Israel and West Bank Settlements

[cradleandshoot]

...Or have we dispensed with thinking and moved to being "men of action"?!? Wake me up after all of the "bold actions to preserve their existence" and let me know how the situation is different.

Pizza, It's Wednesday and Israel still hasn't made any wholesale moves. They're doing plenty of thinking, planning...

Reportedly, there have been over a thousand air strikes into Gaza since this began, neighborhoods being razed to rubble, hospitals overwhelmed (of course), official death count...in Gaza... will exceed Israeli death count as of today...all power cut off, water cut off; a quarter million Gaza residents already displaced from their homes...hundreds of thousands of Israeli troops called up, tanks massing.

I think that's "wholesale moves".
All that hasn't yet happened is the actual movement of tanks and troops into Gaza. And what happens from there...

I have no predictions on timetable, but reportedly Hamas's air defense system is knocked out.

Yet in the middle of this bombardment Hamas was still launching rockets into Israel from the rubble. What does that tell all you liberal pinheads? I'm darn sure these Hamas mother effers want to keep killing as many Jews as they possibly can.

[Matnum PI]

Am amazed to see Jews referred to as "anti Semitic". I post on other websites about the current events and some of that discussion can get rather heated at times. But nobody else (thus far) has resorted to calling or suggesting that some Jews are anti Semite. That's rather unique for this site.

Some blacks are racist towards blacks. Some Latinos are racist towards Latinos. Some gays are homophobic towards gays. Are these any worse? Better? Some Jews are antisemitic. Do you believe otherwise?

[Brooklyn]

Some Jews are antisemitic. Do you believe otherwise?

In this crazy world anything is possible. But I've never known any. Do you?

[Seacoaster(1)]

Tom Friedman in the NY Times today. An opinion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/opin ... amas-.html

"I have covered this conflict for almost 50 years, and I’ve seen Israelis and Palestinians do a lot of awful things to one another: Palestinian suicide bombers blowing up Israeli discos and buses; Israeli fighter jets hitting neighborhoods in Gaza that house Hamas fighters but also causing massive civilian casualties. But I’ve not seen something like what happened last weekend: individual Hamas fighters rounding up Israeli men, women and children, looking them in the eyes, gunning them down and, in one case, parading a naked woman around Gaza to shouts of “Allahu akbar.”

The last time I witnessed that level of face-to-face barbarism was the massacre of Palestinian men, women and children by Christian militiamen in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982, where the first victim I encountered was an older man with a white beard and a bullet hole in his temple.

While I have no illusions about Hamas’s long-established commitment to the destruction of the Jewish state, I am nonetheless asking myself today: Where did this ISIS-like impulse for mass murder as the primary goal come from? Not the seizing of territory, but plain murder? There is something new here that is important to understand.

Since I can’t interview the Hamas leadership, I’m drawing on my experience in the region, and here’s how I see it.

While this operation was surely planned by Hamas leaders months ago, I think its emotional origins can be explained in part by a photograph that appeared in the Israeli press on Oct. 3. A few Israeli government ministers had gone to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for their first official visit ever, to attend international conferences in late September and early October, and it got a lot of coverage in the Israeli press.

But having lived in both Beirut and Jerusalem, I was struck most by that unusual photo — an image that I knew would trigger completely different emotional reactions in both worlds.

It was taken by the team of Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, who was attending a U.N. postal conference in Riyadh, as they were conducting a prayer service in their hotel room for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. One of them took a picture of a colleague wearing a traditional Jewish prayer shawl and yarmulke while holding up a Torah scroll with the Riyadh skyline in the window beyond.

For Israeli Jews, that picture is a dream come true — the ultimate expression of finally being accepted in the Middle East, more than a century after the start of the Zionist movement to build a modern democratic state in the biblical homeland of the Jewish people. To be able to pray with a Torah in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the home of its two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, is a level of acceptance that touches the soul of every Israeli Jew.

But that same photo ignites a powerful and emotional rage in many Palestinians, particularly those affiliated with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. For them, that picture is the full expression of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s supreme goal: to prove to all naysayers, indeed to rub their noses in the fact, that he can make peace with all the Arab states — even Saudi Arabia — and not have to give the Palestinians a single inch.

As far as diplomacy goes, that has been Netanyahu’s life’s mission: to prove to everyone that Israel can have its cake — acceptance by all the surrounding Arab states — and eat the Palestinians’ territory, too.

