I'm a Democrat, and one thing I don't think Republicans get is how frustrating it is that whenever there's a legislative fight, whether it's over the Speakership or budget or whatever, Dems are always expected to be the adults in the room. We assume that Republicans will act irrationally, so Dems have to asymmetrically compromise for the good of the country.
I feel like that's similar to the Israel conflict. Israel is acting more aggressively than I would like, but they were also attacked first and all hostages have not been released. Hamas has repeatedly denied calls for ceasefires, yet the entire discourse here is about how Israel should unilaterally stop fighting. It's like we all expect them to be the adults in the room even though the other side will continue to try to fight regardless of how outgunned they are.
I would've agreed more with this take in November/December. But this puts the conflict into a binary between ceasefire and non-ceasefire. When there is just a lot more Israel could've done to minimize civilian casualties and let aid go into Gaza. I agree that Hamas is the leading reason why there hasn't been a ceasefire in the first place, but there's a world where Israel could've kept fighting in a far more humane way.
sure totally, and I agree with the notion that Israel should do more to minimize civilian casualties.
But this sorta goes to my main point -- the commentariat is more upset with Israel for not doing enough to avoid accidentally killing civilians than they are with Hamas for intentionally killing civilians. We expect Israel to be the adults, and I can imagine how frustrating that would be.
Right, but we expect them to be adults because they have nuclear weapons and a war arsenal that could make Gaza essentially unlivable. I do think it's annoying that the pro-palestinian activist side is slow to blame Hamas and to immediately turn the conflict into a dialogue about colonization. But the US just has more leverage with Israel and they have the capacity to kill far more people, so they're going to get more attention from our government.
Hamas' founding charter called for the destruction of Israel. Their updated 2017 positions are incompatible with Israel (e.g., Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine, Right of Return). So long as Hamas is in power there will be war.
I’m going to point out there that you are reacting with incredulity to something that happened in Nagorno-Karabakh “last year”. In fact, the Azerbaijanis killed or displaced essentially all the Armenians there. Are you happy with that solution?
I think the more leverage thing is key. In the last five years I have expended more energy criticizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank than I have criticizing Hamas terrorism. This isn't because I think settlements are worse than terrorism.
It is because I understand Israel to be pluralistic democracy where the majority of it citizens are rational and well-intentioned people, many of who are sincerely motivated to live according to faith that places a great deal of emphasis on right action and justice. So providing a critique like the one MY is giving here or others have given that failing to engage in a peace process, violating human rights in occupied territories, and undermining the possibility of long term peace through settlements are all things that both immoral and undermining the ability or likelihood of peace and of allies to support them feels like a potentially productive and ultimately loving thing to do for both Palestinians and Israelis.
Hamas is a self-declared genocidal terrorist organization with obvious willingness to use violence to maintain power in Gaza and zero incentive to want peace in the region. The average person in Gaza has limited ability to influence their actions. Hamas and I don't share a set of values, commitments to international law, or desire for peace. So my criticizing them feels like spitting in the wind. They don't give a shit what I think and being upsetting is pretty much their defined MO. Criticizing them may be a supportive gesture to Israel but it seems a fairly hallow one.
I feel fairly similar in terms of how much energy I give to criticizing specific behaviors of the far left than the far right or Dems vs. Republicans. The far right actively hates everything that I stand for and the Republican party quite rationally doesn't give two shits what I think because I am far enough Left that I would never vote for them. To the extent that they get mileage with their base for owning the Libs, my being upset is the goal not the flaw with their behavior. I get how this can feel unfair but ultimately my expecting the Dems to act like adults is about me respecting them.
We should be clear eyed about the fact that seeing your innocent children being killed and (what you, not completely without justification, see as your) homeland being stolen makes you support radical organizations. It's not more surprising than the fact that Lenin became a communist after his brother was killed by the Tsar.
"The average person in Gaza has limited ability to influence their actions."
How many average persons in Gaza are doing their part, for example, by cooperating with the Israelis by providing intel on the locations of Hamas hideouts and tunnels, etc?
Sometimes the often-overly-simplistic maxim that, You're either with us or against us" is actually true, or at least more true than not.
I don't want to rob the average citizen in Gaza of agency or moral responsibility for their actions but people do operate within a community and context. There is a difference between (A) someone who (1) has navigating living for years in an area dominated by a violent and exploitative terrorist organization where opposition can mean death and (2) is currently watching their loved ones die due to a bombing campaign and aid limitation from a foreign occupying power making the choice to risk death by choosing to do what their community would view as treason and assist that foreign occupying power in their war against the government of your country in the hope that post-war your area would be free of terrorism and war and (B) a free citizen of a democracy with free and fair elections and a good internal human rights record choosing to cast a vote for a government committed to the goal of peace and compliance with international law.
It is easy to say that the person A should make that choice or even imagine that if we were person A we would make that choice but it is not an easy choice or one that history would believe most people would be brave enough to make. There is a difference for example between serving in the German resistance in WWII and, say, voting for Biden in 2024. I don't expect any medal for doing the later. That later option is open to the citizens of Israel and has been in the last few elections. It is not open to the average citizen of Gaza since Hamas's take over.
I suspect the number of people who would even see doing option A as the moral things is reducing daily with each civilian killed.
That is what war does. Wars against terrorism can result in symbolic victories but they also create more terrorists. I understand Israel's urge to unleash its military might against Gaza because it has that military might. We did the same thing after 9/11. But I think they will learn at the end of the day that military might has its limits and at the end of the day you risk having more dead soldiers than the terrorists could have hoped to kill otherwise, many times more dead civilians, new terrorist recruits that create every changing and increasingly extreme terrorist regimes, and no way to nation build that is sustainable and doesn't revert as soon as the military leaves.
You may have more leverage with your allies, but it also causes more resentment and at some point your allies may decide they aren't allies anymore. I agree with Matt's frustration with murder/suicide politics.
Sometimes. But if the keys might be there and the only alternative is just walking away and saying "well I guess I'll just never get to drive my car again." It's the most rational set of actions.
I think plenty of people are more upset with Hamas than Israel and would see Hamas evaporated if it could be done without killing lots of Palestinian civilians. There does not seem to be a way to do that, and Hamas doesn’t listen to then US and we don’t fund them, so the message from many is “stop killing these civilians to get at Hamas”.
I will always be more angry with Israel’s government when its policies indiscriminately kill civilians. Killing civilians is part of the founding belief system behind hamas. It says something really horrible about how you view the state of Israel if you’re willing to draw comparisons to it with the policies of hamas.
What precisely more could Israel have done to minimize civilian casualties, without seriously risking more Israeli deaths and still allowing them to achieve their military aims.
Neither of us are privy to the day to day military operations of the Israeli government. And aside from dropping smaller bombs and avoiding civilian infrastructure (that yes, I know Hamas hides in) you're right, it's incredibly hard to avoid civilian casualties when you're executing a bombing campaign on a city as dense as Gaza. I know Blinken, Sullivan, and the rest of the Biden team has publicly advocated for a military strategy that minimizes casualties, and they're much more aware of the specifics of this, so I think it's fair to say that there is a pathway.
Fundamentally, I think this is a question of whether its possible to actually defeat Hamas, of whether indiscriminately bombing Gaza will actually make Israel safer in the long run. This is a critique that's been made by people who are far more steeped in the conflict and have far more sources on the ground in the situation than any of us. And as much Hamas is to blame in all of this, I don't think we can just ignore those questions.
So, I agree that we are not privy to the day-to-day operations.
Using smaller bombs definitely would make it harder to destroy tunnel infrastructure. But we don't know the specifics on each strike.
I'm not convinced that just because Biden administration officials support "minimizing civilian casualties" that that necessarily means that there was a clear path for lowering civilian casualties substantially in a way that allows for protecting Israeli lives as well as accomplishing Israel's military goals. Biden has a clear political incentive for calling for minimization of civilian casualties, regardless. And they are also not privy to all Israeli military intel. And minimizing civilian casualties is just a statement of a value, a value Israel shares. It's not a specific plan.
So in the first paragraph, you admit that Hamas hides in the civilian infrastructure that Israel targets, but in the second paragraph, you called Israel's bombing campaign "indiscriminate." It's a bit of a contradiction. If Israel is targeting Hamas operatives hiding in civilian infrastructure, that's discriminate, not indiscriminate.
I don't like the framing of "destroying" or "defeating" Hamas because the term is vague. I wish Netanyahu had used more specific language, because he set the bar of victory very high. But when I hear defeating Hamas, what I understand is unseating Hamas from power, destroying their arsenal, degrading their military capacity, dismantling their terror infrastructure, and bringing back hostages. I think these are clear and actionable goals. Yes, you can't defeat an idea. But you can make sure that the organization that holds that idea isn't the governing power of a territory and can't execute violent attacks.
I apologize that I don't have the time today for a truly in-depth response, but here's a recent post (https://www.slowboring.com/p/friday-thread-0dd/comment/51744104) that I made on the subject, which specifically references an article detailing a number of ways that Israel could attempt to mitigate civilian casualties if it were genuinely interested in doing so.
As far as describing Israel's bombing campaign as "indiscriminate," I don't think that's necessarily a contradiction, even if they are generally "targeting Hamas operatives hiding in civilian infrastructure". There's ample evidence (e.g. https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/) that Israel is/was destroying large, multi-family buildings with little to no warning just on the basis that Hamas fighter lived there (even though that fighter is likely now deep underground in tunnels). I would argue that is kind of destruction (and the Israeli concept of "power targets" generally) is mostly about revenge, and indiscriminate revenge at that.
Thanks for this, as it does address the relevant questions. I didn't come away from the justsecurity article entirely convinced, because at the end of the day Hamas is an organization that actively *wants* civilian casualties, both for strategic and religious reasons. It is hard to know how to calibrate our expectations for harm minimization in the face of that.
This is exactly why that talking point is cringe: no one ever says that, then pivots to someone with relevant expertise who explains how.
I think that’s because, deep down, we all know what you do: get civilians to flee the city, which Palestinians can’t do and their supporters don’t want them to.
"And minimizing civilian casualties is just a statement of a value, a value Israel shares."
Is that why leading politicians have said the exact opposite? Do you believe this yourself, i.e. that the radical right wing parties in Israel want to protect civilian Palestinian lives? That would be incredibly naive.
When all this went down on 10/7 my expectation was that Israel had to respond with an invasion of Gaza. I was posting on social media that Hamas needed to be destroyed and that the only path to lasting peace was with a different government in Gaza. Needless to say, I was short on specifics then and I don't really have any more now.
My expectation at the time was that the IDF would minimize civilian casualties by relying much more heavily on ground operations and house to house searches in Gaza. This would be very time consuming and dangerous to IDF soldiers, but it struck me as the only realistic way to truly root out Hamas without carpet bombing civilians (I'm not saying that the IDF is carpet bombing now, I am saying that is the only other way I envisioned to destroy Hamas was to, in effect, destroy Gaza). Now I am not a military expert by any means, and I certainly realize that a lot of civilians would get killed in the crossfire of urban combat as well. I might be leaving myself open to getting dunked on here and so be it. War is horrific and suffering is unavoidable but I think myself, and many others just didn't think the Palestinian civilian deaths would be this HIGH. I took Netanyahu seriously that he wanted to root out and destroy Hamas and that would entail a long and costly ground campaign at significant risk to the IDF. I have a lot of sympathy for the IDF and the sacrifices they have to make so I am not suggesting that minimizing their casualties is unimportant or not worthwhile. I am simply stating that the objective that Netanyahu stated could only be achieved by a long and bloody IDF effort or the destruction of Gaza.
The way that many people in these comments (not just on this post but earlier ones as well) seem to think that, because destroying Hamas is *desirable,* that it's therefore *possible,* has really surprised me. It flies in the face of everything I thought this commentariat broadly stood for.
If you mean unseating then from power as the governing entity of Gaza, removing its top leadership, degrading their military capacity, destroying their arsenal, and destroying their terror infrastructure (which is now most Israelis understand it) then it surely is possible.
If you mean making the organization disappear and the ideology go away, then no, it’s not possible.
Fair enough, Ben. My gut sense is that Israel really doesn't care about Gazan casualties and that there may have been reasonable steps they could have taken to limit civilian casualties but didn't, but that's just a gut sense; I really don't know. And outside those involved in military decision making, no one knows.
I've read and listened to a lot on this conflict and the best thing I've heard by far has been this podcast by Jeff Mauer likening Israel's actions in Gaza to the sinking of the Lusitania (https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/imbw-audio-my-thoughts-on-gaza-delivered). Bottom line: when you don't know, you don't know.
If you can't pursue your aims without unacceptable consequences, you have to change aims. Israel's whole security strategy is discredited and should be revised wholesale. That won't fly politically in Israel but it's the truth, and frankly evident from the contradictions of Israeli policy. Decades of occupation, repeated invasions and rising repression haven't delivered security to Israelis.
I don’t think Israel can end the occupation unilaterally. But there are things it can do unilaterally to improve security, improve Palestinian lives, and try to create a political horizon
Okay, I'll give it a shot. They could open up refugee camps within Israel itself and announce that Palestinian civilians who wish to flee Gaza while the fighting is ongoing can come there. Do their best to vette for known Hamas members and keep the refugee camps well guarded. Sure some Hamas will sneak in, but they can't take their infrastructure, weapons, and hostages with them. This will give a lot more credibility to the idea that Israel is providing a place for Plaestinian civilians to flee to.
After all, MattY rightly talks about how we don't condemn Egypt enough for opening their border to Palestinian refugees, but Israel could also let in refugees.
The expectation that Israel will invite 1.5 million Gazans (the equivalent number as 15% of the Israeli population), into sovereign Israel, and will properly be able to vet each one for ties to Hamas (when 70-80% support armed struggle/terrorism/October 7 against Israeli civilians), and will be able to properly set up and guard a refugee camp of that size in a way that keeps Israeli population centers (that aren't that far away) safe seems to me like a pipe dream. And a totally unrealistic expectation for any country at war after being brutally attacked.
It's like asking the US to take 40,000,000 Afghans and set them up in Utah, while vetting every one to make sure they're not Taliban. Good luck convincing the people of Utah that that's a good idea :)
Well you have to admit, it would sure give Israel a motivation to wrap up the Gaza campaign as fast as possible so they could send the refugees back home, while at the same time allowing the campaign to wrap up faster by clearing out the civilians so they can go more destructive on the tunnels and military infrastructure that they're trying to destroy.
If Afghanistan were next to Utah, and the expectation was that the Afghans would only be there months (not years) before being swiftly sent back home then, and it was being done for the purpose of leaving the Taliban no place to hide their weapons and supplies , and this would provide long term security for the people of Utah and prevent them from being continuously attacked then... maybe?
This is pretty unprecedented to ask a country to take in millions of civilians from an enemy entity.
Even if it would help protect civilians, I can already see the world opinion twist it to say Israel is putting Palestinians in concentration camps, and the New York Times front page would be filled with images of squalid living conditions in the tents in these transit camps. I can see them branded as "genocide" camps (even if the intent is to shield refugees from harms way in Rafah).
There is no way to properly vet this population nor to properly monitor the place. It would place Israeli civilian population centers at risk of terrorist activity.
It's just such a ridiculous standard to hold Israel to, and just so unrealistic.
What has surprised me more than the civilian casualties has been the vastness and sophistication of the Gaza tunnel network. What's become more clear to me since Nov./Dec. is Hamas doesn't care about their civilians. They invested their aid into the tunnel network rather than infrastructure.
Of course Hamas doesn't care about their civilians. Terrorist organization occupying territories on the pretext of their being a base for launching a war of liberation that cannot be realistically achieved have a pretty universal record for being absolutely horrible in terms of human rights and care of their civilians. They rob them, they recruit their children into terrorist operations where they will die, they spend money that should be spent on basic needs for military operations that have no hope of success and frequently on their own much higher standard of living. It is also why they often can't surrender under reasonable terms.
I spent time researching human rights conditions in the North and East of Sri Lanka when that territory was held by the Tamil Tigers. The government at the time was committing human rights abuses but nothing to the degree of what was being done to the Tamils by the Tigers themselves. At that point, far into the civil war it was clear that if the current leadership surrendered they would face criminal prosecution if not execution based on claims from both the government and the people they were "ruling" in their own territories. It was basically assumed at that time than any peace accord would need to come with significant bribes to the current leadership and guarantees of safe asylum in a third country. There was obviously little interest in that from a Sri Lankan public that had been subjected to years of terrorism and fighting. As a result, the worse the Tigers were in terms of their behavior in the rest of Sri Lanka the less viable peace became and since peace would mean the end of power and possibly life for the Tiger's leadership the more attractive horrific behavior became.
I know that there are people who think that Hamas miscalculated Israel's response and thought they would just do a hostage exchange. I think this is naive. the gang rapes and mutilation of corpses very much suggests that they were not making a calculated move to collect bargaining chips. I think they correctly calculated that Israel normalizing relations with the Saudis to create an informal alliance against Iran was bad news for them. It might not lead to peace but it would reduce the Arab's world's willingness to support Hamas maintaining control of Gaza or providing funding that would allow it to remain in power.
I think they intentionally lured Israel into a trap. They did something so horrific that they knew the current Israeli government would need to declare total war on Hamas and that would necessitate massive civilian casualties in Gaza and shift the international support, hurt any chances of a normal peace process on the larger two state option, and make it difficult if not impossible for Arab countries to align with Israel. And they knew that they had the capacity to stay in tunnels, take the best food and aid, or stay safe in remote international bases. The civilians would die and grief and hardship would just make fertile ground for recruits among young boys and men who saw their families slaughtered by Israel.
By their own standards, I think Hamas is winning this war and will go on winning unless Israel either radically changes its approach to the conflict or Israel goes so far that they conduct ethnic cleansing in Gaza which might mean that Hamas loses but Israel loses all claim to moral authority in the world community on the greater issue of Israel vs Palestinian relations. It is only that first option where Hamas doesn't win without Israel losing. That is why people who care about both Israeli citizens and Palestinian citizens are calling for a radical change in Israel's tactics and approach to aid.
First, the bombing campaign in the first phase of the war did not seem partiuclarly targeted. If a building had a connection to Hamas, no matter how tenuous, it got on the list, and it got bombed. Because most buildings in Gaza meet this loose criteria, something like 80% of structures in Northern Gaza were destroyed. This phase was where much, if not most, of the civilian deaths came from. As most of the Hamas guys were underground and were unharmed, it's doubtful that this phase really accomplished all that much strategically.
Second, once the Israelis came to the obviously correct conclusion that they could not starve out Hamas without starving to death everyone else in Gaza first (and to be clear, they should have realized this on Day 1), they should have been flooding the strip with aid and supplies. They should have been affirmatively requesting and assisting other countries in getting aid in. Honestly, I don't even know why they are bothering with checking everything because theoretically Hamas could McGuyver it into some kind of weapon. It's penny wise and pound foolish. You're already inside Gaza in a shooting war with Hamas. If Hamas being able to jury rig an additional rocket out of a solar tent is going to meaningfully hinder the war effort, what are you even doing? Rather, the Israelis had to be pushed, cajoled, and threatened to do the bare minimum. And it's totally pointless.
Third, the rules of enagegment seem a heck of a lot more relaxed than in previous wars. They killed Israeli hostages that had miraculously escaped and were waving a white flag! Ostensibly, the whole purpose of the war was to find and rescue those people, and a bunch of trigger happy idiots killed them.
Before I respond, I want to give you credit for a well-thought-out, level-headed assessment that takes into account (or at least doesn’t call into question) the legitimacy of Israel’s war aims. It would be so much easier to have these discussions if people like you didn’t constitute the upper 1 percentile of Israel’s critics’ reasonableness.
> 1
This is a bold claim to make with very little evidence. One of the main reasons I get annoyed by claims that Israel is prosecuting its war wrongly is that no one involved has anything resembling the information needed, because it’s all buried in Israeli deliberations. Even an international expert doesn’t have access to the relevant intelligence, the relevant battlefield information, etc. etc. It’s just silly - it’s like
If you’re curious what it could have accomplished, such that it would be worthwhile, the most obvious to me is the fact that American advisers were estimating 10x the Israeli soldiers killed, a quagmire where Israel wouldn’t have even cleared Gaza City by now, etc. So whatever you want to say about that bombing campaign, the alternatives proposed would have been something between ineffective and counterproductive - especially if you include “don’t try to eliminate Hamas” on the list.
> 2
Starvation has killed approximately zero Palestinians, so the question of aid reduces civilian casualties by approximately zero.
> 3
Again there’s very little actual information to support this. Both in terms of the true positives (how many incidents along these lines actually occurred?) and in terms of false negatives (how many times did soldiers following appropriate ROE get killed?) I have seen reports in Israeli media that the reason they shot at these hostages was because this was a tactic Hamas successfully pursued in the past. We’re talking about a terror group that puts recordings of girls trapped under rubble next to IEDs.
It just strikes me as incredible hubris to claim with confidence that these nuances are being inappropriately calibrated. Where does that leave us? Basically a nihilistic “it’s impossible to know anything about a military’s conduct in war unless it’s on the outermost edge of obviously wrong” - yeah, it’s unsatisfying but that’s life.
With regard to point 1 and 3, I freely concede that I'm not going to have access to the intelligence the IDF is operating under, nor the subjective inferences they're making, or their complete decision making apparatus. All I can really do is read the available reporting, listen to what the Israelis say, and make a judgment call as to whether what the Israelis are doing passes the smell test. And frankly, I don't think it does, with regards to the criticisms I made.
80% of buildngs in Northern Gaza, an extremely dense built up area, are destroyed. Mosto f it destroyed before a single Israeli boot hit the ground. Is it plausible that each such structure was a vital piece of military instructure who destruction was absolutely necessary? And this just happened to be in the immediate aftermath of October 7 when tempers were highest, when the statements of Israeli leaders were most belligerent and uncompromising, and before an invasion plan was set? Additionally, there is reporting that Israel was selecting targets based on any tenuous connection to Hamas that its AI targeting system could identify. In short, I see no reason to defer to a justification that Israel could hypothetically make and prove months or years from now. It doesn't pass the smell test.
With regard to the Israeli hostages they killed, we know rules of engagement were relaxed. Again - am I supposed to believe the only innocent civilians they killed were Israeli hostages with a sign in hebrew saying SOS, waving a white flag? Again, smell test.
With regard to point 2, I would make two points.
First, the necessity of keeping casualties to a minimum is ongoing - I'm not just talking about avoiding casualties that already happened, but casualties that are going to happen.
Second, I think the Israeli indifference if not hostility to aid is indicative of their state of mind vis a vis civlian casualties generally. If they were genuinely focused on minimizing civilian casualties to the extent they want us to believe they are, then they would not have (i) vowed not to let any aid into Gaza until the hostages are returned - a stance some in the government continue to take; (ii) run such a completely ramshackle and insufficient aid operation that they have to be continually bullied into running at all and (iii) being so strict as to which aid items they let through.
If Israel wants to get the benefit of the doubt as to its intentions it really needs to take the humanitarian situation much more seriously - and not as the distracting sideshow they treat it as.
It’s frustrating because the people who insist that Israel isn’t minimizing civilian casualties just go toward saying things that are facially reasonable but which don’t actually have any support to them.
It’s like when people outside engineering speculate on how to build something. They’ll say stuff that sounds reasonable but which is, with appropriate knowledge, recognizable as either completely wrong or entirely without substantive content.
The military discipline seems poor. The trigger-happy idiot who shot the hostages is not the only trigger happy idiot, and some of the idiots are posting on social media.
Yes. Basically, conscript army of reserves + pissed and out for revenge and to humiliate the enemy. Add in relaxed rules of engagement and it's a recipe for disaster.
I think this is a false dilemma. The alternative is doing less to eliminate Hamas because tens of thousands of dead innocent kids is too high a price to pay (e.g. a conclusion that the Hamas hostage taking strategy was successful at least for now and Israel should return to containment attempts while working towards probably doomed two state talks etc).
I would probably not advocate for that if I were an Israeli leader but I don’t think it is a crazy view to hold.
Israel has fought this war in the most humane way in modern history, and the Biden administration has admitted that. The IDF goes to lengths to warn civilians of incoming military action ahead of time that John Kirby has said the American military would never do. Also, while there are a lot of Arab Palestinian casualties, Hamas is making up the numbers: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers
"80% of buildngs in Northern Gaza, an extremely dense built up area, are destroyed. Most of it destroyed before a single Israeli boot hit the ground. Is it plausible that each such structure was a vital piece of military instructure who destruction was absolutely necessary?"
History didn’t start on October 7, re: your claim that Israel was attacked first. It is more complex than that. Certainly, the Hamas attack was horrific and merited a military response but Israel’s record is far from clean. Large numbers of innocent Palestinian civilians have been terrorized and killed in the West Bank by Israeli settlers and police in the past decade.
The history in Gaza did a restart in 2005 when Israel left and dismantled the settlements up to the last one and returned to the international border. The Palestinian response was to elect Hamas, which began to manage from Gaza a terror campaign to destroy Israel.
I don't think that means people living in Gaza deserve everything that's happening to them just because a plurality voted for Hamas. And just because Israel left and dismantled the settlements doesn't mean that Gaza turned into a thriving city. There was a legacy from the settlements.
Respectfully, sentiments like this are why many of Israel's supporters are so frustrated with western liberals.
People frequently argue that if only Israel would pull out of the West Bank and dismantle the settlements, then Palestinian terrorism would stop.
They did this in Gaza, so now it's "the legacy of the settlements," as if previously occupied people always give near-unanimous support for terrorism. (Where are the Tibetan jihadists?)
At some point, we need to confront the reality that the Palestinian national movement has supported these types of violent tactics since the 1920s regardless of the underlying conditions. And it has never made any demand other than the destruction of Israel, either militarily or through the right of return. Palestinian nationalists have always been clear that they would rather be poor in a world without Israel than rich while living in Israel's shadow.
This is confusing to us in the west because we have difficulty conceiving of a system of values that isn't structured around rights and economic prosperity.
Pretty much every policy Israel has tried to some extent in miniature.
Israel should annex the territories and give Palestinians there full citizenship: Done in East Jerusalem. The international community condemns it. Most Palestinians reject citizenship and boycott municipal elections.
Israel should remove the settlements and withdraw unilaterally: Done in Gaza in 2005, and Hamas takes over and starts sending rockets to Israel 2 years later.
Well, they still have control of airspace and territorial waters. They should really pull out completely and leave security up to an international force: Tried in South Lebanon in 2000 with UNIFIL there. Hezbollah has nearly full control and sends rockets to Israeli towns.
>>At some point, we need to confront the reality that the Palestinian national movement has supported these types of violent tactics since the 1920s regardless of the underlying conditions. And it has never made any demand other than the destruction of Israel, either militarily or through the right of return. Palestinian nationalists have always been clear that they would rather be poor in a world without Israel than rich while living in Israel's shadow.
This sums it up nicely, but too many would prefer to ignore inconvenient facts, esp. when it costs *them* nothing to do so.
Matt hit the nail on the head months ago when he noted that what frustrated him about Palestinian nationalism is its lack of pragmatism. Which, as he noted IIRC, is a fine thing if you keep winning but not such a good strategy if all you do is lose.
The failure of Gaza to turn into a thriving city had nothing to do with the fact that previously around 8000 Israelis previously lived there.
The people of Gaza destroyed the Israeli-built greenhouses, that could have generated significant economic activity.
More importantly, the fact that Hamas took over and started immediately attacking Israel caused Israel to put up a blockade to prevent the import of weapons and other materials that could be used to make weapons. That prevented a normal system of imports/exports and prevented them from having a normal economy. Had Hamas renounced violence against Israel, Israel would have removed the blockade and allowed it to develop economically, but alas that didn't happen.
Also don't forget that the context of 2005 was the second Intifada, a hugely violent and terrifying period, featuring suicide bombers throughout Israel. This was launched in the wake of a real offer of peace with real concessions by Ehud Barak.
I’ve felt, for a long time, that the Palestinians see any concessions by Israel as a sign that they’re weakened and an uprising will cause the state to collapse rather than recognizing that they’re offers made by people so far from existential danger that they feel secure in courting risk.
You have Fatah, which is supremely corrupt and a Hamas running on an anticorruption ticket and only getting a plurality of the vote. Of course Hamas lied and runs Gaza like a racketeering mafia. I am fairly certain the most residents of Gaza how were alive back then that backed Hamas would have made a different choice knowing how much more corrupt and violent Hamas is relative to Fatah.
I'd like to believe that counterfactual, and it might well be true. But it is also true that the current devastation has made Gazans *more* in favor of armed conflict, not less, according to polls. If people are upset with Hamas' leadership, they're not really indicating as much.
(And I don't think that that means they deserve to die for it. I just don't think it implies anything optimistic about the prospects for future peace. It mostly leaves me despairing.)
1) Just because they're justifiably outraged doesn't mean the outrage would necessarily have to be directed at Israel. The Allies bombed the shit out of Germany and occupied it for 30 years, and the German citizenry (I think?) understood that this was because they'd fucked up and the Nazis were bad. It wouldn't be unreasonable for Gazans to look at what's happening right now, the fact that they are being used as human shields, and be pissed at Hamas. But they're not, and that seems like important info. (Important in the sense of providing Intel about what kinds of solutions could be practical, depressing in that, to me at least, it seems like the answer might well be... none.)
2) I feel like we're much more willing to use this excuse for the Palestinians than we are for Israelis. But decades of being constantly bombed, of facing random attacks just going about your daily life - that fucks with someone's psyche. I was in Jerusalem for Passover two years ago after there'd been some skirmishes around the western wall and some stabbings at the old city gates and I was terrified to just go pray, and that's just like, the modus operandi for Israelis (and I'm not saying they have it worse day to day than Palestinians). The settlements, the callousness of this war, it's all the actions of people who want to assert agency over their vulnerability, who are worried about extermination (due in no small part to deep generational trauma and near actual extermination success in literally living memory!) It feels strange to me that so many find it so easy to understand the rage of Palestinians but expect Israelis to just suck it up and live with the reality of terror attacks and consistently losing loved ones (really, every single Israeli has lost a loved one to terror. I've only been becoming Jewish for 3 years and I have already lost a close friend.)
I don't mean to downplay the reality of trauma of the Palestinians or say that Israelis are equally vulnerable or anything. Just that solutions which ignore the reality that Palestinians by and large express support for terror while Israelis are unwilling to live in a world where they're exposed to terror seem dead on arrival. I'd like to believe that the genocidal impulses would dissipate once Palestinians could live lives of basic dignity, but I don't see how you get there from here without asking Israelis to accept a lot more suffering on the way. (Maybe that's the morally required approach, but it's not something you can force the stronger party in a conflict to do unless you have especial leverage over them. Maybe the US has that in arms sales. But if we used that leverage, I think Israeli society would be justified in thinking we were not their friend anymore.)
Yeah… people keep assuming that the social dynamics in Palestine push people toward reasonable options. But social dynamics don’t have to and often (maybe even usually) don’t.
"I am fairly certain the most residents of Gaza how were alive back then that backed Hamas would have made a different choice knowing how much more corrupt and violent Hamas is relative to Fatah."
I am not certain about this at all. Certainly I'm not aware of any polling to support this. I would like it to be true but I don't even know if it's true in the very limited sense of "we support Hamas's jew-killing policies, but we really don't like the israelis killing us in response policies."
Correct, it started in 2005, when Israel actively extricated itself from Gaza - that’s what everyone wanted, right? Dismantling settlements and removing occupation? - and Gaza promptly elected a group dedicated to Israel’s destruction, effectively declaring war on Israel. Israel has been trying to deal with a country - and not just the leaders, the entire society - that remains committed to its destruction despite being at Israel’s mercy.
So yes, if you widen the context beyond October 7th, it’s even worse.
And it's important to note that Hamas gave up representing the interests of the West Bank when it abandoned its position within the PA and took over Gaza in a violent coup.
…and before that, Palestinian (the twentieth century PLO) terrorists regularly targeted Israeli civilians going about their daily lives. Decades of that no doubt have a lot to do with the rightward drift of Israeli politics, culminating in Netanyahu becoming the longest serving PM of Israel. It’s very much a both-sides situation, albeit with one side much better armed.
Deputy Knesset speaker Nissim Vaturi from the ruling Likud party wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Israelis had one common goal, “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.” Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, from the far-right Jewish Power party, suggested that Israel drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza and said there were “no uninvolved civilians” in the territory.
But you don't have to listen to the words, it's enough to look at their actions. 80% of buildings destroyed, starving people on purpose, executing people in line for food packages. Also executing civilians in the West Bank regularly.
"80% of buildings destroyed, starving people on purpose, executing people in line for food packages. Also executing civilians in the West Bank regularly"
>History didn’t start on October 7, re: your claim that Israel was attacked first. It is more complex than that.<
Or, very simply, Israel, in violation of international law, has been engaged in a major annexation/colonization/military conquest project for nearly sixty years.
I think the Jewish people have just as much right to a national homeland as the Norwegian people. But if Norway conquered Denmark, a lot of problems would follow. This is the elephant in the room. In essence, Israel wasn't attacked by a foreign country last October. It was attacked by its own subjugated masses.
