The Guilt of Words
Your city is under attack. A fleet of bombers is heading towards you loaded with death and destruction. The pilots of these planes have been here already. During their last visit you were caught by surprise and their bombs killed hundreds of your fellow citizens. But now you are ready. You are equipped with anti-aircraft missiles that can take out the attacking planes and save your people.
However, your defensive action meets up with opposition. There are people who tell you that you may not shoot down those bombers who would kill you. The attackers have taken civilian hostages and have brought them along on their planes. If you shoot down the planes those civilians would die.
What would you do?
I would also shoot down the planes. I would not be guilty for the death of those civilian passengers. Their blood would be on the hands of those who put them on the planes.
Gaza strip under Hamas is the attacking fleet. Their territory has been weaponized to launch attacks against Israel. They have taken the people of Gaza hostage and have positioned themselves amongst the civilian population so as to maximize civilian casualties should Israel attempt to protect itself.
Should Israel not shoot those who are threatening to kill them? Would you allow yourself to be slaughtered because your attackers hide themselves behind a civilian population?
The present war in Gaza did not have to happen. Hamas has been firing rockets at Israel for many years and Israel has attempted to take out those who threaten them with annihilation. But every time Israel strikes at Hamas a chorus of voices erupt calling for Israel to stay her hand. These protesters cry out for the lives of the civilians that Hamas is using as human shields. If Israel would eradicate Hamas, then this conflict would be over. It is the protesters who are prolonging this unnecessary war.
But these same protesters wouldn’t hesitate to shoot down a plane that is trying to kill them or sink a ship that is shooting at them even if there is an innocent civilian on that plane or ship. They would not sit back and allow themselves to get killed just because their murderers are using human shields.
Those who are calling for a ceasefire are calling for more bloodshed. They are demanding that Israel allow itself to be destroyed, which is something they would never do if they were facing the same threat. The call for a ceasefire is legitimizing and encouraging Hamas’ use of human shields. And the call for a ceasefire is a call for the continuation of the conflict.
The only reason that Hamas uses these human shields is because they have come to rely on these protesters. Whether these protesters realize it or not they are marching in the service of Hamas.
If you are one of those who are calling for Israel to stand down I ask you to consider the following. Would you allow yourself to be slaughtered just because your attackers are using human shields? Do you realize that by calling for a ceasefire you are playing a crucial part in Hamas’ war against Israel? Do you realize that your words are prolonging the conflict which can only result in more death, of both Israelis and Palestinians?
Words can kill. Think before you speak.
1000 Verses - a project of Judaism Resources 
Exactly. I would like to see these protesters put pressure on Hamas. Why are they protesting against Israel? Why aren’t people pouring into the streets all over the globe to protest against Hamas? It makes no sense to blame Israel for the chaos and destruction Hamas has wrought.
Hamas could end this war in a second. They can release the hostages and lay down their arms. Why isn’t the world calling on their unconditional surrender?
I think it was Thomas Sowell who said the college that he went to and has been protesting against Israel, has 23 Palestinian assistant professors.
Some people (including most western government leaders) aren’t calling for a ceasefire, but are questioning the attitudes and decisions within the war. Or, at least, saying these things can’t be above question even while upholding the right to respond defensively and with force to terrorism. It’s not about whether the war is justified, but rather how exactly it’s being unleashed by this particular set of leaders.
How can we trust that the Israeli government is doing the minimum necessary for national security? How do we know whether they are overstepping, to gain favour with voters wanting control of Gaza and the West Bank for reasons beyond security only?
If they allow settlements and indiscriminately call the Palestinian population animals, how can we trust that they are planning carefully enough to make sure civilians who are innocent get warnings in time, and receive essential supplies? Do we just blindly trust that people who profess some of the same beliefs as us are going to act purely and without falling into any acts of convenient genocide, even when they call for things like indefinite siege and indefinite displacement? Even when most of the many people killed are women and children who would have escaped if they’d had a chance?
On what basis do you trust the pure intentions and humanitarian care of leaders, when other world leaders who support the war and understand terrorism believe international law is being flouted in this specific instance?
This isn’t to compare the IDF to Hamas, it’s to ask whether those with so much destructive capacity could be going about this in another way, and whether their motives are mixed.
I also share the concern that it is impossible to vaguely ‘destroy Hamas’, and that this war will fuel decades, if not centuries, of terrorism. There seems to be no way forward, and no progress towards inter-racial empathy, understanding or peace, as long as Palestinian people feel traumatised and dispossessed.
Even seeing the complexity of all that the Arab world contributes to the dynamic, where does this war’s way forward actually lead to? Does it even lead towards Israel ever being the safest place to be Jewish, for that matter?
Even if we don’t know all the IDF’s reasons and what may or may not justify particular decisions, can the seriousness of the broader context put all Israeli politicians above particular questions, especially when they wield this much power against civilians?
And in general, ever if they are taking every precaution and acting purely for motives of defence, another question. Can a nation dismiss international protections for civilians as irrelevant, even when fighting an opponent that clearly disregards it?
A lot of good questions and what is some what surprising, it is global.
Every one of those protestors while calling for new underwear, would be demanding a response from their government to protect their families. No one would be concerned the least about the attackers and would demand their deaths. what do you even say to those who want a nice war? Not to much force, ok? The rabbi mentions how hamas is supported by the protestors. Hamas knows they have Zero chance of ever winning any war with Israel, no way. They know they are out manned, out gunned, and are defending their homes. They know Israel has enough nukes to destroy America, China, Russia all at the same time and set the world back centuries. Is over 300 miles of underground tunnels going to help you somehow? what hamas did not expect was Israel saying Enough, This has to end and declared war. Murdering their own citizens as they try to leave and using them as human shields is what all tryants do when their losing. This has been going on for centuries by different rulers and governments and they must be held accountable for the murder and rape of those in Israel and of murdering their own citizens.
Good questions and what is some what surprising, it is global. The rabbi mentions how hamas is supported by the protestors. Everyone of those protestors while calling for new underwear would be demanding a response from their government to protect their families. No one would be concerned the least about the attackers and would demand their deaths. what do you even say to those who want a nice war? Not to much force, ok?
Hamas knows they have zero chance of ever winning any war with Israel, no way. They know they are out gunned, out manned, and are defending their homes. They know Israel has enough nukes to destroy America, China, Russia all at the same time and set the world back centuries. Is over 300 miles of underground tunnels going to help somehow? Nope, what hamas did not expect was Israel saying enough, this has to end and declaring war. Murdering their own citizens as they try to leave and using them as human shields is what all tyrants do when protecting them selves or losing. This has been going on for centuries by different rulers and governments and they must be held accountable, for the murders and rape of those in Israel and of the same of their own citizens.
Shalom Rabbi Blumenthal ,
I have 2 questions:
1. How many “human shields” casualties are we looking at before Istael achieves its goal of eradicating Hamas?
2. If Israel achieve its goal of eradicating Hamas, is there any likelihood that there will be other terror groups that will arise in the future and a repeat of the vicious cycle like what we are seeing today?
Thank you .
On the one hand, giving up control of Palestinian areas would increase the level of organisation and weapons that terrorists can amass, and reduce the land buffer. At the same time, empowering Palestinians would also promote more peaceful reationships and drive less people into terrorism.
A lot of people understand the complexity, the difficulty of meeting these two extreme yet clashing needs, and the uncertainty of the outcome. So there has been understanding for the war as a response to Hamas.
But what we’re seeing play out looks like a blunt and heavy hammer. Accountability regarding the attitude towards civilian casualties, and the serious consideration of alternatives and effective safe areas/provisioning, is the main thing much of the world expects to see here.
I couldn’t agree more. Since their original attack and basically getting a large chunk of Gaza leveled, hamas have since said they will never stop. I believe they have always said that. I also believe it was hamas that declared war first, not Israel. Being a good neighbor ends when you cross certain lines of behavior and when you cross the border and murder non combatant people. If any country did the same to another country they may not be called terrorist but it would be considered a war. Bad governments like hamas in the last century, are responsible for the deaths of over 100 million people, most being their own citizens.
what is the best way to fight a war? By doing the minimum for national security? Does the military strategy include public polls? Should they consider diversity equity and inclusion, how the citizens have treated each other in the past? Does declaring war in response, align everyone’s motive to a successful end?
Should wars be fought humanely? Should they use targeted bombs to minimize casualties? Should fliers be dropped warning citizens of impending attacks? Should food be allowed to be trucked in?
How much do the citizens in Gaza agree with their dictatorial government and the attack on Israel? How is it even possible to get an erection and rape, after murdering and chopping off peoples heads?
How or what will be considered an end to this war and who decides? hamas does.
They have to end their aggression and agree to live in peace. Until then this will only get worse.
sorry rabbi, the first time i posted the last comment it did not show up so i waited and waited trying to make sure something didnt work before i tried again. well that didnt work either.
This is important, too, even though it doesn’t fully answer the complexity, but the way Israelis and many Jews are seeing this war in the media adds to it.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-10/israel-gaza-media-watching-a-sanitised-war/103206528
Annelise, please forgive my bluntness, but that is one of the most incandescently stupid news articles I have ever read.
Israel is not Russia or China. Israel is a free country. Her citizens have the same access to the internet as you and I have, and they are not bound only to their local news media. They can freely choose what to watch, listen to, and read. And they do. Israelis subscribe to media from other countries as well, such as The New York Times.
I think Israel is bewildered at the world’s response not because of their media, but for a different reason. Israel has come to realize that she can no longer tolerate the threat of Hamas living on her border. Any other country with such a threat would come to realize the same thing. So Israelis wonder why the rest of the world judges them differently.
For context, after 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq. In the media, we were shown pictures of the twin towers falling. Of the death and destruction in the Middle East? Not so much. But did you know that about 50,000 civilians in Afghanistan and 300,000 civilians in Iraq were killed as a result of the American wars there? Most Americans don’t even know those figures. I didn’t; I had to look them up before I responded to you. I had no idea the numbers were so staggeringly high.
I hope you read my other comment addressed to you. Why does the world care more about the fate of Palestinians than the fate of any other people on this earth? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the other player is Israel, the only Jewish state on this earth?
Hi Dina,
I can’t see your other comment to me.
What percentage of us actively and often seeks out news from outlets that we don’t already resonate with? I think the article has relevance at least to the many who aren’t hearing both sides, one way or the other.
I also wonder whether you think no Israeli government is above questioning in war, because of the context. Could they be right to respond to Hamas, but do so in the wrong way?
Could food, water, habitable and reliable shelter, some form of anaesthetics/painkillers for amputations and surgery, etc. be available?
Is a generation of extremism going to rise up in the Middle East because of this crushing of the population?
Is international humanitarian law irrelevant when one’s enemy doesn’t follow it?
Are corners of planning and empathy being cut, under the banner of “we’re the more humane?”
How much impact does the extreme-right have in the heavy handed way things are being carried out, with decisions like complete siege?
Whatever the answers are, is anyone above questioning when an entire population is going through months of inescapable hell, and likely to be either displaced or barely able to build back?
The news I’ve been hearing (fairly centre of politics) is not supportive of Hamas, and was understanding of the war at first, but has been covering the suffering and growing international discomfort as it has actually unfolded.
There are a lot of regrets about how the US went about its war on terror, and Biden mentioned at the start of this war that Israel is justified in defending itself but must learn from America’s mistakes.
Not to ignore that there is antisemitism in the mix, but I think the questions about alternatives are valid and aren’t inherently racist wherever civilians are being harmed, especially at such scale.
For context, I know Christians in Australia and the US who only read Christian news that is strongly glorifying of the IDF and anti-Palestinian, so it’s less about location and more about bias in particular news networks and algorithms.
Yes, I hear that. But that article was painting the whole of Israeli society with one broad brushstroke.
That’s odd, I don’t see my comment to you either! I’m going to see if I saved it somewhere and repost it.
As for news, I read news that doesn’t resonate with me all the time. It’s important to seek out different perspectives so you can constantly test your assumptions–it’s critical for critical thinking 🙂
To me, it seems ridiculous to assume that an open society like Israel has no idea what’s going on in Gaza while the rest of the world is in on it. The Jewish community here, which is absorbing the same news you are, interacts with the Jewish community there. So even if every Israeli refused to seek out any news source other than the local one (a preposterous notion), we would be talking to each other and giving each other news.
No government of men, anywhere in the world, is above questioning. Israel is no exception. I addressed this in the comment I thought I posted, lol. I will see if I can track it down.
I think that broad brushstroke observation is fair. I think you’d be part of the exception in terms of seeking out multiple perspectives, though; most people are quite passive with news, and our social media bubbles, whether out of busyness or bias.
I agree that most people don’t do that, but lots more than you think. We independent thinkers are a significant minority. In the US, we are the swing voters who decide elections 🙂
There are also circles in which people might hesitate before publicly questioning the IDF. Not to say there isn’t a lot of open debate about it, but I imagine there are many pockets in which that would be immediately pushed back on.
This comment made me smile. Israelis are the toughest, most contentious, opinionated, loud-mouthed people you’ll ever meet. There is a joke that if you ask two Jews a question, you’ll get three opinions. This is even more “true” of Israelis. The fact is, there is near-unanimity in Israel across the political spectrum on this issue–a rarity in Israeli politics–because Israel as a whole has decided it is no longer willing to live with the threat of Hamas on their border.
I’m not sure you fully grasp the enormity of what Hamas did. Perhaps you should read about the shattered pelvises of women who were gang-raped until they died. Or about the pregnant woman whose fetus they ripped out before killing her. Or about the two kids whose parents were murdered before their eyes, and while they were crying, the terrorists raided the fridge, then sat down at the dinner table to eat. Or about the kids hiding in bomb shelters who were killed when Hamas fighters forced the door open and lobbed grenades inside, taking the survivors hostage, including a young man whose arm was blown off. These people hunted down and tortured, mutilated, and killed in the most gruesome ways babies, children, women, and men.
Like I said, calling these people animals is totally appropriate. It’s the people who have a problem with calling them animals who have lost their way morally.
I did hear most of those things and agree there has to be a strong response. But the remarks I heard about ‘animals’ that should be treated as such were directed towards all Gazans. And it’s civilians bearing the brunt, with barely any restraint.
I know Israeli politics has many sides and opinions. There are Jewish groups and individuals opposing the nature of the war, too, I don’t know how many, and I don’t know how many of those have adjusted their views over the last couple of months.
When the Sydney Opera House was lit up in blue and white after October 7, I was shocked and sickened to see Palestinian flags being waved in Sydney in protest. But when it comes to protesting the war, the context isn’t the same. And even more so for just questioning the narrative purity/necessity around specific battles.
Even if most Israelis are visually aware of what Gazans are going through and have some unanimity, I guess the more important issues are the ethics; the possibility of alternative actions, or taking more caution for innocent people; and the long-term ripples this may unleash, in terms of whether the ordinary people of the Arab nations will become more temperate and receptive, or more extreme and retaliatory.
It’s important in these discussions to get the facts right. What is your evidence for an incident in which all Palestinians were referred to as animals? Was this a statement by one person or the general attitude of the Israeli leadership? Let’s gather the facts first. I have not been able to find anything to support such a story, but I am always open to the facts. So if you have any to share, I would very much appreciate that.
Also, I would add that people weren’t only waving Palestinian flags at the Sydney Opera House. They were also chanting “Gas the Jews!” (https://www.reuters.com/world/police-investigate-pro-palestinian-protest-sydney-opera-house-over-alleged-anti-2023-10-10/)
As for the conduct of Israel’s war operations, this is a very complex issue that requires a thorough knowledge of the international laws of armed conflict. Everyone has suddenly become an expert in assessing Israel’s conduct as legal or illegal. But the fact is that while the operations are ongoing, these assessments are impossible to make. We do not know how many Hamas terrorists are counted in the casualty numbers; nor do we know how many of those dead were killed by Hamas rocket misfires, a far more common occurrence than is reported.
If you try to Google whether Israel is doing what it can to reduce harm to civilians or is committing war crimes, you will find opinions all over the map. Predictably, Israel’s fiercest critics claim Israel is committing heinous war crimes, and Israel’s most ardent supporters claim Israel can do no wrong. The only way to parse this out is to read both sides and then still be humble enough to acknowledge that it is impossible to really know until the war is over and investigations can proceed.
That said, we can look at the IDF’s track record and surmise from there whether they are taking the necessary steps to prevent as many civilian deaths as possible. Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of the British military forces in Afghanistan, testified at the UN that the IDF takes greater care than any army in the history of the world to safeguard civilians.
Missing from this discussion is any sense on your part of the horror Hamas is perpetrating on its own people, not to mention what they’ve done to Israel. The reason the death toll is so high despite Israel’s warnings to evacuate is that Hamas wants it to be high. The more civilian deaths, the worse Israel looks, and the greater the world pressure to hold a ceasefire.
Those of us who know Hamas’s playbook predicted this as soon as we heard about the October 7th attack. We knew that first, the world would express shock and grief at the horror of the attack. Pro forma condemnations of Hamas and support for the right of Israel to defend herself would follow. Then the world would see reporting and footage of the retaliatory strikes and world opinion would turn against Israel, the horror of the initial act that instigated the war forgotten.
This is the predictable pattern, and the world falls for it every single time.
Hamas embeds its ammunition in population centers and its military tunnel infrastructure beneath them, including schools, hospitals, and mosques. When civilians attempt to evacuate, Hamas forces them to stay at gunpoint. When Israel sends shipments of fuel to hospitals, Hamas denies the shipments. When Israel opens humanitarian corridors to allow in humanitarian aid, Hamas fires on them.
If people really cared about the Palestinians, they would want Israel to succeed in eradicating Hamas.
