Experts Agree: Hamas Is Winning

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The biggest story in today’s False Flag Weekly News was Scott Ritter’s article “Hamas Winning Battle for Gaza.” Ritter points out that Israel’s much-ballyhooed war aim of completely eradicating Hamas has given the group an easy path to victory: Mere survival is a win—and a humiliating Israeli defeat.

But Hamas isn’t just surviving, Ritter adds, it is prevailing on the battlefield. Israel can massacre 13,000 civilians to no military purpose, and reduce buildings to the kind of rubble that guerrilla fighters thrive in, but it can’t seem to win any actual engagements. All of Hamas’s senior cadre and even mid-level cadre is still alive and fighting, whereas significant numbers of of Israeli officers and soldiers have been killed or captured by Hamas. The only actual evidence we’ve seen of action on the battlefields of Gaza consists of innumerable stirring videos of Hamas commandos destroying Israeli tanks and other vehicles, sometimes by sprinting to them and planting explosive charges from “distance zero,” and inflicting serious losses on Israeli troop concentrations before disappearing back into their tunnels. It was military and political defeat that forced Israel to accept a ceasefire, which it had been resisting and which Hamas had been supporting.

Scott Ritter, a former supporter of Israel, has switched sides, having noticed that ongoing displays of Palestinian skill and bravery contrast starkly with Zionist lies and atrocities. So maybe he’s biased. But it isn’t just pro-Palestine voices like Ritter who have noticed that Israel is losing. One of the Zionist entity’s most frenzied supporters, former Trump advisor John Bolton, says “Hamas Has Just Won a Major Victory Over Israel.”

Ritter and Bolton are part of a growing chorus of nay-sayers who have arisen to contest the conventional wisdom that “Israel can’t lose.” A recent al-Jazeera (Arabic) article surveyed several American experts who agree, to varying degrees, with the prevailing opinion among West Asian analysts that Hamas is on the path to victory. Below is a quick, Google-assisted translation of the article. -KB

American Experts to al-Jazeera: Israel Has Lost, Hamas Has Won. Here’s Why.

By Mohamed al-Menshawi for Al-Jazeera

Washington - Many discussions in the American capital regarding the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip conclude that Israel will prevail in the end. Experts compete to confirm and repeat the fact of its overwhelming material and military superiority over the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in terms of numbers of troops, armed aircraft, missiles, armored vehicles, tanks and artillery. They cannot imagine any result except Israel's victory, the only question being the time frame and the cost.

In contrast, a growing number of commentators point to the possibility of Hamas's victory and Israel's defeat. Some even assert that Hamas has already won…

In a previous interview with Al Jazeera, former US military intelligence officer Scott Ritter confirmed that the Hamas movement has become more than an organization or group in its traditional physical form: "Hamas has become a broader concept of the meaning of resistance, and we must remember that it carried out an act that had only been done before by the Egyptian army, which was able to defeat the Israeli side on the battlefield. Hamas already won on October 7, and that cannot be changed…when Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal on October 6, 1973, Egypt won. After that, Israel launched strong counterattacks, but that did not change the fact that Cairo was victorious. The same is true with Hamas today. It was victorious on October 7, despite Israel’s efforts to destry the movement.”

In turn, Professor Avraham Shama from Northwestern University believes that regardless of how the Gaza war unfolds, Israel has already lost and Hamas has won. Shama cites the hundreds of thousands of Israelis leaving their homes in the north and south and moving to relatively safe shelters in the center of the country; the closing of many schools and universities; and the deterioration of the economic situation in general.

Deep and Long-Term Losses

Shama said, "The Israelis suffered another kind of defeat, which is a feeling of deep and long-term loss. This loss fundamentally touched their psyche and their sense of collective self and well-being. You can hear it in their voices, their posts, and their choice of words, and you can see it on their faces."

He also pointed out that before the Hamas attack, the Israelis were confident, believing that a sudden war like the October 1973 war could not happen again, and that if that happened, their army would crush it as soon as it began. Then the Hamas attack came, (Israel’s first such experience) in 50 years. It was a deep shock.

The academic considered that despite “the loss of more than 13,000 Palestinians, the Hamas movement was able to invade a country with a population of more than 9 million people with a strong army. They succeeded in destroying the Israeli psyche and pushing the renewal of the Palestinian struggle to establish an independent state to the global forefront.”

For his part, Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University said, “As expected with each side blaming the other, Israel and its supporters portray Hamas as nothing more than a brutal gang of Iranian-backed terrorists who deliberately attacked civilians…While the Palestinians and their supporters acknowledge that attacking civilians is wrong, they blame Israel for imposing an apartheid regime on Palestinians and subjecting Palestinians to systematic and disproportionate violence over many decades. They also point out that international law allows oppressed peoples to resist illegal occupation even if the methods chosen by Hamas are irregular.”

Walt considered that the most striking feature of this latest round of fighting is that Hamas achieved almost complete surprise, just as Egypt and Syria did 50 years ago during the October 1973 war, and demonstrated unexpected combat capabilities. Al Aqsa storm caused more damage to Israel than any other attack.

He added that it is clear that the attack shocked Israeli society, and that the ongoing war may also reveal the limits of power. “War is a continuation of politics by other means, and strong countries sometimes win on the battlefield and still lose politically. The United States won all the major battles in Vietnam and Afghanistan. But in the end it lost both wars."

In Walt’s opinion, Hamas will never be able to defeat Israel in a direct test of strength. But its attack is a tragic reminder that Israel is not impregnable and the Palestinian desire for self-determination cannot be ignored. He continues, “(Al Aqsa Storm) also shows that the Abraham Accords and recent efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are not a guarantee of peace. In fact, they may have made this latest conflict more likely."

Decades of struggle

For his part, John Alterman, head of the Middle East Unit at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, believes that the Israeli army's history of avoiding American mistakes has ended.

Alterman, in a report published by the center, says: “The Israeli army has largely avoided the volatile history that has afflicted the United States militarily since the start of the Vietnam War. The US army ended the clashes in Lebanon, Somalia, and Haiti without clear victories….Also, the post-September 11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Syrian-Iraqi border region, despite a vast outlay of resources, years of fighting, billions of dollars, and thousands of American deaths, ended in failure to secure victory."

Alterman noted that Hamas' concept of military victory revolves around "achieving long-term political results. Hamas does not expect to achieve victory in one year or five, but by engaging in decades of struggle that increases Palestinian solidarity and increases Israel's isolation….In this scenario, Hamas angrily rallies the besieged population of Gaza around it and helps the collapse of the Palestinian Authority by ensuring that the Palestinians view it as a helpless assistant to the Israeli military authority."

Alterman continues, “At the same time, the Arab countries are strongly moving away from normalization, the Global South is strongly siding with the Palestinian issue, Europe is retreating from ignoring the violations of the Israeli army, and an American debate is erupting regarding Israel, destroying the bipartisan support that Israel has enjoyed in Washington since the early 1970s.”

He said that Hamas, “instead of relying on sufficient power to defeat Tel Aviv, is instead seeking to use Israel’s much greater power to defeat it. Israel’s power allows the country to kill Palestinian civilians, destroy Palestinian infrastructure, and defy global calls for restraint. All of these things advance Hamas’ goals…the unexpected successes achieved by the Hamas movement on October 7 will inspire future generations of Palestinians who cherish even small victories despite impossible difficulties."

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com