I have no idea whether the Hamas leadership saw that particular picture, but they have been fully aware of the ongoing evolution it reflects. I believe one reason Hamas not only launched this assault now — but also seemingly ordered it to be as murderous as possible — was to trigger an Israeli overreaction, like an invasion of the Gaza Strip, that would lead to massive Palestinian civilian casualties and in that way force Saudi Arabia to back away from the U.S.-brokered deal now in discussion to promote normalization between Riyadh and the Jewish state. As well as to force the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, which were part of the Abraham Accords produced by the Trump administration, to take a step back from Israel.

The essence of Hamas’s message to Netanyahu and his far-right ruling coalition of Jewish supremacists and ultra-Orthodox is this: You will never be at home here — no matter how much of our land our gulf Arab brothers sell you. We will force you to lose your minds and do crazy things to Gaza that force the Arab states to shun you.

Pay attention: Hamas did not send operatives to the Israeli-occupied West Bank (and it has plenty there) to attack Jewish settlements. It focused its onslaught on Israeli villages and kibbutz farms that were not part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“These were the homes of the people of pre-1967 Israel, democratic Israel, liberal Israel — living in peaceful kibbutzim or going to a life-loving disco party,” the Israeli writer Ari Shavit remarked to me. For Hamas, “Israel’s mere existence is a provocation,” he said. In one kibbutz alone, Be’eri, at least 108 people, including children, were just gunned down.

So how can America best help Israel now, besides standing behind its right to protect itself, as President Biden so forcefully did in his speech today? I think the U.S. needs to do three things.

First, I hope the president is asking Israel to ask itself this question as it considers what to do next in Gaza: What do my worst enemies want me to do — and how can I do just the opposite?

What Israel’s worst enemies — Hamas and Iran — want is for Israel to invade Gaza and get enmeshed in a strategic overreach there that would make America’s entanglement in Falluja look like a children’s birthday party. We are talking house-to-house fighting that would undermine whatever sympathy Israel has garnered on the world stage, deflect world attention from the murderous regime in Tehran and force Israel to stretch its forces to permanently occupy Gaza and the West Bank.

Hamas and Iran absolutely do not want Israel to refrain from going into Gaza very deep or long.

Nor does Hamas want the U.S. and Israel to proceed instead as fast as possible with negotiations to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia as part of a deal that would also require Israel to make real concessions to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which has accepted Israel as part of the Oslo peace accords.

But for Israel to do what is most in its interests, not those of Hamas and Iran, will likely require some very tough love between Biden and Netanyahu. One must never forget that Netanyahu always seemed to prefer to deal with a Hamas that was unremittingly hostile to Israel than with its rival, the more moderate Palestinian Authority — which Netanyahu did everything he could to discredit, even though the Palestinian Authority has long worked closely with Israeli security services to keep the West Bank quiet, and Netanyahu knows it.

Netanyahu has never wanted the world to believe that there are “good Palestinians” ready to live side by side with Israel in peace and try to nurture them. For years now he’s always wanted to tell U.S. presidents: What do you want from me? I have no one to talk to on the Palestinian side.

That’s how Israel reached a stage where the increasingly costly — morally and financially — Israeli occupation of the West Bank has not even been an issue in the last five Israeli elections.

Or as Chuck Freilich, a former deputy Israeli national security adviser, wrote in an essay in Haaretz on Sunday: “For a decade and a half Prime Minister Netanyahu has sought to institutionalize the divide between the West Bank and Gaza, undermine the Palestinian Authority, the P.A., and conduct de facto cooperation with Hamas, all designed to demonstrate the absence of a Palestinian partner and to ensure that there could be no peace process that might have required territorial compromise in the West Bank.”

Lastly, I hope Biden is telling Netanyahu that America will do everything it can to help democratic Israel defend itself from the theocratic fascists of Hamas — and their soul brothers of Hezbollah in Lebanon, should they enter the fight.

But Netanyahu’s side of the bargain is that he has to reconnect himself with liberal democratic Israel, so the world and the region sees this not as a religious war but as a war between the frontline of democracy and the frontline of theocracy. That means Netanyahu has to change his cabinet, expel the religious zealots and create a national unity government with Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid.

Unfortunately, Netanyahu is still prioritizing his coalition of zealots, whom he needs to protect him from his corruption trial and to complete his judicial coup that would neuter the Supreme Court of Israel. That’s really messed up.

And it is a very important reason Israel was caught off guard in the first place. Netanyahu was so wedded to this personal agenda that he was ready to divide Israeli society like never before — and splinter his own army and air force in the process — to get control of the courts.

I promise you that if and when there’s an inquiry into how the Israeli Army could have so missed this Hamas buildup, investigators will discover that the Israeli Army leadership had to spend so much time just keeping its air force pilots and reserve officers from boycotting their service to protest Netanyahu’s judicial coup — not to mention the time, attention and resources they had to devote to preventing extremist settlers and religious zealots from doing crazy things in Jerusalem and the West Bank — that they took their eyes off the ball.