There is currently no clear sovereign over the West Bank. The last sovereign was Jordan, which annexed it (but whose annexation was not recogized by the international community). The previous recognized sovereign was the UK, but they abandoned claims i 1948. Jordan even abandoned any claim in the 1990s.
Now, I do believe settlements to be illegitimate because Israel has also not claimed sovereignty, but instead has a military occupation, resulting from a defensive war in 1967 due to Jordan's shelling of Israel to aid the Egyptians. But that is not the same thing as a conquest project of a sovereign neighbor. And that's where your Norway/Denmark analogy breaks down.
I don't understand why people in Israel think this is such a gotcha. Either it's part of Israel or it's not. If it is, then the people who live there should be allowed to vote in Israeli elections etc. If it's not, then it is a different country and Israel should stop building settlements. You don't get to annex foreign territory just because it doesn't have an internationally recognized government. Like, Pakistan didn't get to just start de facto annexing parts of Afghanistan because the UN never recognized the Taliban as its legitimate government.
Military occupations and disputed exist as a result of war. That is allowed according to the rules of war.
Unilateral extension of law to occupied territories (in other words annexation) is generally not allowed in international law. Now here, it's a bit complicated because as I said, there's no clear sovereign. So that's why Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem was in some legal grey area. And from what I can see, the annexation of the Golan Heights (which the US recognizes) is not allowed in international law because there is a clear sovereign there, even though extending Israeli law there is defintely better for the people living there. And the chance of it ever being returned to Syria is nil.
There are other similar territories around the world: Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus, Nagorno-Karabakh (up until a few months ago). In all of these other cases, the occupying country has had civilian population move there. But it is really only discussed as settler activity in the case of Israel.
I do think that Israel should more clearly elaborate a clear, just, secure, and democratic long-term vision for this territory, rather than what it's doing, that's for sure. And settler activity is counterproductive towards that end and undermines Israel's standing in the world.
But your analysis that either it's one way or another way is not how the world works. And the final status can only really be determined in a peace settlement.
I mean, not really. The Palestinians can declare a state unilaterally and force the question. However, the internal politics of that are bad because the only consensus opinion is a state of Palestine encompassing the whole region.
Interestingly enough, Israel was attacked by the inhabitants of the territory that they aren't currently occupying. And all of this happened after they pulled out, not before!
Moreover, these types of incidents have been occurring since 1920. Arab violence predates the occupation by quite a bit, and it's frequently rewarded by the west. It's a fantasy to think that it would stop if Israel pulled out of the West Bank. To be fair to Palestinians, they don't even claim that the violence would stop in that case -- that's only something that westerners believe.
But according to the Palestinians, Israel has no such right. According to the Palestinians, the establishment of Israel was the worst thing that ever happened to them (Nakba=catastrophe, at least that’s how I’ve heard it translated). That’s why the Palestinians (and sometimes Arab states) were continually attacking Israel.
So what? Lots of Serbians don't think that Kosovo (or half their other neighbors) should be an independent country. North Korea still claims the South (or did until a month ago, it's kind of fuzzy now). It is not a requirement that your neighbors like you.
If your neighbors constantly say that you don't have the right to exist, and have in fact tried to exterminate you multiple times, but you defended yourself so successfully that you were able to grab some of their territory...well, then, it's yours.
Saying that one state has no right to respond in kind to an attempted invasion by another state...is ridiculous.
"They can punch you, but you can only block, not punch back."
You can respond, but you don't get to conquer. We're not giving Bosnians 10% of Serbia as reparations for Srebrenica. That's not how any of this works (or has worked since, like, the Peace of Westphalia).
Except Israel didn’t wind up with Gaza and the West Bank by accident. Its neighbors attacked them from both. Egypt and Jordan didn’t want an independent Palestinian state, they wanted more territory for themselves. There WAS a deal in which Palestine would have been independent 70 years ago and they declined. Their Arab allies took the opportunity to start their own wars of conquest and then abandoned Palestinians to their fate.
So what? Thats not the only war of conquest that someone has ever launched and lost. If Ukraine defeats Russia we're not just going to give them control over Rostov after the war for their trouble on the theory that it is... what, compensation for having to fend off the Russians? Do people think that that would lead to peace in the long term? If 70 years hence the ethnic and linguistic Russians in Rostov are still kind of salty about that are we going to say "yeah, sorry, Putin didn't sign the treaty we wanted him to 50 years before you were born so thats not really our problem."
It's met that way because you are not allowed to annex the territory of your neighbors for any reason. It is not justifiable in the modern international context. And you don't get to commit war crimes just because the other guys were bad. Abu Graib wasn't good because Al Queda is evil, the rules are the rules regardless of what the other guys do.
The so what is that after losing them the Arab world didn’t decide the time was ripe for a peace agreement they instead refused to sign a peace accord
It is notable that Israel hasn’t annexed Gaza or the West Bank. What incentive does Israel have to play nice when most of their neighbors don’t acknowledge their right to exist?
I am a long time reader and listener (back to Vox and Weeds days), but I seldom post comments. I am an Israeli citizen and have lived in Israel for 23 years. I have one kid in the military and one who is out. I fully endorse what you wrote here. Finding the middle ground is hard, but it must be found. I am very frustrated by my government's failure to come up with any plan for after the war, or to address, even with diplomatic language, US and world concerns. They are playing to the local right-wing base at the expense of our international relationships. My only concern about Schumer's speech is that no country likes the US or any foreign governments meddling in our domestic politics, and that can make it hard for the intended public to hear. It is one thing to say "the Israeli government must do X, Y, Z for our continued support". That is about the US/Israel relationship. It is another to say "Israelis should hold elections and reject the current government" - that is interference in our politics. There is a "rally around the PM" that comments like Schumer's can cause. There is also basically nothing the Israeli public can do to force an early election. The more the polls show that the current government will lose an election, the less likely they are to break up the government. In our parliamentary system, the very people most likely to lose from a new election in this situation where the government is extremely unpopular are the only ones who can bring one about. They can ignore the protests no matter how bad they get.
On the other hand, recall Netanyahu delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress designed to undermine the Obama administration’s efforts to get Iran to sign a nuclear deal.
If Netanyahu can meddle in and opine on US politics, why can’t it go the other way?
It was completely inappropriate for Netanyahu to do that then and I was hopping mad about it at the time. In my opinion it backfired, undermining decades of effort to make sure Israeli support in Congress was bipartisan. However, Netanyahu went to Congress and spoke (something I hope Biden will do in the Knesset). He didn't explicitly call on Americans to vote for one side or another. Netanyahu's move was bad because it undermined the relationship with the US Presidency by going directly to Congress. It also misunderstood who is the superpower and who is the itty-bitty country smaller than New Jersey... However, I don't think he explicitly interfered in US politics the way Schumer's speech did.
I dunno, I just don’t buy the idea that Schumer effectively saying “I don’t like this guy and he’s an obstacle to peace (and therefore it would be great if Israelis had a chance to replace him)” is “interfering” in any material way.
Like this just happened last month, per AP: “Two US senators will submit a bipartisan resolution to Congress condemning democratic backsliding in Hungary and urging its nationalist government to lift its block on Sweden's accession into the NATO military alliance.” Is that “interfering”? Seems to me like it’s just expressing a view.
Again, the difference is subtle, but I think important. Your quote about Hungary is a request from one government to another to change their policy and behaviour. What Schumer did is call on the people (in an allied democratic country) to change their government. If he was telling the Israeli government regardless who leads it what they should do, that is normal international pressure. Voters can then decide if they support politicians who will go along with that or those who resist it. But explicitly calling for a change in government is supposed to be off the table between democratic allies. However it is a side point. On the main issues Schumer was right - the question is what can the Israeli public do about it until elections come up.
To be clear what he actually said was that the ruling coalition should give the citizens another opportunity to choose. He didn’t tell the Israeli people what to do because he knows what they already want.
By the way I agree with you on the substance - but that’s the whole point, Netanyahu doesn’t have the support of the Israeli people, and there isn’t much they can do about it barring a new election.
There may be an election sooner than we think. By March 31, the army has to start drafting haredi jews or pass a law creating a system for drafting them. Either outcome would be anathema to the 18 seats in the coalition held by haredi parties. If the Supreme Court won't allow the government to extend the 3/31 deadline, then I think the government collapses.
“If he was telling the Israeli government regardless who leads it what they should do, that is normal international pressure”
To what extent are current policies Netanyahu’s alone versus the consensus of the war cabinet? And given Israeli opinion, even if there were a different prime minister, if there any good reason to expect broadly different policies?
I think to understand what is going on right now, you have to see that there is a broad consensus in Israel about removing Hamas from power (not destroying Hamas, but decimating their military capability and putting someone else in charge in Gaza). The war cabinet is focused on that. Anything beyond that is in stasis because there is no agreement. I think if there was a government that was not beholden to the far-right, and if Netanyahu was not in charge, we would have competent people running our diplomatic service, and I think there would be a longer term plan to stabilize Gaza (which would mean more distribution of aid now because we would be building the mechanisms to deliver it), but the war would not be that different.
I think about Netenyahu as being roughly analogous to Rodrigo Duterte. He sucks, he's bad for US interests, but he is the democratically elected leader of a longtime ally (Duterte was more overtly an asshole, but the Philippines are probably more important to our strategic interests than Israel is--I'm definitely more likely to die in a nuclear war that starts in the South China Sea than one that starts in Iran--so it balances out). Seems basically fine that every US politician who was asked at the time said that Duterte was a scum bag. Because he was a scum bag.
I honestly don't know, but he's not the President anymore and Bongbong seems more willing to play ball with the US even if he has, uh, some other issues.
I don't remember that as an explicit endorsement ( a quick Google search indicates that my memory is correct - a comment he made praising Romney - not endorsing - was understood that way and then he backpedaled). However, even if you are right, it sucked and Democrats have every right to be pissed about it. My comment about whether explicitly interfering in democratic allies' internal politics is not that it is wrong (justifying a tit-for-tat) but that it is ineffective and backfires more often than not. Schumer's call for a new government in Israel is something I am completely behind, but his saying it did not make it more likely, and maybe made it less likely. However, I feel like we are off on a marginal tack here...
I agree that Schumer's speech might've been counterproductive. But I think it's totally fair and not election interference in any meaningful sense for him to say "I think there should be new elections in Israel." We don't call it election interference when, for example, Boris Johnson says he would prefer Trump win 2024, or when Olaf Scholz says he would prefer Biden. Endorsements =/= interference even if they might be distasteful or unwelcome. But yeah, marginal disagreement.
Heh. I know you intend this as evidence that Bibi is a very bad Republican supporter, but with the from the perspective of [waves hands wildly] the last 8 years, Romney is a wise and dignified statesman.
To be clear, Bibi has every right to opine on American politics—but then he doesn't get to complain when American politicians opine on Israeli politics.
I don’t think Netanyahu’s meddling worked very well either, but the depressing answer is that Americans just hate each other way more these days and didn’t (and would never) comparably rally around the flag of the opposition party in response to foreign criticism.
Part of the reason Schumer can and should criticize the Netanyahu government is he has legitimate bona fides as a supporter of Israel and as a Zionist. His views reflect a material amount of non-Haredi views in the US.
It was a bad idea both times. Netanyahu simply made Israel a more partisan issue, which is terrible for Israel. Schumer just made it imperative that Netanyahu resist American pressure. Bowing to the Americans would be the death knell of Israel’s relationships in the Middle East.
“Bowing to the Americans would be the death knell of Israel’s relationships in the Middle East.”
…wait, why? American material and political support for Israel is a massively important strategic consideration in the region well-known to all relevant actors. The US maintains relationships with the Sunni states in the interests of security cooperation and containing Iran, which is…exactly what Israel is trying to do.
Because while those rulers appreciate the US relationship and support, we are not seen as reliable. We can abandon the Middle East at any time (see, e.g., Beirut, Afghanistan). Nobody wants an ally who is weak and beholden to an unreliable external power. If Israel visibly let the US dictate the terms of the war after it was attacked, it would be discrediting.
Yes, someone made this point Leora made on a podcast I listen to. The Saudis apparently are not impressed that the US was behind Israel at the beginning and now essentially giving hope to jihadis and Hamas by blowing in the wind making pronouncements about how cruel the Israelis are and they have to stop the war. Too changeable to rely on.
The problem isn't "public disagreements". The problem is that the USA tries to act as both player and referee in the region, with the result that nobody trusts it fully in either role.
Bibi always struck me as a brilliant tactician and a complete disaster as a strategist. And not only for propping up Hamas vis a vis the PA. But also tying his (and maybe Israel's) fortunes to the Republican party. Paid dividends in the short run but man was that a short-sighted own goal.
Obviously we can, and that's just what Schumer did. The vast difference in the two cases is that I personally approve of what Schumer did and loathe what Netanyahu did.
Calling for a parliamentary leader to go back to the public and give them a choice - something that happens in Israel with great frequency, by the way - is hardly “an explicit call for deposing a leader.” He’s not advocating for a coup!
Throughout these comments you will find people talking about events that happened much more than 8 years later, even if they have been retaliated for. That’s how we determine what norms and precedents are in effect.
At the beginning of Israel's present invasion, my question was "What are you doing here, Israel? What's the plan?" And that's still my question: What is the goal, how will Israel know they've achieved it, what's the plan for after they've achieved it? Can you give us some on-the-ground info about how that's perceived in Israel? What do ordinary citizens think is supposed to happen here? To a naive outsider, it just looks like Israel is flattening Gaza and starving the remaining residents, and it's not clear what the point is other than revenge. And I get the revenge: Hamas is unspeakably terrible. But what's the plan?
I think revenge is not the purpose for most of us. We all felt the desire for it rise up in us - we are human - but revenge is not the primary factor in the motivation for the war. The real desire in Israel (pretty much across the board) is to get the hostages back AND make sure they don't have the capability to do it to us again. Those goals are sometimes in conflict, of course, and with a lot of pain an anguish most of us will prefer the second to the first. Even regarding Hamas leadership, despite the desire for revenge against them, I think that if there was a deal on the table to let the whole leadership escape to Qatar with their lives in exchange for the hostages, Israelis would support it across the board. There is a second question - once we destroy Hamas' military capability, what happens next? Do we have our own soldiers patrolling Gaza again? Most Israelis don't want that, but any explicit plan (Israel in Gaza? PA? 3rd party?) would bring down the government, so Netanyahu is avoiding articulating any plan at all.
That is precisely the problem: how will Israel determine whether its (ill-articulated) goals have been met, and what happens after they are met? From my naive perspective, it looks like Netayahu's goal is to flatten Gaza and then settle it; people in his own government are talking about settlements, and they remain in his own government. I accept that this is not what the Israeli public wants, but Netanyahu is in charge. If that is not his plan, what IS his plan? What are they doing here? What's the end game?
The war has a clear aim - ending Hamas rule and getting the hostages home. It will be clear when it happens because someone else will be running Gaza and the hostages will be home. The issue is the day after and who that will be running Gaza, and there I agree, there is no plan and there won't be until there is a new government. I also fear that the right- wing will start planting settlements without permission and there won't be the political will to stop them. It is how we got many WB settlements in the first place - many started out illegally. We desperately need a new government - I hope that will happen, but I don't see the mechanism. Maybe the government will fall over the Haredi draft issue, but my guess is it won't. The coalition politicians will look at the polls and decide better to stay put.
"someone else will be running Gaza" Hamas is running Hamas, but in what sense is anybody running Gaza, and what is the mechanism for a non-Hamas government to spring up? Your answer is not an answer I can understand. You're not saying Israel will bomb until a new government springs up, or at least I assume that's not what you're saying, but what are you saying? Israel will bomb until what, exactly? If it's "until most Hamas militants are destroyed," how many kids will starve to death or be blown up before that happy day?
Hamas is running Gaza in the sense that all government functions (which you are right are mostly not functioning) report to them. And in the sense that they still mostly control the distribution of aid to the massively displaced population. And in the sense that they could take over again with no opposition if Israel leaves without a plan. And then start launching rockets and attacks again. When that is no longer the case, the war is over. However, without a plan for someone else taking over, Israel will have to stay there indefinitely - definitely not a plan I support.
Reportedly top Israeli security establishment devised a plan to train and re-introduce PA forces from the west bank to rule Gaza, and PA was game, but Netanyahu vetoed that...
I can certainly understand why Israelis would be unhappy about Schumer's clear meddling in domestic Israeli politics. But in part of their minds, are they thinking, "Oh my, if we're losing Schumer maybe we need to reassess"?
Granted, as you note, the people needed to collapse the present government probably don't care what any American politician apart from Trump thinks, but perhaps the pressure Schumer's applying is still worthwhile?
Many are saying that. I am. The question is whether more people will rally to Netanyahu's side or more will realize we need to reassess. We won't know until there is an election. Democracy, the worst form of government, etc. etc.
I 100% understand and respect the Israeli public's feeling that US politicians trying to interfere in Israeli politics is an insult to their democratic process. However, this was Chuck Schumer saying this as opposed to the "US government" so I don't think this was a US attempt and controlling Israel. I think was an individual politician who cares deeply about Israel trying to communicate to Israelis and to his own constituents that his support is unconditional. And I do think the average Israeli should be concerned that an ally as supportive as Schumer is feeling the need to take this position politically.
I think the lack of a clear goal and plan is of really moral concern to a lot of Americans including a lot of American Jews. Hamas is unlikely to surrender on any reasonable terms. (I actually think something like safe asylum to Qatar would likely be necessary. If Israel would agree to that in exchange for hostages, I would be impressed but that isn't the impression we have in the US and I think there is legitimate fear about how many hostages are still alive to facilitate such a plan. )
I don't think that people in the US have a sense of what percentage of Hamas leadership would need to be killed or what percentage of military equipment would need to be destroyed for Israel to declare a win. Without that benchmark it feels like this has no end and that the number of civilians deaths that Israel is willing to cause for this vague goals has no limit.
The lack of a plan for anyone to take over Gaza after Hamas is gone is also a real concern.
Long term occupation of Gaza by the Israeli military with a return of settlements or other attempts at annexation combined with significant civilian deaths starts to look like ethnic cleansing. I detest that people are tabling the civilian deaths to date as a genocide as if that were just a term for describing every time someone kills a lot of people rather an a purposeful attempt to exterminate a group. But the view that Israel is happy to reduce the civilian population of Gaza to make room for its own settlement and annexation seems exaggerated at this point but not beyond the scope of what Israel appears to be willing to do under the current leadership given that it hasn't described any other real end game. We are just going to keep bombing until someone else takes over government services in Gaza the midst of this chaos where only the Israeli army and Hamas have any real military power seems a lot like we are going to bomb forever.
I think that there are conservatives who will stand by Israel even if they engage in ethnic cleansing, endless war, or cause a widespread famine with a significant body count but I don't think many progressives will. I don't think Schumer can and I think he is desperately trying to avoid that choice. He doesn't want to end aid, stop selling weapons, or change the special relationship. But he also can't justify funding or supporting an ethnic cleansing.
I think a lot people in the US who care about the safety and security of Jews in Israel and around the world and also care about human rights don't want to have to make that choice. The last decade of the Israeli government doing settlements and not seeking peace made that hard. The apparent war crimes in this conflict so far have made it harder. I think we are all afraid of this crossing a line where we don't have a choice. We are already dealing with a faction on the left whose disgust at what they are seeing in Gaza is making them vulnerable to embracing antisemitic messaging and leading them to embrace a vision of the Levant that does not include Israel. The longer this goes on without a clear exit plan the more people are going to slip into that camp. Which is bad for everyone involved except for Hamas.
Not sure if your comment is sarcastic, but I actually agree with you. Israel does not have the domestic industrial capability to be militarily independent without becoming like North Korea (a poor country that puts all its resources into the military). We need the US. Our politicians don't need to grovel, but they should at least be more diplomatic and respectful of our superpower ally. I feel like our current government revels in poking the US in the eye...
Decent article. But I think it understates the reasons why Israelis (and Israel's supporters) are kind of enraged by the way global opinion has evolved.
The most basic point this article makes is obviously correct -- of course, some of Israel's actions will influence global opinion. However, I think the article wants to make two stronger claims: (1) the turn of global opinion against Israel is *mostly* about Israel's actions, and (2) global opinion should be a greater consideration for Israel's policymakers (as well as the general public).
1. The turn of global opinion (by western, liberal, cosmopolitan people) against Israel was totally predictable, and in my view, it has much more to do with a "social justice" worldview than Israel's specific actions. When these type of people discuss Israel, they're not really talking about Israel at all -- they're using it as a proxy to discuss issues that matter to western liberals.
You can see this in the way the conflict is discussed in the mainstream prestige media. Op-ed writers talk about the denial of Palestinians' rights, settlements, racism, and the religious fundamentalism *of Israelis*. Since the Palestinians are "oppressed," numbers put out by Hamas are quoted by the media without question, while any figure put out by the IDF is given a million qualifications. (Ask yourself: why is it that "what Palestinians do" doesn't matter for these people at all?)
This is all despite the fact that if Palestinians were given their "rights," they would vote in a fundamentalist dictator who wouldn't be too keen on abortion. Furthermore, Palestinians wouldn't care if they were ruled by a Jordanian or Egyptian dictator (with a much more brutal army). If you listen to Palestinians themselves, they don't talk about rights or settlements. They want to return.
And remember, the term "anti-Zionist" doesn't exist for any other country in the world!
2. I agree with the point that Israelis should care more about global opinion. My sense is that Israelis underestimate the enemy that they face in the global, western left (whereas westerners really underestimate the "ring of fire" that Iran has put around Israel). If Israel is to be destroyed (some day in the future), it will be because the west has somehow forced it to accept something akin to a "one-state" solution rather than because it has been defeated on the battlefield.
However, there's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" element to all of this. Literally everyone involved in foreign policy, from Netanyahu to Biden to MBS, knows the point of this war: Israel has to defeat Hamas on the battlefield to prevent it from raising the victory flag. This is the only way to deter Iran's proxies. (If hiding behind civilians becomes a strategy for invincibility, then Hezbollah is coming next.) Everyone knows that there will be civilian casualties, and Israel's war, honestly, has had a pretty low rate of civilian casualties compared to other urban conflicts. (If you think I'm wrong, name 5 urban battles waged in a more humane way.) From the Arabs' perspective, this is a pretty mild war.
But even taking the only course of action that everyone agrees Israel has to take, it gets accused of genocide! So the only way to keep public opinion on your side is to not accomplish your military goals. (Naturally, no one demands that Palestinians have any goal in mind. They fight as a matter of emotional expression.)
Speaking as someone who is generally pro-Israel, it's shocking to me that 2% of Gaza's population has died in the past few months. And by Israel's own estimates, they haven't even killed half of Hamas's fighters.
Israel used hostage propaganda very effectively when the war started, and if they wanted to, they could wage a propaganda effort to demonstrate they are doing everything they can to treat civilians humanely. But they aren't bothering.
As a Jewish Democrat, it also makes me really angry to see Netanyahu stick his thumb in Biden's eye. This just seems stupid to me, to choose to alienate a major political party of your most important ally. Israel has always enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Why deliberately cut your support in half?
What percent of Mosul’s population was killed do you think? Kurdish estimates put it at 45k civilians plus 10-15k isis fighters. That’s over 10% of the population of the city, probably something like 20% of the city that remained by the end of the siege was killed.
I think the reason Netanyahu is hostile to Democrats is because Democrats have pursued the normalization of financial and diplomatic ties with Iran and generally want the US less involved in the region with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Republicans and him see that as a bad idea, kind of similar to how Eastern Europeans and Atlanticist hawks want the US to maintain a high spending share in NATO vs Germany and France. It's a substantive disagreement on foreign policy; Democrats don't really care what kinds of proxy forces Iran is funding, they want the deal and thus a truly multipolar Middle East between Saudi and Iranian power. I'm surprised Matt didn't bring it up at all because it's a very important context to the increasing polarization of Israel and Saudi Arabia in US politics.
You would think that Israel would have been pleased that pre-Trump the JCPOA put severe roadblocks in path of Iran's acquiring nuclear weapons but I guess at the end of the day they weren't that concerned about Iranian nukes after all.
It's funny none of the predictions of Iran making a nuke came true during Trump's presidency, almost like the whole nuke discourse was a layer on a broader debate of how much Iran should be able to spend on Hezbollah and Iraq and so on in the region...
Iran's ability to build a nuke and how the Iran deal would or wouldn't solve this was an enormous debate topic in the second Obama term that rapidly disappeared in the Trump years. Goes to show how useful the presidency is for setting the terms of debate and how little that can matter looking back.
Likewise with Biden's recent "Trump sabotaged the Ukraine-Border deal". Great media coup and it doesn't make a difference in any poll I see.
Democrats view it as how America can generally spend a lot less on the region both in fiscal and moral terms. It's not entirely unlike some Republicans seeking Europe to spend more on NATO; the costs of the status quo right now seem to detract from other goals they care about. See also the Biden admin's first year turning the cold shoulder to Saudi Arabia.
I get your point. I'm not saying that it would be *impossible* for Israel to do better. Far from it, and I get pretty frustrated with the complete ineptitude of Israel's government to wage an effective PR campaign.
My point is, though, *in practice*, I think almost all wars are plagued by this type of ineptitude, insufficient care for civilians, etc. This is why I ask for 5 examples -- every pundit cherry-picks Mosul (which was waged much more humanely!). But Mosul was actually the exception. It was an extraordinary feat of humane warfare.
Off the top of my head, Mariupol and Aleppo come to mind (much more brutal for civilians). There was lots of urban combat during the Houthi revolution. The US fought urban battles in Iraq (in most of which it killed 2+ civilians per militant).
Part of the problem I see is that when I bring any of this up, people say "ok, so what you're saying is that Israel is better than Assad/the Houthis/the Bush administration? That's a low bar." But who else even fights wars? The Swedes and the French certainly don't!
Look, we can debate the Bush administration, but if you're comparing yourselves to Assad and Putin that's not going to fly for an American and European audience. Those are very straightforwardly the bad guys! And France does fight wars, it fought in Afghanistan. It just kind of fought one in Libya. If you want France levels of support from the other Western powers, then you need to hold yourselves to France levels of conduct.
(I think Israel basically wants France levels of support, like "we are staunch allies, we can be trusted with nukes, but we will disagree with you more than the UK or Canada will.")
“…you're saying is that Israel is better than Assad/the Houthis/the Bush administration?”
That’s the wrong comparison. (For multiple reasons, but whatever.)
The correct comparison is to compare the US military to the IDF. I have seen nothing at all from credible news sources* that shows the IDF has been more careless or bloodthirsty than the US military.
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*The Gaza Health Ministry is *not* a credible source. In case you were unclear on that point.
When they shoot the very hostages they are trying to rescue *while they're waving a white flag* [1], that strikes me as very careless and --- depending on the shooter's mindset --- possibly bloodthirsty! I realize that shit happens in war, but the shooter wasn't a soldier in harms way making a split-second decision. It was a sniper out of harms way who took the shots [4]. And it's not the only incident of a sniper taking a shot that they shouldn't have [5].
When the IDF chief of staff feels the need to remind soldiers not to shoot people waving white flags or otherwise surrendering --- regardless of their affiliation [2], that seems a little weird.
Maybe the US is no better, but stories from David French [3] makes me think that the US is indeed better.
I recall stories at the time of the Battle of Mosul about the US Marines’ tactics when faced when an ISIS fighter was holed up or had taken refuge in a multi-story building. If there was a US tank handy*, they’d fire a 120MM main gun round or two into the base of the structure, collapsing it on ISIS and whatever other unfortunate souls were inside. I have not heard a single credible account of the IDF doing something similar.
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*If no tank was available, the infantry would do the same thing with TOW missiles.
One, the Republicans will give Bibi 100% of what Israel wants and the Democrats will only give you 70%. A guy with a short termer outlook like Bibi - desperate to stay in power and out of jail - will naturally pick the 100% lever every time.
Two, I think Netanyahu understands, correctly, that we are in the twilight of the bipartisan support for Israel era. It's basically a legacy of the affinity between Democrats and American Jews going back to Roosevelt. The current (geriatric) leadership of the Democrats came through the ranks in an era where you it was obvious you would demonstrate commitment to Israel. But the current wave of progressives coming in are just naturally going to gravitate more towards the Palestinian side. And as a result of Jewish assimiliation and intermarriage, there's going to be less and less Jews who see themselves as a distinct ethnicity separate and apart from American gentiles in Congress going forward (i.e. Jews more inclined to be Zionists), which means less and less of those kinds of Jews inhabiting leadership positions in the Democratic party. And once it stops being a position necessary to keep Jews in the coalition, there'll be nothing to stop the natural progressive position. So it's going to happen anyway - so the downside to hastening it is not really that stark.
This is a minor point, but I think by now Israel’s estimates would be more than half of Hamas fighters killed (15/30k). They just don’t announce estimates frequently. Combine that with fighters who have been captured and it’s significantly more.
Looking at the figures for the end of February, Hamas' total death figure (generally regarded as more or less correct) was about 30K, of which 70% were women and children, and Israel was claiming around 10K Hamas fighters killed. If there are only 30K Hamas fighters, that leaves around a quarter of the Gaza population being adult men who are not Hamas fighters. Hardly any men are Hamas fighters, in Israel's reckoning. So, even if we assume that some Hamas fighters are children, there is no room in these numbers for any adult men who are not Hamas fighters to have been killed. How are all these non-Hamas men avoiding the bullets and bombs that are killing so many women and children? These numbers cannot all be correct. And supposedly Hamas' numbers are based on an actual list of actual dead bodies.
Wouldn't that leave a tiny amount in the various pockets of Hamas control I see on wikipedia's map of the conflict? There are at least 5 completely surrounded pockets, some of which have narrow strips that almost cut them in half. If there are only 5-10k left, the there couldn't be more than a few hundred fighters in each of those pockets.
I guess I'm curious simply because it doesn't add up to me. Maybe they are just waiting to starve out those pockets or something. Or maybe a few hundred fighters can hold out against Israel's vastly superior forces for longer than I would think. But I tend to think that either Hamas had a larger force to begin with than the 30k presented above or casualties are smaller than 15k KIA.
I also believe there are more Hamas fighters than claimed. And they have probably recruited more during the war. Especially if they are hoarding the food.
But it's not a linear process, right? As the enemy forces shrink it should starts to become easier if you're not also losing significant forces. I'm way out of my expertise when it comes to this kind of warfare but if they are really down to, say 5k fighters that sounds easy to wrap up.
So I guess I'm a little skeptical of the original math. Over 50% killed implies and a large number captured implies something like at least 60% taken out. And that's without factoring in the severely wounded, which is usually a multiple of KIA.
It just seems like either A) they started with many more than 30,000 B) there have been less KIA than 15,000 C) Hamas were be wiped out pretty soon
Israel isn’t committing genocide any more than the US committed genocide by dropping a bomb on Hiroshima (which no one claims) - but it’s pretty clear they don’t really care about reducing the civilian death toll.
As a true lifelong friend of Israel, he's telling them that there is no blank check and the US won't be behind them no matter what they do. And if this government won't take that gentle advice from a friend seriously, maybe it's best if someone else steps up.
Mosul was hell on earth, with the city leveled and a ludicrous casualty rate. And that was when civilians could flee, unlike in Gaza. Urban warfare is just really bloody.
This article kind of proves my point. The authors couldn't in good faith say that the civilian-to-militant death toll was unusually high (in fact, it's unusually low). So they cherry-picked a different thing that sets this war apart from others -- the extent of bombing. But if that bombing isn't unusually deadly for civilians, then who cares?
It’s not like the destruction of civilian structures are independent of civilian casualties.
Back in January: “Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” said Pape. “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”
Sure, we can editorialize in all sorts of ways to rationalize our actions. Let’s just not pretend this is some sort of professional surgical strike. It’s a bloody mess that has and will continue to devastate many innocent lives. And just so it’s clear I’m in the Yglesias and Friedman camp.
Okay. In that case, Israel should be pressing the NYT to publish opeds and generally getting this info out there. Because that's definitely not the impression I've gotten from my regular news sources.
Come on, that's obviously not what I meant. Israel published an oped right after 10/7, and the NYT would absolutely run another one.
The Israeli government isn't making any effort to present itself as just or merciful. I don't think that's smart when the world sees photos of IDF soldiers sitting on kids' trikes in front of a blown out building, or wearing bras they found in an abandoned apartment. Will those soldiers be disciplined? They seem giddy.
My sense is that Israeli perception is warped by putting undue importance on a) the UN b) NGOs and other supposedly “neutral” international bodies and c) Europe, which is far less consequential for international affairs than it’s ever been. By contrast they underrate d) the US where people aren’t reflexively antisemitic, which can project power unlike Europe, and where its actions can influence opinion much more effectively.
But Matt really needed to address (a) and (b) in his version of the story.
