février 21, 2025 - 7:00am
Plus que tout conflit récent, la guerre entre Israël et le Hamas a démontré le pouvoir affectif des images symboliques.
Depuis la libération des premiers otages israéliens le 19 janvier, un nouvel ensemble d’images a émergé qui pourrait encore une fois changer la direction de la guerre et menacer les chances de paix dans la région. Les remises d’otages ont été organisées par le Hamas d’une manière garantie pour enflammer l’opinion publique en Israël et au-delà. Des uniformes nets et propres et des bandeaux verts impeccables de leurs hommes armés, aux camionnettes Toyota étincelantes, jusqu’aux podiums sur lesquels les otages sont exposés avant leur libération, comme une sinistre cérémonie de médaille olympique. Derrière eux, Benjamin Netanyahu est dépeint comme un vampire suceur de sang.
Les dernières images, des cercueils des otages décédés — Shiri Bibas et ses deux enfants, Ariel et Kfir, et l’ancien Oded Lifshitz — suggèrent que le Hamas essaie délibérément de provoquer Israël pour qu’il rompe l’accord de cessez-le-feu. Cela a été aggravé par de nouveaux rapports suggérant qu’un des corps reçus n’était pas celui de Shiri Bibas, l’armée n’ayant pas pu identifier le corps.
Non seulement ces optiques sont particulièrement odieuses et cruelles, mais le Hamas joue un jeu astucieux en donnant l’impression que ses bataillons sont très intacts, et que l’IDF a totalement échoué dans sa mission. Bien que des milliers de combattants du Hamas aient été tués depuis octobre 2023, et qu’une grande partie de leur arsenal d’armes et de leur réseau de tunnels ait été détruite, les preuves visuelles des dernières semaines suggèrent que le groupe reste loin d’être vaincu. Selon un rapport récent des services de renseignement américains, le Hamas a recruté entre 10 000 et 15 000 nouveaux membres depuis le début du conflit.
Bien sûr, la plupart d’entre eux seront jeunes, non formés et non équipés — pour l’instant, du moins. En supposant que le cessez-le-feu tienne, l’ampleur de la menace que représente le Hamas pour Israël à l’avenir dépendra moins de sa capacité à recruter que de sa capacité à se réarmer. Étant donné la fin du régime Assad en Syrie, l’humiliation du Hezbollah, et le affaiblissement tactique et stratégique plus large de l’Iran, il est peu probable que le Hamas récupère bientôt son armement perdu ou puisse rapidement commencer à reconstruire les tunnels détruits.
Bien qu’ayant reçu une assistance militaire et logistique dans le passé, une grande partie de cela a été faite avant la mort du commandant des Gardiens de la Révolution, Qasem Soleimani, tué par un drone américain à Bagdad en janvier 2020. Aujourd’hui, avec Soleimani parti et l’Iran sur le recul — entravé par son économie en détérioration, la perte d’alliés importants, et la destruction apparente de ses systèmes de défense aérienne — il est peu probable que le Hamas soit réapprovisionné de l’extérieur de sitôt.
Cependant, une partie du plan actuel de cessez-le-feu et de libération des otages implique qu’Israël abandonne le corridor de Philadelphie entre Gaza et l’Égypte. Si l’IDF se retire, alors la contrebande via les tunnels sous la frontière égyptienne pourrait encore fournir au Hamas un moyen de se réarmer.
C’est l’une des raisons pour lesquelles il est difficile de voir le cessez-le-feu durer à travers les étapes deux et trois, car il serait si difficile militairement et politiquement pour Israël d’abandonner de telles positions stratégiques importantes.
Et puis il y a la question de Donald Trump. C’est Trump qui a ordonné l’assassinat de Soleimani en 2020, et sa nomination de partisans engagés d’Israël à des postes clés — Marco Rubio en tant que secrétaire d’État et Elise Stefanik à l’ONU — couplée à ses récents commentaires sur le « nettoyage » de Gaza, suggère qu’il n’est pas d’humeur à voir le Hamas se regrouper.