America cannot protect Israel in the long run from the very real threats it faces unless Israel has a government that reflects the best, not the worst, of its society, and unless that government is ready to try to forge compromises with the best, not the worst, of Palestinian society."

[Seacoaster(1)]

Another opinion in the Times (attribution below):

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/opin ... asion.html

"Four days after Hamas’s attack, Israel appeared poised to order a full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

With more than 1,000 killed in Israel and 2,600 wounded in the deadliest incursion on Israeli territory in its history, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under enormous pressure to send its forces into the enclave. It has already responded with airstrikes that have killed more than 900 Palestinians in Gaza.

Before going any further, Israel must consider that it may be walking into a Gaza trap. Here is why.

Hamas knew that the attack on Saturday would give Mr. Netanyahu little choice but to retaliate with a ground invasion, and it knows that the Israel Defense Forces’ technology and military superiority would offer little advantage on the crowded streets of Gaza City; in Jabalia, Gaza’s largest refugee camp; or through Hamas’s labyrinth of underground tunnels. Gaza, 140 square miles with a population of more than two million, is one of the most densely populated places on earth.

It appears Hamas wants to draw Israeli soldiers into a quagmire, as Hezbollah did in Southern Lebanon from 1985 to 2000. After years of fighting, Israel suffered a humiliating and chaotic withdrawal, leaving an empowered and threatening Hezbollah on its northern border.

Why might Hamas want to draw the Israel Defense Forces into a bloody ground battle? Hamas is the uncontested power in Gaza, though elections have not been held since 2006. The Palestinian Authority; its main political party, Fatah; the business community; civil society; and family clan leaders cannot effectively challenge Hamas, which has become only stronger after each successive conflict with Israel. Despite an Israeli blockade and round-the-clock surveillance, Hamas has apparently been able to build and buy more rockets, steadily improve their range and accuracy, provide offensive combat training for its fighters and develop an intelligence network sophisticated and far-reaching enough to launch a simultaneous assault on 22 Israeli locations. Hamas surely believes it can defeat the Israelis on its home turf in a war of attrition.

Hamas also stands to expand its political credibility in the West Bank if Israel invades Gaza, particularly if Israeli advances stall. Many Palestinians in the West Bank already regard the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as corrupt, enfeebled and unable to realize the aspirations of its people. Israel’s July incursion into the West Bank city of Jenin further highlighted that the government of the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, can neither protect the people of Jenin nor provide a vision of a more hopeful future. If Israel invades Gaza, Hamas may have the public support to challenge the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and potentially assume leadership as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.

In the broader region, Hamas can also count on its ally Hezbollah. The day after the Hamas attack in southern Israel, Hezbollah, presumably in an attempt to test the readiness of Israeli forces, engaged in fighting with the Israeli military along the northern border near Shebaa Farms, land that is controlled by Israel but claimed by Lebanon. Hezbollah may seek to gain advantage if Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank.

Despite its grotesque atrocities against civilians, Hamas may have already reset the political realignment in the Middle East by disrupting prospective diplomatic talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But if Gaza were now to escalate into a protracted ground war, Hamas could also undermine the Abraham Accords, which established agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and break the trend of increasing Arab-Israeli normalization. The Palestinian Authority was unable to block the Abraham Accords, but Hamas could still unwind them.

Israel, of course, can count on U.S. support as it takes its next steps. The Biden administration has sent a carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, in what it has said is a “deterrence posture” that will provide the Israel Defense Forces with “additional equipment and resources, including munitions.” The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel immediately after President Biden’s news conference on Tuesday.

Over the next week or so, Israel could destroy much of Hamas’s infrastructure. The Israel Defense Forces will channel the outrage of the nation if it launches a ground invasion of Gaza and will exact an enormous price for Hamas’s massacre in the Kfar Aza kibbutz. And yet operationally, Hamas complicates the Israel Defense Forces’ freedom of action, given that it holds at least 150 hostages. If a ground war drags on, Israel would make battlefield gains but almost certainly fail to destroy Hamas’s governing ideology or the Palestinians’ unrealized aspirations for statehood.

To avoid the Gaza trap, Israel needs Arab allies on the ground and in the region. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan have all regarded Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the Muslim Brotherhood as a collective strategic threat. To gain the support of the key regional leaders, Israel will have to offer major security concessions and intelligence in the event of a wider war with Iran and set a meaningful and clear political horizon for a post-Abbas, post-Hamas Palestinian state. Yet Mr. Netanyahu faces a steep credibility gap both domestically and with Israel’s Arab neighbors. Only a true unity government may be able to blunt the Hamas threat with breakthrough diplomacy in the region. That success might cost him his job.