There is one thing I cannot forgive or forget about Palestinian civilians. I mean the ordinary civilians who support Hamas. And I think it’s something to keep in mind even as it’s important to distinguish between civilians and fighters. When the terrorists brought back corpses and hostages from the attacks, the civilians of Gaza turned out in force to cheer these monsters (yes, I will call them that) and to spit on the corpses and jeer at the hostages. I can’t even imagine an equivalent scenario happening in Israel, because the IDF would never even display dead, wounded, and suffering Palestinians–even the terrorists themselves–to the public in the first place. In fact, the IDF administers treatment to wounded enemy combatants.
I can’t deny that my pro-Israel bias is strong, and that colors my thinking. But let me tell you this. In all of Jewish history, the Holocaust, in its sheer magnitude of human suffering and death, was the greatest calamity to befall the Jewish people. Just 20 years later, while huge numbers of survivors still peopled the land, Israel opened diplomatic ties with Germany. For this to happen, all Germany had to do was stop killing Jews wherever they could find them. If Israel could develop friendly ties after such an atrocity, it tells you who is the one prolonging the enmity in the current conflict.
Israel, and the Jews in general, have never wanted to be anyone’s enemy. All any country or nation ever has to do is extend the olive branch, and we eagerly accept it. Israel is not the enemy of the Palestinians. Their greatest enemy is their hatred of Jews.
Here are websites for further study and reflection. Some are biased pro-Israel, some are neutral. (Just laying out all my cards on the table.) It’s much easier to find anti-Israel sources of information, so for the other side, just Google it.
https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/wars-and-operations/operation-pillar-of-defence/how-does-the-idf-minimize-harm-to-palestinian-civilians/
https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/the-hamas-terrorist-organization/how-is-the-idf-minimizing-harm-to-civilians-in-gaza/
https://www.justsecurity.org/89825/unpacking-key-assumptions-underlying-legal-analyses-of-the-2023-hamas-israel-war/
https://www.aipac.org/gaza-war-faqs
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/25/lost-innocents
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-717472
https://www.standwithus.com/factsheets-idf-ethics
https://www.meforum.org/2605/idf-tried-to-safeguard-civilians
Hi Annelise,
I found the comment; I had indeed saved it. But when I tried to repost it, it showed that the comment was awaiting moderation. Then it disappeared again. So I think I did post it twice. I will email Rabbi Blumenthal and ask him if he knows why. It was very lengthy; maybe that’s why.
Annelise, I’m going to start a new thread because this thread is getting unwieldy. I’ll post on this thread just to let you know when I’ve posted my new comment.
Yes! I did save that comment! I spent a lot of time on it, so I wanted to keep it for future reference. Here it is.
It is absolutely fair to ask questions of the Israeli government, or any other government, for that matter–no government of men is infallible, after all. So why do so many Jewish supporters of Israel get so upset when people ask legitimate questions or share legitimate concerns about Israel’s conduct of the war?
I shall attempt to explain to you why so many of us get defensive when this line of questioning is raised. Since I am explaining a general attitude, my answer is not aimed at you specifically. It may that it applies to you directly, but only you can know that.
The reason Israel supporters find these questions maddening can be boiled down to one simple truism: We suspect that these questions are not being asked in good faith.
Why do we suspect this?
First, we see that every time Israel retaliates in response to a terror attack, people turn out onto the streets to protest the response but do not do the same for the initial act that instigated it. To use the latest example, we saw hundreds of thousands of people pour into streets literally all over the world–and by literally I mean in the literal sense of the word–to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza. We did not see a similar reaction to the brutal attack that preceded those actions. If people care more about Palestinians and Jews, we suspect their motives.
Second, we do not see a similar reaction to far worse actions around the world. When was the last time we observed mass protests against the Saudis for the deliberate, targeted killing of nearly 15,000 Yemeni civilians? Or against the Syrian government for the deliberate, targeted killing of over 200,000 of its own civilians over the past ten years? The world seems barely aware of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory populated mostly by Armenians that has been blockaded by Azerbaijan and through which humanitarian aid cannot pass.
To raise examples that are more parallel to Israel, where the staggering death toll of civilians is the unintended casualty, we also did not see mass worldwide protests regarding the 50,000 people killed in Afghanistan and the 300,000 (no, those zeroes are not a typo) killed in Iraq as a result of the American wars there. If people care more about the plight of Palestinians than the (sometimes even worse) plight of all other peoples around the world , then we suspect their motives.
Third, the UN represents a global attitude toward the Jewish state. In 2022, the UN condemned Israel 15 times (this, before the current war) and the rest of the world combined, 13 times. Since this doesn’t seem to disturb those who criticize Israel, we suspect their motives.
Fourth, we observe how the world reacted to the US fight against ISIS in cities like Mosul, and we compare that to the scrutiny the world applies to Israel’s fight against ISIS-like Hamas in Gaza. If the scrutiny applied to US actions in Iraq on civilian casualties is far lower than the scrutiny applied to Israel, then we suspect their motives.
Fifth, the oppression of the Palestinians by Israel, real or perceived, pales in comparison to their oppression at the hands of Hamas. Hamas has taken aid money meant for their people and used it for military infrastructure. They torture and/or kill anyone suspected of “collaborating” with Israel, and anyone who dares to criticize them. They do not allow anyone who is LGBT to live. And how they treat women is well known. Curiously, we do not hear much concern for the treatment of Palestinians under Hamas.
If you engage in greater criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza than you did of the Syrians, Saudis, US, Azerbaijan, Russia, and all the other governments who engage in military action AND if you express more concern for the Palestinians than you did for the Yemenis and Syrians and Ukrainians and Aremenians and the rest AND if you apply greater scrutiny to the military action of the government of Israel than to any other government AND if you criticize Israeli treatment of Palestinians more than Hamas treatment of Palestinians, then you are not operating in good faith.
It has been the unfortunate experience of pretty much all Jews who support Israel (which is most Jews) that the people who are just asking questions are asking them out of bad faith and ignorance. Too often, they are and have always been downright hostile to the existence of the State of Israel.
And that is why it is so hard to have this dialogue.
I would like to turn to another issue that critically impacts how ordinary people view the Hamas-Israel conflict, and that is the press. Recently, former AP reporter Matti Friedman made waves with an Atlantic article and podcast appearance on The Dispatch in which he called out the AP’s journalistic malfeasance in its reporting on Israel. Crucially, he described Hamas intimidation of AP journalists and its effectiveness in shaping the narrative, as well as the extreme focus on the conflict in Israel compared to conflicts in other parts of the world.
For example, the AP included Palestinian civilian casualty counts from Hamas and Islamic Jihad misfires along with Israeli airstrikes. They also included Hamas fighters in the civilian casualty counts. There are many more. I am including a list of links to the earlier article by Matti Friedman in Tablet Magazine (as the Atlantic article is paywalled), a statement by the AP in response to the later article, and Friedman’s response to an earlier AP rebuttal. I’m sorry it’s not in chronological order, but you should be able to find more links embedded in the articles.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-insider-guide
https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2014/ap-statement-on-mideast-coverage
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ongoing-controversy-around-the-most-important-story-on-earth
Here are two more articles about the AP:
https://www.mediaite.com/news/former-ap-reporter-accuses-news-outlet-of-collaborating-with-hamas-hamas-is-shaping-the-coverage/#:~:text=In%20that%20piece%2C%20Friedman%20documented,rocket%20launches%20from%20civilian%20areas.
https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/israel-zionism/2022/09/the-associated-press-accidentally-tells-the-truth-about-its-coverage-of-hamas/
I cannot overstate the importance of understanding the media’s bias and, indeed, their malpractice, in reporting on Israel. This shapes the opinion of literally hundreds of millions of people in ways that are unfair and ultimately hostile to Israel. Earlier I said that people ask questions out of ignorance. That ignorance is often the consequence of bad reporting.
I can show you this with a statement you made in your comment. You expressed concern about the dehumanizing statement of an Israeli leader, “indiscriminately” calling Palestinians animals. Politico quoted Ron Prosor as calling Hamas “bloodthirsty animals.” Al Jazeera quoted Yoav Gallant as saying, “We are fighting against human animals.” Since Israel is fighting Hamas, not the Palestinians civilians, I don’t see anything indiscriminate here. Both Israeli leaders are referring to Hamas as animals.
There was much hand wringing in the press over the dehumanizing language used by both sides, specifically with references these statements. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this. Any fair-minded person who read the reports about the glee with which Hamas terrorists raped, burned, mutilated, and butchered babies, children, women, and men would conclude that calling them animals is simply not insane. These people are monsters, I am not afraid to declare. What should we call them? Soldiers? Gentlemen?
One can disagree with the Israeli government on policy, such as allowing settlements. I agree with you that is misguided. But let us not pretend that this is the core of the problem. As Friedman wrote, it is a destructive symptom.
Let us also remember that none of this ever had to be. The Jews did not invade Palestine and kick Arabs off their land. They started migrating to Israel in the 1880s to escape pogroms in Europe and then later to escape the Holocaust. They were willing to live in peace with their Arab neighbors, going so far as to accept the UN partition of the land, which did force compromises they didn’t like. But nevertheless, they were willing to accept it. It was the Arabs who rejected it, and they started a war. It bears repeating. Israel did not attack first. Their Arab neighbors started the war, almost immediately joined by five Arab states. THE ARABS LOST THE WAR. All the displacement, the refugee problem, the anger and resentment, all this, because the Arabs started a war that Israel did not seek and did not want, and that THEY LOST. Israeli Arabs today are, by the way, descendants of the Arabs who did not leave.
Every war that followed was not instigated by Israel except for the preemptive strike of 1967, when Israel received intelligence that an attack was forthcoming.
The Palestinians then went on to reject every offer FROM ISRAEL for statehood, responding to each one with terror and intifidas. The withdrawal from Gaza, in which Israel left behind lucrative hothouses to jumpstart the economy, was followed by destruction of those greenhouses, the election of Hamas, and the transformation of Gaza into a rocket launching pad against Israel. Israel never had a good-faith partner for peace in the Palestinian leadership. This caused Israel to quite reasonably give up, and unfortunately radicalized a segment of Israeli society.
Finally, I would like to address your question on how we can know whether Israel is abiding by the laws of international warfare. We can’t know this. If Israel were engaging in war crimes, the result would look exactly like what we are seeing now. If Israel were abiding by the laws of international warfare, the result would look exactly like what we are seeing now. And it’s inevitable, once the war is over, that some war crimes will be uncovered. When you throw a bunch of eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds into the horrific stress of battle, someone somewhere is going to make a stupid decision. This is true of every single conflict, even since the Geneva convention.
However, if Israel had genocidal intent, a concern that you raise, then please know that this war would have been over on October 8th. Israel has the ability to degrade Hamas along with obliterating the entire population of Gaza in very short order. Instead, coupled with airstrikes, Israel is conducting a ground invasion that puts its soldiers at risk as opposed to safely conducting this war solely through air and drone attacks. They allow regular pauses in fighting to allow in humanitarian aid, which further risks their troops. And what do you know? We are not hearing about soldiers raping women and snatching children. Instead, they are distributing treats and water bottles. If this is the action of a genocidal army, then the word has lost its meaning.
The instinct to impute the worst motives to Israeli leaders of the offensive is not a good instinct. It may also be worthwhile to note here that Israeli political leaders and leaders of the offensive are using starkly different rhetoric. But only some Israeli political leaders. The press is inclined to portray Israel in the worst possible light and is quick to publicize every utterance that can be construed as horrific; they need to pretend that calling Hamas animals is the most terrible offense when they can’t find anything worse.
I do not wish to minimize the suffering of the Palestinians of Gaza. The humanitarian crisis is horrific beyond belief. Every death of every innocent child, man, and woman is a tragedy. But let us put the blame where it squarely belongs: on Hamas.
Hamas has embedded itself within civilian population centers in order to maximize civilian death to make Israel look bad. And this works. They instigated the October 7th attack knowing that it would provoke a fierce response which would kill huge numbers of civilians. But they hate Israel more than they love their own people.
It is naive to believe that a permanent ceasefire is a better alternative. This would be a win for Hamas, and there will be another October 7th, and another, and another. They have gone on the record to promise that this would happen. Believe them.
Israel has no good options. I don’t have any advice for them, but I am certain the IDF has a better inkling than I.
This leads me to my original question, which prompted your comment. Why isn’t the world pressuring Hamas to release all the hostages unconditionally and surrender? That is the only way to end this war immediately and work with a more moderate government on an actual two-state solution. But I have no illusion that this will ever happen.
The world will never blame Hamas. It’s so much more satisfying to blame the Jews.
Hi Dina, that’s good the comments got through.
The quote I heard was from Defence Minister Yoav Gallant- “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”
And then there are people who support the war in principle, but are critical of how it is playing out. Both the American and Australian governments have defended the war and spoken in very strong terms against Hamas. This is the reason why I question it, because governments who support the war are questioning it. The US government also has a lot of reason not to put conservative voters off side over this.
I think that if you minus the socialist groupthink types out of the equation, and the antisemitism or or the ‘othering’ that goes on between the monotheistic groups, there’s one other significant reason why Israel gets the kind of pressure it does. It’s a nation with free speech and free elections, and there’s a lot of overlap with western culture. Dictators and terrorists aren’t going to listen to any protest or pressure, because they have put themselves outside of the lawful world order. Israel hasn’t. When Israel is called on to prioritise acting humanely, it’s because we actually expect this nation to do so, as one of us in the circle of democratic nations.
I’m not talking about Hamas because in this forum we all seem to be on the same page about what they’ve done, and the logistical challenges they create in humanitarian goals.
Questioning the influence of religion on attitudes to the war also isn’t innately anti-Judaism. There are Jews and Israelis who believe that the whole original land of Israel should be taken back ASAP for religious reasons, and some of them also have attitudes of ethnic cleansing that are stated in religious language. Then there are Jews and Israelis who, also religious, believe that international peace is the goal wherever it doesn’t directly conflict with national defence. But the fact that the former attitude is there in the mix gives cause to suspect mixed motives.
I agree that a lot of Palestinians support Hamas, but a lot don’t. And many have no where else to go, no matter what they think. So many entire families have been wiped out or incredibly injured, or one or a few orphans left. This war feels different from any preceding examples. It isn’t making the lives of Gazans better in any short- or medium-term sense, and I’ve heard that Palestinian support for Hamas is now vastly increasing.
I think to really get to the point, isn’t it concerning that the same governments that speak about the war against Hamas being legitimate, and Hamas being unfit to govern, who could also predict how it would play out, are also becoming more and more critical? Including those who were close to and understand with hindsight the nuances of US wars on terror (with justifications of some things, and condemnations of others); those who don’t recommend a ceasefire, or have only recommended it recently; who know transparency is difficult in the midst of war. Why are they so increasingly unsettled, despite being the most articulate international supporters of the war?
Annelise, I’m going to break down my answer into sections, since you raised so many points in your last comment.
“Human Animals”
I actually quoted Yoav Gallant back to you in my initial response to your concern about Israeli leaders indiscriminately calling Palestinians human animals. Look at this quote again: “We are fighting human animals” (my emphasis). I emphasized the word “fighting” because it is understood that Israel is fighting Hamas, not civilians in Gaza. It should be obvious to any fair-minded observer that Gallant is referring to Hamas. Spinning this to mean “Palestinians in general” is interpreting Gallant’s words in the worst possible way in order to put Israeli leaders in the worst possible light. It’s an ugly instinct. I’m not blaming you for this; the news articles you read portrayed it this way. This shows the impact the media has in shaping public opinion, and how recklessly they’re shaping it against Israel.
The media’s recklessness has consequences. When the media incorrectly reported that Israel had bombed a hospital in Gaza and killed 500 people, it didn’t matter that they corrected their reporting to say that in fact an Islamic Jihad rocket misfire caused the explosion and that the number of casualties was closer to fifty. It was too late. Worldwide protests rocked the Arab world, and Arab leaders canceled their meetings with President Biden. So the media has been extremely irresponsible in reporting on this conflict.
(Interesting note: When it became known that it wasn’t Israel’s fault, the story went away. It’s okay when Islamic Jihad accidentally bombs a hospital instead of successfully hitting a civilian population center in Israel. The fact that the target was civilians doesn’t even make people bat an eye.)
Palestinian Support for Hamas
The numbers are damning. Birzeit University in the West Bank conducted a survey, and their results show that 89% of Palestinians support the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
Let that sink in for a moment.
89%.
The survey showed that 75% of Palestinians support the October 7th massacre.
Take a moment to allow that, too, to sink in.
This is bad on every level.
International Support Falters
So this is the same old story. Yes, it’s different this time, but as I said in an earlier post, those of us who are familiar with the Hamas playbook predicted this. First Hamas commits an atrocity that is so stunning that the world can’t ignore it–they are forced to condemn it and express support for Israel’s right to defend herself.
When Israel attempts to do just that, the civilian death toll is intolerably high because Hamas does everything in its power to ensure maximum civilian death and maximum residential damage to make Israel look evil and to elicit world sympathy. Very quickly, the world forgets the initial atrocity and turns its pressure on Israel to negotiate a ceasefire.
This works. Every. Single. Damn. Time.
In fact, there was a ceasefire in place on October 6th. Hamas broke it, as they have broken every single ceasefire they have negotiated with Israel.
There is another complicating factor: Biden’s poll numbers. The youngest cohort of voters in this country is overwhelmingly anti-Zionist and anti-Israel–even before the current conflict. When Biden expressed strong, solid support for Israel and went so far as to visit the beleaguered country, his poll numbers dropped alarmingly among this demographic. His poll numbers were already shaky; before the attack, polls showed him losing to Donald Trump by thin margins. After the attack, the margins are not so thin anymore.
