DG TEAM
DR DAN Steinbock’s new book The Fall of Israel is a stunning look at the longstanding forces undermining the state of Israel and the lives of Palestinians, genocidal atrocities, and regional escalation. His interview offers revealing insights about the ongoing catastrophe.
The path to the obliteration of Gaza was paved by a confluence of a set of longstanding forces; the subject of Dr Dan Steinbock’s new book, The Fall of Israel.
The book comes with high-level endorsements. “The Fall of Israel does an outstanding job explaining the causes and the evolution of the disastrous path that Israel is on,” says Prof. John Mearsheimer, the leading proponent of realism in international relations.
Paths of devastation
In addition to Mearsheimer, the book is endorsed by Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is concerned about US complicity urging “those of us who believe in the rule of law and democracy to read this book. Our current national path leads us straight to hell.“
The strong endorsements are seconded by Ilan Pappe, Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies; Prof. Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Princeton’s Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy Specialist; Jonathan Kuttab, the-founder of Al-Haq for Palestinian human rights; Alfred-Maurice de Zays, UN expert on Democratic and Equitable International Order; and Erkki Tuomioja and Mogens Lykketoft who were among a group of former European foreign ministers charging Israel for being an “apartheid state.”
What makes The Fall of Israel unique is its broad scope. What makes it unsettling is its stubborn quest for verifiable truth, even if it is complex and nuanced. The book connects the dots among the lethal headwinds in the Middle East. We sat down with Dr Steinbock to learn more.
The great conjuncture
In The Fall of Israel, Dr Steinbock starts with the great conjuncture of ethnic expulsions, the occupation of Palestinian territories, US-Israel military ties, and the militarization of Israel, which he believes are the key to understanding the Israel/Palestine catastrophe.
Question (Q): You talk about the converging forces of the “great conjuncture” that were unleashed after October 7, 2023. What do you mean by the term?
Dr Steinbock (DS): The great conjuncture refers to a set of four structural forces that account for a series of cumulative disasters in the Middle East, starting with the ethnic expulsions of the Palestinians in several waves since the late 1940s.
Second, it refers to the aggressive expansion of the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Recently, the rise of the Messianic far-right has fostered outright militarization of the settlers accelerating the anti-Arab pogroms in the West Bank, which is effectively being annexed into Israel.
Third, a half-century of failed American diplomacy in the Middle East. The Fall of Israel outlines the US-Israeli ties from hedging and choosing sides to partnership and eventually a symbiosis. These ties account for 50 years of military destabilization in the region and US complicity in genocidal atrocities.
Finally, instead of fostering peace in the region, America’s massive military aid to Israel – $18 billion in the past year alone – has amplified Israel’s parallel militarization degrading its economy, politics, and military.
These forces feed on each other forming a vicious cycle intensifying and broadening the regional escalation.
Ominous long-term trends
Q: True to its subtitle, The Fall of Israel shows how these underlying forces have degraded Israel, its politics, economy, and defense forces. You believe that the very nature of Israel is now at risk.
DS: It is. Secular Jewish democracy is threatened by ultra-religious, autocratic forces, as evidenced by the record-large mass protests against the “judicial reforms” since early 2023. Social divides are worse than ever before. Labor Zionism, with its more moderate, egalitarian legacies, has been crushed by revisionist Zionism, with its harsh-right neoconservatism and “iron wall” security policies.
Q: What about the economic prospects?
DS: Past growth has benefited a small economic elite, plus the highly subsidized settlers. Income polarization is the highest among all OECD countries. Poverty is climbing. The welfare state is eroding. The economy relies on the tax revenues of a shrinking middle class that’s over-burdened. And as the high-tech “brain drain” has soared, Israel’s future is at risk.
It is these long-term trends that are the real challenge. The recent rating downgrades are a prelude. Without a major change, Israel is heading toward an economic edge.
Struggle for Palestine, Israeli ultra-apartheid
Q: The third chapter of your book takes a deep look at the longstanding Palestinian struggle for sovereignty, Israel’s apartheid rule, South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, and the potential for regional escalation.
DS: Israeli independence and Palestinian Nakba or catastrophe are different sides of the same coin. I describe in detail the early Palestinian dual economy, the rise of al-Banna’s Islamic modernization and Qutb’s Islamism already in the 1950s, the rise of Fatah and the PLO in the 1960s, and Hamas in the 1980s. Then, the peace process crumbled as the right-wing Likud cabinets in Israel opted for more suppression, which has now turned savage.
Q: You also examine Israel’s apartheid rule, as the former head of Mossad calls it, in the occupied territories and the genocidal atrocities in Gaza and beyond. Instead of apartheid, you talk about ultra-apartheid, however. Why?
DS: Apartheid South Africa exploited its segregated and underprivileged black majority. What makes Israeli apartheid different is its ultimate purpose: ethnic expulsions. It is ultra-apartheid. It sees Palestinian labor as a redundant surplus that will eventually have to be expunged or worse.
Allegations of genocide and US complicity
Q: The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accuse Israel of committing acts of genocide in Gaza. What is your take?
DS: The Genocide Convention lists five conditions for genocide. On the basis of extensive evidence, I conclude that the Gaza atrocities fulfill four, possibly all five conditions.
Q: What about allegations of US complicity?
DS: These atrocities could not have happened without the incessant flow of US arms and the close collaboration of Israel and the Biden administration. Abundant evidence highlights US complicity, as the leading genocide scholar William Schabas has argued.
This is a direct outcome of a status quo in which international law has been rendered effectively impotent. Lethal might rules; not legal right. Hence, one disaster after another.
Regional repercussions
Q: The Fall of Israel presents regional escalation as a net effect of the Netanyahu era. Is the region being destabilized?
DS: Effectively, yes. In the book, I show how the destabilization has spread over time from Israel and Palestine to the neighboring countries (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon) and beyond them (Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Iraq and Iran, and Yemen). Worse, the potential of regional escalation does not pose just risks of conventional conflicts. In moments of crisis, Israel has resorted to nuclear mobilization since 1967.
In the continued absence of international containment, a broader Israel-Iran escalation could take the turmoil to an entirely new level, with global repercussions.
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In The Fall of Israel, Dr Steinbock discloses one inconvenient truth after another, including the century-long sources of a set of avoidable disasters; new concepts such as “algocide” to describe the first AI-driven genocidal atrocities; the apocalyptic visions of Israel’s Messianic far-right; the illicit American funding of Jewish settlers and their anti-Arab pogroms; the shocking parallels between Weimar Germany and contemporary Israel; and the undermined peace prospects since the 1940s.
Q: You show the intelligence leading to October 7 was available but ignored.
DS: Correct. That is also why I included extensive endnotes in the book so that facts can no longer be ignored. The consequent human and economic costs are colossal. What has happened in Gaza won’t stay in Gaza.
For The Fall of Israel: The Degradation of Israel’s Politics, Economy and Military (Clarity Press), see https://www.claritypress.com/product/the-fall-of-israel/ Available also via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, !ndigo, Bookshop etc
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Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized strategist of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China, and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China), and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net