The days ahead will be bloody and difficult for Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas may well have set a trap if it induces an Israeli invasion of Gaza. Before Israel makes that call, it needs to have a strategy for exiting Gaza and a plan for the day after. An Israeli miscalculation in Gaza could trigger a crisis in the Middle East that lasts for generations."

R. David Harden is a former assistant administrator at USAID’s bureau for democracy, conflict and humanitarian assistance; USAID mission director to the West Bank and Gaza; and senior adviser to President Barack Obama’s special envoy for Middle East peace.

[Matnum PI]

But I've never known any. Do you?

Holy crow, yes. Many. The most common bigotry I've found of this ilk is wherever there can be more (or less). e.g. More black, more Latino, more gay, more Jewish, etc. A third generation Latino being bigoted towards a first generation. A black in New Canaan being bigoted towards a black in Bed-Stuy. (Chris Rock is a good comedian so he can get away with it but his blacks vs. n'ers bit is a good example.) Talk to innumerable Jews on the Upper East and West side of Manhattan about the Jews in Boro Park, Williamsburg, and Crown Heights and you'll hear some of the most antisemitic words you've ever heard.

[a fan]

Some Jews are antisemitic. Do you believe otherwise?

In this crazy world anything is possible. But I've never known any. Do you?

Yes. Several. There were part of the nutjob fringe in Ann Arbor, MI.

[Farfromgeneva]

Some Jews are antisemitic. Do you believe otherwise?

In this crazy world anything is possible. But I've never known any. Do you?

Yes to all the above. And I know I’m not alone on this.

Heck I worked in DC with this gay French dude named Olivier. Buttoned up was here in the middle of the masters/graduate program at HEC which is a pretty nice business school. We’d walk around DuPont sometimes and see the more eclectic and ridiculous of the cohort and hed sneer and go “eh, f’ng fa***ots”. This was first half of 2000a when we worked for a LDC consulting firm and merchant bank that was close to the World Bank and ex WB officials as partners at a time they were all about tying renewed aid and loan packages to privatization of industries. Worked on many situations w Sub Saharan countries . Plenty of racism there.

[Farfromgeneva]

But I've never known any. Do you?

Holy crow, yes. Many. The most common bigotry I've found of this ilk is wherever there can be more (or less). e.g. More black, more Latino, more gay, more Jewish, etc. A third generation Latino being bigoted towards a first generation. A black in New Canaan being bigoted towards a black in Bed-Stuy. (Chris Rock is a good comedian so he can get away with it but his blacks vs. n'ers bit is a good example.) Talk to innumerable Jews on the Upper East and West side of Manhattan about the Jews in Boro Park, Williamsburg, and Crown Heights and you'll hear some of the most antisemitic words you've ever heard.

How about the cop who puts a gun to Tre in Boyz n The Hood? Can’t believe John Singleton made that up out of thin air.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwtmnn64V0o

Or perhaps my boy KRS Ones’s seminal Black Cop song

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tnlplHQqE3I

[Matnum PI]

Tom Friedman in the NY Times today. An opinion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/opin ... amas-.html

I avoid politics and far prefer discussing other aspects of issues but Friedman is right. Internal Israeli Politics have no small role in this tragedy.

[Brooklyn]

But I've never known any. Do you?

Holy crow, yes. Many. The most common bigotry I've found of this ilk is wherever there can be more (or less). e.g. More black, more Latino, more gay, more Jewish, etc. A third generation Latino being bigoted towards a first generation. A black in New Canaan being bigoted towards a black in Bed-Stuy. (Chris Rock is a good comedian so he can get away with it but his blacks vs. n'ers bit is a good example.) Talk to innumerable Jews on the Upper East and West side of Manhattan about the Jews in Boro Park, Williamsburg, and Crown Heights and you'll hear some of the most antisemitic words you've ever heard.

Combined, I lived in both area for at least 7 years and never saw anything like that. Yes, they opposed Zionism in accordance with biblical teaching as this is normal among Orthodox Jews but that is not anti Semitism.

[Matnum PI]

Heck I worked in DC with this gay French dude named Olivier. Buttoned up was here in the middle of the masters/graduate program at HEC which is a pretty nice business school. We’d walk around DuPont sometimes and see the more eclectic and ridiculous of the cohort and hed sneer and go “eh, f’ng fa***ots”.

