“He was interrogated and he was actually beaten.”
That’s a quote from a family friend of Mosab Abu Toha who’s — how should I put this? — not a terrorist.
A Syracuse graduate, Abu Toha founded Gaza’s only English-language library and was a visiting scholar at Harvard, where he served as a librarian, among other roles. Abu Toha’s essays and poetry have been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times and The New Yorker. In September, when Hamas was in the final stages of planning their attack on Israel, Abu Toha was in Philadelphia for a literature festival.
On Sunday, he was abducted by the Israeli military. Abu Toha, along with his wife and three children, were on a State Department evacuation list. They were, apparently, on their way to the Rafah crossing. His son is a US citizen.
They’d been living in the Jabalia refugee camp, where the family was forced to flee after their home in Beit Lahia was destroyed in an airstrike. Jabalia, readers will recall, has itself been subjected to a relentless aerial bombardment.
Abu Toha, who was born in the Al-Shati camp, published “The Agony of Waiting for a Ceasefire That Never Comes,” in The New Yorker on November 6. The essay detailed life in Jabalia. “I feel like I am in a cage. I’m being killed every day with my people,” he wrote. “Recently, my wife dreamed that she was collecting frozen meat. In her dream, she was saying, ‘This is my son’s arm. This is my daughter’s leg.'”
The New York Times published an account of the moment when Israeli troops seized Abu Toha along with dozens of other Palestinian men on an evacuation route. According to his wife, Israeli soldiers standing among tanks ordered the men to separate themselves from their families, who were told to keep walking. Abu Toha was holding his three-year-old son.
“I was in front of him. They told him, drop the kid,” Abu Toha’s wife recounted. As she came back to retrieve her son, the troops told her to hurry up. Or be shot. To make their point, they fired at the ground and a nearby wall.
The IDF didn’t respond to the Times‘s questions about whether troops were opening fire “at or toward evacuees,” but what we do know is that Israel is separating scores of Palestinian men from their families on evacuation routes and bringing them, blindfolded, to a prison in southern Israel.
The Israeli government readily concedes that the military is “apprehending” hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza and interrogating them. According to the military, those interrogations yield valuable information about the location of Hamas’s tunnels and weapons caches, but you’d be forgiven for any skepticism you might harbor. That sort of coercion has a spotty track record for producing reliable intelligence even when you’re sure you’ve detained actual militants as opposed to, you know, Harvard librarians.
I shouldn’t have to say this, but you can’t indiscriminately abduct civilians and haul them off for interrogation unless you can prove that not doing so presents some kind of imminent security risk.
When the IDF released Abu Toha — surely because The New Yorker, along with other publishers and rights groups, essentially demanded it — they dropped him off where they took him, forcing him to walk south to Deir al-Balah where he (literally) just wandered around until he found somebody he knew. According to Abu Toha’s account, as conveyed to a lawyer friend, the Israelis seized (so, stole) not just his passport, but those of his entire family.
The IDF, in an effort to explain what happened, said “there was intelligence indicating of a number of interactions between several civilians and terror organizations.” Abu Toha was “among the civilians.” He was released “after questioning.”
Israel and Hamas have agreed to a hostage-for-prisoner swap dressed up as a “temporary cease fire.” For those unaware, there are thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails, many of whom are held in what’s known as “administrative detention,” which strips detainees of any sort of due process. In such cases, the allegations are kept secret and the prisoners can be held indefinitely without trial. According to some accounts, 99% of people subjected to the controversial tactic are Palestinians.
As for who Israel is swapping for 50 hostages captured by Hamas last month, the government released a list of 300 names. 150 of them will be exchanged. Everyone on the list is a woman or a minor being held in an Israeli prison. Anyone in Israel can formally object to the release of people on the list. The justice ministry would review any such objections.
The hostage-prisoner swap may commence from Thursday and should take place over a four-day period.
I hear the echoes of GITMO in this story.
“Are you a terrorist?” “No, I’m a poet.” “Oh, God. That’s even worse.”
Israel is a thug nation fully subsidized by its thug daddy USA USA. Howz all this working for both of these global terrorist/war monger states? More money wasted on military, less on their populations, and worse security short/medium and long term.
I want to be clear: The point isn’t to demonize Israel. I have actual, real friends there (as opposed to the fictional Israeli friends that everyone has post-October 7), one of whom had her sons called up to fight. I immediately emailed my friends there on October 7 and tried to check on the ones whose emails I no longer have. Obviously, I’d be upset (at Hamas) if any of those people were killed on October 7 or if any of their children end up being killed fighting in Gaza.
My goal in writing about this conflict is simply to inform readers about the context because if ever there were a conflict where context is critical, this is it. You absolutely can’t have an opinion on this conflict without understanding at least some of the backstory. Context is absolutely indispensable here, and the fact is, that context doesn’t paint Israel in an especially favorable light. It just doesn’t.
I’m not sure why so many people seem to have a difficult time separating the plight of individual Israeli citizens (even those who support the far-right government) from the facts as it relates to the broader conflict and the history of Palestinian oppression.
I’m sure that at least a couple of my Israeli friends are hard-right-leaners, although I’ve always, as a rule, avoided having that discussion with them. I don’t want anything bad to happen to them regardless of their political leanings. If it’s a choice between them and a random Gazan, I gotta go with them. BUT that’s an entirely different discussion than the broader historical context and the big-picture reality which is simply (inescapably) that the Palestinian people are violently oppressed and that wiping out tens of thousands of Gazans with what, IDF protestations aside, looks to any rational person like carpet bombing, is totally unacceptable.
