During the seemingly interminable premiership of Benjamin Netanyahu and his string of increasingly extremist right-wing cabinets, both he and Israel have come under a good deal of harsh criticism, much of it justified.
Netanyahu himself has been accused of corruption, charges for which there is so much evidence that, when contesting them seemed futile, he chose instead to attempt to seize control of a judiciary known for its independence. From there, Netanyahu could either terminate the case against him or effectively pardon himself, two concepts that have recently become familiar to Americans. Israelis took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands to protest.
But the real condemnation was aimed at the Netanyahu governments, which fanned the flames of conflict and hatred by green-lighting settlements deep into the West Bank, looking the other way when Palestinian families were evicted in East Jerusalem, and constricting the ability of Palestinians to conduct their own affairs with dignity and opportunity.
The effect, critics insisted, was to erode the possibility of the two-state solution that just about everyone except extremists on both sides assumed was the sole path to long-term resolution of the conflict. Only when Palestinians had their own nation, they argued, free of Israeli control and influence, would they drop their opposition to the existence of a Jewish state and establish what was certain to be an uneasy but necessary truce between the two antagonists.
This final assumption, that if granted full autonomy, Palestinian militants would be willing to grudgingly recognize Israel and abandon their efforts to eradicate both the country and its occupants—a notion vociferously contested by the Israeli right—was blown up on October 7 by Hamas.
Here was no defensive action against military targets or an attempt to expel an invader, but rather a premeditated, unprovoked campaign to murder and commit unspeakable acts against as many Israeli citizens as possible. Maximal barbarism, Hamas was certain, would necessitate ferocious reprisals that would then ignite all-out war and result in the destruction of Israel as a nation.
The carnage was immense. The number of Israelis killed in the attack per capita was fifteen times the number of Americans killed on 9/11 and the same as if terrorists had murdered the entire population of Coral Gables, Florida, or Sheboygan, Wisconsin. There were widespread rapes, mutilations, and, of course, the taking of more than 200 hostages, including young children and the very old.
Israel responded with more restraint than the United States would have if one of our medium-sized cities had been destroyed in a terrorist attack. While initially pulverizing those areas in Gaza from which rockets continued to be launched, before initiating a full-scale retaliatory strike, Israel gave Gaza civilians a chance to evacuate, which is more than we did in either Afghanistan or Iraq.
In fact, although the Israelis took some highly controversial steps to isolate their enemies, such as imposing a siege, Hamas and the other militant groups showed even less consideration for the lives and welfare of Gaza civilians. In addition to their eagerness to allow those they purport to represent to be killed or have their homes and businesses reduced to rubble, they continued to fire rockets toward Israel from civilian areas, the trajectory of some passing directly over a packed hospital. When one of the rockets misfired and killed hundreds of men, women, and children, Hamas tried to shift the blame to Israel, ironic since the video of what actually occurred was posted on, of all places, Al Jazeera, which still refused to acknowledge its own evidence.
Around the world, but especially in the United States, the renewal of war also evoked a renewal of the debate over moral equivalency. While most Americans were aghast at both Hamas’s brutality and the looming humanitarian disaster in Gaza, more sympathy was directed toward Israel, a victim of one of the worst terrorist attacks in recent world history. Some American progressives, however, many at elite universities, simply could not help but again blame Israel, some even cheering Hamas for its “fight against tyranny.”
That these social justice warriors would side with Hamas is curious, since tyranny is the perfect description for the manner in which Hamas has ruled Gaza. There is no freedom of speech, press, or religion, and women, as in much of fundamentalist Islam, are considered almost a sub-species. Many of these same activists are equally vocal about LGBTQ rights, another irony, since in areas of the world controlled by groups such as Hamas, those falling into those categories are regularly beaten, jailed, and sometimes executed, all of which are sanctioned by the ruling cabal. In Gaza, anyone even suspected of co-operating with Israel is dealt with similarly without the niceties of a trial. In fact, if past behavior is any indication, a Hamas-run state would function a good deal more like Afghanistan under the Taliban than the free and open society—like Israel—that most American progressives claim to favor.
The bigger question, however, is whether this attack by Hamas has destroyed the possibility of a two-state solution as a viable option. By their recent actions, Hamas has demonstrated that, had they been in control of the West Bank with no Israeli security to deal with, rather than committing themselves to building a nation, they would simply have prepared for the same sort of action they took on October 7, except on a much larger and more devastating scale. Peaceful co-existence seems never to have been an option.
Israel is therefore faced with the question of whether it can allow itself to empower a next-door neighbor that remains determined to wipe it and its people from the face of the earth. What other nation would be asked to tolerate such a threat? But if Israel is prohibited from using its own resources to ensure its security, who will?
Thus, even with all the killing and destruction, the biggest casualty of this shameful and horrific episode might be the end, at least for a time, of any movement toward peace, halting and frustrating as it may have been. Once again it will be the innocent on both sides who are the inevitable victims of the extremists.
So sad , so true.