I realize this has inadvertently become a rather Israel-heavy blog in the past year or so, only because I visited Israel this past summer, and have been just super behind on posting about anything else.
But, in the aftermath of October 7, what many are now calling Black Shabbat, or the Simchat Torah War, here we are. A flood of things to talk about, think about, respond to. Overwhelming grief and horror, at what has happened to both Israelis and Palestinians in the past few weeks. The deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, followed by a military which prides itself as one of the most sophisticated in the world leveling half of Gaza – killing thousands (more, I am told, than died in the Bosnian genocide) and leaving more than half the population of Gaza homeless – rather than do something (I don’t know what; I’m not a tactical expert), whatever that may be, to actually attempt to minimize civilian losses while eliminating the threat Hamas has demonstrated themselves to be. Another Black Shabbat can never be allowed to happen again; the threat must be eliminated. But surely not like this?
I was out with a friend, I don’t recall precisely where or what we were doing, but out and about in Kyoto, when I happened to open whichever social media app it was on my phone. I read whatever it was that I read – an IG post, a few tweets, about terrorists attacking homes and villages in southern Israel, murdering and kidnapping people – and I just didn’t appreciate the gravity of it, the size of it. How unprecedented this was; how significant. It is a tragic fact of life that terrorism, violence, is indeed a fact of life in Israel. To what extent, I honestly couldn’t say. Whatever my relationship to Israel may be – not all that different I believe from the relationships that I know my Okinawan- and Taiwanese-American friends have with the histories, politics, freedom, well-being, and culture of Okinawa and Taiwan, to name just two examples – whatever my diasporic relationship may be, I didn’t grow up in Israel, I’ve never lived there. It was upsetting to read about, to hear about, to think about, and I did break down in tears for a moment, as my friend asked me what was wrong and I just said “there’s been a terrorist attack.”
That first day or two after Oct 7, I immediately was thinking about how, after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, people rallied and marched and protested against the government & the military, calling this an intelligence failure, a security failure, and ultimately succeeding in ousting that government. I am no political expert, nor a military affairs expert, and I do not know the numbers on the ground. Just how much were Israel’s defenses weakened by the IDF Reserves refusing to serve, as a protest against Netanyahu’s undemocratic judicial reforms and other right-wing policies? What else exactly was going on that might have caused such a dramatic intelligence failure, and security failure, that such an unprecedented thing as this “al-Aqsa Flood” could take place?
But then, I started seeing social media posts alleging that Netanyahu was somehow responsible for creating or causing, or propping up, or supporting, Hamas? I didn’t really get it. But then I read these articles, from Haaretz (“A Brief History of the Netanyahu-Hamas Alliance“), The Hill (“The symbiotic relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas“), and Foreign Affairs (“Why Netanyahu Must Go“).
Essentially, they explain that Netanyahu has never supported a two-state solution, has never wanted peace, and to the contrary, has done everything in his power to maintain instability and disunity in the Palestinian Territories. Fearing, I suppose, that the Palestinian Authority should become too powerful, he worked to prop up Hamas, to block the PA from regaining control of Gaza, to block the PA from having strong, stable, good governing power in the West Bank…. As a progressive who does believe in the two-state solution; as someone who always has, this strikes me as the very opposite of what should have been done. And it’s horrifying, and devastating, to think of what might have been, instead of this. Instead of more than a thousand Israelis massacred, thousands of Palestinians killed…
I mean, look. I’m no expert in any of this. And I know that Abbas and Fatah are not good people. Abbas literally wrote a book alleging a secret relationship between Zionists and the Nazis, that Zionists helped cause the Holocaust so that Jews could be made to move to Palestine. Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, the PLO, are probably not the greatest partners in peace. But, Rabin came close, and Olmert came close, or so I thought; who knows to what extent Arafat or Abbas actually intended to hold up their side of the bargain and to actually work towards peace. I don’t know. But to my mind, a two-state solution, with a Palestinian Authority that actually wants to devote attention to building a productive, prosperous, safe, stable, and peaceful Palestine, existing within whatever borders – X% of the West Bank and Gaza, with or without East Jerusalem, with whatever arrangement to allow transit and transport between the West Bank and Gaza; a fully sovereign Palestinian State agreed to under whatever XYZ terms of agreement – in peace with the State of Israel, this has always been the solution I have envisioned.
