Hamas, Israel, and Palestine: What History Will Tell

What History Will Tell

One of the most intriguing aspects of the Israel-Hamas war is how much the Israeli people seem to disagree with their government. Many blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for decisions said to have left the nation vulnerable, and inasmuch as the Hamas atrocity in Israel on 7 October is any part of some larger consideration, Netanyahu's finance minister, Belazel Smotrich, describes Hamas as an "asset". In 2020, defense minister Avigdor Lieberman resigned over the Netanyahu government's efforts on behalf of Hamas, denouncing "the first time Israel is funding terrorism against itself".

Early questions wondered how Israel could be so unprepared, including chatter of troop movements that basically cleared the path for an Hamas incursion. More recently, there is even suggestion that Israeli sigint stopped monitoring Hamas radio communications. Between incompetence and betrayal, there is a lot going on; per CBC↱, "Many accuse [Netanyahu] of deliberately empowering [Hamas] for decades as part of a strategy to sabotage a two-state solution".

"There's been a lot of criticism of Netanyahu in Israel for instating a policy for many years of strengthening Hamas and keeping Gaza on the brink while weakening the Palestinian Authority," said Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group. "And we've seen that happening very clearly on the ground."

"(Hamas and Netanyahu) are mutually reinforcing, in the sense that they provide each other with a way to continue to use force and rejectionism as opposed to making sacrifices and compromises in order to reach some kind of resolution," Zonszein told CBC News from Tel Aviv.

This symbiotic relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas has been remarked on for years, by both friends and enemies, hawks and doves.​

A former head of Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, was more direct; a decade ago, he explained, "If we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas's strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister."

Netanyahu's first term as prime minister came after an Israeli rightist murdered PM Yitzhak Rabin in opposition to the Oslo Accords. CBC recalls, "On March 12, 2019, Netanyahu defended the Hamas payments to his Likud Party caucus on the grounds that they weakened the pro-Oslo Palestinian Authority". And in between, imagine a young tough swiping a hood ornament, being celebrated for his crime, and in that moment calling for murder. He might even grow up to be refused military service for being too extremist, but if you're Benjamin Netanyahu, someone like Itamar Ben Gvir is an ideal candidate for minister of national security.

Even Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most infamous regimes, could perform the basic stations of geopolitics; Prince Turki bin Faisal split his criticism between Hamas and Israel. It is one thing if Hamas has committed an atrocity, undermined the Palestinian Authority ("as Israel has been doing"), and sabotaged both Saudi efforts in particular and the Palestinian people in general. But it was also easy enough to denounce Israel for facilitating Hamas.

On March 12, 2019, Netanyahu defended the Hamas payments to his Likud Party caucus on the grounds that they weakened the pro-Oslo Palestinian Authority, according to the Jerusalem Post:

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel's regular allowing of Qatari funds to be transferred into Gaza, saying it is part of a broader strategy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority separate, a source in Monday's Likud faction meeting said," the Post reported.

"The prime minister also said that 'whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for' transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."

Netanyahu insisted that neither the money nor the construction material given to Hamas would be diverted to military purposes. But today, the IDF finds itself showing how Hamas has done exactly that — by diverting and converting civilian funds and materials to warlike purposes.

The military tried to warn him at the time, former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot told the Ma'ariv newspaper. He said Netanyahu acted "in total opposition to the national assessment of the National Security Council, which determined that there was a need to disconnect from the Palestinians and establish two states."​

MK Haim Jelin, then with Yesh Atid, said, four years ago, "Gaza border residents are paying the price for the lack of policy and the arrogance" of Netanyahu's campaign against Palestine. Kibbutz Be'eri, where Jelin lives, lost at least one hundred thirty people on 7 October, with others taken captive.

The arrogance Jelin describes is palpable:

And just twelve days before the Hamas massacres in southern Israel, Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly, holding a map of what he called "The New Middle East" that showed all of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights, as parts of an enlarged Israel, with no Palestinian state in sight.​

Over a quarter-century after an Israeli conservative assassinated a prime minister for not being genocidal enough, the Nazi-sympathizing successor continues his merry way along a genocidal campaign. And as Israelis grapple with questions about how the government could be so unprepared, one thing still very difficult to comprehend and calculate is a question of will. No, Israelis didn't specifically invite Hamas to attack, but Netanyahu dared them. Double-dared them. Triple-dog dared them. And while some of the American-grade superficial politicking runs nigh on conspiracist, such as blaming Russia for both the Hamas attack and coincident American Congressional dysfunction, other questions about troop deployments, sigint failures, facilitation of Hamas, and even wagging genocide in public will persist in historical assessment until their answers are understood.

