Israel’s going to take over Gaza. Completely. But don’t worry. They’re not staying. It’s a temporary thing. Israel not being a territorially acquisitive state and all.
“We want to liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas,” Benjamin Netanyahu explained on Thursday, during an interview with Fox which aired just prior to a planned cabinet vote on war strategy. “We don’t want to keep it,” he insisted.
I doubt I’m telling you anything you don’t already know, but… well, they want to keep it. Or at least some of them do, and notwithstanding symbolic protests by the likes of France, the UK and Canada, nobody’s stopping them.
Not that the Israeli far-right cares (they don’t), but the conduct of the war in Gaza is a forever blight. Although you can still find apologists willing to go on record defending Israel’s scorched-earth tactics, they’re fewer and far between nearly two years on from the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.
This played out about like you’d expect. In the days after Hamas massacred 1,200 innocents and kidnapped several hundred more, the “civilized” world, including its leader at the time, Joe Biden, gave Israel carte blanche. When brown people kill not-brown people, it’s an intolerable affront to the “natural” way of things. This goes back centuries. Savages stormed the colony, raped the women and killed the babies, so much as we’d rather not, we have to murder them all now.
Once Israel was several tens of thousands of dead Gazans in, the international community started to sour on the whole thing, but by then it was too late. 60,000 dead and 22 months later, we’re all staring at what history will almost surely remember as a giant war crime. I’m not sure when, precisely, the IDF stepped over the line marked “beyond the pale,” but it was a long time ago. Gaza’s a place where starving civilians are lured into food lines by the promise of aid, then shot. Among God only knows what other sorts of atrocities.
And look: I really wish there were a way to talk around this. Indeed, I’ve tried to talk around it mostly by not talking about it. I realize that’s a cowardly thing to do, but on the other hand, I don’t see a lot of utility in subjecting readers who’re mostly here for macro-market commentary to graphic descriptions of mass death involving women and children.
You know, just like I know, just like everyone else knows, what’s going on over there. And we all know, in our heart of hearts, that as barbaric as October 7 was, there’s by now almost no connection between what goes on in Gaza on a daily basis and those attacks. Gaza’s a killing field where the Israeli military’s engaged in the indiscriminate slaughter of an entire people. It’s as simple as it is ghastly and unavoidable.
If you’re having a difficult time reconciling that reality with the otherwise favorable impression you have of the Jewish community, join the club. Only two people ever believed in this website when I first mused aloud about making it something more than a pastime in 2017. One of them was my dear friend from New Delhi who died of pancreatic cancer in 2021. The other was a man named Eli, an orthodox Jew who lived in Ra’anana. He died in October of 2020.
I wonder often what Eli would say about all of this, and while I could be completely mistaken — particularly considering he would’ve almost surely known one or more of the October 7 victims given the sheer enormity of his personal and professional networks — I simply can’t imagine he’d countenance a human tragedy like what’s unfolding in Gaza undertaken in the name of the state he loved and the God he worshipped.
That to say this: I have a lot of cognitive dissonance here too. Probably more than most of you. I’m not (not) somebody who’s going to show up at a campus protest wearing a keffiyeh and carrying on aggressively about rivers and seas. And it would’ve been a very bad day for anyone who aimed a derisory remark at Eli for his elaborate getup on the countless occasions we dined together in Manhattan in 2014 and 2015.
But — wait, let me rephrase — BUT. Enough’s enough. And enough was enough in Gaza by December of 2023, frankly. By now, enough’s a genocide. And here we are with Netanyahu openly declaring Israel’s intent to formally seize the territory, which is to say annex it. Temporarily or not. My guess is not. My guess is that Israel will eventually settle (resettle) Gaza, push out as many Palestinians as they can and establish a West Bank-style apartheid system for the ones they can’t.
Netanyahu says that’s not true. And when has he ever lied, right? “We don’t want to govern it,” he went on, in the same Thursday interview with Fox. “We want to hand it over to Arabs who will govern it properly, without threatening us, and giving Gazans a good life.”
From BBC : The Israeli PM says he seeks full control of Gaza, the removal of Hamas and then to transfer governance to another party.
I can’t see what is wrong with that.
What’s wrong with it, Lee, is that you believe him. Jesus Christ. Wake up.
The globe needs a Swiss conference on ‘collateral damage’, the grim reaper for civilians. How many innocents can you kill to get one bad guy; 5, 50, 5000. Netanyahu will tell you they didn’t want to harm a hair on one innocents head, but what choice did they have. I hate to say it, but the 20th century sure set the precedent that taking out 100,000 or more at a clip is OK as long as your god is on your side. There was a lot of fine print with the “thou shall not kill” thing that somehow wasn’t in the copy I got at 6 years old.
But here’s the thing (and this another one of those very, very difficult aspects of the war for people to come to terms with): Not everyone in Netanyahu’s government said any such thing about not wanting to harm innocents. There are some people in that government who are all for it, and in some cases avowedly so.
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If you’re having a difficult time reconciling that reality with the otherwise favorable impression you have of the Jewish community, join the club
/unquote
my feelings exactly. As always on the point and succint.
