GO thanks to Egypt.)
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