I think it was fairly obvious in the immediate aftermath of 10/7 that the strategic objective of the attacks (via Iranian handlers hint hint hinting to their Hamas assets that this is a good idea) was to scuttle the seemingly imminent Saudi recognition of Israel and the establishment of normal diplomatic relations between KSA and Israel. This would have been a major realignment in the region and full security cooperation between Israel and Sunni Arabs would be a major setback to Iranian ambitions.
They have succeeded so far. While it's not certain yet, the situation can change, and the KSA hasn't shut down the possibility, it's much further off than it was before 10/7 and getting further away every day. The IRG must be thrilled.
Israel took the bait line and sinker. It just kills me that it was so obvious.
The thing that remains unsaid is that the Sunni Arab states want normalization with Israel because it is militarily strong and willing to fight Iranian proxies. They are not looking to make peace with a timid and vulnerable Israel that will step down after being attacked.
There's a balancing act, because the populace (in contrast to the leadership) in these Arab states are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Israel absolutely has the right to retaliate and eliminate/neutralize Hamas. Totally. No question.
I do think that the response, or at least how the Israeli government is portraying its response (that is, responding to any critique of the conduct of the war with a thinly veiled "fuck you"), has veered into overreaction with no clearly articulated end game, and it's that state of affairs Iran was counting on to disrupt the Israeli/Sunni Arab security alignment. Israel has walked right into it and friendly nations warning Israel that it is cutting its nose to spite its face are absolutely correct here.
No clearly articulated end game is a legitimate criticism. I agree.
However, a lot (not all) of the critique of the conduct of the war is illegitimate. It doesn't provide Israel with a viable, militarily-sound alternative. Any urban warfare in a place with hundreds of miles of tunnels and militants that blend in with civilians is going to result in large numbers of Israeli casualities. Israel has been clear about what it has been doing to minimize those casualties while still being able to accomplish their reasonable and necessary military goals.
Yes, and as the article argues, for the sake of Israel's standing with the global public he should. But let's not kid ourselves that it would make a difference with Hamas.
Against an adversary that wants to exterminate you, the only two realistic end games are "I win" or "You win".
You don’t have to articulate an end game the Palestinians agree with, just one that seems just in its merits and it can therefore include things like “recognition of Israel’s right to exist with its current borders and with the expectation of peace from its neighbors” or what have you. The point of the war is to force those just terms on your exhausted opponents, and even if that isn’t possible optics matter too and it’s clarifying for your own side. Bibi is, just very obviously, courting his right wing river to the sea base and that’s the reason you don’t see a clear end game not true-but-irrelevant perceived current Palestinian intransigence.
His actions pattern match to “these people can’t be reasoned with, we should just cleanse Gaza while settling the West Bank”, and he ain’t even really denying it by saying he is something else!
I don't think it's that hard. I have yet to hear a sound reason why the obvious answer - Fatah takes over Gaza - is so stridently opposed by the government (even though it has the support of some of the parties in the government).
Is Fatah bad? Yes. Is the security situation with the Fatah in the West Bank infinitely better than the security situation with Hamas in Gaza? Also yes.
The obvious answer that occurs to me is that Bibi opposes it because it means that there is one unified Palestinian government theoretically committed to recognizing Israel, with nothing to stop negotiating for a Palestinian state.
Correct - nobody has articulated how Israel can accomplish it's military goals while minimizing both Israeli and Palestinian civilian casualties. What people are doing is asking Israel to value the foreign lives over the lives of its own civilians, which is just patently insane.
That's what I was trying to say. No country would or should value the lives of foreigners over its own military personnel - yet Israel is the only country on earth that is expected to do so.
This, I agree with 100%. Netanyahu is a mendacious idiot, so far up his own ass and high on his own supply that he thinks he’s *supporting* Israel’s interests by pushing this “fuck you” diplomacy. It’s a real shame that Israel’s parliamentary system makes it so difficult to get rid of him, because God knows no one wants him around anymore. (Even the small share of the country still polling for him would happily take a similarly center-right alternative)
I know!. Such a petulant response the a little murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. Israel should have been the adults in the room, tut-tutted Hamas, and explained to the wider world, “whatadda gonna go, boys will be boys.”
I'm not gonna mince words here - I want Hamas dead. I am disgusted by them. Same as I was disgusted by the Taliban. But fighting a just cause badly is always counterproductive.
If war is politics by other means, the politics is war by words. Military historian Brett Devereaux posted as much a month ago:[1] failing to develop achievable strategic aims and (when possible) prosecute them through diplomacy is being "bad at war", even when (especially when!) you win battles.
Well, you're responding to an article about how the way Israel fought this war is having major backlash effects that affect their ability to fight and end the war, so...perhaps you should re-evaluate the evidence.
I mean, not tut tutted, but yes? Their entire pitch to the west over the last 20 years for support has been that they are the adults in the region so people expected that they would act like the adults when dealing with an adversary that has, like 10% of their GDP, none of their military technology, and is now on the brink of famine?
“The population of Gaza” is not the adversary. Which is why the IDF undertook to get them out of the way whenever possible.
Where is the evidence that Hamas is on the brink of famine? I have read news accounts that strongly suggest Hamas makes sure (through at least the threat of deadly force) that they are first in line when food aid arrives.
Hamas is the government of Gaza, I don't have to like that for it to be true. If they're at war with Hamas they're at war with Gaza in the same way that the US was at war with Iraq even if we played a bunch of semantic games about how we were "really just at war with the regime" or whatever.
He’s not claiming that Israel didn’t need to do something, he’s claiming that it didn’t do it optimally out of rage/irrationality.
That is true and unfortunate. Clearly there were and still are ways to pursue the war - even leaving the level of destruction constant - without undermining every relationship it has with other countries. The end of the Bibi era cannot come soon enough. (And I expect that during the hostage deal new elections will be called)
This is not the right frame to think of Israel’s response.
A state is just a monopoly on violence within its borders. Hamas publicly abrogated that monopoly, if only briefly. A state simply cannot allow that to persist if it wants to maintain its sovereignty - full stop.
Israel didn’t “take the bait” - it had no choice but to fight to eliminate Hamas. Reasonable people can disagree about the strategy to pursue that goal, but prioritizing partnership with Saudi Arabia (itself only interested in Israel for its military and intelligence prowess!) while leaving Hamas intact is simply incoherent.
"They have succeeded so far. While it's not certain yet, the situation can change, and the KSA hasn't shut down the possibility, it's much further off than it was before 10/7 and getting further away every day. The IRG must be thrilled."
I don't think it is much further off. The Saudis and all the Arab countries not aligned with Iran want Hamas handled. What they say privately and what they have to perform publicly are two different things.
The relationship with the Saudis should be fine. Despite their public pronouncements, the Arab leaders are privately telling Israel to carry on. They hate Hamas (i.e., the Muslim brotherhood, the arch enemy of the Arab regimes) and fully expect Israel to wage this war. The bigger danger to those relationships would be for Israel to look weak and irresolute.
[The Saudis] “hate Hamas (i.e., the Muslim brotherhood…”
So does the government of Egypt. Which is, I think, Matt’s point when he mentions Egypt’s differing behavior regarding refugees from Sudan versus Gaza. The “global community of progressive, humanitarian-minded cosmopolitan” activists shows itself to be anything but humanitarian-minded and cosmopolitan.
I hope that normalization is just delayed, and I do think there's some chance it's not dead. I just don't think the current Israeli response is the minimum requirement to not "look weak and irresolute". If anything a cooler-headed response that still kills lots of Hamas would look stronger than the current response, which is somewhere between "over the top" and "unhinged"
It seems equally obvious that Israel has higher priorities than normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia. Like not allowing its citizens to be raped, tortured, kidnapped, and murdered with impunity.
This seems like a reasonable priority ranking to me (admittedly not a Middle East expert).
Again this paternalism towards Israel. We're not all morons I assure you. We've more Nobel prizes per capita than you from our little warzone.
There are people in the Israeli government who've been itching for an excuse to unleash hell on the Palestinians, because they want a Greater Israel that's all-Jewish or certainly absolutely Jewish-dominated. 7/10 given them more room to pursue it, and they've taken it, resolutely supported by the US government.
I expect you will get a lot of criticism for this balanced piece from your imo absurdly Israel apologetic readership. It’s weird how I agree about everything many here say about the stupidity and counter productive stances of the far woke left (and the evil of the populist right), yet when it comes to Israel it’s as if otherwise rational centrist people lose their mind and can’t see what is actually going on.
I despise Hamas as much as the next person, but I cannot pretend that what Israel is doing is legitimate, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians (sometimes with death squad-style killings) as well as directly causing millions of them to starve. Yes, Israel has the right to defend itself - which regrettably might lead to some limited ”collateral damage” - but not the right to commit genocide. And several people in the Israeli government have been open about their genocidal wishes, without being dismissed. To say nothing of the slow motion ethnic cleansing of (and mass murder of civilians in) the West Bank.
What Israel is doing right now is indefensible and saying that doesn’t mean that one is sympathetic towards Hamas or anyone who denies the right of Israel to exist.
I have been ranting for years that it should be illegal to criticize Israel’s conduct in Gaza (in any round of fighting) without offering an alternative.
I note that, like many people of whom I ask this question, you instead angrily answered a question that I didn't ask, because it's easier.
I didn't ask "what don't you want them to do?". Thank you, but I already know that.
I asked you "what *do* you want them to do?".
Apparently this needs clarification.
How, exactly, do you expect Israel to fight Hamas, and defend itself against an enemy that thinks absolutely nothing of hiding behind civilians? An enemy that not only doesn't worry about civilian casualties but positively delights in them? That will ensure that it feeds itself before the civilians around it?
If you can engage with the reality of what's happening, there can be a discussion. If you can't, there can't.
It suggests that Israel: hold elections and change leadership away from a PM who clearly benefits personally from an endless military conflict; define milestones, an end-game, and a postbellum plan to make it clear that the current military operation is not just a slow-motion ethnic cleansing; build alliances with the countries that showed support shortly after 10/7; generally show more interest in persuasion of skeptical parties.
I agree there are things Israel could do differently, that might assuage some observers. However we also have to consider: Are there enough persuadable parties to matter? Put another way, are there too many *unpersuadable* parties to matter?
Even if Palestinian statehood is achieved and peaceful coexistence with Israel is sought, their state capacity to neutralize die hards who still want to destroy Israel would be limited (because that's a hard problem for anyone, and especially for weak states). If there are 30 such die hards, that threat can be managed, and yes, Israel should be doing all the things you say. If the deadenders number would number 30% of the population instead, it's impossible. They'll have a terrorist's veto. There is no milestone or end game or postbellum plan or set of alliances that can address this, whether it's Netanyahu or anyone else.
Looking at recent history, I think the latter view is arguably correct.
This is exactly the type of borderline antisemitic responses that Israel will get if a Palestinian state is established within the 67' borders. It will conduct a guerrilla war against Israel, and Israel will have to retalitae and attack the hospitals and schools in which the terrorists will hide. So what is Israel's incentive to establish a Palestinian state?
And why is this a borderline antisemitic response? Because it does not provide any example of a war where a cruel enemy hid among civilians and the ratio of civilians casualties was lower. After all, everyone knows that historically in such wars, the ratio of civilian casualties is usually much higher.
There is no real attempt to understand or to look for historical examples, just an automatic vilification of Jews, while they are actually doing something that no army has ever done, feeding its enemies.
Criticism of the Israeli government’s actions are not per se antisemitic and nothing about Joachim saying he doesn’t like that civilians are being killed is antisemitic. You do your cause a disservice by throwing that label around in response to every criticism of the Israeli government.
I'm not talking about a specific commenter that I don't know, but about a type of online responses that try to ignore the existing laws of war that were applied in modern history and claim that Jews need to act according to special rules that were fabricated to restrict them.
In terms of "a type of online response" I think your is fairly representative of commentators who think that Israel is always treated in some especially unfair way. It seems to me that civilian deaths are the #1 thing that concern people about war. Compare for example, Russia's seizure of Crimea to the current invasion.
If people weren't protesting a war that takes place among civilians with great loss of life *that* would be special.
If this is your insight, and it may well be a good one, then it's clear that Israel must under no circumstances agree to a Palestinian state. There's a very high likelihood that such a state would become a terrorism base, the dismantling of which would require killing many civilians.
In contrast, in the occupation of the West Bank, there is no daily killing of uninvolved civilians. The IDF simply blocks the establishment of a terrorism infrastructure at its early stages before it leads to a massive war.
Yeah that’s not all that the IDF does in the West Bank; they’re also protecting illegal settlements, the creation of which understandably irks Palestinians.
Deaths are really bad, especially of children. This sounds glib but I don't know how else to put it - people seem to forget. Israel is currently killing children. There is absolutely nothing borderline Antisemitic about seeing one country kill thousands of children and being angry about it.
Maybe you think they're tactically wrong, and that if Israel didn't kill 1,000 children now, 10,000 might die later, but you should be able to make that argument without ascribing nefarious reasons for them to not want 1,000 children to die now. This is exactly the kind of reasoning Matt is trying to talk you out of.
Every nation has the Geneva Convention, which recognizes that sometimes to kill an enemy, collateral damage is inevitable. But for Jews, a different criterion is needed that won't allow them to defend themselves at all. Yes, that's antisemitic.
What is not antisemitic? A serious, substantive discussion that compares the war of Israel to other wars waged by Western countries in civilian areas. Places like Mosul and the like.
Do you not think there there is criticism of the US war in Iraq? It's a mainstream opinion that it was a massive mistake - morally and tactically bad.
And maybe some people are saying that Israel can't defend itself, but that sure isn't what the poster you responded to is saying. They explicitly say the opposite. This is exactly the conflation that Matt's article is about.
The Geneva Convention of 49 & 77 calls for all civilians under the power of enemy forces to be treated humanely in all circumstances, protected from any violence, murder, or torture. Do not misquote it again.
International human rights law recognizes double effect; it's generally legal to kill civilians as collateral damage so long as it's truly collateral damage.
Section 4.7 of this Stanford publication explains that, while double effect is used to analyze bombing strategies by philosophers, international humanitarian law makes no distinction and that, by IHL, there is not sufficient permissibility to justify tactical bombing--- ALL civilian bombing breaks IHL.
I'm not sure that's accurate, but even if it is - that's a sign that Israel is doing *better*. Dropping more bombs but causing *less* civilian death is a *good thing*, I would think.
And yet, despite the fact that fewer bombs were used, a ton of civilians still died! (Grenades and bullets flying all around is pretty effective at killing civilians too.)
It's not antisemitic to object to the mass slaughter of civilians, and no matter how many times you say it, it won't be true. More and more people see that now.
Before the current war, I felt deeply conflicted about the Israel-Palestine situation, but the craziness of this sort of rhetoric has made me realize just how radical the Israeli status quo is. It's wild.
The perception that Jews are subject to different, harsher laws than everyone else is the very definition of antisemitism.
Anyone wanting to have a serious and non-antisemitic discussion about the war in Gaza needs to bring examples from other wars around the world and show how other armies had a more humane approach. But, unfortunately, the consensus among experts is that the civilian to militant casualty ratio is actually low relative to this type of conflict.
Well, the consensus among the experts I've consulted is that Israeli casualties sustained on Oct. 7 were actually quite low relative to this type of conflict. So, you know ... those civilian deaths were regrettable, but if you want to have a serious discussion you'll need to show examples from other insurgencies around the world of how Hamas could have had a more humane approach. (Sarcasm, obviously. Oct. 7 was inexcusable. Israel's mass slaughter and starvation campaign is inexcusable. This is obvious to anyone not blinded by hate.)
As of a month ago, Israel claims it has killed around 12,000 militants. A Qatari-based Hamas official claimed 6,000. Likely the number was somewhere between the two.
I don't think "death squad killings" have a formal definition, and I'm not especially informed on the details of the war, but reading on this incident led me to be believe that Israeli soldiers are killing fairly wantonly and without much regard for civilians.
Netanyahu's security strategy blew up on October 7. They can't mow the grass anymore, and I don't think they ever could. The options now are restart some sort of peace process or ethnically cleanse all of the Palestinian territories. I think most people outside Israel would support the former, but Netanyahu and his allies seem to prefer the latter.
It should be emphasized that the "mowing the grass" policy reflected an extreme reluctance to go to all out war with Gaza.
It meant Israel accepting rockets launched at its civilians for nearly two decades, with only minor retaliations (that sure caused damage and killed people, but were far short of what was needed to stop the terror).
It meant Israel literally inventing a way to shoot rockets out of the sky in order to avoid going to war.
This should be clarified for those trying to portray Netanyahu as a war-monger. I despise Netanyahu, and I thinks his security doctrine was a sham. And he has refused time and time again to articulate a long term vision or poitical horizon. There was no way the status quo was sustainable, and in retrospect we should have all realized that. But war-monger, he is not.
Hence the choice. Netanyahu also blockaded Gaza, expanded settlements in the West Bank, appointed far-right extremists to his cabinet, and has forthrightly said that he would never accept a two-state solution. Mowing the grass was an unstable equilibrium. At some point, things were going to boil over. At some point, facts on the ground has to change.
The blockade on Gaza wasn't instituted by Netanyahu. That preceded his election in 2009. And in my opinion I think it was 100% necessary.
But the other stuff not.
Now, Netanyahu has said he supports a 2-state solution multiple times. His policies didn't really further it. But it's only now that he's saying he doesn't want a 2-state solution, which given the current circumstances, I don't think is irrational.
I think Netanyahu should have been working towards building the conditions in which a 2-state solution was possible, and he did the opposite.
I’m not sure I’m anti-American foreign policy though. I’m a staunch supporter of Ukraine and NATO and as anti-Russia as anyone can get. I also support Israel’s right to exist with a Jewish-majority state of their own. I just don’t support their excessive violence in Gaza right now or their long standing slow motion ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. I certainly detest islamism in general and Hamas (although I can understand why traumatized Palestinians support them, unfortunately).
"I despise Hamas as much as the next person, but I cannot pretend that what Israel is doing is legitimate, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians (sometimes with death squad-style killings) as well as directly causing millions of them to starve."
The modern laws of war are set up to allow two warring parties to *cooperate* to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas has chosen, over and over, to defect: to store military supplies in civilian hospitals, to divert humanitarian aid funds to building military tunnels, to attack Israelis without a uniform (so that one could distinguish between combatants and non-combatants), and to hold civilians as hostages. I don't know of instances in which they attacked under a flag of truce, but I would expect nothing better from them. And after Hamas has spent years blurring the line between civilian and military, those chickens have come home to roost: and Israel must choose over and over again between making life better for Gazan civilians and the certainty that any aid supplies will get passed along to militants, and any restraint used as cover by Hamas tacticians. The civilian deaths that result? Those are on Hamas.
"The modern laws of war are set up to allow two warring parties to *cooperate* to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas has chosen, over and over, to defect"
Yes, this is something I'm thinking about more and more. Can you/should you follow IHL when fighting an opponent that doesn't care about IHL?
The disengagement from Gaza in 2005 was intended to pave the way for the creation of a peace-seeking Palestinian state. Yet, the suicide bombings in buses and restaurants in 2001 had already illustrated that relinquished territories would likely serve as platforms for terror activities. The accumulation of such evidence challenges the feasibility of holding onto peace-driven illusions.
Experience has shown that the establishment of a Palestinian state might escalate into warfare, possibly eclipsing current hostilities. Palestinian militants, as observed, might continue to exploit civilian infrastructures like hospitals and schools for tactical advantages, aiming to garner international sympathy. Thus, envisioning a Palestinian state as a step towards garnering global empathy seems as imprudent as expecting financial prosperity from loans taken under predatory conditions from organized crime.
You don’t get to decide that though, that’s the point of states. The South Koreans would obviously prefer it if North Korea didn’t have a military, Kosavars and Serbia, Indians and Pakistan. People need to stop acting like “two states bordering each other who hate each others guts and have a long history of violence” is some weird experiment that has never been tried, it’s literally why we invented national sovereignty in the first place.
Then when Palestinian state inevitably attacks Israel - or, more likely, aids and abets it's paramilitary/terrorists to strike at Israel with impunity - the. Israel would be perfectly justified in invading and conquering them.
And we're back to square one.
And we've already basically seen this play out after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
That’s not what states do in response to low grade one off attacks anymore. There are border skirmishes and terrorist attacks several times per year along all the borders I named. They lead to talks and maybe small, proportionate military responses. The only country that tried to fully conquer another in response to an attack (setting aside Ukraine, which seems somewhat more complex, and also the conquerors are the bad guys) recently had been the US in Afghanistan and even that comes with a pile of caveats (we backed one side in a pre-existing civil war and never denied Afghan statehood) and, more importantly, was a total disaster that shows why you shouldn’t do that.
The Palestinian attacks on Israel aren't one-offs or small scale.
Unless you are intentionally ignoring the constant rocket attacks since 2005.
No government on earth would tolerate those actions on their border.
Imagine if Mexico or it's paramilitary proxies were regularly launching tickets on civilian targets in the US. We would absolutely invade, and be right in doing so.
Yeah as an American this is one of the hardest things to wrap my head around. If, say, Tijuana sent rockets to San Diego like Gaza has to Israel...then Mexico would no longer exist.
I think this is underrated. Attacks of Oct 7th magnitude with any level of regularity would be intolerable. It's not possible to continue normal societal function with periodic attacks of that nature, and that's not what you see in history. Typically an attack(s) of that size would lead into full blown war which is what we are seeing now.
So shoot back at the rockets. I'm not someone who thinks Israel shouldn't defend itself. Keep some jets in the air and every time a rocket gets launched drop a bomb from the launch side five minutes later. But don't just kill 100 random civilians every time something bad happens.
I don't know why Isarel didn't do this, but manifestly Israel did not consider itself to be at war with Gaza for the last ten years. If it had, the border (which is shorter than the Berlin wall, a span that people managed to secure with 1960s technology) wouldn't have been so insecure that a bunch of guys with machine guns could have walked across it without anyone noticing for six hours.
Deliberately murdering 1200 civilians (and maiming/raping a bunch of them first) is NOT what I would call “low-grade.” Also, the Hamas leadership has explicitly said that it was not a one-off attack; they promised to keep doing it.
Look at the geography of Israel and the West Bank.
"Border skirmishes" could mean rockets being sent to Tel Aviv or Ben Gurion airport from a few km away, from higher ground.
"Border skirmishes" could mean rockets sent to Jerusalem from Jerusalem's own municipal border.
We are not talking about border skirmishes between Gaza or South Lebanon and remote moshavim and kibbutzim (which also frankly should never be subject with the horror that they have already been subject to). But "border" skirmishes means the potential for serious damage to Israel's major population centers as well as critical civilian infrastructure.
This seems to be intentionally ignoring context. South Korea didn't knowingly agree to the creation of North Korea out of nowhere. It's true that warring/feuding states do, and always have, existed next to one another- that's a truism that comes about due to the natural ways in which humanity and nation states have developed going back millennia. The difference is that one side is demanding that the current state acquiesce to and actively participate in the creation of a state that would potentially immediately begin active hostilities against it. Can you think of a situation where that has been the case?
"You don’t get to decide that though, that’s the point of states." They do get to at least make that demand though. That's the point of this being a proposal done diplomatically as opposed to through an invasion.
"You don’t get to decide [whether Palestine can have an official military] though, that’s the point of states."
No, sometimes other countries do get to decide that.
The Treaty of Versailles, Part V §1 Ch. 1: "The [German] Army shall be devoted exclusively to the maintenance of order within the territory and to the control of the frontiers."
Japanese Constitution, Art. 9 (official English translation): "The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation...land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained."
All of these were incorporated into the establishment of a new governing body following defeat by a foreign military invasion.* If you allow domestic invasions too, then Costa Rica also has "Se proscribe el Ejército como institución permanente" in its constitution.
* In fact, an invasion _by the United States._ If you want to claim that this is US-specific, then, sure! I agree! The US is fantastic (on this point) and everywhere else should be more like it.
I actually don't really understand the opposition to the Palestinians having a military. Jordan has a military. Egypt has a military. The concern should not be existing states with whom you have peace agreements invading you with their armies that are much much weaker than yours. The concern should be the non-state actors within those countries' borders that, because they are better armed than that country's government, can operate with impunity. The problem with Lebanon is not that Lebanon has an army, but that Lebanon's army can't beat Hezbollah. I would rather a Fatah controlled army that can keep Hamas in check than a weak Fatah state where Hamas can operate with impunity.
If the "police" are strong enough and well equipped enough to suppress a well armed terrorist army, for all intents and purposes aren't they just basically a military?
No, because there's nobody hired at the FBI headquarters to plan how to invade Mexico, just in case we ever want to do that. But certainly someone at the Pentagon has that job.
I agree with your column. Particularly "I find the extent to which the global community of progressive, humanitarian-minded cosmopolitan types simply imbibes an Arab nationalist worldview and views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through that lens to be maddening."
I'm of a different mind about the level of restraint Israel has demonstrated during this war, though. I think their reluctance to prosecute this war in an all-out way has been a mistake. It has prolonged the war and has allowed anti-Israeli forces to regroup and change the terms of the debate. Israel would have been justified -- as the allies were justified during WW2 -- to reduce the entire Gaza strip to rubble in the pursuit of an unconditional surrender by Hamas. They should have done that in the first two months of the war.
If there's one thing the past century+ of global conflict has demonstrated it's that "humane", nation building, winning hearts and minds-style warfare is a sham concept that doesn't work. If you're not pursuing total, unconditional surrender you need to go back to the drawing board.
The original hearts and minds campaign in Malaya worked (original as in "that's where that name comes from"). More people should study the Malayan Emergency.
So this was like... The British version of the first Indochina war? Except the British won where the French lost? Wikipedia isn't really sufficient for me to feel like I'm fully grasping the dynamics.
It's not something I know a vast amount about, except that my uncle fought in it (he was the last or second-last year to be conscripted in the UK; his two younger brothers, including my father, weren't). The narrative I know is that the British cut off the MNLA from international support and then won a successful hearts and minds campaign to convince the Malayan peasants to oppose the MNLA and this enabled them to gradually round them up and defeat them. I know there were also a bunch of massacres (one of which gets compared to My Lai) and I don't know enough detail to really understand the dynamics myself.
But they really did convince a sufficiency of Malay peasants that the UK colonial regime and the independent successor they were setting up to replace it was better for them than the communist MNLA rebels. And the French (and later the Americans) really didn't in Vietnam.
Yep. I suppose we need to actually define what total surrender means. Total surrender is where the conquered population commits to suppressing the elements of their own people who would maintain the conflict. Which is what happened in WWII, the people's of the Axis powers aligned with the western alliance against the elements that fomented the conflict because the alternative was destruction.
I think the nation-building was a big part of why Germany did that suppression, and could credibly commit to doing so. Red Army Faction might have gotten a lot more sympathy from Germans if they were fighting against an American occupation force rather than a legitimately elected sovereign government.
What is an unconditional surrender by a stateless organization accountable to no one look like?
Im not trolling im just not that read up on campaigns like this one that aren’t between uniformed armies. Like if they surrender on Thursday what’s to stop their fighters from carrying on in Jamas on Friday. Perhaps licking their wounds a bit longer but it has a hydra quality about it.
It seems like you’d need to change something about tbe baseline conditons that outside groups have money and material to send and Palestinians feel they have nothing to gain by investing in their own lives so may as well fire rockets from my neighborhood.
There's no doubt the Red Army committed atrocities in their fight against the Nazi. The British firebombed Dresden and killed 25,000 in one incident. Innocent German civilians suffered terribly, sometime in way the Allies could have avoided. But as compared to the Nazis, there's just no question who was in the right and needed all the help and support they could have. And it was, after all, Germans civilians, as opposed to British or Soviet civilians, who allowed their society and state to become host to such a malignant ideology.
Same with Israel's fight against Hamas, which is a modern-day equivalent of the Nazis.
Proportionality, in the law of war, does *not* mean tit-for-tat (in the sense that you get to kill an enemy civilian for each civilian on your side killed). It just means that you shouldn't kill civilians because you have nothing better to do. But if the only way to get at a single militant is to kill a thousand civilians—that is "proportional" under the laws of war (also that's despicable and you should wait for a better opportunity instead…but I digress).
Since the 1990s, Israel has handed over 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinians in return for a piece of paper in the Oslo Accords, and naively ignored the transformation of these territories into terrorist strongholds. This ignorance became untenable when buses started exploding within Israel itself.
And what does that have to do with the war *in Gaza*?
(See also: https://www.slowboring.com/p/israels-two-wars/. It's recent, so maybe you've already seen it, in which case I'm sorry for patronizing. But you haven't commented on the article, so I think maybe you subscribed after its posting?)
The same thing that happens to civilians in any war -- they become refugees, they become subjects of the other side, they die or they rebel against their leaders. War sucks. It's what happened to civilians in Germany or Japan during WW2.
The allies didn’t raze all of Japan and Germany to the ground, which would have been bad. Unless the civilians were allowed to evacuate into Jordan or Egypt, your proposal is essentially that Israel should kill them all during the bombing campaign. I think that’s wrong.
We razed large portions of both Japan and Germany. And were prepared to continue doing so until their leaders unconditionally surrendered, and I think that was justified, not wrong.
I'm not advocating killing civilians as a goal unto itself. Israel should allow civilians to evacuate to Jordan or Egypt, but that is up to those countries rather than Israel.
Well the problem ironically is that the more sinister the motives of the Palestinian cause really are, the more obvious it is why Jordan and Egypt would want to avoid taking these people in.
Many left-liberals in the US view the Arabs in Palestine as a long-standing separate nation-state whose sovereignty must be upheld, not unlike Wilsonian thinking after WW1. But the conservative Jews I talk to view them more like the Sudetenland and Ost Germans constantly agitated for by pan-German nationalists in the European interwar period. Ironically, by taking this perspective, I believe Israeli rightists and their fans in the US unfortunately underrate the Jordanians have done a lot and their king was literally murdered by a refugee from Palestine. That refugee, like many Arabs across the greater region, felt the king's annexation of the west bank betrayed the greater cause to create a full Palestinian state so Israel can remain under perpetual siege and eventually, be removed from the rightful Arab homeland.
Clearly the leaders of Jordan and Egypt are more quietly favorable to Israel than ever in its history. But it's a tough ask for them to take more of these refugees who are obviously both a security threat themselves, and because this very act would betray the Arab nationalist cause and agitate others to violence against their leadership. Once you place Arab nationalism as a major factor here, which was inflamed by Britain to destroy the Ottoman Empire, some things fit into place. It's clear why the Palestinian cause operates the way it does across the Arab world and why Israeli rightists see placating it as negotiating with a paranoid pan-German nationalist.
But it's also clear there's no easy fix, and the Arabs aren't about to assemble anything on the scale of Nazi Germany in the Middle East anytime soon. The Israelis remain overall quite secure, and it's hard for them to invoke Nazism when that refers to an actual genocidal war led by a massive industrial economy across Europe, not just frothing racists in a Bavarian beer hall. Israel is a lot more like a broadly successful Habsburg democracy, desperately trying to figure out what to do about the German and Hungarian nationalists occasionally throwing bombs at them and financed by groups in scattered German states.
"The allies didn’t raze all of Japan and Germany to the ground"
That's true, but that also was in large part because finite resources required the Allies to put some effort into choosing their targets. The targets that *were* selected, even by the western Allies (let alone the Soviets!), tended to be destroyed rather thoroughly if the Axis defenders tried to stand and fight for a prolonged period of time. (See, e.g., the near-complete destruction of cities like Monte Cassino, Aachen, and Manila.) It's also not an exaggeration to say that the comparatively softer touch of the western Allies was facilitated by the European Axis powers imploding, while land battles against the Japanese were overwhelmingly not fought in urban areas simply due to the combination of geography (the Pacific islands) and low population density (rural Burma, New Guinea, etc.).
Cliche to say but - it’s complicated. His biggest critics at the time were the Americans because they were pursuing, what they believed, as high minded strategic bombing of targets of importance to the war economy.
The stronger criticism IMO was that British bomber command resources could’ve been used more effectively than area (“terror”) bombing. Especially once long range fighter support came into play via the P51 in 1944
Yes, very true. Which is why I specifically referred to situations where "the Axis defenders tried to stand and fight for a prolonged period of time," and used examples of protracted urban land battles, which are the relevant analogy to what's going on in Gaza.
Just to be clear, the civilians elected Hamas, support its goals, support Oct. 7th, support repeating attempts at Oct. 7th, and mostly reject Hamas because they think they’re not prosecuting their genocidal war of return effectively enough. (If any of those sounds implausible, look up any polling data on the subject.)
So now the question: what happens? They die, and that’s bad, and a war crime, and possibly genocide. What’s the alternative? That this society, if given autonomy, reorganizes itself to produce more genocidal war against Israel.
Neither choice is acceptable. I think this is a real blind spot in our Western framework for thinking about these things. And I’m not trying to stealth advocate for the genocide option - really. But we need more attention to the until now most theoretical problem “what happens when a society, with all but full democratic legitimacy, organizes itself around the goal of wiping out the Jews nearby, despite little to no hope of success?”
They narrowly elected Hamas 15 years ago, many of those living in Gaza today were children or not born then. Also, being thrown out of what you consider your ancestral lands will tend to lead to radicalization… your children being bombed to pieces even more so.