Somehow the Israel/Gaza situation reminds me of the US post 9/11. At first there was an outpouring of sympathy from almost all around the world, then that sympathy was p***ed away by the totally disproportionate reaction.
Here’s a comment from a long-time orthodox rightwing ex-IDF officer living in Israel:
“Thank god will be getting rid of bibi next year
He has destroyed the brand called Israel and Jews around the world”
I guess Alan Dershowitz would accuse him of being anti-semitic?
From my personal conversations with people who have very strong opinions about this, talking about innocents is not even the right framework, not in their minds. Everyone there is indoctrinated to hate the Jews and kill them whenever possible (evidence: massive “civilian” participation on 10/7), children will grow up to become adults with this exact mentality, so there is no other way to survive other than to kill them all. I am not even exaggerating. Obviously not everyone feels this way but still.
Israel left Gaza in 2008 for a reason. The society still remembers and that’s why they are reluctant to go back. Occupation will be very costly so, in a sense, I do believe that ideally they don’t want to govern it long term. But they might end up doing it anyway.
The general attitude I see coming out of Israel reminds me of seeing the armed dead in Viet Nam being dragged away from the majority of dead which were old men, women and children for photos and body counting purposes of the armed ones. Looking at this I said,”This is F##ed up.” Someone mentioned that they either fathered, mothered or would grow up to be communists, price you pay.
What’s really messed up is that they are one our top ten suppliers of many types of goods and they are still who they were. Frankly, they make the best shirts there and it’s all I buy any more.
I’m on record here that my largest cohort of friends and acquaintances is Jewish, and the runner up isn’t close. I’m of exactly the same mind here as H, and happy (and a little surprised tbh) that almost all of my Jewish cohort also feel this way.
But a couple among them have turned on me, slapping me with a permanent antisemite tattoo and suggesting I go hang out with the Squad for my temerity in crtiticizing Israel in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct 7.
I can’t argue or discuss the topic with these outliers anymore, so I had to give them the Gaza treatment and expunge them from my life. They chafed at my suggestions that claiming antisemitism everywhere all the time tends to make the term meaningless, and that if they thought antisemitism was bad before Oct 7, then what Israel has done since Oct 7 isn’t going to improve that much (contrary to their assertion that Israel has done the dirty work and the world a huge favor).
In the end, before cutting off contact completely, I offered a warning: it may be convenient to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism now, but there may come a time in the near future when that conflation will prove less convenient (if not existential) and they may be disappointed (or worse) to find you can’t unmix that drink.
This conflation is a simplification due to high correlation. Sure, you can criticize Israel without being an antisemite. But usually this just a convenient cover. At least, most Jews feel that way.
“usually this just a convenient cover.” Got any data to back that up? You’re a quant, after all.
You know what’s anti-Semitic? This quote: “At least, most Jews feel that way.”
There’s this thing unwitting racists do where they think they’re not being racist because they’re saying something in favor of a particular group. “Most black people aren’t criminals.” “Most Hispanics aren’t here illegally.” They think that highlighting a positive (not a criminal!) makes it not racist even as they’re engaged in full-on stereotyping. What does being black have to do with criminality? Hispanic with immigration status? Oh, you’re just “playing the odds?” That’s fine when you’re drawing to a flush while getting 10:1 pot-odds. But when you’re making a blanket statement about a particular group based on your preconceived notions, that’s just garden variety racism.
“Most Jews.” You don’t speak for Jews, not “most” of them or any other subset of them. And you don’t get to conflate Jewry with the state of Israel. Prior to the era of Likud dominance, Israel was famously the most socialist-leaning of all democracies (or at least in the top three, depending on the year). Was it anti-Semitic to criticize Israel’s socialists? Of course not. You know better. Now try to actually be better.
On a final note, your comment is painfully ironic in a way you clearly are too dense to recognize (I’ve switched to just insulting you now, I hope you’re okay with that). You straight up justified your banal, content-free criticism by saying the “conflation” (unspecified), is, “a simplification due to high correlation,” then you made an argument that rests entirely on correlation. At least, most statisticians feel that way.
I agree with your assessment. But how does this war^H^H^H genocide get stopped? As you and commenters (FuriousA in particular) have noted, there are people who are pro-Jews and anti-Gazan-genocide. There’s not too much action available for those of us in this cognitive-dissonance camp – perhaps write to politicians? I can report that my senators (most likely their staff) are either unresponsive or send replies indicating strong disagreement with my POV.
Everything in my life seems to be back in the day. I remember the Gaza Strip being in play back before high school. Israel has coveted wanted safe space since it was formed as an isolated state. They won the first piece in 1967. They wrecked Lebanon on the north and they an no longer a big threat. There’s just this one last piece and Israel is hell-bent to take it, with our billions in tax dollars. I have no idea why our Imparator wants to help this guy murder all these people and take what doesn’t belong to him. I always thought of Trump as anti-Semitic.
Maybe you’re wrong?
or maybe not.
There is an entire wikipedia article about Donald Trumps antisemitism.
This is, after all, the guy who called the literal nazis (like with swastikas etc) who yelled “jews will not replace us” “very fine people”. Plus his endless alluding to “George Soros”, “globalists”, etc. I mean, these are not even dog whistles. But full-on bullhorns