Balanced, respectful and interesting. Thank you for contributing. The US is lucky to have you as a citizen.
It is interesting that you mentioned North Korea toward the end of your essay, as that was in my mind as I read along. I feel terrible for the innocent people in Gaza, essentially held hostage by a terrorist organization and conscripted into the Hamas campaign against Israel. As in many wars, it is the civilian population that pays the greatest price.
All the more reason to support resistance movements against totalitarian-style governments in Iran, North Korea, Gaza and elsewhere.
"I feel terrible for the innocent people in Gaza, essentially held hostage by a terrorist organization"
Not trying make a pedantic point but I feel like the Gaza citizens are in a worse situation than "held hostage". Sinwar's strategic goal is to increase civilian deaths. These people are being murdered by their own government.
I liked the article but would have loved one written by someone who had spent the last year in Gaza.
One question the essay doesn’t really answer— how has Hamas held on to power? Are there rival groups who would like to replace it? Why haven’t they killed the Hamas cadres and seized power? If I were a young man is Gaza, I would be very angry, and killing Hamas operatives would be a more productive outlet for my rage than killing Israelis.
Have some sympathy for those living under a totalitarian regime. Choosing to fight Hamas would almost certainly result in your death, and likely the death of your entire family. We should encourage those who do so, but I understand the human impulse to survive rather than take up arms against your oppressor.
Seeking “consistency” in foreign policy is generally silly when there is huge diversity of circumstances.
For the French, resistance made much more sense in June of 1944 than July of 1940.
Nor have I ever said Ukraine should capitulate. I have said it should negotiate. At least a third of Ukrainians agree with me. In any event, the odds Ukraine will ever exercise sovereignty over all of Donetsk and Luhansk are slim, and few of the hawks on this sub stack are willing to admit that.
As has been repeatedly pointed out to you, Ukraine negotiated with Russia continuously for 8 straight years, after Russia initially seized 14% of Ukrainian territory. They were brokered by France and Germany. How did those negotiations work out? Russia ended them right before invading the second time
Russia has seized about 270 square miles of Donetsk this year- for perspective, they'd need to seize 4000 square miles to get all of Donetsk. They're also by all accounts taking over 1000 casualties a day, because eventually mass human wave attacks runs out of, you know, humans. The odds Russia will ever exercise sovereignty over all of Donetsk and Luhansk are slim, so they should give up now
What you never acknowledge is that negotiation requires a counter-party willing to negotiate. In both conflicts, Israel/Palestinian and Ukraine/Russia, there is an absence of a counter-party to negotiate with can provide believable commitments. So the call for negotiation in that context equates to capitulation.
Less than 2% of the French people ever "resisted", and it's worth remembering that even those few were receiving extensive outside help and were pretty sure that massive Allied armies would eventually arrive on their shores --- motivated by their own interests as much as any desire to help the French.
None of that aid, or hope, or external self interest did exist or does exist for Gaza. For it to have any parallel you would have to imagine an Israeli government that saw successful governance and Gazan self-determination as consistent with its own interests. The Israeli government took just about exactly the opposite approach.
'Less than 2% of the French people ever "resisted"'
My understanding is that polls taken of the French population immediately after the war revealed that 100% of the French people were part of the Resistance.
We admire people who resist a terrible regime because it's a brave, scary, and *uncommon* thing to do. Everyone, myself included, likes to believe that they'll find the courage to take a stand and risk everything, including the lives of their children, if or when the time comes, but history shows that most people can't bring themselves to really face the consequences of that kind of act.
What a ridiculously callous thing to say from the warmth and comfort of your safe, functioning society. I, too, admire you for your bravery - you might have sprained a wrist typing out that comment, after all.
I feel the same when qualms about taking Russian deserters come up, claiming that they should instead stand and fight, often from comfortable westerners who've never even seen a gun outside of a tutting NYTimes article. A common trait among sensible, socialable people is that they just want to live and be left alone. Such folks are a credit to any society, but also exactly the last sort of person who'd pick up a bloody flag and continue a hopeless fight. Responding "well maybe they should" just feels so confusing to me.
I think the answer is simple, it’s a military dictatorship. The rival groups, like PIJ, are all even more violent, but ultimately have the same goals. Recall that Hamas violently purged fatah members from Gaza shortly after takeover.
This is the part of the essay that doesn’t make sense to me. The rest of the essay I appreciate. At the end, there is this assertion, unsupported by evidence, that the Gazans will throw off Hamas. How? Hamas and Sinwar in particular are very good at killing Gazans.
Agreed, James. I dearly pray he's right and he certainly speaks from an experience basis that none of us shares. But I fear that hope and desire may be triumphing over analysis here.
I don't know if there's much point in writing an article that says Palestine is doomed to another century of misery. You start with a vision, even if you have nothing else.
The thesis of the piece is that they should do so, and its aim is to encourage Palestinians and their allies to focus on doing so. Accordingly, it is trying to persuade them that this is a good idea as well as a noble expression of Palestinian virtues and a path to future glory. It would be weird if it took a pessimistic tone (however justified that pessimism may be).
Churchill didn’t say “well we COULD fight the on the beaches, although of course at that point they must have established air superiority and we would certainly be slaughtered, and in fact Britain would likely surrender and install a friendly collaborator government just like France” for good reasons!
Yes, but Churchill had an army and a government and economic levers he could pull. I really doubt this essay was aimed at Gazans, especially since it is in English in Slow Boring. The lack of reality and ridiculously optimistic dreaming by many actors on I/P issues is one of the larger problems preventing solutions.
That's not really the way it works in war when your fear and hatred are focused on the people attacking you. The same thing could be asked of Israel: given Bibi's unprecedented combination of failures and continuing betrayal of the national interest, why hasn't there been a more sustained popular effort* to force him to resign, including a general strike?
* Note that this could also include negotiations, like offering to drop all charges against him if he retires from politics.
Honestly I’ve wondered that myself. If I were Israeli I’d be going to anti-Bibi protests at every opportunity for the last 2 years. My best answer is that Israelis are worried about the possibility that there’s a disruptive, toxic election and he somehow retains power.
The parallels with Trump are really innumerable (and therefore scary for America; I guess Israel hasn’t actually collapsed yet, so we can hope that whoever takes advantage of Trump’s weakness doesn’t do so catastrophically.)
This is one of the things that makes the idea that Israel engages in a dehumanization campaign against Palestinians a little absurd to me as a complaint. Nearly all the important Palestinian organizations engage in dehumanizing Palestinians and it's a core part of the identity their advocates present to the world!
It makes sense for many of them to do this, being at least descended from militarized groups which need that for military discipline at a minimum. But it does have pernicious effects like any campaign to present the people as barbarous just quoting their leadership and advocates.
It is very sad that people are forced to work for Hamas. But are they really "innocent" any more? Are you still a "civilian" if you are working for a terrorist organization? By this logic, every Nazi soldier was an innocent civilian.
If I thought the United States was an evil force in the world, then I would feel complicit, like I was morally obligated to leave, or to fight against it.
However, I think the United States is a force for good in the world. So "complicit" isn't the right word, because it has a negative connotation. Instead, I feel a sense of pride, to be an American citizen.
Given the article asserts, without evidence, that "the people of Gaza are done with Hamas and want nothing to do with Islamism, terrorism, or future suicidal adventurism":
Below is a Palestinian-run poll finding 35% support for Hamas and 39% support for the 7/10 attacks in Gaza. The IDF has accused Hamas of messing with this pollster's methodology but itself puts support for 7/10 in Gaza at over 30%.
The original writer also mentioned that "an awakening by many Palestinians" is needed to reach this peaceful goal. Recent polls still state that armed struggle has a majority support. Regardless of whether Gazans support Hamas or not, if they just want another armed struggle alternative it doesn't seem to me like they're abandoning terrorism, right?
I’m worried about people getting out over their skis. The PCPSR has been the pre-eminent source for polling Palestinians for decades, presumably not by accident. Moreover the articles describing the document the IDF found are extremely light on details. For example: how, in a randomized telephone poll, does Hamas manage to get in between the pollster and the respondents? It’s worth noting that Shikaki, the leader of the PCPSR, is adamant that his results are of high quality.
I would really, really like to believe that Fuad and the IDF (and this Zogby outfit that I’ve never heard of before) are right. It would mean that there is hope for peace with Gaza next door (because frankly I don’t see how there can be peace with a society that, having gone through what they’ve just gone through, still supports the 10/7 massacre.) But this is one of those situations where Matt’s hot take that “getting the empirical facts right matters quite a bit” is relevant.
7% for Hamas only, 17% for a Hamas-Fateh unity government. As several other people on this thread have written, the way violence works, 24% support for violence is more than enough for a conflict to persist. (Applies on the Israeli side too, it doesn't take that many settlers terrorising Palestinians in the West Bank to commit the entire country to the conflict that emanates from that.)
I think the belief that this conflict emanates from settler violence is pernicious. I have a hard time believing that Hizballah would be incapacitated if settler violence stopped.
I didn't mean to imply that. But they still have an impact far disproportionate to their numbers, for the reason Dave Coffin describes below. If ever there is peace between Israel and the Palestinians I worry these extremists would try to blow it up and Israel will have to exert significant effort to prevent them from doing so. (As will the Palestinians with their own dead-enders).
Agreed. It would be a great thing for Israelis, Palestinians, and the world if the residents of Gaza dedicated themselves to peaceful development. It would be a miracle. Unfortunately, I’m not holding my breath.
And the tragedy is that even if 90% of Gazans wanted peaceful development, if 10% of the strip is comprised of terrorists and people aiding terrorists, it’s still a threat that Israel will have to respond to in ways that harm the 90%.
I feel like this is key. It's not sufficient for most Gazans to not be terrorists. There have to be enough Gazans willing and able to exert forceful control over the Gazans who are terrorists to secure a peaceful relationship with their neighbor. If the non-terrorist Gazans can't or won't prevent Hamas from taking them to war with Israel then they all suffer because that's a war Israel will win every time..
This is the story in all the relevant cases: in Gaza, in Iran, and most importantly in Lebanon. Majority of Lebanese don’t support Hizballah; but the vast majority of Lebanese are too traumatized from decades of civil war and don’t want to be the ones to deal with Hizballah.
Well, if they don’t, Israel has no choice but to deal with Hizballah themselves.
This is a good essay, but it kind of all hangs on a core assumption that seems barely plausible to me let alone likely:
"After this war, the extent of the destruction and damage that Gazans have experienced means that they will never again, under any circumstances, allow a rogue terror organization to hold them hostage in the name of fighting Israel"
This is simply an assertion without evidence. If there wasn't the will/capacity to depose Hamas a year ago how are Gazans supposed to suppress the islamist death cult now? Where are these internal Gazan anti-Hamas fighters going to come from? How are they going to arm themselves? How are they not simply going to get themselves killed, unless the assumption is that Israel has really truly wiped out Hamas for them?
I take it that this is like the statement in wedding vows that we will be together till death do us part. It’s not based on evidence about similar situations in the past - it’s a wishful statement of commitment that is appropriate for the occasion.
Why is it a barely plausible assumption? Losing a catastrophic war has enormous consequences for all kinds of human polities. That's often why they're so bitterly fought until exhaustion; the stakes of losing are very high for incumbent political leaders.
Your point is well argued, and I don't really think I have any substantive disagreements with it. I would just note that demographics might provide some opportunity for change. The author mentioned at one point in the essay that half of population of Gaza is very young. If this is the first time they have witnessed destruction of this scale brought on by the atrocities committed by Hamas, maybe that at least inspires a will to move beyond Hamas. I agree that that "will" may lack a "way" for the time being.
They’ve started many wars and lost all of them. The nakba was a war that they started and lost (literally - the disaster referred to Arabs losing to Jews, not Palestinian displacement).
The critical difference here is the leaders of The Arab League were on their side back then, and now it's an embarrassment to all of them while they quietly ask Israel to crush these political movements. That is a very important context to why Israel has been able to prosecute such a bloody war; Arab country *leaders* in the region are on better terms with them than ever in history.
For the record, I don't particularly think that this was a uniquely "right" decision — we could have gone in other directions. But the game here is we run one piece per day and I thought this was a good one that the world and our readers would benefit from.
Disagree. Today is the correct day to have these conversations. And nothing the author said was disrespectful to the victims of October 7th.. in fact he was incredibly sympathetic.
I give the author a lot of credit - 99.9% of people with his background would have nothing but hate and contempt for Israelis. That being said, while he certainly isn't carrying water for Hamas I found this particular section to be questionable:
"It was Friday night, October 6, in San Francisco, when I saw the attacks unfold; I was devastated and extremely concerned with what I knew was about to happen. I immediately realized the catastrophe that would be unleashed upon the people of Gaza, and that the Strip’s residents, including my immediate and extended family members, would suffer unprecedented consequences due to Hamas’s narrow and nefarious calculus."
This is a piece that ran on 10/7 and the author is silent about the atrocities that happened to Israelis. He easily could've said "I was devastated about what happened to the innocent Israelis...." but simply chose not to put his empathy for those affected by 10/7 on paper.
I’m fine with it because I’ve read enough of Fuad’s writing and posting to know that he has spoken out about Hamas’ barbarity.
Vibe I get is that this piece is actually aimed at Palestinians. The bona fides of “Israel is fighting a war of revenge” etc. etc. seem to be there to provide cover for “time to recognize Israel’s legitimacy”.
Why do you think it was the right decision? I disagree, personally (though I love the piece itself, just not the context).
Jews are so often told that grieving their loved ones is somehow *wrong*. E.g. that article in the Guardian called "How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war".
Almost everyone in Israel knows someone who lost a loved one to a depraved invasion and terror attack, and has been living in trauma since then. I think it's odd not to give space for that grief, whatever else you think.
Having one article describe the situation Gazans currently face and the historical context they're in is not a denail of the right of Israelis to grive their loved ones in any reasonable sense.
I don't think this article is denying that at all. I was referring to the choice to run this piece today specifically, as well as the parent comment saying it's the "correct choice", which seems to imply (in my mind) that it would *incorrect* to run an article focusing on the tragedy to Israelis.
I think that Jews have felt since October 7 that they are constantly “All Lives Mattered”.
People can’t talk about antisemitism without talking about Islamophobia in the same sentence. People can’t commemorate October 7 victims without turning the attention towards Gaza.
Attention to both issues is important. But we shouldn’t not crowd out attention to Jewish issues, security and suffering, especially in this time.
Because 10x+ as many Palestinians have died in the last year than Israelis, and the non-death toll has been even more lopsided. It's weird for people outside of Israeli (which is reasonably going to care a lot more about their citizens than Palestinians) to specifically call out the equivalent of "Israeli Lives Matter" given those numbers.
More Afghanis died in the Afghanistan War than on Sept 11. Still on Sept 11, we commemorate the people who lost their lives in the Twin Towers and in the planes, not the people who were hurt in the war fought with the government who was harboring the terrorists who committed that attack.
And the reason more Palestinians have died in the last year than Israelis, despite the fact that Palestinian militants target Israeli civilians while Israeli soldiers do not target Palestinian ones is due to the policy decisions of the Gazan government, which put civilians in harms way and of the Israeli government, which protect civilians.
