World Plummets into Eschatological Frenzy: Unraveling the Implications

The eschatological fervor of the Palestine crisis is reaching a deafening peak. Officials worldwide are dropping their masks, and inadvertently revealing the Biblical strain of the conflict.

At every turn, political figures now soak their proclamations in Biblical reference and allegory. The foremost of which was Netanyahu, who has now invoked an assortment of Biblical prophecies as dogwhistles to stir his people into an eschatological frenzy.

Here he not only invokes the prophecy of Isaiah, but frames the conflict as that of “light” versus “darkness” and good versus evil, painting the Palestinians as the Children of Darkness to be vanquished by the Chosen Ones:

[...] Now, Congressional staffers on Capitol Hill are even secretly turning against Israel. Journalist Kei Pritsker spoke to an anonymous staffer “who describes the growing discontent with Israel’s massacre in Congress.”

In short: it’s a mutiny of sorts, deep within the bowels of the establishment itself, which points to a growing rift as people begin to grasp the true dimensions of the escalating conflict.

Alastair Crooke, for one, leaves with a pessimistic outlook on things:

Should Israel enter Gaza (and Israel may decide it has no choice but to launch a ground operation, given the domestic political dynamics and public sentiment), it is likely that Hizbullah will incrementally be drawn further in, leaving the U.S. with the binary option of seeing Israel defeated, or launching a major war in which all the hotspots become fused ‘as one’.

In a sense, the Israeli-Islamic conflict now may only be resolved in this kinetic way. All efforts since 1947 have seen the divide only deepen. The reality of the necessity of war is permeating widely the consciousness of the Arabic and Islamic world.

As a final key piece in understanding where things are heading, we have this week’s interview with former Prime Minister of France, Dominique De Villepin, as translated by Arnaud Bertrand.

Arnaud commends De Villepin for his extremely insightful deconstruction of the conflict, with which I agree. I highly recommend reading the interview in its entirety, but I’ll highlight the single most important point made therein.

Its chief idea is epitomized in the following essential exchange:

"Hamas has set a trap for us, and this trap is one of maximum horror, of maximum cruelty. And so there's a risk of an escalation in militarism, of more military interventions, as if we could with armies solve a problem as serious as the Palestinian question.

There's also a second major trap, which is that of Occidentalism. We find ourselves trapped, with Israel, in this western bloc which today is being challenged by most of the international community.

[Presenter: What is Occidentalism?]

Occidentalism is the idea that the West, which for 5 centuries managed the world's affairs, will be able to quietly continue to do so. And we can clearly see, even in the debates of the French political class, that there is the idea that, faced with what is currently happening in the Middle East, we must continue the fight even more, towards what might resemble a religious or a civilizational war. That is to say, to isolate ourselves even more on the international stage.

This is not the way, especially since there's a third trap, which is that of moralism. And here we have in a way the proof, through what is happening in Ukraine and what is happening in the Middle East, of this double standard that is denounced everywhere in the world, including in recent weeks when I travel to Africa, the Middle East, or Latin America.

The criticism is always the same: look at how civilian populations are treated in Gaza, you denounce what happened in Ukraine, and you are very timid in the face of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza. Consider international law, the second criticism that is made by the global south. We sanction Russia when it aggresses Ukraine, we sanction Russia when it doesn't respect the resolutions of the United Nations, and it's been 70 years that the resolutions of the United Nations have been voted in vain and that Israel doesn't respect them.

In short, he’s explaining that the West finds itself trapped in a fatal Sunk Cost Fallacy. They’ve gone “all in” on a certain moral and ethical framework of the world, and faced with a situation where the West’s moral fabric has been openly exposed and refuted, they find it extremely difficult—and perhaps fatally impossible—to withdraw, admit guilt or wrongdoing, and correct course. Instead, the hubristic, psychopathic leaders of the West may instead choose to “take it to the end” and force the imposition of their now falsified ontology onto the rest of the world.

Coming full circle, De Villepin too limns the conflict in eschatological hues:

You are in a game of causes and effects. Faced with the tragedy of history, one cannot take this 'chain of causality' analytical grid, simply because if you do you can't escape from it.

Once we understand that there is a trap, once we realize that behind this trap there has also been a change in the Middle East regarding the Palestinian issue... The situation today is profoundly different [from what it was in the past]. The Palestinian cause was a political and secular cause. Today we are faced with an Islamist cause, led by Hamas.

