Tom Kando
(References in this piece are to David Remnick’s article In the Cities of Killing published in the New Yorker on November 6, 2023)
It has been over a month since Hamas’ attack ignited the current war and prompted Israel to retaliate with a vengeance. On October 7, Hamas invaded southern Israel and murdered fourteen hundred inhabitants of kibbutzim such as Kfar Aza and Be’eri and revelers at the Nova music festival. Babies were beheaded, parents were executed in front of their children, rape and other atrocities were committed. Over two hundred and forty hostages were taken, and remain in Hamas custody. Some of the civilian inhabitants of Northern Gaza followed the terrorists into Israel and participated in the slaughter and plunder. Hamas labeled the event the Al-Aqsa Flood. Israel calls it Black Saturday. History may remember it as October 7, as America remembers 9/11.
Within a few days, Israel’s IDF began a bombing campaign against Gaza, a campaign of increasing ferocity. It told the one million Palestinians who live in Northern Gaza to evacuate the area, which was identified as the target area. In fact, all of Gaza became the target. Leaving the northern part to find safety elsewhere was an impossibility. Hence, hundreds of children, women and other non-combatants were killed every day, thousands every week. Entire neighborhoods were pulverized, including hospitals, refugee camps, shopping areas and residential housing.
Hamas and its supporters have vowed to destroy Israel. Its charter remains clear: Its basic goal is the total elimination of Israel, “”from the river to the sea.” Their ultimate ambition, as that of supporters such as Hezbollah and Iran, is the elimination of the “Zionist entity.” In 2001, a founder of Hamas said that “the goal is to establish an Islamic state in Palestine, in Egypt, in Lebanon, in Saudi Arabia, everywhere, under a single Caliphate...we will not tolerate a non-Islamic state on Islamic lands.” (P.33).
Israel is permitting practically no humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. The supplies of water, medicine, food and fuel to two and a half million people are approaching zero. Mass death from starvation, disease and bombings is imminent.
The world continues to see a sharp rise in anti-Semitism: According to FBI director Christopher Wray, hate crimes against Jews make up 60% of all religious hate crimes in the US, where Jews make up 2.4% of the population. The original Hamas covenant describes Jews as “cunning, greedy, seeking world domination, as starting the First World War and the Second World War in order to make huge profits from trading war material” (p. 34)
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet’s planned solution to the crisis is to continue indiscriminate bombing indefinitely, or at least until all the hostages are freed. Their stated goal is the total destruction of Hamas. They do not contemplate any temporary cease-fire, arguing that this would be tantmount to surrender.
In 2005, Israel evacuated Gaza. Two years later, Hamas established its rule over that territory. Instead of using its significant resources (including generous aid from wealthy Arab states) to develop Gaza into a prosperous and peaceful territory, Hamas proceeded to arm itself to the teeth and to devote itself to chronic war with Israel. In a way, this was an experiment in “two-states coexistence “ and it failed..
The Netanyahu government has turned its back on any “two-state solution.” It has encouraged the continued and increasingly uncontrolled colonization of the West Bank by hardline orthodox Jewish settlers. Netanyahu also bears responsibility for being caught off-guard by the October 7 attack, despite Israel’s vaunted Mossad and its past excellence in intelligence. The prime minister and his cronies were too busy trying to reduce the power of the Israeli Supreme Court, and other shenanigans.
Remnick writes that “the task of holding in one’s head multiple thoughts - multiple facts (is) nearly impossible.” (p. 41).
The tragedy of October 7 was quickly glossed over by a majority of the public, which now focuses almost exclusively on Israel’s disproportionate response. Israel’s fight is existential, as its enemies stated goal is the country’s total elimination.
As secretary of state Antony Blinken said, “there will be no partners for peace if (Israel) is consumed by humanitarian catastrophe and....indifferent to the plight (of the Palestinians...)”
When the Ukraine war began, I wrote here that NATO going to war against Russia was not an option. This was not because I sympathized with Russia, but because escalation towards a nuclear World War Three was unthinkable. I now write in the same vein.
October 7 and its aftermath have made the problem more difficult and the solution more remote. Positions are hardening. The realization of a two-state solution and the peaceful coexistence of Jews and Palestinians seem more remote than ever. The current crisis radicalizes both sides, strengthening the Right and support for Netanyahu in Israel, and anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism elsewhere. Diplomacy, compromise and negotiations have become less likely. Israel may make the same mistakes which the US made after 9/11, and its enemies seem to be ready for all-out war.
The past cannot be changed. Only the future can. The rise of Zionism, great power agreements in the previous century and the creation of Israel in 1948 are accomplished facts. Today, America remains the only conceivable broker in this mess. Today, both sides speak of war as the solution. This must change, even as the problem has become much more intractable.
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11 comments:
Neither Zionists nor Hamas are willing to live together and treat each other with equal intrinsic worth. This is tribalism. Modern civilization requires legal frameworks that enable all people to have potential or actual sovereignty or this will be the result. Both governments may have been elected, but that doesn’t make them legitimate. To be legitimate they must serve the personal sovereignty of all residents.