29 likes so far for a comment that argues that all out genocide (turning Gaza into rubble) is a legitimate response, something that even few Allied supporters argued for in WW2. Yikes.
Should the US have reduced Afghanistan to rubble after 9/11? Why not?
Winning a war is not "genocide", no matter how many times that word is invoked.
The allies during WW2 turned numerous parts of Germany (Dresden, Berlin, Dortmund) and Japan (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo) into rubble in pursuit of the reasonable and just objective of degrading their ability to conduct the war and convincing the political leaders of Germany and Japan to surrender unconditionally.
I see no reason Israel shouldn't pursue the war Hamas started to a similar conclusion. Hamas can stop the war at any time -- release the hostages and surrender. Any civilian deaths (1) are their responsibility.
(1) assuming, of course, that Israel doesn't target civilians without a legitimate war aim.
Regarding your question re: Afghanistan: No, we should not have reduced it to rubble because it wasn't necessary to accomplish the objective. The Taliban didn't control the entire country and our forces quickly established operational control of most of the country. When the Taliban retreated, we pursued them. The US lost sight of the operational objectives of the war. We became sidetracked with nation-building, establishing democracy, pursuing women's rights, etc -- so the quagmire continued for 20 years until Biden pulled us out (good decision, Joe!).
Even pure terror bombing (which the Allies did a lot of in WW2, but which is a war crime) is not genocide. This is what Matt's talking about when he refers to obviously bad-faith frivolous criticisms.
Killing Gazans is genocide. Bombing them back to the Stone Age is not.
Genocide requires a determined attempt to exterminate a people. Gaza already has a large organization (UNWRA) dedicated to ensuring that (most) Gazans will survive off of foreign-donated food, even if the whole region is turned into rubble around them.
Even taking Israel out of the equation (if that’s possible) the “global community of progressive, humanitarian-minded cosmopolitan types simply imbibes an Arab nationalist worldview” is kind of mind blowing to me.
I’m a very open minded, internationalist person who objectively appreciates the different peoples and regions of the world. However…Arabs, like all peoples, have what I would consider pros and cons about them, but they would not be at the top of my list of people to default side with and take their worldview as most valid.
Wondering where this comes from. Lawrence of Arabia legacy?
Matt has always been a big believer in policy and its effects on public opinion. His pieces are easy to support when you agree with the proposed policy shift. However the irking empirical doubt remain : policy and facts *ought* to affect public opinion but *do* they? In every single Gaza conflict of the past decade, it always starts with a baseline level of pro Israel sentiment that always erodes as the Israeli response continues. This is always the dynamic regardless of the specifics. It’s also the case that the core anti Israel side blames Israel for things like “genocide” continuously , and held anti Israel rallies on Oct 7th itself, and as Matt points out, has zero interest in actually helping Palestinian cilvians. Add to that the fact that most anti Israel opinion is derived from Chinese controlled social media. That the shift in the Biden stance has at least as much to do with the looming elections etc
In short here is the question: would the polls show anything different if the Gaza causality rate was 20k or 40k rather than the current presumed 30k? These are dramatically differently numbers, and in military terms the lower figure may have been achievable only at enormous costs for Israel (if achievable at all). Hence could reflect different policy on the war. But would public opinion have been even minutely affected?
It seems to me that the facts on the ground actually matter very little to global public opinion. A rhetorically smarter Israeli government and leadership could probably have had a positive effect on the margins, but that’s about it.
If Gazan casualties were 20k instead of 30k, you would get the exact same level of outcry in liberal Western media, the same opinion pieces on how this is cruel and immoral and Israel must find a way to get civilian casualties down to zero. How? [shrug]
To be 100% clear, I feel terribly sorry for innocent Palestinian civilians, especially children, who have been killed or injured or who are suffering from lack of food and medicine. Just, the critics of Israel don’t seem able to accept that when you’re fighting a fanatical death cult that uses civilians as shields, there are no good options. Damned if I know what the least bad option is. I’m glad I’m not in the Israeli government.
Best of my understanding, the current government has been propping up Hamas to use as a foil against a two-state deal because Bibi doesn’t want one, while also making the situation worse in the West Bank with all the settlements. Doesn’t excuse Hamas’ actions but definitely made tensions worse, so maybe not doing that would’ve been the move.
First, this seems non-responsive. The question is, how should Israel be conducting the war? Your answer is effectively, "it would be good if the entire war would be butterflyed away by an alternative history of the long lasting conflict taken by better, wiser leaders." Yes, that would be good.
Second, "Bibi propped up Hamas" assumes that Bibi was a necessary condition for Hamas being in power. But Hamas's government in Gaza preceded Bibi and continued to exist even when Bibi was out of office. It continues to exist even now as Bibi bombs and shoots the shit out of it. The idea that it was up to Bibi's discretion to have simply made Hamas go away and be replaced with something better is entirely unsupported by any fact. It also seems asburd to me to blame an Israeli for the continued existence of a Palestinian terrorist organization, created and staffed entirely by Palestinians, and voted in by Palestinians in their most recent election, and which continues to enjoy high favorability in every Palestinian poll.
Third, when Israelis blame Bibi for "propping up Hamas," they don't mean that Bibi was out there running guns to Hamas or giving them PR advice. Rather, they are criticizing him for (i) negotiating ceasefires and prisoner exchanges with Hamas; (ii) letting Qatar send foreign aid into Gaza (iii) not toppling Hamas in a huge war and (iv) reducing the stringency of the blockade in response to Hamas's good behavior. Which of these are you saying he shouldn't have done?
"it would be good if the entire war would be butterflyed away by an alternative history of the long lasting conflict taken by better, wiser leaders."
Thank you for making me snort-laugh in the midst of a very somber and disturbing thread. (I mean the topic is disturbing, not the comments, almost all of which are thoughtful and rational.)
Absolutely 100% agree, Netanyahu is an a-hole and the strategy of propping up Hamas was both immoral and astonishingly stupid. It brings to mind that famous Napoleon quote: “It’s worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.”
The problem is, that doesn’t really answer the question of what is the least bad thing Israel can do now?
The reality is more complicated than what you describe. No Israeli government would initiate a war to get rid of Hamas in Gaza. The human cost on both sides is too high. The damage to Israel's image is crazy, and Israel's focus is the Iranian nuclear program, not terrorists in Gaza.
When Bibi said that at least Hamas's presence in Gaza provides a way to avoid a Palestinian state, he gave an excuse to his right-wing voters to explain why he is ok with a terrorist organization controlling Gaza. Even without this excuse, things would proceed in the same manner. You have to pay money to Hamas, otherwise, they'll commit terrorism. And a war to uproot Hamas wasn't realistic, until the extreme cruelty and the magnitude of the horrors of October 7 forced it.
Was it really propping up Hamas, or just real politic. Dealing with the people in charge to try and make the best out of a bad situation. Thinking you could deal with Hamas like they have with the PLO
I don’t know about 20k rather than 30k, but if it had been only 10k by this point I am 100% certain that the level of outcry would be less.
Theres a strong anti-Israel contingent that would behave exactly the way they are now, but the majority of Americans aren’t in this group and don’t sympathize with them. For many of people in the broad middle here there are specific events in the fighting that have turned them towards one side or another. If fewer of those events were surprisingly bloody encounters and more of them were surprisingly restrained responses, more of these people would be sympathizing with the Israeli efforts. The difference wouldn’t be as big as one would want to reflect the significant difference in outcome for innocent Palestinian people, but it just seems obviously false to claim that there is *zero* influence.
I think a different Israeli leadership with better message discipline would have helped on the margines. More importantly, I think better and earlier attention on food etc for civlians would have not only been the right call morally but would have helped the war aims. And I certainly think that a good plan of what to replace Hamas with would have dramatically improved Israel's position and served the actual aim of the war! This may have gone a long way in Israel's war aims per se as well as its *diplomatic* relations. These are of course very important. That is to say Israel's terrible leadership is damaging it (of course!). However here I focus on public opinion. On that front I doubt the polls would have shown much else under any realistic scenario. Most especially, the anti Israel line of "progressives" would have been virtually identical, same as their threat to Biden in November. And young people's anti-Israel stance would have been the same, unless Qatar and China were convinced to indoctrinate them differently.
P.S.
as to "specific events" a lot more has to do with biased shoddy reporting in mainstream american media, than the actual facts on the ground, such as the hospital incident, and more recently the tragedy with the aid convoy. The latter is in fact a classic case of "no good deed goes unpunished". Israel did the right thing there but that didn't stop NYT from spreading terrible libel with full force, backtracking only belatedly and half heartedly. Such cases are very numerous and add another problematic layer to how much the "facts" matter as opposed to how they are presented by legacy media and a fortiori social media controlled by adversaries.
PPS
There is also the American polariztaion dynamic to consider. it's becoming increasingly difficult to have american consensus on *anhy* issue. It may be instructive to compare israel to ukraine. Both enjoyed outpouring genral symapthy in the aftermath of the initial attakc oon them by an unscrupulous aanti-american enemy. But in both cases polarization dynamics were fast creeping in as the conflict then dragged on. For whatever reason it came down that dems were seen as the pro ukraine side so gop started to back away (with important exceptions from elite politicians mostly of an older generation) while pro israeal wsa marked republican so dems start backing away(with important exceptions from elite politicians mostly of an older generation). Wrt to american public opinion polarization probably matter a whole lot more than the facts on the ground.
You mention food for civilians. Sincere question, not trolling: how can Israel/US/UN/any other entity providing said food ensure it does not fall into the hands of Hamas? Hamas does not give a fruit fly's fart about the lives of ordinary Gazans; what is to stop them from hoarding all the food and using starving Gazan children as yet another stick to beat Israel with in the court of international public opinion?
It's a big problem. In the immediate term I think parachuting stuff as US and others have been doing is some help, but the best thing that could be done is for Egypt to open its border to refugees, if only for women and children. Anyone who leaves Gaza will get immediate relief and by doing would also help relieve some of the problems for those who stay. It boggles the mind that this is not happening, contrary to just about any other war zone in the world.
You can’t prevent them from any hoarding - but if you can get in large amounts of food aid by many channels, then there will be more abundance, and less value to hoarding.
The anti-Israel line of "progressives" would likely have been the same. It's possible that the people driven by social media would have been the same too. But I think there are a lot of people that have turned negative on the Israeli effort who aren't "progressive" or "very online", and the numbers there would be somewhat different.
Also MY's article and Friedman both have the premise that Israel should care more about international opinion. I think that is true--Israel should care more than it does, and it shouldn't dismiss legitimate constructive criticism along with the massive amounts of bad-faith illegitimate criticism it gets.
But international perspectives isn't Israel's only, or even main, concern. The Israeli government's first priority is the security interests of its own people. This may be some extent tied up in international support, and that should be taken into consideration, of course. But Friedman seems to think that every Israeli action should be premised on how to maximize international support. So in article after article, he fails to clearly address or even articulate the security concerns Israelis have to his specific proposals.
Friedman, like me, supports a two state solution. But proposals need to address the real and legitimate security concerns that Israelis have that a two-state solution will result in rockets towards Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and Jerusalem from just a few km away, if the PA can't get its shit together and govern effectively. Friedman doesn't address these concerns, but ignores them, because he thinks that Israel should do what it can to improve its international standing. So security concerns of Israel's actual citizens isn't important or even germane to his arguments.
Golda Meir said "If we have to have a choice between dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we'd rather be alive and have the bad image." See p. 26 in Schenker & Schenker (eds.; 1970), "As Gold as Golda". If you have an Internet Archive account, then it's available at https://archive.org/details/asgoodasgoldawar0000meir/page/26/.
A quick Google search didn't turn up anything for your phrasing, although ofc that doesn't mean that nobody notable has ever said it.
I think that those of us who support a two-state solution -- a number in which I very solidly place myself -- need to be clear-eyed in our expectations. It is NOT, at least for the lifetimes of many of us, going to be "two states living side by side in peace" in the way of Canada and the United States. It's going to be much more like "two states living side by side in peace" very much in the way of East and West Germany at the height of the Cold War, with an impenetrable border, a patrolled "autobahn" connection and guaranteed air corridor between the West Bank and Gaza, a "Right of Return" limited to the borders of the internationally recognized Palestinian State, and probably a demilitarized Palestine. Not ideal, but by far the most desirable possible outcome.
At least before the war started, a lot of Palestinians (including from Gaza) would cross into Israel for work. This work is important for the Palestinian economy.
I'm curious to what extent in a two-state future, that this exchange will be able to continue.
The Palestinian guest workers worked with Hamas, providing information down to which families had pets and where the nurseries were. They are *never* being allowed in Israel again.
At this point I personally doubt that it would be feasible or acceptable to either side, but we can always hope. Part of the peace plan must be a massive investment program, probably funded by the Arab petrostates, to build a functioning economy within Palestine that provides jobs and prosperity. Done right, it's not out of the question that Palestine could become the Singapore of the Near East. Maybe someday in the distant future, Israelis would even be commuting THERE to work!
It’s an extraordinarily telling thing to me that pro-Palestinian protestors showed up to an event to admonish and criticize a New York Times opinion writer for his columns on Israel and that person was NOT Brett Stephens. Like I don’t think there is a bigger pro Likud* and pro Netanyahu zealot working in all of American mainstream media. And yet this not the person you come to shout at.
Someone in the comments has noted already that this stems from this weird mindset that’s taken hold especially since Trump got elected that GOP or GOP aligned people have no agency. So your protests and criticism doesn’t even think about the much more extreme vision of the GOP. Please see Jared Kushner’s comments that Matt highlighted on Twitter. You know, the guy Trump put in charge of his Israel and Middle East policy last time around. Go ask Mike Johnson what is views about Israel are. It just strikes me that something is seriously off when the target of your pro Palestinian protests in America are not the people who are most threatening to the welfare of Palestinian people.
* my line for 30 years now is I’m pro Israel but anti Likud. Ever since Ariel Sharon became PM (remember him? He looks like a moderate now). Guess I have to update this to anti Likud and anti even worse extremist Likud adjacent nutballs.
I think the difference is that Bret Stephens would look out his window down onto the protestors and think, “What a bunch of idiots. Get a job hippies” and go about his day. Whereas Friedman might look on and think “Jeez, why don’t they like me? Don’t they know I’m on their side? Wow, I need to do better”
“The specific thing that has transfixed a global audience of idealistic young people is the concrete suffering of Palestinian civilians. That’s something that could be resolved far short of dissolving the State of Israel.”
From this perspective, I don’t get the description in the opening this article of all people who are opposed to the status quo as being somehow in favor of the collapse of the state of Israel. I am, and have long been, in favor of neither of those things. Coincidentally, “Israel should stop settlement expansion and move towards a two state solution” has been the official US position since the 90s and the reason I am disillusioned, as an America, is because Israel has told the US to fuck itself on those issues consistently for 30 years while expecting our unwavering support for everything else it does. That was never going to work forever, especially now that the Cold War is over and we’re no longer worried about Soviet proxies dominating the Suez etc., and crises are when things break.
So let’s be clear: we have Gaza and the West Bank. In Gaza there are no settlements, there is full autonomy, hell it’s not even demilitarized, it launches endless attacks on Israel culminating in Oct. 7th, and Israel’s response transfixes the global audience.
In the West Bank the opposite of all of these holds, the attacks are well under control, and Israel’s occupation transfixes no audience, for the most part.
Why should Israel ever allow even the possibility of the Gaza situation in the West Bank? In other words: why should Israel ever conceive of allowing a Palestinian state in the West Bank?
I’m not saying you’re wrong - I actually think you’re 100% right! - but it doesn’t seem like too many people have given thought to the incentive structure here.
Netanyahu is an a-hole and the suffering of innocent Palestinians is horrible. That said, looking at the order of operations:
1. Israel removes its settlers from Gaza
2. Hamas takes power in Gaza, promptly begins to attack Israel
3. Israel blockades Gaza
4. NGOs send aid to Gaza; Hamas uses most of the aid to build tunnels while regular people are desperately poor
5. Hamas launches a horrific attack on 10/7, specifically targeting kibbutzim that are (or were) predominantly inhabited by progressive-ish Israelis who wanted a peaceful two state solution.
I think you are actually badly misunderstanding the deeply screwed up incentives at work here. Just to take one obvious example, the tunnels are there PRECISELY BECAUSE of the blockade.
This is Econ 101. People need stuff. The land routes are tightly controlled. And so, as has happened in literally every place ever where you have tightly controlled access, an impressive level of human ingenuity has gone into the most profitable exercise available: building smuggling infrastructure.
I'm not saying that the smuggling infrastructure isn't also useful to Hamas. Tunnels are, by their very nature, dual-use. But you are kidding yourself if you think the economics of smuggling isn't a significant contributor to this kind of activity.
Honestly, though, you don't have to do this kind of deep-dive analysis. We know that Netanyahu saw it as in his political interest to incentivize the continued rule of Hamas in Gaza; he believed that their continued ascendance combined with the barrier project and the periodic "mow the grass" policy was the best way to achieve his long-term strategic aims. His expression of that sentiment is old reporting.
I think that was both an immoral AND a stupid call, and I think 10/7 makes that point. But, if you're being honest, it looked pretty good prior to 10/7, at least from the point of view of Israel's elected leadership.
It's fine to call Hamas a bunch of butchers and to blame them for being horrible. But it's silly to act as if the Israeli government was just standing around while stuff happened in Gaza. Gaza is what Hamas AND Israel made of it, through many years of very intentional policy choices. And those outcomes were clear long ago--to circle back to where we started, the Israeli government didn't wake up on 10/8 and go, "Wow, who knew there were tunnels in Gaza?!? When did this happen?"
I think the choices were dumb and immoral. And, to put it bluntly, this is not some kind of hot take. I was sharing it with undergraduates in my modern Middle East survey ten years ago precisely because I was reading a lot of contemporary regional analysis in order to teach that part of the class--my own expertise was squarely in the area of oil policy and rentier economies, rather than Israel-Palestine, which frankly didn't much interest me--and that was what a lot of smart folks were saying.
The present is the product of choices made in the past. There were good strategic and political and personal incentives for the actors involved to make those choices. But acting as if the Israeli government is a bystander in this story is ludicrous, and it clouds all the rest of your analysis.
According to the reporting--which, either you believe it or you don't, but if you want the flavor, check out the NYT story on 12/10/23--Netanyahu felt like this was precisely the point: supporting Hamas's control of Gaza perfectly created the argument you describe, which effectively quieted international pressure for the Two State plan and allowed for the slow-roll ethnic cleansing project (settlement expansion, but also the associated expansion of the security state) in the West Bank to go forward relatively unimpeded.
Honestly, I think that was an immoral but also strategically suspect plan. I think people were always eventually going to notice and object to the West Bank project, as demonstrated by things like the BDS movement. But on the other hand, prior to 10/7 my opinion looked dumb; the BDS people have been more or less sidelined--by law, in many parts of the US--the settler project has made huge gains, Netanyahu was back in power, and Israel was making international political gains with the Arab states as part of a potential anti-Iran coalition.
And who knows? It's not like we've reached the end of this story. Netanyahu is a smart guy, and his allies on the right are deeply committed to their project. Historically speaking, ethnic cleansing projects have a relatively high success rate, depending on how you count. They might well still prevail. If you told me that in twenty years there would be a single Jewish state encompassing, say, 90% of the territory currently in the West Bank and Gaza and ruling over a Palestinian worker population with restricted rights or some kind of Jim Crow type situation, I would find that plausible. Maybe do a UAE-style guest worker class for the Palestinians? I don't think it's the most likely outcome, but I'm a historian, and historically it wouldn't be that unusual of an outcome.
Israel is the only place in the world where Jews can be safe (despite the fact that they are objectively safer in the United States), but also Israel is forever on the edge of destruction, so you better keep those billions of dollars in cash and arms coming, America. We have to support Israel because Israel keeps Jews safe; we have to support Israel because Israeli Jews are so deeply threatened.
Israel is a strong, independent nation that does not need America's permission for anything, but needs America's money for everything. Don't you dare tell us what to do, Joe Biden, because we're a proud modern self-sufficient country, now raise the funding for the Iron Dome or we're all going to die.
The IDF is the most sophisticated and efficient military in the world, immensely technologically advanced and incredibly well-trained, but also it can't stop killing civilians by the tens of thousands, whoops! The IDF is a proud people's army, one that punches above its weight internationally to an astonishing degree, the perfect picture of a compassionate and humane modern military, also if they bomb a hospital and kill a bunch of innocent people, hey, that's war baby.
Not that this frothy hyperbole really requires fact checking but our aid to Israel is ~ 100% through the DoD and has been since 2008; we're not sending cash. For further context on the $3.3B of military financing to Israel, we provided $1.2B to Egypt and $0.5B to Jordan.
EDIT: Also since I'm still a little worked up over this comment, why are we suddenly acting like "billions of dollars" is a lot of money? Who cares about single digits billions of dollars when we're up to $75B for Ukraine?
“Complete moron” is very unfair to Freddie, who is highly intelligent. Substitute “ideologically committed to some wrong/bad ideas and extremely pissy when contradicted.”
“Just because they're after you doesn't mean you're not paranoid” is true when it comes to good-faith critics writ large, but is totally laughable when it comes to who is running Gaza itself. Given what self-governance and disengagement since 2005 has done to the place, how could one not be paranoid about what it (or the West Bank under similar management) given full-blown statehood and a military, could do?
"you could have a peace deal in which Palestinians are citizens of their own sovereign state (or of two separate Palestinian states) that, like Jordan and Egypt, control their own borders and are at peace with Israel. There are plenty of people who don’t like that idea, who want to reverse the nakba of 1948 and liberate all of historical Palestine. But those people would get far less international support if Israel were acting the way Friedman says they should act."
The problem is that the (substantial) minority that doesn't like it can still exercise the "terrorist veto" (like a heckler's veto, but with guns), and any Palestinian state is very unlikely to be able to control that. Say what you will about Israel, but when they decide (as they did with settlers in Gaza in 2005) to control their most extreme elements, they can actually do it.
It leaves us where we currently are. I didn't say there were any good outcomes. Yes, civilian casualties are bad, but I don't think that criticism of Israel is legitimate unless it is paired with a clear-eyed suggestion for what they should do instead. Most critics of Israel are not constrained by that.
Great post. As an American Jew and moderate dem, It's been disheartening to me to see that *many* Jewish moderate dems that eschewed the identitarian "there's white supremacy under every rock" nonsense have embraced an identitarian "there's anti-semitism under every rock" in the last few years.
For example, it's taken as an article of faith that Ilhan Omar's "It's all about the Benjamins" tweet was an obvious anti-semitic, "saying the quiet part out loud" take. But it's obviously true that AIPAC massive political funding is intended to steer policy in favor of Israel - that's the point! Decrying the influence of money in politics is commonplace. Just because there's a bad stereotype that Jews use money to control things doesn't mean that sometimes Jewish people don't use money to try to control things!
This mindset has made it very easy to discount valid criticisms of Israel.
I find Matt’s piece to be correct in the bottom line but totally unhelpful. This is a piece Matt should have seriously considered translating to Hebrew and publishing to an Israeli audience. It’s not one I find particularly helpful in the context of American discourse. The ”blame Israel” discourse, which at the end of the day this piece is a part of, even though written with an explicit pro Israeli intention, is ironically exacerbating the very dynamic it’s out to condemn. What we rather need is far more forceful condemnation of the anti semitic left (and there is no reason to equivocate on this characterization). What we neeed is a whole piece talking about things like Egypt’s refugee policy, mentioning Hamas intractable positions on the hostage deal that are a major factor in the war, mentioning the importance of the Biden admin humanitarian relief effforts (and how they are getting at least Israel’s cooperation, while the anti Israel croud never called for them!).
In short, Matt’s extremely apologetic stance is understandable for him as a basically pro Israeli American Jew living and working in increasingly anti Israel and anti semitic circles. But it’s very counterproductive. He’d do far better to use his voice in these circles to push back.
Part of the reason support for Israel is going down is that people like you keep throwing around antisemitism charges in response to any criticism of the Israeli government. You’re not doing the pro-Israel cause any favors with that.
IIRC, THPacis is European, and in Europe, honest-to-goodness straight-up any-reasonable-person-would-recognize-it-as-such anti-Semitism is both much more common in highly educated circles and more correlated with opinion about Israel than it is in the US. I get the sense that this colors his perception of the issue.
The situation in the US is not nearly as bad as much of Europe, but it's becoming much worse than it used to be with alarming speed and little push back. There is still way too much denial and deflection going on, as we can see.
Yes there are too many people denying the Israeli government’s role in making the problem worse and deflecting any criticism of said role with charges of antisemitism
"Part of the reason support for Israel is going down is that people like you keep throwing around antisemitism charges in response to any criticism of the Israeli government."
I'd like to see some polling on this, please. For example, if you ask people: "What is the thing you would most like Israel or Jews in general to change regarding the current war in Gaza?" then what proportion answer "stop accusing people of anti-semitism"?
Just wanted to give you props for making an important point that’s probably going to be genuinely unpopular with a significant chunk of your readership.
“If your government includes very vocally pro-ethnic cleansing guys, you kill a civilian population faster than the Khmer Rouge, and you don’t have a clear plan for the postwar, a lot of otherwise persuadable people will see you as bad actors”* is both true and pretty obvious, but a lot of people are either deeply triggered or engaging in motivated reasoning and don’t want to see it.
* The literal Hamas apologists tend to have a similar problem, but there are just a lot fewer of them on this site and in the US in general.
I'm a Democrat, and one thing I don't think Republicans get is how frustrating it is that whenever there's a legislative fight, whether it's over the Speakership or budget or whatever, Dems are always expected to be the adults in the room. We assume that Republicans will act irrationally, so Dems have to asymmetrically compromise for the good of the country.
I feel like that's similar to the Israel conflict. Israel is acting more aggressively than I would like, but they were also attacked first and all hostages have not been released. Hamas has repeatedly denied calls for ceasefires, yet the entire discourse here is about how Israel should unilaterally stop fighting. It's like we all expect them to be the adults in the room even though the other side will continue to try to fight regardless of how outgunned they are.
I would've agreed more with this take in November/December. But this puts the conflict into a binary between ceasefire and non-ceasefire. When there is just a lot more Israel could've done to minimize civilian casualties and let aid go into Gaza. I agree that Hamas is the leading reason why there hasn't been a ceasefire in the first place, but there's a world where Israel could've kept fighting in a far more humane way.
sure totally, and I agree with the notion that Israel should do more to minimize civilian casualties.
But this sorta goes to my main point -- the commentariat is more upset with Israel for not doing enough to avoid accidentally killing civilians than they are with Hamas for intentionally killing civilians. We expect Israel to be the adults, and I can imagine how frustrating that would be.
Right, but we expect them to be adults because they have nuclear weapons and a war arsenal that could make Gaza essentially unlivable. I do think it's annoying that the pro-palestinian activist side is slow to blame Hamas and to immediately turn the conflict into a dialogue about colonization. But the US just has more leverage with Israel and they have the capacity to kill far more people, so they're going to get more attention from our government.
I think we generally agree overall though.
We don't focus our attention on influencing Israel primarily because they have a bigger military.
We do it because we recognize that it is futile to engage with the Palestinians.
The Palestinian public by and large thinks that Israel doesn't have a right to exist and that it should be swept away.
You can't negotiate with that.
What’s the solution then? Kill or displace them all? Leave Gaza permanently under Israeli occupation?
If Palestinians refuse to accept a 2SS, then yes, permanent military occupation. That still obligates Israel to stop expanding into the West Bank.
Hamas' founding charter called for the destruction of Israel. Their updated 2017 positions are incompatible with Israel (e.g., Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine, Right of Return). So long as Hamas is in power there will be war.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
https://palwatch.org/storage/documents/hamas%20new%20policy%20document%20010517.pdf
I don't know. I don't think there is a good solution, so I suspect the latter option to happen.
Go back to the pre-2005 status with Gaza where Israel is occupying and policing it to keep Hamas suppressed.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if the first option happens at some point down the road.
It pretty much does seem to be a death match between Israel and the Palestinians.
And if it did eventually come to that, I guess I'm on the side of the people who -werent- cheering after 9/11.
I’m going to point out there that you are reacting with incredulity to something that happened in Nagorno-Karabakh “last year”. In fact, the Azerbaijanis killed or displaced essentially all the Armenians there. Are you happy with that solution?
I think the more leverage thing is key. In the last five years I have expended more energy criticizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank than I have criticizing Hamas terrorism. This isn't because I think settlements are worse than terrorism.
It is because I understand Israel to be pluralistic democracy where the majority of it citizens are rational and well-intentioned people, many of who are sincerely motivated to live according to faith that places a great deal of emphasis on right action and justice. So providing a critique like the one MY is giving here or others have given that failing to engage in a peace process, violating human rights in occupied territories, and undermining the possibility of long term peace through settlements are all things that both immoral and undermining the ability or likelihood of peace and of allies to support them feels like a potentially productive and ultimately loving thing to do for both Palestinians and Israelis.
Hamas is a self-declared genocidal terrorist organization with obvious willingness to use violence to maintain power in Gaza and zero incentive to want peace in the region. The average person in Gaza has limited ability to influence their actions. Hamas and I don't share a set of values, commitments to international law, or desire for peace. So my criticizing them feels like spitting in the wind. They don't give a shit what I think and being upsetting is pretty much their defined MO. Criticizing them may be a supportive gesture to Israel but it seems a fairly hallow one.
I feel fairly similar in terms of how much energy I give to criticizing specific behaviors of the far left than the far right or Dems vs. Republicans. The far right actively hates everything that I stand for and the Republican party quite rationally doesn't give two shits what I think because I am far enough Left that I would never vote for them. To the extent that they get mileage with their base for owning the Libs, my being upset is the goal not the flaw with their behavior. I get how this can feel unfair but ultimately my expecting the Dems to act like adults is about me respecting them.
We should be clear eyed about the fact that Gazans do support Hamas.
We should be clear eyed about the fact that seeing your innocent children being killed and (what you, not completely without justification, see as your) homeland being stolen makes you support radical organizations. It's not more surprising than the fact that Lenin became a communist after his brother was killed by the Tsar.
I sure as shit wouldn’t support the Israelis if I was a Palestinian. What do you expect?
"The average person in Gaza has limited ability to influence their actions."
How many average persons in Gaza are doing their part, for example, by cooperating with the Israelis by providing intel on the locations of Hamas hideouts and tunnels, etc?
Sometimes the often-overly-simplistic maxim that, You're either with us or against us" is actually true, or at least more true than not.
I don't want to rob the average citizen in Gaza of agency or moral responsibility for their actions but people do operate within a community and context. There is a difference between (A) someone who (1) has navigating living for years in an area dominated by a violent and exploitative terrorist organization where opposition can mean death and (2) is currently watching their loved ones die due to a bombing campaign and aid limitation from a foreign occupying power making the choice to risk death by choosing to do what their community would view as treason and assist that foreign occupying power in their war against the government of your country in the hope that post-war your area would be free of terrorism and war and (B) a free citizen of a democracy with free and fair elections and a good internal human rights record choosing to cast a vote for a government committed to the goal of peace and compliance with international law.
It is easy to say that the person A should make that choice or even imagine that if we were person A we would make that choice but it is not an easy choice or one that history would believe most people would be brave enough to make. There is a difference for example between serving in the German resistance in WWII and, say, voting for Biden in 2024. I don't expect any medal for doing the later. That later option is open to the citizens of Israel and has been in the last few elections. It is not open to the average citizen of Gaza since Hamas's take over.
I suspect the number of people who would even see doing option A as the moral things is reducing daily with each civilian killed.
That is what war does. Wars against terrorism can result in symbolic victories but they also create more terrorists. I understand Israel's urge to unleash its military might against Gaza because it has that military might. We did the same thing after 9/11. But I think they will learn at the end of the day that military might has its limits and at the end of the day you risk having more dead soldiers than the terrorists could have hoped to kill otherwise, many times more dead civilians, new terrorist recruits that create every changing and increasingly extreme terrorist regimes, and no way to nation build that is sustainable and doesn't revert as soon as the military leaves.
What do you think happens to Gazans who are found to be collaborating with the IDF?
Exerting political pressure on the people who care more what you have to say is like looking for your keys under the street light.
Really? So us center-leftist should try and influence Marjorie Taylor Green rather than other Democrats?
You may have more leverage with your allies, but it also causes more resentment and at some point your allies may decide they aren't allies anymore. I agree with Matt's frustration with murder/suicide politics.
Sometimes. But if the keys might be there and the only alternative is just walking away and saying "well I guess I'll just never get to drive my car again." It's the most rational set of actions.
I think plenty of people are more upset with Hamas than Israel and would see Hamas evaporated if it could be done without killing lots of Palestinian civilians. There does not seem to be a way to do that, and Hamas doesn’t listen to then US and we don’t fund them, so the message from many is “stop killing these civilians to get at Hamas”.
