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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.

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author

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.

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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.

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author

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.

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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.

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What’s the solution then? Kill or displace them all? Leave Gaza permanently under Israeli occupation?

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If Palestinians refuse to accept a 2SS, then yes, permanent military occupation. That still obligates Israel to stop expanding into the West Bank.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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We should be clear eyed about the fact that Gazans do support Hamas.

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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.

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I sure as shit wouldn’t support the Israelis if I was a Palestinian. What do you expect?

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"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.

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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.

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What do you think happens to Gazans who are found to be collaborating with the IDF?

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Exerting political pressure on the people who care more what you have to say is like looking for your keys under the street light.

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Really? So us center-leftist should try and influence Marjorie Taylor Green rather than other Democrats?

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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.

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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.

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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”.

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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.

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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.

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author

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.

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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.

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Mar 20·edited Mar 21

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.

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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On Israel specifically people here lose their rationality it seems.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 :)

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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?

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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.

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Not starving innocent civilians?

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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.

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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.

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Oh really? Like what? Would love to hear strategies for eliminating Hamas that involve fewer civilian casualties.

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Mar 20Liked by Ben Krauss

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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And a military leadership that appears to be doing nothing to rein in the rank-and-file.

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Mar 20·edited Mar 20

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.

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Mar 20·edited Mar 20

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

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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?

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It is perhaps unavoidable.

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"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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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>>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.

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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.

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"near-unanimous support for terrorism"

Hamas only barely won. Also, many Irish people supported the IRA.

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I didn’t say Hamas. I said terrorism. The support for October 7th is overwhelming in polls. Even in the wider Arab world.

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Precisely

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Mar 20Liked by Ben Krauss

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.

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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.)

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This seems to me to be a normal human response. I suspect were I in their position I would thirst for revenge as well.

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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.)

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Seeing your kids being bombed to death usually has that effect on people.

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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.

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"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."

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“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.

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You won't find me defending Israel's actions in the West Bank in any way.

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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.

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…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.

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“It’s very much a both-sides situation…”

It’s very much not. One side is genocidal, and it’s not the Israelis.

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What a relief, to have sorted out the goodies and the baddies.

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It’s not that complicated.

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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.

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"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.

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>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.

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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.

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Mar 20·edited Mar 20

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.

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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.

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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.

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He does not say it is a gotcha. He says the settlements are illegitimate. He also says the analogy is poor, which it is.

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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.

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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.

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Mar 20·edited Mar 20

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.

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Mar 20·edited Mar 20

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."

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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).

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History didn’t start on October 7, but this war did.

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deletedMar 20·edited Mar 20
Comment deleted
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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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?

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*Democrat trying to explain Arab nationalists to a progressive*: "First, imagine a bloodthirsty terrorist like Kevin McCarthy or Mike Johnson."

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Mar 20·edited Mar 20

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.

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author

Thanks for posting and giving an inside context. Please comment more, your thoughtfulness is appreciated.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Mar 20·edited Mar 20

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.

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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.

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“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?

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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.

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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.

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Duterte enjoys broad support though, no?

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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.

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Bibi endorsed Romney in 2012!

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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...

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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In a more functional relationship, the Israelis would be playing ball with Biden so that Biden didn't have to have public disagreements.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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"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?

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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.

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founding

"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.

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Destroy the tunnels and cripple Hamas’s military capability and command and control? I don’t think it’s much of a mystery.

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And then?

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What is your plan for ending the conflict and bringing peace to the region?

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founding

<Crickets>

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What is the end game?

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The end game is the elimination of Hamas. Everything else flows downstream from that.

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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...

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Mar 20Liked by Ben Krauss

Thanks for posting. Helpful firsthand context.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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Thank you for your input.

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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...

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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.)

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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?

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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.

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AND, importantly, the Mosul population had the option to flee.

Gazans are not given that option because of Egyptian concerns.

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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.

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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.

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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...

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Was there much expectation Iran would be able to make a nuke in four years? Do not remember.

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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.

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What I don’t get is why they want Iran empowered as part of this picture.

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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.

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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.

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What would be other current examples of urban warfare?

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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!

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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.")

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“…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.

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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

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Mar 20·edited Mar 20

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.

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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

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Yeah, I was probably thinking more of Falluja - both were part of the same broader operation.

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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

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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If that means there's only 5-10k Hamas fighters left then shouldn't they be able to defeat the rest rather easily?

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Most are in Rafah I believe

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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.

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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.

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It means that it's taken them this long to get to 15k of 30k (estimates of Hamas's size vary).

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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

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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.

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“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?

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As not clownish?

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What is it you believe he accomplished by attempting to interfere with democracy in Israel?

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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.

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“I mean again I reject the idea that he was interfering in any meaningful way”

I did say it was clownish.

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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.

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Whether he has a right to complain completely misses the point.

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