Exactly. That's the most common form that I've seen. I'm gay but *that* is too gay! I'm not *that* kind of gay! [Remove gay and insert black, Latino, Jewish, etc.] It's awful. It's a form of self-hate but it's also just... hate. Awful. Over the course of history, literally for thousands of years, some of the greatest enemies to the Jews have been Jews who are trying to assimilate within the culture where they're living. And... This is true in america, too.

[Matnum PI]

Combined, I lived in both area for at least 7 years and never saw anything like that.

You never heard uptown Manhattan Jews bad-mouth Brooklyn orthodox Jews?! Then you were not listening.

Yes, they opposed Zionism in accordance with biblical teaching as this is normal among Orthodox Jews but that is not anti Semitism.

Brooklyn, c'mon. Stop. I want to be able to converse with you but this is ridiculous. The neturei karta are less than 0.01% of the orthodox jewish community and the other 99.99% of the Jewish Community explicit shuns them. Opposing Zionism is not in accordance with biblical teaching. This is not normal amongst orthodox Jews.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Heck I worked in DC with this gay French dude named Olivier. Buttoned up was here in the middle of the masters/graduate program at HEC which is a pretty nice business school. We’d walk around DuPont sometimes and see the more eclectic and ridiculous of the cohort and hed sneer and go “eh, f’ng fa***ots”.

Exactly. That's the most common form that I've seen. I'm gay but *that* is too gay! I'm not *that* kind of gay! [Remove gay and insert black, Latino, Jewish, etc.] It's awful. It's a form of self-hate but it's also just... hate. Awful. Over the course of history, literally for thousands of years, some of the greatest enemies to the Jews have been Jews who are trying to assimilate within the culture where they're living. And... This is true in america, too.

Yep….

[Matnum PI]

Another opinion in the Times (attribution below):

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/opin ... asion.html

...To avoid the Gaza trap, Israel needs Arab allies on the ground and in the region. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan have all regarded Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the Muslim Brotherhood as a collective strategic threat. To gain the support of the key regional leaders, Israel will have to offer major security concessions and intelligence in the event of a wider war with Iran and set a meaningful and clear political horizon for a post-Abbas, post-Hamas Palestinian state...

I'd love to be wrong but that seems to be asking for a lot. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan...

[Seacoaster(1)]

Tom Friedman in the NY Times today. An opinion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/opin ... amas-.html

I avoid politics and far prefer discussing other aspects of issues but Friedman is right. Internal Israeli Politics have no small role in this tragedy.

A former Israeli Defense Minister, I believe, issued a statement yesterday urging the opposition to Bibi's Likud to refuse to form a "war government" with him, and instead insist on his resignation, and blaming him for the intelligence failures and for leaving the part of Israel adjacent to Gaza less than well-protected. If there were an election, my guess is Netanyahu loses, maybe badly. But the reality on the ground is that every Israeli with an oar has to be pulling in the right direction. So we have the larger war coalition agreement yesterday or today.

I do think Israel considers this crisis existential, particularly as the battering and death toll is so very high, and as Hezbollah f*cks with them from Lebanon. Today, some sort of call for a Haj went out for Islamists to not only join the attack on Israel, but to bring the war to other populations. In a nation of 10,000,000, where ordnance reaches far into the territory, and where aircraft transit the nation in minutes, this is existential.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Here is a twitter post by a guy named Isaak Saul (@Ike_Saul). Not endorsing it; just thought it was a perspective worth sharing:

"People ask me all the time if I am "pro-Israel" because I am a Jew who has lived in Israel, and my answer is that being "pro-Israel" or being "pro-Palestine" or being a "Zionist" does not properly capture the nuance of thought most people do or should have about this issue. It certainly doesn't capture mine.

I have a lot to say. I’ve spent the last 72 hours writing, texting, and talking to Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians. Much of my reaction is going to piss off people on "both sides," but I am exhausted and hurting and I do not think there is any way to discuss this situation without being radically honest about my views. So I'm going to try to say what I believe to be true the best I can.

Let me start with this: It could have been me.

That's a hard thought to shake when watching the videos out of Israel — the concert goers fleeing across an empty expanse, the hostages being paraded through the streets, the people shot in the head at bus stops or in their cars. I went to those parties in the desert, I rubbed shoulders with Israelis and Arabs and Jews and Muslims, I could have easily accepted an invitation to some concert near Sderot and gone without a care, only to be indiscriminately slaughtered. Or, perhaps worse, taken hostage and tortured.