Hamas leaders are in freaking Qatar not Gaza
I will always be more angry with Israel’s government when its policies indiscriminately kill civilians. Killing civilians is part of the founding belief system behind hamas. It says something really horrible about how you view the state of Israel if you’re willing to draw comparisons to it with the policies of hamas.
What precisely more could Israel have done to minimize civilian casualties, without seriously risking more Israeli deaths and still allowing them to achieve their military aims.
People make this claim, but don't specify.
Neither of us are privy to the day to day military operations of the Israeli government. And aside from dropping smaller bombs and avoiding civilian infrastructure (that yes, I know Hamas hides in) you're right, it's incredibly hard to avoid civilian casualties when you're executing a bombing campaign on a city as dense as Gaza. I know Blinken, Sullivan, and the rest of the Biden team has publicly advocated for a military strategy that minimizes casualties, and they're much more aware of the specifics of this, so I think it's fair to say that there is a pathway.
Fundamentally, I think this is a question of whether its possible to actually defeat Hamas, of whether indiscriminately bombing Gaza will actually make Israel safer in the long run. This is a critique that's been made by people who are far more steeped in the conflict and have far more sources on the ground in the situation than any of us. And as much Hamas is to blame in all of this, I don't think we can just ignore those questions.
So, I agree that we are not privy to the day-to-day operations.
Using smaller bombs definitely would make it harder to destroy tunnel infrastructure. But we don't know the specifics on each strike.
I'm not convinced that just because Biden administration officials support "minimizing civilian casualties" that that necessarily means that there was a clear path for lowering civilian casualties substantially in a way that allows for protecting Israeli lives as well as accomplishing Israel's military goals. Biden has a clear political incentive for calling for minimization of civilian casualties, regardless. And they are also not privy to all Israeli military intel. And minimizing civilian casualties is just a statement of a value, a value Israel shares. It's not a specific plan.
So in the first paragraph, you admit that Hamas hides in the civilian infrastructure that Israel targets, but in the second paragraph, you called Israel's bombing campaign "indiscriminate." It's a bit of a contradiction. If Israel is targeting Hamas operatives hiding in civilian infrastructure, that's discriminate, not indiscriminate.
I don't like the framing of "destroying" or "defeating" Hamas because the term is vague. I wish Netanyahu had used more specific language, because he set the bar of victory very high. But when I hear defeating Hamas, what I understand is unseating Hamas from power, destroying their arsenal, degrading their military capacity, dismantling their terror infrastructure, and bringing back hostages. I think these are clear and actionable goals. Yes, you can't defeat an idea. But you can make sure that the organization that holds that idea isn't the governing power of a territory and can't execute violent attacks.
I apologize that I don't have the time today for a truly in-depth response, but here's a recent post (https://www.slowboring.com/p/friday-thread-0dd/comment/51744104) that I made on the subject, which specifically references an article detailing a number of ways that Israel could attempt to mitigate civilian casualties if it were genuinely interested in doing so.
In case you don't want to go down the thread of my posts, here's the top level link to one relevant article: https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/
As far as describing Israel's bombing campaign as "indiscriminate," I don't think that's necessarily a contradiction, even if they are generally "targeting Hamas operatives hiding in civilian infrastructure". There's ample evidence (e.g. https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/) that Israel is/was destroying large, multi-family buildings with little to no warning just on the basis that Hamas fighter lived there (even though that fighter is likely now deep underground in tunnels). I would argue that is kind of destruction (and the Israeli concept of "power targets" generally) is mostly about revenge, and indiscriminate revenge at that.
Thanks for this, as it does address the relevant questions. I didn't come away from the justsecurity article entirely convinced, because at the end of the day Hamas is an organization that actively *wants* civilian casualties, both for strategic and religious reasons. It is hard to know how to calibrate our expectations for harm minimization in the face of that.
Yeah….
This is exactly why that talking point is cringe: no one ever says that, then pivots to someone with relevant expertise who explains how.
I think that’s because, deep down, we all know what you do: get civilians to flee the city, which Palestinians can’t do and their supporters don’t want them to.
"And minimizing civilian casualties is just a statement of a value, a value Israel shares."
Is that why leading politicians have said the exact opposite? Do you believe this yourself, i.e. that the radical right wing parties in Israel want to protect civilian Palestinian lives? That would be incredibly naive.
When all this went down on 10/7 my expectation was that Israel had to respond with an invasion of Gaza. I was posting on social media that Hamas needed to be destroyed and that the only path to lasting peace was with a different government in Gaza. Needless to say, I was short on specifics then and I don't really have any more now.
My expectation at the time was that the IDF would minimize civilian casualties by relying much more heavily on ground operations and house to house searches in Gaza. This would be very time consuming and dangerous to IDF soldiers, but it struck me as the only realistic way to truly root out Hamas without carpet bombing civilians (I'm not saying that the IDF is carpet bombing now, I am saying that is the only other way I envisioned to destroy Hamas was to, in effect, destroy Gaza). Now I am not a military expert by any means, and I certainly realize that a lot of civilians would get killed in the crossfire of urban combat as well. I might be leaving myself open to getting dunked on here and so be it. War is horrific and suffering is unavoidable but I think myself, and many others just didn't think the Palestinian civilian deaths would be this HIGH. I took Netanyahu seriously that he wanted to root out and destroy Hamas and that would entail a long and costly ground campaign at significant risk to the IDF. I have a lot of sympathy for the IDF and the sacrifices they have to make so I am not suggesting that minimizing their casualties is unimportant or not worthwhile. I am simply stating that the objective that Netanyahu stated could only be achieved by a long and bloody IDF effort or the destruction of Gaza.
The way that many people in these comments (not just on this post but earlier ones as well) seem to think that, because destroying Hamas is *desirable,* that it's therefore *possible,* has really surprised me. It flies in the face of everything I thought this commentariat broadly stood for.
On Israel specifically people here lose their rationality it seems.
Depends on what you mean by “destroying Hamas”?
If you mean unseating then from power as the governing entity of Gaza, removing its top leadership, degrading their military capacity, destroying their arsenal, and destroying their terror infrastructure (which is now most Israelis understand it) then it surely is possible.
If you mean making the organization disappear and the ideology go away, then no, it’s not possible.
Fair enough, Ben. My gut sense is that Israel really doesn't care about Gazan casualties and that there may have been reasonable steps they could have taken to limit civilian casualties but didn't, but that's just a gut sense; I really don't know. And outside those involved in military decision making, no one knows.
I've read and listened to a lot on this conflict and the best thing I've heard by far has been this podcast by Jeff Mauer likening Israel's actions in Gaza to the sinking of the Lusitania (https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/imbw-audio-my-thoughts-on-gaza-delivered). Bottom line: when you don't know, you don't know.
If you can't pursue your aims without unacceptable consequences, you have to change aims. Israel's whole security strategy is discredited and should be revised wholesale. That won't fly politically in Israel but it's the truth, and frankly evident from the contradictions of Israeli policy. Decades of occupation, repeated invasions and rising repression haven't delivered security to Israelis.
I agree with that.
I don’t think Israel can end the occupation unilaterally. But there are things it can do unilaterally to improve security, improve Palestinian lives, and try to create a political horizon
Okay, I'll give it a shot. They could open up refugee camps within Israel itself and announce that Palestinian civilians who wish to flee Gaza while the fighting is ongoing can come there. Do their best to vette for known Hamas members and keep the refugee camps well guarded. Sure some Hamas will sneak in, but they can't take their infrastructure, weapons, and hostages with them. This will give a lot more credibility to the idea that Israel is providing a place for Plaestinian civilians to flee to.
After all, MattY rightly talks about how we don't condemn Egypt enough for opening their border to Palestinian refugees, but Israel could also let in refugees.
The expectation that Israel will invite 1.5 million Gazans (the equivalent number as 15% of the Israeli population), into sovereign Israel, and will properly be able to vet each one for ties to Hamas (when 70-80% support armed struggle/terrorism/October 7 against Israeli civilians), and will be able to properly set up and guard a refugee camp of that size in a way that keeps Israeli population centers (that aren't that far away) safe seems to me like a pipe dream. And a totally unrealistic expectation for any country at war after being brutally attacked.
It's like asking the US to take 40,000,000 Afghans and set them up in Utah, while vetting every one to make sure they're not Taliban. Good luck convincing the people of Utah that that's a good idea :)
Well you have to admit, it would sure give Israel a motivation to wrap up the Gaza campaign as fast as possible so they could send the refugees back home, while at the same time allowing the campaign to wrap up faster by clearing out the civilians so they can go more destructive on the tunnels and military infrastructure that they're trying to destroy.
If Afghanistan were next to Utah, and the expectation was that the Afghans would only be there months (not years) before being swiftly sent back home then, and it was being done for the purpose of leaving the Taliban no place to hide their weapons and supplies , and this would provide long term security for the people of Utah and prevent them from being continuously attacked then... maybe?
This is pretty unprecedented to ask a country to take in millions of civilians from an enemy entity.
Even if it would help protect civilians, I can already see the world opinion twist it to say Israel is putting Palestinians in concentration camps, and the New York Times front page would be filled with images of squalid living conditions in the tents in these transit camps. I can see them branded as "genocide" camps (even if the intent is to shield refugees from harms way in Rafah).
There is no way to properly vet this population nor to properly monitor the place. It would place Israeli civilian population centers at risk of terrorist activity.
It's just such a ridiculous standard to hold Israel to, and just so unrealistic.
Not starving innocent civilians?
What has surprised me more than the civilian casualties has been the vastness and sophistication of the Gaza tunnel network. What's become more clear to me since Nov./Dec. is Hamas doesn't care about their civilians. They invested their aid into the tunnel network rather than infrastructure.
Of course Hamas doesn't care about their civilians. Terrorist organization occupying territories on the pretext of their being a base for launching a war of liberation that cannot be realistically achieved have a pretty universal record for being absolutely horrible in terms of human rights and care of their civilians. They rob them, they recruit their children into terrorist operations where they will die, they spend money that should be spent on basic needs for military operations that have no hope of success and frequently on their own much higher standard of living. It is also why they often can't surrender under reasonable terms.
I spent time researching human rights conditions in the North and East of Sri Lanka when that territory was held by the Tamil Tigers. The government at the time was committing human rights abuses but nothing to the degree of what was being done to the Tamils by the Tigers themselves. At that point, far into the civil war it was clear that if the current leadership surrendered they would face criminal prosecution if not execution based on claims from both the government and the people they were "ruling" in their own territories. It was basically assumed at that time than any peace accord would need to come with significant bribes to the current leadership and guarantees of safe asylum in a third country. There was obviously little interest in that from a Sri Lankan public that had been subjected to years of terrorism and fighting. As a result, the worse the Tigers were in terms of their behavior in the rest of Sri Lanka the less viable peace became and since peace would mean the end of power and possibly life for the Tiger's leadership the more attractive horrific behavior became.
I know that there are people who think that Hamas miscalculated Israel's response and thought they would just do a hostage exchange. I think this is naive. the gang rapes and mutilation of corpses very much suggests that they were not making a calculated move to collect bargaining chips. I think they correctly calculated that Israel normalizing relations with the Saudis to create an informal alliance against Iran was bad news for them. It might not lead to peace but it would reduce the Arab's world's willingness to support Hamas maintaining control of Gaza or providing funding that would allow it to remain in power.
I think they intentionally lured Israel into a trap. They did something so horrific that they knew the current Israeli government would need to declare total war on Hamas and that would necessitate massive civilian casualties in Gaza and shift the international support, hurt any chances of a normal peace process on the larger two state option, and make it difficult if not impossible for Arab countries to align with Israel. And they knew that they had the capacity to stay in tunnels, take the best food and aid, or stay safe in remote international bases. The civilians would die and grief and hardship would just make fertile ground for recruits among young boys and men who saw their families slaughtered by Israel.
By their own standards, I think Hamas is winning this war and will go on winning unless Israel either radically changes its approach to the conflict or Israel goes so far that they conduct ethnic cleansing in Gaza which might mean that Hamas loses but Israel loses all claim to moral authority in the world community on the greater issue of Israel vs Palestinian relations. It is only that first option where Hamas doesn't win without Israel losing. That is why people who care about both Israeli citizens and Palestinian citizens are calling for a radical change in Israel's tactics and approach to aid.
Oh really? Like what? Would love to hear strategies for eliminating Hamas that involve fewer civilian casualties.
I think I would make three broad criticisms.
First, the bombing campaign in the first phase of the war did not seem partiuclarly targeted. If a building had a connection to Hamas, no matter how tenuous, it got on the list, and it got bombed. Because most buildings in Gaza meet this loose criteria, something like 80% of structures in Northern Gaza were destroyed. This phase was where much, if not most, of the civilian deaths came from. As most of the Hamas guys were underground and were unharmed, it's doubtful that this phase really accomplished all that much strategically.
Second, once the Israelis came to the obviously correct conclusion that they could not starve out Hamas without starving to death everyone else in Gaza first (and to be clear, they should have realized this on Day 1), they should have been flooding the strip with aid and supplies. They should have been affirmatively requesting and assisting other countries in getting aid in. Honestly, I don't even know why they are bothering with checking everything because theoretically Hamas could McGuyver it into some kind of weapon. It's penny wise and pound foolish. You're already inside Gaza in a shooting war with Hamas. If Hamas being able to jury rig an additional rocket out of a solar tent is going to meaningfully hinder the war effort, what are you even doing? Rather, the Israelis had to be pushed, cajoled, and threatened to do the bare minimum. And it's totally pointless.
Third, the rules of enagegment seem a heck of a lot more relaxed than in previous wars. They killed Israeli hostages that had miraculously escaped and were waving a white flag! Ostensibly, the whole purpose of the war was to find and rescue those people, and a bunch of trigger happy idiots killed them.
Before I respond, I want to give you credit for a well-thought-out, level-headed assessment that takes into account (or at least doesn’t call into question) the legitimacy of Israel’s war aims. It would be so much easier to have these discussions if people like you didn’t constitute the upper 1 percentile of Israel’s critics’ reasonableness.
> 1
This is a bold claim to make with very little evidence. One of the main reasons I get annoyed by claims that Israel is prosecuting its war wrongly is that no one involved has anything resembling the information needed, because it’s all buried in Israeli deliberations. Even an international expert doesn’t have access to the relevant intelligence, the relevant battlefield information, etc. etc. It’s just silly - it’s like
If you’re curious what it could have accomplished, such that it would be worthwhile, the most obvious to me is the fact that American advisers were estimating 10x the Israeli soldiers killed, a quagmire where Israel wouldn’t have even cleared Gaza City by now, etc. So whatever you want to say about that bombing campaign, the alternatives proposed would have been something between ineffective and counterproductive - especially if you include “don’t try to eliminate Hamas” on the list.
> 2
Starvation has killed approximately zero Palestinians, so the question of aid reduces civilian casualties by approximately zero.
> 3
Again there’s very little actual information to support this. Both in terms of the true positives (how many incidents along these lines actually occurred?) and in terms of false negatives (how many times did soldiers following appropriate ROE get killed?) I have seen reports in Israeli media that the reason they shot at these hostages was because this was a tactic Hamas successfully pursued in the past. We’re talking about a terror group that puts recordings of girls trapped under rubble next to IEDs.
It just strikes me as incredible hubris to claim with confidence that these nuances are being inappropriately calibrated. Where does that leave us? Basically a nihilistic “it’s impossible to know anything about a military’s conduct in war unless it’s on the outermost edge of obviously wrong” - yeah, it’s unsatisfying but that’s life.
With regard to point 1 and 3, I freely concede that I'm not going to have access to the intelligence the IDF is operating under, nor the subjective inferences they're making, or their complete decision making apparatus. All I can really do is read the available reporting, listen to what the Israelis say, and make a judgment call as to whether what the Israelis are doing passes the smell test. And frankly, I don't think it does, with regards to the criticisms I made.
80% of buildngs in Northern Gaza, an extremely dense built up area, are destroyed. Mosto f it destroyed before a single Israeli boot hit the ground. Is it plausible that each such structure was a vital piece of military instructure who destruction was absolutely necessary? And this just happened to be in the immediate aftermath of October 7 when tempers were highest, when the statements of Israeli leaders were most belligerent and uncompromising, and before an invasion plan was set? Additionally, there is reporting that Israel was selecting targets based on any tenuous connection to Hamas that its AI targeting system could identify. In short, I see no reason to defer to a justification that Israel could hypothetically make and prove months or years from now. It doesn't pass the smell test.
With regard to the Israeli hostages they killed, we know rules of engagement were relaxed. Again - am I supposed to believe the only innocent civilians they killed were Israeli hostages with a sign in hebrew saying SOS, waving a white flag? Again, smell test.
With regard to point 2, I would make two points.
First, the necessity of keeping casualties to a minimum is ongoing - I'm not just talking about avoiding casualties that already happened, but casualties that are going to happen.
Second, I think the Israeli indifference if not hostility to aid is indicative of their state of mind vis a vis civlian casualties generally. If they were genuinely focused on minimizing civilian casualties to the extent they want us to believe they are, then they would not have (i) vowed not to let any aid into Gaza until the hostages are returned - a stance some in the government continue to take; (ii) run such a completely ramshackle and insufficient aid operation that they have to be continually bullied into running at all and (iii) being so strict as to which aid items they let through.
If Israel wants to get the benefit of the doubt as to its intentions it really needs to take the humanitarian situation much more seriously - and not as the distracting sideshow they treat it as.
It’s frustrating because the people who insist that Israel isn’t minimizing civilian casualties just go toward saying things that are facially reasonable but which don’t actually have any support to them.
It’s like when people outside engineering speculate on how to build something. They’ll say stuff that sounds reasonable but which is, with appropriate knowledge, recognizable as either completely wrong or entirely without substantive content.
"Starvation has killed approximately zero Palestinians, so the question of aid reduces civilian casualties by approximately zero."
Will you change your mind as the death toll rises? Also, that people are not already dying en masse is thanks to the UN and now the US.
The military discipline seems poor. The trigger-happy idiot who shot the hostages is not the only trigger happy idiot, and some of the idiots are posting on social media.
Yes. Basically, conscript army of reserves + pissed and out for revenge and to humiliate the enemy. Add in relaxed rules of engagement and it's a recipe for disaster.
And a military leadership that appears to be doing nothing to rein in the rank-and-file.
I think this is a false dilemma. The alternative is doing less to eliminate Hamas because tens of thousands of dead innocent kids is too high a price to pay (e.g. a conclusion that the Hamas hostage taking strategy was successful at least for now and Israel should return to containment attempts while working towards probably doomed two state talks etc).
I would probably not advocate for that if I were an Israeli leader but I don’t think it is a crazy view to hold.
Israel has fought this war in the most humane way in modern history, and the Biden administration has admitted that. The IDF goes to lengths to warn civilians of incoming military action ahead of time that John Kirby has said the American military would never do. Also, while there are a lot of Arab Palestinian casualties, Hamas is making up the numbers: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers
Quoting from above:
"80% of buildngs in Northern Gaza, an extremely dense built up area, are destroyed. Most of it destroyed before a single Israeli boot hit the ground. Is it plausible that each such structure was a vital piece of military instructure who destruction was absolutely necessary?"
Is starving civilians necessary?
It is perhaps unavoidable.
"When there is just a lot more Israel could've done to minimize civilian casualties"
While still achieving military objectives?
And at the cost of how many more Israeli lives?
History didn’t start on October 7, re: your claim that Israel was attacked first. It is more complex than that. Certainly, the Hamas attack was horrific and merited a military response but Israel’s record is far from clean. Large numbers of innocent Palestinian civilians have been terrorized and killed in the West Bank by Israeli settlers and police in the past decade.
The history in Gaza did a restart in 2005 when Israel left and dismantled the settlements up to the last one and returned to the international border. The Palestinian response was to elect Hamas, which began to manage from Gaza a terror campaign to destroy Israel.
I don't think that means people living in Gaza deserve everything that's happening to them just because a plurality voted for Hamas. And just because Israel left and dismantled the settlements doesn't mean that Gaza turned into a thriving city. There was a legacy from the settlements.
Respectfully, sentiments like this are why many of Israel's supporters are so frustrated with western liberals.
People frequently argue that if only Israel would pull out of the West Bank and dismantle the settlements, then Palestinian terrorism would stop.
They did this in Gaza, so now it's "the legacy of the settlements," as if previously occupied people always give near-unanimous support for terrorism. (Where are the Tibetan jihadists?)
At some point, we need to confront the reality that the Palestinian national movement has supported these types of violent tactics since the 1920s regardless of the underlying conditions. And it has never made any demand other than the destruction of Israel, either militarily or through the right of return. Palestinian nationalists have always been clear that they would rather be poor in a world without Israel than rich while living in Israel's shadow.
This is confusing to us in the west because we have difficulty conceiving of a system of values that isn't structured around rights and economic prosperity.
This is part of the frusturation.
Pretty much every policy Israel has tried to some extent in miniature.
Israel should annex the territories and give Palestinians there full citizenship: Done in East Jerusalem. The international community condemns it. Most Palestinians reject citizenship and boycott municipal elections.
Israel should remove the settlements and withdraw unilaterally: Done in Gaza in 2005, and Hamas takes over and starts sending rockets to Israel 2 years later.
Well, they still have control of airspace and territorial waters. They should really pull out completely and leave security up to an international force: Tried in South Lebanon in 2000 with UNIFIL there. Hezbollah has nearly full control and sends rockets to Israeli towns.
>>At some point, we need to confront the reality that the Palestinian national movement has supported these types of violent tactics since the 1920s regardless of the underlying conditions. And it has never made any demand other than the destruction of Israel, either militarily or through the right of return. Palestinian nationalists have always been clear that they would rather be poor in a world without Israel than rich while living in Israel's shadow.
This sums it up nicely, but too many would prefer to ignore inconvenient facts, esp. when it costs *them* nothing to do so.
Matt hit the nail on the head months ago when he noted that what frustrated him about Palestinian nationalism is its lack of pragmatism. Which, as he noted IIRC, is a fine thing if you keep winning but not such a good strategy if all you do is lose.
"near-unanimous support for terrorism"
Hamas only barely won. Also, many Irish people supported the IRA.
I didn’t say Hamas. I said terrorism. The support for October 7th is overwhelming in polls. Even in the wider Arab world.
Precisely
The failure of Gaza to turn into a thriving city had nothing to do with the fact that previously around 8000 Israelis previously lived there.
The people of Gaza destroyed the Israeli-built greenhouses, that could have generated significant economic activity.
More importantly, the fact that Hamas took over and started immediately attacking Israel caused Israel to put up a blockade to prevent the import of weapons and other materials that could be used to make weapons. That prevented a normal system of imports/exports and prevented them from having a normal economy. Had Hamas renounced violence against Israel, Israel would have removed the blockade and allowed it to develop economically, but alas that didn't happen.
Also don't forget that the context of 2005 was the second Intifada, a hugely violent and terrifying period, featuring suicide bombers throughout Israel. This was launched in the wake of a real offer of peace with real concessions by Ehud Barak.
I’ve felt, for a long time, that the Palestinians see any concessions by Israel as a sign that they’re weakened and an uprising will cause the state to collapse rather than recognizing that they’re offers made by people so far from existential danger that they feel secure in courting risk.
You have Fatah, which is supremely corrupt and a Hamas running on an anticorruption ticket and only getting a plurality of the vote. Of course Hamas lied and runs Gaza like a racketeering mafia. I am fairly certain the most residents of Gaza how were alive back then that backed Hamas would have made a different choice knowing how much more corrupt and violent Hamas is relative to Fatah.
I'd like to believe that counterfactual, and it might well be true. But it is also true that the current devastation has made Gazans *more* in favor of armed conflict, not less, according to polls. If people are upset with Hamas' leadership, they're not really indicating as much.
(And I don't think that that means they deserve to die for it. I just don't think it implies anything optimistic about the prospects for future peace. It mostly leaves me despairing.)
This seems to me to be a normal human response. I suspect were I in their position I would thirst for revenge as well.
Sort of, but I guess I'm of two minds about this:
1) Just because they're justifiably outraged doesn't mean the outrage would necessarily have to be directed at Israel. The Allies bombed the shit out of Germany and occupied it for 30 years, and the German citizenry (I think?) understood that this was because they'd fucked up and the Nazis were bad. It wouldn't be unreasonable for Gazans to look at what's happening right now, the fact that they are being used as human shields, and be pissed at Hamas. But they're not, and that seems like important info. (Important in the sense of providing Intel about what kinds of solutions could be practical, depressing in that, to me at least, it seems like the answer might well be... none.)
2) I feel like we're much more willing to use this excuse for the Palestinians than we are for Israelis. But decades of being constantly bombed, of facing random attacks just going about your daily life - that fucks with someone's psyche. I was in Jerusalem for Passover two years ago after there'd been some skirmishes around the western wall and some stabbings at the old city gates and I was terrified to just go pray, and that's just like, the modus operandi for Israelis (and I'm not saying they have it worse day to day than Palestinians). The settlements, the callousness of this war, it's all the actions of people who want to assert agency over their vulnerability, who are worried about extermination (due in no small part to deep generational trauma and near actual extermination success in literally living memory!) It feels strange to me that so many find it so easy to understand the rage of Palestinians but expect Israelis to just suck it up and live with the reality of terror attacks and consistently losing loved ones (really, every single Israeli has lost a loved one to terror. I've only been becoming Jewish for 3 years and I have already lost a close friend.)
I don't mean to downplay the reality of trauma of the Palestinians or say that Israelis are equally vulnerable or anything. Just that solutions which ignore the reality that Palestinians by and large express support for terror while Israelis are unwilling to live in a world where they're exposed to terror seem dead on arrival. I'd like to believe that the genocidal impulses would dissipate once Palestinians could live lives of basic dignity, but I don't see how you get there from here without asking Israelis to accept a lot more suffering on the way. (Maybe that's the morally required approach, but it's not something you can force the stronger party in a conflict to do unless you have especial leverage over them. Maybe the US has that in arms sales. But if we used that leverage, I think Israeli society would be justified in thinking we were not their friend anymore.)
Seeing your kids being bombed to death usually has that effect on people.
Yeah… people keep assuming that the social dynamics in Palestine push people toward reasonable options. But social dynamics don’t have to and often (maybe even usually) don’t.
"I am fairly certain the most residents of Gaza how were alive back then that backed Hamas would have made a different choice knowing how much more corrupt and violent Hamas is relative to Fatah."
I am not certain about this at all. Certainly I'm not aware of any polling to support this. I would like it to be true but I don't even know if it's true in the very limited sense of "we support Hamas's jew-killing policies, but we really don't like the israelis killing us in response policies."
“History didn’t start on October 7”
Correct, it started in 2005, when Israel actively extricated itself from Gaza - that’s what everyone wanted, right? Dismantling settlements and removing occupation? - and Gaza promptly elected a group dedicated to Israel’s destruction, effectively declaring war on Israel. Israel has been trying to deal with a country - and not just the leaders, the entire society - that remains committed to its destruction despite being at Israel’s mercy.
So yes, if you widen the context beyond October 7th, it’s even worse.
You won't find me defending Israel's actions in the West Bank in any way.
And it's important to note that Hamas gave up representing the interests of the West Bank when it abandoned its position within the PA and took over Gaza in a violent coup.
…and before that, Palestinian (the twentieth century PLO) terrorists regularly targeted Israeli civilians going about their daily lives. Decades of that no doubt have a lot to do with the rightward drift of Israeli politics, culminating in Netanyahu becoming the longest serving PM of Israel. It’s very much a both-sides situation, albeit with one side much better armed.
“It’s very much a both-sides situation…”
It’s very much not. One side is genocidal, and it’s not the Israelis.
What a relief, to have sorted out the goodies and the baddies.
It’s not that complicated.
Deputy Knesset speaker Nissim Vaturi from the ruling Likud party wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Israelis had one common goal, “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.” Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, from the far-right Jewish Power party, suggested that Israel drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza and said there were “no uninvolved civilians” in the territory.
But you don't have to listen to the words, it's enough to look at their actions. 80% of buildings destroyed, starving people on purpose, executing people in line for food packages. Also executing civilians in the West Bank regularly.
"80% of buildings destroyed, starving people on purpose, executing people in line for food packages. Also executing civilians in the West Bank regularly"
Yeah, those things are not happening.
>History didn’t start on October 7, re: your claim that Israel was attacked first. It is more complex than that.<
Or, very simply, Israel, in violation of international law, has been engaged in a major annexation/colonization/military conquest project for nearly sixty years.
I think the Jewish people have just as much right to a national homeland as the Norwegian people. But if Norway conquered Denmark, a lot of problems would follow. This is the elephant in the room. In essence, Israel wasn't attacked by a foreign country last October. It was attacked by its own subjugated masses.
Except Denmark is a sovereign state.
There is currently no clear sovereign over the West Bank. The last sovereign was Jordan, which annexed it (but whose annexation was not recogized by the international community). The previous recognized sovereign was the UK, but they abandoned claims i 1948. Jordan even abandoned any claim in the 1990s.
Now, I do believe settlements to be illegitimate because Israel has also not claimed sovereignty, but instead has a military occupation, resulting from a defensive war in 1967 due to Jordan's shelling of Israel to aid the Egyptians. But that is not the same thing as a conquest project of a sovereign neighbor. And that's where your Norway/Denmark analogy breaks down.
I don't understand why people in Israel think this is such a gotcha. Either it's part of Israel or it's not. If it is, then the people who live there should be allowed to vote in Israeli elections etc. If it's not, then it is a different country and Israel should stop building settlements. You don't get to annex foreign territory just because it doesn't have an internationally recognized government. Like, Pakistan didn't get to just start de facto annexing parts of Afghanistan because the UN never recognized the Taliban as its legitimate government.
That's not true.
Military occupations and disputed exist as a result of war. That is allowed according to the rules of war.
Unilateral extension of law to occupied territories (in other words annexation) is generally not allowed in international law. Now here, it's a bit complicated because as I said, there's no clear sovereign. So that's why Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem was in some legal grey area. And from what I can see, the annexation of the Golan Heights (which the US recognizes) is not allowed in international law because there is a clear sovereign there, even though extending Israeli law there is defintely better for the people living there. And the chance of it ever being returned to Syria is nil.
There are other similar territories around the world: Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus, Nagorno-Karabakh (up until a few months ago). In all of these other cases, the occupying country has had civilian population move there. But it is really only discussed as settler activity in the case of Israel.
I do think that Israel should more clearly elaborate a clear, just, secure, and democratic long-term vision for this territory, rather than what it's doing, that's for sure. And settler activity is counterproductive towards that end and undermines Israel's standing in the world.
But your analysis that either it's one way or another way is not how the world works. And the final status can only really be determined in a peace settlement.
I mean, not really. The Palestinians can declare a state unilaterally and force the question. However, the internal politics of that are bad because the only consensus opinion is a state of Palestine encompassing the whole region.
He does not say it is a gotcha. He says the settlements are illegitimate. He also says the analogy is poor, which it is.
Interestingly enough, Israel was attacked by the inhabitants of the territory that they aren't currently occupying. And all of this happened after they pulled out, not before!
Moreover, these types of incidents have been occurring since 1920. Arab violence predates the occupation by quite a bit, and it's frequently rewarded by the west. It's a fantasy to think that it would stop if Israel pulled out of the West Bank. To be fair to Palestinians, they don't even claim that the violence would stop in that case -- that's only something that westerners believe.
But according to the Palestinians, Israel has no such right. According to the Palestinians, the establishment of Israel was the worst thing that ever happened to them (Nakba=catastrophe, at least that’s how I’ve heard it translated). That’s why the Palestinians (and sometimes Arab states) were continually attacking Israel.
So what? Lots of Serbians don't think that Kosovo (or half their other neighbors) should be an independent country. North Korea still claims the South (or did until a month ago, it's kind of fuzzy now). It is not a requirement that your neighbors like you.
If your neighbors constantly say that you don't have the right to exist, and have in fact tried to exterminate you multiple times, but you defended yourself so successfully that you were able to grab some of their territory...well, then, it's yours.
Saying that one state has no right to respond in kind to an attempted invasion by another state...is ridiculous.
"They can punch you, but you can only block, not punch back."
You can respond, but you don't get to conquer. We're not giving Bosnians 10% of Serbia as reparations for Srebrenica. That's not how any of this works (or has worked since, like, the Peace of Westphalia).
History didn’t start on October 7, but this war did.
Except Israel didn’t wind up with Gaza and the West Bank by accident. Its neighbors attacked them from both. Egypt and Jordan didn’t want an independent Palestinian state, they wanted more territory for themselves. There WAS a deal in which Palestine would have been independent 70 years ago and they declined. Their Arab allies took the opportunity to start their own wars of conquest and then abandoned Palestinians to their fate.
So what? Thats not the only war of conquest that someone has ever launched and lost. If Ukraine defeats Russia we're not just going to give them control over Rostov after the war for their trouble on the theory that it is... what, compensation for having to fend off the Russians? Do people think that that would lead to peace in the long term? If 70 years hence the ethnic and linguistic Russians in Rostov are still kind of salty about that are we going to say "yeah, sorry, Putin didn't sign the treaty we wanted him to 50 years before you were born so thats not really our problem."
