Hard Truths About Israel and Gaza

Looking an Ugly Reality Straight in the Eye

I have seen few things in my life as gut wrenching as the videos of Hamas’ terror attack on Israel on October 7 of last year. And in recent weeks there have been few images as upliftingly moving as the all too few images of hostages been reunited with their families.

Israeli strikes that have weakened Hamas and their Hezbollah allies in the north as well as Israel’s effective defense against the attacks from the sponsor of both terror groups, Iran, have been appropriate and an inevitable response to the grave threat all three pose.

Israel has a right to exist and its people have every right to defend themselves. Terrorism targeting innocent people is repugnant and not the solution to the political demands of any group of people. Striking out against Israel and then hiding among innocent civilians in Gaza as Hamas has done is also a horrific tactic and one that further demonstrates that Hamas is not a legitimate representative of Palestinians.

Hamas has no role to play in the future of Gaza or anywhere.  It should be neutralized as both a political and a military force.

Further, I think the immediate reaction of President Biden to support Israel, a long-standing ally of the U.S., and the tireless efforts of the U.S. to engineer a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war have been sound steps taken in the interests of the United States. Further, I personally know and in several cases know well the senior members of the President’s national security and foreign policy team and I have unshakeable belief in them as gifted and compassionate public servants. The president’s decency is a signature trait. Vice President Kamala Harris has distinguished herself as an advocate for moral policies and as a formidable leader on the international stage. Secretary of State Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and CIA Director Bill Burns have long been and remain among the people I like and admire most in Washington and each is, in my view, as a historian of how the White House and the national security community work, among the very best who have ever held their high offices.

Nonetheless…

While U.S. support for Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks was a natural impulse, the nature and degree of that support was profoundly ill-considered. The Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is extremist, reckless, immoral and incompetent. That is true in large part because Netanyahu himself is all those things as well as being corrupt, a pathological liar, an enemy of U.S. interests, toxic to the U.S.-Israel relationship and an active advocate of forces within Israel, the U.S. and around the world that seek to weaken democracy and the rule of law. His cabinet and political orbit in Israel contain people that are, if it can be imagined, even worse—real monsters, advocates of ethnic cleansing, racists and, as it has turned out, like Netanyahu, war criminals.

Even though many in the U.S. government recognized these flaws in the Israeli government even before the most recent war between Israel and Gaza commenced, the U.S. offered support to Israel that it was absolutely clear from the outset that Israel would abuse. Although Israel is a rich nation well capable of meeting its own defense needs, we provided the country with weapons that not only made the criminal band that ran the country more dangerous but that also virtually ensured more innocent Palestinians would be killed than had we not done so. We offered massive aid even though it was clear Netanyahu had no strategy in Gaza but revenge. His goal of eliminating Hamas altogether was known from the outset to be unachievable and one that would come with a enormous human toll. The rhetoric justifying a policy of overkill was understandably fueled by post-10/7 heartbreak and fury. But it was also both ugly and over-the-top. Hamas never posed an existential threat to Israel. The tactics employed by the Israelis in the past in response to attacks had clearly not been effective in reducing the threat from Hamas. Indeed, failures by the Netanyahu administration and Israel’s vaunted intelligence and defense communities had made the country vulnerable to the October 7^th attacks and needed to be investigated and understood better if an effective and proportional response to those attacks was to take place. But no effort was made or has since been made to arrive at that understanding.

For all those reasons, the so-called “bear hug” of the Netanyahu Administration by Biden and his team and the degree of support that was accorded to the Israeli government even after it was clear that their execution of the Gaza war was as morally reprehensible as it was ineffective in key respects such as reducing the risk to Israel or moving the region closer to a sustainable peace appear in retrospect to have been huge errors. Indeed, they represent the biggest foreign policy mistake of Biden’s first term.

