Excellent piece. On all fronts. I realize strategy isn't the focus of the piece, but with that caveat, I'm concerned that if the IDF undertakes an attempt to go into Gaza and root out Hamas, that could leave the northern front vulnerable to Hezbollah in a manner that could bring Israel's continuing existence into question. If Iran was able to coordinate with a Sunni force without apparent detection, I fear what they may be planning in conjunction with their more natural allies.
Great piece Damon, the Iran deal is my big issue, because it felt like we were paying them to behave themselves and every parent knows that doesn’t work
Great essay. Intelligently reasoned and heartfelt, which has to have been difficult to pull off. The article that Damon linked explaining possible Hammas reasoning behind this attack is also good.
Would that we could all at least try to understand the other side, without feeling the need to excuse them. I have a question though: You write "after Trump scuttled the deal, reimposed painful sanctions, and assassinated Qasem Soleimani? What made Biden think that turning back the clock was either possible or desirable?" I'd like to see a logical and thorough argument about why it is not worth the effort to engage with Iran to find a way to limit or eliminate its nukes. Even in Obama's day, the right was raging against it, but if there were nuanced arguments from their side, I never saw them (they all seemed to be along the lines of "Ok, we might be able to stop their nukes with the treaty, but if we can't make them behave in all other ways about meddling in the middle east, it's not worth it, and we should take our toys and go home". Are we REALLY in a better spot because of that all-or-nothing approach?) By all accounts, Iran WAS complying with the nuclear portion of the treaty before Trump threw it away. The "we cannot tell if they are complying" sounds suspiciously like the ones used against Iraq by those claiming they had WMD. Hans Blicks and Scott Ritter were 'cancelled' even though they were correct.
Damon, I was set to applaud you when I read the first half of this sentence:
"[T]he fundamental source of Israel’s situation is the dispossession of the Palestinians that followed from Israel’s founding, and the refusal of the Palestinians to accept it, even after 75 long, suffering years."
Why did you have to ruin it with the second half, which is utterly uninformed. Perhaps you believe, like most Americans, that Israel has made one sincere peace offer after another, which the Palestinians and other Arabs have stubbornly refused. This is perfect nonsense. Israel has always offered the least that they imagined the Palestinians could accept, and then, if the Palestinian showed too much interest, backed away or added a poison pill, leading the Palestinians to reject it, which Israel pointed to as evidence of Palestinian rejectionism. And meanwhile, of course, it kept annexing the West Bank and starving Gaza. For relevant history, see Noam Chomsky's "Fateful Triangle" and relevant books by Tara Reinhardt, Simha Flapan, Avi Shlaim, and Ilan Pappe, among others.
And quit condescending to the left while you apparently know so little about the subject, ethnicity or no.
Whatever they do for a response, don't follow the example of the United States after 9/11. Every damn thing we've done in the Middle East in the past 22 years has made the situation 1,000 times worse. If they're going to do anything, let it be "an eye for an eye," not "a head for an eye." They can smash Hamas into a million pieces. Which at some point in the future will reassemble into something far worse.
I think this is a very rich contribution to the responses to the attacks that I've read so far. I don't agree fully with all of it, but I do agree with most, and all of the post seems carefully thought.
I'm interested in Mr. Scialabba's response in the comments because it illustrates a process I've felt frustrated by now for well over fifty years: the response that suggests one side is fully at fault and then uses as evidence the arguments of people supporting that position, ignoring the arguments of people who say the other side is fully at fault while trotting out their own warhorses.
The history of the conflict dates back over a century and is enormously complex, both factually and morally, and extends to the detritus of Ottoman and Nazi wreckages. It is not at all difficult to drown out the "other side" with an endless recital of facts (often highly leveraged) to support your side.
It leads nowhere. Historical arguments assigning blame are only tools to prolong the conflict, which I've come to believe is going to outlive me, although if you'd told me in 1967 that it wouldn't be resolved by 2000 I'd have shaken my head.