In its way, this must remain a matter of failure; the alternative is unspeakable, and ought to rest beyond the pale of reasonable imagination. The Hamas attack, and its toll and manner, is an atrocity. That Israel would respond with atrocity of its own is about as obvious and predictable as can be. Inasmuch as that was part of Hamas' calculation, Israelis now countenance the perfect storm of failure that coincides with such an extraordinary pretext for a chance to fulfill over a quarter-century of genocidal intention. That Hamas could commit such an act, and even Israelis are eyeing their own government, tells us something about how far this is gone.

Americans have a microbubble version, as some political conservatives attempt to countenance what their movement has become. In that way, the Israeli moment reads like a later stage of a process we perceive in other experiences, a certain manner of disbelief because regardless of the fact that they keep giving Likud and Netanyahu a chance, some part of so many Israelis never really believed it would go this far.

From abroad, the conflict between Israel and Hamas looks like a war with no good guys. And while it is not quite infighting within a cohort of villains, something about the lack of necessity, somewhere between inessential and wanton, haunts this war like perpetual accusation.
____________________

Notes:

Dyer, Evan. "How Netanyahu's Hamas policy came back to haunt him — and Israel". CBC News. 28 October 2023. CBC.ca. 30 October 2023. https://bit.ly/45QcDCQ

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Omission and Uncertainty

Correspondent Tal Schneider↱, for the Times of Israel, the day after:

Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

While Netanyahu does not make these kind of statements publicly or officially, his words are in line with the policy that he implemented.

The same messaging was repeated by right-wing commentators, who may have received briefings on the matter or talked to Likud higher-ups and understood the message ....

.... One thing is clear: The concept of indirectly strengthening Hamas — while tolerating sporadic attacks and minor military operations every few years — went up in smoke Saturday ....

.... Hamas became stronger and used the auspices of peace that Israelis so longed for as cover for its training, and hundreds of Israelis have paid with their lives for this massive omission.

The terror inflicted on the civilian population in Israel is so enormous that the wounds from it will not heal for years, a challenge compounded by the dozens abducted into Gaza.

Judging by the way Netanyahu has managed Gaza in the last 13 years, it is not certain that there will be a clear policy going forward.​

The idea that so much life hangs in a balance of omission and uncertainty is integral to understanding how it comes to all this, but the days since have made clear what the policy is, going forward.
____________________

Notes:

Schneider, Tal. "For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it's blown up in our faces". The Times of Israel. 8 October 2023. TimesOfIsrael.com. 30 October 2023. https://bit.ly/49roBG2

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Definition and Identity

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

​

"Zionist forces brutally assault Orthodox Jews in the streets of Jerusalem for opposing genocide in Gaza. Haven't seen this kind of state violence against Jews since Nazi Germany. Images like this destroy the myth that the State of Israel is Jewish."

― Dan Cohen↱​

There is a lot going on in that short paragraph from journalist Dan Cohen, and for our part there isn't much to make of it in the moment. The video accompanying Cohen's post is a brief clip of an Israeli soldier ("Zionist forces") physically assaulting an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem, and then fellow soldiers come to his aid as other Orthodox Jews try to haul the victim away.

And in that way, goes the assertion, "Zionism" is part of why Israel is not a Jewish state. Normally, the idea that Israel is not a Jewish state is a response to accusations of theocracy, a way of reminding the pretense that Israel is a democratic society.

And while the Nazi comparison feels about as strange as can be while the Israeli government murders thousands in a concentration camp, the whole of Cohen's post is one of those things we might come back to again and again, as this goes on, and find the thresholds defining his argument—Zionist, Nazi, myth of the Jewish state—strangely unstable. To wit, sure, I can get what he's saying, and even in a way that isn't some sort of awful politic, but how will the terminology weather as time passes?

It's like the idea that "Zionism" is some manner of antisemitic slur, except Jews use the word, but it also turns out Orthodox Jews just aren't conservative enough for a supremacist Israeli identity politic that apparently doesn't have a name.

So, perhaps every time we look back at this relic, it will feel differently than last time. That is part of what history will tell. It is also part of living through the history. Well, that is, for those who live through it.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Integrity and Failure

Craig Mohkiber is the former director of the New York office of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. His resignation letter↱ is an appeal from a broken heart:

I also worked in these halls through the genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya. In each case, when the dust settled on the horrors that had been perpetrated against defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed in our duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocites, of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators. And so it has been with successive waves of murder and persecution against the Palestinians throughout the entire life of the UN.

High Commissioner, we are failing again.

As a human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, Apartheid rules.