You are commenting on an article about suffering in Gaza to complain that suffering in Israel isn't highlighted enough - that is like the definition of All-Lives-Mattering something.
I agree with you on the insistence of pairing antisemitism with Islamophobia, but 40x as many Palestinians have died in response to 10/7. Gaza has been totally flattened. Matt has been clear that he thinks a 1SS of any kind is a perverse fantasy. He has the standing to grieve for all the lives lost.
Also, on any day, it's refreshing to hear a Palestinian voice that recounts the terrible suffering he's witnessed, and even endured himself, while not finishing with "and that's why Israel should be wiped off the map." If he can advocate for 2S, surely everyone else can.
How in God's name does a two-state solution work at this point? Gaza is nearly leveled, the West Bank is carved up by settlements, and the two pieces of a hypothetical Palestinian state are separated by Israel and governed by two different entities that hate each other. The Israeli government is opposed to the idea and they hold all the cards - most Arab neighbors want to ally with Israel, they're a nuclear weapons state, Iran's rocket attacks, both direct and via proxies, seem ineffective, and Palestinians are in no state to mount a Third Intifada, which wouldn't have any chance of success even if it were launched.
Israel is the winner in its conflict with the Palestinians. That victory may turn out to be Pyrrhic economically, or culturally, or diplomatically, but the Israeli state isn't going anywhere and it won't allow a Palestinian state.
I don’t think it would have been *incorrect*, but while the October 7th attacks were bad for Israeli civilians, they were even worse for Gazans. The Israeli perspective is well-represented in mainstream media, but the Gazans perspective is not (there are many Palestinian-sympathetic pieces in left-wing media, but that is not the same. In particular, they don’t have a takeaway remotely similar to the takeaway of this article).
If Matt had published an Israeli piece today, and person A had said “this was the correct choice,” and person B said “this denies the right of Palestinians to grieve their loved ones,” would you have agreed with person B?
The Israeli response to October 7 and the resulting damage in Gaza didn't start till well after October 7. You could choose another date to symbolically commemorate the hardship of Gazans in this war. October 7 is the anniversary of one of the largest terror attacks in history targeting Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis.
I don't see how this is even remotely controversial. There's 364 other days in the year in which the plight of Gazans can and should be written about. For example, the anniversary of Israel's incursion into Gaza is in a few weeks - it would be just as meaningful to write about the plight of Gazans on that day.
At least 30% of Gazans and 70% of Palestinians in the West Bank disagree with you and think that the October 7 attacks were good for them, or at least were worth the cost.
You and I may disagree, but this is what polling suggests. You can’t just explain that away. They are genuine in believing this.
30% is disturbingly high if accurate, but I don’t see how this contradicts my point - the majority of Gazans do *not* think October 7 worked well for them, and in material terms they have suffered the most
It feels like you're making Brian's point: if "[ultimately] worse for Gazans" is a sound justification, then we should mark September 11th by discussing the deaths of Afghanis, and December 7th by discussing the deaths at Hiroshima. I suppose we have done this with Columbus Day by shifting focus away from the explorer/invaders and onto indigenous peoples, but I think it's fair to argue that one year is too soon to make that switch, and that waiting a day would have been more respectful.
I've seen a few people referencing a parent comment saying this was the correct choice, but I'm not seeing anything. Can you point out what you're referencing there? I'm wondering if something was deleted that I logged on too late to see.
Thanks! I figured that couldn't be the one because the top reply to that statement (with many more likes) is MY saying that he didn't think this was a uniquely correct decision, just one of many plausible ones that are acceptable. The fact that a commenter on here thought it was THE right decision isn't all that relevant to me, especially given all the other comments on here arguing the opposite.
I am entirely sympathetic to Israel, and could only be described as having hawkish views. But I fail to see how running this article today is disrespectful or inappropriate.
Yeah, it's just the thing where partisans to the IP conflict are always trying to delegitimize the suffering* of the "other side" ("They started it!" etc) while centering the suffering of "their side." It's a common tactic that is both morally obtuse and pretty annoying but quite common.
Personally I think the author's perspective is often overlooked and so I think it's good Matt had it published.
*For an opposite example see the ridiculous and offensive attempts to claim their wasn't any sexual violence on 10/7.
Imagine it is Sept 11, 2002. Do you highlight the voices of families grieving the loss of their family members on 9/11 and honor the first responders? Or do you highlight the Saudi or Afghani perspective, even a relatively moderate one? Try to put yourself in that position and maybe you’ll try to understand.
I don't think that is an accurate description of his reaction as conveyed in this piece. At least my read on his statement was that he had two reactions:
1) Devastated
2) Concerned about what would happen next
My assumption was 'devastated about the fact of the attack' and 'concerned about what would happen next in Gaza.' Which, honestly, was my reaction too. A tragedy that was going to unleash further tragedies...
"It was Friday night, October 6, in San Francisco, when I saw the attacks unfold; I was devastated and extremely concerned with what I knew was about to happen. I immediately realized the catastrophe that would be unleashed upon the people of Gaza, and that the Strip’s residents, including my immediate and extended family members, would suffer unprecedented consequences due to Hamas’s narrow and nefarious calculus."
Not one word about the scores of innocent people murdered that day.
I guess I read this a bit more as the piece trying to reach people who are more sympathetic to the Palestinian side. The default American (and liberal, and American Jewish) position is, "sure, two states, please everyone stop killing each other." So there's nothing particularly challenging or interesting about a liberal/Jewish/American saying that to other liberals/Jews/Americans.
A *Palestinian* speaking to Palestinians/American leftists about the reality of Israel's existence is interesting and challenging. And it needs to start by emphasizing to Palestinians and leftists that Hamas assessed the risk of tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties, and found it acceptable. It wasn't an act of plucky resistance, but a massive betrayal of the people they are charged with protecting.
Alkhatib doesn’t represent the “Palestinian” side, or at least a common perspective on the Palestinian side. Even though he is Palestinian, his perspective that Palestinians should accept the Jewish state and move on and focus on building next to it is extremely rare in Palestinian society. It takes Alkhatib a lot of courage to take his position in Palestinian society, where the overall ethos is that the establishment of a Jewish state is the biggest injustice that can only be rectified when it is undone.
I think the piece is about how Palestinian civilians are the primary victims of Hamas’s appalling attack on October 7 is well observed, and kind of lost in the “which team are you in” messaging from both sides.
As I’ve noted in another comment, I don’t have such a problem with this choice simply because SlowBoring doesn’t need to be everything for everyone. But you have to understand that the efforts to brush Israeli and Jewish suffering under the rug are extremely pernicious and have substantial real world consequences.
To wit: the commonplace that “Israel is initiating war against Lebanon” when Lebanon (via Hizballah) has been shelling civilians in northern Israel for a year. This stuff just doesn’t fly unless every opportunity to recognize the threats and pain Israelis undergo gets overshadowed with “well what about the Palestinians, so many more of them have died”.
This is not, however, an effort to brush Jewish suffering under the rug (which efforts we agree are bad). Indeed it acknowledges it many times.
It feels like you are saying “you are right this article is good, but unrelated bad things exist and are bad—sometimes involving Lebanon”, so there must be a part of your argument I am not understanding.
This is not true. Gazans have surely suffered, largely because of policy decisions of their own government (using civilian infrastructure for military purposes, creating tunnels for militants but no civilian shelters).
However, Israelis have also suffered immensely. It’s not a competition but if you don’t recognize that Israelis have suffered after October 7 you don’t understand the conflict. And the extent to which they’ve continued normal life is due to policy decisions of their government (building bomb shelters, missile defenses, and separating military and civilian infrastructure) They have been displaced, murdered, raped, rocketed and exploded by drone. They lost their sons and daughters who are doing their military service and miluim (reserves). They’ve faced mass shootings and rocket attacks.
Certainly, they have suffered. But the death toll is at least 40 to 1, Gaza is now a pile of rubble, and essentially the entire population is displaced and on the brink of famine. The order of magnitude is not remotely the same.
This is largely due to intentional policy decisions of Gaza’s government. I explain that in the comment above.
They received billions in aid that could have been used to create bomb shelters for civilians and to create a defensive military infrastructure separate from civilian life. Instead they chose to build tunnels that civilians are barred from so that militants operate under civilians. They chose to use schools, mosques and apartment buildings for military operations, making them legitimate military targets under international law.
These are choices that Gaza’s government made. And they were not inevitable.
By the same measure, Israeli's have also suffered largely because of the policy decisions of their own government (directly supporting Hamas for decades, undermining the peace process, engaging in a brutal totalitarian occupation of the Palestinian Territories, etc.)
Israel has killed 100X more Palestinians in the last year than vice versa. It is entirely appropriate to focus on mass murder taking place in Gaza today
It's not 100X more. Current estimates are around 40k dead, with at least some fraction of these actual militants - Israel estimates around 15k I believe.
In any case, "mass murder" is not taking place in Gaza today. The situation is awful and many innocent Gazans have died, but the death toll is relatively small compared to the start of the war, and many of those deaths happen as part of armed combat between Hamas militants and the IDF.
Unless you call *all* warfare as mass-murder, I believe it is disingenuous to label it as such in this case. The true situation is horrible enough without saying untrue things.
You linked to an article about a study that is *estimating* the *eventual* death toll, via indirect deaths (e.g. diseases from being in a war zone). It's not peer reviewed, and has been criticized a lot. (Though worth saying that some people do back up the estimate.)
The official death count, as reported by Hamas themselves (via Gaza's Health Ministry, which they run) is 42k.
So yes, if you take one extremely outlier article talking about an estimate of what the death toll *might* be, instead of looking at actual facts on the ground, you get a figure that is almost 5x higher than anyone else claims. I'm not sure why you think that's a good source to rely on.
I have definitely sometimes seen a "well, what about [X]" / "that's not what matters right now" / "think about how this could be weaponized" view about *personal* expressions of grief in progressive spaces. I agree that is really stupid and cruel. But I think that gets unfairly conflated with any sort of critical discussion of how grief and trauma can get mobilized in a *political* context, and I definitely don't think that's the kind of discussion we should rule as out of bounds (for the same reason I don't support "identitarian deference" norms more broadly).
As a Jew I'm certainly biased but how was this the right decision? There's 364 other days in the year in which the Gazan perspective could and should be written about - the Israelis should have this one to themselves.
I'm a huge fan of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. He's been one of the clearest voices of sanity on this issue this whole year, and I would love nothing more than to replace any and all leaders in the Middle East (very much including Israel's so-called "leaders") with him.
This article is no exception.
I do think it was a deliberate decision to run this piece today, which I can't say I care for. October 7th is the anniversary of the brutal attack on Israel. I really think space should be given, today of all days, to let Israelis grieve. The tragedy of the hostages is ongoing; so is the much bigger-in-scale tragedy of Gazans. And that should absolutely be talked about. But so should the pain and trauma that Israelis went through, and are still going through. And I think today it would be appropriate to focus on that.
And truly today is two things. It's the anniversary of an awful event — painful for the victims on their families, painful for Israelis and the global Jewish community more broadly — which deserves to be commemorated on its own terms. And it is also I think an opportunity to take stock of a year of response and what it has and hasn't achieved and what might happen in the year to come. We could reasonably have gone in either direction, but I thought this was a very good article and like you I've enjoyed a lot of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib's work and wanted for a while to work with him on something so this is what came together and I think it's an important perspective.
I'll stop reading the comments here and respond. As an admirer and subscriber from day one, it pains me that you chose today, October 7, to publish this otherwise excellent essay. More than one thing can be true: that Ahmed Fouad Alkhatibi's work should be published and promoted by you; and that today was absolutely not the right day. The insensitivity is beyond anything I could have imagined. You erred. You offended. I find your explanation unconvincing and even hurtful.
Look, I feel differently about whether today was the right time for this piece. Both because of what I said before, and also, tactically, because I really do love Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib's work and think this is a great article, and it should be published on a day in which it can be judged on its own merits, and not be "controversial".
But, y'know, it's ok to agree to disagree on this. I really *am* glad that this article was published.
I get that you can’t be everything for everyone. And consequently I don’t have such a problem with the choice as Edan does. But man, it’s hard out there for Jews and Israelis. Surely you’ve seen the Naomi Klein one about “weaponizing Israeli trauma” or whatever. I wish antisemites didn’t put us in this position where the decision to run this article from Fuad (I’m a fan of his as well by the way) can feel like a slap in the face.
Cosign with Matt's editorial choice. It's an error to construe what success over the evil of 10/7 will look like primarily by a metric of giving sufficient space to grieve. In fact, a successful reconciling by Arabs in Gaza with the perpetual and suicidal race war for land sought by Arab nationalist political forces like Hamas and Hezbollah *is probably going to sound less sensitive* than this piece being published today. Here's Konrad Adenuaer in 1965, after his long political career rebuilding the West German economy and people:
"We had wronged the Jews so much, we had committed such crimes against them, that they had to be atoned for somehow, or made right, if we were to regain any standing at all among the peoples of the earth. And further: The power of the Jews even today, especially in America, should not be underestimated. And therefore I have very thoughtfully and very consciously - and this has always been my opinion - put all my strength into it, as best I could, to bring about a reconciliation between the Jewish people and the German people."
Notice the two-decade conservative leader of West Germany is referring to "The power of the Jews even today" in a way that would obviously make any American (or Jew) uncomfortable with this kind of talk on public television in 1965. It's *much more morally outrageous* for a German leader two decades from the Holocaust to offer this passing sentence about Jews than merely letting a writer discuss the defeat of Hamas in terms of Gaza one year from 10/7.
And yet, if we had to pick a success story for closing up the horrors of Nazism and its support among the German people, who even in defeat often told surveys it was a good intention that ended badly, it's probably men who talk and act like Konrad Adenauer. Stiff and measured, not with warmth, but with the stoic reserve that comes from witnessing and losing such a terrible war. Good on Matt for running with this perspective. If we want Gaza reformed after 10/7 and this war, it will require a stiff upper lip for this kind of argument at any time it is worth discussing the war.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is as knowledgable as anyone about the problems that remain towards promoting peace, security, and economic opportunity in the region. But clearly believes it is important and possible to imagine a path forward, even if that path seems completely impossible at the moment.
It won't be next year. But I think it's important to be constructive and optimistic when possible.
That's a good and insightful line but it has made me wonder whether the only response is to throw up one's hands. Nobody can *make* the parties want different things of course, but maybe there are things that others could do to at least nudge the parties in the right direction. For example on the Palestinian side I would hypothesize that two reasons why so many people are resigned to Hamas' worldview is that (1) they don't think resistance would have any chance of success, (2) they don't think a Hamas-less world would be any nicer of a place for them to live. And those two points seem pretty accurate as it currently stands. Is there any way of changing those realities and credibly convincing people of same?
There's a lot I like here, but when he gets into population transfer, Alkhatib makes the error that so many people do when discussing politics of assuming that whatever the most extreme people in a coalition want to do is what the coalition wants to do.
