A Brief History
On October 11, 2023, in the Middle East and around the world, many feel a sense of anxiety over what will happen next in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Digging Deeper
The war began on October 7, 2023 with a combined land, air, and sea assault on Israeli territory by Hamas rockets and militants from the Palestinian controlled Gaza Strip. The invading Palestinian terrorists attacked Israeli soldiers and civilians, massacring perhaps over 1,000 victims, wounding thousands more, and abducting perhaps hundreds in horrifying scenes of atrocities shared across various social media platforms as can be seen in the embedded videos on YouTube below.
Unsurprisingly, other corrupt hate groups even outside of the Middle East have expressed support for these barbaric acts committed by Hamas as covered in the embedded videos below this paragraph, while leaders of some of the most powerful countries in Europe and North America have condemned Hamas’s horrific crimes against humanity. As for Israel, the country quickly pushed back Hamas’s incursion and began retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza with smaller skirmishes with other militant groups elsewhere on Israel’s borders with Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank.
It is expected that Israel will soon launch a major ground offensive into Gaza to eliminate Hamas’s ability to strike at Israel again; however, with Israel focusing its efforts on Gaza, concerns have been raised that Hezbollah will strike Israel even harder than Hamas did from Hezbollah’s bases in Lebanon. As Israel faces a potential multi-front war that could spillover into Lebanon and Syria, Iran may seize the opportunity to directly support the attacks on Israel opening up a wider Middle Eastern conflict, potentially drawing in the United States of America (US) and other countries while taking away from the US’s ability to provide the same level of support for Ukraine’s ongoing resistance to Russia’s invasion that the US and its allies have been providing to Ukraine thus far. If the US is busy simultaneously trying to support both Ukraine and Israel, further fears are that China may see an opportunity to finally attempt an invasion of Taiwan. As belligerents on any side of these ongoing or hypothetical conflicts get desperate, it is frightening to think how far things can go. Hopefully, cool and rational thinking heads will prevail in preventing an escalation into a global conflict.
Unfortunately, though, we have the past precedent from World War I, for example, of how a seemingly small, localized conflict can escalate into something much larger. So too do we have the example from World War II of how conflicts in different regions many miles apart can merge into an unprecedented global conflagration. Will such a nightmare scenario happen again now?
Question for students (and subscribers): If such a nightmare scenario were to play out with three massive wars happening simultaneously, how long do you think these wars would last? Who would ultimately prevail? Under what circumstances might nuclear weapons be used? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Andrews, John and Matt Baker. Timeline of World History. Thunder Bay Press, 2020.
Brocklehurst, Ruth, Henry Brook, and Paul Dowswell. The World Wars. Usborne Pub Ltd, 2007.
The featured image in this article, a map of the Middle East that is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Geography & Map Division under the digital ID g7420.ct003144, is a work of a Central Intelligence Agency employee, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a Work of the United States Government, this image or media is in the public domain in the United States.
You can also watch a video version of this article on YouTube.