Black Lives Matter and Free Palestine
movements collude in the global netwar.
"A Brave New War:
The Tribal War Over Israel"
by John Robb
"What curious form of war and protest do we have before us? “War in the 21st Century will be very different from what we have come to expect,” John Robb forecasted in the preface to his 2007 book, "Brave New War." In a nutshell: "We live in an extremely complex global system – too complex for a single state or group of states to keep under control. Certain people – guerillas – are now intentionally introducing instability into these global systems by attacking both social and economic systems. The manufactured instabilities are almost impossible to control. Additionally, many of the things we have tried in order to stop these negative actors have only made matters worse."
"In a last ditch effort, Hamas constructed the perfect trap for Israel. Why was Israel so willing to walk in? The Israeli government says it’s at war to destroy Hamas. It isn’t. It’s in an online war with a global, networked tribe for its very existence. A war it is losing.
You can see it in this recent poll (one of many that say the same thing) just after the terrorist attack. Question: Israel’s response to the Hamas attack is fully justified (US citizens by age)?
50-64 56%.
35-49 44%.
18-34 27%.
This result tells us that Israel is on track to lose US support in a generation or less. However, given the networked tribalism underway, this result tells us that the US won’t just be unsupportive of Israel; it will be antagonistic to it.
Tribalized Moral Warfare: The reason for this sudden shift is the rise of tribalized and networked moral warfare. Until recently, Israel was largely unopposed in its ability to wage moral warfare, both on and offline. It was able, with the support of its diaspora, to control the flow of information and the moral framing of its wars, and any attempt to wage moral warfare in opposition to Israel was shut down by labeling it anti-semitism. This control provided them with support from Western governments and their institutional media. Support (from $ to weapons to military intervention to diplomatic cover) they need to survive. That’s over.
Networked tribalism, similar to what we have seen with anti-racism/fascism/etc., has rapidly emerged to wage moral warfare in opposition to Israel. This tribal moral warfare routes around the traditional media, and in some cases, it coerces media companies into alignment. Moreover, networked tribalism connects people to this conflict through empathy triggers that forge fictive kinship, turning billions of people unrelated to the participants in real life into partisans.
No Peace: Tribal moral warfare isn’t a political contest. Solutions and compromise aren’t possible. Peaceful outcomes are an anathema. In networked tribal warfare, the sides are framed as absolute good vs. absolute evil. Opressor/oppressed. Peaceful citizens/terrorists. As a result, tribal moral warfare dehumanizes the opposition.
Debate immediately devolves. Since networked tribes only come together to oppose an enemy and not about position goals, they won’t acknowledge or even ‘see’ the evil acts of their side. They fall outside of the oppositional pattern they are using to make sense of the conflict. For example: The charges “You are defending terrorists who behead babies” or “You are defending a country that blows up and starves babies” aren’t even heard by the people they are used against. Networked tribes don’t deal in nuance. They are maximalists. The problem for Israel, and those who support it, is that this isn’t a fair fight.
The Tactics of Mistake: On January 11, 2024, South Africa started to make its case that Israel has breached the 1948 Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice (of which Israel is a signatory). The vote on provisional measures to provide protection and aid to Palestinians in Gaza (and potentially the West Bank) took as little as a week. Regardless of the outcome, this is a disaster for Israel. This isn’t all; this war’s length, brutality, and complexity have led to an ever-increasing amount of damage to Israel. Here are a few examples:
The tunnel network and the bombing campaign (rubble) have combined to turn Gaza into an unforgiving battlefield that is a cross between two of the most deadly battlefields of WW2: Iwo Jima (tunnels) and Stalingrad. As a result, hundreds of IDF soldiers have been killed and thousands critically wounded (long-term care), damaging IDF morale and discipline.
Extensive tunneling has made it impossible for Israel to effectively ID Hamas targets, which has led to a very messy bombing campaign, resulting in tens of thousands of civilian deaths. These deaths have fueled the growth of anti-Israel networked tribalism across the world (a generational time bomb for Israel within the US) and prepared the ground for South Africa’s action.
The complexities of this prolonged war have led to an increasing number of self-inflicted incidents that have damaged Israel both internally and externally. For example, in a complete breakdown in discipline, the IDF killed three shirtless Israeli hostages waving a white flag.
The reason things have gone so badly for Israel is that this war was a trap. A trap laid in a last-ditch move (just before the normalization of relations between Israel and much of the Arab world) by a weak adversary with few other options. A perfect trap that Israel was compelled to walk into.
Why Terrorism Works: Terrorism succeeds - in the rare times it does work - when the target state overreacts to the provocation and damages itself by doing so. The trick to knowing when it will work (and when it will be devastating) relies on one insight from Sun Tzu. "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
What does knowing your enemy mean? It means that you understand how your enemy makes decisions. - John Robb. So it goes..."
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