This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What's more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel's atrocities.​

But for all the failures, the UN keeps trying. For Mokhiber, it's all the difference in the world:

High Commissioner, I came to this Organization first in the 1980s, because I found in it a principled, normbased institution that was squarely on the side of human rights, including in cases where the powerful US, UK, and Europe were not on our side. While my own government, its subsidiarity institutions, and much of the US media were still supporting or justifying South African apartheid, Israeli oppression, and Central American death squads, the UN was standing up for the oppressed peoples of those lands. We had international law on our side. We had human rights on our side. We had principle on our side. Our authority was rooted in our integrity. But no more.​

The first two pages of the letter are a searing indictment that plead for a glimmer of hope: "We have much for which to atone," Mokhiber declares. "But the path to atonement is clear."

The remainder actually outlines a path forward, and one thing that stands out is that Mokhiber, an American, explicitly plinks the U.S. government, and there isn't really any question what he means by the advice to "fight like hell for a principled approach in the UN's political offices".
____________________

Notes:

Mokhiber, Craig. "Resignation letter from the Director of New York Office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights". 28 October 2023. AURDIP.org. 2 November 2023. https://bit.ly/3QoCH20

 

What History We Tell

Two minutes with Sana Saeed↱:

While people keep referencing, "This is Israel's 9/11, this is Israel's 9/11" what keeps being missed is that, yeah, it is a lot like 9/11, specifically in the way the U.S. news media and its political establishment, choking on th efog of war, absolutely lost their minds, cultivated one of the worst periods of mass-hysterical racism, and gallivanted into two fo the bloodiest wars of the past century, leading to complete destabilization of entire regions, and millions dead.

We have editorials from leading papers calling to stand with Israel against war crimes as it carries out horrific war crimes. We have op-eds by professors calling their students anti-Semitic and imploring employers not to hire them because they stand against the Israeli occupation, against apartheid. We have billionaire CEOs seeking to ruin the lives of students who wrote a letter akin to the Ha'aretz editorial blaming the Hamas attack on Benjamin Netanyahu.

MSNBC removed its three Muslim anchors from the anchor chair. Reuters declines to even name Israel in its statements about the killing of one of its journalists, Issam Abdullah.

The State Department has asked its diplomats to not use the terms "ceasefire", "de-escalation", and "restoration of calm", an approach adopted by U.S. news media. President Joe Biden is taking talking points from Netanyahu, and lying about confirming images of forty decapitated Israeli babies. Marches in solidarity with Palestinians against the Israeli bombings and siege and occupation are being called "pro-Hamas" rallies. The FBI and ICE are visiting Muslims and Palestinians at their homes, at mosques.

And so, when a six year-old Palestinian-American Muslim by, Wadea Al-Fayoume, is stabbed twenty-six time by his mother's landlord who was concerned about the non-existent "Global Day of Jihad" that made headlines across the country, who are we blaming? Are we blaming Hamas? Or are we blaming a media and political landscape that decided the greatest lesson from the mass hysteria following 9/11 that led to some of the greatest civil and human rights violations in recent history was to repeat it?​

Those two minutes are extracted from a larger seventeen and a half minutes↱ in which Saeed describes "How the U.S. Media Protects Israel".
____________________

Notes:

@ajplus. "You can always rely on the U.S. news media to do one thing and do it well: protect Israel. @SanaSaeed explains.". Twitter. 3 November 2023. Twitter.com. 4 November 2023. https://bit.ly/47jDQ1S

Saeed, Sana. "How the U.S. Media Protects Israel". Backspace with Sana Saeed. 3 November 2023. YouTube.com. 4 November 2023. https://youtu.be/6HAedspO8hM

 

Curiously, no such critique was offered when the West strategically (indiscriminately) bombed Berlin during WWII.

Bombing of Berlin in World War II
Part of Strategic bombing during World War II

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

The ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, heavily damaged in an Allied bombing and preserved as a monument against destruction and war

more.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Berlin_in_World_War_II#

Today, I know what is going on is barbaric and many innocent civilians have lost lives, on both sides. But it seems to me that the loudest voices come from people who have never had to defend themselves, their families, or their country.

To Israel, this is an existential threat and any chance for peace is unattainable until the enemy has been utterly destroyed, regardless of any innocent civilian casualties, which btw is not of any concern to Hamas, They not only kill indiscriminately, they actually target civilians or use Palestinian or Israeli civilians as defensive strategy.
This is why they have been labeled "terrorists" and terrorism is a viral mindset.

Israel is only playing on a level field with the opponent's rules of engagement. It's the only effective strategy.
If Palestine wants peace, it's the Palestinians that need to get rid of Hamas from their midst.
Then the bombing will stop!

 

Stupid comment, of course there were critiques.
Also are you forgetting the Blitz? 40,000 were killed in cities across the UK from Glasgow to London two years prior to those events. It was a very ugly messy indiscriminate war, there was no such thing as surgical strikes with drones and cruise missiles.