Think of all the righties who say American liberals want to abolish the police, based on the fact that some very extreme parts of our coalition talk openly of it. And they do. They even published an op-ed in the New York Times on it. They ran experiments in cities like Seattle with autonomous zones with no policing! If one is trying to mislead right leaning people that liberals are dangerous and want to abolish the police, the evidence is there.
Except, it's actually BS. Liberals do not want to abolish the police. Some extremists on the Left do, and they attained some power in 2020 and were able to carry out small steps that might have pointed in that direction, and were given some media platforms to say it. But there was a 0% chance that we were ever going to abolish the police and there is still a 0% chance. Supporters of policing have control of the policy tiller on a national level and always have.
Well, that's the actual truth about deporting Palestinians. Yes, the Israeli settler right fantasizes openly about doing it. There are ministers and right wing intellectuals who love musing about it. And in the wake of 10/7 some of them got to publicly fantasize that this was the policy.
But this was never happening and it didn't happen, because in actuality the people who run government policy pay lip service to the crazies (as you have to do) but absolutely understand the practical and moral implications of such a policy. Netanyahu, as bad as he is, did not implement any policies to deport Palestinians en masse. He had nowhere to deport them to and did not even try to, for instance, convince Egypt to take them. He knew the score and has always known the score.
I get WHY partisans do this (EVERY partisan fears the worst from the other side; that's part of how polarization works) but it's a terrible intellectual habit and you have to resist it. "What are my opponents actually capable of and what does the mainstream of their coalition believe?" are crucial questions if you want to strategize your side's next move. And Alkhatib fails that test on the population transfer stuff.
My sense from watching and trying to interpret Netanyahu over the years is that he in fact _does_ want to completely dispel the Palestinians and take 100% of the territory; he just has the luxury of time because of Israel’s comparative wealth and strength. Palestinians and neighbouring Arabs commit the crucial fault (in my view) of denying the right of Israel to exist (or qualifying this right to such an extent as to be meaningless) but a sad realisation for me has been the extent to which significant shares of the Israeli population - and its leadership - are basically also pursuing maximalist territorial aims. Just more slowly. The long game seems to me to be to immiserate the Palestinians for long enough that a window opens when they become Egypt or Jordan’s problem (as nearly happened earlier, mentioned in the essay). Do you really think that if Egypt had opened its doors that Bibi would be letting Palestinians back into the entirety of Gaza any time?
Or am I wrong? (Genuine question, as I’m not an expert. I’m just sharing my honest reactions having watched this issue simmer since I began paying attention to the world at all.)
That's a complete misreading of Netanyahu- who, to be clear, is an extremely bad actor. He actually gave away land to the Palestinians in the Hebron agreement in the 1990's. Why? Because Bibi cares about one thing-- Bibi. If the political climate favors concessions to the Palestinians, he makes them. If it favors a hard line, he takes it. If it gives him room to operate, he does whatever is best for him and to keep him away from the very serious legal charges he faces.
At any rate, the best way to look at the settlement movement is to understand what it is and what it is not. What it is, is an illegal land grab that puts facts on the ground and makes peace harder to achieve. But what it is not is a coherent strategy that gets Israel to deportation of the Palestinians. Indeed, that's a big reason there's so much illegal settler violence; the government is NOT backing the settlers' claims that the Palestinians should leave, but is also not preventing the settlers from breaking Israeli law to build new outposts. Thus, the settlers shoot at Palestinians themselves. Which is a terrible situation and, to be clear, a major international human rights violation by Israel.
But the other thing to understand about settlements is the focus on Gaza, support for Hamas, support for terrorism, and maximalism for 1948 all serve the settlers' aims. A Palestinian movement that just went for 2 states, domestically and internationally, and renounced violence against Israel, would put the settlers in a very bad position (just as the settlers in the 1990's were in a bad position-- indeed, in Gaza, some settlements were even uprooted). A Palestinian movement that focuses on Gaza and relitigating 1948 is great for the settlers though; they can continue violating Israeli and international law and the Palestinian movement ignores them because they are too busy fantasizing about eliminating the colonialist ethno-state and achieving final liberation for the Palestinian people, and driving the infidel Jews out.
So in sum:
1. Population transfer isn't happening and the people who are saying it is are being intellectually dishonest about it.
2. Expansion of settlements IS happening and is being aided both by Netanyahu and the "one state" crowd on the Palestinian side who don't want to focus on the West Bank because they don't want a 2 state solution.
The short answer is that this completely misunderstands Bibi and his sales pitch.
Bibi doesn’t really care about anything anymore. He just wants to keep himself in the top seat.
As for his sales pitch, the nickname he appropriated for himself was “Mr. Security”. The 20-25% of Israelis who reliably vote for Likud do so because they don’t trust squishy leftists, who think making concessions to Palestinians will get them to stop with the terrorism, to be maximally hawkish when it comes to preserving Israeli security.
This argument has fallen apart post 10/7 for obvious reasons, and we’ll see what new sales pitch Netanyahu comes up with. But the territorial maximalism that you’re seeing is mostly restricted to the fringe right wing parties that Likud partners with; Likud voters themselves don’t really care about settlements except insofar as they (allegedly) prevent Palestinian terror.
It may not be explicit in these findings, but it's hard to see it not implied. And although it's not a clear majority, it's a lot more serious than "abolish the police" ever was.
"The only way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is through the complete annexation of PA territories to Israel. Agree 32%
The Gaza strip should be resettled by Jewish settlers? Agree 42%"
(Agam Labs, May 2024)
I would also point you to a recent Ezra Klein podcast where the resident jourbalist had a pretty good description of voluntary emigration as an explicit policy.
I don't think ethnic cleansing *is* really implied in the question, though.
Annexation does not equal ethnic cleansing. Indeed, one of the reasons why Israel annexed the Golan and East Jerusalem is that it was willing to take on the inhabitants as potential citizens, and why it never bothered with the Sinai, Gaza, or the West Bank is because it is not willing to take on all those people as potential citizens. A lot of annexationists *may* want to expel the Palestinians as part 2, but for a lot of people, baked into annexationism is "and that means the Palestinians are still there too" which means either citizenship or some sort of apartheid.
Nor does resettling the Gaza strip imply ethnic cleansing. There were Israeli settlement in Gaza before and they didn't require ethnic cleansing. Settlers have this belief (which I think is totally cuckoo but is clearly the product of motivated reasoning) that the presence of civilian settlements acts as a barrier between Palestinian terror groups and Israel proper.
Annexation is the exact *opposite* of ethnic cleansing in this concept. It is in fact closer to what people mean when they talk about a "one state solution" - Israel making all Palestinians equal citizens. (I'm talking about the people saying this in good faith.)
In the context of Israel, annexation would not automatically be understood to give Palestinians rights. I can imagine people answering this survey and assuming that Israel annexes the land but the people remain non-citizens. But it *doesn't* necessarily imply population transfer.
I am sure I have seen some, and yeah, some Israelis on the right support it. But the policy is made by grown-ups who understand what is happening and as I note above, it's not like you can actually do it especially without anyone who is actually going to accept the transfers. It's just like "abolish the police"; every political coalition has its crazies, this is something the crazies fantasize about, and it's not happening in reality.
IDK I think a more equivenlant analysis might be in 2020 when cities started cutting police budgets by like 5%, but in a parallel timeline wherein instead of reinstating the police budget they continued to cut it by an additional few percentage points every year. 'We're not defunding the police completely, we'd never do that, we're just annexing a little bit of their budget each year'
No, that's wrong. Where's the evidence that Israel has deported 5% of the Palestinians every year.
There's literally no policy of deportation, nowhere where they can be deported to, and no realistic prospect of implementation. But it's a fantasy of the Israeli right, to be sure, and it suits some people to pretend it is actual Israeli policy rather than the fantasy proposal of the Israeli right that the grown ups making policy ignore.
You're right it's not an exact analogy, but it's to say that creeping West Bank expansion is pushing Palestinians into a smaller and smaller area. Although not pushed out of the West Bank, Palestinian communities have certainly been pushed off their land. The same crazies like Smotrich who call for 'population transfer' are the ones pushing the settlements, and I think it's very hard to deny the connection between the two, and that for them latter is a step to achieving the former.
Whether or not the govt facilitating the settlements intend them as a step to population transfer, they are certainly making population transfer more feasible and more likely.
Settlement expansion is bad but you are moving the goalposts. Settlement expansion doesn't deport Palestinians. It just reduces the territory available for a potential state. Which is itself bad but is a completely different thing.
And the fact that the same people call for 2 bad policies doesn't mean that the 2 policies are the same thing.
It is obvious that deportation is not happening and nobody is making it happen, and this is a key point that people have to understand because a lot of BS that ends up killing or immiserating a lot of Palestinians flies around in this particular discourse space. It is really important to admit that Israel is not doing things it isn't doing.
Doesn't ethnic cleansing mean the murder of the people of a given ethnicity, rather than them being forcibly moved? To state the obvious, the latter case, while bad, doesn't mean the people moved lose their ethnicity.
Ethnic cleansing is 'cleansing an area of an ethnicity of people'. For example, the recent ethnic cleansing of Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh. I could be wrong, but I didn't think any Armenians died, they just aren't there anymore.
Mr. AlKhatib is a a wise, sane and humane voice, but I'm really skeptical that he is representative of any significant section of the Palestinian population. If you check the people who like his posts on facebook for example, you will see scarcely any Arab or Palestinian people liking him, and far, far more Left wing Israelis and Jews
Wouldn’t this suggest that Israel is achieving one of its main war aims through the methods they have so far deployed? Would they have gotten to the same place with a token special forces operation/assassinations and some missiles?
Not posing in bad faith here, genuinely wondering aloud.
Thank you for the correction that it only used to be a majority of Gazans that supported the October 7th terrorist attacks, but that now it's just 39%. Your choice of headline all makes sense now!
The author of today's article has made the point that PCPSR's data is unreliable, citing both evidence of manipulation of the polls by Hamas (per IDF sources) and recent polling by Zogby suggesting dramatically lower support for Hamas among Gazans (7%). Do you still have a high degree of confidence in PCPSR data? Do you think the indications of manipulation are unproven? Or do you cite it notwithstanding the allegations of unreliability because very little else is available?
Re. gross or inappropriate topic, nah. As a jew, not an Israeli, but with friends and family in Israel, I can't think about 10.7 without thinking about everything else that happened over the last year and possible ways forward. This impulse to police topics sounds like the politicians who say the day, week, forever after a school shooting is not the time to talk about gun control. It's a good time, it's on peoples hearts and minds. As an American, I can't think about 9/11 without thinking that every life lost in Iraq was based on a stupid plan argued under false pretenses. This was a good article, I'm glad I read it today,
Interesting. I am more sympathetic to Israel than I am to Palestine. And I'm okay with this piece. And I agreed with your comment, until I got to the 9/11 comment. And then I got very offended because I lost loved ones on 9/11, and I do think 9/11 should just be about the victims.
Not saying I'm mad at your comment per se, but it brought home how idiosyncratic and personal our reactions are.
Far more Japanese than Americans died in WWII. Pearl Harbor day is still dedicated to the remembrance of the victims of Pearl Harbor, not their attackers.
I agree with you. However, I'd guess that the NYT and the like ran op-eds on the first year anniversary, reflecting on the attack and America's resulting entry into WWII.
You know that more than 1200 Israelis have died in this war. You’re not counting the many soldiers who have died. The civilians who died in rocket and drone attacks, etc. At least 1,700 Israelis died.
The number quoted was a year out of date. Many Israeli families have dealt with loss after October 7. Reservists and soldiers being killed. People being killed in mass shootings, rocket attacks and drone attack. Hostages being murdered.
As much as you want to minimize it, Israeli losses did not end on October 7, and so quoting a number that’s a year out of date is a bit problematic.
I'm actually not trying to minimize it, I don't think comparing deaths on either side is the right way to view the morality of a conflict. Far more Japanese were killed by Americans in World War II than vice-versa, and that absolutely doesn't mean Japan was the oppressed party in that fight. But when you correct the figures as you did, I think you're playing into that framing, and if you do think in those terms, correcting the ratio from 3% to 5% is pretty absurd.
No. 9/11 is to remember the victims of 9/11. You have 364 other days of the year to consider the aftermath, including the anniversaries of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
An important caveat in 'Do Gazans support 10/7?' is what they think happened on 10/7. Outwardly Hamas claimed that they didn't attack any civilians, and I don't know how much access to outside information Gazans have
Right, but he mentions that it's because the brother has an Israeli SIM card, and I don't know how common that is.
There's a broader question of what responsibility do people have to seek out information that contradicts the dominant narrative that they're being served? Everyday Russians could find accurate information about the war in Ukraine if they ignore the information they're being fed and go out of their way to find it, but most people just aren't going to do that, and that applies to people everywhere. There is also a strong power of denial to believe that your people are in the right and to not be sympathetic to the ideas of a people that are attacking you Is that right? Probably not, but it's extremely human.
Also following the news is probably not the highest priority for people running for their lives.
Thank you Matt Y for posting this piece, and to the author: I'm sincerely sorry for everything you and your family and friends have suffered. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us.
One part that stuck out like a sore thumb:
"Some, myself included, put out proposals and pleas to Israeli officials to build small camps on the Israeli side of the border, right next to Gaza, that could house some Palestinians until the war was over and minimize civilian casualties, to no avail."
Sorry to be disrespectful, but you gotta be kidding me. "Hey Israel, some of our people crossed your border and murdered, mutilated, raped, and/or kidnapped a bunch of your civilians. Won't you please let us cross your border again and set up camps for our safety? We promise we'll be very good and won't do any more terrorisms and we definitely won't let any Hamas fighters disguised as civilians into these camps!"
[insert Tony Stark "not a great plan" gif]
Now, that said, I really appreciate the author saying that the Palestinian people must accept the existence of Israel, renounce extremism and violence, and focus on rebuilding Gaza into a peaceful, prosperous nation. Unfortunately, his assertion that "the people of Gaza ... want nothing to do with Islamism, terrorism or future suicidal adventurism" is sorely in need of evidence. As Matt Y said, this conflict would be easy to solve if only both sides wanted different things than they actually do want.
I'm glad the author got out safely and I wish him well.
It is a government’s job to protect its citizens. Building shelters, securing food supplies, and evacuating citizens is Hamas’s job, not Israel’s. The international community has coddled Hamas for far too long, taking over what are rightly government responsibilities and leaving Hamas free to wage war.
You start a war and expect your enemy to take in your civilians because you can’t be bothered with their welfare? Grow up and get real. That’s a preposterous expectation. It’s a great humanitarian act if they want to do it, and may even have strategically benefit, but it is emphatically not their job.
To be honest, I think Israel would have been better off doing it - if it could do so reliably. Israel evacuated all these civilians anyway, and the fact that there was nowhere to evacuate them where Hamas military infrastructure was unavailable proved to be a big problem. Similarly, controlling aid distribution would have been much easier if they were in camps rather than in Gaza.
That said, the hard part is doing so in a way where they can’t break out of the camps and wind up in Israel proper.
Maybe you would support 40,000,000 North Koreans or Afghanis being evacuated to camps in Utah? Because that’s the scale of what you’re proposing.