The younger members of the Biden administration as well Congressional interns are also exerting enormous pressure on the president to change his stance.
Arab American activists are mobilizing their base to vote against Biden unless he changes his position.
So Biden is reading the handwriting on the wall and acting accordingly.
As for the other countries, they were always reflexively anti-Israel, so it’s no surprise they are wavering. The US is the only country with a history of staunchly and consistently standing by Israel.
This is not to say that the situation in Gaza isn’t horrific. It is. This is not to say that perhaps Israel is overplaying her hand. Perhaps she is. I don’t know. And I don’t think anyone really does either. We won’t know unless and until they succeed and their actions can then be investigated.
I’m just very suspicious of the motives of those who are turning the screws now.
Please also realize that the ultra-religious nationalists with the scary extremist views are NOT the ones running the military operations.
A Different Standard for Israel
You claim that Israel is held to a higher standard because it is a member of the circle of democratic nations.
It troubles me that the world shrugs its shoulders when it’s a rogue nation committing mass murder. Why should we turn a blind when the bad guys are killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, just because they’re evil despots? The civilians who are getting killed sure as heck care a lot! Or cared, anyway. If the world does not protest, and the UN does not issue resolutions of condemnation, they are implicitly giving license to the bad guys, who hear their silence loud and clear.
The world should care even more about those innocents who are purposely targeted, in my view, than those who are killed unintentionally as a result of a just war.
That said, I agree that Israel should be held to the same standard as other democratic nations. By this I mean that Israel should really be held to the same standard, and the same level of scrutiny that is applied to other democracies should be applied to Israel.
When the US conducted its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not only did we not observe the massive worldwide protests that we have seen since October 7th, although 50,000 civilians were killed as a result of the war in Afghanistan and three hundred thousand civilians were killed as a result of the war in Iraq. We also did not even know the death toll or the extent of the damage. I had no idea so many people were killed in these wars. Did you? Why not? That’s the question. Oh, and by the way, these are the numbers who were killed as a result of direct military action. The numbers of those who died indirectly as a result of starvation and disease are also very high.
Why is Israel subjected to greater scrutiny than any other democratic nation? To me this is very disturbing.
Imagine if the US had a Hamas-like problem on the Texas border. Imagine if this entity crossed the border, killed 50,000 Americans in the most horrific way (using numbers proportional to the American population), injured 100,000 more, and took 6,000 babies, grandmothers, and everyone in between hostage.
What would be the appropriate American response? Would the US tolerate continuing to live with such a threat at its border?
The fact is that there is no country in the world who would not attempt to achieve the same goal as Israel if they faced a similar threat.
Demanding that Israel negotiate a ceasefire is a victory for Hamas and a return to the status quo. It is a guarantee of a future horrific attack on Israel and a future horrific retaliation that will once again inflict a high death toll and enormous damage. This will keep happening, because that is what Hamas leaders have promised. Believe them.
Just want to add more context to American criticism of Israeli military operations. It’s more complicated than what has been reported.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/biden-aide-israel-taking-steps-to-protect-civilians-that-even-us-might-not-have/
https://www.voanews.com/a/white-house-downplays-biden-s-remarks-on-israel-s-indiscriminate-bombing-/7397560.html
I can’t find that speech in context, but the way the ‘treat them like animals’ part came after the statement of complete siege makes it sound like it was directed against the entire people whom the siege included. That may not be what he meant, but you don’t have to have a motive in order to hear it like that; it’s essentially in the grammar, and in the decision early on that full and indefinite siege was appropriate. Whether it was or not, it raises concerns.
Israel does have a lot of safeguards, although those maps have caused chaos because of the complexity, the changes in where is safe, and the population being told to use QR codes when often they don’t have internet access. Aid groups have said their workers are confused and terrified when trying to figure out the maps and find somewhere safe.
I signed a petition years ago with an activist group, and I haven’t unsubscribed to their emails still from that. Their topics since October have been Israel/Gaza (mostly calling for safety for children, and they mentioned the amount of people killed by the US), the Amazon, climate, Norway’s deep-sea mining, and sextortion in Africa and Latin America. In August and September, their emails addressed deforestation, the famine caused by Russia, genocide in Sudan, a man threatened with execution in Iran, and Brazil’s shark mutilation. So it depends what news people are receiving. What I heard about that hospital strike initially was that it wasn’t clear what had caused it, and then there were a number of subsequent reports as the evidence came in to clear Israel.
What you say about Biden treading a tightrope of public opinion makes sense, though I think a lot of people (especially Jews and Christians) who are undecided about Trump might make their decision based on whether Biden supports the war against Gaza. Our foreign minister in Australia also wants to keep favour with America, and all I’ve heard in the news from her is statements defending Israel’s right to defend itself in this complexity. Australia just voted for ceasefire, but with comments that it was because safe zones weren’t being protected, and with the belief that Hamas should return the hostages and not be allowed to govern. She quoted US defense secretary Lloyd Austin’s view that “you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians” and not driving the civilian population into the arms of the enemy, which replaces any tactical victory with strategic defeat in the end. The US didn’t plan properly for what would happen after the fall of Suddam Hussain, and now people are wondering what the coming decades will look like in Gaza.
I actually think that America would be under intense scrutiny if it waged war in South America after a terrorist attack, with no one saying they shouldn’t respond, but many people watching closely how civilians were protected. Especially with their past mistakes front of mind. Imagine if Trump was leading the war, how much scrutiny he would get from the left of politics.
I read that Israel has had to form a highly right-wing coalition government, that they allow settlements and aren’t clearly punishing violent settlers. That’s why I wonder how much the idea of “it’s actually our ancient land and God approves of us fighting for it” is driving some of the decisions. I can’t call what is being done right or wrong, but the world feels responsible to make sure that hand isn’t overplayed. And it’s not just targeting of Israel, though that happens in some spheres and is one thread of it.
Our government here is also speaking out against racism increasing towards Jews and Muslims locally in these months. They condemned the initial smaller protest in which flares and antisemitic words were used by some. My friend was a war child and said that was terrifying to hear about; she said the police must have been scared to stop them in case a riot broke out. But the government condemned it and apologised that it could happen, and later, larger protests have been different in nature. Many protestors don’t support erasing Israel. The government keeps talking about not importing the conflict, and especially many times they’ve talked against the antisemitism. So I feel they’re trying to be level about the situation, whether they are or not; it’s an acknowledgement of how complicated and pressing the situation is that has dominated the conversation here, even from our centre-left wing government.
I agree that more outrage should be lifted against dictators, but sadly things become old news after a while. Even the huge initial popular support for Ukraine, the shock that there could be war in Europe, has become just an occasional part of the news cycle, which people don’t talk about a lot, except the funding issue. But the strong opposition to all these atrocities is still felt.
I agree with a bit of what you wrote here, and I’ll get to that in a moment. First, I want to say that I continue to be troubled by the way the “human animals” comment was treated in the media. You present the way it was presented to you, although I found the exact quote. Yoav Gallant said nothing about treating Palestinians like animals; had he said that it would have been all over the news. He said that Israel is fighting human animals; it was clear he was referring to Hamas; and no one should have a problem with calling them animals. Actually, they behaved worse than animals. Animals aren’t that cruel and depraved.
Where we agree: that the situation is complex and not easily judged. It isn’t wrong to be concerned. But I hope you understand my explanation about why Jewish supporters of Israel get defensive about criticism: We see a double standard in how the only Jewish state in the world is judged.
The actual historical fact, as I showed you with many examples, is that no government’s military action has been scrutinized and judged the way Israel’s has been.
Another fact is that the level of world outrage is orders of magnitude higher when those affected are Palestinians bombed by Israel. That is simply incontrovertible, all those emails you receive notwithstanding.
I reject the idea that there is a religious belief of territorial conquest driving any of the decisions. This is pure speculation on your part. There is zero evidence of that, and after the horrific attack on October 7th, to expect Israel not to attempt to remove the threat of Hamas–which can only be done with the terrible consequences that are playing out–is unreasonable.
And then there is Israel’s track record, that beats every other country’s, on taking care to avoid civilian death.
I do not believe there is any country in the world that would have tolerated such a threat, or tolerated the status quo Israel has put up with for so long.
Like I said, it’s fine to be concerned–as long as you care as much about everyone else as you do about the Palestinians.
Around here when I tune into the main stream propaganda some call news, most all I ever see is how difficult it is for the Palestinians. Not a word about the 11,400 rockets fired into Israel between 10/7 and 11/14. The way wars are won is overwhelming force. Everything else is B.S. Where is the/any concern for Israel, their suffering. People said bad words? really, how dare they.
I think you’ve totally summed it up, that it’s right to be concerned, as long as we care about every other people group as much as Palestinians.
And that’s a very fair call because many groups do lift the Palestinian cause up as if it were simply the case of a peaceful, colonised indigenous group. I disagree with that too.
The US and Australia have arguably less right to nationhood than Israel does, in terms of colonial origins (although both the US and Australia have mostly been able to reduce that violence more now to an unwillingness to change the status quo of what’s been stolen).
That said, I don’t know that the creation of two states, based on race, was a sustainable one. How can a democracy work without war when the entire purpose of the nation, as a homeland for a specific race, is threatened if the demographic changes, and in fact even if the descendants of those who felt they had to leave were to return? The multicultural West struggles to comprehend how a race-focused democracy can work. The only way it’s possible is if Jewish-Arab relationships become respecful and collaborative. And getting there isn’t simple. But everything has to be done to protect civilians on both sides, and to avoid stirring up irreparable hatred from those who are said to be liberated, but have the experience of being violently attacked and tightly controlled. The future of their anger is also a threat to Israel, potentially much larger than that of Hamas
Clearly regardless of anything, Israel can’t just give up on protection from terrorism, and the ethics and risks are incredibly difficult.
I think some of the reason why Hamas’ rockets are taken less seriously is because Israel generally has the means to stop them, and so the impact on Israelis is very real, but also very much less. Israel has more lethal and defensive technological power, and that is called into account, both in and out of wartime.
I heard that even before October, there were a lot of concerns about the current government being the most ultra-right in the nation’s history, including an ultranationalist party dominated by West Bank settlers. All that was said before the invasion. Do you think it’s accurate?
Anyway I think you’ve really described the heart of the issue, which is that we need to be careful both in questioning and in defending the Israeli government’s actions.
I’ll answer your last question first. Over the last decade or so, we’ve seen ultra-right, nationalist, populist, blood-and-soil movements sweep through the Western world, winning elections in many countries. To me, this is a terrifying development, no less so in the United States than in Israel. I was concerned with Netanyahu returning to power for many reasons, but the coalition he has formed with the most extreme right-wing political parties has turned out to be, well, not great.
So, yes, the more moderate among us, across the political spectrum from center-left to center-right, are right to be concerned. I am concerned about the rise of the right in Hungary and Italy. I am relieved that Poland is returning to the center and hope her flirtation with the ultra-right is over. I am worried about the populist movement here in the US gaining power. And I hope that when the dust settles from the Hamas-Israel war, Netanyahu will be ousted and the next prime minister will form a centrist coalition.
I think the settler violence and extremism have been a huge problem, and I find the lack of government action to end it very troubling.
I also agree with you that the idea of a democracy that requires a majority of its population to belong to one ethnicity is an idea that is in tension with itself. I have given this a great deal of thought! In an ideal world, there would be one state with equal rights for all, and race and identity wouldn’t matter. There wouldn’t be a need for two states because everyone’s race/religion/national identity would be entirely irrelevant.
Alas, we do not live in such a world. Israel was born out of the need for Jews to find a safe haven from people who literally want to kill them. The first large-scale migrations in the late nineteenth-century comprised Jews fleeing from pogroms. Later, they were Jews fleeing the Holocaust. Imagine if the Israelis granted the Palestinians the right of return or if there were a one-state solution to form a state for both Jews and Palestinians. Jews would quickly become the minority in a majority population that is hostile to Jews. (It would also become yet another autocratic Arab state with the same kinds of human rights abuses that are endemic to the Middle East, but that is beside the point.)
So these two ideas are in conflict with each other. But I think Israel has done a good job of harmonizing these two ideas as much as possible. This means that in Israel, everyone is treated equally under the law. Ironically, this also means it is the best place in the Middle East for Arabs to live.
This is a quote from a settler mid-this year- “It’s simple… we need to besiege the Arabs, block the roads, until each village gives up its terrorists. That would curb the attacks immediately. Take the fight to them.”
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/02/israel-vigilante-settlers-violence-benjamin-netanyahu
So some of this response has been part of the conversation previously.
I should have also said, the activism emails are from an organisation with 68,000,000 members (I guess that means subscribers), so it’s very mainstream. That said, I know there are also big groups that focus more exclusively on immediately liberating Palestine, or on a few issues including this.
Also I looked up the polling about Palestinians supporting the attack. One statistic reported is that only 16% in Gaza, and 1% in the West Bank, believe that women and children were killed by Hamas. So if that’s true, then when they support it, that doesn’t mean with understanding.
I think you’re looking at a different polling survey, but I find that hard to believe. Hamas paraded the corpses of their victims in Gaza, along with the hostages, and the Palestinians reactions were reported in the press. It’s not like Hamas is trying to cover up its actions. I find it hard to believe that they don’t know or believe what Hamas did.
Here are some of the statistics from that polling, during the ceasefire-
“We offered the public a list of acts or measures and asked respondents whether they are permitted under international law. The majority (84%) said it allows taking soldiers prisoners. But the vast majority (78%) said it does not allow attacks on or the killing of civilians women and children in their homes; 77% said it does not allow the bombing of hospitals; 76% said it does not allow cutting electricity and water from the civilian population; and 52% said it does not allow taking civilians as prisoners of war.”
“When asked if Hamas did commit these atrocities, the overwhelming majority said no, it did not and only 7% (1% in the West Bank and 16% in the Gaza Strip) said it did.” [Some may have been aware of, but disbelieved, accounts/videos]
“When asked which political party or political trend they support, the largest percentage selected Hamas (43%), followed by Fatah (17%), while 12% selected other or third-party groups, and 28% said none of them or did not know. Three months ago, support for Hamas stood at 22% and Fatah at 26%.”
“Only 44% of Gazans say they have enough food and water for a day or two and 56% say they do not.
When they need food or water, only one third of Gazans say they can reach a place where they can have access to assistance while two thirds say they cannot.
Almost two thirds (64%) of Gazan respondents say a member of their family have been killed or injured during the current war in Gaza; 36% say none of their family members have been killed or injured.”
https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/961
Here is an important bit of information.
“We asked the respondents what they thought of Hamas’ decision to launch the October the 7th offensive given its outcome so far, a vast majority (72%; 82% in the West Bank and 57% in the Gaza Strip) said it was a correct decision and 22% (12% in the West Bank and 37% in the Gaza Strip) said it was incorrect.”
These are just polls and not news. The news continues to be that hammas committed an act of war against their neighbor which they knew they cannot win, so they must have done it with the intent of bringing their other neighbors into the conflict to completely destroy Israel.
When countries make bad decisions everyone suffers.
https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/961
Also, when Hamas planned that attack, they knew would provoke a fierce response from Israel that would kill a much higher proportion of their own people. But they didn’t care. They purposely use civilian population centers as shields. Every single death and every single bit of destruction in Gaza is on Hamas.
I guess it is possible that many people who celebrated the attacks on Israel believed that the victims were only soldiers and/or male settlers. Hamas has made propaganda about humane care for hostages.
That said, of course some are more violent. It just may be a minority that would support what really happened if they knew the representations to be true.
Dina I just saw two of your recent comments, too, that I missed earlier. I think we’re on the same page about the extreme right, the way it is drawing people into rabbit holes of anger and suspicion, and its closeness with autocratic nations seeking to reorder global power through violent expansion. Democratically appointed leaders can dismantle democracy, and that’s a risk on a few fronts.
I just wonder how much input these extreme right politicians have had in defining the way the war with Hamas would be fought in Gaza. If a settler was quoted talking about complete siege as a solution to quickly stop the attacks in June/July, and heavy punishment as deterrence has been advertised on banners, isn’t that reason to suspect that settler ideas were directly behind the announcement of (initially) complete siege and all-out war in October?
Is it possible that a more centrist government would have been more precise and targeted, even with a serious response? And if they did, is it possible that the long-term effect would be safer, in terms of not disturbing the progress so far towards peace in the Middle East, and not massively increasing the belief that violence is the only way to deal with Israel?
About the racial basis for a state, I think you’re right that it’s not straightforward. Ethnicity can be a defining part of nationhood, in the sense that ethnic displacement or violence can destroy a state as well. In a secular sense at least, both Jews and Arabs have a place in the land, and many have had longstanding homes and heritage there. But the two can’t live together safely at this stage.
Democracy and safety aside (I agree they’re real concerns that complicate issues like this), but just about idea of a defendable homeland for Jews; after the second world war, it made a lot of sense. I wonder if it’s still a meaningful concept to hold, though, knowing that the Arab response to their (complex) displacement, and to continuing Jewish government in this area, a) makes it probably not the safest place in the world for Jews, and b) an arrangement that may be surrounded by very prolonged civilian suffering.
I know that’s a very sensitive question, because the right to be safe in the world (and separately, the right to live safely on your ancestral land if you choose to), can’t be brushed aside.
The full picture of a homeland for Jews in Israel does involve a huge cost to innocent people, though, and there is no end in sight. So I think the question is still there as to what kind of a safety solution it is. I feel there are very strong arguments both ways, and how do you weigh things that are so heavy.
I’m going to separate my response into sections again, since you raise several important points.
