This quote by the professor pretty much sums it up.
"The gullibility, and indeed ignorance, of contemporary leaders about the intent, hatred, ruthlessness, and capability of their enemies are not surprising given unchanging human nature."
Except that does & doesn't apply to the zionist considering how they're always singing the tune that is Hamas' supposed charter. They certainly make it a point to play the victim card as loud as possible by constantly playing the existential threat song & dance. Then they murder them by the tens of thousands while Hamas is slowly (hopefully surely) lining up to be a member of the examples this man is referring to.
But it's good because this is really not a new concept, besides his outlining of all the nitty gritty details of these events and how they brought about those empirical powers' eventual demise. In fact, the annihilation of powers in general was not always relegated to large empires only, but as we clearly see now, it's superpowers and regional powers as well. Eventually they'll all meet their demise but the neat thing he's really stating with those historical events is that they're only an affirmation that history repeats itself. Despite our belief that we are moral and only have nukes for deterrence. It's really simple but the beauty of what the professor's (who is well-known in academia) book is the details of that history and the specifics of how they relate to the examples he gave, namely the Armenians, Kurds, zionists but I must admit the more interesting one that strangely enough many people don't pay much attention to (including myself) despite its population being extremely small yet it has a rather popular and vociferous diaspora is current Greece! I found it fascinating that he would include it in his list which obviously calls out today's Türkiye as one of those so-called "vulnerable powers" that could face an eventual doom. Obviously, that depends on Türkiye's future actions since I don't believe they're anywhere near that point.
It also seems to go unnoticed in historical contexts as to how in some of these instances, the annihilation vs doom was not necessarily all due solely to the aggressor, but in large part the defender himself contributed to his own annihilation as he astutely points out the Aztecs along with Cortez and his Spanish Conquistadores in Mexico. The Aztecs' annihilation was due largely in part to their own horrible practices of human sacrifices and all that crazy stuff they did. Funny thing is he didn't make the correlation in that interview, but we could easily deduce that it could also apply to the demise of the zionist. Obviously not in the same terms as the Aztecs. However, with the zionists demon-like treatment of the Palestinians and who knows, maybe in time they'll go full-bore demon and slaughter their own in the form of Orthodox Jews and other Israeli/Jews who defy zionism and speak up against it making them also fall in that category. Leave it up to the zionist to actually have the horrible & disgusting traits of both parties not just one!
I still come back to the hypothesis that Israel is ruled by factions, the faction in power is which ever can keep on achieving state survival, despite the dissonance many of their citizens almost certainly feel. They won’t seriously hurt their orthodox community, it’s against their law. At most they will jail them and work on educating their children to have different views (pro-government views) than their parents.
Once they get the Arab nations (or some Palestinians) to be the “peacekeepers” (some may start considering them modern day sondercommandos in this ongoing genocide) in Gaza, vis a vi pressure from America, they will work on their public image around the world and shift to a liberal face for a while to do a massive PR campaign.
Before this massacre started their use to be a YouTube ad for “Tel Aviv - Jerusalem”. Expect more of that.
The only thing is, The Palestinians and the Arabs and enough young people know that this is a war, not to neutralize Hamas, but to expel the Palestinians if they can achieve it, or kill enough of them until some kind of deterrence is re-established, through fear. But what they have lost in this fight is that people know they will go to any lengthens, and risk harming any civilian if their AI tells them to do so. So as Sun Tzu would say, they have put the Palestinians on “Fatal Terrain”; a no turning back position, so don’t expect the Palestinians people and their supporters to let up, despite whatever face saving Israel and its supporters try to do.
The censorship of TikTok and other media in such a naked way has also exposed Israel supremacist supporters and the whole global facade to keep them and the global status quo in power, not unlike the movie “John Carpenter: They Live”: especially how they co-opt local elites. (“They Live, We Sleep”). By the way, this is a film that came out in 1988 (alluding to Reagan supporters, but …) and 2025 is right around the corner.
I come back to
what was agreed by liberal Israelis and the PLO with the Oslo accords. That was Israel’s high water mark, and a way for them to legitimize themselves, with time. The right wing faction killed Rabin and instigated the second intifada, and eventually they had to withdraw from southern Lebanon and Gaza in 2000 and 2005 respectively. The Middle East was liberalizing in the 90s, and without a “reason d’tre” regimes like the one in Iran might have fallen by now, had a Palestinian state come to be in the 90s. With demographics being what they were, a majority of the regions people wouldn’t have known an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and by now, most young people would have just look at Israel as always having been there, side by side with a Palestine.
The right wing Israeli, most definitely led by Netanyahu, pushed for the 2003 Iraq War, but created a worse status quo, by empowering Iran. Forces inside Lebanon and Syria went from Arab entities to Iranian proxies.
