For a Leviathan to function, it must remain rational and powerful, Alastair Crooke writes.

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Israel’s strategy from past decades continues to rest on the hope of achieving some literal Chimeric transformative ‘de-radicalisation’ of both Palestinians and of the Region, writ large – a de-radicalisation that will make ‘Israel safe’. This has been the ‘holy grail’ objective for Zionists since Israel was first founded. The code word for this chimaera today is the ‘Abraham Accords’.

Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister, former Israeli Ambassador to Washington and key Trump ‘whisperer’ – writes Anna Barsky in Ma’ariv (Hebrew) on 24 August – “sees reality with cold political eyes. He is convinced that a real agreement [on Gaza] will never be concluded with Hamas, but [only] with the United States. What is needed, Dermer says, is the Americans’ adoption of Israel’s principles: the same five points that the Cabinet approved: disarmament of Hamas, return of all hostages, complete demilitarization of Gaza, Israeli security control in the Strip – and an alternative civilian government that is not Hamas and not the Palestinian Authority”.

From the perspective of Dermer, a partial hostage release deal – which Hamas has accepted – would be a political disaster. By contrast, were Washington to endorse the Dermer outcome – as an ‘American plan’ – Barsky infers Dermer suggesting: “we would have a situation in which everyone benefits”. Moreover, in Dermer’s logic, “the mere opening of a partial deal gives Hamas a window of two to three months, during which it can strengthen itself and even try to obtain a different ‘final scenario’ from that of the Americans – one that suits [Hamas] better”. “This, according to Dermer, is the truly dangerous scenario”, writes Barsky.

Dermer has for years insisted that Israel can have no peace without the prior ‘transformative de-radicalisation’ of all Palestinians. “If we do it right”, Ron Dermer says, “it will make Israel stronger – and the U.S. too!”

Some years earlier, when Dermer was asked what he saw to be the solution to the Palestinian conflict. He replied that both the West Bank and Gaza must be totally dis-armed. Yet, more important than disarmament however, was the absolute necessity that all Palestinians must be mutationally “de-radicalised”.

When asked to expand, Dermer pointed approvingly to the outcome of WW2: The Germans were defeated, but more significantly, the Japanese had been fully ‘de-radicalised’ and rendered docile by the war’s end:

“Japan had U.S. forces for 75 years. Germany — U.S. forces for 75 years. And if anyone thinks that was by agreement at the beginning they’re kidding themselves. It was imposed, then they understood it was good for them. And over time there was a mutual interest in keeping it”.

Trump is aware of Dermer’s thesis, but seemingly it is Netanyahu who instinctively dithers, so Barsky writes:

“A partial deal [with Hamas] will almost certainly lead to the resignation of Smotrich and Ben Gvir [from the government]… The government will fall apart … A partial deal means the end of the right-right government … Netanyahu knows this well, which is why his hesitation is so difficult. And yet, there is a limit to how long one can hold the rope at both ends”.

Trump seemingly accepts the ‘Dermer Thesis’: “I think they want to die, and it’s very, very bad”, Trump said of Hamas before leaving for his recent weekend trip to Scotland. “It got to a point where you’re [i.e. Israel] gonna have to finish the job”.

But Dermer’s notion about having the consciousness of adversaries seared by defeat was never just about Hamas alone. It extended to all Palestinians and the region as a whole – and, of course to Iran in particular.

Gideon Levy writes that we must thank the former head of the Military Intelligence, Aharon Haliva, for admitting on Channel 12:

“We need genocide every few years; the murder of the Palestinian people is a legitimate, even essential act”. This is how a “moderate” general in the IDF speaks … killing 50,000 people is “necessary”.

This ‘necessity’ is no longer ‘rational’. It has metamorphosed into bloodlust. Benny Barbash, an Israeli playwright, writes of the many Israelis he meets, including at the demonstrations in favour of a hostage-prisoner deal, who frankly admit:

“Listen, I’m really sorry to tell you this, but the children dying in Gaza really don’t bother me at all. Nor the hunger that’s there, or not. It really doesn’t interest me. I’ll tell you straight: As far as I’m concerned, they can all drop dead there”’

“Genocide as the IDF’s legacy, for the sake of future generations”; “For every one [Israeli] on 7 October, 50 Palestinians have to die. It doesn’t matter now, children. I’m not speaking out of revenge; it’s out of a message to future generations. There’s nothing to be done, they need a Nakba every now and then to feel the price”, Gideon Levy soberly quotes General Haliva saying (emphasis added).