Palestinian Culpability
The Palestinians do not deserve the benefit of the doubt on this, since there are news reports and photos that confirm that they knew exactly what Hamas was doing. The most haunting and infamous one is that of the half-naked body of a young woman in the back of a pickup truck. Palestinian civilians are celebrating. As I said previously, Hamas did not try to cover up their actions but instead broadcast them widely. They recorded the savage glee with which they tortured and mutilated innocent people and uploaded the videos and photos to social media.
The corpses and hostages they paraded in front of Hamas weren’t soldiers but women bleeding from their crotches and children.
We know for a fact, from the news reports and photographic evidence that has emerged from Gaza, that Palestinians know the extent of the atrocities and celebrate them.
We also know that Palestinians have a proven track record of reacting with joyous celebration after terror attacks against civilians. If you’ve been following this over the years, as I have been, then this won’t be news to you.
On the other hand, Hamas supporters worldwide are in fact denying the extent of the atrocities, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Take the case of Briahna Joy Gray, for example. Gray was the former press secretary for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign and hosts a show for The Hill. She is a prominent feminist. This is what she posted on X/Twitter on December 4, long after reams of evidence had been provided by the Israelis about Hamas’s sexual violence against Israeli women:
“Believe all women” was always an absurd overreach: woman should be heard, claims should be investigated, but evidence is required. The same is true of the allegations out of Israel.
But also, this isn’t a “believe women” scenario bc no female victims have offered testimony.
People questioned about why they were tearing down posters of kidnapped Israeli children explained that they didn’t believe it happened.
But I don’t put them in the same bucket as Palestinian civilians who saw the victims with their own eyes, and whose track record reacting to Israeli civilian victims of terror is deplorable. That is why I find it hard to believe that only a minority would support the attack if they knew the truth. They do know, and they support it anyway.
Extreme Right Influence on Military Ops
Concern about the influence of the extreme right on war planning is reasonable. I sure hope they aren’t taken seriously. But I think it’s unlikely. The emergency war cabinet that Netanyahu convened right after the attack includes himself, Benny Gantz, and Yoav Gallant. Netanyahu tends to pander to the right, but as the member of a centrist opposition party, Gantz acts a check on Netanyahu. Gallant is a member of Netanyahu’s party but opposed Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul (which I’m sure you heard about). This tells me is much more moderate than Netanyahu as well.
These three gentlemen vote on measures; the remaining two observers participate in meetings but do not vote. They are Gadi Eisenkot, a member of the opposition and therefore yet another check on overly right-wing policies; and Ron Dermer, a member of Netanyahu’s own party, I believe.
I feel pretty confident that these are level-headed people (despite my disdain for Netanyahu) who are doing the best they can in an extremely challenging situation. I feel similarly confident that the crazy settlers who want to nuke all the Arabs in the Middle East are not influencing decision making regarding the IDF’s military operations.
The people responsible for the belief that violence is the only solution are the people who keep attacking Israel. For all her faults, Israel has never been the first to attack, but only ever in response to a terror attack. To my knowledge, the only time Israel attacked first was the war in 1967, when Israel conducted a preemptive strike after being informed by intelligence that an imminent attack against Israel.
The people who need to be pressured to lay down their arms and demonstrate a good-faith effort to negotiate for peace are the Palestinians. It’s maddening that the world puts all the onus and all the pressure on Israel, when they are completely powerless to make peace with an enemy that is hellbent on eradicating them from the earth (this is per Hamas’s own charter). How on earth is that even possible?
When I talk to people about this, I remind them that Israel made many offers for peace, statehood, and concessions in land-for-peace deals, and each one was followed by terror and intifadas. A fair-minded observer would conclude that it’s reasonable for Israel to give up on a two-state solution after all of that and to harden their attitudes. That’s why I say that the ball is in the Palestinian court now to demonstrate their good faith. It’s frustrating that the international community refuses to see this, or is simply unable to see this due to their (seemingly) inborn animus toward Israel.
Was Israel a Mistake?
As you point out, the idea of a Jewish safe haven in our ancestral homeland made a lot of sense after the Holocaust, but was it really worth it, now that we see the toll in innocent lives it keeps costing?
To me, the answer is an unequivocal yes. To explain why, we need to back up and examine the immediate history of the conflict as well as the current situation for Jews worldwide.
Before the creation of the State of Israel, there was no Palestinian national identity. I read Mark Twain’s book, The Innocents Abroad, in which he describes his travels around the world in 1867, before Jews began migrating there from Europe. The relevant passages about then-Palestine are fascinating. He talks about the Jews and Arabs of various nationalities that he saw there (he names Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, etc.) He writes about his extreme disappointment in finding the land desolate, barren, and sparsely populated.
In truth, when Jews began emigrating to Palestine in 1880, there were about half a million Arabs and 20,000 to 30,000 Jews. Jews had maintained a continuous presence on the land since biblical times, despite the Roman sacking of Jerusalem and enforced exile of the Jews. When the Jews got there, they began the hard labor of building up the land, attracting Arab workers looking for employment opportunities. The relationship between them was rocky even back then; massacres of Jews by Arabs occurred in the very early 1900s during the British mandate.
In 1947, the UN partitioned the land between the Arabs and Jews, which would have forced concessions on both sides. While the Jews accepted the plan, the Arabs rejected the partition. After Israel declared her independence, five Arab states attacked Israel. They expected a quick and easy victory, but instead Israel repelled the attack and defeated the Arab states.
Here is where things start to get very strange.
The war created about 600,000 Palestinian refugees. At the same time, as a result of ethnic cleansing of Jews in Arab states, a similar number of Jewish refugees fled their host countries in the Middle East to Israel. The tiny, fledgling state with practically no resources successfully undertook the monumental task of absorbing and resettling the refugees. On the other hand, the surrounding Arab countries refused to resettle and absorb the Palestinian refugees despite having vastly more land and resources. Instead, for over seven decades, they kept them in refugee camps to use (successfully, of course) as a cudgel against Israel.
In the history of the world, the situation of the Palestinian refugees is unique. There is no parallel that I am aware of in which refugees maintained their refugee status and passed their status to subsequent generations, swelling their numbers.
In the history of the world, I do not believe there is a parallel to a national entity or entities starting a war of aggression, losing the war, and refusing to move on.
Israel did not seek this war. The Arabs did. And they lost. And they refuse to concede their loss.
Once the Arabs lost the war, Israel could not allow the refugees to return. Now that there had been a war, that would have meant allowing back a majority population that is hostile to Israel. The Arabs who started the war had a responsibility to deal with the refugee problem but refused to do so.
The whole thing is bizarre and surreal, and the most surreal aspect is that the world consistently sides with the losing aggressors.
Israel was a needed haven after the Holocaust and after the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Middle Eastern countries. Now that Israel has been established, there is no wishing it away. The only way to get rid of the Jews there and give the land to the Palestinians is via genocide. It’s just the reality of the situation.
I do not believe Jews are less safe in Israel than anywhere else. Twenty years ago, 3,000 Americans were killed here on American soil in a terror attack. Antisemitism is sweeping the globe, and rising rapidly in the one country that was supposed to be the protector of all minorities. If things get really bad here, where would the Jews flee to, if Israel did not exist? Because Jew hatred and violence against Jews are the two constants we can always rely on to exist, we will always need Israel.
Sadly, what Palestinians fail to realize is that Israel is not the enemy. Israel could be their best economic partner if only they would let her. Their worst enemy is their hatred–of Jews in general and Israelis in particular.
I do believe that the historical context is important to consider when judging even the current conflict. To that end, I recommend From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters. I believe this history only goes up to the 1980s, but it’s valuable nevertheless. I also recommend a podcast by Sam Harris with an unusual perspective about the mentality of Hamas. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFBm8nQ2aBo
And here is a link to criticism of the podcast: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/11/sam-harriss-fairy-tale-account-of-the-israel-hamas-conflict.html
I think both of these views contain logical fallacies and factual errors, but I want to be fair and present both sides of this interesting idea.
Thanks, it’s good to know the emergency cabinet didn’t include the more extreme members of the government.
I saw mentioned that Itamar Ben-Gvir is the national security minister and has radical ideology. Does he have any say in it? It just seems relevant that the approach that has been taken, of siege and taking the fight to Palestinian civilians, is the same as the one being called for previously in the settlements.
Hamas has claimed that other groups got through and committed those crimes. Some Gazans would believe that. And many wouldn’t have seen the parades in the streets. I guess more polling and research into their beliefs in Hamas’ innocence need to be done.
I think there are terrible consequences to assuming an entire population is at fault and not worthy of dignity, as in this article; Israel admitted it shouldn’t have left innocent men undressed and made them find their way home without their clothes after releasing them.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-17/detained-palestinians-gaza-idf-videos-photos-stripped-men/103237684
I don’t know enough about it all to reply to the rest, though most of what you wrote I’ve heard. I’ll need to keep learning.
Also, about the Palestinian rejection of peace deals, I wonder if there’s research on how many people would accept a different deal vs how many would hold out for the whole land. I heard that what has been offered has not always been considered a good deal from the Palestinian point of view, and they don’t want to ‘compromise on the compromise.’
Apparently Shlomo Ben Ami, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, and one of the main negotiators, said,
“Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.”
They would have had to give up areas of the West Bank under Israel’s control (settements, the dead sea, and large parts of the Jordan Valley), plus an additional 4% of what what left, effectively exchanging 10% of the most fertile land in the West Bank for 1% of desert land, with an additional 8-12% of the West Bank under ‘temporary’ Israeli control.
Israel would also permanently control Palestinian airspace, with three permanent military installations manned by Israeli troops in the West Bank, Israeli presence at Palestinian border crossings, and special “security arrangements” along the borders with Jordan which effectively annexed additional land. Israel would be allowed to invade in case of emergency, vaguely defined. Palestine would be demilitarized and unable to enter alliances without Israel’s permission. Israel’s reasoning here is security, but it still doesn’t constitute a sovereign state or sense of security to Palestinians. There would also have been no Palestinian sovereignty over most of east Jerusalem, including many Palestinian neighbourhoods, although this was supposed to be the Palestinian capital.
So it’s understandable that they turned down a deal like that. And Israel is unlikely to want to change the status quo much in any deal.
But if a more acceptable offer were made, how many Palestinians would be happy with it, and find terrorist goals irrelevant thereafter? I think we could probably only know the answer by studying population attitudes, rather than assuming they are all outright rejectionist.
Not meaning that a better deal can happen immediately, in the current security context. Maybe it could happen gradually. But I think it raises questions about the idea that Israel has made offers that the Palestinians could accept.
Actually according to this Wikipedia, it seems the approach is more based on the history of this kind of theory- that the response must be disproportionate in order to serve as a warning against future attacks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine
Many people struggle to accept that if it means people are not only dying, injured, losing loved ones, losing their neighbourhoods, terrified at having no certain safe place or provisions, but also unable to be reached under rubble and going through operations with no pain relief or sufficient medical supplies. There’s a reason why it’s so hard to see collective punishment as justified by the need to protect borders, and why there seems to be no end in sight when an urban population feels the hostile power is their defender.
So much to think and write about. I’ll try to find some time today (which may end up being tomorrow for you).
Again, there are several issues to address, so I will break them down as follows.
Offers for Statehood
It looks like we are looking at competing narratives with competing sets of facts. I found the facts you cited here: https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/palestinians-sabotaged-the-peace-process/
This is a biased website that is pro-Palestinian. On the other hand, I am biased and am pro-Israel. I will offer you a competing set of facts, but unfortunately that will only add to the confusion.
But first, I want to approach this logically. If Yassir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas had found the peace deals offered to them unacceptable, then they had two reactions that are inexplicable. One is that they engaged in lengthy negotiations. If they had found the deals unacceptable, they would have made that clear at the outset, instead of wasting months and years on painstaking negotiations.
The other reaction is a particular kind of non-reaction. Neither of these leaders offered a counter proposal. If they had such deep objections, and they were as committed to peace as that website claims, then why did they never offer a counter proposal (at least as far as I know)?
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Palestinian apologists are looking for ways to blame Israel and exculpate the Palestinians after the fact.
The facts are these: In the peace deals I looked at, Israel offered more than 95% of the West Bank, 100% of Gaza, and land swaps for the remaining areas of the West Bank where there were already Jewish settlements, as well as divided control of Jerusalem. Both sides would have had to make painful concessions. The Israelis were willing to make those concessions, as far as I can tell.
The complaint that the Palestinians rejected the deal because there were Jewish settlements in some areas, which would result in a non-contiguous Palestinian state, is astonishing. Israel is dotted all over with Arab neighborhoods and mixed neighborhoods, but this isn’t a problem for a “non-contiguous” state in Israel. That we don’t bat an eye and even expect the Palestinians to demand a Judenrein state shows how low our standard for the Palestinians has fallen. (On the other hand, sadly, I can understand why Jews would be afraid to live under Palestinian control.)
I’m not saying mistakes weren’t made along the way, by both sides. And extremists tried to derail the proceedings. Most disturbingly, reports are now coming out that Netanyahu encouraged the division between Fatah and Hamas to prevent the possibility of a two-state solution, and shame on him. That doesn’t change the fact that every time the opportunity for a two-state solution presented itself, Israel accepted it and the Palestinians rejected it.
Demilitarization
A common complaint of the peace deals is that they included provisions for a complete demilitarization of a Palestinian state. This is frivolous. After World War II, Germany and Japan were demilitarized. Before the world would allow these dangerous powers to re-arm themselves, they had to prove to the world their good faith. A militarized Palestinian state would pose a major security threat to Israel. It is not unreasonable to assume that the first they would do is attack Israel. First they would have to prove that their intentions are peaceable; only then would they be allowed to build up their own military and retain control of their own airspace.
Mistreatment of Palestinians by Israeli Soldiers
I read the news article you linked in your comment, and I won’t defend the actions of Israeli soldiers here. It was wrong. The IDF has acknowledged this–even the article states this as fact–and has vowed to ensure that Palestinians civilians who are detained will be released in a humane and fair way going forward.
I have a much greater concern. All wars, even just wars in which the governments directing the operations abide by the international laws of warfare, entail war crimes. That’s because, under stress or in the heat of the moment, some less-than-stellar soldiers are going to commit crimes. After all this is over, especially with the heightened scrutiny to which the world subjects Israel, I have little doubt that some war crimes will be uncovered. What is described in the ABC article is bad, but it doesn’t rise to the level of a war crime.
I simply cannot understand why there hasn’t been a huge movement of world pressure on Hamas to release the hostages at once and unconditionally and to surrender. They started this war, they use their own people as human shields, they should be held to account. While Israel is responsible to reduce civilian deaths as much as possible, the ones who are in fact responsible for every death and for every bit of suffering are Hamas.
There was a time when I wondered how the Palestinians could fail to see what is so obvious to so many of us. Hamas treats their own far worse than anything Israel has ever done. No one has any rights under their rule. If you dare to speak out against their tactics, you’re dead. If you are discovered to have any leanings toward any of the letters in LGBT, you’re dead. God help you if you’re a woman.
Hamas has also impoverished its own people, using aid money meant to alleviate economic difficulty to purchase weapons. They appropriated cement trucks meant for civilian infrastructure to build their tunnels. The Palestinians are destitute because of Hamas.
Hamas has also inflicted a massively high death toll on Palestinians. They use them as human shields, as I have noted many times, by dressing in civilian clothes, hiding their weapons and military command centers among the civilian population, and fighting out of homes and hospitals. They also kill their own people through rocket misfires (counted among the dead in this war, and we have no idea how many).
So how do the Palestinians miss this?
The answer occurred to me when I reflected on the history of corrupt leaders who exploit the populace. In order to continue their exploitation for their own ends, they would divert the population’s attention from their misdeeds by scapegoating the Jews. This tactic has a massive track record of success, to the great misfortune of the Jewish people. Hamas is very cunning, and they have used this to great effect. Even as they hold back people trying to evacuate buildings at gunpoint, whom do the Palestinians blame for the excessively high death toll? Not Hamas.
What helps their cause tremendously is the indoctrination of the very young in the most virulent, medieval type of Jew hatred–I’m talking blood libels and The Protocols. Killing of Jews is glorified from a tender age.
This absolves the Palestinians of any responsibility for their own fate. It blinds them to the reality that their real enemy is not Israel, it’s their hatred.
If we could make peace with Germany after the Holocaust, we can make peace with ANYONE. We can do this despite the hardliners and extremists. We just need them to realize this too.
The Toll of the War on Gaza
Here’s the truth: It’s horrific. It’s terrible. There are no two ways about. I pray for an end to the war in which Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas is realized.
Thanks, Dina. It makes sense that any agreement would need demilitarisation at first, but how about the swapping of fertile land for desert land?
I also agree that individuals, rather than systematic IDF values, could have been behind the failure to return the men’s clothes and the posting of photos humiliating them as if they were surrendering terrorists. But I just think that stereotyping all Palestinians as if they were all in favour of barbaric terrorism (when we know some groups of people support peaceful protest, or aren’t politically engaged) can systemically encourage flippancy among soldiers. So it’s something to take care around in any conversation.
Do you think it’s fair to say that Israel is using the Dahiya doctrine in this war, involving civilian suffering disproportionate to the immediate goals, as a deterrence for terrorism?
I definitely agree that when people or nations condemn Israel without condemning Hamas, that is wrong and dangerous.
This is the joint statement by Australia, Canada and New Zealand that I think is more balanced and echoes the US, saying that any ceasefire must be two-sided and involve the return of hostages, and that Hamas has no place in government, while calling on Israel as a democracy to protect civilians-
https://www.pm.gov.au/media/joint-statement-prime-ministers-australia-canada-and-new-zealand
And the Australian press conference-
https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/transcript/press-conference-adelaide-8
I tried fact checking land swaps of desert land for fertile land, and I couldn’t find it discussed anywhere except on the pro-Palestinian website “Decolonize Palestine.” I am not sure it’s true. Since the language of the deal was that the land swaps would be mutually agreed upon, it doesn’t even make sense. As I said previously, the Palestinian negotiators did not raise this issue at the time, nor did they come up with any counter offers. Again, this leads me to believe that the defenders of the Palestinian leadership are making up excuses after the fact.