I don’t believe Hamas is killing Israelis to liberate themselves, nor do I believe they are doing it to make peace. They're doing this because they represent the devil on the shoulder of every oppressed Palestinian who has lost someone in this conflict. They're doing it because they want vengeance. They are evening the score, and acting on the worst of our human impulses, to respond to blood with blood — an inclination that is easy to give in to after what their people have endured. It should not be hard to understand their logic — it is only hard to accept that humans are capable of being driven to this. Not defending Hamas is a very low bar to clear. Please clear it.

It’s not possible to recap the entire 5,000 year history of people fighting over this strip of land in one newsletter. There are plenty of easily accessible places you can learn about it if you want to (and, by the way, many of you should — far too many people speak on this issue with an obscene amount of ignorance, loads of arrogance, and a narrow historical lens focused on the last few decades). But I'll briefly highlight a few things that are important to me.

In my opinion, the Jewish people have a legitimate historical claim to the land of Israel. Jews had already been expelled and returned and expelled again a half dozen times before the rise of the Muslim and Arab rule of the Ottoman Empire. Of course it’s messy because we Jews and Arabs and Muslims are all cousins and descendents of the same Canaanites. But Arabs won the land centuries ago the same way Israel and Jews won it in the 20th century: Through conflict and war. The British defeated the Ottoman Empire and then came the Balfour Declaration, which amounted to the British granting the area to the Jewish people, a promise they’d later try to renege on — all before the wars that have defined the region since 1948.

That historical moment in the late 1940s was unique. After World War II, with many Arab and Muslim states already in existence, and after six million Jews were slaughtered, the global community felt it was important to grant the Jewish people a homeland. In a more logical or just world that homeland would have been in Europe as a kind of reparation for what the Nazis and others before them had done to the Jews, or perhaps in the Americas — like Alaska — or somewhere else. But the Jews wanted Israel, the British had taken to the Zionist movement, the British had conquered the Ottoman Empire which handed them control of the land, and America and Europe didn’t want the Jews. As a result, we got Israel.

The Arab states had already rejected a partitioned Israel repeatedly before World War II and rejected it again after the Holocaust and the end of the war. They did not want to give up even a little bit of their land to a bunch of Jewish interlopers who were granted it all of a sudden by British interlopers who had arrived a hundred years prior. Who could blame them? It had been centuries since Jews lived there in large numbers, and now they wanted to return in waves as secularized Europeans. Many of us would probably react the same way. So, just as humans have done forever, they fought. The many existing Arab states turned against the burgeoning new Jewish state. One side won and one side lost. This is the brutal and broken and violent world we live in, but it is what created the global world order we have now.

Are Israelis and British people "colonizers" because of this 20th century history? Sure. But that view flattens thousands of years of history and conflict, and the context of World War I and World War II. I don’t view Israelis and Brits as colonizers any more than the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Romans or the Mongols or the Egyptians or the Ottomans who all battled over the same strip of land from as early as 800 years before Jesus’s time until now. The Jews who founded Israel just happened to have won the last big battle for it.

You can’t speak about this issue in a vacuum. You can't pretend that it wasn't just 60 years ago when Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab states who wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. Despite the balance of power shifting this century, that threat is still a reality. And you can't talk about that without remembering the only reason the Jews were in Israel in the first place was that they'd spent the previous centuries fleeing a bunch of Europeans who also wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. And then Hitler showed up.

American partisans have a narrow view of this history, and an Americentric lens that is infuriating to witness. As Lee Fang perfectly put it, "Hamas would absolutely execute the ACAB lefties cheering on horrific violence against Israelis if they lived in Gaza & U.S. right-wingers blindly cheering on Israeli subjugation of Palestinians would rebel twice as violently if Americans were subjected to similar occupation."

And yet, many Americans only view modern Israel as the "powerful" one in this dynamic. Which is true — they obviously are. It isn't a fair fight and it hasn't been for decades because Israel's government is rich and resourceful, has the backing of the United States and most of Europe, and has an incredibly powerful military. At the same time, Israeli leadership has made technological and military advancements that have further tipped those scales — all while the Israeli government has helped create a resource-thin open air prison of two million Arabs in Gaza.

Conversely, Palestinians are devoid of any real unified leadership, and the Arab world is now divided on the issue of Palestine. Israel is unwilling to give the people in Gaza and the West Bank more than an inch of freedom to live. These are largely the refugees and descendents of the refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars that Israel won. And you can't keep two million people in the condition that those in the Gaza strip live in and not expect events like this.

