The whole world is watching
Geopolitically, Israel could no more not retaliate for the Hamas butchery and hostage-taking than the U.S. could brush off the 9/11 attacks. The question in each case was always how.
“While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it,” President Joe Biden cautioned on his 7 1/2-hour visit to Israel after seemingly ISIS-inspired Hamas attacks. “After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”
Some of us still remember the mistakes. The PATRIOT Act, the Office of Special Plans, “Curveball,” aluminum tubes, yellowcake uranium, Colin Powell’s U.N. address, the Iraq invasion, Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, enhanced interrogation techniques, Guantanamo. Plus, “We’re an empire now.“
Speaking of ISIS, ISIS was the product of our mistakes too.
Did Israel listen to Biden? This is from the Times of Israel on Friday (which I’ve not seen reported elsewhere): Cabinet said slated to okay police use of live fire against protesters blocking roads during multi-front war.
The Guardian cited that report and followed up, reporting:
The war has sparked a crackdown by the Israeli government against perceived dissent, with hundreds of people arrested or disciplined for speech sympathetic to Gazans. Police have been given wide new powers to determine what applies as “support for terrorism”, and have declared they will not allow solidarity demonstrations in support of Gaza.
If you’ve got a sinking feeling that you picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue, join the club.
Biden has pledged America’s unwavering support for Israel. Does the United States of America support Israel shooting domestic protesters? How far does that unwavering support extend?
What Israel has done is launch its own version of Shock and Awe against Gazans. The BBC this morning offers drone footage of the results to date:
The streets of the city are covered in large piles of rubble from collapsed buildings, and homes can be seen filled with debris, having lost their roofs.
Israel has been bombing Gaza since Hamas militants crossed the border into Israel on October 7 and killed 1,400 people.
This would all play better for Israel on the world stage if we saw the bodies of Hamas fighters on TV, not just Palestinian civilians weeping over their dead and wounded. With Hamas invisible, even if buried in their tunnels beneath hundreds of tons of collapsed apartment blocks, what the world sees is Israel slaughtering civilians and starving the survivors.
Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times:
One well-educated young woman inside Gaza, Amal, told me over WhatsApp that the victims she knew of were mostly civilians, and she sounded full of despair.
“Constant bombardment has me feeling as if I am not human anymore, as if our souls mean nothing at all,” she told me. “We are being massacred.”
A 16-year-old girl in Gaza offered this message, conveyed through Save the Children: “It’s like we are overpaying the price for a sin we didn’t commit. We were always with peace and will always be.”
As Israel launches ground operations, even if necessary for its security, is eradicating Hamas even possible? And when, not if, Israel withdraws, then what? Who will step in to fill the power vacuum? No regional player wants to.
I’m skeptical, and when I hear backers of an invasion speak of removing Hamas I have the same sinking feeling as when I heard hawks in 2002 and 2003 cheerily promising to liberate Iraq. Just because it would be good to eliminate a brutal regime doesn’t mean it is readily achievable; the Taliban can confirm that.
Then there is the moral cost Israel (and the U.S.) will pay for managing this response badly:
The second prism through which to consider the Gaza war is a moral one, for we have values as well as interests. Decades from now when we look back at this moment, I suspect it’s the moral failures that we may most regret — the inability of some on the left (and many in the Arab world) to condemn the barbaric Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis, and the acceptance by so many Americans and Israelis that countless children and civilians must pay with their lives in what Netanyahu described as Israel’s “mighty vengeance.”
When Israeli Jews were asked in a poll whether the suffering of Palestinian civilians should be taken into account in planning the war on Gaza, 83 percent said “not at all” or “not so much.” I can’t help feeling that while we say that all lives have equal value, President Biden has likewise greatly prioritized Israeli children over Gazan children.
[…]
Every account I’ve heard from Gaza this past week, including directly from people there who despise Hamas, suggests that the civilian toll there has been horrendous. One gauge is that at least 53 United Nations staff members have been killed so far, including teachers, an engineer, a psychologist and a gynecologist. More than 20 journalists have been killed, too, and an Al Jazeera correspondent lost his wife, son, daughter and grandson to an airstrike.
It will get worse before it gets better, and maybe not in what remains of our lifetimes.
Kristof concludes:
Israel faces an agonizing challenge: A neighboring territory is ruled by well-armed terrorists who have committed unimaginable atrocities, aim to commit more and now shelter in tunnels beneath a population of more than two million people. It’s a nightmare. But the sober question must be: What policies will reduce the risk, not inflame it, while honoring the intrinsic value of Palestinian life as well as Israeli life?
People will answer that question in different ways, and I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I think some day we will look back in horror at both the Hamas butchery in Israel and at the worsening tableau of suffering in Gaza in which we are complicit.
And should the war widen into a regional one?