With All Eyes on Gaza, Israeli Soldiers and Settlers Kill Dozens of West Bank Palestinians

BrettWilkins

October 13, 2023

"Many Israeli settlers have openly called for Palestinians to be wiped off the map," said one advocacy group. "Now, Israel is giving them the guns to achieve that vision."

 

While the world watches Israel's military pulverize Gaza amid anticipation of an imminent ground invasion of the besieged strip, Israeli soldiers and settlers—who are receiving thousands of assault rifles from the government—have killed dozens of Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem over the past week, officials there said on Friday.

At around 5:00 pm local time, the Palestinian Health Ministry said that 11 people were killed by Israeli occupation forces and settler-colonists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem so far on Friday, raising the death toll there to 46 and the number of wounded to over 700 since Hamas and other Gaza-based militants launched a massive cross-border attack on southern Israel last weekend, killing more than 1,300 Israeli soldiers and civilians.

In response, Israeli forces bombarded Gaza by air, land, and sea, killing at least 1,799 Palestinians—including at least 583 children—wounding at least 7,388 more, displacing hundreds of thousands, and cutting off water and power to the besieged strip's 2.3 million residents.

"Amidst the war and horrors in the south, away from the public eye, Israeli soldiers and settlers are engaging in deadly violence against Palestinians in the West Bank," the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din noted earlier this week. "The attacks are taking place within the villages themselves, on the roads, and in agricultural lands."

"Israeli settlers are shooting, injuring, setting fires, and damaging property and trees," the group added. "There is evidence that soldiers are allowing the violence to continue, sometimes joining in."

Some critics accused the Israeli government—and especially far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—of enabling settler attacks by handing out thousands of military assault rifles to settlement residents.

"As it drops bomb after bomb on Palestinians in Gaza, Israel is giving 1000s of machine guns to extremist Israelis, including settlers in the Palestinian West Bank. There have already been reports of Israeli settlers using the weapons to attack every Palestinian they see," the California-based Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) said on social media Thursday.

"The extremist settlers Israel is arming have spent years attacking Palestinian cities in lynch mobs, with full backing from the Israeli government," IMEU continued. "This year alone, they have killed Palestinian civilians and set fire to cars and homes with families inside."

"Many Israeli settlers have openly called for Palestinians to be wiped off the map. Now, Israel is giving them the guns to achieve that vision," the group added. "Israel is setting the stage for a genocide of Palestinians."

On Friday, Israeli settlers and soldiers attacked Palestinians protesting the assault on Gaza in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, killing three people, according toAgence France-Presse. Another Palestinian, a 13-year-old boy, was reportedly shot dead in Beit Furik, near Nablus.

Meanwhile, the Times of Israel reported that Israeli police on Friday shot and killed four Palestinians who allegedly detonated explosive devices in what the paper called an apparent attempt to breach the Israeli separation wall near Tulkarem.

Also on Friday, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem published a video showing an Israeli settler ambushing and shooting an unarmed Palestinian man in the abdomen with an assault rifle at point-blank range near the West Bank village of At-Tuwani, south of Hebron. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier seen standing nearby does not intervene. Instead, he escorts the shooter and another person away from the scene.

The Times of Israel reported the victim was severely injured, and that Israeli police know the identity of the shooter—a resident of a nearby illegal settlement—and will question him. However, as the newspaper noted, "assailants are rarely arrested, let alone prosecuted for their actions."

On Wednesday, a group of masked gunmen from the illegal Esh Kodesh settler outpost attacked the West Bank village of Qusra, south of Nablus. The attackers stormed the village in all-terrain vehicles, shooting indiscriminately and killing four Palestinians while wounding 11 others, including a 6-year-old girl. The settlers torched homes and other structures before fleeing.

The following day, Israeli settlers and troops opened fire on mourners and an ambulance carrying the victims of Wednesday's attack in Qusra, fatally wounding Ibrahim Wadi, 63, and his son, Ahmad Wadi, 26.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Thursday reported 49 settler attacks on West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinians since October 7, including some in which IDF troops took part.

OCHA also said that 214 people from 35 Palestinian families from the Wadi as Seeq and Al Mu'arajat Bedouin communities fled their homes amid "systematic harassment and attacks by Israeli settlers," raising concerns of possible ethnic cleansing.

Additionally, the World Health Organization has documented 28 attacks on West Bank healthcare infrastructure or workers since October 7, including 20 assaults on medical professionals.

On Thursday, the Palestine-based International Middle East Media Centerreported Israeli occupation forces "stormed and ransacked dozens of homes across the West Bank" while abducting 42 Palestinians, many of them former political prisoners and at least one journalist.

Attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers on West Bank Palestinians are nothing new. Prior to last weekend's attacks on Israel, at least 120 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank this year alone. There have been multiple deadly settler rampages this year that have been described by Israeli officials, rights groups, and others as "pogroms."

 

Israel orders 1 million Palestinians to leave within 24 hours

RT

All residents of Gaza City may be forced to relocate, according to the UN

The Israeli military has urged over 1 million people to leave their homes in Gaza City and urgently move south. The UN has warned of “devastating humanitarian consequences.”

 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued the evacuation order, calling it a “humanitarian step.” It did not mention any specific deadline, with a spokesperson acknowledging it would take “some time.”

“The IDF calls on all residents of Gaza City to evacuate their homes, move south for their protection and settle in the area south of the Gaza River,” the military said in a post on X. “This evacuation is for your personal safety. It will be possible to return to Gaza City only after a notification confirming this.”

The UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Department of Safety and Security in Gaza (OCHA oPt) was notified just before midnight local time that “the entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza should relocate to southern Gaza within the next 24 hours,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement to multiple media outlets on Friday morning.