I'm sorry to say that while the blood on the ground is fresh. The Israelis who were killed in this attack largely have nothing to do with those conditions other than being born at a time when Israel and Jews have the upper hand in this conflict. Some of the victims weren’t even Israeli — they were just tourists. This is why we describe them as “innocent” and why Hamas has only reaffirmed that they are a brutal terror organization with this attack — an organization that I hope is quickly toppled, for the sake of both the Palestinian people and the Israelis. But as someone with a deep love for Israel, with friends in danger and people I know still missing, it breaks my heart to say it but I'm saying it again because it remains perhaps the most salient point of context in a tangled mess full of centuries of context:

You cannot keep two million people living in the conditions people in Gaza are living in and expect peace.

You can't. And you shouldn’t. Their environment is antithetical to the human condition. Violent rebellion is guaranteed. Guaranteed. As sure as the sun rising.

And the cycle of violence seems locked in to self-perpetuate, because both sides see a score to settle:

1) Israel has already responded with a vengeance, and they will continue to. Their desire for violence is not unlike Hamas’s — it’s just as much about blood for blood as any legitimate security measure. Israel will “have every right to respond with force." Toppling Hamas — a group, by the way, Israel erred in supporting — will now be the objective, and civilian death will be seen as necessary collateral damage. But Israel will also do a bunch of things they don't have a right to. They will flatten apartment buildings and kill civilians and children and many in the global community will probably cheer them on while they do it. They have already stopped the flow of water, electricity, and food to two million people, and killed dozens of civilians in their retaliatory bombings. We should never accept this, never lose sight that this horror is being inflicted on human beings. As the group B’Tselem said, “There is no justification for such crimes, whether they are committed as part of a struggle for freedom from oppression or cited as part of a war against terror.” I mourn for the innocents of Palestine just as I do for the innocents in Israel. As of late, many, many more have died on their side than Israel's. And many more Palestinians are likely to die in this spate of violence, too.

Unfortunately, most people in the West only pay attention to this story when Hamas or a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank commits an act of violence. Palestinian citizens die regularly at the hands of the Israeli military and their plight goes largely unnoticed until they respond with violence of their own. Israel had already killed an estimated 250 Palestinians, including 47 children, this year alone. And that is just in the West Bank.

2) Every single time Israel kills someone in the name of self-defense they create a handful of new radicalized extremists who will feel justified in wanting to take an Israeli life in retribution sometime in the future. Half of Gaza’s two million people are under the age of 19 — they know little besides Hamas rule (since 2006), Israeli occupation, blockades, and rockets falling from the sky. The suffering of these innocent children born into this reality is incomprehensible to me. They will suffer more now because of Hamas’s actions and Israel’s response, all through no fault of their own.

There is no way out of this pattern until one side exercises restraint or leaders on both sides find a new solution. Israelis will tell you that if Palestinians put their guns down then the war would end, but if Israel put their guns down they'd be wiped off the planet. I don't have a crystal ball and can’t tell you what is true. But what I am certain of is that every time Israel kills more innocents they engender more rage and hatred and recruit more Palestinians and Arabs to the cause against them. There is no disputing this.

So, why did this happen now?

I'm not sure how to answer that question except to say it was bound to happen eventually. It was a massive policy and intelligence failure and Netanyahu should pay the price politically — he is a failed leader. Iran probably helped organize the attack and the money freed up by the Biden administration's prisoner swap probably didn't help the situation, either. Israel's increasingly extremist government and settlers provoking Palestinians certainly didn't help. Nor has going to the Al-Aqsa mosque and desecrating it. Nor do blockades and bombings and indiscriminate subjugation of a whole people. Nor does refusing to talk to non-terrorist leaders in Palestine. Nor does illegally continuing to expand and steal what is left of Palestinian land, as many Jews and Israelis have been doing in the 21st century despite cries from the global community to stop. A violent response was predictable — in fact, plenty of people did predict it.

Israel is forever stuffing these people into tinier and tinier boxes with fewer and fewer resources. But if you want to blame Israeli leaders for continuing to expand and settle land that does not belong to them (as I do), then you should also spare some blame for Palestinian leaders for repeatedly not accepting a partitioned Israel during the 20th century that could have led to peace (as I do).

Please also remember this: Hamas is still an extremist group. The Palestinian people do not have a government or leaders who legitimately represent their interests, and it sure as hell isn't Hamas. Will some Palestinians cheer and clap at the dead, or spit on them as they are paraded through Gaza? Yes they will. And they have. Many will also mourn because they loathe Hamas and know this will only make things worse. This is no different than how some Americans cheer at the dead in every single war we've ever fought. It's no different than the Israelis who set up lawn chairs to watch their government bomb Palestine and cheer them on, too. This doesn't mean Palestinians or Israelis or Americans are evil — it means some of them are giving in to their violent impulses, and their zealous feelings of righteous vengeance.