Let us also remember that the peace deals would have demanded painful concessions from the Israelis, which they were willing to make.
I agree that we shouldn’t stereotype all Palestinians as barbaric as the Hamas terrorists who committed atrocities on October 7. But if I am going to be transparent, then I must confess that I find this emotionally difficult, given their deep hatred of Jews which goes beyond anything that is reciprocated. According to a poll conducted by the ADL, the Middle East is the most antisemitic region in the world, and 93% of Palestinians have beliefs that are antisemitic. That’s, like, almost everyone! And it’s hard not to feel that way when you read about what the regular folks, not Hamas, do when presented with Jewish corpses.
As someone who is physically distant from the conflict and knows no one who was killed or abducted in the attack yet who still struggles to be fair, I can only imagine how much harder it is for the soldiers, many of whom witnessed the atrocities and/or know someone who was killed, hurt, or kidnapped.
There is a massive asymmetry in the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. That’s why I keep saying that Israel is not really the enemy; it’s their hatred of Israel that is their enemy.
That said, Israeli soldiers must transcend these emotions and remember that they are fighting a defensive war to defang Hamas, not to enact vengeance. This is the standard that their own military has set.
About the use of disproportionate force, I’m never sure what people mean by that. If the only way to fight a war is by using proportionate force, then does that mean that if Hamas killed 1200 Israelis, then Israel should kill 1200 Hamas fighters? That’s a little silly, isn’t it? Even according to the laws of international warfare, disproportionate force is appropriate in certain circumstances. From what I’ve read on the Dahiya Doctrine (admittedly very little), Israel developed it as a result of having to deal with terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas operating their command centers out of population centers such as apartment buildings, hospitals, and mosques. According to this doctrine, they would bomb these areas, which would cause harm to civilians.
Under the international laws of warfare, these population centers are protected. However, if they are used for military purposes, they lose that protection and become legitimate military targets. This does not absolve the army from doing everything it can to reduce civilian deaths, but once that’s in place, all the civilian deaths that result from such a military operation is the responsibility of the people who placed their military infrastructure there. This is even according to international law.
Israel has ordered the evacuation of areas that they are bombing. Astonishingly, this attempt to protect civilian life has been portrayed by the media as ethnic cleansing. Tragically, the Palestinians often have nowhere to go, and Egypt has escaped the scrutiny and condemnation of the international community for not stepping up the plate. In every other war, neighboring countries take in refugees, but no one is holding Egypt accountable.
I’m glad some countries recognize that a ceasefire must mean Hamas steps down and the hostages are unconditionally released. Most of those calling for a ceasefire are in fact calling for an unconditional ceasefire, unfortunately. In any case, Hamas will not agree to release the hostages and to relinquish control to another ruling entity.
Israel has no good options, but nearly all Israelis are united on the goal of eliminating Hamas, across the political spectrum. For fractious people like Israelis, that’s saying a lot.
This site says that there have been some counteroffers, though not any that felt acceptable to Israel. One at Taba following months of negotiations after Camp David-
“At Taba, Israel dropped its demand to control Palestine’s borders and the Jordan Valley. The Palestinians, for the first time, made detailed counterproposals—in other words, counteroffers—showing which changes to the 1967 borders they would be willing to accept. The Israeli map that has emerged from the talks shows a fully contiguous West Bank, though with a very narrow middle and a strange gerrymandered western border to accommodate annexed settlements.”
“In April 2002, the countries of the Arab League—from moderate Jordan to hardline Iraq—unanimously agreed on a Saudi peace plan centering around full peace, recognition and normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, as well as a ‘just resolution’ to the refugee issue. Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha’ath declared himself ‘delighted’ with the plan. ‘The proposal constitutes the best terms of reference for our political struggle,’ he told the Jordan Times (3/28/02).
“Ariel Sharon responded by declaring that ‘a return to the 1967 borders will destroy Israel’ (New York Times, 5/4/02). In a commentary on the Arab plan, Ha’aretz‘s Bradley Burston (2/27/02) noted that the offer was ‘forcing Israel to confront peace terms it has quietly feared for decades.'”
About the 93% of Palestinians being antisemitic, that’s extremely disturbing considering the links between antisemitism, hatred, and violence. There is a scale though where on one side, people may believe Jews have extreme power and commit war crimes, etc., and they may feel hatred towards the IDF, but still not support violence against civilians and be open to building more positive relationships with Israelis. The other side is there too, but the statistic of 93% covers such a range of attitudes. Although now it is probably moving much more to the extreme side, and that’s the point Lloyd Austin has been making about only being able to win urban warfare by protecting civilians.
It makes a lot of sense that Israeli soldiers would struggle to be impartial. But the military power they have access to is still something they’re fully accountable for, and the conversations around the war fuel the attitudes of soldiers, so they also need to avoid stereotypes.
About disproportionate force, I may be wrong but I think it doesn’t mean equal number of casualties. I think it means, disproportionate to the immediately necessary force to fulfil the goals. So essentially going beyond the current necessary actions, and further teaching the enemy a lesson, to prevent future attacks.
With a history of using heavy force as deterrence, and despite all the humanitarian efforts still 60% of residential buildings damaged/destroyed, and so many people unable to get to safety or access basic necessities, and the extreme death and injury toll of people who were trying to follow IDF instructions, it’s hard to think of it as anything but negligent planning or deliberately accepting that level of human injury as inevitable for the level of infrastructure damage that is deemed necessary. The question is whether these are all honestly unavoidable targets, and that depends on how much the principle of deterrence is being applied in the equation.
About 1967 borders, even if they’re impossible in practice, there’s still a sense that accepting even less than they have on the map now (while remembering the original partition plan and the 1967 borders), would be compromising on the compromise.
I wonder why the Taba peace talks were never resumed after the change of government, though, if both sides felt so close with that proposal.
You’re right, I forgot that the Palestinians demanded a right of return (that’s what they mean when they say “resolve the refugee problem”) and that Israel withdraw to its pre-1967 borders. But that wasn’t a serious proposal because they know it’s a non-starter.
Israel will not return to indefensible borders and will not allow the return of millions of refugees who, by sheer force of numbers, will obliterate the Jewish state.
I meant serious counter offers, not frivolous demands. This, again, has been used as an excuse to paint Israel as the intransigent one.
As for the bombing of Gaza, I don’t know if Israel is going too far. In Mosul, Iraq, the US destroyed 80% of the Old City of Mosul. They leveled 138,000 homes, destroyed 70% of the University of Mosul, and burned the university’s library, including 3 million books.
I don’t recall the world being too fussed about it at the time.
I do know that the IDF has the best track record of any country in the world in civilian harm reduction. I also know that what Israel suffered was like 16 nine-elevens, and in a way so much worse because of the sheer brutality of the killings. And finally, while the US was battling a terrorist organization that was half a world away, the IDF is fighting a threat that is right on its border.
One more point on this: the IDF is extremely sensitive to world opinion, especially the US whose support it needs. So if they aren’t agreeing to US demands to slow down, that means they are willing to go it alone. That fact alone tells you that the preservation of Israel is at stake, and that they are not willing to commit national suicide to appease world opinion.
Without military knowledge and a good understanding of the facts on the ground, I am less willing to second guess the IDF from the safety and comfort of my home.
I agree with you that whatever the reality is of Palestinian hatred toward Jews and whatever the level of that hatred, soldiers should not stereotype. I don’t know how much of that is going on. I also accept that soldiers are human. Many of them are 18 and 19 years old, not the most mature of ages. Bad military decisions are simply built in. The tragic accident that happened last week with the killing of three Israeli hostages is the kind of awful thing that is bound to happen.
War is horrible. Let us remember that Israel did not want, nor did they seek, this war.
Yes, that offer wasn’t realistic in the context of risk to Israel. But how about the Taba summit? It was apparently close to going through.
You may be right, given the threat from Hamas, but it’s unfathomable to declare war knowing that so many people wouldn’t be able to get out of harm’s way. And people will never forget being given maps with a QR code when the Internet was down, or being told to leave when the borders were being closed.
The US seems to be saying that Israel hasn’t heeded all the lessons they’re trying to convey after learning from dealing with ISIS in civilian areas. That a philosophy of harsh deterrence may be underlying the decision making, and that there may be more precise ways to deal with Hamas. That assessment is all I have to go with that there may have been another way.
Though I see what you mean about Israel being the most likely to take its own security the most seriously, and that security is valid.
It sounds like there are moves towards scaling down the war in the near future, but there’s now so much to rebuild in terms of people’s lives and cities, and trust.
Some protestors are saying “All lives are equal”, in terms of feeling Palestinian lives are being dispensable in this, and that’s the terrible thing with concepts of national defence. I hope shortcuts aren’t being taken in the name of Hamas being responsible, though that’s also true.
And the way people fled to where they were told to go and found bombing there as well, or were unable to flee because of no safe routes but were then treated as terrorists for still being there. That’s why it feels like planning was chaotic at best, because assurances of safety haven’t been trustworthy, even in cases when people have received them in time.
I can’t know if Israel could have done better at making sure evacuations were conducted properly before striking and/or invading Gaza. There was a lot of chaos and confusion at the border crossings, with the one into Egypt remaining closed–Egypt has a lot of culpability here. Hamas also tried to prevent people from evacuating.
There is probably enough blame to go around. But ultimately Hamas is responsible because they instigated this war.
I have a lot of sympathy and grief for the innocent people caught in the middle, trying to flee and finding borders closed, or being treated like terrorists for remaining in an area that was supposed to be evacuated. I’m not sure what Israel could have done about it. We aren’t getting their perspective. The media isn’t really interviewing Israeli officials much, so the narrative is somewhat one-sided. I just don’t know.
I know I keep saying this, but the thing to keep forefront in our minds is that Israel did not seek this war.
About Taba: It does seem to be that, despite all the finger pointing, there isn’t a clear culprit. The talks seem to have just fizzled out.
That makes sense.
I guess that although there’s no equivalence between Israel and Hamas, the level of power that Israel holds can magnify its impact on the cycle of violence. So there needs to be a very high standard of willingness to learn from the mistakes of the war so far. To take more responsibility for truly safe humanitarian corridors, alongside tactical planning (since Hamas won’t). To urgently change the culture in the IDF so that it is less stereotyped and flippant towards Arab/Palestinian civilians, so less accidents and careless incitements to hatred are perpetrated by IDF soldiers. To take full responsibility for the role of settlements themselves in fuelling the violence, and particularly to take physically violent settlers to account.
This is the standard to which all nations need to keep rising. This learning is not unique to Israel, but the power Israel has over such a dense population at the moment, in such a difficult task, demands that level of heightened responsibility, and demands that the flaws shouldn’t be routinely distracted from by making comparisons (although those comparisons are fair when Israel is falsely accused of being the main aggressor).
I agree with you about the settler violence and settlements, but I’m not convinced that the IDF isn’t already doing all of the other things you listed. What I mean is, it could be that the IDF could do better, but it also could be that it’s not nearly as flippant and cavalier about this as the news reports suggest.
It does make sense it could be largely about individual personalities and prejudices, and what turns up in the news doesn’t say anything about prevalence. But going by the way Palestinians are talked about sometimes, it can feel like that groups all individuals into the politics. And the way settler violence isn’t being strongly enough addressed raises questions also about whether the IDF is working on a culture of strongly avoiding racist rhetoric. Because of the level of power that is wielded.
I do believe very many IDF soldiers and leaders have empathetic and humanitarian values front of focus, and that these are also embedded in many central practices.
I saw a news article today that explained what you said about civilian buildings not being protected under international humanitarian law if they are being used for military purposes. It did question whether over 11,000 strikes in the last month is proportional to the immediate threat. So that holds open the question of whether a) it could be more precisely targeted, and b) whether there is a secondary aim of deterrence and making it hard for the population to return and rebuild.
But these are just questions… the main thing I think is clear is that the IDF needed to give safer humanitarian passages and clearer, non-contradictory, accessible instructions about where was safe. They must be aware of that though and hopefully, carefully learning from it.
I’m thinking about what you said about the importance of safeguarding Israel as a homeland for Jews because of global antisemitism, and how that is important enough to sustain even when so much suffering goes on in the Palestinian conflict. Specifically because Israel has a right to territory, based on both ancient heritage and established international borders. Do you think this goal can ever be the primary reason for opposing a two-state solution, though?
In one modern sense, the statehood of Israel and the statehood of Palestine both have the same founding principle, based on the demographics at the time when they were proposed. If people refuse a two-state solution, for the sake of defending Israel as a safe homeland, does that have a secular justification?
Let me say at the outset that my strong pro-Israel bias makes it very painful for me to consider that the conduct of the IDF has been less than stellar in pursuing their military objectives. But if it turns out that they could have done a lot better, then so be it. I do think that the contradictory evacuation orders and the bombing of areas that had been designated safe are highly problematic, but I attribute that more to the fog of war than to malice. That said, I do think more care could have been taken at least in that regard. I am still reserving judgment on other operations because I believe that we can’t really know anything until the war is over and the dust settles.
I continue to be amazed–blown away, really–at the level of scrutiny applied to Israel, especially when I compare it to the coverage of US operations overseas.
Every instance of wrongdoing of any individual soldier is broadcast and amplified until one can be forgiven for getting the impression that Israeli soldiers are all hateful, racist, bigoted thugs. One story in the New York Times would have been funny if it hadn’t been so dire. A nurse at a Gaza hospital was describing the terrifying encounters of Israeli soldiers with hospital personnel, whom they interrogated. She said that she was so scared, and that they handed everyone water bottles. So scary! Do you know why I think she was so scared? I think everyone there was terrified of saying the wrong thing to make Hamas accuse them of collaborating with the Israelis, an accusation that carries with it the threat of execution. But she didn’t dare say that out loud. So you have this bizarre situation of an encounter that involved only being asked questions and being given a water bottle that is framed as scary. That’s the only way I can think of to explain this strange story, which the Times journalist reported without any curiosity to probe further.
I agree with you about the settler violence, I find it distressing, and I find it more distressing that the Israeli government hasn’t done much about it. And I can understand why that would raise questions in your mind about all the rest of it. I do believe, though, that mainstream Israeli society doesn’t condone settler violence, and that the IDF is acutely aware of international opinion and needs the support of the US. So even if they were all evil human beings, it’s in their own self-interest to adhere to the international laws of warfare.
I strongly support a two-state solution, and I believe that is the only way that peace can ever be achieved in the region (barring the arrival of Mashiach, lol). I think Israelis have given up on that as an impossible dream, and Hamas certainly is committed to their vision of wiping Israel off the map.
There was a time when the majority of both Israelis and Palestinians supported a two-state solution. I believe the Palestinians were betrayed by their leadership.
I do not see any reason to justify opposing a two-state solution, as long as there is a possibility of negotiating such a deal.
I’m also trying to understand the way Israel kept taking more territory during the wars of the 20th century.
I’ve heard the ideas that Palestinians rejected a state in 1948, that they started the violence, and that Palestinian nationalism was a new thing at the time anyway.
But nationalism (in terms of territory governed by a cultural group) as a whole was emerging at the same time, globally. The ancestors of many Palestinians still had a sense of local homeland connection, and despite movement in the region, the population consisted of people whose families had considered it home for a long time. I think that’s the basis of most modern ethnic claims to nationality.
When they rejected a state, they felt that it was unfair that Britain had facilitated Zionism (even though many Palestinian Arab farmers had also been sold out by their landlords), and that they would be losing too much of their farmland, seaports, and the villages that were their homelands. They weren’t happy with a two state solution, but progressively taking more of the land that was proposed as the Palestinian state just made the conflict more impossible to resolve. Doesn’t that, plus the settlements, plus the instances in which Israel has been too heavy handed in defence and caused anger, all give Israel a portion of responsibility for the impasse in peaceful political nationhood in the region?
Violent resistance on the part of many Arab Palestinians has also made the right of return and full self-governance impossible at the moment. And they did start the violence when Israel was only purchasing land. But the current situation in which Gaza and the West Bank are tiny compared to the lands where their ancestors called home, with some continuity and separate identity from other Arab regions over centuries- is that expansionism just a reflection of Israeli self-defense? Or is it also opportunistic Zionism?
And if the latter, does Israel bear a large responsibility to restore nationalistic balance to the situation, in whatever ways are safe, however costly in terms of the status quo? Since Israel’s statehood was established based on that equal split of land as the fairest possible proposal at that time, and the Palestinian rejection of its adequacy didn’t mean they accepted even less.
In terms of unifying Israel as a theocratic nation, isn’t that more a necessity of waiting for moshiach to make things clear in that regard? Whereas modern statehood or nationalism is more about trying to encode stable, unoppressed governance by cultural groups in their homelands, and creating a safehold nation for Jews as an ethnic group doesn’t necessarily imply exactly an overlap, in this day and age, with biblical territory.
In the history of wars of aggression, when the aggressor is defeated and loses land, no one in the entire history of the world has ever expected the defender to return the captured territory.
For example, during World War II, the Russians, defending against the German aggressor, drove the German population out of the port city of Koenigsberg. The Russians formally annexed the city and renamed it Kaliningrad. It remains Russian territory.
After the explosion of the USS Maine, which the US considered an act of war by Spain, the US captured the Spanish territory of Guam during the ensuing war, around the turn of the 20th century. It remains a US territory until today.
Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula during the Six Day War of 1967. In 1982, they returned the land as part of a peace treaty with Egypt, a peace that has been maintained until the present day.