And let’s be real. Even if Israel did do this, Palestinian and Western media would be full of articles describing the camps as “genocide camps”, even if the intention were evacuations from harms way.
It breaks my heart that this war turns one today. Excellent essay Ahmed.
It genuinely pains me that we are a year in and not at all closer to some kind of resolution. Hamas and the Israeli far-right are codependent infections in the festering wound that is this conflict and I have no idea what a realistic path to a positive resolution looks like.
All I can do is share now in the hope Ahmed raises here which is that in the other side, the people of Gaza will build something new and better.
“Indeed, the people of Gaza are done with Hamas and want nothing to do with Islamism, terrorism, or future suicidal adventurism, all of which have set their just and urgent aspirations back by decades.”
I hope this is true. I am not sure that I see of lot of evidence for this just yet, but hopefully that will come in time.
Respectfully, this is not a very good article. It is at times informative but throughout treats a complex issue without serious analysis and seeks to misinform.
To give only one example, the author writes
“The Israeli military and Netanyahu were furious and felt they had to inflict maximum pain and damage on the people of the Gaza Strip.”
This is an extremely strong claim that contradicts the repeated statements of Israeli officials. Does he mean that this appears to have been their reaction based on their conduct or does he have information that substantiates the contention? The passage misinforms the reader if he does not.
The piece is interesting as a pro-Palestinian propaganda alternative to the Free Press, but is a really weird fit in Slow Boring which generally tries to publish actual serious analysis. Anyway I did enjoy the read so I don’t want to be too hard on it.
So this depends on what's meant by 'maximum pain and damage.' Like, it is trivially true that Israel could kidnap a dozen Gazan children for each hostage and slowly torture them to death on television only stopping if the hostage in question was released, while continuing their current campaign, which would be greater pain and damage then they are currently doing, but that's only true in a very trivial 'things can always be worse way.'
I do think it's pretty transparent that one of Israel's goals is to attempt to establish/re-establish deterrence (which can be somewhat unflatteringly termed 'do maximum damage/inflict pain'), which they believe October 7th indicates they lost. I think this is mistaken and, as the piece argues, Hamas viewed normalization as an existential threat and no amount of deterrence would cause them to avoid acting under such circumstances.
Well right, I mean we could define 'maximum damage' as killing every Gazan, and then killing 1 million Gazans would be less than half of maximum damage. I don't think anyone would define it that way though, and how we generally refer to 'maximum pain and damage' is as the maximum that could feasibly get away with.
People have mentioned the casualties, but also consider the below -
'The U.N. says the war has damaged or destroyed over 92% of Gaza’s main roads and more than 84% of its health facilities.
It estimates nearly 70% of Gaza’s water and sanitation plants have been destroyed or damaged. That includes all five of the territory’s wastewater treatment facilities, plus desalination plants, sewage pumping stations, wells and reservoirs.
The breakdown of water infrastructure has flooded the streets with sewage in many areas, contributing to the spread of disease among a population weakened by widespread hunger.'
I agree Ray. The majority of the article which is spent describing the past is entirely devoted to giving Israel full agency and giving Gazans none. Notice the use of passive (Palestinians) vs active (Israeli) voice. Israel is the only actor which does anything, and everything happens to Gaza, according to this author. It’s basic propaganda 101.
“It was Friday night, October 6, in San Francisco, when I saw the attacks unfold; I was devastated and extremely concerned with what I knew was about to happen.” Empathy would have you concerned with what WAS ACTUALLY HAPPENING. Today is the anniversary of a brutal pogrom against Israelis. We can grieve for all the death and destruction that resulted in Gaza—we should and we do—but just as not all Gazans are Hamas, not all Israelis—babies, peace activists, Holocaust survivors, a hundred-plus still held hostage—are Netanyahu, Smotrich and the far right. I hope your hope for Gaza is realized. A good start would be acknowledging as human beings those on the Israeli side of the border who also just “love life and want to prosper and thrive.”
This is an odd reading of Ahmed's piece. He expresses *in the sentence you quote in your comment* his devastation at what "was actually happening." I don't think the ability to hold two feelings at once — sadness at what is happening now to others and fear for what the future holds for you and your family — is in any way indicative of a lack of empathy. And his piece ends with the "good start" you request: "This transformation is entirely attainable, but it requires an awakening among many Palestinians and their global allies that starts with a recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland in safety and security."
The author uses passive voice (“what was happening”) to describe the actions of Palestinians and active voice to describe the actions of Israel. It’s the most obvious way to depict an oppressor vs victim narrative.
The language in quotes was used by the commenter, not by Ahmed. He does, in fact, use active language to describe the actions of both Hamas and Israel.
Late to the party... I just read through a bunch of comments arguing about
a. was it appropriate to publish this article today (I am an Israel hawk generally, but I see no issues with it)
b. who suffered or is suffering more (Gaza by sheer numerical numbers)... but the real answer is humanity is suffering.
I like many am skeptical about whether at the end, Gazans will throw off the yoke of Hamas and rebuild with peace and unity in mind... but you can't fault optimism.
All I know is Hamas poked a bear... and when you poke a bear... don't expect a proportional response.
This subject... the middle east... especially with Israel will not be solved in our generation (sorry for the skepticism). At best we can hope for some period of reduced violence soon.
My thoughts are with the people whose families were slaughtered today... anniversaries are especially hard. (This does not mean that my thoughts aren't with any innocent victims of any war happening today no matter what side)
“The Israeli military and Netanyahu were furious and felt they had to inflict maximum pain and damage on the people of the Gaza Strip.”
You read their minds, Ahmed?
“The Israeli army would often strike targets that had no military significance but caused numerous casualties among non-involved combatants, especially children who have paid the heaviest price throughout this war.”
Presumably you meant “non-combatants,” but whatever. And, not having been present, how do you judge the military significance of attacks?
Over 40k dead, nearly 50% of hospitals destroyed, vast majority of schools damaged or destroyed. Regardless of one's position on this issue, how could you not call that maximum pain and damage on the people of the Gaza Strip?
Many of the hospitals/schools/etc were staging grounds and logistics hubs for hamas. It’s hamas’s strategy to work like this, and it didn’t need to. They spent years and lots of international aid resources intended for hospitals and schools on their tunnel network. This whole thing was extremely intentional activity from hamas.
Very true. But I think this essay on Israel's policies regarding civilian harm is interesting. It's from a former State Department official who has a lot of experience in that field of policy and seems to be written in good faith.
That essay is heavy on procedural problems and light on meaningful facts. (It cites daily casualty data from January, and the situation on the ground has evolved quite a lot since then.) He complains that the IDF is not open about their planning and may not use the most recently developed best practices - fair enough, the IDF is a modern, professional military and they have the wherewithal to handle this sort of record keeping. But it’s sort of like failing an ISO-9000 audit solely for poor record keeping. To the extent he disagrees with John Spencer, probably the world’s top expert on MOUT, I’d put more weight on Spencer’s opinions.
The scale of these tunnel networks have really shifted my entire view on this conflict. I would say pre-10/7, I was broadly sympathetic to Gaza and maybe even the Palestinian cause or naively thought a two-state solution would work. But now, seeing how Hamas probably pumped 90 cents on every dollar of investment into these tunnels ... it's just hopeless.
"We have to inflict maximum pain and damage" and "we have to kill enemy fighters so they can't do an October 7 again, and that entails destroying civilian buildings because fighters insist on hiding there" are two different things, although tragically both do result in max pain and suffering.
The number of dead is in dispute and includes Hamas and other fighters.
Hospitals, schools, etc. were damaged and destroyed because Hamas used them - deliberately - for military purposes like command-and-control centers, rocket launch sites, hardened fighting positions, etc. Same with apartment buildings, UNWRA facilities, mosques and other locations that are supposed to be protected locations in international law. When a combantant violates international law and militarizes such locations, they become legitimate military targets.
If there is "maximum pain and damage" on the people of the Gaza strip, then the vast majority of the blame belongs to Hamas whose leadership has been explicitly clear over the years that their tactics involve creating "martyrs" out of the population. Their entire fighting doctrine revolves around using the population as a weapon both in terms of combat by attempting to limit Israeli responses, as well as information warfare and propaganda directed toward outside audiences when that strategy succeeds. There's documented evidence that, in response to Israeli pre-strike evacuation notices, Hamas has attempted to prevent civilians from leaving, as one example. If Israel was truly committed to maximizing the pain and damage to the civilian population, they would not bother with evacuations, "roof knocking" and other means that allow civilians to leave operating areas. Israel doing that hurts its military effectiveness, because those warnings also warn Hamas.
The sad reality is that urban warfare is particularly destructive and deadly to civilians and civilian infrastructure. This is not something unique to Gaza. See also Manila (WWII), Mosul, Allepo, Bakhmut, and many others. What is unique is that, unlike most every other war, the civilian population is not allowed to leave the battlespace. Gazan's are denied that basic right by Egypt, by Israel, and by every other government with an interest in this conflict including the United States. This is why - unlike other wars - Gazans constantly have to move to different parts of the strip depending on where the fighting is. The international community has decided they should not be allowed to flee somewhere that is actually safe. That fact also contributes significantly to the maximum pain and damage to the people of Gaza.
It’s tragic, but Palestinian refugees has a bad history of coups and violence in countries that take them and it’s understandable why no one wants to assume responsibility for 2m people, largely radicalized.
The illiteracy claim seems wrong. I googled “Palestinian illiteracy rate Gaza” and the top result says 1.9% of Gazans over age 15 were illiterate in 2023. For context quick googling suggests that the illiteracy rate is noticeably higher in neighboring Arab countries.
you're right here, it seems the info I had was inaccurate and/or wildly out of date. 65+ age cohorts have low literacy rates in Gaza (80%), young rates are very high.
You can't make this claim while ignoring the fact that Hamas's strategy is to deliberately cause maximum civilian casualties by housing its military installations in civilian infrastructure.
If it has tunnels under all the hospitals then many of those hospitals will be destroyed but it is not due to a bloodthirsty desire to destroy hospitals.
Your inference is based on an incomplete consideration of available information.
"Hamas policies" makes the group sound weirdly respectable - I love the idea of a Hamas think tank or bureaucracy that creates public policy. "The Department of Zionist Elimination seeks public comment on a proposed rule regarding the reallocation of water pipe infrastructure for kinetic use."
If you’re to believe urban warfare experts like John Spencer then it’s entirely plausible Israel is actually waging the most ethical war in modern urban warfare history.
Very easily: by knowing anything about urban warfare.
Don’t believe me? Ask Brett McGurk, or the US DOD official who *literally sat with the IDF as they chose targets* and confirmed that their process is similar to American ones.
It is very frustrating to me that even when this stuff is reported in American media, the same lazy thinking about “look at these big numbers” dominates.
I mean, you can turn this argument right back around - you know that the Israeli government *doesn't* want to inflict a ton of damage on the Gaza Strip? You *are* able to judge the military significance of Israeli attacks on Gaza despite not being there? Hamas is absolutely at fault for keeping at least some of their activity around places like hospitals, but I don't think it's responsible to just take the Israeli government's word that every airstrike, every shelling, every sniping is done with the utmost respect for civilian life and only on thoroughly vetted legitimate military targets. They're not out to slaughter civilians, but it sure doesn't seem like the Israeli military gives a damn if they get in the way.
To start with, where are the official statements by Israel saying their policy is to inflict deliberate damage to non-military targets and to punish civilians? From what I’ve seen, their stated position is, and has been, to destroy Hamas and rescue hostages. Every bullet and bomb and hour used for the purpose of inflicting “maximin pain and damage” is a waste of resources.
What would be the point of that?
If you have any information showing that Israel has targeted schools and hospitals that were *not* also Hamas command centers or barracks or materiel stores, please share it.
The US DoD embedded an official with the IDF as it chose targets and confirmed that their processes and guardrails for civilian casualties match ours’.
Balanced, respectful and interesting. Thank you for contributing. The US is lucky to have you as a citizen.
It is interesting that you mentioned North Korea toward the end of your essay, as that was in my mind as I read along. I feel terrible for the innocent people in Gaza, essentially held hostage by a terrorist organization and conscripted into the Hamas campaign against Israel. As in many wars, it is the civilian population that pays the greatest price.
All the more reason to support resistance movements against totalitarian-style governments in Iran, North Korea, Gaza and elsewhere.
"I feel terrible for the innocent people in Gaza, essentially held hostage by a terrorist organization"
Not trying make a pedantic point but I feel like the Gaza citizens are in a worse situation than "held hostage". Sinwar's strategic goal is to increase civilian deaths. These people are being murdered by their own government.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-chiefs-brutal-calculation-civilian-bloodshed-will-help-hamas-626720e7
I liked the article but would have loved one written by someone who had spent the last year in Gaza.
One question the essay doesn’t really answer— how has Hamas held on to power? Are there rival groups who would like to replace it? Why haven’t they killed the Hamas cadres and seized power? If I were a young man is Gaza, I would be very angry, and killing Hamas operatives would be a more productive outlet for my rage than killing Israelis.
"I liked the article but would have loved one written by someone who had spent the last year in Gaza."
That would be good too!
Have some sympathy for those living under a totalitarian regime. Choosing to fight Hamas would almost certainly result in your death, and likely the death of your entire family. We should encourage those who do so, but I understand the human impulse to survive rather than take up arms against your oppressor.
I admire the French who resisted and pity those who did not. My feelings in Gaza are similar.
The contrast between your opinion on this versus Ukraine is striking.
No kidding.
Seeking “consistency” in foreign policy is generally silly when there is huge diversity of circumstances.
For the French, resistance made much more sense in June of 1944 than July of 1940.
Nor have I ever said Ukraine should capitulate. I have said it should negotiate. At least a third of Ukrainians agree with me. In any event, the odds Ukraine will ever exercise sovereignty over all of Donetsk and Luhansk are slim, and few of the hawks on this sub stack are willing to admit that.
As has been repeatedly pointed out to you, Ukraine negotiated with Russia continuously for 8 straight years, after Russia initially seized 14% of Ukrainian territory. They were brokered by France and Germany. How did those negotiations work out? Russia ended them right before invading the second time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements
Russia has seized about 270 square miles of Donetsk this year- for perspective, they'd need to seize 4000 square miles to get all of Donetsk. They're also by all accounts taking over 1000 casualties a day, because eventually mass human wave attacks runs out of, you know, humans. The odds Russia will ever exercise sovereignty over all of Donetsk and Luhansk are slim, so they should give up now
There is literally a Wikipedia article about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
How has Ukraine failed to negotiate?
What you never acknowledge is that negotiation requires a counter-party willing to negotiate. In both conflicts, Israel/Palestinian and Ukraine/Russia, there is an absence of a counter-party to negotiate with can provide believable commitments. So the call for negotiation in that context equates to capitulation.
Less than 2% of the French people ever "resisted", and it's worth remembering that even those few were receiving extensive outside help and were pretty sure that massive Allied armies would eventually arrive on their shores --- motivated by their own interests as much as any desire to help the French.
None of that aid, or hope, or external self interest did exist or does exist for Gaza. For it to have any parallel you would have to imagine an Israeli government that saw successful governance and Gazan self-determination as consistent with its own interests. The Israeli government took just about exactly the opposite approach.