Every instance of Palestinian/Arab wrongdoing is met by you with a 'so what?'.
Your logic is so tortured in an attempt to damn Israel and absolve the Palestinians, that it's not worth engaging with.
It's met that way because you are not allowed to annex the territory of your neighbors for any reason. It is not justifiable in the modern international context. And you don't get to commit war crimes just because the other guys were bad. Abu Graib wasn't good because Al Queda is evil, the rules are the rules regardless of what the other guys do.
The so what is that after losing them the Arab world didn’t decide the time was ripe for a peace agreement they instead refused to sign a peace accord
It is notable that Israel hasn’t annexed Gaza or the West Bank. What incentive does Israel have to play nice when most of their neighbors don’t acknowledge their right to exist?
*Democrat trying to explain Arab nationalists to a progressive*: "First, imagine a bloodthirsty terrorist like Kevin McCarthy or Mike Johnson."
Mike Johnson is worse than Osama any day
I am a long time reader and listener (back to Vox and Weeds days), but I seldom post comments. I am an Israeli citizen and have lived in Israel for 23 years. I have one kid in the military and one who is out. I fully endorse what you wrote here. Finding the middle ground is hard, but it must be found. I am very frustrated by my government's failure to come up with any plan for after the war, or to address, even with diplomatic language, US and world concerns. They are playing to the local right-wing base at the expense of our international relationships. My only concern about Schumer's speech is that no country likes the US or any foreign governments meddling in our domestic politics, and that can make it hard for the intended public to hear. It is one thing to say "the Israeli government must do X, Y, Z for our continued support". That is about the US/Israel relationship. It is another to say "Israelis should hold elections and reject the current government" - that is interference in our politics. There is a "rally around the PM" that comments like Schumer's can cause. There is also basically nothing the Israeli public can do to force an early election. The more the polls show that the current government will lose an election, the less likely they are to break up the government. In our parliamentary system, the very people most likely to lose from a new election in this situation where the government is extremely unpopular are the only ones who can bring one about. They can ignore the protests no matter how bad they get.
Thanks for posting and giving an inside context. Please comment more, your thoughtfulness is appreciated.
On the other hand, recall Netanyahu delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress designed to undermine the Obama administration’s efforts to get Iran to sign a nuclear deal.
If Netanyahu can meddle in and opine on US politics, why can’t it go the other way?
It was completely inappropriate for Netanyahu to do that then and I was hopping mad about it at the time. In my opinion it backfired, undermining decades of effort to make sure Israeli support in Congress was bipartisan. However, Netanyahu went to Congress and spoke (something I hope Biden will do in the Knesset). He didn't explicitly call on Americans to vote for one side or another. Netanyahu's move was bad because it undermined the relationship with the US Presidency by going directly to Congress. It also misunderstood who is the superpower and who is the itty-bitty country smaller than New Jersey... However, I don't think he explicitly interfered in US politics the way Schumer's speech did.
I dunno, I just don’t buy the idea that Schumer effectively saying “I don’t like this guy and he’s an obstacle to peace (and therefore it would be great if Israelis had a chance to replace him)” is “interfering” in any material way.
Like this just happened last month, per AP: “Two US senators will submit a bipartisan resolution to Congress condemning democratic backsliding in Hungary and urging its nationalist government to lift its block on Sweden's accession into the NATO military alliance.” Is that “interfering”? Seems to me like it’s just expressing a view.
Again, the difference is subtle, but I think important. Your quote about Hungary is a request from one government to another to change their policy and behaviour. What Schumer did is call on the people (in an allied democratic country) to change their government. If he was telling the Israeli government regardless who leads it what they should do, that is normal international pressure. Voters can then decide if they support politicians who will go along with that or those who resist it. But explicitly calling for a change in government is supposed to be off the table between democratic allies. However it is a side point. On the main issues Schumer was right - the question is what can the Israeli public do about it until elections come up.
To be clear what he actually said was that the ruling coalition should give the citizens another opportunity to choose. He didn’t tell the Israeli people what to do because he knows what they already want.
By the way I agree with you on the substance - but that’s the whole point, Netanyahu doesn’t have the support of the Israeli people, and there isn’t much they can do about it barring a new election.
There may be an election sooner than we think. By March 31, the army has to start drafting haredi jews or pass a law creating a system for drafting them. Either outcome would be anathema to the 18 seats in the coalition held by haredi parties. If the Supreme Court won't allow the government to extend the 3/31 deadline, then I think the government collapses.
“If he was telling the Israeli government regardless who leads it what they should do, that is normal international pressure”
To what extent are current policies Netanyahu’s alone versus the consensus of the war cabinet? And given Israeli opinion, even if there were a different prime minister, if there any good reason to expect broadly different policies?
I think to understand what is going on right now, you have to see that there is a broad consensus in Israel about removing Hamas from power (not destroying Hamas, but decimating their military capability and putting someone else in charge in Gaza). The war cabinet is focused on that. Anything beyond that is in stasis because there is no agreement. I think if there was a government that was not beholden to the far-right, and if Netanyahu was not in charge, we would have competent people running our diplomatic service, and I think there would be a longer term plan to stabilize Gaza (which would mean more distribution of aid now because we would be building the mechanisms to deliver it), but the war would not be that different.
I think about Netenyahu as being roughly analogous to Rodrigo Duterte. He sucks, he's bad for US interests, but he is the democratically elected leader of a longtime ally (Duterte was more overtly an asshole, but the Philippines are probably more important to our strategic interests than Israel is--I'm definitely more likely to die in a nuclear war that starts in the South China Sea than one that starts in Iran--so it balances out). Seems basically fine that every US politician who was asked at the time said that Duterte was a scum bag. Because he was a scum bag.
Duterte enjoys broad support though, no?
I honestly don't know, but he's not the President anymore and Bongbong seems more willing to play ball with the US even if he has, uh, some other issues.
Bibi endorsed Romney in 2012!
I don't remember that as an explicit endorsement ( a quick Google search indicates that my memory is correct - a comment he made praising Romney - not endorsing - was understood that way and then he backpedaled). However, even if you are right, it sucked and Democrats have every right to be pissed about it. My comment about whether explicitly interfering in democratic allies' internal politics is not that it is wrong (justifying a tit-for-tat) but that it is ineffective and backfires more often than not. Schumer's call for a new government in Israel is something I am completely behind, but his saying it did not make it more likely, and maybe made it less likely. However, I feel like we are off on a marginal tack here...
I agree that Schumer's speech might've been counterproductive. But I think it's totally fair and not election interference in any meaningful sense for him to say "I think there should be new elections in Israel." We don't call it election interference when, for example, Boris Johnson says he would prefer Trump win 2024, or when Olaf Scholz says he would prefer Biden. Endorsements =/= interference even if they might be distasteful or unwelcome. But yeah, marginal disagreement.
Heh. I know you intend this as evidence that Bibi is a very bad Republican supporter, but with the from the perspective of [waves hands wildly] the last 8 years, Romney is a wise and dignified statesman.
(And I say that as someone who despises Bibi.)
To be clear, Bibi has every right to opine on American politics—but then he doesn't get to complain when American politicians opine on Israeli politics.
I don’t think Netanyahu’s meddling worked very well either, but the depressing answer is that Americans just hate each other way more these days and didn’t (and would never) comparably rally around the flag of the opposition party in response to foreign criticism.
Part of the reason Schumer can and should criticize the Netanyahu government is he has legitimate bona fides as a supporter of Israel and as a Zionist. His views reflect a material amount of non-Haredi views in the US.
It was a bad idea both times. Netanyahu simply made Israel a more partisan issue, which is terrible for Israel. Schumer just made it imperative that Netanyahu resist American pressure. Bowing to the Americans would be the death knell of Israel’s relationships in the Middle East.
“Bowing to the Americans would be the death knell of Israel’s relationships in the Middle East.”
…wait, why? American material and political support for Israel is a massively important strategic consideration in the region well-known to all relevant actors. The US maintains relationships with the Sunni states in the interests of security cooperation and containing Iran, which is…exactly what Israel is trying to do.
Because while those rulers appreciate the US relationship and support, we are not seen as reliable. We can abandon the Middle East at any time (see, e.g., Beirut, Afghanistan). Nobody wants an ally who is weak and beholden to an unreliable external power. If Israel visibly let the US dictate the terms of the war after it was attacked, it would be discrediting.
Yes, someone made this point Leora made on a podcast I listen to. The Saudis apparently are not impressed that the US was behind Israel at the beginning and now essentially giving hope to jihadis and Hamas by blowing in the wind making pronouncements about how cruel the Israelis are and they have to stop the war. Too changeable to rely on.
In a more functional relationship, the Israelis would be playing ball with Biden so that Biden didn't have to have public disagreements.
The problem isn't "public disagreements". The problem is that the USA tries to act as both player and referee in the region, with the result that nobody trusts it fully in either role.
Bibi always struck me as a brilliant tactician and a complete disaster as a strategist. And not only for propping up Hamas vis a vis the PA. But also tying his (and maybe Israel's) fortunes to the Republican party. Paid dividends in the short run but man was that a short-sighted own goal.
Obviously we can, and that's just what Schumer did. The vast difference in the two cases is that I personally approve of what Schumer did and loathe what Netanyahu did.
1) a speech is vastly different than an explicit call for deposing a leader
2) Obama already retaliated for that at the UNSC. I don’t know why we’re still talking about it 8 years later.
Calling for a parliamentary leader to go back to the public and give them a choice - something that happens in Israel with great frequency, by the way - is hardly “an explicit call for deposing a leader.” He’s not advocating for a coup!
Throughout these comments you will find people talking about events that happened much more than 8 years later, even if they have been retaliated for. That’s how we determine what norms and precedents are in effect.
Thanks for posting!
At the beginning of Israel's present invasion, my question was "What are you doing here, Israel? What's the plan?" And that's still my question: What is the goal, how will Israel know they've achieved it, what's the plan for after they've achieved it? Can you give us some on-the-ground info about how that's perceived in Israel? What do ordinary citizens think is supposed to happen here? To a naive outsider, it just looks like Israel is flattening Gaza and starving the remaining residents, and it's not clear what the point is other than revenge. And I get the revenge: Hamas is unspeakably terrible. But what's the plan?
I think revenge is not the purpose for most of us. We all felt the desire for it rise up in us - we are human - but revenge is not the primary factor in the motivation for the war. The real desire in Israel (pretty much across the board) is to get the hostages back AND make sure they don't have the capability to do it to us again. Those goals are sometimes in conflict, of course, and with a lot of pain an anguish most of us will prefer the second to the first. Even regarding Hamas leadership, despite the desire for revenge against them, I think that if there was a deal on the table to let the whole leadership escape to Qatar with their lives in exchange for the hostages, Israelis would support it across the board. There is a second question - once we destroy Hamas' military capability, what happens next? Do we have our own soldiers patrolling Gaza again? Most Israelis don't want that, but any explicit plan (Israel in Gaza? PA? 3rd party?) would bring down the government, so Netanyahu is avoiding articulating any plan at all.
That is precisely the problem: how will Israel determine whether its (ill-articulated) goals have been met, and what happens after they are met? From my naive perspective, it looks like Netayahu's goal is to flatten Gaza and then settle it; people in his own government are talking about settlements, and they remain in his own government. I accept that this is not what the Israeli public wants, but Netanyahu is in charge. If that is not his plan, what IS his plan? What are they doing here? What's the end game?
The war has a clear aim - ending Hamas rule and getting the hostages home. It will be clear when it happens because someone else will be running Gaza and the hostages will be home. The issue is the day after and who that will be running Gaza, and there I agree, there is no plan and there won't be until there is a new government. I also fear that the right- wing will start planting settlements without permission and there won't be the political will to stop them. It is how we got many WB settlements in the first place - many started out illegally. We desperately need a new government - I hope that will happen, but I don't see the mechanism. Maybe the government will fall over the Haredi draft issue, but my guess is it won't. The coalition politicians will look at the polls and decide better to stay put.
"someone else will be running Gaza" Hamas is running Hamas, but in what sense is anybody running Gaza, and what is the mechanism for a non-Hamas government to spring up? Your answer is not an answer I can understand. You're not saying Israel will bomb until a new government springs up, or at least I assume that's not what you're saying, but what are you saying? Israel will bomb until what, exactly? If it's "until most Hamas militants are destroyed," how many kids will starve to death or be blown up before that happy day?
Hamas is running Gaza in the sense that all government functions (which you are right are mostly not functioning) report to them. And in the sense that they still mostly control the distribution of aid to the massively displaced population. And in the sense that they could take over again with no opposition if Israel leaves without a plan. And then start launching rockets and attacks again. When that is no longer the case, the war is over. However, without a plan for someone else taking over, Israel will have to stay there indefinitely - definitely not a plan I support.
"how many kids will starve to death or be blown up before that happy day?"
That is up to Hamas and the people in Gaza. Unconditional surrender is on the table for them.
Destroy the tunnels and cripple Hamas’s military capability and command and control? I don’t think it’s much of a mystery.
And then?
What is your plan for ending the conflict and bringing peace to the region?
<Crickets>
What is the end game?
The end game is the elimination of Hamas. Everything else flows downstream from that.
Reportedly top Israeli security establishment devised a plan to train and re-introduce PA forces from the west bank to rule Gaza, and PA was game, but Netanyahu vetoed that...
Thanks for posting. Helpful firsthand context.
I can certainly understand why Israelis would be unhappy about Schumer's clear meddling in domestic Israeli politics. But in part of their minds, are they thinking, "Oh my, if we're losing Schumer maybe we need to reassess"?
Granted, as you note, the people needed to collapse the present government probably don't care what any American politician apart from Trump thinks, but perhaps the pressure Schumer's applying is still worthwhile?
Many are saying that. I am. The question is whether more people will rally to Netanyahu's side or more will realize we need to reassess. We won't know until there is an election. Democracy, the worst form of government, etc. etc.
I 100% understand and respect the Israeli public's feeling that US politicians trying to interfere in Israeli politics is an insult to their democratic process. However, this was Chuck Schumer saying this as opposed to the "US government" so I don't think this was a US attempt and controlling Israel. I think was an individual politician who cares deeply about Israel trying to communicate to Israelis and to his own constituents that his support is unconditional. And I do think the average Israeli should be concerned that an ally as supportive as Schumer is feeling the need to take this position politically.
I think the lack of a clear goal and plan is of really moral concern to a lot of Americans including a lot of American Jews. Hamas is unlikely to surrender on any reasonable terms. (I actually think something like safe asylum to Qatar would likely be necessary. If Israel would agree to that in exchange for hostages, I would be impressed but that isn't the impression we have in the US and I think there is legitimate fear about how many hostages are still alive to facilitate such a plan. )
I don't think that people in the US have a sense of what percentage of Hamas leadership would need to be killed or what percentage of military equipment would need to be destroyed for Israel to declare a win. Without that benchmark it feels like this has no end and that the number of civilians deaths that Israel is willing to cause for this vague goals has no limit.
The lack of a plan for anyone to take over Gaza after Hamas is gone is also a real concern.
Long term occupation of Gaza by the Israeli military with a return of settlements or other attempts at annexation combined with significant civilian deaths starts to look like ethnic cleansing. I detest that people are tabling the civilian deaths to date as a genocide as if that were just a term for describing every time someone kills a lot of people rather an a purposeful attempt to exterminate a group. But the view that Israel is happy to reduce the civilian population of Gaza to make room for its own settlement and annexation seems exaggerated at this point but not beyond the scope of what Israel appears to be willing to do under the current leadership given that it hasn't described any other real end game. We are just going to keep bombing until someone else takes over government services in Gaza the midst of this chaos where only the Israeli army and Hamas have any real military power seems a lot like we are going to bomb forever.
I think that there are conservatives who will stand by Israel even if they engage in ethnic cleansing, endless war, or cause a widespread famine with a significant body count but I don't think many progressives will. I don't think Schumer can and I think he is desperately trying to avoid that choice. He doesn't want to end aid, stop selling weapons, or change the special relationship. But he also can't justify funding or supporting an ethnic cleansing.
I think a lot people in the US who care about the safety and security of Jews in Israel and around the world and also care about human rights don't want to have to make that choice. The last decade of the Israeli government doing settlements and not seeking peace made that hard. The apparent war crimes in this conflict so far have made it harder. I think we are all afraid of this crossing a line where we don't have a choice. We are already dealing with a faction on the left whose disgust at what they are seeing in Gaza is making them vulnerable to embracing antisemitic messaging and leading them to embrace a vision of the Levant that does not include Israel. The longer this goes on without a clear exit plan the more people are going to slip into that camp. Which is bad for everyone involved except for Hamas.
Israel has accepted so much American help that we are understandably pissed when it doesn’t behave as a vassal like it should
Like you don’t have domestic politics. They’re immaterial, in my view. Israel should do what Biden says
Not sure if your comment is sarcastic, but I actually agree with you. Israel does not have the domestic industrial capability to be militarily independent without becoming like North Korea (a poor country that puts all its resources into the military). We need the US. Our politicians don't need to grovel, but they should at least be more diplomatic and respectful of our superpower ally. I feel like our current government revels in poking the US in the eye...
Thank you for your input.
Decent article. But I think it understates the reasons why Israelis (and Israel's supporters) are kind of enraged by the way global opinion has evolved.
The most basic point this article makes is obviously correct -- of course, some of Israel's actions will influence global opinion. However, I think the article wants to make two stronger claims: (1) the turn of global opinion against Israel is *mostly* about Israel's actions, and (2) global opinion should be a greater consideration for Israel's policymakers (as well as the general public).
1. The turn of global opinion (by western, liberal, cosmopolitan people) against Israel was totally predictable, and in my view, it has much more to do with a "social justice" worldview than Israel's specific actions. When these type of people discuss Israel, they're not really talking about Israel at all -- they're using it as a proxy to discuss issues that matter to western liberals.
You can see this in the way the conflict is discussed in the mainstream prestige media. Op-ed writers talk about the denial of Palestinians' rights, settlements, racism, and the religious fundamentalism *of Israelis*. Since the Palestinians are "oppressed," numbers put out by Hamas are quoted by the media without question, while any figure put out by the IDF is given a million qualifications. (Ask yourself: why is it that "what Palestinians do" doesn't matter for these people at all?)
This is all despite the fact that if Palestinians were given their "rights," they would vote in a fundamentalist dictator who wouldn't be too keen on abortion. Furthermore, Palestinians wouldn't care if they were ruled by a Jordanian or Egyptian dictator (with a much more brutal army). If you listen to Palestinians themselves, they don't talk about rights or settlements. They want to return.
And remember, the term "anti-Zionist" doesn't exist for any other country in the world!
2. I agree with the point that Israelis should care more about global opinion. My sense is that Israelis underestimate the enemy that they face in the global, western left (whereas westerners really underestimate the "ring of fire" that Iran has put around Israel). If Israel is to be destroyed (some day in the future), it will be because the west has somehow forced it to accept something akin to a "one-state" solution rather than because it has been defeated on the battlefield.
However, there's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" element to all of this. Literally everyone involved in foreign policy, from Netanyahu to Biden to MBS, knows the point of this war: Israel has to defeat Hamas on the battlefield to prevent it from raising the victory flag. This is the only way to deter Iran's proxies. (If hiding behind civilians becomes a strategy for invincibility, then Hezbollah is coming next.) Everyone knows that there will be civilian casualties, and Israel's war, honestly, has had a pretty low rate of civilian casualties compared to other urban conflicts. (If you think I'm wrong, name 5 urban battles waged in a more humane way.) From the Arabs' perspective, this is a pretty mild war.
But even taking the only course of action that everyone agrees Israel has to take, it gets accused of genocide! So the only way to keep public opinion on your side is to not accomplish your military goals. (Naturally, no one demands that Palestinians have any goal in mind. They fight as a matter of emotional expression.)
Mosul was conducted more humanely.
Speaking as someone who is generally pro-Israel, it's shocking to me that 2% of Gaza's population has died in the past few months. And by Israel's own estimates, they haven't even killed half of Hamas's fighters.
Israel used hostage propaganda very effectively when the war started, and if they wanted to, they could wage a propaganda effort to demonstrate they are doing everything they can to treat civilians humanely. But they aren't bothering.
As a Jewish Democrat, it also makes me really angry to see Netanyahu stick his thumb in Biden's eye. This just seems stupid to me, to choose to alienate a major political party of your most important ally. Israel has always enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Why deliberately cut your support in half?
What percent of Mosul’s population was killed do you think? Kurdish estimates put it at 45k civilians plus 10-15k isis fighters. That’s over 10% of the population of the city, probably something like 20% of the city that remained by the end of the siege was killed.
AND, importantly, the Mosul population had the option to flee.
Gazans are not given that option because of Egyptian concerns.
I think the reason Netanyahu is hostile to Democrats is because Democrats have pursued the normalization of financial and diplomatic ties with Iran and generally want the US less involved in the region with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Republicans and him see that as a bad idea, kind of similar to how Eastern Europeans and Atlanticist hawks want the US to maintain a high spending share in NATO vs Germany and France. It's a substantive disagreement on foreign policy; Democrats don't really care what kinds of proxy forces Iran is funding, they want the deal and thus a truly multipolar Middle East between Saudi and Iranian power. I'm surprised Matt didn't bring it up at all because it's a very important context to the increasing polarization of Israel and Saudi Arabia in US politics.
You would think that Israel would have been pleased that pre-Trump the JCPOA put severe roadblocks in path of Iran's acquiring nuclear weapons but I guess at the end of the day they weren't that concerned about Iranian nukes after all.
It's funny none of the predictions of Iran making a nuke came true during Trump's presidency, almost like the whole nuke discourse was a layer on a broader debate of how much Iran should be able to spend on Hezbollah and Iraq and so on in the region...
Was there much expectation Iran would be able to make a nuke in four years? Do not remember.
Iran's ability to build a nuke and how the Iran deal would or wouldn't solve this was an enormous debate topic in the second Obama term that rapidly disappeared in the Trump years. Goes to show how useful the presidency is for setting the terms of debate and how little that can matter looking back.
Likewise with Biden's recent "Trump sabotaged the Ukraine-Border deal". Great media coup and it doesn't make a difference in any poll I see.
Iran = good
Saudi Arabia = bad
Obviously!
What I don’t get is why they want Iran empowered as part of this picture.
Democrats view it as how America can generally spend a lot less on the region both in fiscal and moral terms. It's not entirely unlike some Republicans seeking Europe to spend more on NATO; the costs of the status quo right now seem to detract from other goals they care about. See also the Biden admin's first year turning the cold shoulder to Saudi Arabia.
I get your point. I'm not saying that it would be *impossible* for Israel to do better. Far from it, and I get pretty frustrated with the complete ineptitude of Israel's government to wage an effective PR campaign.
My point is, though, *in practice*, I think almost all wars are plagued by this type of ineptitude, insufficient care for civilians, etc. This is why I ask for 5 examples -- every pundit cherry-picks Mosul (which was waged much more humanely!). But Mosul was actually the exception. It was an extraordinary feat of humane warfare.
What would be other current examples of urban warfare?
Off the top of my head, Mariupol and Aleppo come to mind (much more brutal for civilians). There was lots of urban combat during the Houthi revolution. The US fought urban battles in Iraq (in most of which it killed 2+ civilians per militant).
Part of the problem I see is that when I bring any of this up, people say "ok, so what you're saying is that Israel is better than Assad/the Houthis/the Bush administration? That's a low bar." But who else even fights wars? The Swedes and the French certainly don't!
Look, we can debate the Bush administration, but if you're comparing yourselves to Assad and Putin that's not going to fly for an American and European audience. Those are very straightforwardly the bad guys! And France does fight wars, it fought in Afghanistan. It just kind of fought one in Libya. If you want France levels of support from the other Western powers, then you need to hold yourselves to France levels of conduct.
(I think Israel basically wants France levels of support, like "we are staunch allies, we can be trusted with nukes, but we will disagree with you more than the UK or Canada will.")
“…you're saying is that Israel is better than Assad/the Houthis/the Bush administration?”
That’s the wrong comparison. (For multiple reasons, but whatever.)
The correct comparison is to compare the US military to the IDF. I have seen nothing at all from credible news sources* that shows the IDF has been more careless or bloodthirsty than the US military.
.
*The Gaza Health Ministry is *not* a credible source. In case you were unclear on that point.
When they shoot the very hostages they are trying to rescue *while they're waving a white flag* [1], that strikes me as very careless and --- depending on the shooter's mindset --- possibly bloodthirsty! I realize that shit happens in war, but the shooter wasn't a soldier in harms way making a split-second decision. It was a sniper out of harms way who took the shots [4]. And it's not the only incident of a sniper taking a shot that they shouldn't have [5].
When the IDF chief of staff feels the need to remind soldiers not to shoot people waving white flags or otherwise surrendering --- regardless of their affiliation [2], that seems a little weird.
Maybe the US is no better, but stories from David French [3] makes me think that the US is indeed better.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/israel-hostages-gaza-hamas-war-52fa9628e6284cdad6d7f7db6cc30742
[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-reiterates-rules-of-engagement-to-troops-after-3-hostages-killed-in-error/
[3] https://www.twincities.com/2023/10/17/david-french-the-moral-questions-at-the-heart-of-the-gaza-war/
[4] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/3-israeli-hostages-tried-only-killed-military-rcna130912
[5] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/16/middleeast/idf-sniper-gaza-church-deaths-intl-hnk/index.html
I recall stories at the time of the Battle of Mosul about the US Marines’ tactics when faced when an ISIS fighter was holed up or had taken refuge in a multi-story building. If there was a US tank handy*, they’d fire a 120MM main gun round or two into the base of the structure, collapsing it on ISIS and whatever other unfortunate souls were inside. I have not heard a single credible account of the IDF doing something similar.
.
*If no tank was available, the infantry would do the same thing with TOW missiles.
I don't think the US was that heavily involved in the battle of Mosul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%932017)
Unless you're referring to the 2004 version, which was fairly quick and didn't generate all that many casualties
Yeah, I was probably thinking more of Falluja - both were part of the same broader operation.
2% seems pretty low to me given that Hamas deliberately hides among civilians and doesn't let them flee.
Hamas WANTS civilians to be killed. It thinks every civilian kill is a win for them. Given that 2% is a fantastic number
"Why deliberately cut your support in half?"
I guess two reasons.
One, the Republicans will give Bibi 100% of what Israel wants and the Democrats will only give you 70%. A guy with a short termer outlook like Bibi - desperate to stay in power and out of jail - will naturally pick the 100% lever every time.
Two, I think Netanyahu understands, correctly, that we are in the twilight of the bipartisan support for Israel era. It's basically a legacy of the affinity between Democrats and American Jews going back to Roosevelt. The current (geriatric) leadership of the Democrats came through the ranks in an era where you it was obvious you would demonstrate commitment to Israel. But the current wave of progressives coming in are just naturally going to gravitate more towards the Palestinian side. And as a result of Jewish assimiliation and intermarriage, there's going to be less and less Jews who see themselves as a distinct ethnicity separate and apart from American gentiles in Congress going forward (i.e. Jews more inclined to be Zionists), which means less and less of those kinds of Jews inhabiting leadership positions in the Democratic party. And once it stops being a position necessary to keep Jews in the coalition, there'll be nothing to stop the natural progressive position. So it's going to happen anyway - so the downside to hastening it is not really that stark.
This is a minor point, but I think by now Israel’s estimates would be more than half of Hamas fighters killed (15/30k). They just don’t announce estimates frequently. Combine that with fighters who have been captured and it’s significantly more.
Looking at the figures for the end of February, Hamas' total death figure (generally regarded as more or less correct) was about 30K, of which 70% were women and children, and Israel was claiming around 10K Hamas fighters killed. If there are only 30K Hamas fighters, that leaves around a quarter of the Gaza population being adult men who are not Hamas fighters. Hardly any men are Hamas fighters, in Israel's reckoning. So, even if we assume that some Hamas fighters are children, there is no room in these numbers for any adult men who are not Hamas fighters to have been killed. How are all these non-Hamas men avoiding the bullets and bombs that are killing so many women and children? These numbers cannot all be correct. And supposedly Hamas' numbers are based on an actual list of actual dead bodies.
If that means there's only 5-10k Hamas fighters left then shouldn't they be able to defeat the rest rather easily?
Most are in Rafah I believe
Wouldn't that leave a tiny amount in the various pockets of Hamas control I see on wikipedia's map of the conflict? There are at least 5 completely surrounded pockets, some of which have narrow strips that almost cut them in half. If there are only 5-10k left, the there couldn't be more than a few hundred fighters in each of those pockets.
I guess I'm curious simply because it doesn't add up to me. Maybe they are just waiting to starve out those pockets or something. Or maybe a few hundred fighters can hold out against Israel's vastly superior forces for longer than I would think. But I tend to think that either Hamas had a larger force to begin with than the 30k presented above or casualties are smaller than 15k KIA.
I also believe there are more Hamas fighters than claimed. And they have probably recruited more during the war. Especially if they are hoarding the food.
It means that it's taken them this long to get to 15k of 30k (estimates of Hamas's size vary).
But it's not a linear process, right? As the enemy forces shrink it should starts to become easier if you're not also losing significant forces. I'm way out of my expertise when it comes to this kind of warfare but if they are really down to, say 5k fighters that sounds easy to wrap up.
So I guess I'm a little skeptical of the original math. Over 50% killed implies and a large number captured implies something like at least 60% taken out. And that's without factoring in the severely wounded, which is usually a multiple of KIA.
It just seems like either A) they started with many more than 30,000 B) there have been less KIA than 15,000 C) Hamas were be wiped out pretty soon
This is right on.
Israel isn’t committing genocide any more than the US committed genocide by dropping a bomb on Hiroshima (which no one claims) - but it’s pretty clear they don’t really care about reducing the civilian death toll.
“As a Jewish Democrat, it also makes me really angry to see Netanyahu stick his thumb in Biden's eye”
As a Jewish Democrat, how do Schumer’s recent clownish antics strike you?
As not clownish?
What is it you believe he accomplished by attempting to interfere with democracy in Israel?
I mean again I reject the idea that he was interfering in any meaningful way.
I think he accomplished articulating what a lot of American Jews are feeling, and pointing out that there are consequences to Israel’s actions.
“I mean again I reject the idea that he was interfering in any meaningful way”
I did say it was clownish.
Bibi got himself plenty involved in our domestic politics when Obama was president; he has no right to complain now that the shoe’s on the other foot.
Whether he has a right to complain completely misses the point.
As a true lifelong friend of Israel, he's telling them that there is no blank check and the US won't be behind them no matter what they do. And if this government won't take that gentle advice from a friend seriously, maybe it's best if someone else steps up.
“…he's telling them that there is no blank check and the US won't be behind them no matter what they do”
As if they believed otherwise?
I don’t think so. I think this was entirely theatrical and entirely for the domestic audience.
Mosul was hell on earth, with the city leveled and a ludicrous casualty rate. And that was when civilians could flee, unlike in Gaza. Urban warfare is just really bloody.
“The Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip has been unlike any other in the 21st century.”
https://wapo.st/3va5Pnj
This article kind of proves my point. The authors couldn't in good faith say that the civilian-to-militant death toll was unusually high (in fact, it's unusually low). So they cherry-picked a different thing that sets this war apart from others -- the extent of bombing. But if that bombing isn't unusually deadly for civilians, then who cares?
It’s not like the destruction of civilian structures are independent of civilian casualties.
Back in January: “Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” said Pape. “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”
https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-bombs-destruction-death-toll-scope-419488c511f83c85baea22458472a796
And there are lot more civilian casualties “in the pipeline” as a result of exposure, hunger and disease.
“And there are lot more civilian casualties ‘in the pipeline’ as a result of exposure, hunger and disease”
The quicker Hamas is defeated the lower that toll will be.
Sure, we can editorialize in all sorts of ways to rationalize our actions. Let’s just not pretend this is some sort of professional surgical strike. It’s a bloody mess that has and will continue to devastate many innocent lives. And just so it’s clear I’m in the Yglesias and Friedman camp.
Okay. In that case, Israel should be pressing the NYT to publish opeds and generally getting this info out there. Because that's definitely not the impression I've gotten from my regular news sources.
I regret to inform you that Israel does not, in fact, control the New York Times.
Come on, that's obviously not what I meant. Israel published an oped right after 10/7, and the NYT would absolutely run another one.
The Israeli government isn't making any effort to present itself as just or merciful. I don't think that's smart when the world sees photos of IDF soldiers sitting on kids' trikes in front of a blown out building, or wearing bras they found in an abandoned apartment. Will those soldiers be disciplined? They seem giddy.
My sense is that Israeli perception is warped by putting undue importance on a) the UN b) NGOs and other supposedly “neutral” international bodies and c) Europe, which is far less consequential for international affairs than it’s ever been. By contrast they underrate d) the US where people aren’t reflexively antisemitic, which can project power unlike Europe, and where its actions can influence opinion much more effectively.
But Matt really needed to address (a) and (b) in his version of the story.
"Furthermore, Palestinians wouldn't care if they were ruled by a Jordanian or Egyptian dictator (with a much more brutal army)."
Ummm... ever heard of Black September?
