The news arrives with the grim predictability of a Roman triumph: Benjamin Netanyahu orders the IDF to extend its grip over Gaza to 70%. A decisive push, they call it. A final solution to the question of Hamas. To which I say: history has seen such hubris before, and it rarely ends well.
Let us be clear. This is not a military operation; it is a declaration of intellectual bankruptcy. The Israeli state, once the darling of progressive thought, has descended into a parody of late-imperial overreach. We have seen this script: the Quixotic charge, the promised peace through overwhelming force, the inevitable quagmire. From Rome’s war in Germania to Britain’s adventures in Afghanistan, the pattern is unchanged. The conqueror believes that violence can solve what politics cannot.
And what does 70% control actually mean? It is a number plucked from the air, a bureaucrat’s fantasy. Land is not conquered by percentages but by the consent of those who live on it. The people of Gaza have been herded from rubble to rubble, and now they are told that more soldiers, more checkpoints, more ruined buildings will bring peace. It will not. It will bring more hatred, more radicalisation, more martyrs.
I detect the stench of decadence. For a nation to sustain such a campaign, it must believe in its own righteousness beyond all reason. It must ignore the cost in treasure, in blood, in international standing. It must treat its own soldiers as expendable pieces on a board. This is not strength; it is the death-urge of a society that has lost its moral compass.
Consider the historical parallel: the late Roman Republic. The endless wars, the triumphal marches, the dictatorial powers granted to generals. And what came of it? Civil war, economic collapse, and the end of a republic. Netanyahu, with his corruption trials and desperate coalition, is a Caesar in training. The West looks on, wringing its hands, but doing nothing. It is too busy admiring the efficiency of the killing.
National identity is a strange thing. Israel was founded as a refuge, a light unto nations. Now it is a fortress state, obsessed with control. The push to 70% is not a policy; it is a symptom. It reveals a nation that cannot imagine peace, only victory. And victory in such a conflict is a mirage. You cannot bomb an idea. You cannot occupy a grievance.
Of course, there are those who will say I am being a pessimist, a contrarian, a Cassandra. They will point to the security briefings, the tactical wisdom, the necessity of the moment. But I have read my Gibbon. I know the sound of an empire cracking. The question is not whether Israel can take 70% of Gaza; it can. The question is what happens after. Will the children born in those ruins grow up to hate more or less? Will the soldiers who watch their friends die in a fruitless occupation come home and question their leaders? The answers are as predictable as the tides.
I write this not to offend but to provoke thought. The intellectual decadence of our age is our refusal to learn from history. We treat each crisis as unique, each conflict as a righteous crusade. But the laws of power do not change. Enormous force, applied without a vision, creates only destruction. Netanayhu’s push is a tragedy precisely because it is so predictable.
The Fall of Rome took centuries. The Fall of a nation’s soul can happen in a decade. I wonder which we are witnessing now.