This must be understood to represent a profound shift within the core of Zionist thinking (from Ben Gurion to Kahane). Yossi Klein writes (in Haaretz Hebrew) that:

“We are indeed in the stage of barbarism, but this is not the end of Zionism … [This barbarism] has not killed Zionism. On the contrary, it has made it relevant. Zionism has had various versions, but none resembled the new, updated, violent Zionism: the Zionism of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir …

“The old Zionism is no longer relevant. It established a state and revived its language. It has no more goals … If you ask a Zionist today what their Zionism is, they wouldn’t know how to answer. ‘Zionism’ has become an empty word … Until [that is] Meir Kahane came along. He came with an updated Zionism whose goals are clear: to expel Arabs and settle Jews. This is a Zionism that doesn’t hide behind pretty words. “Voluntary evacuation” makes it laugh. “Transfer” enchants it. It is proud of “apartheid” … To be a Zionist today is to be Ben-Gvir. To be non-Zionist is to be antisemitic. An antisemite [today] is someone who reads Haaretz …”.

Smotrich declared this week that the Jewish people are experiencing ‘physically’, “the process of redemption and the return of the divine presence to Zion – as they engage in the ‘conquest of the land’”.

It is this train of apocalyptic thought that is bleeding into the Trump Administration in its various formats: It is metamorphosing the Administration’s ethical posture towards one of ‘war is war and must be absolute’. Anything less must be seen as mere moral posturing. (This is the Talmudical understanding arising from the story of wiping out the Amalek (see Jonathan Muskat in Times of Israel)).

Thus we can see Washington’s new found thrall for de-capitation of intransigent leaderships (Yemen, Syria and Iran); the support for the political neutering of Hizbullah and the Shi’a in Lebanon; the normalisation of assassination for recalcitrant heads of state (as was mooted for Imam Kamenei); and for the toppling of state structures (i.e. as planned for Iran on 13 June).

The transformation of Israel to this Revisionist Zionism – and its hold over key factions of U.S. thinking – is precisely why war between Iran and Israel has come to be perceived as inevitable.

The Supreme Leader of Iran articulated his understanding of the implications explicitly in his public address earlier this week:

“This [American] hostility has persisted for 45 years, across different U.S. administrations, parties, and presidents. Always the same hostility, sanctions, and threats against the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people. The question is why?.

“In the past, they hid the real reason behind labels like terrorism, human rights, women’s rights, or democracy. If they did state it, they framed it more politely, saying: ‘We want Iran’s behaviour to change”.

“But the man in office today in America gave it away. He revealed the true objective: ‘Our conflict with Iran, with the Iranian people, is because Iran must obey America’. That is what we, the Iranian nation, must clearly understand. In other words: A power in the world expects that Iran—with all its history, dignity and its legacy as a great nation — should simply be submissive. That is the real reason for all the enmity”.

“Those who argue, “Why not negotiate directly with America to solve your problems?” are also looking only at the surface. That’s not the real issue. The real problem is that the U.S. wants Iran to be obedient to its commands. The Iranian people are deeply offended by such a great insult, and they will stand with all their strength against anyone who harbours such a false expectation of them … the U.S.’ real goal is Iran’s submission. Iranians will never accept this ‘great insult’”.

‘De-radicalisation’ in the Dermer thesis’ meaning means installing a Leviathan-esque “despotism that reduces the region to total powerlessness – including that of a spiritual, intellectual and moral powerlessness. The total Leviathan is a unique, absolute and unlimited power, spiritual and temporal, over other humans”, as Dr Henri Hude, former head of the Department of Ethics and Law at France’s prestigious Saint-Cyr Military Academy, has observed.

Former IDF Ombudsman Major General (Res). Itzhak Brik too has warned that Israel’s political leadership are “gambling with Israel’s very existence”:

“They want to accomplish everything through military pressure, but in the end, they won’t accomplish anything. They have put Israel on the brink of two impossible situations [–] the outbreak of a full-fledged war in the Middle East, [and, or, secondly] a continuing of the war of attrition. In either situation, Israel won’t be able to survive for long”.

Thus, as Zionism transforms to what Yossi Klein has defined as ‘late stage Barbarism’, the question arises, could ‘war without limits’ work, despite Hude’s and Brik’s deep scepticism? Could such Israeli ‘terror’ impose on the Middle East an unconditional surrender “that would allow it to change profoundly, militarily, politically and culturally, and to transform as Israeli satellites within an overall Pax Americana?”

The clear response that Dr Hude gives in his book Philosophie de la Guerre is that war without limits cannot be the solution, because it cannot deliver long-lasting ‘deterrence’ or de-radicalisation:

“On the contrary, it is the most certain cause of war. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational than it is, arousing opponents who are even less rational than it is, the Leviathan will fall; and even before its fall, no security is assured”.

Hude identifies too such extreme ‘will to power’ without limits as necessarily containing the psyche of self-destruction within it.

For a Leviathan to function, it must remain rational and powerful. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational, and angering opponents who are less rational than it is itself, the Leviathan then must – and will – fall.

This is precisely why Iran, even now, knows it must prepare for the Big War as Leviathan ‘arises’. And so too, must Russia – for it is one single war being prosecuted against recalcitrants to the American new order.