'Less than 2% of the French people ever "resisted"'
My understanding is that polls taken of the French population immediately after the war revealed that 100% of the French people were part of the Resistance.
"'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have done that,"'says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually -- memory yields."
They became part of it after it ended.
Someday, nobody will have ever been anti-zionists in this present we're living through.
Until then we'll have to deal with some pretty ugly anti-zionism.
We admire people who resist a terrible regime because it's a brave, scary, and *uncommon* thing to do. Everyone, myself included, likes to believe that they'll find the courage to take a stand and risk everything, including the lives of their children, if or when the time comes, but history shows that most people can't bring themselves to really face the consequences of that kind of act.
What a ridiculously callous thing to say from the warmth and comfort of your safe, functioning society. I, too, admire you for your bravery - you might have sprained a wrist typing out that comment, after all.
I feel the same when qualms about taking Russian deserters come up, claiming that they should instead stand and fight, often from comfortable westerners who've never even seen a gun outside of a tutting NYTimes article. A common trait among sensible, socialable people is that they just want to live and be left alone. Such folks are a credit to any society, but also exactly the last sort of person who'd pick up a bloody flag and continue a hopeless fight. Responding "well maybe they should" just feels so confusing to me.
I think the answer is simple, it’s a military dictatorship. The rival groups, like PIJ, are all even more violent, but ultimately have the same goals. Recall that Hamas violently purged fatah members from Gaza shortly after takeover.
This is the part of the essay that doesn’t make sense to me. The rest of the essay I appreciate. At the end, there is this assertion, unsupported by evidence, that the Gazans will throw off Hamas. How? Hamas and Sinwar in particular are very good at killing Gazans.
There's a tendency of essays like this to try to end with a solution, path forward, etc., even when the odds of such a future are sadly very small.
Yes, but there is no plan. This is just a vague hope and assertion that Gaza is tired of Hamas. Ok, suppose I accept that. What next? PIJ?
Yeah, it's weak because the situation is incredibly bleak.
Agreed, James. I dearly pray he's right and he certainly speaks from an experience basis that none of us shares. But I fear that hope and desire may be triumphing over analysis here.
I don't know if there's much point in writing an article that says Palestine is doomed to another century of misery. You start with a vision, even if you have nothing else.
The thesis of the piece is that they should do so, and its aim is to encourage Palestinians and their allies to focus on doing so. Accordingly, it is trying to persuade them that this is a good idea as well as a noble expression of Palestinian virtues and a path to future glory. It would be weird if it took a pessimistic tone (however justified that pessimism may be).
Churchill didn’t say “well we COULD fight the on the beaches, although of course at that point they must have established air superiority and we would certainly be slaughtered, and in fact Britain would likely surrender and install a friendly collaborator government just like France” for good reasons!
Yes, but Churchill had an army and a government and economic levers he could pull. I really doubt this essay was aimed at Gazans, especially since it is in English in Slow Boring. The lack of reality and ridiculously optimistic dreaming by many actors on I/P issues is one of the larger problems preventing solutions.
I think it was aimed at the diaspora and sympathetic people abroad, mostly. Build support for the “ditch Hamas” position.
That's not really the way it works in war when your fear and hatred are focused on the people attacking you. The same thing could be asked of Israel: given Bibi's unprecedented combination of failures and continuing betrayal of the national interest, why hasn't there been a more sustained popular effort* to force him to resign, including a general strike?
* Note that this could also include negotiations, like offering to drop all charges against him if he retires from politics.
Honestly I’ve wondered that myself. If I were Israeli I’d be going to anti-Bibi protests at every opportunity for the last 2 years. My best answer is that Israelis are worried about the possibility that there’s a disruptive, toxic election and he somehow retains power.
The parallels with Trump are really innumerable (and therefore scary for America; I guess Israel hasn’t actually collapsed yet, so we can hope that whoever takes advantage of Trump’s weakness doesn’t do so catastrophically.)
Is anyone offering to arm such people?
More from Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib
https://thedispatch.com/article/hamas-monstrous-gazans-agree/
Excellent link
This is one of the things that makes the idea that Israel engages in a dehumanization campaign against Palestinians a little absurd to me as a complaint. Nearly all the important Palestinian organizations engage in dehumanizing Palestinians and it's a core part of the identity their advocates present to the world!
It makes sense for many of them to do this, being at least descended from militarized groups which need that for military discipline at a minimum. But it does have pernicious effects like any campaign to present the people as barbarous just quoting their leadership and advocates.
It is very sad that people are forced to work for Hamas. But are they really "innocent" any more? Are you still a "civilian" if you are working for a terrorist organization? By this logic, every Nazi soldier was an innocent civilian.
If I thought the United States was an evil force in the world, then I would feel complicit, like I was morally obligated to leave, or to fight against it.
However, I think the United States is a force for good in the world. So "complicit" isn't the right word, because it has a negative connotation. Instead, I feel a sense of pride, to be an American citizen.
Given the article asserts, without evidence, that "the people of Gaza are done with Hamas and want nothing to do with Islamism, terrorism, or future suicidal adventurism":
Below is a Palestinian-run poll finding 35% support for Hamas and 39% support for the 7/10 attacks in Gaza. The IDF has accused Hamas of messing with this pollster's methodology but itself puts support for 7/10 in Gaza at over 30%.
https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/991
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/rejecting-idf-claims-palestinian-pollster-says-highly-unlikely-hamas-falsified-its-results-but-vows-to-probe/
The author wrote about this poll a few days ago: https://thedispatch.com/article/hamas-monstrous-gazans-agree/
Notably, there he cites a Western-run poll (by Zogby), showing 7% Gazan support for Hamas remaining in power, and that more blame Hamas than Israel for the war: https://institute.global/insights/geopolitics-and-security/tbi-comment-new-polling-by-zogby-research-services-reveals-palestinian
The original writer also mentioned that "an awakening by many Palestinians" is needed to reach this peaceful goal. Recent polls still state that armed struggle has a majority support. Regardless of whether Gazans support Hamas or not, if they just want another armed struggle alternative it doesn't seem to me like they're abandoning terrorism, right?
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/poll-shows-rise-support-armed-struggle-by-palestinians-2024-06-13/
I’m worried about people getting out over their skis. The PCPSR has been the pre-eminent source for polling Palestinians for decades, presumably not by accident. Moreover the articles describing the document the IDF found are extremely light on details. For example: how, in a randomized telephone poll, does Hamas manage to get in between the pollster and the respondents? It’s worth noting that Shikaki, the leader of the PCPSR, is adamant that his results are of high quality.
I would really, really like to believe that Fuad and the IDF (and this Zogby outfit that I’ve never heard of before) are right. It would mean that there is hope for peace with Gaza next door (because frankly I don’t see how there can be peace with a society that, having gone through what they’ve just gone through, still supports the 10/7 massacre.) But this is one of those situations where Matt’s hot take that “getting the empirical facts right matters quite a bit” is relevant.
7% for Hamas only, 17% for a Hamas-Fateh unity government. As several other people on this thread have written, the way violence works, 24% support for violence is more than enough for a conflict to persist. (Applies on the Israeli side too, it doesn't take that many settlers terrorising Palestinians in the West Bank to commit the entire country to the conflict that emanates from that.)
I think the belief that this conflict emanates from settler violence is pernicious. I have a hard time believing that Hizballah would be incapacitated if settler violence stopped.
I didn't mean to imply that. But they still have an impact far disproportionate to their numbers, for the reason Dave Coffin describes below. If ever there is peace between Israel and the Palestinians I worry these extremists would try to blow it up and Israel will have to exert significant effort to prevent them from doing so. (As will the Palestinians with their own dead-enders).
Agreed. It would be a great thing for Israelis, Palestinians, and the world if the residents of Gaza dedicated themselves to peaceful development. It would be a miracle. Unfortunately, I’m not holding my breath.
And the tragedy is that even if 90% of Gazans wanted peaceful development, if 10% of the strip is comprised of terrorists and people aiding terrorists, it’s still a threat that Israel will have to respond to in ways that harm the 90%.
I feel like this is key. It's not sufficient for most Gazans to not be terrorists. There have to be enough Gazans willing and able to exert forceful control over the Gazans who are terrorists to secure a peaceful relationship with their neighbor. If the non-terrorist Gazans can't or won't prevent Hamas from taking them to war with Israel then they all suffer because that's a war Israel will win every time..
This is the story in all the relevant cases: in Gaza, in Iran, and most importantly in Lebanon. Majority of Lebanese don’t support Hizballah; but the vast majority of Lebanese are too traumatized from decades of civil war and don’t want to be the ones to deal with Hizballah.
Well, if they don’t, Israel has no choice but to deal with Hizballah themselves.
Not if the 90% got the 10% under control through their own police and security forces.
This is a good essay, but it kind of all hangs on a core assumption that seems barely plausible to me let alone likely:
"After this war, the extent of the destruction and damage that Gazans have experienced means that they will never again, under any circumstances, allow a rogue terror organization to hold them hostage in the name of fighting Israel"
This is simply an assertion without evidence. If there wasn't the will/capacity to depose Hamas a year ago how are Gazans supposed to suppress the islamist death cult now? Where are these internal Gazan anti-Hamas fighters going to come from? How are they going to arm themselves? How are they not simply going to get themselves killed, unless the assumption is that Israel has really truly wiped out Hamas for them?
I take it that this is like the statement in wedding vows that we will be together till death do us part. It’s not based on evidence about similar situations in the past - it’s a wishful statement of commitment that is appropriate for the occasion.
Why is it a barely plausible assumption? Losing a catastrophic war has enormous consequences for all kinds of human polities. That's often why they're so bitterly fought until exhaustion; the stakes of losing are very high for incumbent political leaders.
True, but the whole history of Palestine back to 1948 has been about a people refusing to accept the reality of losing war after war after war.
Your point is well argued, and I don't really think I have any substantive disagreements with it. I would just note that demographics might provide some opportunity for change. The author mentioned at one point in the essay that half of population of Gaza is very young. If this is the first time they have witnessed destruction of this scale brought on by the atrocities committed by Hamas, maybe that at least inspires a will to move beyond Hamas. I agree that that "will" may lack a "way" for the time being.
They’ve started many wars and lost all of them. The nakba was a war that they started and lost (literally - the disaster referred to Arabs losing to Jews, not Palestinian displacement).
The critical difference here is the leaders of The Arab League were on their side back then, and now it's an embarrassment to all of them while they quietly ask Israel to crush these political movements. That is a very important context to why Israel has been able to prosecute such a bloody war; Arab country *leaders* in the region are on better terms with them than ever in history.
Frankly I don’t think it’s been catastrophic enough. I desperately hope that I’m wrong.
I consider this optimistic as well - I'd be interested in a historical analysis
I truly, deeply, appreciate the decision to run a piece by someone from Gaza today. It was surely not an easy decision but it's the right one.
For the record, I don't particularly think that this was a uniquely "right" decision — we could have gone in other directions. But the game here is we run one piece per day and I thought this was a good one that the world and our readers would benefit from.
I do think tomorrow would have been a better day for this piece.
Disagree. Today is the correct day to have these conversations. And nothing the author said was disrespectful to the victims of October 7th.. in fact he was incredibly sympathetic.
I give the author a lot of credit - 99.9% of people with his background would have nothing but hate and contempt for Israelis. That being said, while he certainly isn't carrying water for Hamas I found this particular section to be questionable:
"It was Friday night, October 6, in San Francisco, when I saw the attacks unfold; I was devastated and extremely concerned with what I knew was about to happen. I immediately realized the catastrophe that would be unleashed upon the people of Gaza, and that the Strip’s residents, including my immediate and extended family members, would suffer unprecedented consequences due to Hamas’s narrow and nefarious calculus."
This is a piece that ran on 10/7 and the author is silent about the atrocities that happened to Israelis. He easily could've said "I was devastated about what happened to the innocent Israelis...." but simply chose not to put his empathy for those affected by 10/7 on paper.
I’m fine with it because I’ve read enough of Fuad’s writing and posting to know that he has spoken out about Hamas’ barbarity.
Vibe I get is that this piece is actually aimed at Palestinians. The bona fides of “Israel is fighting a war of revenge” etc. etc. seem to be there to provide cover for “time to recognize Israel’s legitimacy”.
People seem to agree with you, but I think today can be a day of incredible sorrow for 10/7 and everything has ensued.
Why do you think it was the right decision? I disagree, personally (though I love the piece itself, just not the context).
Jews are so often told that grieving their loved ones is somehow *wrong*. E.g. that article in the Guardian called "How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war".
Almost everyone in Israel knows someone who lost a loved one to a depraved invasion and terror attack, and has been living in trauma since then. I think it's odd not to give space for that grief, whatever else you think.
Having one article describe the situation Gazans currently face and the historical context they're in is not a denail of the right of Israelis to grive their loved ones in any reasonable sense.
I don't think this article is denying that at all. I was referring to the choice to run this piece today specifically, as well as the parent comment saying it's the "correct choice", which seems to imply (in my mind) that it would *incorrect* to run an article focusing on the tragedy to Israelis.
I think that Jews have felt since October 7 that they are constantly “All Lives Mattered”.
People can’t talk about antisemitism without talking about Islamophobia in the same sentence. People can’t commemorate October 7 victims without turning the attention towards Gaza.
Attention to both issues is important. But we shouldn’t not crowd out attention to Jewish issues, security and suffering, especially in this time.
Because 10x+ as many Palestinians have died in the last year than Israelis, and the non-death toll has been even more lopsided. It's weird for people outside of Israeli (which is reasonably going to care a lot more about their citizens than Palestinians) to specifically call out the equivalent of "Israeli Lives Matter" given those numbers.
More Afghanis died in the Afghanistan War than on Sept 11. Still on Sept 11, we commemorate the people who lost their lives in the Twin Towers and in the planes, not the people who were hurt in the war fought with the government who was harboring the terrorists who committed that attack.
And the reason more Palestinians have died in the last year than Israelis, despite the fact that Palestinian militants target Israeli civilians while Israeli soldiers do not target Palestinian ones is due to the policy decisions of the Gazan government, which put civilians in harms way and of the Israeli government, which protect civilians.
You are commenting on an article about suffering in Gaza to complain that suffering in Israel isn't highlighted enough - that is like the definition of All-Lives-Mattering something.
The article is entitled “A Year Later”. Today is October 7. A year later from what?
Too many people are suffering
I agree with you on the insistence of pairing antisemitism with Islamophobia, but 40x as many Palestinians have died in response to 10/7. Gaza has been totally flattened. Matt has been clear that he thinks a 1SS of any kind is a perverse fantasy. He has the standing to grieve for all the lives lost.
Also, on any day, it's refreshing to hear a Palestinian voice that recounts the terrible suffering he's witnessed, and even endured himself, while not finishing with "and that's why Israel should be wiped off the map." If he can advocate for 2S, surely everyone else can.