What might lead somewhere, I think, is a realization that playing into the conflict by playing for one side against the other only creates continuing pain for both sides. The alternative of working for a settlement that may offend the sense of justice on both sides, each rooted in a different justice narrative, seems to me the only way out. I feel disorienting dismay about the Hamas attacks, but do hold onto a hope that they may somehow renew hard work towards a formula that focuses on future possibilities, rather than on the endless litigation of past history.
Will Israel's natural inclination for retribution be tempered in anyway because of the impeding Saudi/US/Israel peace deal? Or is that already a casualty? If in fact Iran approved of this attack last week, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, will Israel go to war with Iran? If Israel is calling up 300,000 reservists, as reported, does that mean a two front war with Hama and Hezbollah? That's just scratching the surface of the various consequences from this weekend. Most selfishly for political animals, how will this ultimately impact US politics. If Biden handles this situation like he did Ukraine (and so far he's handling it pretty well), then it will boost his 2024 reelect situation.
What saddens me the most about this situation is that the people who will be hurt the most by the massacre are the very people in whose name Hamas pretends to act, the civilians of Gaza, Muslim and Christian, most of whom are not aligned with terrorist organizations. Already Israel is beefing up the blockade, cutting electric services to two hours a day and stopping shipments of food and fuel. How will this action do anything to improve the situation or discourage further radicalism? What do these people have left to lose?
I'm also Jewish married to a former Soviet Jew who has relatives in Israel. Their daughter has already been called back into military service. So, I feel the sense of connection and fear. But, as Mr. Eno notes above, the history of the region is long and complicated, rooted in the fallout from the dissolution of colonialism. In America, and especially within the American Jewish community, we mostly get to see only one side of things.
The only thing I will politely dissent on is understanding anger and disgust. I remember 9/11, and while I was young I can still feel that pain seared across my heart. Like any tribal person (and make no mistake: I am an American patriot to the bone) I can imagine what this would be like. If, in some terrible alternate reality, there was a Mexican group trapped in Baja California determined to reclaim lands the US conquered in the 1850s and launched a terrorist attack against San Diego: I'd be in pain. Like Israel: I would want my government to stop at nothing to ensuring the men who perpetrated this terrorism be held responsible.
This is the part I get heated up about. I could not imagine being the father who's kids and wife are now hostages to a murderous Hamas. Or a parent who's child was killed while attending a concert for peace on the border. Or the husband of an unsuspecting border guard who was killed in shock. That pain must be unbearable: and Hamas is unequivocally and unquestionably at fault. This was not legitimate resistance: it was terrorism, and it must be resisted.
Am I supposed to believe that Israeli intelligence, who is credited with knowledge of the location of every Hamas cell location in Gaza, failed to see the amassing of thousands of rockets in Gaza? With thousands of Israelis in the streets protesting the proposed weakening of their Supreme Court, this attack played right into the hands of Bebe, who now has the ability to declare whatever a State of War allows him to call. (What about all those reservists who claimed they would not be called up if the Supreme Court issue came to fruition?) Sorry, but "Al Qaeda determined to strike in the U.S." lingers in this instance.
This is the result of human beings fighting over whose version of reality is correct, with each version featuring its own God and characters. This is the same as the Evangelical and MAGA devotion to an amoral Republican Party. I'm having a hard time making a distinction between MAGA Republicans and Hamas, to be brutally honest. There will be Timothy McVeigh-like or Hamas-like violence here in the U.S. unless the party can somehow check itself. It won't be at that scale, but there's a good reason the FBI are investigating these people now.
This question/option is very much counterfactual history, so I know it's completely stupid nowadays. But it seems to me, thousands of miles and many decades away, that things might have been better carving out a piece of Germany for the new Israel. The US/UK/France controlled Western Germany and it would have been an easy and a greatly symbolic move to let the Jews return to Germany as part of the conquering alliance. Of course we'd have to have ironclad security agreements, permanent troops there, and the same sort of arrangement would have had to been made to keep Jerusalem an open city. Putting a Jewish state on top of, and surrounded by, Muslims just seems like not a great idea. (and another plus, German land is a lot more fertile and centrally located than a strip of desert.)