Almost unmentioned is the fact that about 2 million Arabs are citizens of Israel, more than live in the West Bank. So more than half of the "Palestinians" (a recent group) are in fact Israeli citizens and most seem to be supporting their nation. The unbending hostility is that of Islamic Hamas against the Jews, in fact their only ideology is Jew-hate. The Romans had a solution: exile them all and salt the earth.
Thanks for your comments.
Both Gordon and Unknown make valid comments. However, I do not agree with Unknown when he suggests that we emulate ancient Rome's policies. I would hope that we have made some progress over the past two thousand years.
The number of college kids calling Jews "colonizers" & "occupiers" is indicative of the sad state of American education system that borders on the Nazi youth. Yes I know that many the Jews there now are from or descended from European jews. But about 1/2 are from Jews that have always been there & 1/4 are from Europe & the other areas of the Middle East. The Jews from Persia & the Middle East that immigrated immediately as Israel was made safe for Jews, because they were forced into extreme poverty by discrimination so harsh the it makes the Jim Crow era seem like good times. The indoctrination of the kids chanting "from the river to the sea" could only be explained by such antisemitic teachers & administrators fully entrenched in the education institutions it should terrify everyone.
You must not make up words and then use them to your advantage. A Semite is an Arab or a Jew. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism (or IHRA definition) is a non-legally binding statement on what antisemitism is. No other group invents a word to desribe the discrimination they suffer but then you are special, the chosen ones, chosen by The U.S. and Britain anyway.
You talk of indoctrination but have you been to school in Israel?
If college kids are calling Jews colonizers & occupiers it is because they are mistaken. I think though they only mean those Jews who continue to choose to live in Israel once they understand how it is there.
I appreciated your thoughtful perspective of this past month’s horrific conflict in Gaza. I pray for solutions to come forth but am at a loss as to what will bring about lasting peace in the Middle East.
Thank you for your comments.
Unknown brings up the plight of Jewish immigrants to Israel, and anti-Semitism. Yes, university campuses are where one finds the strongest support for Palestinians, and opposition to Zionism. Many people see this as a bias.
It is not entirely clear what anonymous’ point is.
Whatever the origins of the term “Semite” are (Phoenicians and Carthaginians were Semitic, nearly three thousand years ago), in the twentieth century, most people understand it to refer to Jews, particularly when it is part of the expression “anti-Semitism.”
When, in the context of the current conflict between Jews and Muslims, the opposite prejudice is brought up, it is labeled “Islamophobia.”
Whether one labels as colonizers or occupiers Jewish settlers in areas designated or claimed to be for Palestinians (such as the West Bank) is debatable, I suppose. In any event, if this conflict is ever to be resolved, there will have to be land swaps, and at least some of those “settlers” will have to be evacuated, as happened for example when Jews were evacuated from Gaza in 2005.
PS. Like Bob, I am at a loss as to how to solve this problem. The only firm belief I have is that, somehow, both sides need to de-escalate. Currently, things are moving in the wrong direction
Throwing 700 thousand jews out of their home will not achieve peace. Why should Jews be allowed to live in Europe, America, South Africa, etc., but not in Judea? Talking about ethnic cleansing. A state based on ethnic purity is bound to fail. The British tried it during the Palestinian Mandate era, when the Jews were not allowed to buy land, so the British could appease an Arab leader. Are Jwish civil rights inferior to other peoples’ civil rights? Settlers bought land but are not allowed to build on that land? Blaming the settlers for all the pathologies of the Arab world is not going to bring peace. It is one more reason to blame Israel for a problem they have not created.
Thanks Tom, this needs to be said over and over again
There does not seem to be any alternative to a two-states solution, which means the creation of a Palestinian country adjacent to Israel. Talking about this does not mean blaming the settlers for all the pathologies of the Arab world, but to recognize that all parties will have to accept compromises, or else there will never be peace in that part of the world, or for that matter in many other parts of the world that connect to that part, i.e. the US, Europe, Iran the entire Muslim world, etc.
The two-states goal would not necessarily have to be ethnic cleansing or ethnic purity, were it not for the fact that mutual hatred has become so rampant.
The two-state objective is to get to a consensus about territory, about redrawing the map. To which country does a given area belong? In peaceful times, countries can be home to diverse populations that coexist in harmony. Look at Canada, Belgium, etc.
But this does not work when tribalism and mutual hatred take over. Yugoslavia fell apart due to tribalism. Before asshole Putin saw some idiotic reason to annex parts of Ukraine, Russians and Ukrainians had lived together peacefully for generations on both sides of the border - many Russians living in Ukraine and vice-versa.
The tragedy is that tribalism and ethnic zealotry have taken over. The parties have inflicted too much pain on each other. They hate each other and only want to kill each other. When this happens, moving and separation are the best option, as in divorce.
The West Bank/Judea was annexed by Israel in 1967. It is one area that is contested by both Israel and the PLO. Whether this is the territory that should be considered as the basis for a Palestinian state is not for me to propose. All I am saying is that there will not be peace until a two-states solution is found. Sadly, as a result of decades of mutual hatred, the two states will probably become ethnically homogeneous, one Jewish and one Palestinian. This would not necessarily have to be so, Ideally, no one would have to be expelled from anywhere.
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