How in God's name does a two-state solution work at this point? Gaza is nearly leveled, the West Bank is carved up by settlements, and the two pieces of a hypothetical Palestinian state are separated by Israel and governed by two different entities that hate each other. The Israeli government is opposed to the idea and they hold all the cards - most Arab neighbors want to ally with Israel, they're a nuclear weapons state, Iran's rocket attacks, both direct and via proxies, seem ineffective, and Palestinians are in no state to mount a Third Intifada, which wouldn't have any chance of success even if it were launched.
Israel is the winner in its conflict with the Palestinians. That victory may turn out to be Pyrrhic economically, or culturally, or diplomatically, but the Israeli state isn't going anywhere and it won't allow a Palestinian state.
I don’t think it would have been *incorrect*, but while the October 7th attacks were bad for Israeli civilians, they were even worse for Gazans. The Israeli perspective is well-represented in mainstream media, but the Gazans perspective is not (there are many Palestinian-sympathetic pieces in left-wing media, but that is not the same. In particular, they don’t have a takeaway remotely similar to the takeaway of this article).
If Matt had published an Israeli piece today, and person A had said “this was the correct choice,” and person B said “this denies the right of Palestinians to grieve their loved ones,” would you have agreed with person B?
The Israeli response to October 7 and the resulting damage in Gaza didn't start till well after October 7. You could choose another date to symbolically commemorate the hardship of Gazans in this war. October 7 is the anniversary of one of the largest terror attacks in history targeting Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis.
I don't see how this is even remotely controversial. There's 364 other days in the year in which the plight of Gazans can and should be written about. For example, the anniversary of Israel's incursion into Gaza is in a few weeks - it would be just as meaningful to write about the plight of Gazans on that day.
At least 30% of Gazans and 70% of Palestinians in the West Bank disagree with you and think that the October 7 attacks were good for them, or at least were worth the cost.
You and I may disagree, but this is what polling suggests. You can’t just explain that away. They are genuine in believing this.
30% is disturbingly high if accurate, but I don’t see how this contradicts my point - the majority of Gazans do *not* think October 7 worked well for them, and in material terms they have suffered the most
It feels like you're making Brian's point: if "[ultimately] worse for Gazans" is a sound justification, then we should mark September 11th by discussing the deaths of Afghanis, and December 7th by discussing the deaths at Hiroshima. I suppose we have done this with Columbus Day by shifting focus away from the explorer/invaders and onto indigenous peoples, but I think it's fair to argue that one year is too soon to make that switch, and that waiting a day would have been more respectful.
I've seen a few people referencing a parent comment saying this was the correct choice, but I'm not seeing anything. Can you point out what you're referencing there? I'm wondering if something was deleted that I logged on too late to see.
https://open.substack.com/pub/matthewyglesias/p/a-year-later?utm_source=direct&r=ki68r&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=71688184
Thanks! I figured that couldn't be the one because the top reply to that statement (with many more likes) is MY saying that he didn't think this was a uniquely correct decision, just one of many plausible ones that are acceptable. The fact that a commenter on here thought it was THE right decision isn't all that relevant to me, especially given all the other comments on here arguing the opposite.
Running it on 10/7 when there are 364 other days in the year is certainly a strange decision.
I am entirely sympathetic to Israel, and could only be described as having hawkish views. But I fail to see how running this article today is disrespectful or inappropriate.
Yeah, it's just the thing where partisans to the IP conflict are always trying to delegitimize the suffering* of the "other side" ("They started it!" etc) while centering the suffering of "their side." It's a common tactic that is both morally obtuse and pretty annoying but quite common.
Personally I think the author's perspective is often overlooked and so I think it's good Matt had it published.
*For an opposite example see the ridiculous and offensive attempts to claim their wasn't any sexual violence on 10/7.
Imagine it is Sept 11, 2002. Do you highlight the voices of families grieving the loss of their family members on 9/11 and honor the first responders? Or do you highlight the Saudi or Afghani perspective, even a relatively moderate one? Try to put yourself in that position and maybe you’ll try to understand.
I think to be fair, the enemy death toll was not remotely close on 9/11/2002 to what it is in I/P. But I understand why people are upset.
It’s not disrespectful or inappropriate but reeks of contrarianism.
I don't think that is an accurate description of his reaction as conveyed in this piece. At least my read on his statement was that he had two reactions:
1) Devastated
2) Concerned about what would happen next
My assumption was 'devastated about the fact of the attack' and 'concerned about what would happen next in Gaza.' Which, honestly, was my reaction too. A tragedy that was going to unleash further tragedies...
My immediate reaction on October 7th was the exact same as the author's.
These are the author's exact words:
"It was Friday night, October 6, in San Francisco, when I saw the attacks unfold; I was devastated and extremely concerned with what I knew was about to happen. I immediately realized the catastrophe that would be unleashed upon the people of Gaza, and that the Strip’s residents, including my immediate and extended family members, would suffer unprecedented consequences due to Hamas’s narrow and nefarious calculus."
Not one word about the scores of innocent people murdered that day.
I guess I read this a bit more as the piece trying to reach people who are more sympathetic to the Palestinian side. The default American (and liberal, and American Jewish) position is, "sure, two states, please everyone stop killing each other." So there's nothing particularly challenging or interesting about a liberal/Jewish/American saying that to other liberals/Jews/Americans.
A *Palestinian* speaking to Palestinians/American leftists about the reality of Israel's existence is interesting and challenging. And it needs to start by emphasizing to Palestinians and leftists that Hamas assessed the risk of tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties, and found it acceptable. It wasn't an act of plucky resistance, but a massive betrayal of the people they are charged with protecting.
Alkhatib doesn’t represent the “Palestinian” side, or at least a common perspective on the Palestinian side. Even though he is Palestinian, his perspective that Palestinians should accept the Jewish state and move on and focus on building next to it is extremely rare in Palestinian society. It takes Alkhatib a lot of courage to take his position in Palestinian society, where the overall ethos is that the establishment of a Jewish state is the biggest injustice that can only be rectified when it is undone.
I think the piece is about how Palestinian civilians are the primary victims of Hamas’s appalling attack on October 7 is well observed, and kind of lost in the “which team are you in” messaging from both sides.
As I’ve noted in another comment, I don’t have such a problem with this choice simply because SlowBoring doesn’t need to be everything for everyone. But you have to understand that the efforts to brush Israeli and Jewish suffering under the rug are extremely pernicious and have substantial real world consequences.
To wit: the commonplace that “Israel is initiating war against Lebanon” when Lebanon (via Hizballah) has been shelling civilians in northern Israel for a year. This stuff just doesn’t fly unless every opportunity to recognize the threats and pain Israelis undergo gets overshadowed with “well what about the Palestinians, so many more of them have died”.
This is not, however, an effort to brush Jewish suffering under the rug (which efforts we agree are bad). Indeed it acknowledges it many times.
It feels like you are saying “you are right this article is good, but unrelated bad things exist and are bad—sometimes involving Lebanon”, so there must be a part of your argument I am not understanding.
Because the primary set of people who have suffered over the last year, in the aftermath of October 7, are the people of Gaza.
This is not true. Gazans have surely suffered, largely because of policy decisions of their own government (using civilian infrastructure for military purposes, creating tunnels for militants but no civilian shelters).
However, Israelis have also suffered immensely. It’s not a competition but if you don’t recognize that Israelis have suffered after October 7 you don’t understand the conflict. And the extent to which they’ve continued normal life is due to policy decisions of their government (building bomb shelters, missile defenses, and separating military and civilian infrastructure) They have been displaced, murdered, raped, rocketed and exploded by drone. They lost their sons and daughters who are doing their military service and miluim (reserves). They’ve faced mass shootings and rocket attacks.
Certainly, they have suffered. But the death toll is at least 40 to 1, Gaza is now a pile of rubble, and essentially the entire population is displaced and on the brink of famine. The order of magnitude is not remotely the same.
This is largely due to intentional policy decisions of Gaza’s government. I explain that in the comment above.
They received billions in aid that could have been used to create bomb shelters for civilians and to create a defensive military infrastructure separate from civilian life. Instead they chose to build tunnels that civilians are barred from so that militants operate under civilians. They chose to use schools, mosques and apartment buildings for military operations, making them legitimate military targets under international law.
These are choices that Gaza’s government made. And they were not inevitable.
The children who have died didn’t have a say in picking Gaza’s government.
“On the brink of famine” is simply false. Like laughably false.
By the same measure, Israeli's have also suffered largely because of the policy decisions of their own government (directly supporting Hamas for decades, undermining the peace process, engaging in a brutal totalitarian occupation of the Palestinian Territories, etc.)
Israel has killed 100X more Palestinians in the last year than vice versa. It is entirely appropriate to focus on mass murder taking place in Gaza today
It's not 100X more. Current estimates are around 40k dead, with at least some fraction of these actual militants - Israel estimates around 15k I believe.
In any case, "mass murder" is not taking place in Gaza today. The situation is awful and many innocent Gazans have died, but the death toll is relatively small compared to the start of the war, and many of those deaths happen as part of armed combat between Hamas militants and the IDF.
Unless you call *all* warfare as mass-murder, I believe it is disingenuous to label it as such in this case. The true situation is horrible enough without saying untrue things.
Seems to be closer to 200,000. Certainly qualifies for mass murder
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/12/gaza-death-toll-indirect-casualties
You linked to an article about a study that is *estimating* the *eventual* death toll, via indirect deaths (e.g. diseases from being in a war zone). It's not peer reviewed, and has been criticized a lot. (Though worth saying that some people do back up the estimate.)
The official death count, as reported by Hamas themselves (via Gaza's Health Ministry, which they run) is 42k.
So yes, if you take one extremely outlier article talking about an estimate of what the death toll *might* be, instead of looking at actual facts on the ground, you get a figure that is almost 5x higher than anyone else claims. I'm not sure why you think that's a good source to rely on.
lol I thought that if any group was going to be immune to that Lancet drivel, it would be my fellow Slow Borers. Ah well.
I have definitely sometimes seen a "well, what about [X]" / "that's not what matters right now" / "think about how this could be weaponized" view about *personal* expressions of grief in progressive spaces. I agree that is really stupid and cruel. But I think that gets unfairly conflated with any sort of critical discussion of how grief and trauma can get mobilized in a *political* context, and I definitely don't think that's the kind of discussion we should rule as out of bounds (for the same reason I don't support "identitarian deference" norms more broadly).
As a Jew I'm certainly biased but how was this the right decision? There's 364 other days in the year in which the Gazan perspective could and should be written about - the Israelis should have this one to themselves.
I'm a huge fan of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. He's been one of the clearest voices of sanity on this issue this whole year, and I would love nothing more than to replace any and all leaders in the Middle East (very much including Israel's so-called "leaders") with him.
This article is no exception.
I do think it was a deliberate decision to run this piece today, which I can't say I care for. October 7th is the anniversary of the brutal attack on Israel. I really think space should be given, today of all days, to let Israelis grieve. The tragedy of the hostages is ongoing; so is the much bigger-in-scale tragedy of Gazans. And that should absolutely be talked about. But so should the pain and trauma that Israelis went through, and are still going through. And I think today it would be appropriate to focus on that.
I appreciate engaging respectfully around this.
And truly today is two things. It's the anniversary of an awful event — painful for the victims on their families, painful for Israelis and the global Jewish community more broadly — which deserves to be commemorated on its own terms. And it is also I think an opportunity to take stock of a year of response and what it has and hasn't achieved and what might happen in the year to come. We could reasonably have gone in either direction, but I thought this was a very good article and like you I've enjoyed a lot of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib's work and wanted for a while to work with him on something so this is what came together and I think it's an important perspective.
I'll stop reading the comments here and respond. As an admirer and subscriber from day one, it pains me that you chose today, October 7, to publish this otherwise excellent essay. More than one thing can be true: that Ahmed Fouad Alkhatibi's work should be published and promoted by you; and that today was absolutely not the right day. The insensitivity is beyond anything I could have imagined. You erred. You offended. I find your explanation unconvincing and even hurtful.
Thanks, I appreciate your response.
Look, I feel differently about whether today was the right time for this piece. Both because of what I said before, and also, tactically, because I really do love Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib's work and think this is a great article, and it should be published on a day in which it can be judged on its own merits, and not be "controversial".
But, y'know, it's ok to agree to disagree on this. I really *am* glad that this article was published.
I get that you can’t be everything for everyone. And consequently I don’t have such a problem with the choice as Edan does. But man, it’s hard out there for Jews and Israelis. Surely you’ve seen the Naomi Klein one about “weaponizing Israeli trauma” or whatever. I wish antisemites didn’t put us in this position where the decision to run this article from Fuad (I’m a fan of his as well by the way) can feel like a slap in the face.
It was a terrible decision on your part.
Cosign with Matt's editorial choice. It's an error to construe what success over the evil of 10/7 will look like primarily by a metric of giving sufficient space to grieve. In fact, a successful reconciling by Arabs in Gaza with the perpetual and suicidal race war for land sought by Arab nationalist political forces like Hamas and Hezbollah *is probably going to sound less sensitive* than this piece being published today. Here's Konrad Adenuaer in 1965, after his long political career rebuilding the West German economy and people:
[From https://youtu.be/90EVIH4KZsc?t=1637]
"We had wronged the Jews so much, we had committed such crimes against them, that they had to be atoned for somehow, or made right, if we were to regain any standing at all among the peoples of the earth. And further: The power of the Jews even today, especially in America, should not be underestimated. And therefore I have very thoughtfully and very consciously - and this has always been my opinion - put all my strength into it, as best I could, to bring about a reconciliation between the Jewish people and the German people."
Notice the two-decade conservative leader of West Germany is referring to "The power of the Jews even today" in a way that would obviously make any American (or Jew) uncomfortable with this kind of talk on public television in 1965. It's *much more morally outrageous* for a German leader two decades from the Holocaust to offer this passing sentence about Jews than merely letting a writer discuss the defeat of Hamas in terms of Gaza one year from 10/7.
And yet, if we had to pick a success story for closing up the horrors of Nazism and its support among the German people, who even in defeat often told surveys it was a good intention that ended badly, it's probably men who talk and act like Konrad Adenauer. Stiff and measured, not with warmth, but with the stoic reserve that comes from witnessing and losing such a terrible war. Good on Matt for running with this perspective. If we want Gaza reformed after 10/7 and this war, it will require a stiff upper lip for this kind of argument at any time it is worth discussing the war.
Wonderful essay, I only wish I found the closing section remotely persuasive.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is as knowledgable as anyone about the problems that remain towards promoting peace, security, and economic opportunity in the region. But clearly believes it is important and possible to imagine a path forward, even if that path seems completely impossible at the moment.
It won't be next year. But I think it's important to be constructive and optimistic when possible.
Really collapses on Matt’s line about “the parties need to want something other than they currently want.”
That's a good and insightful line but it has made me wonder whether the only response is to throw up one's hands. Nobody can *make* the parties want different things of course, but maybe there are things that others could do to at least nudge the parties in the right direction. For example on the Palestinian side I would hypothesize that two reasons why so many people are resigned to Hamas' worldview is that (1) they don't think resistance would have any chance of success, (2) they don't think a Hamas-less world would be any nicer of a place for them to live. And those two points seem pretty accurate as it currently stands. Is there any way of changing those realities and credibly convincing people of same?