Yeah and how’s that going 50 years later? Oh right - Hashemites still in charge with no end in sight.
Or the Lebanese Civil War. Or Kuwait?
I think it was fairly obvious in the immediate aftermath of 10/7 that the strategic objective of the attacks (via Iranian handlers hint hint hinting to their Hamas assets that this is a good idea) was to scuttle the seemingly imminent Saudi recognition of Israel and the establishment of normal diplomatic relations between KSA and Israel. This would have been a major realignment in the region and full security cooperation between Israel and Sunni Arabs would be a major setback to Iranian ambitions.
They have succeeded so far. While it's not certain yet, the situation can change, and the KSA hasn't shut down the possibility, it's much further off than it was before 10/7 and getting further away every day. The IRG must be thrilled.
Israel took the bait line and sinker. It just kills me that it was so obvious.
The thing that remains unsaid is that the Sunni Arab states want normalization with Israel because it is militarily strong and willing to fight Iranian proxies. They are not looking to make peace with a timid and vulnerable Israel that will step down after being attacked.
There's a balancing act, because the populace (in contrast to the leadership) in these Arab states are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Israel absolutely has the right to retaliate and eliminate/neutralize Hamas. Totally. No question.
I do think that the response, or at least how the Israeli government is portraying its response (that is, responding to any critique of the conduct of the war with a thinly veiled "fuck you"), has veered into overreaction with no clearly articulated end game, and it's that state of affairs Iran was counting on to disrupt the Israeli/Sunni Arab security alignment. Israel has walked right into it and friendly nations warning Israel that it is cutting its nose to spite its face are absolutely correct here.
No clearly articulated end game is a legitimate criticism. I agree.
However, a lot (not all) of the critique of the conduct of the war is illegitimate. It doesn't provide Israel with a viable, militarily-sound alternative. Any urban warfare in a place with hundreds of miles of tunnels and militants that blend in with civilians is going to result in large numbers of Israeli casualities. Israel has been clear about what it has been doing to minimize those casualties while still being able to accomplish their reasonable and necessary military goals.
When you're dealing with an adversary that doesn't recognize your right to exist, it's hard to articulate an end game......
I agree it's hard, and that all options are bad.
But that doesn't remove responsibility of Netanyahu to offer some sort of vision, something that he has avoided his entire political career.
Yes, and as the article argues, for the sake of Israel's standing with the global public he should. But let's not kid ourselves that it would make a difference with Hamas.
Against an adversary that wants to exterminate you, the only two realistic end games are "I win" or "You win".
You don’t have to articulate an end game the Palestinians agree with, just one that seems just in its merits and it can therefore include things like “recognition of Israel’s right to exist with its current borders and with the expectation of peace from its neighbors” or what have you. The point of the war is to force those just terms on your exhausted opponents, and even if that isn’t possible optics matter too and it’s clarifying for your own side. Bibi is, just very obviously, courting his right wing river to the sea base and that’s the reason you don’t see a clear end game not true-but-irrelevant perceived current Palestinian intransigence.
His actions pattern match to “these people can’t be reasoned with, we should just cleanse Gaza while settling the West Bank”, and he ain’t even really denying it by saying he is something else!
I don't think it's that hard. I have yet to hear a sound reason why the obvious answer - Fatah takes over Gaza - is so stridently opposed by the government (even though it has the support of some of the parties in the government).
Is Fatah bad? Yes. Is the security situation with the Fatah in the West Bank infinitely better than the security situation with Hamas in Gaza? Also yes.
The obvious answer that occurs to me is that Bibi opposes it because it means that there is one unified Palestinian government theoretically committed to recognizing Israel, with nothing to stop negotiating for a Palestinian state.
Correct - nobody has articulated how Israel can accomplish it's military goals while minimizing both Israeli and Palestinian civilian casualties. What people are doing is asking Israel to value the foreign lives over the lives of its own civilians, which is just patently insane.
Israel also has an interest in protecting the lives of its own military personnel, not only civilians.
That's what I was trying to say. No country would or should value the lives of foreigners over its own military personnel - yet Israel is the only country on earth that is expected to do so.
Yes, I think we are agreeing with each other at this point
This, I agree with 100%. Netanyahu is a mendacious idiot, so far up his own ass and high on his own supply that he thinks he’s *supporting* Israel’s interests by pushing this “fuck you” diplomacy. It’s a real shame that Israel’s parliamentary system makes it so difficult to get rid of him, because God knows no one wants him around anymore. (Even the small share of the country still polling for him would happily take a similarly center-right alternative)
It’s not like anyone else has a “clearly articulated end game.”
It's not like there is anyone else whose job it is to have a “clearly articulated end game,” either.
It’s not really anyone’s job.
“Israel took the bait…”
I know!. Such a petulant response the a little murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. Israel should have been the adults in the room, tut-tutted Hamas, and explained to the wider world, “whatadda gonna go, boys will be boys.”
I'm not gonna mince words here - I want Hamas dead. I am disgusted by them. Same as I was disgusted by the Taliban. But fighting a just cause badly is always counterproductive.
I have seen to good evidence that the IDF has been fighting badly. Quite the opposite, actually.
I think their literal combat effectiveness is fine. That's not really the issue here.
You are the one who used the word “badly.”
If war is politics by other means, the politics is war by words. Military historian Brett Devereaux posted as much a month ago:[1] failing to develop achievable strategic aims and (when possible) prosecute them through diplomacy is being "bad at war", even when (especially when!) you win battles.
[1]: https://acoup.blog/2024/02/23/fireside-friday-february-23-2024-on-the-military-failures-of-fascism/
Well, you're responding to an article about how the way Israel fought this war is having major backlash effects that affect their ability to fight and end the war, so...perhaps you should re-evaluate the evidence.
What evidence do you believe I missed? That western leftists are lying?
I mean, not tut tutted, but yes? Their entire pitch to the west over the last 20 years for support has been that they are the adults in the region so people expected that they would act like the adults when dealing with an adversary that has, like 10% of their GDP, none of their military technology, and is now on the brink of famine?
"an adversary that has…none of their military technology"
A gun can threaten more civilians at once, but a knife is still enough to kill one.
"like 10% of their GDP"
FWIW, it's more like 6%.
Where is the evidence that Hamas is on the brink of famine?
The evidence that the population of Gaza is on the brink of a famine comes from well known liberal rag The Wall Street Journal
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/over-one-million-people-in-gaza-are-facing-starvation-d2bdf6c4
“The population of Gaza” is not the adversary. Which is why the IDF undertook to get them out of the way whenever possible.
Where is the evidence that Hamas is on the brink of famine? I have read news accounts that strongly suggest Hamas makes sure (through at least the threat of deadly force) that they are first in line when food aid arrives.
Hamas is the government of Gaza, I don't have to like that for it to be true. If they're at war with Hamas they're at war with Gaza in the same way that the US was at war with Iraq even if we played a bunch of semantic games about how we were "really just at war with the regime" or whatever.
He’s not claiming that Israel didn’t need to do something, he’s claiming that it didn’t do it optimally out of rage/irrationality.
That is true and unfortunate. Clearly there were and still are ways to pursue the war - even leaving the level of destruction constant - without undermining every relationship it has with other countries. The end of the Bibi era cannot come soon enough. (And I expect that during the hostage deal new elections will be called)
"...it didn’t do it optimally out of rage/irrationality"
Yes. War.
This is not the right frame to think of Israel’s response.
A state is just a monopoly on violence within its borders. Hamas publicly abrogated that monopoly, if only briefly. A state simply cannot allow that to persist if it wants to maintain its sovereignty - full stop.
Israel didn’t “take the bait” - it had no choice but to fight to eliminate Hamas. Reasonable people can disagree about the strategy to pursue that goal, but prioritizing partnership with Saudi Arabia (itself only interested in Israel for its military and intelligence prowess!) while leaving Hamas intact is simply incoherent.
"They have succeeded so far. While it's not certain yet, the situation can change, and the KSA hasn't shut down the possibility, it's much further off than it was before 10/7 and getting further away every day. The IRG must be thrilled."
I don't think it is much further off. The Saudis and all the Arab countries not aligned with Iran want Hamas handled. What they say privately and what they have to perform publicly are two different things.
Your lips to God's ears
The relationship with the Saudis should be fine. Despite their public pronouncements, the Arab leaders are privately telling Israel to carry on. They hate Hamas (i.e., the Muslim brotherhood, the arch enemy of the Arab regimes) and fully expect Israel to wage this war. The bigger danger to those relationships would be for Israel to look weak and irresolute.
[The Saudis] “hate Hamas (i.e., the Muslim brotherhood…”
So does the government of Egypt. Which is, I think, Matt’s point when he mentions Egypt’s differing behavior regarding refugees from Sudan versus Gaza. The “global community of progressive, humanitarian-minded cosmopolitan” activists shows itself to be anything but humanitarian-minded and cosmopolitan.
I hope that normalization is just delayed, and I do think there's some chance it's not dead. I just don't think the current Israeli response is the minimum requirement to not "look weak and irresolute". If anything a cooler-headed response that still kills lots of Hamas would look stronger than the current response, which is somewhere between "over the top" and "unhinged"
“Took the bait”
It seems equally obvious that Israel has higher priorities than normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia. Like not allowing its citizens to be raped, tortured, kidnapped, and murdered with impunity.
This seems like a reasonable priority ranking to me (admittedly not a Middle East expert).
Again this paternalism towards Israel. We're not all morons I assure you. We've more Nobel prizes per capita than you from our little warzone.
There are people in the Israeli government who've been itching for an excuse to unleash hell on the Palestinians, because they want a Greater Israel that's all-Jewish or certainly absolutely Jewish-dominated. 7/10 given them more room to pursue it, and they've taken it, resolutely supported by the US government.
It's not paternalism to warn your friends that they're driving into a ditch
They’re already in a ditch. They’ll climb back out and clean up once they’re given Hamas their reward.
I expect you will get a lot of criticism for this balanced piece from your imo absurdly Israel apologetic readership. It’s weird how I agree about everything many here say about the stupidity and counter productive stances of the far woke left (and the evil of the populist right), yet when it comes to Israel it’s as if otherwise rational centrist people lose their mind and can’t see what is actually going on.
I despise Hamas as much as the next person, but I cannot pretend that what Israel is doing is legitimate, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians (sometimes with death squad-style killings) as well as directly causing millions of them to starve. Yes, Israel has the right to defend itself - which regrettably might lead to some limited ”collateral damage” - but not the right to commit genocide. And several people in the Israeli government have been open about their genocidal wishes, without being dismissed. To say nothing of the slow motion ethnic cleansing of (and mass murder of civilians in) the West Bank.
What Israel is doing right now is indefensible and saying that doesn’t mean that one is sympathetic towards Hamas or anyone who denies the right of Israel to exist.
"I despise Hamas as much as the next person, but I cannot pretend that what Israel is doing is legitimate"
I wish people who say things like this would grapple more seriously with the question: "what do you want Israel to do instead?"
I think it's as simple as most people who say this want a ceasefire and by ceasefire they want Israel to simply stop defending itself.
I have been ranting for years that it should be illegal to criticize Israel’s conduct in Gaza (in any round of fighting) without offering an alternative.
Hi, I have an alternative! The alternative is to not slaughter tens of thousands of people and intentionally starve them to death.
I want them to not bomb 80% (and counting) of all buildings and starve millions of innocent civilians.
I note that, like many people of whom I ask this question, you instead angrily answered a question that I didn't ask, because it's easier.
I didn't ask "what don't you want them to do?". Thank you, but I already know that.
I asked you "what *do* you want them to do?".
Apparently this needs clarification.
How, exactly, do you expect Israel to fight Hamas, and defend itself against an enemy that thinks absolutely nothing of hiding behind civilians? An enemy that not only doesn't worry about civilian casualties but positively delights in them? That will ensure that it feeds itself before the civilians around it?
If you can engage with the reality of what's happening, there can be a discussion. If you can't, there can't.
Here's a good article on the issue: https://www.slowboring.com/p/what-israel-does-matters
It suggests that Israel: hold elections and change leadership away from a PM who clearly benefits personally from an endless military conflict; define milestones, an end-game, and a postbellum plan to make it clear that the current military operation is not just a slow-motion ethnic cleansing; build alliances with the countries that showed support shortly after 10/7; generally show more interest in persuasion of skeptical parties.
Touche.
I agree there are things Israel could do differently, that might assuage some observers. However we also have to consider: Are there enough persuadable parties to matter? Put another way, are there too many *unpersuadable* parties to matter?
Even if Palestinian statehood is achieved and peaceful coexistence with Israel is sought, their state capacity to neutralize die hards who still want to destroy Israel would be limited (because that's a hard problem for anyone, and especially for weak states). If there are 30 such die hards, that threat can be managed, and yes, Israel should be doing all the things you say. If the deadenders number would number 30% of the population instead, it's impossible. They'll have a terrorist's veto. There is no milestone or end game or postbellum plan or set of alliances that can address this, whether it's Netanyahu or anyone else.
Looking at recent history, I think the latter view is arguably correct.
This is exactly the type of borderline antisemitic responses that Israel will get if a Palestinian state is established within the 67' borders. It will conduct a guerrilla war against Israel, and Israel will have to retalitae and attack the hospitals and schools in which the terrorists will hide. So what is Israel's incentive to establish a Palestinian state?
And why is this a borderline antisemitic response? Because it does not provide any example of a war where a cruel enemy hid among civilians and the ratio of civilians casualties was lower. After all, everyone knows that historically in such wars, the ratio of civilian casualties is usually much higher.
There is no real attempt to understand or to look for historical examples, just an automatic vilification of Jews, while they are actually doing something that no army has ever done, feeding its enemies.
Criticism of the Israeli government’s actions are not per se antisemitic and nothing about Joachim saying he doesn’t like that civilians are being killed is antisemitic. You do your cause a disservice by throwing that label around in response to every criticism of the Israeli government.
I'm not talking about a specific commenter that I don't know, but about a type of online responses that try to ignore the existing laws of war that were applied in modern history and claim that Jews need to act according to special rules that were fabricated to restrict them.
If you think that people getting upset about civilians dying proves the existence of an antisemitic double standard then I think you’re tripping
In terms of "a type of online response" I think your is fairly representative of commentators who think that Israel is always treated in some especially unfair way. It seems to me that civilian deaths are the #1 thing that concern people about war. Compare for example, Russia's seizure of Crimea to the current invasion.
If people weren't protesting a war that takes place among civilians with great loss of life *that* would be special.
If this is your insight, and it may well be a good one, then it's clear that Israel must under no circumstances agree to a Palestinian state. There's a very high likelihood that such a state would become a terrorism base, the dismantling of which would require killing many civilians.
In contrast, in the occupation of the West Bank, there is no daily killing of uninvolved civilians. The IDF simply blocks the establishment of a terrorism infrastructure at its early stages before it leads to a massive war.
Yeah that’s not all that the IDF does in the West Bank; they’re also protecting illegal settlements, the creation of which understandably irks Palestinians.
Deaths are really bad, especially of children. This sounds glib but I don't know how else to put it - people seem to forget. Israel is currently killing children. There is absolutely nothing borderline Antisemitic about seeing one country kill thousands of children and being angry about it.
Maybe you think they're tactically wrong, and that if Israel didn't kill 1,000 children now, 10,000 might die later, but you should be able to make that argument without ascribing nefarious reasons for them to not want 1,000 children to die now. This is exactly the kind of reasoning Matt is trying to talk you out of.
Every nation has the Geneva Convention, which recognizes that sometimes to kill an enemy, collateral damage is inevitable. But for Jews, a different criterion is needed that won't allow them to defend themselves at all. Yes, that's antisemitic.
What is not antisemitic? A serious, substantive discussion that compares the war of Israel to other wars waged by Western countries in civilian areas. Places like Mosul and the like.
Do you not think there there is criticism of the US war in Iraq? It's a mainstream opinion that it was a massive mistake - morally and tactically bad.
And maybe some people are saying that Israel can't defend itself, but that sure isn't what the poster you responded to is saying. They explicitly say the opposite. This is exactly the conflation that Matt's article is about.
I think Mosul is referencing the siege of Mosul against ISIS that took place in 2016 or so. The US was probably involved, but indirectly.
The Geneva Convention of 49 & 77 calls for all civilians under the power of enemy forces to be treated humanely in all circumstances, protected from any violence, murder, or torture. Do not misquote it again.
https://www.icrc.org/en/document/protected-persons/civilians-protected-international-humanitarian-law
International human rights law recognizes double effect; it's generally legal to kill civilians as collateral damage so long as it's truly collateral damage.
Section 4.7 of this Stanford publication explains that, while double effect is used to analyze bombing strategies by philosophers, international humanitarian law makes no distinction and that, by IHL, there is not sufficient permissibility to justify tactical bombing--- ALL civilian bombing breaks IHL.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/#RoleConvNormWarf
Quote DDE philosphers if you want, don't misquote IHL.
Gaza is more bombed out after five months than Baghdad was after a decade of war. The idea that this is the only way to fight is obviously nonsense.
It's the only effective way to fight when Hamas uses critical civilian infrastructure as defensive positions every chance they get.
Oh, and human shields, of course.
I'm not sure that's accurate, but even if it is - that's a sign that Israel is doing *better*. Dropping more bombs but causing *less* civilian death is a *good thing*, I would think.
The more appropriate comparison is Mosul, not Baghdad.
Get back to us after you read up on that.
And yet, despite the fact that fewer bombs were used, a ton of civilians still died! (Grenades and bullets flying all around is pretty effective at killing civilians too.)
It's not antisemitic to object to the mass slaughter of civilians, and no matter how many times you say it, it won't be true. More and more people see that now.
Before the current war, I felt deeply conflicted about the Israel-Palestine situation, but the craziness of this sort of rhetoric has made me realize just how radical the Israeli status quo is. It's wild.
The perception that Jews are subject to different, harsher laws than everyone else is the very definition of antisemitism.
Anyone wanting to have a serious and non-antisemitic discussion about the war in Gaza needs to bring examples from other wars around the world and show how other armies had a more humane approach. But, unfortunately, the consensus among experts is that the civilian to militant casualty ratio is actually low relative to this type of conflict.
Well, the consensus among the experts I've consulted is that Israeli casualties sustained on Oct. 7 were actually quite low relative to this type of conflict. So, you know ... those civilian deaths were regrettable, but if you want to have a serious discussion you'll need to show examples from other insurgencies around the world of how Hamas could have had a more humane approach. (Sarcasm, obviously. Oct. 7 was inexcusable. Israel's mass slaughter and starvation campaign is inexcusable. This is obvious to anyone not blinded by hate.)
Name 5 urban conflicts that have had a lower civilian-to-militant casualty ratio.
What is your source for the civilian-to-militant ratio in this conflict? The IDF labelling just about every male in Gaza a militant?
As of a month ago, Israel claims it has killed around 12,000 militants. A Qatari-based Hamas official claimed 6,000. Likely the number was somewhere between the two.
Name 5 recent urban conflicts with more destruction of homes than this one, and with higher percentages of starving civilians.
“Israel is…killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians (sometimes with death squad-style killings)…”
…you claim despite an utter lack of evidence.
I don't think "death squad killings" have a formal definition, and I'm not especially informed on the details of the war, but reading on this incident led me to be believe that Israeli soldiers are killing fairly wantonly and without much regard for civilians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam_Haim,_and_Samer_Talalka
Those shootings were not in an area with civilians, and are therefore not evidence of death squads or anything of the like.
It clearly was an area with civilians since they killed civilians.
What’s your point?
Netanyahu's security strategy blew up on October 7. They can't mow the grass anymore, and I don't think they ever could. The options now are restart some sort of peace process or ethnically cleanse all of the Palestinian territories. I think most people outside Israel would support the former, but Netanyahu and his allies seem to prefer the latter.
It should be emphasized that the "mowing the grass" policy reflected an extreme reluctance to go to all out war with Gaza.
It meant Israel accepting rockets launched at its civilians for nearly two decades, with only minor retaliations (that sure caused damage and killed people, but were far short of what was needed to stop the terror).
It meant Israel literally inventing a way to shoot rockets out of the sky in order to avoid going to war.
This should be clarified for those trying to portray Netanyahu as a war-monger. I despise Netanyahu, and I thinks his security doctrine was a sham. And he has refused time and time again to articulate a long term vision or poitical horizon. There was no way the status quo was sustainable, and in retrospect we should have all realized that. But war-monger, he is not.
Hence the choice. Netanyahu also blockaded Gaza, expanded settlements in the West Bank, appointed far-right extremists to his cabinet, and has forthrightly said that he would never accept a two-state solution. Mowing the grass was an unstable equilibrium. At some point, things were going to boil over. At some point, facts on the ground has to change.
Overall I agree.
The blockade on Gaza wasn't instituted by Netanyahu. That preceded his election in 2009. And in my opinion I think it was 100% necessary.
But the other stuff not.
Now, Netanyahu has said he supports a 2-state solution multiple times. His policies didn't really further it. But it's only now that he's saying he doesn't want a 2-state solution, which given the current circumstances, I don't think is irrational.
I think Netanyahu should have been working towards building the conditions in which a 2-state solution was possible, and he did the opposite.
The peace process is underway, but is still in Step 1: Kill Hamas.
I find the you + Joao axis of "anti-woke, anti-American foreign policy" to be a valuable perspective here imo
I’m not sure I’m anti-American foreign policy though. I’m a staunch supporter of Ukraine and NATO and as anti-Russia as anyone can get. I also support Israel’s right to exist with a Jewish-majority state of their own. I just don’t support their excessive violence in Gaza right now or their long standing slow motion ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. I certainly detest islamism in general and Hamas (although I can understand why traumatized Palestinians support them, unfortunately).
"I also support Israel’s right to exist with a Jewish-majority state of their own. "
If all the parties did, the situation would be resolvable. But they don't. Israel's actions can only be evaluated in that light.
"We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us"
"I despise Hamas as much as the next person, but I cannot pretend that what Israel is doing is legitimate, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians (sometimes with death squad-style killings) as well as directly causing millions of them to starve."
The modern laws of war are set up to allow two warring parties to *cooperate* to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas has chosen, over and over, to defect: to store military supplies in civilian hospitals, to divert humanitarian aid funds to building military tunnels, to attack Israelis without a uniform (so that one could distinguish between combatants and non-combatants), and to hold civilians as hostages. I don't know of instances in which they attacked under a flag of truce, but I would expect nothing better from them. And after Hamas has spent years blurring the line between civilian and military, those chickens have come home to roost: and Israel must choose over and over again between making life better for Gazan civilians and the certainty that any aid supplies will get passed along to militants, and any restraint used as cover by Hamas tacticians. The civilian deaths that result? Those are on Hamas.
"The modern laws of war are set up to allow two warring parties to *cooperate* to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas has chosen, over and over, to defect"
Yes, this is something I'm thinking about more and more. Can you/should you follow IHL when fighting an opponent that doesn't care about IHL?
The disengagement from Gaza in 2005 was intended to pave the way for the creation of a peace-seeking Palestinian state. Yet, the suicide bombings in buses and restaurants in 2001 had already illustrated that relinquished territories would likely serve as platforms for terror activities. The accumulation of such evidence challenges the feasibility of holding onto peace-driven illusions.
Experience has shown that the establishment of a Palestinian state might escalate into warfare, possibly eclipsing current hostilities. Palestinian militants, as observed, might continue to exploit civilian infrastructures like hospitals and schools for tactical advantages, aiming to garner international sympathy. Thus, envisioning a Palestinian state as a step towards garnering global empathy seems as imprudent as expecting financial prosperity from loans taken under predatory conditions from organized crime.
I support a two state solution, but I can imagine why how Israel wouldn't exactly want Palestine to have an official military.
You don’t get to decide that though, that’s the point of states. The South Koreans would obviously prefer it if North Korea didn’t have a military, Kosavars and Serbia, Indians and Pakistan. People need to stop acting like “two states bordering each other who hate each others guts and have a long history of violence” is some weird experiment that has never been tried, it’s literally why we invented national sovereignty in the first place.
Then when Palestinian state inevitably attacks Israel - or, more likely, aids and abets it's paramilitary/terrorists to strike at Israel with impunity - the. Israel would be perfectly justified in invading and conquering them.
And we're back to square one.
And we've already basically seen this play out after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
That’s not what states do in response to low grade one off attacks anymore. There are border skirmishes and terrorist attacks several times per year along all the borders I named. They lead to talks and maybe small, proportionate military responses. The only country that tried to fully conquer another in response to an attack (setting aside Ukraine, which seems somewhat more complex, and also the conquerors are the bad guys) recently had been the US in Afghanistan and even that comes with a pile of caveats (we backed one side in a pre-existing civil war and never denied Afghan statehood) and, more importantly, was a total disaster that shows why you shouldn’t do that.
The Palestinian attacks on Israel aren't one-offs or small scale.
Unless you are intentionally ignoring the constant rocket attacks since 2005.
No government on earth would tolerate those actions on their border.
Imagine if Mexico or it's paramilitary proxies were regularly launching tickets on civilian targets in the US. We would absolutely invade, and be right in doing so.
Yeah as an American this is one of the hardest things to wrap my head around. If, say, Tijuana sent rockets to San Diego like Gaza has to Israel...then Mexico would no longer exist.
I think this is underrated. Attacks of Oct 7th magnitude with any level of regularity would be intolerable. It's not possible to continue normal societal function with periodic attacks of that nature, and that's not what you see in history. Typically an attack(s) of that size would lead into full blown war which is what we are seeing now.
So shoot back at the rockets. I'm not someone who thinks Israel shouldn't defend itself. Keep some jets in the air and every time a rocket gets launched drop a bomb from the launch side five minutes later. But don't just kill 100 random civilians every time something bad happens.
I don't know why Isarel didn't do this, but manifestly Israel did not consider itself to be at war with Gaza for the last ten years. If it had, the border (which is shorter than the Berlin wall, a span that people managed to secure with 1960s technology) wouldn't have been so insecure that a bunch of guys with machine guns could have walked across it without anyone noticing for six hours.
Deliberately murdering 1200 civilians (and maiming/raping a bunch of them first) is NOT what I would call “low-grade.” Also, the Hamas leadership has explicitly said that it was not a one-off attack; they promised to keep doing it.
Look at the geography of Israel and the West Bank.
"Border skirmishes" could mean rockets being sent to Tel Aviv or Ben Gurion airport from a few km away, from higher ground.
"Border skirmishes" could mean rockets sent to Jerusalem from Jerusalem's own municipal border.
We are not talking about border skirmishes between Gaza or South Lebanon and remote moshavim and kibbutzim (which also frankly should never be subject with the horror that they have already been subject to). But "border" skirmishes means the potential for serious damage to Israel's major population centers as well as critical civilian infrastructure.
October 7th was a low grade one off attack? Ok.
This seems to be intentionally ignoring context. South Korea didn't knowingly agree to the creation of North Korea out of nowhere. It's true that warring/feuding states do, and always have, existed next to one another- that's a truism that comes about due to the natural ways in which humanity and nation states have developed going back millennia. The difference is that one side is demanding that the current state acquiesce to and actively participate in the creation of a state that would potentially immediately begin active hostilities against it. Can you think of a situation where that has been the case?
"You don’t get to decide that though, that’s the point of states." They do get to at least make that demand though. That's the point of this being a proposal done diplomatically as opposed to through an invasion.
It's not uncommon to have the losing side in a war agree to restrictions on their future military capabilities.
No, but it's very uncommon to talk about setting up a state under foreign occupation as a way of ending a foreign occupation.
"You don’t get to decide [whether Palestine can have an official military] though, that’s the point of states."
No, sometimes other countries do get to decide that.
The Treaty of Versailles, Part V §1 Ch. 1: "The [German] Army shall be devoted exclusively to the maintenance of order within the territory and to the control of the frontiers."
Japanese Constitution, Art. 9 (official English translation): "The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation...land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained."
Panamanian Constitution, Art. 310 (from https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Panama_2004): "The Republic of Panama shall not have an Army."
All of these were incorporated into the establishment of a new governing body following defeat by a foreign military invasion.* If you allow domestic invasions too, then Costa Rica also has "Se proscribe el Ejército como institución permanente" in its constitution.
* In fact, an invasion _by the United States._ If you want to claim that this is US-specific, then, sure! I agree! The US is fantastic (on this point) and everywhere else should be more like it.
That’s nice, but the reaction to the war in Gaza is proving why that’s an inadequate response.
I actually don't really understand the opposition to the Palestinians having a military. Jordan has a military. Egypt has a military. The concern should not be existing states with whom you have peace agreements invading you with their armies that are much much weaker than yours. The concern should be the non-state actors within those countries' borders that, because they are better armed than that country's government, can operate with impunity. The problem with Lebanon is not that Lebanon has an army, but that Lebanon's army can't beat Hezbollah. I would rather a Fatah controlled army that can keep Hamas in check than a weak Fatah state where Hamas can operate with impunity.
Wouldn’t that be police?
If the "police" are strong enough and well equipped enough to suppress a well armed terrorist army, for all intents and purposes aren't they just basically a military?
No, because there's nobody hired at the FBI headquarters to plan how to invade Mexico, just in case we ever want to do that. But certainly someone at the Pentagon has that job.
I agree with your column. Particularly "I find the extent to which the global community of progressive, humanitarian-minded cosmopolitan types simply imbibes an Arab nationalist worldview and views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through that lens to be maddening."
I'm of a different mind about the level of restraint Israel has demonstrated during this war, though. I think their reluctance to prosecute this war in an all-out way has been a mistake. It has prolonged the war and has allowed anti-Israeli forces to regroup and change the terms of the debate. Israel would have been justified -- as the allies were justified during WW2 -- to reduce the entire Gaza strip to rubble in the pursuit of an unconditional surrender by Hamas. They should have done that in the first two months of the war.
If there's one thing the past century+ of global conflict has demonstrated it's that "humane", nation building, winning hearts and minds-style warfare is a sham concept that doesn't work. If you're not pursuing total, unconditional surrender you need to go back to the drawing board.
The original hearts and minds campaign in Malaya worked (original as in "that's where that name comes from"). More people should study the Malayan Emergency.
So this was like... The British version of the first Indochina war? Except the British won where the French lost? Wikipedia isn't really sufficient for me to feel like I'm fully grasping the dynamics.
Basically: yes.
It's not something I know a vast amount about, except that my uncle fought in it (he was the last or second-last year to be conscripted in the UK; his two younger brothers, including my father, weren't). The narrative I know is that the British cut off the MNLA from international support and then won a successful hearts and minds campaign to convince the Malayan peasants to oppose the MNLA and this enabled them to gradually round them up and defeat them. I know there were also a bunch of massacres (one of which gets compared to My Lai) and I don't know enough detail to really understand the dynamics myself.
But they really did convince a sufficiency of Malay peasants that the UK colonial regime and the independent successor they were setting up to replace it was better for them than the communist MNLA rebels. And the French (and later the Americans) really didn't in Vietnam.
Well, we got unconditional surrender in Japan and Germany and then we did nation-building, and it’s been a total success, right?
Yep. I suppose we need to actually define what total surrender means. Total surrender is where the conquered population commits to suppressing the elements of their own people who would maintain the conflict. Which is what happened in WWII, the people's of the Axis powers aligned with the western alliance against the elements that fomented the conflict because the alternative was destruction.
I think the nation-building was a big part of why Germany did that suppression, and could credibly commit to doing so. Red Army Faction might have gotten a lot more sympathy from Germans if they were fighting against an American occupation force rather than a legitimately elected sovereign government.
What is an unconditional surrender by a stateless organization accountable to no one look like?
Im not trolling im just not that read up on campaigns like this one that aren’t between uniformed armies. Like if they surrender on Thursday what’s to stop their fighters from carrying on in Jamas on Friday. Perhaps licking their wounds a bit longer but it has a hydra quality about it.
It seems like you’d need to change something about tbe baseline conditons that outside groups have money and material to send and Palestinians feel they have nothing to gain by investing in their own lives so may as well fire rockets from my neighborhood.
There's no doubt the Red Army committed atrocities in their fight against the Nazi. The British firebombed Dresden and killed 25,000 in one incident. Innocent German civilians suffered terribly, sometime in way the Allies could have avoided. But as compared to the Nazis, there's just no question who was in the right and needed all the help and support they could have. And it was, after all, Germans civilians, as opposed to British or Soviet civilians, who allowed their society and state to become host to such a malignant ideology.
Same with Israel's fight against Hamas, which is a modern-day equivalent of the Nazis.
The global order attempted to set limits and conditions in place for war after WWII. Proportionality is a thing.
"Proportionality is a thing."
Proportionality, in the law of war, does *not* mean tit-for-tat (in the sense that you get to kill an enemy civilian for each civilian on your side killed). It just means that you shouldn't kill civilians because you have nothing better to do. But if the only way to get at a single militant is to kill a thousand civilians—that is "proportional" under the laws of war (also that's despicable and you should wait for a better opportunity instead…but I digress).