Excellent piece. On all fronts. I realize strategy isn't the focus of the piece, but with that caveat, I'm concerned that if the IDF undertakes an attempt to go into Gaza and root out Hamas, that could leave the northern front vulnerable to Hezbollah in a manner that could bring Israel's continuing existence into question. If Iran was able to coordinate with a Sunni force without apparent detection, I fear what they may be planning in conjunction with their more natural allies.
Great piece Damon, the Iran deal is my big issue, because it felt like we were paying them to behave themselves and every parent knows that doesn’t work
Great essay. Intelligently reasoned and heartfelt, which has to have been difficult to pull off. The article that Damon linked explaining possible Hammas reasoning behind this attack is also good.
Thanks, Damon.
Damon, beautifully, intelligently, thoughtfully stated piece.
I read the essay in The Times of Israel too. I think there is substance in that opinion as well.
Would that we could all at least try to understand the other side, without feeling the need to excuse them. I have a question though: You write "after Trump scuttled the deal, reimposed painful sanctions, and assassinated Qasem Soleimani? What made Biden think that turning back the clock was either possible or desirable?" I'd like to see a logical and thorough argument about why it is not worth the effort to engage with Iran to find a way to limit or eliminate its nukes. Even in Obama's day, the right was raging against it, but if there were nuanced arguments from their side, I never saw them (they all seemed to be along the lines of "Ok, we might be able to stop their nukes with the treaty, but if we can't make them behave in all other ways about meddling in the middle east, it's not worth it, and we should take our toys and go home". Are we REALLY in a better spot because of that all-or-nothing approach?) By all accounts, Iran WAS complying with the nuclear portion of the treaty before Trump threw it away. The "we cannot tell if they are complying" sounds suspiciously like the ones used against Iraq by those claiming they had WMD. Hans Blicks and Scott Ritter were 'cancelled' even though they were correct.
Damon, I was set to applaud you when I read the first half of this sentence:
"[T]he fundamental source of Israel’s situation is the dispossession of the Palestinians that followed from Israel’s founding, and the refusal of the Palestinians to accept it, even after 75 long, suffering years."
Why did you have to ruin it with the second half, which is utterly uninformed. Perhaps you believe, like most Americans, that Israel has made one sincere peace offer after another, which the Palestinians and other Arabs have stubbornly refused. This is perfect nonsense. Israel has always offered the least that they imagined the Palestinians could accept, and then, if the Palestinian showed too much interest, backed away or added a poison pill, leading the Palestinians to reject it, which Israel pointed to as evidence of Palestinian rejectionism. And meanwhile, of course, it kept annexing the West Bank and starving Gaza. For relevant history, see Noam Chomsky's "Fateful Triangle" and relevant books by Tara Reinhardt, Simha Flapan, Avi Shlaim, and Ilan Pappe, among others.
And quit condescending to the left while you apparently know so little about the subject, ethnicity or no.
Whatever they do for a response, don't follow the example of the United States after 9/11. Every damn thing we've done in the Middle East in the past 22 years has made the situation 1,000 times worse. If they're going to do anything, let it be "an eye for an eye," not "a head for an eye." They can smash Hamas into a million pieces. Which at some point in the future will reassemble into something far worse.
I think this is a very rich contribution to the responses to the attacks that I've read so far. I don't agree fully with all of it, but I do agree with most, and all of the post seems carefully thought.
I'm interested in Mr. Scialabba's response in the comments because it illustrates a process I've felt frustrated by now for well over fifty years: the response that suggests one side is fully at fault and then uses as evidence the arguments of people supporting that position, ignoring the arguments of people who say the other side is fully at fault while trotting out their own warhorses.
The history of the conflict dates back over a century and is enormously complex, both factually and morally, and extends to the detritus of Ottoman and Nazi wreckages. It is not at all difficult to drown out the "other side" with an endless recital of facts (often highly leveraged) to support your side.
It leads nowhere. Historical arguments assigning blame are only tools to prolong the conflict, which I've come to believe is going to outlive me, although if you'd told me in 1967 that it wouldn't be resolved by 2000 I'd have shaken my head.
What might lead somewhere, I think, is a realization that playing into the conflict by playing for one side against the other only creates continuing pain for both sides. The alternative of working for a settlement that may offend the sense of justice on both sides, each rooted in a different justice narrative, seems to me the only way out. I feel disorienting dismay about the Hamas attacks, but do hold onto a hope that they may somehow renew hard work towards a formula that focuses on future possibilities, rather than on the endless litigation of past history.