But now it seems – was I naive? woefully uninformed? or is this news, that most people didn’t know, didn’t realize? – now Haaretz reports that Netanyahu intentionally, for the past 15 years, worked to “bolster… the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and … weaken… the Palestinian Authority,” “resist[ing] any attempt, military or diplomatic, that might bring an end to the Hamas regime,” and actually actively supporting and funding the group. I am reeling. What did I ever actually know about Netanyahu? That he was corrupt, that he was the head of perhaps the most right-wing government Israel has ever had. But this? I had no idea.
Hamas. A group that has stated countless times, and enshrines in its Charter, its complete opposition to ever recognizing the State of Israel or ever agreeing to peace, and its total support for the killing of every Jew not just in Palestine but around the world. Outright calls for genocide, again and again. A group that not only represents a direct, overt, threat to Jewish lives, freedom, well-being, and to political stability in the region, but a group that has also, ever since their founding and especially since taking over complete control of Gaza in 2007, impoverished Gaza residents’ well-being or hopes for prosperity, and endangered their lives.
People are endlessly calling for an end to occupation. In 2005, Israel pulled out of Gaza entirely, in the hopes that this would bring greater security. De-occupied, de-colonized if you’d like, the area entirely. Every last settlement, every last Jewish resident, every soldier, every speck of Israeli control or presence, removed from the region. The entire Gaza Strip, left to the Palestinians to run and rule as they wish. Some at the time expressed that even a tiny place such as that could grow, like Dubai, into a rather well-to-do place. Technological innovation, beautiful beaches, access to the sea for import/export. Instead, Hamas took over and immediately started devoting resources to military buildup and to attacking Israel. Israel – along with Egypt – responded by implementing various security measures, including a fence or wall on one side of the Gaza Strip, and a maritime blockade on the other, both to attempt to block out violence, and to prevent Hamas from obtaining weapons or certain other sorts of materials. All the oppressive “occupation” “open-air prison” aspects that so many anti-Zionist activists love to talk about as if Israel is just doing it just to be cruel, just purely because Israel is an evil, colonialist, imperialist, entity, all of these things exist for one reason and one reason only: to protect Israel from Hamas violence. It is Hamas’ fault, and not Israel’s, that all of this existed. People call for “ending the occupation.” I don’t know what that means. Israel already vacated Gaza entirely, and it didn’t bring peace. Now you think that removing the walls and blockades will actually bring peace? Every time that Israel has eased up on security, there was more violence. Every single time that Hamas or similar organizations were given an opportunity to say “okay, we’ll ease up on ‘occupation’ if you’ll give us peace in return,” instead there were rockets.
In the years since 2007, Hamas has spent god knows how much humanitarian aid money (and funds from Qatar, Iran, and elsewhere) not on hospitals or schools or food or water or whatever else it might be used for, to benefit Gazans, but instead on rockets, and on digging tunnels under Gaza to hide weapons and fighters. Hamas placed rocket launchers and whatever other military equipment atop hospitals and schools, built their tunnel networks under residential neighborhoods, actively and intentionally endangering their own people. And now, with Operation al-Aqsa Flood, they’ve brought utter devastation to Gaza, by once again breaking the standing ceasefire, refusing to allow peace, and instead once again launching an attack on innocent Israelis, inviting – they most certainly knew – extensive retribution. And in the days since Oct 7, Hamas is still redirecting water, fuel, humanitarian aid in other forms, away from actually helping the people and towards supporting their own fighters, their own capacity for continued violence. At least one Hamas representative, speaking on the news, has said explicitly that the safety of Palestinian civilians is not Hamas’ responsibility or priority, but that it’s the UN and Israel who are responsible for protecting them. In other words, Hamas remains a militant group, not a government; it cares only about its own fighters, and its own military capabilities.