There's a lot I like here, but when he gets into population transfer, Alkhatib makes the error that so many people do when discussing politics of assuming that whatever the most extreme people in a coalition want to do is what the coalition wants to do.
Think of all the righties who say American liberals want to abolish the police, based on the fact that some very extreme parts of our coalition talk openly of it. And they do. They even published an op-ed in the New York Times on it. They ran experiments in cities like Seattle with autonomous zones with no policing! If one is trying to mislead right leaning people that liberals are dangerous and want to abolish the police, the evidence is there.
Except, it's actually BS. Liberals do not want to abolish the police. Some extremists on the Left do, and they attained some power in 2020 and were able to carry out small steps that might have pointed in that direction, and were given some media platforms to say it. But there was a 0% chance that we were ever going to abolish the police and there is still a 0% chance. Supporters of policing have control of the policy tiller on a national level and always have.
Well, that's the actual truth about deporting Palestinians. Yes, the Israeli settler right fantasizes openly about doing it. There are ministers and right wing intellectuals who love musing about it. And in the wake of 10/7 some of them got to publicly fantasize that this was the policy.
But this was never happening and it didn't happen, because in actuality the people who run government policy pay lip service to the crazies (as you have to do) but absolutely understand the practical and moral implications of such a policy. Netanyahu, as bad as he is, did not implement any policies to deport Palestinians en masse. He had nowhere to deport them to and did not even try to, for instance, convince Egypt to take them. He knew the score and has always known the score.
I get WHY partisans do this (EVERY partisan fears the worst from the other side; that's part of how polarization works) but it's a terrible intellectual habit and you have to resist it. "What are my opponents actually capable of and what does the mainstream of their coalition believe?" are crucial questions if you want to strategize your side's next move. And Alkhatib fails that test on the population transfer stuff.
My sense from watching and trying to interpret Netanyahu over the years is that he in fact _does_ want to completely dispel the Palestinians and take 100% of the territory; he just has the luxury of time because of Israel’s comparative wealth and strength. Palestinians and neighbouring Arabs commit the crucial fault (in my view) of denying the right of Israel to exist (or qualifying this right to such an extent as to be meaningless) but a sad realisation for me has been the extent to which significant shares of the Israeli population - and its leadership - are basically also pursuing maximalist territorial aims. Just more slowly. The long game seems to me to be to immiserate the Palestinians for long enough that a window opens when they become Egypt or Jordan’s problem (as nearly happened earlier, mentioned in the essay). Do you really think that if Egypt had opened its doors that Bibi would be letting Palestinians back into the entirety of Gaza any time?
Or am I wrong? (Genuine question, as I’m not an expert. I’m just sharing my honest reactions having watched this issue simmer since I began paying attention to the world at all.)
That's a complete misreading of Netanyahu- who, to be clear, is an extremely bad actor. He actually gave away land to the Palestinians in the Hebron agreement in the 1990's. Why? Because Bibi cares about one thing-- Bibi. If the political climate favors concessions to the Palestinians, he makes them. If it favors a hard line, he takes it. If it gives him room to operate, he does whatever is best for him and to keep him away from the very serious legal charges he faces.
At any rate, the best way to look at the settlement movement is to understand what it is and what it is not. What it is, is an illegal land grab that puts facts on the ground and makes peace harder to achieve. But what it is not is a coherent strategy that gets Israel to deportation of the Palestinians. Indeed, that's a big reason there's so much illegal settler violence; the government is NOT backing the settlers' claims that the Palestinians should leave, but is also not preventing the settlers from breaking Israeli law to build new outposts. Thus, the settlers shoot at Palestinians themselves. Which is a terrible situation and, to be clear, a major international human rights violation by Israel.
But the other thing to understand about settlements is the focus on Gaza, support for Hamas, support for terrorism, and maximalism for 1948 all serve the settlers' aims. A Palestinian movement that just went for 2 states, domestically and internationally, and renounced violence against Israel, would put the settlers in a very bad position (just as the settlers in the 1990's were in a bad position-- indeed, in Gaza, some settlements were even uprooted). A Palestinian movement that focuses on Gaza and relitigating 1948 is great for the settlers though; they can continue violating Israeli and international law and the Palestinian movement ignores them because they are too busy fantasizing about eliminating the colonialist ethno-state and achieving final liberation for the Palestinian people, and driving the infidel Jews out.
So in sum:
1. Population transfer isn't happening and the people who are saying it is are being intellectually dishonest about it.
2. Expansion of settlements IS happening and is being aided both by Netanyahu and the "one state" crowd on the Palestinian side who don't want to focus on the West Bank because they don't want a 2 state solution.
3. Bibi does whatever is good for Bibi.
That's the capsule summary, I think.
The short answer is that this completely misunderstands Bibi and his sales pitch.
Bibi doesn’t really care about anything anymore. He just wants to keep himself in the top seat.
As for his sales pitch, the nickname he appropriated for himself was “Mr. Security”. The 20-25% of Israelis who reliably vote for Likud do so because they don’t trust squishy leftists, who think making concessions to Palestinians will get them to stop with the terrorism, to be maximally hawkish when it comes to preserving Israeli security.
This argument has fallen apart post 10/7 for obvious reasons, and we’ll see what new sales pitch Netanyahu comes up with. But the territorial maximalism that you’re seeing is mostly restricted to the fringe right wing parties that Likud partners with; Likud voters themselves don’t really care about settlements except insofar as they (allegedly) prevent Palestinian terror.
Do we have polling on Israeli public support for 'population transfer' (nicest way I've ever heard to say ethnic cleansing)?
It may not be explicit in these findings, but it's hard to see it not implied. And although it's not a clear majority, it's a lot more serious than "abolish the police" ever was.
"The only way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is through the complete annexation of PA territories to Israel. Agree 32%
The Gaza strip should be resettled by Jewish settlers? Agree 42%"
(Agam Labs, May 2024)
I would also point you to a recent Ezra Klein podcast where the resident jourbalist had a pretty good description of voluntary emigration as an explicit policy.
I don't think ethnic cleansing *is* really implied in the question, though.
Annexation does not equal ethnic cleansing. Indeed, one of the reasons why Israel annexed the Golan and East Jerusalem is that it was willing to take on the inhabitants as potential citizens, and why it never bothered with the Sinai, Gaza, or the West Bank is because it is not willing to take on all those people as potential citizens. A lot of annexationists *may* want to expel the Palestinians as part 2, but for a lot of people, baked into annexationism is "and that means the Palestinians are still there too" which means either citizenship or some sort of apartheid.
Nor does resettling the Gaza strip imply ethnic cleansing. There were Israeli settlement in Gaza before and they didn't require ethnic cleansing. Settlers have this belief (which I think is totally cuckoo but is clearly the product of motivated reasoning) that the presence of civilian settlements acts as a barrier between Palestinian terror groups and Israel proper.
It does in this context. Israel could adopt the one state solution if it wanted to absorb all the Palestinians into its population. It doesn't.
Annexation is the exact *opposite* of ethnic cleansing in this concept. It is in fact closer to what people mean when they talk about a "one state solution" - Israel making all Palestinians equal citizens. (I'm talking about the people saying this in good faith.)
In the context of Israel, annexation would not automatically be understood to give Palestinians rights. I can imagine people answering this survey and assuming that Israel annexes the land but the people remain non-citizens. But it *doesn't* necessarily imply population transfer.
I am sure I have seen some, and yeah, some Israelis on the right support it. But the policy is made by grown-ups who understand what is happening and as I note above, it's not like you can actually do it especially without anyone who is actually going to accept the transfers. It's just like "abolish the police"; every political coalition has its crazies, this is something the crazies fantasize about, and it's not happening in reality.
IDK I think a more equivenlant analysis might be in 2020 when cities started cutting police budgets by like 5%, but in a parallel timeline wherein instead of reinstating the police budget they continued to cut it by an additional few percentage points every year. 'We're not defunding the police completely, we'd never do that, we're just annexing a little bit of their budget each year'
No, that's wrong. Where's the evidence that Israel has deported 5% of the Palestinians every year.
There's literally no policy of deportation, nowhere where they can be deported to, and no realistic prospect of implementation. But it's a fantasy of the Israeli right, to be sure, and it suits some people to pretend it is actual Israeli policy rather than the fantasy proposal of the Israeli right that the grown ups making policy ignore.
You're right it's not an exact analogy, but it's to say that creeping West Bank expansion is pushing Palestinians into a smaller and smaller area. Although not pushed out of the West Bank, Palestinian communities have certainly been pushed off their land. The same crazies like Smotrich who call for 'population transfer' are the ones pushing the settlements, and I think it's very hard to deny the connection between the two, and that for them latter is a step to achieving the former.
Whether or not the govt facilitating the settlements intend them as a step to population transfer, they are certainly making population transfer more feasible and more likely.
Settlement expansion is bad but you are moving the goalposts. Settlement expansion doesn't deport Palestinians. It just reduces the territory available for a potential state. Which is itself bad but is a completely different thing.
And the fact that the same people call for 2 bad policies doesn't mean that the 2 policies are the same thing.
It is obvious that deportation is not happening and nobody is making it happen, and this is a key point that people have to understand because a lot of BS that ends up killing or immiserating a lot of Palestinians flies around in this particular discourse space. It is really important to admit that Israel is not doing things it isn't doing.
Doesn't ethnic cleansing mean the murder of the people of a given ethnicity, rather than them being forcibly moved? To state the obvious, the latter case, while bad, doesn't mean the people moved lose their ethnicity.
Ethnic cleansing is 'cleansing an area of an ethnicity of people'. For example, the recent ethnic cleansing of Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh. I could be wrong, but I didn't think any Armenians died, they just aren't there anymore.
I think it can refer to a combination of murder and displacement.
Right, can, and usually does, include murder, but doesn't have to.
Mr. AlKhatib is a a wise, sane and humane voice, but I'm really skeptical that he is representative of any significant section of the Palestinian population. If you check the people who like his posts on facebook for example, you will see scarcely any Arab or Palestinian people liking him, and far, far more Left wing Israelis and Jews
The title is mourning the destruction of Gaza on the anniversary of the murder of 1,200 Israelis. That is so outrageously gross.
By the way, opinion polls show Gazans mostly approve of the 10/7 attack and support Hamas.
"By the way, opinion polls show Gazans mostly approve of the 10/7 attack and support Hamas."
This was true earlier in the year, but it's actually changed according to the most recent PCPSR survey which I would encourage you to read.
https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/991
Wouldn’t this suggest that Israel is achieving one of its main war aims through the methods they have so far deployed? Would they have gotten to the same place with a token special forces operation/assassinations and some missiles?
Not posing in bad faith here, genuinely wondering aloud.
36% of GAZANS still believe in the armed struggle, per this poll. 36%!
Thank you for the correction that it only used to be a majority of Gazans that supported the October 7th terrorist attacks, but that now it's just 39%. Your choice of headline all makes sense now!
You just made the case for Israeli hawks.
The author of today's article has made the point that PCPSR's data is unreliable, citing both evidence of manipulation of the polls by Hamas (per IDF sources) and recent polling by Zogby suggesting dramatically lower support for Hamas among Gazans (7%). Do you still have a high degree of confidence in PCPSR data? Do you think the indications of manipulation are unproven? Or do you cite it notwithstanding the allegations of unreliability because very little else is available?
Re. gross or inappropriate topic, nah. As a jew, not an Israeli, but with friends and family in Israel, I can't think about 10.7 without thinking about everything else that happened over the last year and possible ways forward. This impulse to police topics sounds like the politicians who say the day, week, forever after a school shooting is not the time to talk about gun control. It's a good time, it's on peoples hearts and minds. As an American, I can't think about 9/11 without thinking that every life lost in Iraq was based on a stupid plan argued under false pretenses. This was a good article, I'm glad I read it today,
Interesting. I am more sympathetic to Israel than I am to Palestine. And I'm okay with this piece. And I agreed with your comment, until I got to the 9/11 comment. And then I got very offended because I lost loved ones on 9/11, and I do think 9/11 should just be about the victims.
Not saying I'm mad at your comment per se, but it brought home how idiosyncratic and personal our reactions are.
1,200 is a lot smaller than 40,000
Far more Japanese than Americans died in WWII. Pearl Harbor day is still dedicated to the remembrance of the victims of Pearl Harbor, not their attackers.
I agree with you. However, I'd guess that the NYT and the like ran op-eds on the first year anniversary, reflecting on the attack and America's resulting entry into WWII.
Suffering isn’t a contest. It’s all unnecessary.
You know that more than 1200 Israelis have died in this war. You’re not counting the many soldiers who have died. The civilians who died in rocket and drone attacks, etc. At least 1,700 Israelis died.
"No, actually, 5% as many Israelis as Palestinians have died, not 3%."
The number quoted was a year out of date. Many Israeli families have dealt with loss after October 7. Reservists and soldiers being killed. People being killed in mass shootings, rocket attacks and drone attack. Hostages being murdered.
As much as you want to minimize it, Israeli losses did not end on October 7, and so quoting a number that’s a year out of date is a bit problematic.
I'm actually not trying to minimize it, I don't think comparing deaths on either side is the right way to view the morality of a conflict. Far more Japanese were killed by Americans in World War II than vice-versa, and that absolutely doesn't mean Japan was the oppressed party in that fight. But when you correct the figures as you did, I think you're playing into that framing, and if you do think in those terms, correcting the ratio from 3% to 5% is pretty absurd.
On the anniversary of 9/11 is it not appropriate to take stock of what happened after 9/11?
No. 9/11 is to remember the victims of 9/11. You have 364 other days of the year to consider the aftermath, including the anniversaries of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Especially on 9/11/2002.
An important caveat in 'Do Gazans support 10/7?' is what they think happened on 10/7. Outwardly Hamas claimed that they didn't attack any civilians, and I don't know how much access to outside information Gazans have
I mean, thousands of civilians *actively participated* in the attack...
Right, but out of 2.2 million, thousands is not a huge percentage
They know what happened, information gets in. The author of the piece discusses talking to his family in Gaza.
Right, but he mentions that it's because the brother has an Israeli SIM card, and I don't know how common that is.
There's a broader question of what responsibility do people have to seek out information that contradicts the dominant narrative that they're being served? Everyday Russians could find accurate information about the war in Ukraine if they ignore the information they're being fed and go out of their way to find it, but most people just aren't going to do that, and that applies to people everywhere. There is also a strong power of denial to believe that your people are in the right and to not be sympathetic to the ideas of a people that are attacking you Is that right? Probably not, but it's extremely human.
Also following the news is probably not the highest priority for people running for their lives.
Thank you Matt Y for posting this piece, and to the author: I'm sincerely sorry for everything you and your family and friends have suffered. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us.
One part that stuck out like a sore thumb:
"Some, myself included, put out proposals and pleas to Israeli officials to build small camps on the Israeli side of the border, right next to Gaza, that could house some Palestinians until the war was over and minimize civilian casualties, to no avail."