It is important to note that although the mistake has had horrible consequences that Biden’s foreign policy has by and large been highly effective and is commendable. Getting out of Afghanistan and ending “the forever wars” begun in the wake of 9/11 was a major achievement—even if the exit from Afghanistan was a deeply regrettable mess. Shifting U.S. priorities to focus on next generation challenges from the rise of China to the dawn of the age of AI involved another set of concrete achievements. So too did the U.S. have the most robust post-COVID recovery of any developed economy in the world. Stepping up to support Ukraine in the wake of the Soviet onslaught of February 2022 was the right thing to do and Biden and his team have led an allied response that has dramatically strengthened the world’s most important alliance, NATO. The U.S. has done more under Biden to address the climate crisis than it has under any other president. We have actually introduced massive investments in our infrastructure, in science and technology and in our productive capacity that make the country stronger and safer. These are major achievements that are not to be minimized—especially when seen in contradistinction to the irresponsible and reckless policies and actions of Biden’s predecessor and current challenger for the presidency, Donald Trump.

Further, from the outset the U.S. has sought to use its influence to ensure Israelis prioritize humanitarian concerns, focus on strategy and achievable goals and have in mind a plan for “the day after” the war. These efforts have been as high-level and impassioned as they have been ineffective. That is not the fault of the U.S. It is due to the intractably and divergent interests of Netanyahu and his gang of thugs. What the Biden team must take responsibility for is continuing to provide weapons and financial support to Israel once it was clear that Israeli tactics were reprehensible and that American advice was not only being ignored but that the Israelis had dramatically different goals from the U.S..—such as Israeli opposition to America’s most important goal and the region’s most important need and that is a two-state solution guaranteeing self-determination and security for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Barbarity

In recent months, as the Netanyahu government’s barbarity became clearer, Biden and his team have begun to shift their policies. The decision to limit aid was too late and too narrow but it was a step in the right direction. The so-called red-line in Rafah was called for and justifiable even if in the end it shifted and was ultimately largely ignored. The focus on ceasefire negotiations were worthy and involved really superhuman efforts on the part of American diplomats even if they have fallen short and, as of this week, Biden has publicly stated he does not expect them to bear fruit anytime soon.

Of far more consequence than how badly this war has turned out for American policymakers or the divisions it has revealed and exacerbated in Israeli politics is of course, the toll the war has taken on the innocent people of Gaza. Not all those killed in Israeli attacks have been, we know, civilians. But the vast majority of them have been. It is hard to know the exact toll the war has taken and we likely will not for many many months given the number of bodies entombed in the rubble of Gaza and how difficult it is to identify the war’s victims.

But we have an idea of the cost of this war to the people of Gaza. The number of dead is approaching 40,000. The number of injured is more than twice that, having recently surpassed the 85,000 mark. Massacres claiming many civilians lives in a single stroke occur regularly. Worse, according to a statement from the Director General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebeyesus, “A significant portion of Gaza’s population is now facing catastrophic hunger and famine-like conditions. Despite reports of increased delivery of food, there is currently no evidence those who need it most are receiving sufficient quantity and quality of food.”

Last month, according to the UN’s World Food Program, northern Gaza had “entered full-blown famine.” A formal famine declaration looms. (That means at least one in five households are essentially starving, approximately a third of children are acutely malnourished and “two adults or four children per every 10,000 are daily dying of hunger.) Those conditions are almost certainly being met in some parts of Gaza. At least a million people within Gaza, half the population are at serious risk of famine. And reports continue to come in that Israel is making delivery of food to Gazans in need very difficult and dangerous—which is, in itself, a war crime.

With a ceasefire looking unlikely for the foreseeable future, expect much worse reports about famine and suffering in Gaza next month.

The Hateful Ideas at the Center of It All

Netanyahu continues the war because it is, in his view, one of the few ways he can remain in office and thus avoid prosecution for his corruption. It is also a demand of key members of his extremist coalition, a group that includes people calling for Palestinians to be expelled from Gaza and that area to be resettled by Israelis. Part of the rationale behind the fighting and repulsive tactics is to continue to seek revenge for October 7^th…even as the ratio of Palestinians killed in the eight months since to the number of Israelis that died that dark day surpasses 33 to 1.

In that math lies a central part of the problem. Israel’s policy has always been the deterrence demands that their adversaries know that for every Israeli killed many more of their opponents or their opponents’ people will die.  But deeply imbedded in this policy is also a view that Israeli lives are worth more than Palestinian lives. Tragically not to mention repulsively, this has also been a view that has been tacitly accepted into America foreign policy for decades. It is disgusting. It is racist. And it is time to expunge it. (And before you ask whether I’m ignoring the genocidal views of some Palestinian or Iranian extremists, no, of course not. They too are reprehensible.)