And what Israel has done to Palestinians in the West Bank since the 90s is conveniently ignored…
Since the 1990s, Israel has handed over 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinians in return for a piece of paper in the Oslo Accords, and naively ignored the transformation of these territories into terrorist strongholds. This ignorance became untenable when buses started exploding within Israel itself.
Excuses are made for friends and allies. I think we can all see where Joachim's sympathies lie.
And what does that have to do with the war *in Gaza*?
(See also: https://www.slowboring.com/p/israels-two-wars/. It's recent, so maybe you've already seen it, in which case I'm sorry for patronizing. But you haven't commented on the article, so I think maybe you subscribed after its posting?)
If Israel were to have reduced Gaza to rubble what was to happen to the civilians there?
The same thing that happens to civilians in any war -- they become refugees, they become subjects of the other side, they die or they rebel against their leaders. War sucks. It's what happened to civilians in Germany or Japan during WW2.
The allies didn’t raze all of Japan and Germany to the ground, which would have been bad. Unless the civilians were allowed to evacuate into Jordan or Egypt, your proposal is essentially that Israel should kill them all during the bombing campaign. I think that’s wrong.
We razed large portions of both Japan and Germany. And were prepared to continue doing so until their leaders unconditionally surrendered, and I think that was justified, not wrong.
I'm not advocating killing civilians as a goal unto itself. Israel should allow civilians to evacuate to Jordan or Egypt, but that is up to those countries rather than Israel.
Well the problem ironically is that the more sinister the motives of the Palestinian cause really are, the more obvious it is why Jordan and Egypt would want to avoid taking these people in.
Many left-liberals in the US view the Arabs in Palestine as a long-standing separate nation-state whose sovereignty must be upheld, not unlike Wilsonian thinking after WW1. But the conservative Jews I talk to view them more like the Sudetenland and Ost Germans constantly agitated for by pan-German nationalists in the European interwar period. Ironically, by taking this perspective, I believe Israeli rightists and their fans in the US unfortunately underrate the Jordanians have done a lot and their king was literally murdered by a refugee from Palestine. That refugee, like many Arabs across the greater region, felt the king's annexation of the west bank betrayed the greater cause to create a full Palestinian state so Israel can remain under perpetual siege and eventually, be removed from the rightful Arab homeland.
Clearly the leaders of Jordan and Egypt are more quietly favorable to Israel than ever in its history. But it's a tough ask for them to take more of these refugees who are obviously both a security threat themselves, and because this very act would betray the Arab nationalist cause and agitate others to violence against their leadership. Once you place Arab nationalism as a major factor here, which was inflamed by Britain to destroy the Ottoman Empire, some things fit into place. It's clear why the Palestinian cause operates the way it does across the Arab world and why Israeli rightists see placating it as negotiating with a paranoid pan-German nationalist.
But it's also clear there's no easy fix, and the Arabs aren't about to assemble anything on the scale of Nazi Germany in the Middle East anytime soon. The Israelis remain overall quite secure, and it's hard for them to invoke Nazism when that refers to an actual genocidal war led by a massive industrial economy across Europe, not just frothing racists in a Bavarian beer hall. Israel is a lot more like a broadly successful Habsburg democracy, desperately trying to figure out what to do about the German and Hungarian nationalists occasionally throwing bombs at them and financed by groups in scattered German states.
"The allies didn’t raze all of Japan and Germany to the ground"
That's true, but that also was in large part because finite resources required the Allies to put some effort into choosing their targets. The targets that *were* selected, even by the western Allies (let alone the Soviets!), tended to be destroyed rather thoroughly if the Axis defenders tried to stand and fight for a prolonged period of time. (See, e.g., the near-complete destruction of cities like Monte Cassino, Aachen, and Manila.) It's also not an exaggeration to say that the comparatively softer touch of the western Allies was facilitated by the European Axis powers imploding, while land battles against the Japanese were overwhelmingly not fought in urban areas simply due to the combination of geography (the Pacific islands) and low population density (rural Burma, New Guinea, etc.).
I think Bomber Harris comes in for a lot of criticism, not just morally but strategically. Is that wrong?
Cliche to say but - it’s complicated. His biggest critics at the time were the Americans because they were pursuing, what they believed, as high minded strategic bombing of targets of importance to the war economy.
The stronger criticism IMO was that British bomber command resources could’ve been used more effectively than area (“terror”) bombing. Especially once long range fighter support came into play via the P51 in 1944
Yes, very true. Which is why I specifically referred to situations where "the Axis defenders tried to stand and fight for a prolonged period of time," and used examples of protracted urban land battles, which are the relevant analogy to what's going on in Gaza.
Just to be clear, the civilians elected Hamas, support its goals, support Oct. 7th, support repeating attempts at Oct. 7th, and mostly reject Hamas because they think they’re not prosecuting their genocidal war of return effectively enough. (If any of those sounds implausible, look up any polling data on the subject.)
So now the question: what happens? They die, and that’s bad, and a war crime, and possibly genocide. What’s the alternative? That this society, if given autonomy, reorganizes itself to produce more genocidal war against Israel.
Neither choice is acceptable. I think this is a real blind spot in our Western framework for thinking about these things. And I’m not trying to stealth advocate for the genocide option - really. But we need more attention to the until now most theoretical problem “what happens when a society, with all but full democratic legitimacy, organizes itself around the goal of wiping out the Jews nearby, despite little to no hope of success?”
They narrowly elected Hamas 15 years ago, many of those living in Gaza today were children or not born then. Also, being thrown out of what you consider your ancestral lands will tend to lead to radicalization… your children being bombed to pieces even more so.
29 likes so far for a comment that argues that all out genocide (turning Gaza into rubble) is a legitimate response, something that even few Allied supporters argued for in WW2. Yikes.
Should the US have reduced Afghanistan to rubble after 9/11? Why not?
Winning a war is not "genocide", no matter how many times that word is invoked.
The allies during WW2 turned numerous parts of Germany (Dresden, Berlin, Dortmund) and Japan (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo) into rubble in pursuit of the reasonable and just objective of degrading their ability to conduct the war and convincing the political leaders of Germany and Japan to surrender unconditionally.
I see no reason Israel shouldn't pursue the war Hamas started to a similar conclusion. Hamas can stop the war at any time -- release the hostages and surrender. Any civilian deaths (1) are their responsibility.
(1) assuming, of course, that Israel doesn't target civilians without a legitimate war aim.
Regarding your question re: Afghanistan: No, we should not have reduced it to rubble because it wasn't necessary to accomplish the objective. The Taliban didn't control the entire country and our forces quickly established operational control of most of the country. When the Taliban retreated, we pursued them. The US lost sight of the operational objectives of the war. We became sidetracked with nation-building, establishing democracy, pursuing women's rights, etc -- so the quagmire continued for 20 years until Biden pulled us out (good decision, Joe!).
Even pure terror bombing (which the Allies did a lot of in WW2, but which is a war crime) is not genocide. This is what Matt's talking about when he refers to obviously bad-faith frivolous criticisms.
"all out genocide (turning Gaza into rubble)"
Killing Gazans is genocide. Bombing them back to the Stone Age is not.
Genocide requires a determined attempt to exterminate a people. Gaza already has a large organization (UNWRA) dedicated to ensuring that (most) Gazans will survive off of foreign-donated food, even if the whole region is turned into rubble around them.
Even taking Israel out of the equation (if that’s possible) the “global community of progressive, humanitarian-minded cosmopolitan types simply imbibes an Arab nationalist worldview” is kind of mind blowing to me.
I’m a very open minded, internationalist person who objectively appreciates the different peoples and regions of the world. However…Arabs, like all peoples, have what I would consider pros and cons about them, but they would not be at the top of my list of people to default side with and take their worldview as most valid.
Wondering where this comes from. Lawrence of Arabia legacy?
Matt has always been a big believer in policy and its effects on public opinion. His pieces are easy to support when you agree with the proposed policy shift. However the irking empirical doubt remain : policy and facts *ought* to affect public opinion but *do* they? In every single Gaza conflict of the past decade, it always starts with a baseline level of pro Israel sentiment that always erodes as the Israeli response continues. This is always the dynamic regardless of the specifics. It’s also the case that the core anti Israel side blames Israel for things like “genocide” continuously , and held anti Israel rallies on Oct 7th itself, and as Matt points out, has zero interest in actually helping Palestinian cilvians. Add to that the fact that most anti Israel opinion is derived from Chinese controlled social media. That the shift in the Biden stance has at least as much to do with the looming elections etc
In short here is the question: would the polls show anything different if the Gaza causality rate was 20k or 40k rather than the current presumed 30k? These are dramatically differently numbers, and in military terms the lower figure may have been achievable only at enormous costs for Israel (if achievable at all). Hence could reflect different policy on the war. But would public opinion have been even minutely affected?
It seems to me that the facts on the ground actually matter very little to global public opinion. A rhetorically smarter Israeli government and leadership could probably have had a positive effect on the margins, but that’s about it.
You already know the answer to your question!
If Gazan casualties were 20k instead of 30k, you would get the exact same level of outcry in liberal Western media, the same opinion pieces on how this is cruel and immoral and Israel must find a way to get civilian casualties down to zero. How? [shrug]
To be 100% clear, I feel terribly sorry for innocent Palestinian civilians, especially children, who have been killed or injured or who are suffering from lack of food and medicine. Just, the critics of Israel don’t seem able to accept that when you’re fighting a fanatical death cult that uses civilians as shields, there are no good options. Damned if I know what the least bad option is. I’m glad I’m not in the Israeli government.
Best of my understanding, the current government has been propping up Hamas to use as a foil against a two-state deal because Bibi doesn’t want one, while also making the situation worse in the West Bank with all the settlements. Doesn’t excuse Hamas’ actions but definitely made tensions worse, so maybe not doing that would’ve been the move.
First, this seems non-responsive. The question is, how should Israel be conducting the war? Your answer is effectively, "it would be good if the entire war would be butterflyed away by an alternative history of the long lasting conflict taken by better, wiser leaders." Yes, that would be good.
Second, "Bibi propped up Hamas" assumes that Bibi was a necessary condition for Hamas being in power. But Hamas's government in Gaza preceded Bibi and continued to exist even when Bibi was out of office. It continues to exist even now as Bibi bombs and shoots the shit out of it. The idea that it was up to Bibi's discretion to have simply made Hamas go away and be replaced with something better is entirely unsupported by any fact. It also seems asburd to me to blame an Israeli for the continued existence of a Palestinian terrorist organization, created and staffed entirely by Palestinians, and voted in by Palestinians in their most recent election, and which continues to enjoy high favorability in every Palestinian poll.
Third, when Israelis blame Bibi for "propping up Hamas," they don't mean that Bibi was out there running guns to Hamas or giving them PR advice. Rather, they are criticizing him for (i) negotiating ceasefires and prisoner exchanges with Hamas; (ii) letting Qatar send foreign aid into Gaza (iii) not toppling Hamas in a huge war and (iv) reducing the stringency of the blockade in response to Hamas's good behavior. Which of these are you saying he shouldn't have done?
"it would be good if the entire war would be butterflyed away by an alternative history of the long lasting conflict taken by better, wiser leaders."
Thank you for making me snort-laugh in the midst of a very somber and disturbing thread. (I mean the topic is disturbing, not the comments, almost all of which are thoughtful and rational.)
Yes I am critiquing the past actions of the Israeli government in the lead up to the current bout of conflict
Absolutely 100% agree, Netanyahu is an a-hole and the strategy of propping up Hamas was both immoral and astonishingly stupid. It brings to mind that famous Napoleon quote: “It’s worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.”
The problem is, that doesn’t really answer the question of what is the least bad thing Israel can do now?
The reality is more complicated than what you describe. No Israeli government would initiate a war to get rid of Hamas in Gaza. The human cost on both sides is too high. The damage to Israel's image is crazy, and Israel's focus is the Iranian nuclear program, not terrorists in Gaza.
When Bibi said that at least Hamas's presence in Gaza provides a way to avoid a Palestinian state, he gave an excuse to his right-wing voters to explain why he is ok with a terrorist organization controlling Gaza. Even without this excuse, things would proceed in the same manner. You have to pay money to Hamas, otherwise, they'll commit terrorism. And a war to uproot Hamas wasn't realistic, until the extreme cruelty and the magnitude of the horrors of October 7 forced it.
Was it really propping up Hamas, or just real politic. Dealing with the people in charge to try and make the best out of a bad situation. Thinking you could deal with Hamas like they have with the PLO
I don’t know about 20k rather than 30k, but if it had been only 10k by this point I am 100% certain that the level of outcry would be less.
Theres a strong anti-Israel contingent that would behave exactly the way they are now, but the majority of Americans aren’t in this group and don’t sympathize with them. For many of people in the broad middle here there are specific events in the fighting that have turned them towards one side or another. If fewer of those events were surprisingly bloody encounters and more of them were surprisingly restrained responses, more of these people would be sympathizing with the Israeli efforts. The difference wouldn’t be as big as one would want to reflect the significant difference in outcome for innocent Palestinian people, but it just seems obviously false to claim that there is *zero* influence.
I think a different Israeli leadership with better message discipline would have helped on the margines. More importantly, I think better and earlier attention on food etc for civlians would have not only been the right call morally but would have helped the war aims. And I certainly think that a good plan of what to replace Hamas with would have dramatically improved Israel's position and served the actual aim of the war! This may have gone a long way in Israel's war aims per se as well as its *diplomatic* relations. These are of course very important. That is to say Israel's terrible leadership is damaging it (of course!). However here I focus on public opinion. On that front I doubt the polls would have shown much else under any realistic scenario. Most especially, the anti Israel line of "progressives" would have been virtually identical, same as their threat to Biden in November. And young people's anti-Israel stance would have been the same, unless Qatar and China were convinced to indoctrinate them differently.
P.S.
as to "specific events" a lot more has to do with biased shoddy reporting in mainstream american media, than the actual facts on the ground, such as the hospital incident, and more recently the tragedy with the aid convoy. The latter is in fact a classic case of "no good deed goes unpunished". Israel did the right thing there but that didn't stop NYT from spreading terrible libel with full force, backtracking only belatedly and half heartedly. Such cases are very numerous and add another problematic layer to how much the "facts" matter as opposed to how they are presented by legacy media and a fortiori social media controlled by adversaries.
PPS
There is also the American polariztaion dynamic to consider. it's becoming increasingly difficult to have american consensus on *anhy* issue. It may be instructive to compare israel to ukraine. Both enjoyed outpouring genral symapthy in the aftermath of the initial attakc oon them by an unscrupulous aanti-american enemy. But in both cases polarization dynamics were fast creeping in as the conflict then dragged on. For whatever reason it came down that dems were seen as the pro ukraine side so gop started to back away (with important exceptions from elite politicians mostly of an older generation) while pro israeal wsa marked republican so dems start backing away(with important exceptions from elite politicians mostly of an older generation). Wrt to american public opinion polarization probably matter a whole lot more than the facts on the ground.
You mention food for civilians. Sincere question, not trolling: how can Israel/US/UN/any other entity providing said food ensure it does not fall into the hands of Hamas? Hamas does not give a fruit fly's fart about the lives of ordinary Gazans; what is to stop them from hoarding all the food and using starving Gazan children as yet another stick to beat Israel with in the court of international public opinion?
It's a big problem. In the immediate term I think parachuting stuff as US and others have been doing is some help, but the best thing that could be done is for Egypt to open its border to refugees, if only for women and children. Anyone who leaves Gaza will get immediate relief and by doing would also help relieve some of the problems for those who stay. It boggles the mind that this is not happening, contrary to just about any other war zone in the world.
You can’t prevent them from any hoarding - but if you can get in large amounts of food aid by many channels, then there will be more abundance, and less value to hoarding.
The anti-Israel line of "progressives" would likely have been the same. It's possible that the people driven by social media would have been the same too. But I think there are a lot of people that have turned negative on the Israeli effort who aren't "progressive" or "very online", and the numbers there would be somewhat different.
For me the willingness to starve 2,5 million civilians is worse than the indiscriminate bombings, as terrible as they are.
Agreed.
Also MY's article and Friedman both have the premise that Israel should care more about international opinion. I think that is true--Israel should care more than it does, and it shouldn't dismiss legitimate constructive criticism along with the massive amounts of bad-faith illegitimate criticism it gets.
But international perspectives isn't Israel's only, or even main, concern. The Israeli government's first priority is the security interests of its own people. This may be some extent tied up in international support, and that should be taken into consideration, of course. But Friedman seems to think that every Israeli action should be premised on how to maximize international support. So in article after article, he fails to clearly address or even articulate the security concerns Israelis have to his specific proposals.
Friedman, like me, supports a two state solution. But proposals need to address the real and legitimate security concerns that Israelis have that a two-state solution will result in rockets towards Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and Jerusalem from just a few km away, if the PA can't get its shit together and govern effectively. Friedman doesn't address these concerns, but ignores them, because he thinks that Israel should do what it can to improve its international standing. So security concerns of Israel's actual citizens isn't important or even germane to his arguments.
Isn’t there an old quote from an Israeli PM: “we (Jews) would rather be despised and alive than pitied and dead”?
I believe it’s something like “we’d rather have your condemnations than your condolences.”
No, drosophilist has it right:
Golda Meir said "If we have to have a choice between dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we'd rather be alive and have the bad image." See p. 26 in Schenker & Schenker (eds.; 1970), "As Gold as Golda". If you have an Internet Archive account, then it's available at https://archive.org/details/asgoodasgoldawar0000meir/page/26/.
A quick Google search didn't turn up anything for your phrasing, although ofc that doesn't mean that nobody notable has ever said it.
I stand corrected! It's so strange I've only ever heard it the other way.
I think that those of us who support a two-state solution -- a number in which I very solidly place myself -- need to be clear-eyed in our expectations. It is NOT, at least for the lifetimes of many of us, going to be "two states living side by side in peace" in the way of Canada and the United States. It's going to be much more like "two states living side by side in peace" very much in the way of East and West Germany at the height of the Cold War, with an impenetrable border, a patrolled "autobahn" connection and guaranteed air corridor between the West Bank and Gaza, a "Right of Return" limited to the borders of the internationally recognized Palestinian State, and probably a demilitarized Palestine. Not ideal, but by far the most desirable possible outcome.
At least before the war started, a lot of Palestinians (including from Gaza) would cross into Israel for work. This work is important for the Palestinian economy.
I'm curious to what extent in a two-state future, that this exchange will be able to continue.
The Palestinian guest workers worked with Hamas, providing information down to which families had pets and where the nurseries were. They are *never* being allowed in Israel again.
At this point I personally doubt that it would be feasible or acceptable to either side, but we can always hope. Part of the peace plan must be a massive investment program, probably funded by the Arab petrostates, to build a functioning economy within Palestine that provides jobs and prosperity. Done right, it's not out of the question that Palestine could become the Singapore of the Near East. Maybe someday in the distant future, Israelis would even be commuting THERE to work!
I don't even think that's possible right now.
It’s an extraordinarily telling thing to me that pro-Palestinian protestors showed up to an event to admonish and criticize a New York Times opinion writer for his columns on Israel and that person was NOT Brett Stephens. Like I don’t think there is a bigger pro Likud* and pro Netanyahu zealot working in all of American mainstream media. And yet this not the person you come to shout at.
Someone in the comments has noted already that this stems from this weird mindset that’s taken hold especially since Trump got elected that GOP or GOP aligned people have no agency. So your protests and criticism doesn’t even think about the much more extreme vision of the GOP. Please see Jared Kushner’s comments that Matt highlighted on Twitter. You know, the guy Trump put in charge of his Israel and Middle East policy last time around. Go ask Mike Johnson what is views about Israel are. It just strikes me that something is seriously off when the target of your pro Palestinian protests in America are not the people who are most threatening to the welfare of Palestinian people.
* my line for 30 years now is I’m pro Israel but anti Likud. Ever since Ariel Sharon became PM (remember him? He looks like a moderate now). Guess I have to update this to anti Likud and anti even worse extremist Likud adjacent nutballs.
I think the difference is that Bret Stephens would look out his window down onto the protestors and think, “What a bunch of idiots. Get a job hippies” and go about his day. Whereas Friedman might look on and think “Jeez, why don’t they like me? Don’t they know I’m on their side? Wow, I need to do better”
Or at least that’s the hope of the protestors.
“The specific thing that has transfixed a global audience of idealistic young people is the concrete suffering of Palestinian civilians. That’s something that could be resolved far short of dissolving the State of Israel.”
This.
From this perspective, I don’t get the description in the opening this article of all people who are opposed to the status quo as being somehow in favor of the collapse of the state of Israel. I am, and have long been, in favor of neither of those things. Coincidentally, “Israel should stop settlement expansion and move towards a two state solution” has been the official US position since the 90s and the reason I am disillusioned, as an America, is because Israel has told the US to fuck itself on those issues consistently for 30 years while expecting our unwavering support for everything else it does. That was never going to work forever, especially now that the Cold War is over and we’re no longer worried about Soviet proxies dominating the Suez etc., and crises are when things break.
So let’s be clear: we have Gaza and the West Bank. In Gaza there are no settlements, there is full autonomy, hell it’s not even demilitarized, it launches endless attacks on Israel culminating in Oct. 7th, and Israel’s response transfixes the global audience.
In the West Bank the opposite of all of these holds, the attacks are well under control, and Israel’s occupation transfixes no audience, for the most part.
Why should Israel ever allow even the possibility of the Gaza situation in the West Bank? In other words: why should Israel ever conceive of allowing a Palestinian state in the West Bank?
I’m not saying you’re wrong - I actually think you’re 100% right! - but it doesn’t seem like too many people have given thought to the incentive structure here.
Yes.
Netanyahu is an a-hole and the suffering of innocent Palestinians is horrible. That said, looking at the order of operations:
1. Israel removes its settlers from Gaza
2. Hamas takes power in Gaza, promptly begins to attack Israel
3. Israel blockades Gaza
4. NGOs send aid to Gaza; Hamas uses most of the aid to build tunnels while regular people are desperately poor
5. Hamas launches a horrific attack on 10/7, specifically targeting kibbutzim that are (or were) predominantly inhabited by progressive-ish Israelis who wanted a peaceful two state solution.
What incentives are there for Israel in all this?
I think you are actually badly misunderstanding the deeply screwed up incentives at work here. Just to take one obvious example, the tunnels are there PRECISELY BECAUSE of the blockade.
This is Econ 101. People need stuff. The land routes are tightly controlled. And so, as has happened in literally every place ever where you have tightly controlled access, an impressive level of human ingenuity has gone into the most profitable exercise available: building smuggling infrastructure.
I'm not saying that the smuggling infrastructure isn't also useful to Hamas. Tunnels are, by their very nature, dual-use. But you are kidding yourself if you think the economics of smuggling isn't a significant contributor to this kind of activity.
Honestly, though, you don't have to do this kind of deep-dive analysis. We know that Netanyahu saw it as in his political interest to incentivize the continued rule of Hamas in Gaza; he believed that their continued ascendance combined with the barrier project and the periodic "mow the grass" policy was the best way to achieve his long-term strategic aims. His expression of that sentiment is old reporting.
I think that was both an immoral AND a stupid call, and I think 10/7 makes that point. But, if you're being honest, it looked pretty good prior to 10/7, at least from the point of view of Israel's elected leadership.
It's fine to call Hamas a bunch of butchers and to blame them for being horrible. But it's silly to act as if the Israeli government was just standing around while stuff happened in Gaza. Gaza is what Hamas AND Israel made of it, through many years of very intentional policy choices. And those outcomes were clear long ago--to circle back to where we started, the Israeli government didn't wake up on 10/8 and go, "Wow, who knew there were tunnels in Gaza?!? When did this happen?"
I think the choices were dumb and immoral. And, to put it bluntly, this is not some kind of hot take. I was sharing it with undergraduates in my modern Middle East survey ten years ago precisely because I was reading a lot of contemporary regional analysis in order to teach that part of the class--my own expertise was squarely in the area of oil policy and rentier economies, rather than Israel-Palestine, which frankly didn't much interest me--and that was what a lot of smart folks were saying.
The present is the product of choices made in the past. There were good strategic and political and personal incentives for the actors involved to make those choices. But acting as if the Israeli government is a bystander in this story is ludicrous, and it clouds all the rest of your analysis.
According to the reporting--which, either you believe it or you don't, but if you want the flavor, check out the NYT story on 12/10/23--Netanyahu felt like this was precisely the point: supporting Hamas's control of Gaza perfectly created the argument you describe, which effectively quieted international pressure for the Two State plan and allowed for the slow-roll ethnic cleansing project (settlement expansion, but also the associated expansion of the security state) in the West Bank to go forward relatively unimpeded.
Honestly, I think that was an immoral but also strategically suspect plan. I think people were always eventually going to notice and object to the West Bank project, as demonstrated by things like the BDS movement. But on the other hand, prior to 10/7 my opinion looked dumb; the BDS people have been more or less sidelined--by law, in many parts of the US--the settler project has made huge gains, Netanyahu was back in power, and Israel was making international political gains with the Arab states as part of a potential anti-Iran coalition.
And who knows? It's not like we've reached the end of this story. Netanyahu is a smart guy, and his allies on the right are deeply committed to their project. Historically speaking, ethnic cleansing projects have a relatively high success rate, depending on how you count. They might well still prevail. If you told me that in twenty years there would be a single Jewish state encompassing, say, 90% of the territory currently in the West Bank and Gaza and ruling over a Palestinian worker population with restricted rights or some kind of Jim Crow type situation, I would find that plausible. Maybe do a UAE-style guest worker class for the Palestinians? I don't think it's the most likely outcome, but I'm a historian, and historically it wouldn't be that unusual of an outcome.
I’m skeptical that this would actually change all that much with the “idealistic young people.”
Israel is the only place in the world where Jews can be safe (despite the fact that they are objectively safer in the United States), but also Israel is forever on the edge of destruction, so you better keep those billions of dollars in cash and arms coming, America. We have to support Israel because Israel keeps Jews safe; we have to support Israel because Israeli Jews are so deeply threatened.
Israel is a strong, independent nation that does not need America's permission for anything, but needs America's money for everything. Don't you dare tell us what to do, Joe Biden, because we're a proud modern self-sufficient country, now raise the funding for the Iron Dome or we're all going to die.
The IDF is the most sophisticated and efficient military in the world, immensely technologically advanced and incredibly well-trained, but also it can't stop killing civilians by the tens of thousands, whoops! The IDF is a proud people's army, one that punches above its weight internationally to an astonishing degree, the perfect picture of a compassionate and humane modern military, also if they bomb a hospital and kill a bunch of innocent people, hey, that's war baby.
etc etc etc
Not that this frothy hyperbole really requires fact checking but our aid to Israel is ~ 100% through the DoD and has been since 2008; we're not sending cash. For further context on the $3.3B of military financing to Israel, we provided $1.2B to Egypt and $0.5B to Jordan.
https://www.foreignassistance.gov/cd/israel/
https://www.foreignassistance.gov/cd/egypt/
https://www.foreignassistance.gov/cd/jordan/
EDIT: Also since I'm still a little worked up over this comment, why are we suddenly acting like "billions of dollars" is a lot of money? Who cares about single digits billions of dollars when we're up to $75B for Ukraine?
It was reading Freddie's articles about Israel that made me realize that it's possible for someone to be a fantastic writer and also a complete moron.
“Complete moron” is very unfair to Freddie, who is highly intelligent. Substitute “ideologically committed to some wrong/bad ideas and extremely pissy when contradicted.”
"Who cares about single digits billions of dollars when we're up to $75B for Ukraine?"
Don't worry, Freddie is on record as opposing that too.
Sounds like you measure Israel entirely by AIPAC propaganda.
Wow, you’d almost think that that sort of propaganda is what he’s talking about.
Not sure why someone who claims to be a Marxist would expect state legitimation propaganda to be true and free of contradictions.
Yes, lots of crazy contradictions. Nothing makes sense, and the fighting and hatred and recriminations continues to continue …
“Just because they're after you doesn't mean you're not paranoid” is true when it comes to good-faith critics writ large, but is totally laughable when it comes to who is running Gaza itself. Given what self-governance and disengagement since 2005 has done to the place, how could one not be paranoid about what it (or the West Bank under similar management) given full-blown statehood and a military, could do?
"you could have a peace deal in which Palestinians are citizens of their own sovereign state (or of two separate Palestinian states) that, like Jordan and Egypt, control their own borders and are at peace with Israel. There are plenty of people who don’t like that idea, who want to reverse the nakba of 1948 and liberate all of historical Palestine. But those people would get far less international support if Israel were acting the way Friedman says they should act."
The problem is that the (substantial) minority that doesn't like it can still exercise the "terrorist veto" (like a heckler's veto, but with guns), and any Palestinian state is very unlikely to be able to control that. Say what you will about Israel, but when they decide (as they did with settlers in Gaza in 2005) to control their most extreme elements, they can actually do it.
Where does that leave us though?
How would you eliminate the possibility of terrorism outside of committing genocide and wiping out every Palestinian?
It leaves us where we currently are. I didn't say there were any good outcomes. Yes, civilian casualties are bad, but I don't think that criticism of Israel is legitimate unless it is paired with a clear-eyed suggestion for what they should do instead. Most critics of Israel are not constrained by that.
Great post. As an American Jew and moderate dem, It's been disheartening to me to see that *many* Jewish moderate dems that eschewed the identitarian "there's white supremacy under every rock" nonsense have embraced an identitarian "there's anti-semitism under every rock" in the last few years.
For example, it's taken as an article of faith that Ilhan Omar's "It's all about the Benjamins" tweet was an obvious anti-semitic, "saying the quiet part out loud" take. But it's obviously true that AIPAC massive political funding is intended to steer policy in favor of Israel - that's the point! Decrying the influence of money in politics is commonplace. Just because there's a bad stereotype that Jews use money to control things doesn't mean that sometimes Jewish people don't use money to try to control things!
This mindset has made it very easy to discount valid criticisms of Israel.
On the other hand we have Jews hiding in locked rooms and storage closets on "elite" college campuses to avoid mobs.
I find Matt’s piece to be correct in the bottom line but totally unhelpful. This is a piece Matt should have seriously considered translating to Hebrew and publishing to an Israeli audience. It’s not one I find particularly helpful in the context of American discourse. The ”blame Israel” discourse, which at the end of the day this piece is a part of, even though written with an explicit pro Israeli intention, is ironically exacerbating the very dynamic it’s out to condemn. What we rather need is far more forceful condemnation of the anti semitic left (and there is no reason to equivocate on this characterization). What we neeed is a whole piece talking about things like Egypt’s refugee policy, mentioning Hamas intractable positions on the hostage deal that are a major factor in the war, mentioning the importance of the Biden admin humanitarian relief effforts (and how they are getting at least Israel’s cooperation, while the anti Israel croud never called for them!).
In short, Matt’s extremely apologetic stance is understandable for him as a basically pro Israeli American Jew living and working in increasingly anti Israel and anti semitic circles. But it’s very counterproductive. He’d do far better to use his voice in these circles to push back.
Part of the reason support for Israel is going down is that people like you keep throwing around antisemitism charges in response to any criticism of the Israeli government. You’re not doing the pro-Israel cause any favors with that.
IIRC, THPacis is European, and in Europe, honest-to-goodness straight-up any-reasonable-person-would-recognize-it-as-such anti-Semitism is both much more common in highly educated circles and more correlated with opinion about Israel than it is in the US. I get the sense that this colors his perception of the issue.
The situation in the US is not nearly as bad as much of Europe, but it's becoming much worse than it used to be with alarming speed and little push back. There is still way too much denial and deflection going on, as we can see.
Yes there are too many people denying the Israeli government’s role in making the problem worse and deflecting any criticism of said role with charges of antisemitism
So antisemitism is Israel's fault now? Are you even listening to yourself? I would stop digging if I were you
No, I didn't say that. For someone in academia your reading comprehension doesn't seem great.
You could do better with this ridiculous strawman, Milan, but you won't.
"Part of the reason support for Israel is going down is that people like you keep throwing around antisemitism charges in response to any criticism of the Israeli government."
I'd like to see some polling on this, please. For example, if you ask people: "What is the thing you would most like Israel or Jews in general to change regarding the current war in Gaza?" then what proportion answer "stop accusing people of anti-semitism"?
I suspect the number is very small indeed.
Sure thing, wire me $1000 and I'll get a YouGov survey to you by end of week
I appreciate you responding in earnest to me here, but I don't have $1000 to drop on an internet argument.
Thanks, again, though.
I’m slightly skeptical that that is a significant factor.
Just wanted to give you props for making an important point that’s probably going to be genuinely unpopular with a significant chunk of your readership.
“If your government includes very vocally pro-ethnic cleansing guys, you kill a civilian population faster than the Khmer Rouge, and you don’t have a clear plan for the postwar, a lot of otherwise persuadable people will see you as bad actors”* is both true and pretty obvious, but a lot of people are either deeply triggered or engaging in motivated reasoning and don’t want to see it.
* The literal Hamas apologists tend to have a similar problem, but there are just a lot fewer of them on this site and in the US in general.
We have already seen them in today’s comment section, some explicitly voicing support for turning all of Gaza into rubble. It’s sickening.