Fernando Guevara writes:

Why do most news outlets ask ”Can they win the war?” to the exclusion of the question: ”Can they win 7 billion people’s hearts in the long run”?

Yes, Israel has nuclear weapons, but there is this: lasting peace cannot be founded on keeping most people in servitude, silent and unresisting forever. Let us hope that Israel does not start throwing nuclear bombs around before we organise dissent on a wider level. Israel is in the process of realising that it has lost the entire world’s moral support. And it is desperate. Is it acting rationally? What do you think?

If Israel does use nuclear weapons, where will it aim them? I assume it won’t be throwing nuclear bombs in its own back yard. So it will be somewhere else. Let’s continue taking to the streets while we still can. The more people demonstrate their dissent now, the bigger the chance of averting Israel’s use of nuclear weapons and maybe, maybe, maybe saving a few Palestinian lives. Amazing dissent has already been shown throughout the world.

Israel will not act for any moral reasons, but possibly due to the fact that the whole world is starting to pay attention. The question is what does it have to win versus what does it have to lose?

What Israel has to lose is unconditional support and subsidies from the USA, and political support of countries that depend on the USA. Further, there are much financial connections that could be lost on account of BDS, as well as other loss of goodwill.

What could cause the USA to withdraw its unconditional  support? That someone impresses upon Biden that the USA might not win a World War now? Can Biden comprehend that? It doesn’t sound like it at present, but certainly some analysts in the USA can see that the USA is in a, let’s say, tricky position. I hope they tell Biden soon.

What Israel stands to win by changing its war tactics is a more difficult question to answer, and I am worried. Because nothing I can think of is a lasting solution. A smaller (than present) Israel, as a supremacist Jewish state, is not bound to be a better solution than apartheid South Africa or segregated (”separate but equal”) USA. But maybe it is more realistic to think that Israel might ”come to its senses” based on concerns about what it has to lose? Your guess is as good as mine.

Let us join demonstrations, and speak out in every possible way, this coming weekend. Personally, I choose to not leave home without wearing my Palestine shawl, and I have noticed this: since I started wearing it, I have received more friendly smiles than ever – in the street, in the grocery store, at work. One thing is for certain: the people is on a different page than our governments.