Six Things I Believe about Israel and Gaza

Trying to find clarity amidst the madness

It has been nearly six months since a large-scale attack in Israel thrust the region into war. I wrote a lengthy, scattered post about it in the early days, reacting to the complexity of being a liberal Jewish person watching Israel descend into chaos and madness.

In the intervening months, some things have become clearer to me, and others remain a muddle. I would like to share my updated observations and perspective, understanding the limits of talking about a crisis in the middle of the crisis.

  1. Netanyahu has to go.

    Until he does, until a new Israeli government takes over, this crisis will never end. There are a number of ways in which he has proven himself to be inept, dishonest, and driven by the need to remain in power. Specifically, his fidelity to the most extreme right-wing voices in his coalition has resulted in starvation, forced evictions, over-the-top violence, and increased settlement activity. He is salting the Earth against a future Palestinian state, and increasingly his bad actions are turning the world against Israel. It is my judgment that his continued leadership poses a greater threat to Israel than Hamas and Hezbollah combined. If Israel loses American support, it will be due to his massive incompetence.

    In a perverse way, Netanyahu has given a gift to his eventual successor. It is highly unlikely his Likud party will remain in power once elections are held, and any new government will appear liberal by comparison. The simple and frankly obvious step of restoring unrestricted food deliveries to Gaza will be seen as benevolent statecraft instead of being the bare minimum the law and humanity requires.

  2. Hamas needs to be defeated from within, and not by Israel

    In the early weeks of the war, Israel’s military demonstrated for the umpteenth time their vast military superiority over Hamas. There is no question that in a fair fight, Israel wins every time. That is why Hamas doesn’t fight fair: they conducted a sneak attack, took hostages, and fled back to within a civilian population. When Israel came after them, they demanded a humanitarian ceasefire, saying that any attempt to come after them would be a war crime because of the presence of civilians. They created the problem, and I have no sympathy for their cries of victimhood.

    The Gazan civilians, however, are victims of both Israel and Hamas. They are caught between a military superpower and a ruthless, frightened faction of armed zealots. Calls from Israel for Gazans to turn against Hamas and overthrow them assume a level of control and volition that simply doesn’t exist; Gazans have no practical ability to challenge Hamas, and won’t have that capability until they are joined by other Arab and Muslim voices and forces.

    Hamas has been negotiating for a permanent ceasefire, and based on its negotiating position, it believes it is winning the war and can remain in power. Israel cannot and will not allow that to happen; no ceasefire will be permanent unless it results in removing Hamas from power.

    In my opinion, the solution will require regional allies to propose an alternative government that is run by Palestinians- not an outside force of any kind- and that has a clear mandate to rebuild, restore order, and negotiate for a permanent peace, not just a permanent ceasefire. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, and Egypt have a role to play here, and they have the financial ability and moral authority to be credible arbiters of an alternative government for Gaza.

  3. Iran’s proxies need to be challenged and defeated everywhere they operate

    Among the only things that Israel is doing right is its targeting of Iranian militia leaders in Syria and throughout the region. Iran is playing a dangerous, destabilizing game. They are trying to take advantage of this conflict to sew regional discord and elevate their own influence. The Houthi rebels, Hezbollah, and the other factions and acolytes of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard must be eliminated from all areas in which they are ensconced.

    Since Iran benefits from the conflict, it will have an incentive to undermine any peaceful solution. Since Israel is so trigger-happy in the wake of the October 7 attacks, it is not difficult for Iran and its proxies to derail any de-escalation by launching missiles, employing snipers, or carrying out terrorist attacks. They must be denounced, attacked, and removed from the areas they claim outside of Iran and throughout the region.

  4. The anti-Israel left still doesn’t have a clue

    My liberal friends continue to consistently disappoint me when they talk about Israel. Just today, I spent part of my morning fact-checking and disputing a meme about how (1) Israel claimed that rapes happened but it was all made up and (2) the IDF shot a pregnant woman after raping her in front of her entire family. Neither of these things was true, but by the time a lengthy thread of comments produced the receipts to dispute them, there were three other memes up, again parroting anti-Israel talking points.

    On a recent visit to see my sister in Virginia, we encountered an anti-Israel march, with chants of “5, 6, 7, 8, we don’t want no JEW state,” emphasis in the original. It is easy to see why protests are the conflict are being conflated with anti-Semitism.