Obviously, this kind of cause is absolute and allows no form of negotiation. On the Israeli side, there has also been a development. Zionism was secular and political, championed by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century. It has largely become messianic, biblical today.

This means that they too do not want to compromise, and everything that the far-right Israeli government does, continuing to encourage colonization, obviously makes things worse, including since October 7th. So in this context, understand that we are already in this region facing a problem that seems profoundly insoluble. Added to this is the hardening of states. Diplomatically, look at the statements of the King of Jordan, they are not the same as six months ago. Look at the statements of Erdogan in Turkey.

He recognizes that the conflict is coming to a head—the classical unstoppable force vs. immovable object. Now that things have taken on Biblical, messianic, eschatological dimensions, there are very few ways to defuse things.

But there is some hope, as evidenced by the growing rifts within the Western establishments themselves. It can even be seen reverberating up the spine of the U.S. political hierarchy like a jolting fear, adding an uncharacteristically tremulous step to their typically unequivocal approach. Now they seem uncertain as to how to proceed; despite sending a massive armada to the region, their signals to Israel are mixed.

There continue to be reports that Biden’s administration is completely split on how to proceed. Interestingly, Bush, too, was once conflicted on the eve of the Iraq war. What finally facilitated his ‘sound-minded’ decision to invade? Apparently, the same eschatological framing:

So—will the Biden administration follow suit in accordance with voices of a ‘higher calling’, cleaving to their Biblical obligations of protecting sacred Zion? The problem is, unlike Iraq and Saddam, Iran and its protectorate are much more attuned to the eschatological purpose of ongoing events, as are many of the satellite powers which now threaten to enter the conflict—like that of Turkey, whose radical opposition figures have already threatened war against Israel should they fully invade Gaza.

The ultimate danger of the situation rests on the fact that Netanyahu and his most fervent right-wing lackeys see this as potentially the one and only opportunity to enact a decades-long plan to fully erase ‘Palestine’ once and for all. If this conflict was only actually about Hamas itself, then there wouldn’t be much to worry about.

But given that all indications prove that this has been an internal Israeli plan long in the making, that the events of October 7 were in fact a Pearl Harbor-esque falseflag tasked with generating the needed outrage which would allow the execution of the ‘Final Palestinian Solution’, this tells us that the Netanyahu government means to go “all the way” in the first step towards fulfilling messianic prophecy.

And if that’s the case, then as De Villepin implied, the West may be trapped in following Israel into the throes of darkness—basically risking their own total destruction for someone else’s Biblical madness and vanity.

In the end, the conflict could merely schism the world heavily, rather than lead to a total kinetic WW3 confrontation. But even so, it would similarly lead to the West’s complete downfall as it would only accelerate the global rifts and harden the newly-formed oppositional blocs, which favors the East rather than the dependent West.

Given that energy giants like Iran and KSA are not only technically on the same side in this conflict, but even moreso given recent developments like KSA’s accession to the BRICS (not to mention Egypt), the conflict will only ‘isolate’ the West from everything it needs to thrive, leaving China and its constellation of friendly powers to develop and grow and pull away from the terminally declining, necrotic European powers.

If I had to make a prediction, that’s how I see things unfolding. Though there’s still a strong chance for a major kinetic outbreak, I slightly favor the outcome of the Western powers stepping off from the ledge on account of the strong internal opposition and fraying disagreement, discussed earlier. This conflict will continue to simmer for many months, with perhaps some ‘close calls’ flaring up, but will ultimately lead to even deeper global realignments as the world sees the bared, naked face of the West’s moralizing hypocrisy and double standards. The West will simply continue to lose their moral exclusivity and righteousness as the entire global south solidifies under China, Russia, and Iran’s leadership.

Sensing the West’s hesitancy and weakness, Israel may attempt to desperately spark a wider conflagration by increasing the amplitude of their false flags—perhaps another USS Liberty-like incident or unilateral strikes on Iran meant to goad them into a response that would necessarily trigger a U.S. intervention. It’s my belief that this will be the chief danger to watch as, gripped by the terminal phase of its eschatological madness, Israel will be at its most unpredictable and dangerous to humanity at large.

In the end, they may succeed in establishing a new kingdom on the ashes of the old one, just perhaps not in the way they expected. (read more)