Will Israel's natural inclination for retribution be tempered in anyway because of the impeding Saudi/US/Israel peace deal? Or is that already a casualty? If in fact Iran approved of this attack last week, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, will Israel go to war with Iran? If Israel is calling up 300,000 reservists, as reported, does that mean a two front war with Hama and Hezbollah? That's just scratching the surface of the various consequences from this weekend. Most selfishly for political animals, how will this ultimately impact US politics. If Biden handles this situation like he did Ukraine (and so far he's handling it pretty well), then it will boost his 2024 reelect situation.
What saddens me the most about this situation is that the people who will be hurt the most by the massacre are the very people in whose name Hamas pretends to act, the civilians of Gaza, Muslim and Christian, most of whom are not aligned with terrorist organizations. Already Israel is beefing up the blockade, cutting electric services to two hours a day and stopping shipments of food and fuel. How will this action do anything to improve the situation or discourage further radicalism? What do these people have left to lose?
I'm also Jewish married to a former Soviet Jew who has relatives in Israel. Their daughter has already been called back into military service. So, I feel the sense of connection and fear. But, as Mr. Eno notes above, the history of the region is long and complicated, rooted in the fallout from the dissolution of colonialism. In America, and especially within the American Jewish community, we mostly get to see only one side of things.
The only thing I will politely dissent on is understanding anger and disgust. I remember 9/11, and while I was young I can still feel that pain seared across my heart. Like any tribal person (and make no mistake: I am an American patriot to the bone) I can imagine what this would be like. If, in some terrible alternate reality, there was a Mexican group trapped in Baja California determined to reclaim lands the US conquered in the 1850s and launched a terrorist attack against San Diego: I'd be in pain. Like Israel: I would want my government to stop at nothing to ensuring the men who perpetrated this terrorism be held responsible.
This is the part I get heated up about. I could not imagine being the father who's kids and wife are now hostages to a murderous Hamas. Or a parent who's child was killed while attending a concert for peace on the border. Or the husband of an unsuspecting border guard who was killed in shock. That pain must be unbearable: and Hamas is unequivocally and unquestionably at fault. This was not legitimate resistance: it was terrorism, and it must be resisted.
Am I supposed to believe that Israeli intelligence, who is credited with knowledge of the location of every Hamas cell location in Gaza, failed to see the amassing of thousands of rockets in Gaza? With thousands of Israelis in the streets protesting the proposed weakening of their Supreme Court, this attack played right into the hands of Bebe, who now has the ability to declare whatever a State of War allows him to call. (What about all those reservists who claimed they would not be called up if the Supreme Court issue came to fruition?) Sorry, but "Al Qaeda determined to strike in the U.S." lingers in this instance.
This is the result of human beings fighting over whose version of reality is correct, with each version featuring its own God and characters. This is the same as the Evangelical and MAGA devotion to an amoral Republican Party. I'm having a hard time making a distinction between MAGA Republicans and Hamas, to be brutally honest. There will be Timothy McVeigh-like or Hamas-like violence here in the U.S. unless the party can somehow check itself. It won't be at that scale, but there's a good reason the FBI are investigating these people now.
This question/option is very much counterfactual history, so I know it's completely stupid nowadays. But it seems to me, thousands of miles and many decades away, that things might have been better carving out a piece of Germany for the new Israel. The US/UK/France controlled Western Germany and it would have been an easy and a greatly symbolic move to let the Jews return to Germany as part of the conquering alliance. Of course we'd have to have ironclad security agreements, permanent troops there, and the same sort of arrangement would have had to been made to keep Jerusalem an open city. Putting a Jewish state on top of, and surrounded by, Muslims just seems like not a great idea. (and another plus, German land is a lot more fertile and centrally located than a strip of desert.)
I, as you put it, have no skin in the game, so I'll limit my comment to saying that I found this post helpful. Painful, painful time.
Excellent piece. I lived in Israel for a few years and find that my reactions mirror yours.