    There is a real and valuable conversation to be had about Israel’s role as a ethno-nationalist state in a region prone to conflict. The reactionary left doesn’t engage with that conversation: they engage in sloganeering, hyperbole, and propaganda. Outrage politics are not constructive, and they have largely had the effect of making the Israelis dig in their heels, as they are seen as proof that the world truly doesn’t understand and doesn’t support Israel’s right to safety.

    If Israel accepted the demands of the left and unilaterally stopped its operations in Gaza, what would happen? Hamas would remain in power, and would plan their next attack; they have stated that October 7 was only the beginning. Since taking hostages proved so effective, we can expect to see more people assaulted and held captive. Withdrawing from Gaza without a plan is no solution, and I am yet to hear a credible leftist proposal for unwinding the conflict in a way calculated to lead to lasting peace.

  5. The UN is causing more harm than it helps

    When Israel accused UNRWA of having ties to Hamas generally, and the October 7 attacks specifically- an accusation UNRWA did not deny- it gave Israel a colorable excuse to cut off their access and funding. This was a distraction that nobody needed, since UNRWA is tasked with providing relief to the very people who are suffering most.

    At the same time, the UN took months before acknowledging sexual violence by Hamas, which they did with such general, milquetoast language that it seemed to be a begrudging acknowledgement in the face of overwhelming evidence, including first-hand accounts.

    The UN resolutions for a ceasefire are a political sideshow, a zero-stakes game that has no impact on the conflict, but gives superpowers the ability to claim they are taking action, when all they are really doing is taking meaningless votes.

    This conflict is beyond the UN’s ability to effect positive influence, and they should step aside and let other actors- ideally led by other states in the region- take the lead in the rebuilding effort.

  6. A viable Palestinian state is still crucial, and is going to require a lot of money

    Now that Gaza has been all but leveled by the IDF, it will require a massive amount of investment in order to rebuild. In my view, if they rebuild it as it was- an impoverished enclave- a major opportunity will be missed.

    Gaza should be rebuilt as an economic powerhouse, with modern construction, dynamic port facilities, and the infrastructure needed to become a regional beacon of development and prosperity. There would be poetic justice in creating an independent Gaza that is the envy of the region, including Israel. Economic prosperity- not subsistence levels of donated food- is the best way to combat extremism in the long-term. This will require a high level of support from the United States- both financially, and in restraining Israel from interfering- as well as other regional and world powers.

    The Israeli voices- a minority for sure, but a loud minority- arguing against an eventual Palestinian state are playing a dangerous game. There are three possibilities that do not involve a two-state solution: a united Israel that does not have a Jewish majority; an ethnically cleansed Israel where Palestinians have been largely killed or deported; or an apartheid state in which Jewish Israelis are the only ones with full citizenship. All of these are unacceptable to me, and I believe would be unacceptable to most.

    Palestinians must be empowered to declare statehood on a viable territory encompassing Gaza and the great majority of the West Bank. In previous times, arguments about the precise borders, whether Palestine can militarize, and other ancillary issues have doomed negotiations to failure. I believe the first step- declaring a state in the areas where there is broad consensus that state should be situated- should not wait on a final, comprehensive agreement to all terms. Independence can build momentum, and the Palestinian people have waited generations for statehood; they should not be made to wait another generation to raise their flag.

~AG

Published in: on April 1, 2024 at 1:39 pm  Leave a Comment  
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To Be Set Right

On the conflicted values of a Millenial Zionist.

I grew up in a Jewish family in Lexington, Kentucky.  As we were a small religious minority in the area, my parents took great pains to make sure I had a Jewish education.  This included Sunday School, Hebrew School, and a series of summer camps.  Throughout all of it, in addition to the history, religion, and cultural lessons, ran a strong thread of Zionism. 

Looking at Jewish history, it is easy to see why this was the case.  The Jewish story is one of repeated exile, pogrom, and holocaust.  Our history is rife with sad remembrances, and celebrations that boil down to “they tried to kill us, they failed, hallelujah.”  Israel, which came into existence around the time my parents did, was and remains the only Jewish-majority modern state.  Its brief history hit on familiar themes: they tried to kill us, again and again, but we persisted. 

I choose my pronouns carefully: I was raised thinking of Israel as my country, too, though I have only been there once, as a young tourist.  I have understood, as have many Jewish Americans, that if circumstances warrant, I can always move to Israel; living there is my birthright.

My intellectually formative years took place between the first and second intifada.  I mourned along with my family when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.  I remember the adults wondering aloud whether this meant the end of the peace process.  I also remember them saying, in hushed tones, how glad they were that the assassin was not Palestinian.  