Every time the Palestinians and the wider Arab world initiated a war of aggression with Israel, they lost both the war and chunks of land. They ought to have learned by now that fighting with Israel makes their situation worse, not better. But as the aggressor, they have not earned the right to get their land back. That’s just not the way it works, and it’s unreasonable to hold Israel to a standard to which no other country in the world is held.
That said, if the Palestinians managed to make a sincere show of good faith, I think a two-state solution is possible, and as peace is cemented and the new Palestinian state flourishes, perhaps then Israel would be willing to grant more concessions. But at this point the ball is in the Palestinian court.
I reject the narrative that Israel drove the Palestinians out and took their land. Nothing of the sort happened until the neighboring Arab states attacked the fledgling state of Israel. At this point, yes, a number of Palestinians were indeed driven out. Many fled to avoid being caught in the crossfire. A large number were also encouraged to leave because their own leaders told them to, believing they would win this war quickly and everyone would be able to return and take over not just their own homes but Israeli ones as well.
They lost a war that Israel did not seek and did not want and which ended in catastrophe for them. For this I do not hold Israel the least bit responsible.
I do hold Israel responsible for the relatively small number of war crimes that were committed during the war. Tragically, it’s a fact of war that crimes will be committed, even in a just war of defense. Nevertheless, Israel is accountable for that.
Today, Israel does share some responsibility for the mess. Israel’s record has not been perfect. The expansion of settlements into disputed land was and remains a grave error of judgment. The recent settler violence that began in 2020 and has been allowed to grow unchecked is a stain on the Israeli government. But I believe all this has been a reaction to Palestinian intransigence. This is not to excuse but to explain what has happened. All in all, the Palestinians’ share of responsibility is so much greater as to make Israel’s almost negligible. All this tragic history would never have happened if not for the actions of the Arab world against the State of Israel.
A quote from Golda Meir, former prime minister of Israel, sums it up for me: “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
That question is more a background one, though. Beyond that, and alongside whether civilians could have been better protected (whether in heavy war or in a more lengthy operation), I still don’t hear any answer to concerns about whether Israel actually can destroy Hamas without simply stirring up more terrorism, and what comes next in the region.
The Jordanian Foreign Minister’s perspective is that “It is not just killing Palestinians… it is also creating an environment in the region where the amount of hatred that’s growing by the day, as a result of what we see unfolding in Gaza, is undoing 30 years of work that we all have invested in to normalise the idea of peace.” Removing Hamas doesn’t change that loss of substantial progress towards peaceful relationships, and it doesn’t improve the wider volatility among people who perceive injustice, large numbers of whom would otherwise accept Israel.
Many would agree Israel had to go after Hamas, but the goal of completely destroying Hamas by large-scale war, that’s where the US is one of the only supporters.
I’m not seeing that the US is the only supporter of Israel. As far as I can see, the governments of Germany, France, England, and others support Israel too. So I don’t know how to answer your argument on that score.
I think the argument that Israel should not continue fighting because they will cause more people to hate them is a strange one. Those kinds of considerations didn’t stop the Dresden bombing, nor Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We can debate the merits of those actions (war crimes for sure), but they ended a horrific world war, and peace between the US and Germany as well as the US and Japan is an established fact of life.
Israel isn’t going to not defend herself in order to not upset people. That would be committing national suicide.
I want to share a bit of news that is encouraging on the IDF front. A mosque in Jenin was cleared out and the explosives taken outside so they could be detonated without destroying the mosque. Israeli soldiers were suspended for using the mosque’s call-to-prayer mic to recite Hebrew prayers. This violated IDF protocols because it showed insensitivity to Muslims. You can read the story here: https://news.sky.com/story/israel-hamas-war-israeli-soldiers-suspended-for-reading-out-jewish-prayers-at-jenin-mosque-during-west-bank-raid-13030762#:~:text=The%20Israeli%20military%20says%20the,in%20the%20West%20Bank%20city.&text=Israel%20has%20suspended%20a%20group,West%20Bank%20city%20of%20Jenin.
In my opinion, this is a high level of sensitivity. In the Talmud, we have a method of argumentation that is known in Latin as a fortiori. But in Hebrew it’s called “kal v’chomer,” which literally means “light to the heavy.” If this is how the IDF expects their soldiers to act in a “lighter” situation, then how much more so in a “heavier” situation.
The behavior of the soldiers in this incident was fairly benign, but the IDF wouldn’t stand for it. If they won’t stand for anything that could be deemed religiously insensitive, then surely they won’t stand for outright killing that is greater than necessary.
I want to add one more thing on a personal note. I so much appreciate having this dialogue with you, Annelise. It is helping me to think about the issues more deeply and carefully and sensitively, and I think we are having a very productive dialogue. I feel that it’s a privilege to talk to someone as respectful and kind as you are.
Thanks, Dina. I’m learning a lot from what you bring up too, and also appreciate your empathy and critical thinking.
I didn’t see your reply when I posted my last comment, so I’ll reply to your last few comments.
I agree there are numerous nations supporting the war, but I haven’t come across support as strong as that by some US officials for the heavy-handed nature of the war that might produce so many casualties (even though the same people are also saying more care had to be taken). You’re probably right that other leaders have made similar defences of hundreds of bombs per day and huge civilian impact, I just haven’t heard it. I’m hearing more support for going after Hamas, complexity of the situation, and urging caution.
It’s hard to accept there would be no other way, and that’s why all the potential ulterior motives that could underlie the best intentions come up for question.
I agree that Israel can’t just sit and accept attacks in order to avoid making others angry. It still seems that there are Arabs who are going to be extreme Islamists no matter what Israel does, and there are also many Arabs who just want peace and get angry when they see all the suffering of people who are disempowered. And that perspective of Lloyd Austin, this is more of the quote-
“Now, Israel is in a hard fight against a cruel enemy, in one of the most densely populated areas on Earth.
“But democracies like ours are stronger and more secure when we uphold the law of war. So we will continue to press Israel to protect civilians and to ensure the robust flow of humanitarian aid.
“First and foremost, that’s the right thing to do. But it’s also good strategy.
“You know, I learned a thing or two about urban warfare from my time fighting in Iraq and leading the campaign to defeat ISIS.
“Like Hamas, ISIS was deeply embedded in urban areas. And the international coalition against ISIS worked hard to protect civilians and create humanitarian corridors, even during the toughest battles.
“So the lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians.
“You see, in this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.
“So I have repeatedly made clear to Israel’s leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative.”
About Israel expanding, I agree now is not a time to give land back, but I don’t understand why it had to be taken in the first place when that would leave the Palestinians with so little left, and the peace process impossible. And since Israel was founded on the assumption that Palestine would have almost half the land, it seems to have swung everything off balance that all that land was taken. I can see where people are coming from when they talk about disappearing Palestine (I do think the discussion has to be confined to post-1948), or make pictures of Israel with a full plate and Palestine with a few little pieces.
It’s true they began most of the wars, but if you count expansionism as a form of violence, it seems that a lot of the prolonging of Palestinian anger into this century comes not only from religious motives but also from the secular reaction to being pushed into diminishing corners of the land. Not only Israel, but also Palestinians, are reactive in some of their offences. Though the ball is in their court, a lot of old wounds are still being aggravated in a way that maybe keeps historical mistakes relevant.
Most nations that have made peace after conflict at least have a lot of territory and independence left. I know there is also an antisemitic, Islamic expansionist element behind some of the long and violent grievance of Palestinians. But there is also a lot of impact from the huge losses of land that have been occurring until this day.
That is good to hear how the IDF responded to the Hebrew prayers on the microphone, and I see what you mean. There is a lot of integrity, on many levels at least. My question is just whether there are blinds spots at critical axis points of decision making, but unfortunately the two possibilities just stand side by side- that it could have been done fundamentally differently (in which case other motivations are relevant), or that it couldn’t have.
There is fear of the IDF among parents in Palestine who know that their teenage children can be taken during the night, interrogated without their parents or any representation present, and then held indefinitely in a way that is commonly happening even without charges being proven. That sort of thing is genuine reason for fear, even if there aren’t typically other huge aggressions beside it.
So it looks like we misunderstood each other about Israel’s allies supporting Israel during this war. To be clear, I think you’re right that the US is the only supporter in terms of refusing to pressure Israel into a ceasefire. Other allies have called for a ceasefire, or temporary ones to allow humanitarian aid (which Israel has agreed to), but they haven’t applied pressure for a permanent ceasefire. I don’t think any supporters of Israel, including even the US, support the heavy bombing in which Israel has been engaging. So your assessment that, “I’m hearing more support for going after Hamas, complexity of the situation, and urging caution,” is spot on. I agree with the quote you cited by Lloyd Austin, and I suspect the IDF does too.
That said, it would certainly not be the first time Israel has faced international pressure, including from the US, regarding its military operations. Sometimes Israel has caved to international pressure and sometimes has continued in the face of it, prioritizing security over appeasement. I’m not sure which direction we’re heading in this time, but it looks like Israel is very determined to defeat Hamas once and for all, and her citizens are united behind the war effort.
I don’t think you’re wrong to be concerned. It’s a difficult, painful situation and extremely complex. Israel has no good options.
One point about the land that Israel captured: It’s actually quite confusing. In the war of 1967, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt. In other words, those territories were occupied by other aggressive powers and were not in Palestinian hands to begin with. Israel is at peace now with both countries, and neither are demanding the land back. But the rest of the world believes it should not belong to Israel. Israel had placed the territories under military occupation for security reasons. They withdrew from Gaza unilaterally in 2005, and look what happened. It was a security risk, all right.
After Israel withdrew from Gaza, they left behind their famous lucrative hothouses to help the Palestinians jumpstart their economy. Instead, the Palestinians destroyed the greenhouses, elected Hamas in the last democratic election ever held in the Gaza Strip, and Hamas turned Gaza into a rocket launching pad.
So I think it’s a safe bet to say that Israel was right to believe that both territories posed a security risk. And I don’t think Israel is going to repeat its mistake with Gaza and withdraw from the West Bank until the Palestinians make a concerted effort to prove they are serious about living in peace with Israel.
In previous peace negotiations, the ones that went nowhere, both sides agreed to land swaps with regard to settlements in which land had been taken from the Palestinians. So I believe that can all be worked out in negotiations. But right now there are no leaders on either side willing to do that–and that will be impossible anyway as long as Hamas is in power.
Parents’ fear of the IDF on behalf of their children is genuine, but I’m not sure I understand its relevance to the story of the hospital nurse that I cited.
Also I think it’s not a question of malicious or deliberately uncaring decisions. It’s more a question of unconscious motivations in the weighing of options, at certain stages of decision making.
Something else about the high standard, I think that’s also part of the pattern of globally working towards how to stop the suffering that happens in war. That’s the project of developing and refining rules-based order and humanitarian agreement.
It’s honestly an uncomfortable and unclear conversation from every angle, because we all just want peace and security and for suffering to stop, and no matter what decisions are made there are risks to individuals. And a government has to protect its population, but population ethics are innately awful.
I think there’s also, for Jews at the moment, the cultural and emotional load of being held to account about a conflict you didn’t choose and can’t change. I really appreciate you being willing to listen and speak from a place like that. And hope that it not only moves quickly to a more peaceful stage, but also that the truth and ways forward will be more transparent for everyone.
Beautiful, and beautifully said, Annelise!
When I read about the death toll in Gaza and see the photos of suffering children and the heaps upon heaps of rubble, my heart pleads for all of this to stop, now! But my head tells me that if Israel agrees to a permanent ceasefire, leaving Hamas in power, it will not only be a victory for Hamas. It will mean continuing a cycle of horrific Hamas attacks followed by wars of retribution. I fear that if Israel doesn’t finish the job now, then the future will hold even more terrible costs in human life and property.
Let’s imagine that Israel achieves its goal of eliminating Hamas. With Hamas out of the picture, I believe that despite all the rage against Israel the war has engendered, healing will be able to take place and a real path to peace can be realized. I believe this because throughout history we have seen great powers defeat others in horrible ways and make peace shortly thereafter. I’m thinking specifically of Germany and Japan after World War II. The only difference is, that this time the victors are Jews, and I’m not sure the Palestinians can ever suffer a defeat at the hands of Jews. Anyone else can be forgiven, but Jews? I’m not so sure. But I do hope that I’m wrong on this score. And what gives me hope is the peace Israel made with Egypt, and more recently, the Abraham Accords.
Yes… although both Israel and Palestine also have a lot of trust to rebuild, especially now.
I just listened to part of a talk by Dr Einat Wilf, where she talked about the social change that happened in Germany and Japan, and how that came from a vision to rebuild their cultures. She believes that Palestinians now have the same goal as in 1947, to make sure Israel doesn’t have a state, and that Western institutions are responsible for perpetuating the idea that this is still an open question.
Even though there may be more to it, I agree with this. And although this may be too divisive an issue to fully unpack until after the US election, it does seem that Western opinions against the legitimacy of Israel having a state at all are deeply responsible for the prolonging of the original effort to destroy Israeli statehood.
And at the same time, we can’t let slide the ways in which the IDF and Israeli government need to avoid damaging Palestinians’ ability to trust them.
If it blocks the way to peace, it needs to be taken seriously, and both sides of the spectrum need to keep working on that.
And also the constant effort to hear each other better, to get away from simplifying situations. I read a quote from Etgar Keret- “And when I see people watching the horrible tragedy that is happening here as if it were a Super Bowl of victimhood, in which you support one team and really don’t care about the other, empathy becomes very, very selective. You see only some pain. You don’t want to see other pain.” Somehow both head and heart need to keep holding and weighing the tension of multiple sides of the picture, uncertainties included. Unfortunately, that gets harder as the global future feels increasingly unpredictable.
This is exactly right!
This also talks about how important 1967 lines are to possible peace, and how much a threat settlements are to that. Any plans Israel has for after the war can either preserve or obliterate the remaining chance of a two state solution even being viable. So the government really has immediate control right now over what possibilities are left in the long term.
https://www.progressispossible.org/issues/borders-territory
Thanks for the link. It shows how peace negotiations can proceed, if there are people on both sides who are committed to working out a solution. I pray that day comes soon.
I hope so too.
I don’t know how the world is supposed to hold leaders to account when we don’t know the details of their decision making.
It’s very reasonable that it’s difficult to avoid injuring civilians while adequately dealing with Hamas.
But even while seeing that, with even the more balanced members of the war cabinet having spoken of their belief in deterrence through local destruction, it’s hard to trust that all their decisions in an operation are as precise as they say. With quotes like these regarding Lebanon-
“What happened in the Dahiya quarter … will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. … We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.” (Gadi Eisenkot)
“If… an escalation or conflict develops here, we will return Lebanon to the Stone Age. We will not hesitate to use all our power, and erode every inch of Hezbollah and Lebanon if we have to.” (Yoav Gallant)
Understandably they have to deter violent attacks, but the way the civilian areas are comfortably spoken of as targets for total destruction.
And as the US talks about scaling down the war, Israel is still talking about expanding it. It sounds like two different approaches to the same intelligence.
I honestly don’t know what to make of all of this! I think Hamas has to be taken out, but I don’t know how that can be accomplished, rhetoric aside, without horrific loss of life. I think it would be terrible for both sides if Hamas stays in power. As I wrote previously, we will only see the cycle of attack-retribution continue.
I guess if you’re objecting to the rhetoric, it’s not great. I mean, these are the moderates. So I hear you. I also hear them. They are fighting an enemy that attacked them in a very personal, intimate way (as opposed to 9/11 when the murderers didn’t have personal contact with their victims) and their enemies are right there (as opposed to half a world away). I can hardly fault them for unguarded moments of expressing real moral outrage and also blind fury.
Sadly true. And I do see that there can be a separation between rhetoric and intention, as well as a separation between biased motivation and more measured action. It’s horrific.
I guess the main thing most people can do is just keep the general conversation as nuanced as possible, challenging stereotypes and generalisations. That in itself goes a long way.
I agree!
I mean the situation is horrific (not the fact that people can potentially be more careful, even when biased or using rhetoric).
I’d also like to understand more about when Israel accepted the offer of a state. In a way that sounds valid, but isn’t it possible to say that the UN didn’t simply give Israel a state; rather, it offered a two-state peace plan, which the Arabs rejected but Israel went ahead with despite the plan not having agreement from both sides?
It’s such an unusual situation. Jews had a long and well-known claim to the land, but so many places were the hometowns of Arab Palestinians.
The land was owned by landlords and sold or given over legally, but in other instances of moving from tenant farming to modern statehood (as little as I understand it), the society of tenants can be understood as the primary occupants of a homeland even if they haven’t owned it or governed it.
So I think that both Jews and Palestinian Arabs had a degree of claim to legitimate statehood, in different ways (and states can have a variety of forms/foundations). But without Arab agreement to the proposal for two states, Israel’s declaration of independence assumed that the UN could, and did, grant them the internationally recognised governance of the land, rather than seeing it as a proposal that hadn’t been accepted by one party.
It also seems that Britain realised later, but not at first, that attempting to set up a Jewish nation there would be a source of prolonged conflict with longtime occupants, who wouldn’t want a new government to, by design, put (and keep) them in the minority.
I don’t know if I’m missing something in all this. I think Jews and Arab Palestinians both had genuine connections to the land that can constitute a claim to statehood in different ways, but I’m not sure that Israel’s claim to have been given it by the UN fits with the fact that the proposal wasn’t universally accepted by the groups it was offered to.
I think this is a fair assessment but would like to add some context.
Before 1948 there never was an official Palestinian nation in an officially recognized Palestine homeland. Instead there was a jumble of different peoples (Arabs from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan; nomadic tribes like the Druze and Bedouins; and Jews). These disparate peoples were ruled at various times by different empires (Byzantine, Ottoman, British).