Solutions, you ask? I can’t say I have any. If you came here for that, I’m sorry. The two-state solution looks dead to me. A three-state solution makes some sense but feels out of the view of all the people who matter and could make it happen. I wish a one-state solution felt realistic — a world of Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights, fully integrated and defused of their hate, is a version of Israel that I would adore. But it seems less and less realistic with every new act of violence.

Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea.

I'm pro-not-killing-civilians.

I'm pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons.

I'm pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head.

I'm pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes.

I'm pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages.

I'm pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process.

I'm pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro- all the things we never see in this conflict anymore.

Whatever this is, I want none of it."

[Brooklyn]

Combined, I lived in both area for at least 7 years and never saw anything like that.

You never heard uptown Manhattan Jews bad-mouth Brooklyn orthodox Jews?! Then you were not listening.

Yes, they opposed Zionism in accordance with biblical teaching as this is normal among Orthodox Jews but that is not anti Semitism.

Brooklyn, c'mon. Stop. I want to be able to converse with you but this is ridiculous. The neturei karta are less than 0.01% of the orthodox jewish community and the other 99.99% of the Jewish Community explicit shuns them. Opposing Zionism is not in accordance with biblical teaching. This is not normal amongst orthodox Jews.

Satmar number well over 100K. There are many others. How many progressive Jews there are who oppose Zionism is unknown.

As for the Bible's teaching I suggest you read their websites which actually prove that Zionism is unbiblical since only the Messiah can reestablish the Kingdom.

And, as always, just because these fine people oppose Zionist ideology, it doesn't make them anti Semitic.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Combined, I lived in both area for at least 7 years and never saw anything like that.

You never heard uptown Manhattan Jews bad-mouth Brooklyn orthodox Jews?! Then you were not listening.

Yes, they opposed Zionism in accordance with biblical teaching as this is normal among Orthodox Jews but that is not anti Semitism.

Brooklyn, c'mon. Stop. I want to be able to converse with you but this is ridiculous. The neturei karta are less than 0.01% of the orthodox jewish community and the other 99.99% of the Jewish Community explicit shuns them. Opposing Zionism is not in accordance with biblical teaching. This is not normal amongst orthodox Jews.

Satmar number well over 100K. There are many others. How many progressive Jews there are who oppose Zionism is unknown.

As for the Bible's teaching I suggest you read their websites which actually prove that Zionism is unbiblical since only the Messiah can reestablish the Kingdom.

And, as always, just because these fine people oppose Zionist ideology, it doesn't make them anti Semitic.

Bible duels are gonna help sort this out for sure.

[jhu72]

Tom Friedman in the NY Times today. An opinion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/opin ... amas-.html

I avoid politics and far prefer discussing other aspects of issues but Friedman is right. Internal Israeli Politics have no small role in this tragedy.

A former Israeli Defense Minister, I believe, issued a statement yesterday urging the opposition to Bibi's Likud to refuse to form a "war government" with him, and instead insist on his resignation, and blaming him for the intelligence failures and for leaving the part of Israel adjacent to Gaza less than well-protected. If there were an election, my guess is Netanyahu loses, maybe badly. But the reality on the ground is that every Israeli with an oar has to be pulling in the right direction. So we have the larger war coalition agreement yesterday or today.

I do think Israel considers this crisis existential, particularly as the battering and death toll is so very high, and as Hezbollah f*cks with them from Lebanon. Today, some sort of call for a Haj went out for Islamists to not only join the attack on Israel, but to bring the war to other populations. In a nation of 10,000,000, where ordnance reaches far into the territory, and where aircraft transit the nation in minutes, this is existential.

... I had heard that as well, from some talking head. Friedman is far from alone in his understanding of the politics on the ground. Bibi's cabinet is not well thought of by anyone wired into the workings of the government. I suspect Bibi's day is coming after Hamas is dealt with. I will settle for his chief toads prior to forming a government.

I don't know if it is general knowledge yet, but it was reported yesterday that the 101st Airborne is being / has been deployed to Jordan. It is just a training mission -- wink wink nod nod. Suspect they are contingency in case anyone in southern Lebanon gets the idea of wandering across the boarder heading south.

I am beginning to think the Egyptian's may have a roll in this. It would make sense under some circumstances, not necessarily as a combat force. Of course this would force them to take some risk vis-a-vis terrorist threats. The Jordanians may already be. Clearly Biden's idea is to form an Araba - Israeli Coalition to fight regional terrorism. He is looking and sounding like he is not waiting for Israel and Saudi Arabia to sign an agreement. Remarkable if true.