By the time I started college, I had developed a fascination with the history and politics of the Middle East, and wrote pro-Israel columns in the campus newspaper.  I decried the hypocrisy of Israel’s neighbor states, who kept Palestinian refugees in squalor as political pawns, never permitting them to develop or integrate, all while claiming to be their champions in the world community.  I advocated for returning Gaza to Egypt, and returning the West Bank to Jordan (or, a fortiori, Transjordan).  

The core of my support for Israel in their conflict with the Palestinians was a deeply-ingrained belief, fomented and nurtured over many years of Zionist education, that the Palestinians and their supporters did not appropriately value human life.  I was outraged when Hamas placed its bases and military assets next to hospitals and orphanages, or when suicide bombers sought to maximize loss of life.  I viewed those incidents as proof that in this asymmetrical conflict, Israel had the better weapons, but the Palestinians had the freedom to kill indiscriminately.  

My views began to change after Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount set off another wave of violence.  His administration, and later, that of Benjamin Netanyahu, undermined my belief in Israel’s virtue.  The aggressive settlement expansion, the serial objections to direct negotiation, and the policies that treated non-Jews as second class citizens disgusted me.  These were not our values; these did not represent who we want to be as a Jewish nation. 

It is possible to love your country and hate your government, as any liberal who lived through the Trump years can attest.  But it became harder and harder, under the Netanyahu government, to identify as a Zionist without implicitly ratifying the disgusting policies of the Likud party. Zionist became a political position more than a statement of national pride.  Do you support Palestinian independence, or are you a Zionist? 

I opt for both.  I am a Zionist, proud of the establishment of a Jewish state and committed to preserving and protecting this one small country that will always welcome members of its diaspora.  It may be hard to fathom, but the relative safety and acceptance of Jewish people in the United States is a historical anomaly.  Through most of history, Jewish people have been at best tolerated, and at worse, faced with systematic extermination. 

I am also an American, and one of our foundational tenets is a belief in the right to self-determination.  Israel has made plain that it will not welcome the Palestinians into their country as citizens, jeopardizing the Jewish majority.  That means the people of Palestine need to be given real self-government, sufficient land to form a viable state, and the economic assistance required of any new state to develop and join the world community.  

It has been hard to find truly neutral accounts of what is happening in Israel these days.  Most of my reading- my algorithms skew liberal- has been decidedly anti-Israel, portraying them as attacking Gaza for no reason, and killing indiscriminately.  The pro-Israel writing dates the start of the present violence to rocket attacks from Gaza, ignoring the eviction of Palestinians from East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers.  

Israel conducts its egregious actions under color of law, “legally” evicting Palestinians and slowly, steadily transitioning key parts of East Jerusalem to Jewish occupation, foreclosing it as a future capital for a Palestinian state.  The Palestinians do not have the ability to act under color of law, so they resort to violence.  Lacking the technical prowess of the IDF, that violence is often indiscriminate.  Rocket launchers are placed atop schools, hospitals, and media buildings to deter counterstrikes; if they were kept away from civilian centers, as Israel demands, they would be quickly and cataclysmically destroyed by Israel’s superior military might. 

There are no “good guys” in this conflict.  For all its social services, Hamas is a terrorist organization, and its indiscriminate attacks coupled with its refusal to even acknowledge Israel’s right to exist disqualifies it as a player in the peace talks.  Israel has the power to improve the lives of the Palestinians living under its control, but refuses, and takes every opportunity to avenge rocket attacks with devastating reprisal strikes, often disproportionate to the provocation.  

Jewish Americans like me, who grew up idolizing Israel, must now reckon with a government of right-wing extremists seeking to consolidate power and crush the prospects of a two-state solution.  As Jewish identity and Zionism were so closely linked in my religious education, it can be hard to question fidelity to Israel without shaking the foundations of that identity.  

I identify as a Zionist because my belief in the necessity for a Jewish state, and my appreciation for the establishment and existence of that state, is valid.  I identify as pro-Palestinian because I believe that people have a right to self-determination, and to their own pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness.  I criticize Israel because I support Israel, and I believe that the best way I can show support is to advocate for less extreme policies and a greater acceptance of Palestinian rights.  I criticize the Palestinians because I support their goal of statehood, and believe the actions of Hamas and its supporters are contrary to that goal.  

As Senator Carl Schurz once said, “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”  For Jewish Americans like me, that is our challenge and obligation if we choose to identify as Zionists: to set things right, and to speak out against actions that undermine our values.  

It has been just under twenty four hours since the ceasefire took hold.  I pray it lasts.