It was Hamas, and not anyone else, who imprisoned, abused, massacred, Fatah members and other political opponents when they took over Gaza in 2005-2007. It was Hamas who violently punished anyone who spoke out against them over the past nearly 20 years. It was Hamas who beheaded or otherwise abused and executed countless gay and queer Palestinians.
How anyone can think Hamas are good people, that they are good guys, that they are liberationist resistance fighters, is beyond me. My heart is rent apart for the suffering of the Palestinian people. The people themselves – parents and children, grandparents; teachers and doctors. Millions of people who just want to live freely, to live happily, to enjoy some prosperity and wellbeing and peace in their homeland. But the people are not Hamas. It is Hamas who endangers them, who impoverishes them. It is Hamas who refuses peace, and who has now proven themselves to be such a threat to Israeli safety and well-being that they must be eliminated, to ensure that Oct 7 can never happen again. It is Hamas that the Palestinian people need to be freed from.
But. But here’s the point: Netanyahu helped prop this all up. He helped support and fund Hamas. He not only allowed this to continue for a decade and a half, but he actually encouraged it, supported it.
I am honestly not sure what to do with this information. I just feel so depressed, so angry, so upset over this. These fucking right-wing assholes. Things didn’t have to be this way. We could have gone down a different path. Israel could have been working all this time to eliminate Hamas. I don’t know how. Somehow. Whether militarily, or through some kind of power manipulations, helping to boost moderates… I don’t know the ins and outs of exactly how it would have been done. It would have been complicated, difficult. If it were easy, it would have been solved decades ago already. But by whatever means, Israel could have been working towards supporting those elements within Palestinian society who might actually agree to a two-state solution, and working towards supporting those people in weakening, marginalizing, perhaps even eliminating violent extremist elements such as Hamas. To learn that Netanyahu and his ilk have been actively working against this, actively doing the very opposite, for years… I am floored. I am so disgusted, so dismayed.
Things didn’t have to be this way. And now, here we are, with the whole of Israel traumatized and at war, having suffered such an incredible shock, such an emotionally devastating and truly inhumanly brutal attack, and half of Gaza razed to the ground. How can peace ever possibly emerge from this? We’re going to have war for generations to come. Is this what Netanyahu wanted? I know it’s what Hamas wants. The Palestinian people, and the Israeli people, don’t deserve this. No one does. We all deserve better. We all deserve freedom and peace. Prosperity and well-being. Security and self-determination.
Makes me wish I believed in Hell, so that I could believe that Netanyahu would burn for eternity for what he has caused here. Millions are suffering, have suffered, will continue to suffer, because of the evil he has propped up, and enabled.
As bad as Netanyahu is, I think Ben-Gvir is even worse. Netanyahu betrayed Israel’s security, but he was president twice before and the country didn’t burn down. Ben-Gvir is legitimately a sociopath. He has a portrait of the equivalent of Dylann Roof in his home, he burned a photo of a dead Palestinian baby at his friend’s wedding, he even kidnapped a little boy and raised him telling him lies about his family in an experiment to see if he could raise a terrorist. He’s the one who was sacking mosques to incite Hamas, and of course he is using this war as an excuse to lock up Israeli protesters, including friends of mine, and ethnically cleanse the West Bank. I don’t think Israel can survive as a home for Jews, nor as a democracy, with the involvement of Ben-Gvir’s Kahanist party in this wartime unity government. It has already turned into something different and I think it is going to get worse.
Thank you for this. I guess I really should have written “Netanyahu and friends.”
Yes, from what little I know of him, Ben Gvir sounds absolutely horrific. And several of the other cabinet ministers as well.