Please think just for once before posting.

 

I take it that you are justifying the Allies' bombing Germany into submission? I do.

But how about Hiroshima, Nagasaki? This horror ended the war and saved American lives.

But, do you believe Hamas is waging an honorable "clean" war that deserves deference?
Why is Israel being chastized for their desire to end Hamas, who started this mess to begin with and hides behind civilians?

p.s. And why don't you try to be a little more civil? Do you have some kind of inferiority complex that needs feeding?

 

A claim like the US one-sidedly "protecting Israel" carries the undertone of the stereotype that Jews are either running or manipulating the government, academia, Hollywood, journalism, public opinion, the financial system, etc. Regardless of whether the case to some degree or not, referencing such a proposed grip of Judeo-prowess on America is typically regarded as an antisemitic meme.

If qualifications for both New Antisemitism and some aspects of the old can be ignored on the asserted grounds that "anti-bigotry" is being opportunistically abused to deflect legit criticism of Israel and Jewish interests in general, then via the same this should trigger a developing landslide toward selectively slighting the whole spectrum of new formal/informal "I'm entitled to be safe from that" privileges assigned to the array of population groups.

Which is to say, if one can figuratively walk into Abramowitz's protected social space on the beach and piddle on their sandcastle because it is construable that they are actually exploiting that space to enjoy advantages beyond the intended purpose, then the whole consensus arrangement begins to collapse for everybody. (Setting aside the issue of how pretentious the existence of a network of effective "don't tread on or offend me" special prerogatives might be to begin with, as fomented by some skeptics/cynics.)
_

 

Debatable as to who started it all. You do realize that less than 100 years ago, that land was named Palestine- right?
As to hiding behind civilians, Gaza strip is 140 sq miles... Less than half the size of Ft Worth, TX. (330 sq miles). And, at 2,000,000 people - over twice the population of Ft Worth (900,000). Kind of crowded for anybody to get "out of the way".

 

No, that is not correct.
a) There was a treaty to which all parties agreed and that was not broken by Israel.
b) There are not 2,000,000 Hamas that need to go. Israel has no quarrel with Palestinians who want to live in peace.

And talking about numbers, where do you want 7+ million Jews to go? "Into the sea"?

Origin of the Palestinians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians#

Please understand, I am from the Netherlands, and before WWII we had a large Jewish population. Our Jewish family doctor and his wife were killed across the street from us and his home was used as a German station.

The Holocaust in the Netherlands

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_the_Netherlands

https://amsterdam.org/en/diamonds.php#

 

Ok I'm jumped in a little there. My apologies

 

All I'm saying is Oct 7 didn't happen in a vacuum. There's a long history here.

I didn't say there was. I said Gaza has a population of 2 million humans crammed into 140 sq miles.

Did I even imply that? No.

All irrelevant to the discussion.

 

I agree.

Yes, it's a big city.

It is part of the equation. To the Jewish people this is an existential situation.

You do realize that all parties involved are native Palestinians, including Jews? Here we're looking at ancient civil war.

 

"Existential situation" describes anything that, if left unchecked, could potentially bring about the cessation of something. That is not disputed: there are indeed those among the Palestinian population who want to wipe out Israel. What is important, though, would seem to be the nature of the response to that "existential situation". Wiping out the possible threat is certainly one way (although ironically you then become the existential threat to the other party, and if you're looking to wipe them out, are they then not justified in trying to wipe you out - so you give them the justification for that which you are trying to prevent?). The best way? The most appropriate way? Do observers think what is happening now should be classed as such? And if anything is it not making things worse in giving a new generation of Palestinians the very desire they are looking to eradicate through force?

Not sure what you mean by referring to it as an "ancient civil war"? Do you mean that it's a war between two peoples from the same ancient ethnic group? If so then it is really no more an "ancient civil war" than all the European wars of yore. Napoleonic wars? 100 Years War? Classifying them as "ancient civil wars" would be rather unhelpful in understanding them, would it not?
Or do you mean that it is the continuation of a civil war that has been going on since ancient times? If so, which war would that be? Or do you mean something else?

 

Appears to be fairly existential for the Palestinians too.

 

There needs to be a change of regime/approach to the problem. It will be a hell of a task unfortunately to able to move on from October 7th for Israel, what followed for Palestine and all the history prior to that.

We could look to events in Japan, Germany and the rest of Europe as examples in terms of how it is possible to recover from war and live in peace.
Look to Northern Ireland on how communities can recover from political/religious conflict.

Will it be possible with this problem?

One solution would be to police it ourselves like we did in the Bosnia conflict. UN troops in a two nation state?

The attacks stop, the food shortages water shortages stop, or to enforce it.