The lives and aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians should be valued equally. Anyone with even a perfunctory understanding of the profoundly complex history of the region knows that the claims to the land of Jews and Arabs are more or less equally strong and equally weak. Similarly they know that virtually every map drawn to suit those competing claims has been flawed…and that the division of land and control as it currently stands is unsustainable if long-term peace or justice is the objective. Whether that means returning to the 1967 borders or some earlier or some different approach is unclear.

The Difficult Path to a Just Solution

The path to arriving at a just solution is however, as clear as it is difficult. First, a ceasefire must be achieved. Next, Israelis must withdraw from Gaza and stop seeking to claim more and more of the West Bank. Then, a new more legitimate form of self-governance for Palestinians with a new generation of leaders must be empowered. Then, with a guarantee that the long term goal of all parties is two states, neighbors and the international community can be brought together to help with the rebuilding of Gaza. It is a massive task. Gaza is essential gone, a pile of rubble. It will cost many billions and take many years. It must be administered by the International community in conjunction with legitimate Palestinian leaders. There is no role in that rebuilding for Israelis. The international community must be responsible for keeping the peace and, I should add, that should involve supporting its efforts to prosecute war criminals on both sides. Only if all leaders are clear the rule of law will be enforced fairly against all who violate it can we begin to end the cycle of slaughter and suffering.

Israelis will howl that the above is unacceptable. The world must respond in unison that it is not for Israel to determine the fate of Palestinians. Israel should be able to defend itself as any other state does—which means it should not possess or assert any role in its neighbor’s governance nor any special advantage over its neighbor in terms of self-defense.  

And the U.S. must shift its policies to actively support the above goals in concert with regional and international partners in every forum in which we participate and in at least one in which we do not participate but should, the International Criminal Court. Our objections to its existence are hypocritical and wholly inconsistent with our values or our post-World War II goals in building an international order.

In this essay—which I will admit has been too long and for that I apologize—I have tried to tell the whole truth, fairly, as I see it and also as I feel it must be seen. But I hope you will allow me to make one more related set of points that are relevant.

Since this war began, the debate around it has been both highly charged and regrettably absolutist. Neither side has taken the time to understand the views of the other. Further, the divisions that have manifest themselves are linked to many other fissures in society that are ancient and that must be acknowledged.

Anti-Semitism is real and a scourge that must be defeated. So too is Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate. So too is thinking of any “other” as lesser. It is vital that we collectively condemn such behaviors even as we condemn the terrorism of Hamas and the war crimes of the Israeli government.

Given the fraught nature of the exchanges that have occurred since October 7, both sides have sought to narrowly define terms so they could be used as weapons or walls, so that they could support their narrative and their view alone. These terms have included words like “anti-Semitism” and “Zionist” as well as expressions like “from the river to the sea.” Some have sought to institutionalize their definitions and to use them to help set parameters for public discourse, for protests, for academic debate.

Hate speech is wrong. Free speech is essential. Rejection of ugly ideas is a social good. But recognition of one’s own biases and respect for the views of others is also essential. So too is academic freedom and the right to peaceful protest.

While these seem to be reasonable ideas, I once thought that saying neither Israeli nor Palestinian innocents should die or that countries should abide by international law and basic standards of decency would not be controversial statements. But when uttering them or writing them in the past few months, I have ended up being called an anti-Semite (which would have come as quite a shock to my Holocaust survivor father and the rest of my proudly Jewish family). I have also been taunted even by friends who have tried to get me into debates about whether or not I am a Zionist. (For the record, my view is Israel has precisely the same right to exist as any other nation, based on the right of self-determination of its people. But that I also oppose what I see as the unequal treatment of people within the borders it controls, anti-democratic steps it has taken under Netanyahu, and the serial perpetration of war crimes while denying another group of people with an equal right to have their own nation the ability to fulfill that right. For the record, as an American, I also believe in separation of church and state and believe that all governments must honor human rights, ensure tolerance and aspire to moral progress.)

I’ve added all this because I wanted to take this moment to lay out the facts of this complex situation as fairly as I could because solving the problems of the region will require it and understanding where I am coming from will help you calibrate my perspectives on all this.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.