Peut-être que ses commentaires extravagants sur l’Égypte et la Jordanie acceptant des réfugiés palestiniens font partie d’un stratagème pour forcer le président égyptien Abdel Fattah al-Sisi à faire des efforts plus importants pour empêcher la contrebande de son côté de la frontière. Quoi qu’il en soit, l’impact des images visuelles sur Trump est bien connu, et voir les vidéos de libération des otages est peu susceptible d’adoucir son attitude envers Gaza. Par conséquent, bien que le Hamas ait peut-être survécu pour l’instant, il n’est pas difficile de voir une nouvelle offensive israélienne se dérouler — cette fois avec le soutien enthousiaste plutôt que réticent des États-Unis.
David Swift is a historian and author. His next book, Scouse Republic, is available to pre-order now.
davidswift87
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SubscribeLest we forget that Biden was also considered down for the count in the 1980’s after being caught lying about his educational credentials and plagiarism. It’s painful to be this old and remember things like history with my own eyes. If Kamala wants it that badly, she will persevere and America will forget that she is a vacuous empty suit, who only has her mixed race and chromosomes to thank.
California (and Illinois and Ohio and Michigan) need some kind of electoral college system to protect their naturally conservative rural residents from being persistently outvoted by the masses of sleepwalking Democrats ruling them from the continually collapsing urban areas.
The Right Wing Media. That is laughable.
She had 80% of the advantages – most mainstream broadcasters, newspapers, Hollywood Elite, Silicon Valley, Union Leaders, Wall Street, Woke Education Elites – even the old style Republican NeoCons.
The only she didn’t have was policies to address the needs of ordinary people. Kind of important which is why she lost.
She is the worst VP in living memory, and bearing in mind that includes Dan Quayle and her new mate Cheney, that is some effort.
Had she won it would have been due to nation’s distaste for Trump’s personal vulgarities and actual crimes. The fact people prefer to put up with those as his policies may work at least to some extent, tells us all you need to know about DNC.
Which were the ‘actual’ crimes?
34 of them as things stand. He has yet to be sentenced.
The slate on the others is as good as wiped clean so he will avoid anymore indefinitely.
Name one.
Google is your friend.
Are those two halos above her head or the remnants of her brains evaporating?
Never mind Harris.
Let’s talk about “obstreperous”, my new word of the day.
Use it frequently on my husband…
Does he reciprocate ?
The video she put out the other day did not really inspire confidence in her abilities to do anything high level, she appeared to be as tight as a boiled owl.
You sometimes wonder if Joe Biden doesn’t talk more sense (in his more lucid moments) than Kamala Harris.
It’s textbook cognitive dissonance by Kamala and co. Almost as if she feels entitled to have a big job …
Harris vs Vance (and/or Gabbard) in 2028.
A turkey shoot…
You made my day
Well, maybe not. Depends how long it takes the Democratic Party centrists to win the coming civil war. If this is unresolved by the end of this current election cycle and the Progressives still have a foothold then yes, it will likely be a turkey shoot but perhaps with Newsome and not Harris.
Don’t vibes and joy count as policies?
I suppose they do if you’re living in a dreamworld.
Very well said. Although this is probably attractive to a good number of Californian Democrats. I weep to see what she and her ilk have done to the beautiful city of San Francisco.
Surely the Californian neighbourhoods decimated by drugs, crime and rivers of excrement can take comfort from the fact that their Democratic leaders are so visibly kind and inclusive?
I don’t know what to say about Californians. On the one hand, the sight of idiots trying to smash their foreheads into the wall of reality is pretty funny. On the other hand, their diligence is downright scary.
But they are not all like that. Get away from the bit cities and the coast and it’s very different. Same story in Oregon and Washington State.
This is over-simplifying somewhat, but the Democrat strongholds are ones where there’s a large proportion of skilled migrant workers and things like European attitudes to welfare and health systems are admired. In the rest of the US you simply don’t get this same inferiority complex (which is so atypical of the US). In Britain we spent several decades with a similar attitude to France and Germany – because we weren’t doing well and they appeared to be, we assumed they were fundamentally better.