-AG

Published in: on May 21, 2021 at 10:59 am  Leave a Comment  
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Even a Broken Clock

The decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was long-overdue.  

I am not a fan of our current president.  I’m sure that does not come as much of a surprise to anyone even passingly familiar with my writing.  My political views place great value on open-mindedness, humility, civility, and the role of objective facts and analysis.  Consequently, I think the current occupant of the White House is unqualified and dangerous.

Due in large part to the self-selection of social media, geography, and real-life society, a vast majority of my friends share this view.  Unfortunately, many of us make the mistake of concluding that because the president is dangerous and unqualified, anything he says or does must be wrong.

Admittedly, that formula produces accurate results in the large majority of cases.  However, over the last month, the president did something that- while controversial- I believe was exactly the correct course of action to move the Middle East closer to peace.

He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Naturally, as soon as this decision was announced, it was decried as dangerous folly by my fellow Trump critics.  After all, failing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was a bipartisan norm for our chief executives.  Official recognition of Jerusalem, coupled with moving our embassy there, has been one of the largest carrots we have dangled in front of the Israelis for decades, in hopes of persuading them into making a lasting peace with the Palestinians.

In a sense, this policy shift reminds me of President Obama’s steps to de-isolate Cuba.  In that case, as now, a long-held, bipartisan foreign policy position was being forfeited by a new chief executive with limited governing experience.  The president’s critics- then and now- immediately proclaimed it a mistake.  Then, as now, those critics accused the president of giving up leverage and compromising our long-term strategic goals.

One persistent error in American foreign policy has been our failure to recognize when our policies are not working.  The Cuban embargo lasted for decades, and did nothing to resolve our tensions with their government.  Our refusal to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital did not compel Israel to make hard concessions for peace over the decades.

There is no final peace agreement that does not include an Israeli capital in Jerusalem.  Our stubborn refusal to acknowledge that reality does nothing to bend Israel to our will.  If you telegraph so persistently- as we have- that you are going to give the horse the carrot eventually, no matter what, it ceases to serve as an effective incentive.  It did, however, provide Palestinians with the hope- however remote- that Israel would be forced to cede Jerusalem to some international body, or that the city might be a shared capital of both countries.

Our president’s move effectively takes this issue off the table.  The predicted violent uproar in response largely failed to materialize.  The Palestinians have announced that they are unwilling to continue working with the United States, but they must recognize even now that will be an untenable position in the long term, as only the United States has sufficient influence on Israel to facilitate a comprehensive settlement.

The idea that this compromises our perceived neutrality in the conflict ignores reality; we have been compromised since at least the 1980s.  No international observer truly believes that we are impartial in this dispute.  The United States has been and remains Israel’s closest ally in the world.  That is not a surprising revelation to anyone following the abortive peace efforts over the years, least of all to the Palestinians.

There is a more subtle aspect to this policy shift.  It represents, for the first time, the United States intervening to settle a disputed issue unilaterally.  Israel was quite pleased at this particular outcome, but they must surely realize that the next issue could go the other way, particularly with our volatile and unpredictable president at the helm.

Perhaps the United States will decide that large swaths of Israeli settlements must be demolished in the West Bank, or that a certain number of Palestinian refugees must be readmitted to Israel.  We have the leverage to force compliance, should we so choose.  Consequently, this new precedent of unilateral decision-making should give Israel pause.

The message sent by this policy shift is that the status quo cannot be indefinitely sustained.  The current Israeli leadership seems satisfied to remain in stalemate, and the Palestinians still have not consolidated the necessary collective will to make a meaningful peace.  This unilateral move undermines that status quo, and signals that the United States is committed to moving towards peace, with or without the participation of the primary governments involved.

I do not believe- and this may be my anti-Trump bias, but it’s based on his other governing decisions- that the president considered all of the implications of his decision before making the announcement.  I am not convinced that he is a leader who understands nuance, foreign policy, or long-term strategy.  More likely, he was convinced to make this announcement at the behest of one of his pro-Israel supporters or family members; perhaps the recently-disclosed financial arrangements between Israel and his son-in-law played a role.

Regardless of his motives, however, I do believe that in this case, the president got it right.  Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and our refusal to recognize it as such was nothing more than a relic of a negotiating tactic that produced no results over the decades it had been our policy.  Just like the Cuba embargo, its time has passed, and we need to move on from ineffective foreign policy decisions.

To paraphrase an old saying, even a broken president is right twice a term.

-AG

Published in: on January 10, 2018 at 9:45 am  Comments (1)  
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