There wasn’t a push for an independent Palestinian homeland for Palestinians until the need became urgently recognized that the Jews particularly needed a safe haven. The circumstances at the time made this painfully clear.
It was only when the Jews started pushing for this and it became a public discussion that suddenly the collection of Arabs decided to band together and demand their own homeland. The idea of being governed by Jews was intolerable.
It was never part of the plan that when partitioning the land, Arabs would have to leave their villages. This only happened as a result of the 1948 war.
I think you have a fair point that the British should have ensured the Arabs were on board first. But I don’t think they ever would have been, given what we now know. And the need of the Jews to just not be killed was the greater need at the time.
Oh I think I was wrong, I read now that it really was offered by the UN rather than just suggested, although it wasn’t a unanimous vote, and there were concerns about the way it was blocked into two states rather than into regions.
Israel accepted what was offered in that sense. But with so much disagreement and non-acceptance around it, I can see why how echoes of colonialism can seem relevant to the fact that those nations felt they could give regions occupied by one group over to another group.
It’s not the same as colonialism in a pure sense, and like with many contested land claims it is also almost a century old (though passing time as a legitimiser of land claims can be a problem in itself). I still hear why people ask what right the (non-unanimous) majority of the UN had to give statehood in parcels of the land to either party without the agreement of both.
I see what you mean about that urgency, and the validity of the Jews’ connection to the land, which wasn’t erased by Arab opposition to any agreement. That opposition was partly a perpetuation of the imperialism that had already made Jews so unwelcome in the land for centuries.
I guess that it was partly that they wouldn’t tolerate being a minority under Jewish rule, and partly that they wouldn’t accept just generally becoming a permanent minority in their towns. And that last point is where I can understand their grievance. They felt that the demographics were being systematically flooded with new people and that land was being purchased in ways that were evicting them collectively, despite their being so established there.
Some of what you said is similar to Rabbi Blumenthal’s comment below; I’ll reply there so we’re all on the same thread.
I’m confused. How is purchasing land a form of eviction? Unless the buyer forces the seller to sell, I don’t understand this concept.
The Arabs could not possibly have been concerned about Jews flooding the land; otherwise their objection to the UN partition makes no sense. They complained that they received slightly less than 50% of the land despite their far more sizable population, which was two or three times greater. (The Jews countered that their half comprised desert, whereas the Arabs’ portion was located in the fertile part of the land.)
Initially, the Israelis had no intention of displacing the Arabs who were living there. They were displaced because of a war of aggression against Israel, a war they lost, as I have pointed out many times before. Why does no other country have to assume responsibility for displaced people who earned that status as the result of a war of aggression?
Something interesting to consider: From 1948 to 1967, Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza. For 19 years, the Arabs who lived there (who did not yet call themselves Palestinians) did not advocate for an independent state. That began only after 1967, when Israel captured both territories. Suddenly, independence became very important.
One more interesting point. Much is made of the religious significance of Jerusalem to Muslims, which is why many countries in the world do not recognize the city as the capital of Jerusalem. And a divided Jerusalem forming the capitals of two states is crucial to a two-state solution. Jerusalem is mentioned in Tanach 669 times and Zion 154 times. Do you know how many times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Koran? ZERO. Muslims do not mention Jerusalem in their prayers and pray facing Mecca, not Jerusalem. On the other hand, the city is mentioned 5 times in the Amidah prayer alone, which appears in all three Jewish daily prayer services, and Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Yet it so offends Muslims to see Jews praying on the Temple Mount that the Israeli government agreed that Jews may visit but not pray. Praying is considered a great provocation. And no one finds this the least bit problematic. The only thing that’s considered a problem is when Jews defiantly pray there. (And I say this as an Orthodox Jew who accepts the rabbinic decree that forbids Jews to step food on the Temple Mount.) This is just a tiny example of the insane double standard the world applies to Jews and Muslims.
It seems obvious to me, the more I delve into the past and observe the present, that the beginning, middle, and end of the story is Jew hatred. If not for that factor, none of this history would have ever happened.
I agree that there is religious motivation for Muslims to prefer Muslim rule. It’s not just a secular concern about losing their hometowns or homeland. And the rivalry with Judaism, in terms of which version of the scriptures and of monotheism is correct, makes similarity a deep source of conflict.
Human violence is too often like that, most aggressive when there’s similarity present in the authority challenge. I guess both Christian and Islamic antisemitism have been fuelled partly by this.
But for many of us, that level of violence that Jews have experienced seems so shockingly impossible, and separate from what even racism normally looks like around us, that it’s hard to take it into account. And Jews keep mentioning it to ensure it never happens again, but I accept it’s hard for most others to take it seriously enough. Our society has tried so hard to believe that we aren’t like that anymore, and expect you to essentially move on.
I don’t think we knew how to confront what happened apart from distancing our identity from the violence, being the helpers and the commemorators and the judges of the evil that was committed… without fully dealing with the aspects of Western society that either took part or stood by.
I don’t want to deny that or negate it, I just don’t know how to weigh it in my own thinking, so I have to just leave it beside this other thought. I do think, at the same time, that some people oppose Zionism not in its foundational essence, but rather in the complexity of the current situation. They don’t oppose a homeland or nation or sovereignty for Jews. Some people just oppose the idea that biblical beliefs and/or ancient territory claims (these things are what they mean by Zionism) should be put above a political solution to the conflict, or somehow justify the loss of people’s communities in bulk land-buyouts or the times when Israel used strategies to make people move. I think this isn’t anti-Zionism in the sense you defined Zionism, though.
I agree the land was purchased, but it was done in a way where absent landowners sold it, and it wasn’t just a few families having to move; as far as I know, entire communities were uprooted. That was legal, but the way it was done systematically to move established groups of people, groups of communities that in many cases were hundreds of years old and had local identity, seems also to have been problematic at best, and an a colonial-influenced mistake at worst.
I do think there is a real level of Jewish indigeneity in the land, and that Arabs weren’t going to accept that. I don’t know what a better way to deal with that would have been.
This article says that “when Israeli archives were opened in the 1980s records showed that Israeli operations, including psychological-warfare broadcasts, helped drive the exodus of Palestinians.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-01/what-will-israel-and-gaza-look-like-when-the-war-is-over/103272414
It makes sense that the wars in which land was taken were defensive. But with so many citizens feeling the motivation to take hold of the entire land, for more than just defensive reasons, it’s difficult to tell which motivations have caused which outcomes.
The is the second link you posted from the Autralian ABC network, and it is just as biased as the first link. There is a lot wrong with this article. I don’t have time to review it all, but I will give one example. To prove that Israel is bombing indiscriminately, the article quotes Joe Biden saying exactly that–although his comments were walked back almost immediately by his own administration. This article was published well after John Kirby, a member of the National Security Council, walked back Joe Biden’s comments (I discussed this in an earlier comment).
The point of this to show how misleading the media can be when it comes to Israel, so I guess what I want to say is, buyer beware.
I’m not sure where your information on land purchases is coming from; I did a little online research and discovered that by 1948, the amount of land purchased by Jews made up about 5% of the Mandate. Only during/after the War of 1948 did the military occupy more land; that, however, is not what we are discussing here.
(I got this information from Wikipedia and the UN website. The UN is predisposed to paint Israel in the worst possible light, yet they pretty much confirmed Wikipedia, which, as you know, is not the most reliable source.)
We already know that in 1948 Israelis drove Arabs out. I’m not going to defend that, of course. We also know that some fled out of fear, and that many others left because their own leaders told them to. There is tons of documentation of this, but somehow, only Israel gets the flak for it, although they were not the ones to start the war.
Here is a link that provides evidence of this: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/myths-and-facts-the-refugees#e
Search for “Arab leaders never encouraged the Palestinians to flee.” It will bring it up for you. Of course, there is now denial that this ever happened. (For the sake of transparency, this website is heavily biased toward Israel; however, I believe the sources are sound.)
If you think the motivation of those who fought the war should have been pure and consistent across the board and throughout the conflict, then you are applying a standard that no nation has ever upheld. If Israel was attacked and then won the war, it is eminently reasonable to conclude that they would not have fought had they not been attacked. The primary motivation was defense, and therefore, secondary motivations are irrelevant.
I want to say something else about the article you posted, which lists every mean thing they could find (286 statements!) that an Israeli in any position of any kind of leadership (even actors) said. (They should do that for Gaza too; it would be interesting to see those findings.)
I recommend reading the recent New York Times article on the sexual violence of the Hamas attack, which details only a small fraction of the atrocities. How anyone can read that and then judge the people who are affected by it for inflammatory rhetoric is beyond me. It shows, in my opinion, a lack of empathy bordering on cruelty.
Unfortunately, it’s probably behind a paywall.
Yes, it’s odd because the Australian ABC did earlier report the disagreement within the government about Biden’s indiscriminate bombing comment. Different articles from there show a mix in terms of levels and directions of bias. Some are more pro-Palestinian, some are more like what I hear from the Jewish community, some are focused on the suffering on the ground while including some Israeli perspective. At the start of the war they reported a lot about the global leaders who support Israel’s right and responsibility for defence, and they have continued to report findings about Hamas atrocities. People find it to be left-leaning more often, but still often centre as well. They’re definitely voicing the idea that the war is likely to give fuel to the incentive young people have to join terrorist causes.
I agree that the list of quotes from all over Israeli society may not be properly representative of the mainstream and/or the main decision makers. And comparison to Palestinian rhetoric and violence would show a different picture. The media is seriously failing to hold Palestinian society to account for that.
I’m actually also very concerned by a comment I heard from an International Criminal Court prosecutor, talking about the suffering and possible breaches of the law (or spirit of the law to protect people) on both sides, especially the failure to facilitate any type of anaesthetics for surgery. He said, “if Israel doesn’t comply now, they shouldn’t complain later.” That’s a frightening and serious attitude, with the potential to dehumanise Israelis, even if he really was right in some respects that the level of civilian suffering and lack of aid movement is avoidable.
Israel is under extra scrutiny because of an antisemitic avoidance of Jewish governance, and also people’s fear of opposing Palestinian goals and ideas. In particular, Indigenous rights and anti-racism/colonialism movements (that do have a lot of validity) have taken Palestinian resistance under their wing in a simplistic and vehement way.
On the other hand, Israel holds most of the military power, and Palestinians are taking the brunt of the suffering that gies beyond almost anything else this century. I really believe that raises the level of accountability of Israeli society, government, and the IDF not to dehumanise them. Even out of justified anger. I think that in some ways there is an unfair thread to the scrutiny, yet there is also a genuine sense of the responsibility held in a war like this. This has raised the bar, and would raise it towards any democratic power and society in a way that’s not essentially dissimilar, if they were showing not-insignificant streaks of dehumanising a society they were fighting against, and brushing aside the impact.
Basically, I think it’s fair to list quotes of concern from across Israeli society and leadership. What’s not fair is the lack of similar scrutiny on Palestinian antisemitism, and also the fact that their hatred and violence are brushed aside by many as part of victimhood.
I guess I think the problem is what was excluded from that article, but not so much what was included
Israel has to act defensively, regardless of mixed motivations. But without simultaneously addressing those mixed motivations very seriously, particularly the dehumanisation of Palestinians, there is the ongoing risk of lapses in judgement regarding the level of expected civilian disaster, in key decisions. The public sets the boundaries and the tone for the government.
I don’t understand how you can read that article and still judge Israel harshly. After reading that, I said some pretty emotional things that I would not want publicized. So I think you’re expecting them to not be human. As much as I decry the rhetoric, it’s understandable, and it is also gives a one-sided picture without detailing the efforts that Israel has indeed taken, and the statements it has made, that paint a much more nuanced picture.
Other than that, I agree with basically everything you wrote and I found your comment to be thoughtful and measured.
I have been reading in the news that there are signs that Israel is wrapping up its major operations and scaling down to smaller ones.
Man, I hope they catch Yahya Sinwar.
I think that’s an important thought regarding initial responses vs ongoing ideologies. Also I can hear what you said about it being cruel to judge people for reactive rhetoric in the aftermath of October 7, and that sense of cruelty extends to one-sided scrutiny of Israeli culture in the media. And the injustice of Western society sitting in judgment of Jewish self-defence. Even as the international community has to have these conversations, the fact that we can find these words so easily after all these centuries should be much more troubling than we tend to feel it as.
It’s difficult, too, in terms of the idea that the war, all the images of suffering children especially, will stir up the terrorist cause. It will. And completely eliminating terrorist groups while the grievances are still there is impossible. But that terrorism is also driven by other sources, for which Israel isn’t responsible, and that’s something we aren’t really hearing about. There’s fear of stirring up Islamophobia, and I can’t see the same fear when Zionism is spoken about. I guess the difficult thing is addressing the serious imbalance without letting it sideline the responsibilities to examine issues in Israeli culture because of the wide impact it can have on people and peace, in this situation currently.
It does sound like things are phasing to a more specifically targeted phase. Hopefully ways for peace and security keep being found, and all this changes somehow.
I just want to say again what a pleasure it is to talk to you, Annelise. It’s a rare delight to talk to someone who is listening with empathy!
I think the fear that Israel’s actions will radicalize another whole generation of Palestinians is not unfounded. I have thought about this idea a great deal. It’s so distressing. It’s a catch 22 for Israel. If Israel does not respond, Hamas scores a massive victory and plans their next attack. If Israel retaliates, they create more terrorists. (Also, Hamas always wins the PR war when Israel strikes back.) It’s a no-win situation for Israel. And it’s a terrible, horrific crisis for the innocent Gazans caught in the middle.
As I pondered this, I thought about the Dresden bombing and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I thought as well about the Holocaust. Despite the horrific losses of civilian life in Germany and Japan and among Jews, the US, Japan, Germany, and Israel all became allies. And not very long after! So how did that happen?
I’m speculating, but I surmise that the Germans were able to make peace with Israel and the US because they stopped indoctrinating their people in fantastical imperialist beliefs and conspiracies about Jews. More important, they stopped acting on those beliefs. I suspect something similar occurred with the Japanese.
The problem with the Palestinians is that I don’t believe the indoctrination will stop. This indoctrination really is the root of the problem. If it ends, then even after all of this, peace will be possible. If all these countries could make peace after committing major atrocities against each other, then surely the Palestinians can make peace with Israel.
I hope when this is over that Israel will at least have succeeded in defanging Hamas. Then the international community can step in and help rebuild Gaza. But let the Palestinians end the indoctrination of Jew hatred, which is at a truly insane level, so peace can be achieved at last.
Yes, I think you’re right. There was a lot of international pressure for Germany and Japan to change their outlook, too.
Thanks for giving me more perspective on what’s missing from the news I get, in terms of both information and the balance. And thanks again for what is really a painful and messy conversation.
Hi Dina, I wonder do you have any thoughts about this quote from The Guardian-
“Netanyahu’s coalition government includes far-right parties who are adamantly opposed to a Palestinian state, or any let-up in the intensity of the attacks on Gaza.
“The concessions needed to secure the release of hostages, including freeing many Palestinian prisoners, would probably prompt them to leave, and collapse his government.”
It seems that the war cabinet is bound by keeping the government together.
Also I don’t know that we can judge much about motivations from it, but I read too how Eisenkot doesn’t think Hamas can be destroyed and wants to focus on hostage deals. And how he paused when asked if Netanyahu was just prolonging the war to avoid political reckoning, and replied “I hope not.”
Hi Annelise,
Let me stipulate at the outset that I think it’s a crying shame that the man at the helm right now is deeply compromised by personal scandals, charges of corruption, and widespread unpopularity both within and without Israel. It’s also a crying shame that in order to cobble together a governing coalition he had to include people who say truly insane things. (In my opinion Smotrich and Ben Gvir are bad news.)
There will never be peace unless BOTH sides commit to a two-state solution. It is deeply troubling that Netanyahu is not committed to that goal, but not surprising. He has made no secret of that for decades. But the fact is, the Israelis NEVER had a good-faith negotiating partner for a two-state solution even back when they were open to the idea.
Netanyahu does seem conflicted about this. In a phone call with Biden, he said he is not “foreclosing the possibility of a Palestinian state in any form” (quote is from CNN, not Netanyahu). Later he posted that Israel would maintain full control over security, which contradicts the demands of a sovereign state. I disagree. A demilitarized Palestine could still be sovereign, as Germany and Japan were at the end of the war.
In fact, a demilitarized Palestinian state is what the US is leaning toward.
As for the comment about intensifying the campaign, the IDF has announced multiple times that it was winding down operations and entering a new phase of smaller-scale, more precisely targeted attacks. I’ve seen news reports (though I don’t remember where) that there was indication of this on the ground. For example, I believe this has already happened in North Gaza.
It is absolutely maddening that Israel does not have a hero like Ukraine’s Zelensky to guide them through this tough time. It hurts the credibility of Israel when it needs it most.
Anyway, that’s my opinion, for whatever it’s worth 🙂
That makes sense. I can see the dilemma around it being demilitarised without being fully supervised. Yet needing that two-state solution for an exit from constant conflict.
I hope that Israel gets a government that can really handle the situation wisely, and same for other nations too; that sanity and peace can grow somehow in all that’s going on in the world as a whole.
Amen!
And I just wondered mostly whether it’s possible that a lot of the course/nature of the war has been determined by the need to keep the government unified? Maybe it’s too hard to make that judgment.
I read about the ICJ case mentioning Netanyahu’s references to Amalek in relation to this war. Netanyahu’s office says that the remarks are a reference to the terrorists’ genocidal intent, and aren’t themselves a call for genocide.