It’s not hard for me to say, “I’m on the side of my individual friends, but I’m also against systematic oppression and carpet bombing of civilians.” A lot of other people seem to think that cognitive dissonance is too much to bear and that they need to reconcile it somehow. I don’t think it needs to be reconciled. I think it’s perfectly consistent on its own.
Thank you for a very clear eyed column and comment. When you know real people on both sides of this conflict, it’s very hard to stomach the absolutist comments from either party. Here in the USA, very few people have much context. I was at a dinner a few weeks ago where my host tried to tell me that Arafat had not been head of the PLO.
This is an excellent comment.
Some of my closest friends are Jewish (moderate), with relatives living in Israel. My soon-to-be son-in-law is Muslim (moderate) and first generation US born, with relatives scattered in Syria and Egypt.
I am agnostic, repulsed by any “religious” aggressive efforts that harm other people (what a mockery) and I firmly believe that a peaceful, two state solution should be a requirement of continuing US aid- military or humanitarian.
Thanks for this, i personally find the last para especially illuminating.
If you are going to the trouble of invading a foreign country to root out a terrorist network, then you want to make sure you get as many of the bad guys you can before you declare victory and withdraw. When the bad guys use humans as a shield, then you need to look under the shield. Unfortunately, this process of separating good guys from bad guys falls into the hands of the lowest common denominator: the young soldier, drunk with power, lacking any empathy, bored and afraid.
As Israel increasingly controls the above-ground part of Gaza and destroys/seals off the below-ground part, more Hamas fighters will try to blend into the civilian population, disappear into the refugee camps, and in some cases slip through the border crossing. A previous evacuation of Gazans was derailed when many Hamas fighters were identified on the evacuee list. The IDF is going to segregate, question, and investigate fighting-age males trying to get through the border.
It is interesting to look at the demographics of Gaza in this context. There are very roughly 300-350K males of fighting age (summing the 15-35 y/o male population, for lack of finer detail). Hamas supposedly has (or had) about 30K fighters. This implies that 10% of males in their late-teens-to-early-thirties are (or were) Hamas fighters. The IDF has obvious reasons to screen that population, and the so-called laws of war provide for checkpoints, questioning, detention, etc.
Israel has considerable data on Gaza and Gazans, including cellphone location tracking and communications intercepts, and knows the identities of many Hamas fighters. I wonder if the IDF identifies cellphones repeatedly at locations associated with Hamas, or with a pattern of disappearing/reappearing at suspected tunnel entrances, then looks for those devices when screening detainees?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/world/middleeast/gaza-invasion-israel-cellphone-data.html
Yeah, but John you can’t “screen” 300,000 people, and you damn sure can’t detain them all. How do you conduct the screening? “Are you Hamas?” “No.” “You look like Hamas.” “Why do you say that?” “Because you’re 24 years old and you’re male.” “Well, I’m not Hamas.” “Are you sure?” “Yes.” “Are you lying?” “No.” “If I shoot you in the foot will you admit you’re Hamas?” “I’m not Hamas.” Bang! “You shot me in the foot!” “Are you Hamas?” “No!”
You can’t walk into an asymmetric battlefield and then complain about it. If you’re going to invade Gaza, you’re going to be fighting an asymmetric war, and you have to accept everything that goes along with that, including the frustrating imperative of protecting civilians when it’s not easy to determine who’s a civilian and who isn’t. You know that going in. To complain about it later (or for other people to complain about it on your behalf) is asinine.
State actors that claim to respect international law are at a disadvantage in asymmetric wars, which is why they tend to “lose” them. You can break (or bend) international law in order to reduce the asymmetry, but if you do that, you shouldn’t act surprised or aggrieved when your allies get irritable with you and start talking about human rights.
Yes, I’d hope there’s not too much of that, even allowing for all the cluster-f’s that happen in a war. I think that the IDF can screen Gazans in a more effective manner – they have the data for it.
As for whether it should screen, if I’m right that there is a demographic in Gaza that is 10% comprised of Hamas fighters, then I’d think it “will” regardless of debates about whether it “should”. I don’t think the IDF is complaining (or apologizing). I think Israel doesn’t much cares about others’ complaints, as long as it retains US support however irritated.
What happens in Gaza is just as much out of individual investors’ control as what happens at the FOMC. I don’t spend much time thinking about what the FOMC “should” do, and similarly don’t focus much on what Hamas or Israel “should” do.
I also don’t expect a humanitarian, orderly, or merciful outcome in Gaza. It is a war, the combatants will fight until one wins or both are spent, and the longer it goes on the more civilians will die – just like every war.
The market seems to not care, absent hostilities spreading to oil. As noted, investors seem more interested in the Ctrl-Alt-Delete soap opera.
As Israel exchanges 150 women and children, now would seem like a good time for people to start asking why they have so many children in jail.
https://www.btselem.org/statistics/minors_in_custody
Looks like almost all such are in the 16-18 y/o age group.
I noticed another interesting “numbers thing“.
I’m seeing claims that about 5,000 Hamas fighters have been killed so far. At the same time, Palestinian deaths in Gaza are claimed to be 10,000 or so. First claim from Israeli side, second from Palestinian side, both probably merit some skepticism. But if these are more or less true, then about 50% of deaths in Gaza would be combatants vs 50% civilians. That would, if so, be a lower rate of civilian to combatant deaths than is seen in most wars.
Since I’m focused on what will be rather than what should be, does this matter? Maybe. If IDF believes it is achieving a “relatively low” rate of civilian deaths per combatant deaths, that may encourage it to continue with its tactics.
Sorry, my numbers are wrong. Claimed now 14,000.
John, The whole comment is basically wrong. Here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-death-toll.html