Sorry to be disrespectful, but you gotta be kidding me. "Hey Israel, some of our people crossed your border and murdered, mutilated, raped, and/or kidnapped a bunch of your civilians. Won't you please let us cross your border again and set up camps for our safety? We promise we'll be very good and won't do any more terrorisms and we definitely won't let any Hamas fighters disguised as civilians into these camps!"
[insert Tony Stark "not a great plan" gif]
Now, that said, I really appreciate the author saying that the Palestinian people must accept the existence of Israel, renounce extremism and violence, and focus on rebuilding Gaza into a peaceful, prosperous nation. Unfortunately, his assertion that "the people of Gaza ... want nothing to do with Islamism, terrorism or future suicidal adventurism" is sorely in need of evidence. As Matt Y said, this conflict would be easy to solve if only both sides wanted different things than they actually do want.
I'm glad the author got out safely and I wish him well.
I feel like it’s too hard to disentangle the religious element from the nationalist element in this conflict.
Even the PLO (a supposedly secular organization) was shot through with Islamic radicals.
It is a government’s job to protect its citizens. Building shelters, securing food supplies, and evacuating citizens is Hamas’s job, not Israel’s. The international community has coddled Hamas for far too long, taking over what are rightly government responsibilities and leaving Hamas free to wage war.
You start a war and expect your enemy to take in your civilians because you can’t be bothered with their welfare? Grow up and get real. That’s a preposterous expectation. It’s a great humanitarian act if they want to do it, and may even have strategically benefit, but it is emphatically not their job.
To be honest, I think Israel would have been better off doing it - if it could do so reliably. Israel evacuated all these civilians anyway, and the fact that there was nowhere to evacuate them where Hamas military infrastructure was unavailable proved to be a big problem. Similarly, controlling aid distribution would have been much easier if they were in camps rather than in Gaza.
That said, the hard part is doing so in a way where they can’t break out of the camps and wind up in Israel proper.
Maybe you would support 40,000,000 North Koreans or Afghanis being evacuated to camps in Utah? Because that’s the scale of what you’re proposing.
And let’s be real. Even if Israel did do this, Palestinian and Western media would be full of articles describing the camps as “genocide camps”, even if the intention were evacuations from harms way.
It breaks my heart that this war turns one today. Excellent essay Ahmed.
It genuinely pains me that we are a year in and not at all closer to some kind of resolution. Hamas and the Israeli far-right are codependent infections in the festering wound that is this conflict and I have no idea what a realistic path to a positive resolution looks like.
All I can do is share now in the hope Ahmed raises here which is that in the other side, the people of Gaza will build something new and better.
“Indeed, the people of Gaza are done with Hamas and want nothing to do with Islamism, terrorism, or future suicidal adventurism, all of which have set their just and urgent aspirations back by decades.”
I hope this is true. I am not sure that I see of lot of evidence for this just yet, but hopefully that will come in time.
Respectfully, this is not a very good article. It is at times informative but throughout treats a complex issue without serious analysis and seeks to misinform.
To give only one example, the author writes
“The Israeli military and Netanyahu were furious and felt they had to inflict maximum pain and damage on the people of the Gaza Strip.”
This is an extremely strong claim that contradicts the repeated statements of Israeli officials. Does he mean that this appears to have been their reaction based on their conduct or does he have information that substantiates the contention? The passage misinforms the reader if he does not.
The piece is interesting as a pro-Palestinian propaganda alternative to the Free Press, but is a really weird fit in Slow Boring which generally tries to publish actual serious analysis. Anyway I did enjoy the read so I don’t want to be too hard on it.
That claim is extremely well supported by reporting on the Israeli government, but even more so by what they have in fact done to Gaza.
I'm going to second this from Sam. It's all quite well documented. If you haven't seen it, then you don't want to see it.
So this depends on what's meant by 'maximum pain and damage.' Like, it is trivially true that Israel could kidnap a dozen Gazan children for each hostage and slowly torture them to death on television only stopping if the hostage in question was released, while continuing their current campaign, which would be greater pain and damage then they are currently doing, but that's only true in a very trivial 'things can always be worse way.'
I do think it's pretty transparent that one of Israel's goals is to attempt to establish/re-establish deterrence (which can be somewhat unflatteringly termed 'do maximum damage/inflict pain'), which they believe October 7th indicates they lost. I think this is mistaken and, as the piece argues, Hamas viewed normalization as an existential threat and no amount of deterrence would cause them to avoid acting under such circumstances.
Well right, I mean we could define 'maximum damage' as killing every Gazan, and then killing 1 million Gazans would be less than half of maximum damage. I don't think anyone would define it that way though, and how we generally refer to 'maximum pain and damage' is as the maximum that could feasibly get away with.
People have mentioned the casualties, but also consider the below -
'The U.N. says the war has damaged or destroyed over 92% of Gaza’s main roads and more than 84% of its health facilities.
It estimates nearly 70% of Gaza’s water and sanitation plants have been destroyed or damaged. That includes all five of the territory’s wastewater treatment facilities, plus desalination plants, sewage pumping stations, wells and reservoirs.
The breakdown of water infrastructure has flooded the streets with sewage in many areas, contributing to the spread of disease among a population weakened by widespread hunger.'
Was the liberation of Mosul an attempt to “inflict maximum pain and damage on the people of” Mosul?
Because Brett McGurk sure seems to think Israeli tactics were perfectly acceptable by comparison. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/09/israel-gaza-war-biden-netanyahu-peace-negotiations/679581/
I agree Ray. The majority of the article which is spent describing the past is entirely devoted to giving Israel full agency and giving Gazans none. Notice the use of passive (Palestinians) vs active (Israeli) voice. Israel is the only actor which does anything, and everything happens to Gaza, according to this author. It’s basic propaganda 101.
“It was Friday night, October 6, in San Francisco, when I saw the attacks unfold; I was devastated and extremely concerned with what I knew was about to happen.” Empathy would have you concerned with what WAS ACTUALLY HAPPENING. Today is the anniversary of a brutal pogrom against Israelis. We can grieve for all the death and destruction that resulted in Gaza—we should and we do—but just as not all Gazans are Hamas, not all Israelis—babies, peace activists, Holocaust survivors, a hundred-plus still held hostage—are Netanyahu, Smotrich and the far right. I hope your hope for Gaza is realized. A good start would be acknowledging as human beings those on the Israeli side of the border who also just “love life and want to prosper and thrive.”
This is an odd reading of Ahmed's piece. He expresses *in the sentence you quote in your comment* his devastation at what "was actually happening." I don't think the ability to hold two feelings at once — sadness at what is happening now to others and fear for what the future holds for you and your family — is in any way indicative of a lack of empathy. And his piece ends with the "good start" you request: "This transformation is entirely attainable, but it requires an awakening among many Palestinians and their global allies that starts with a recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland in safety and security."
The author uses passive voice (“what was happening”) to describe the actions of Palestinians and active voice to describe the actions of Israel. It’s the most obvious way to depict an oppressor vs victim narrative.
The language in quotes was used by the commenter, not by Ahmed. He does, in fact, use active language to describe the actions of both Hamas and Israel.
"What was happening" isn't passive voice, it's active voice past progressive. If what you mean is "vague about agency", say that instead.
Late to the party... I just read through a bunch of comments arguing about
a. was it appropriate to publish this article today (I am an Israel hawk generally, but I see no issues with it)
b. who suffered or is suffering more (Gaza by sheer numerical numbers)... but the real answer is humanity is suffering.
I like many am skeptical about whether at the end, Gazans will throw off the yoke of Hamas and rebuild with peace and unity in mind... but you can't fault optimism.
All I know is Hamas poked a bear... and when you poke a bear... don't expect a proportional response.
This subject... the middle east... especially with Israel will not be solved in our generation (sorry for the skepticism). At best we can hope for some period of reduced violence soon.
My thoughts are with the people whose families were slaughtered today... anniversaries are especially hard. (This does not mean that my thoughts aren't with any innocent victims of any war happening today no matter what side)
Well said.
“The Israeli military and Netanyahu were furious and felt they had to inflict maximum pain and damage on the people of the Gaza Strip.”
You read their minds, Ahmed?
“The Israeli army would often strike targets that had no military significance but caused numerous casualties among non-involved combatants, especially children who have paid the heaviest price throughout this war.”
Presumably you meant “non-combatants,” but whatever. And, not having been present, how do you judge the military significance of attacks?
Over 40k dead, nearly 50% of hospitals destroyed, vast majority of schools damaged or destroyed. Regardless of one's position on this issue, how could you not call that maximum pain and damage on the people of the Gaza Strip?
Many of the hospitals/schools/etc were staging grounds and logistics hubs for hamas. It’s hamas’s strategy to work like this, and it didn’t need to. They spent years and lots of international aid resources intended for hospitals and schools on their tunnel network. This whole thing was extremely intentional activity from hamas.
Very true. But I think this essay on Israel's policies regarding civilian harm is interesting. It's from a former State Department official who has a lot of experience in that field of policy and seems to be written in good faith.
https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/
That essay is heavy on procedural problems and light on meaningful facts. (It cites daily casualty data from January, and the situation on the ground has evolved quite a lot since then.) He complains that the IDF is not open about their planning and may not use the most recently developed best practices - fair enough, the IDF is a modern, professional military and they have the wherewithal to handle this sort of record keeping. But it’s sort of like failing an ISO-9000 audit solely for poor record keeping. To the extent he disagrees with John Spencer, probably the world’s top expert on MOUT, I’d put more weight on Spencer’s opinions.
The scale of these tunnel networks have really shifted my entire view on this conflict. I would say pre-10/7, I was broadly sympathetic to Gaza and maybe even the Palestinian cause or naively thought a two-state solution would work. But now, seeing how Hamas probably pumped 90 cents on every dollar of investment into these tunnels ... it's just hopeless.
Ben, did you really not know that Hamas built command centers under hospitals and stored rockets in schools? Well, now you know.
"We have to inflict maximum pain and damage" and "we have to kill enemy fighters so they can't do an October 7 again, and that entails destroying civilian buildings because fighters insist on hiding there" are two different things, although tragically both do result in max pain and suffering.
Intention matters?
The number of dead is in dispute and includes Hamas and other fighters.
Hospitals, schools, etc. were damaged and destroyed because Hamas used them - deliberately - for military purposes like command-and-control centers, rocket launch sites, hardened fighting positions, etc. Same with apartment buildings, UNWRA facilities, mosques and other locations that are supposed to be protected locations in international law. When a combantant violates international law and militarizes such locations, they become legitimate military targets.
If there is "maximum pain and damage" on the people of the Gaza strip, then the vast majority of the blame belongs to Hamas whose leadership has been explicitly clear over the years that their tactics involve creating "martyrs" out of the population. Their entire fighting doctrine revolves around using the population as a weapon both in terms of combat by attempting to limit Israeli responses, as well as information warfare and propaganda directed toward outside audiences when that strategy succeeds. There's documented evidence that, in response to Israeli pre-strike evacuation notices, Hamas has attempted to prevent civilians from leaving, as one example. If Israel was truly committed to maximizing the pain and damage to the civilian population, they would not bother with evacuations, "roof knocking" and other means that allow civilians to leave operating areas. Israel doing that hurts its military effectiveness, because those warnings also warn Hamas.
The sad reality is that urban warfare is particularly destructive and deadly to civilians and civilian infrastructure. This is not something unique to Gaza. See also Manila (WWII), Mosul, Allepo, Bakhmut, and many others. What is unique is that, unlike most every other war, the civilian population is not allowed to leave the battlespace. Gazan's are denied that basic right by Egypt, by Israel, and by every other government with an interest in this conflict including the United States. This is why - unlike other wars - Gazans constantly have to move to different parts of the strip depending on where the fighting is. The international community has decided they should not be allowed to flee somewhere that is actually safe. That fact also contributes significantly to the maximum pain and damage to the people of Gaza.
It’s tragic, but Palestinian refugees has a bad history of coups and violence in countries that take them and it’s understandable why no one wants to assume responsibility for 2m people, largely radicalized.
The illiteracy claim seems wrong. I googled “Palestinian illiteracy rate Gaza” and the top result says 1.9% of Gazans over age 15 were illiterate in 2023. For context quick googling suggests that the illiteracy rate is noticeably higher in neighboring Arab countries.
you're right here, it seems the info I had was inaccurate and/or wildly out of date. 65+ age cohorts have low literacy rates in Gaza (80%), young rates are very high.
Hamas’ leadership openly brags about killing their own people!
“We are ready to sacrifice twenty thousand, thirty thousand, a hundred thousand.”—Sinwar
You can't make this claim while ignoring the fact that Hamas's strategy is to deliberately cause maximum civilian casualties by housing its military installations in civilian infrastructure.
If it has tunnels under all the hospitals then many of those hospitals will be destroyed but it is not due to a bloodthirsty desire to destroy hospitals.
Your inference is based on an incomplete consideration of available information.
Maximum pain would have been indiscriminate bombing or deliberate targeting of civilians like Hamas does
Do you dispute the reports that Hamas used hospitals and schools for military purposes?
To the degree Gaza’s civilian population is experiencing “maximum pain and damage” it is due to Hamas policies.
"Hamas policies" makes the group sound weirdly respectable - I love the idea of a Hamas think tank or bureaucracy that creates public policy. "The Department of Zionist Elimination seeks public comment on a proposed rule regarding the reallocation of water pipe infrastructure for kinetic use."
If you’re to believe urban warfare experts like John Spencer then it’s entirely plausible Israel is actually waging the most ethical war in modern urban warfare history.
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286
Very easily: by knowing anything about urban warfare.
Don’t believe me? Ask Brett McGurk, or the US DOD official who *literally sat with the IDF as they chose targets* and confirmed that their process is similar to American ones.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/09/israel-gaza-war-biden-netanyahu-peace-negotiations/679581/
It is very frustrating to me that even when this stuff is reported in American media, the same lazy thinking about “look at these big numbers” dominates.
I mean, you can turn this argument right back around - you know that the Israeli government *doesn't* want to inflict a ton of damage on the Gaza Strip? You *are* able to judge the military significance of Israeli attacks on Gaza despite not being there? Hamas is absolutely at fault for keeping at least some of their activity around places like hospitals, but I don't think it's responsible to just take the Israeli government's word that every airstrike, every shelling, every sniping is done with the utmost respect for civilian life and only on thoroughly vetted legitimate military targets. They're not out to slaughter civilians, but it sure doesn't seem like the Israeli military gives a damn if they get in the way.
To start with, where are the official statements by Israel saying their policy is to inflict deliberate damage to non-military targets and to punish civilians? From what I’ve seen, their stated position is, and has been, to destroy Hamas and rescue hostages. Every bullet and bomb and hour used for the purpose of inflicting “maximin pain and damage” is a waste of resources.
What would be the point of that?
If you have any information showing that Israel has targeted schools and hospitals that were *not* also Hamas command centers or barracks or materiel stores, please share it.
“They're not out to slaughter civilians…”
I agree.
The accuser bears the burden of proof. Obviously.
The US DoD embedded an official with the IDF as it chose targets and confirmed that their processes and guardrails for civilian casualties match ours’.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/09/israel-gaza-war-biden-netanyahu-peace-negotiations/679581/