I feel that as possible as this is, doesn’t it recklessly add to the blurring of the lines in the Israeli conversation? The way Trump used ‘fight’ metaphors in front of a mob that was clearly showing inclinations to physical violence, and then failed to tell them to stop in the critical time of that violence being carried out.
I’ve learnt from Christian/European history that when problematic words are easy to explain away, and fit mostly (or in one interpretation) with people’s views, then often they are allowed to slip by without fully considering their possible consequences. And that when there’s ambiguity about what is and isn’t being said or done, it’s even harder not to be a bystander.
Netanyahu’s evocation of Amalek is in one sense very different from Europe’s racist and religious leaps of reason and imagery, because Israel’s war is responsive and defensive. In that sense it feels like an ironic comparison. Yet in another sense the risk of silence in ambiguity seems relevant, and it’s the clearest comparison I’m familiar with.
I feel that the loud calls for genocide from some sides of Israeli society, the attitude that there are no innocent Palestinians, and the broad use of force being chosen for how the war should be handled, make him, his cabinet, and Israelis fully responsible for actively anti-genocide language and actions.
The ICJ has given Israel a month to prove that it is preventing and punishing incitements to genocide. It will be hard for them to prove this, since although sometimes action is taken against settler violence and reckless language/actions in the IDF, other instances of violent actions and genocidal talk seem to be tolerated and accepted. Including within the extreme sides of government, which have the influence on the war cabinet of being able to pull the government apart if they aren’t appeased.
Are there ways for Jewish and Israeli circles to draw the distinction of supporting war against Hamas, while vocally (and not too late) questioning parts of the war that is actually playing out, and the apparent tolerance of genocidal talk and actions?
I’m trying to think how I can say in the strongest possible terms that Netanyahu said absolutely nothing wrong in his statement that Israel is fighting Amalek. To religious Jews there was nothing ambiguous about it whatsoever, and I will take the liberty of assuming that it never even occurred to Netanyahu that ignorant Jews and others would understand it in the way it’s been reported. (I also think that putting Israel in the dock at the ICJ instead of Hamas is morally repugnant.)
In the Jewish tradition, we typically refer to our genocidal enemies as Amalek. I grew up hearing the Nazis referred to that way. The main story in the Bible that embodies this concept is the story of Purim in the Book of Esther. Haman, a descendent of the Amalekite king Agag, sought to annihilate the Jewish people throughout the Persian empire. The ONLY time the Bible mentions a commandment to kill Amalek is in 1 Samuel 15; it’s a commandment for a specific time and place and is completely irrelevant to how we live our lives today.
People heard the word “Amalek” and rushed to find a source in the Bible and try to explain what it means to traditional Jews without actually asking any real, live traditional Jews, who are not very hard to find in this country. That’s Journalistic Malfeasance 101. It’s reckless and irresponsible and needlessly poured oil on an already raging fire.
Three university presidents in the United States were hauled before Congress to answer for the shocking rise of antisemitism on their campuses. They were asked if calling for the genocide of the Jewish people violated their code of conduct, and all three of them basically said no, that’s protected speech. (If you’ve been following, this caused an uproar, and at least one of them was forced to resign; another resigned over allegations of plagiarism.)
“From the river to the sea” is a genocidal chant against the Jewish people and I haven’t heard anyone say people should be forbidden from expressing it. People are twisting themselves into pretzels explaining that it’s really only aspirational, but that’s a load of, uh, non-truth.
No one in any decision-making capacity in Israel is actually calling for genocide, and the problematic statements from lower-level officials has had zero effect on the military operations. Sure, it would be nice if they could exercise a little restraint. But I have no idea how Israel can enforce that without encroaching on their free speech rights.
I also think that the world has shown, in its judgment, a shocking lack of empathy for Israelis. Imagine someone comes home and finds his wife and kids dead, mutilated, lying in pools of blood, and he says, “I will find whoever did this and tear them apart limb by limb!” No one would judge him for saying that.
Not only is the empathy lacking, the level of scrutiny is so heightened, I find it alarming. Who pays attention to the actions and words of lower-level officials in other countries? It’s actually scary. Like every Israeli has to walk on eggshells because the whole world is watching to see them make one wrong move and yell, Gotcha! Every country has its crazy extremists. I mean, you could have a field day with all the insane things American public officials say. But in Israel, everyone has to be perfectly balanced and reasonable. It’s an absurd standard.
I apologize for the strong language, but I find all this soooooo infuriating!
I appreciate your taking the time to ask, though, and I hope I didn’t scare you away with my rant. It’s totally not directed at you. You’re an innocent consumer of the news, after all. I’m just mad at the journalists who present these things to the public in such an unfair and biased way.
I agree that Hamas should be brought to the ICJ for genocidal intention. But I feel that doesn’t stop the need to check whether it is plausible from the Israeli government’s side too. Hamas should be brought first because the terrorism is happening from their side. But perhaps Israel should be brought first because they have the means to actually harm a lot more people at the moment, even if through periodic lapses into negligence.
I spent some Purims with the Jewish community here, so my initial response to hearing the Amalek phrases would be similar to yours I guess. I don’t think I would have made the genocide connection without it being pointed out. That said, it’s a strong and plain connection in the biblical sense. And I don’t know if I agree about the walking on eggshells idea because the words accepted in the community make a huge difference to the course of the war, and these are not necessarily the words of a negligible minority.
The words of anger make sense until it’s remembered that innocent people are tangled up in an incredibly powerful, lethal response. There’s no way to protect those innocent people without the highest scrutiny and caution. Every racist word ever spoken risks people’s lives, even in this, and especially in the chaos of war.
I’m not convinced that the extremist members of the government have no influence on the cabinet’s decisions. Do you think it’s fair to say they are able to threaten to shatter the government if they aren’t happy with the way the war is waged?
I also wonder why again there are reports of shelters being bombed. Why should a designated safe place ever be bombed?
This is what I think we need to ask the Israeli side. What I think we should ask the media and Western academia/governments is why they can report of Israeli sentiment, but not on Palestinian genocidal culture.
I’m also not sure that the right freedom of speech extends to hate speech or the incitement to violence against innocent people. Whether it’s a legal response or a condemnation, shouldn’t it be called out in the strongest terms?
About free speech. The US has robust free speech rights, perhaps the strongest in the world, and I am using that as my benchmark. I don’t know what the laws are in Israel. In the US, hate speech is protected speech, and incitement to violence is defined in the most narrow sense. For example, it is unlawful to say, “Bring your AR-15 to the synagogue at 123 Cherry Lane at 6 pm on Friday night and start firing into the windows.” The violence intended must be directed at a specific target and must be imminent. It would be perfectly legal to say, “Kill all the Jews!” It would also be perfectly legal to condemn the speech.
So yes, it’s appropriate to condemn violent rhetoric. But the way the world is reacting is extreme and isn’t typical for other countries. It just isn’t.
What is Israel supposed to do with its crazy extremists, other than rebuke them? Israel has always had extremist groups, just like every other country. For example, there are neo-Nazi groups in the US. What are we supposed to do about it? Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States, had dinner with a major neo-Nazi. That’s pretty troubling!
So I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. The evidence does not support the charge that Israel isn’t taking care to minimize civilian deaths. And every single one of those deaths is on Hamas. Remember: Hamas broke a ceasefire to start a war that Israel did not seek and did not want. They set up their whole military operation in such a way that it’s impossible for Israel to kill them without killing innocent civilians. Israel has begun scaling down its military operations, but that doesn’t seem to be penetrating the public consciousness.
Hauling Israel before the court is disgusting, sorry. Especially by pro-Putin South Africa. Instead of presenting arguments why, here are two opinion pieces that say it better than I can.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/opinion/israel-hamas-war-genocide.html#:~:text=It's%20obscene%20because%20it%20politicizes,in%20Ukraine%2C%20the%20Holocaust%20itself%3F
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/hamass-useful-idiots-israel-genocide
And I know ‘politically correct’ language is contentious even out of this context. Sometimes activists are so aggressive against people using language that has previously been normal. Sometimes the response to that is anger at not being able to speak the current form of the language, without words being judged or picked apart.
My feeling is that words do make an immense difference to our attitudes and culturally sanctioned actions, even in more nuanced or less obvious ways. And we need to talk about this respectfully, assuming we can all be rational and empathetic even while we’re emotional and even while there are multiple sides to the hurt or concern.
Sometimes (I mean, in general) people need to be less defensive about their words being questioned for impact. Sometimes those doing the questioning need to hear other perspectives, too.
In this case where the anger is valid and the wish for Palestinians to just go away has to do with the terrorism, I don’t at all think the primary issue is defensiveness over being PC.
But that impulsive wish, in itself, can’t be trusted. There is a risk of genocide even if unintentional and even if generally avoided, and I feel that this in itself calls for even higher national introspection. Regardless of how unbalanced much of the international community has been.
Annelise, the world would be a paradise if everyone treated each other with respect and heard each other out. There would be no war and every conflict would be resolved peacefully. Alas, that is not the world we live in. So if people are going to be unfair in their judgment, I will call them out on it.
By the way, it’s not genocide if it’s unintentional.
Actually this is something I’ve been trying to show my primary school aged child lately. We read a memoir about everyday life for a Jewish girl and her in interwar Poland, which just showed a few seemingly small glimpses of racism they experienced, and we also read one about a girl who was one of the original children to integrate a southern American school, including the way the mobs and violence emerged in their town.
When Israelis are racist or make violent statements, the origin of that is very different. The fear is that the effects won’t be dissimilar, even if in the form of avoidable mistakes.
Just to be clear, I’m not defending any racist and violent comments. I think they are reckless and irresponsible and unacceptable. And I think people who make them should be called out on that. I also think that the reaction is way over the top and fails to take into account the trauma from which these words are emanating.
I can hear you on a lot of that. I’m surprised the US hate speech laws are so timid, although I get how dangerous it can be when there are grey areas on free speech, or when the concept is bent.
I’m just not convinced that the Israeli government and society are taking full responsibility and a clear stance on the way words can make way for horrific, avoidable outcomes. I see what you mean about genocide being defined as intentional, and the importance of that. I mean that same impact though, or even just the margins of collatoral damage. Half the buildings in Gaza are damaged or destroyed now, and a quarter of the population is starving, so even if these facts aren’t Israel’s fault there must be no room to let racism against Palestinians slide in conversation or political dialogue.
It does seem a very difficult distinction to hold, even in less heightened times- to push back on unbalanced elements of international scrutiny while also pushing forward for higher caution with culture and accepted conversation.
I think the distinction is only difficult because of the heightened scrutiny Israel faces. If this were any other country, it would not even be in the news. We don’t hear about the comments Ukrainian officials make about Russia, for example. It’s impossible, given what they are going through, that they aren’t saying nasty things about Russians over there. But I wouldn’t know, because nobody knows and no one cares. Of course, the Russian rhetoric on Ukraine (never mind their war crimes) is appalling. Yes, that is reported, but it doesn’t seem to bother people as much. Do you understand why that double standard is so maddening?
[The New York Times] (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/world/middleeast/amichay-eliyahu-israel-minister-nuclear-bomb-gaza.html) reported that Netanyahu fired a defense minister for a genocidal comment. Others, including Yoav Gallant,piled on in condemning the rhetoric. What stronger message can a government send the public, short of rounding up and killing people? Why is the good that Israel does never enough and the bad always too much?
I hadn’t heard about that (though I can’t read the article without subscribing). I’m glad to hear that happened and that it was responded to seriously.
I think we would be talking more about hateful Ukrainian rhetoric if Ukraine were so thoroughly destroying Russia, though.
Dina
“The Toll of the War on Gaza
Here’s the truth: It’s horrific. It’s terrible. There are no two ways about. I pray for an end to the war in which Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas is realized.”
I absolutely agree. Great post.
Do you have an opinion on why hammas would attack Israel knowing they are out manned, out gunned and will lose terribly? Is it because they know most of the media is leftist and will support them? What do you think is the bigger picture/goal?
I think, based on news reports, there seem to be several motivations for this attack. I’m going by memory here, but I seem to remember Hamas leaders who were interviewed on this saying that as Israel moved forward with opening diplomatic ties with various Arab states, the Palestinian cause began to take a back seat to other issues in the Middle East. This was their way of putting it back on the front burner (to mix my metaphors).
Hamas also assumed that this attack would follow the same pattern as previous terror attacks. First the world condemns the attack, then Israel retaliates, and as the civilian death toll mounts, the world forgets about the attack and pressures Israel into a ceasefire. (This is one of the ways in which Hamas’s violations of the laws of warfare have been so effective.)
While Hamas likely expected a fiercer response than usual, due to the severity and scale of their attack, I think they expected Israel to cave to international pressure much sooner. Although they wanted an outcome that would result in mass casualties of their own people (because it makes Israel look bad and elicits international sympathy), I think it’s possible that they didn’t expect the resolve Israel has shown thus far.
It’s also possible that Hamas is truly delusional in believing that they can destroy Israel and take over as a Palestinian state.
People use the term proportionality like it is a rather simple notion. If the good effects out weigh the bad effects, then the war or act of war is proportionate. If the bad effects out weigh the good effects then it’s disproportionate, but this doesn’t tell us anything about the notion of necessity for war and whether the same results have been gotten some other way. It doesn’t tell us anything about the day to day use of proportionality and why it seems that many buildings are being destroyed. How can anyone that is not there in the trenches know anything about that?
I’m not going to second guess Israel if they decided that this war is necessary, personally I believe they should have long ago. But I can call hammas on the carpet for their use of disproportionate force against not only Israel but their own citizens. Slaughtering young people at a concert, kidnapping, raping, torturing, innocent unarmed non combatants indiscriminately is disproportionate use of unnecessary force. Murdering their own citizens fleeing from harms way is a disproportionate use of force. Firing at Israel from rooms with their citizens in it or from rooms next to rooms with their citizens in it, knowing a grenade will kill them is a disproportionate use of force against their own citizens to inflict as much media harm as possible. Ruining their country by robbing and starving them to build underground tunnels just so a few hundred mad men could conduct raids to satisfy their blood lust is a disproportionate use of force. Firing missiles so badly made that 1/3 of them fall on and kill their own citizens.
Where is the like button? 🙂
Dina and Annelise
It was much later than 48 when the idea of an independent Palestinian state came on the table – primarily as a method to obliterate Israel. before that the locals saw themselves as part of Jordan and/or Syria – I hope to post about this – meanwhile it would be worthwhile to watch the “Whose Land” series
I guess that before nationalism really became such a defining part of people’s identities, people had more a cluster of wider and more local identities. They had their ethnicity of origin, their religion, the wider region, the smaller localities. They knew they were part of Palestine, but that was only one layer of identity.
The problem with their claim to Palestine/Israel is that it was already known to be the Jewish ancestral land, and that Jews continued to have connections to it, despite the reasons for largely living elsewhere. Jordan, Lebanon, Syria etc. could become nations in a way that Palestinian Arabs couldn’t, because Israel was known to have this ongoing significance to Jews, and Jews, Muslims and Christians had a clear awareness of the disputed ownership of the land spanning back through the Middle Ages. It couldn’t be nationalised as an Arab nation in the same way as its neighbours could be. I don’t think the whole land could, or can, be given as a Palestinian Arab state.
And yet on the regional level, there was long-term establishment of Arab populations, and it’s on the regional level that displacement occurred. They may have been part of one people with what became Jordan and Syria, but modern Jordan and Syria weren’t the place they all called home, even if some traveled back and forth. To expect Palestinian/Syrian communities who were established in the Israel/Palestine region to just be evicted through land sales, or to stay and accept that their regions should take in many newcomers who would also claim government over them, because of the Jewish ownership and way of life on that territory over a millenium prior, on a regional (not national) level that seems unfair. They would have qualified for self-governance in every sense apart from the Jewish historical and ongoing connection to those regions, which involved being absent (with reason) for so many centuries.
That’s why I think the concept of modern statehood applied to a partial extent for both Jews and the local Arabs. The fact that Arabs didn’t accept this in the form of a two-state solution doesn’t take away the Jews’ claim, and the fact that they felt a pressing urgency to take that claim. The Arabs did miss the chance to take almost half the land, because violent resistance made that impossible. But the way it was done still caused displacement of established communities when their tenancies were being sold or given collectively, and they feared that happening further throughout the land; a lot of them didn’t think of the regions that are now part of Jordan or Syria as their home communities, which they felt Jews had mostly left to them for many centuries.
The religious claim to the land being Jewish land to govern forever is separate from the secular, internationally accepted boundaries of a foundation in the development of modern nationalism, so that’s why I’m not looking through that lens.
Also I don’t have access to the full article, but the first page of this looks interesting- suggesting there may be evidence for both a broader Islamic identity, and also identity that corresponds more with the ancient/modern labels, in the 17th century.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/164341
“Little-used sources from the 17th and 18th centuries indicate some remarkable traces of awareness of territorial consciousness that deserve closer scrutiny. The main source in question is a two-volume fatwa (legal opinion) composed by the Palestin- ian Mufti Khayr al-Din al-Ramli (1585-1670),’ which on many occasions mentions the concepts Filastin, biladuna (our country), al-Shām (Syria), Misr (Egypt), and di- yãr (country), in senses that go far beyond ‘mere’ objective geography. While I am fully aware that some may claim that such territorial concepts may simply refer to one’s native home, place of birth, a close reading of al-Ramli may suggest that there is something more to it, and that we are in fact looking at something that can only be called embryonic territorial awareness, though the reference is to social awareness
rather than to a political one.”
This map is apparently the sheikhdom of Zahir al-Umar to the extend it was united in 1774- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zahir_al-Umar_maximum_extent_map.svg
Not to say that their denial of any ongoingJewish claims to the land were legitimate; just to see on this map that there was seemingly some wider unification in the area.
Okay, thank you!