I’ve travelled in the northernmost parts of California. Yes, they’re very different. The politics there doesn’t map neatly into UK comparisons, but if I were to try it reminded me of parts of semi-rural Wales; old-school leftish but still grounded in reality. ‘Blue Labour’ perhaps?
I noticed a strong sense of community, quite alien to the more prosperous parts of central and southern Cali. Volunteer fire departments. Small, locally-run libraries. Stars and stripes flown from porches. Political independents who voted either way, not tribally, depending on the candidate. A measure of respect for ‘the other side’ (admittedly, this was pre-Trump). A sort of pleasingly libertarian vibe, one where pot-smoking coffee-house dwellers waved good morning to men with gun racks in their pick-up trucks.
I wasn’t remotely surprised to see counties north of Sacramento agitate for independence from the rest of the state. It’s like London being forced into an administrative arrangement with the Home Counties.
Sadly, at least in Oregon, getting away from the big cities isn’t enough. As Portland has turned into an even bigger cesspool of homelessness, lawlessness, and Antifa, the people with means have moved over the Cascades mountains and brought their progressive politics with them. I give central Oregon about ten years before it’s as bad as Portland.
What to say about California…. Perennially good weather, hundreds of miles of nice beaches, national parks and the Sierras, decent-yet-devaluing universities, a once-common (but now mostly lost) meritocracy in the valley, the once-admired cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles … there’s a lot that drew (and can still draw) bright and talented people to work in California. The problem is that all of the above positives have also attracted a significant number of takers and moochers.
These freeloaders take the ‘free’ natural benefits … and they soon realize that long-time residents will put up with a lot of mooching before the citizens will ever consider moving to a State in which they’ll need to shovel snow for four or five months each year, deal with extremely hot and freezing temperatures, have a view of a barren and nondescript landscape, have fewer engaging outdoor activities during the colder months, etc.
The greater the abundance of natural resources within a location, the softer the citizens will become over the decades, if they are not wary, relative to harsher locations that breed hardy people. The equilibrium is different, as the vikings discovered.
I still mourn the loss of meritocracy in the valley. You can still find it in small pockets within organizations (e.g. start-ups, hidden R&D departments and skunkworks, engineering teams, etc), but the massive support ‘cities’ that develop within the same organizations are largely made up of the social sciences types. Those who worry more about their newest pet Woke cause than about the mission of the organization. And, being more numerous, they throw their weight around.
One can’t walk 25 feet without some sort of Woke messaging on the corporate walls about how these social science activists will organize (over a breakfast of avocado toast or dinner tapas and wine) to save us all from ourselves, even as the activists are still too lazy and immature to take the minuscule responsibility to regularly clean their own rooms before demanding a complete reorganization of our societies into their vision of utopia.
We’ve all seen how the utopian dreams of these social science activists played out with their demands during COVID Lockdown, their organizing of the 2020-2021 anarchy riots that cost the US over 20 innocent lives and the US economy (mostly mom-and-pop stores) $2 billion in damages and lost goods, and their dreamy autonomous zones that worked for a mere couple of weeks until they could not mooch any more ‘free’ resources – from the broader and more responsible society – to keep these net-taker activists from falling into a self-destructive spiral of Mad Max murder and mayhem, etc. Sooner or later, they buy a plane ticket and return to their unkempt bedrooms in mom’s lavish home while the poor societies left behind have to deal with their failed meddling for years to come.
I hope it’s not too late for California to return to the former – functional – broader model of meritocracy before the brain-drain is compete.
Let me share your hope
100% correct on the “social scientist types”. They have infested every institution and corporation everywhere in prosperous developed countries and will be their downfall.
They are a massive drag on productivity and sources of division and disharmony within organisations and society as a whole.
So she’s taking a page out of the Nixon playbook.
So she must run for Governor and lose! Then wait until 2032.
Nixon was smart.