The IDF vowed to “continue to operate significantly in Gaza City in the coming days” and has urged civilians to “distance yourself from the Hamas terrorists who use you as a human shield.”

The UN official emphasized that it is “impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.”

“This amounts to approximately 1.1 million people. The same order applied to all UN staff and those sheltered in UN facilities – including schools, health centers and clinics,” the spokesperson said.

“The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation,” Dujarric added.

As of Thursday night, the number of people already forced to flee their homes amid the ongoing Israeli airstrikes has increased to 423,378, or roughly 21% of the entire population of Gaza, according to the latest flash update by the OCHA. About two-thirds of the internally displaced persons are taking shelter in facilities operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

Gaza warns health system on brink of collapse READ MORE: Gaza warns health system on brink of collapse

Hamas militants launched Operation ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ raid last Saturday with a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza before advancing rapidly into Israeli territory, storming multiple towns and villages. Reports of shocking brutality soon followed, with at least 260 Israeli and foreign civilians slaughtered at a music festival and an unknown number captured by the militants.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a state of war on Sunday, as IDF troops were deployed to clear Israeli towns and villages of Hamas fighters. Israeli planes have conducted constant airstrikes on Gaza ever since.

At least 1,300 Israelis have been killed and more than 3,000 wounded, according to figures released by the Israeli government on Friday. More than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed and over 6,000 more wounded, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

 

Phyllis Bennis on Gaza

CounterSpin

 

This week on CounterSpin:  In the wake of the October 7 attacks by Hamas and the ensuing bombing campaign from Israel on the Gaza Strip, many people were surprised that CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria aired an interview with a Palestinian activist who frankly described the daily human rights violations in Gaza, the right of Palestinians to resist occupation and apartheid, and how any tools of resistance they choose are deemed violent and punishable. Such statements aren’t controversial from an international law or human rights perspective, but they stand out a mile in elite US media suffused with assumptions listeners will know: Palestinians attack, Israel responds; periods of “calm” are when only Palestinians are dying; stone-throwing is terrorism, but cutting off water is not.

“War is not the time for context” still seems to be the mantra for many in the US press. But there is, around the edges, growing acknowledgement of the dead end this represents: showing hour after hour of shocking and heart-wrenching imagery, in a way that suggests violence is the only response to violence—when so many people are looking for another way forward.

We’ll talk with Phyllis Bennis from the New Internationalism project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

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Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of Saudi Arabia, Nicaragua, US political division and the Federal Reserve.

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US in a quandary over Israel’s war on Gaza

 M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s press conference on Thursday concluding his visit to Israel conveyed three things. One, the Biden Administration will be seen as backing Israel to the hilt by way of meeting its security needs but Washington will not be drawn into the forthcoming Gaza operations except to arrange exit routes in the south for hapless civilians fleeing the conflict zone.

Two, Washington’s top priority at the moment is on engaging with the regional states who wield influence with Hamas to negotiate the hostage issue. Fourteen US citizens in Israel remain unaccounted for. (White House confirmed that the death toll in the fighting now includes at least 27 Americans.)

Three, the US will coordinate with the regional states to prevent any escalation in the situation to widen the conflict on the part of Hezbollah. Although the US cannot and will not stop Israeli leadership on its tracks apropos the imminent Gaza operation, it remains unconvinced.

Blinken was non-committal about any direct US military involvement, and the chances are slim as things stand. Most important, even as  Blinken could hear the war drums, he also cast his eye on a future for Israel (and the region) where it will be at peace with itself, would integrate into the region and concentrate on creating economic prosperity — metaphorically put, beating its swords into plowshares in a Biblical Messianic intent.

That is to say, despite the massive show of force off the waters of Israel, with the deployment of two aircraft carriers along with destroyers and other naval assets and fighter jets off the waters of Israel, the Biden Administration is profoundly uneasy about any escalation of the conflict into a wider war. If the US senses that this is a catastrophe that Israel allowed to happen, that remains a strictly private thought.

Even as Blinken was heading for Tel Aviv, US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul told reporters in Washington on Wednesday following a closed-door intelligence briefing that “We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen. I don’t want to get too much into classified, but a warning was given. I think the question was at what level.”

Shortly after McCaul spoke to reporters in Washington, an anonymous Egyptian official confirmed to the Times of Israel that Cairo’s agents did warn their Israeli counterparts about a planned Hamas attack, but that this warning may not have made it to Netanyahu’s office.

These disclosures would embarrass the Israeli government, as Saturday’s surprise attack can be viewed as a catastrophic failure for Israel’s intelligence services. In a brutally frank statement on Thursday, the Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces General Herzi Halevi admitted, “The IDF is responsible for the security of our nation and its citizens, and we failed to do so on Saturday morning. We will look into it, we will investigate, but now it is time for war.”   

This failure will impact the decision-making in Tel Aviv. Gen. Halevi described Hamas as “animals” and “merciless terrorists who have committed unimaginable acts” against men, women and children. He said that the IDF “understands the magnitude of this time, and the magnitude of the mission that lays on our shoulders.”

“Yahya Sinwar, the ruler of the Gaza Strip, decided on this horrible attack, and therefore he and the entire system under him are dead men,” the general added, vowing to “attack them and dismantle them and their organisation” and that “Gaza will not look the same” afterward.

Make no mistake, the Israeli objective will be to use overwhelming force with its most advanced weapons, including powerful bunker-busting bombs, to inflict crippling losses on Hamas formations so that the movement cannot wage an armed struggle for many years. A ground operation is to be expected any day.

 

It is improbable that Blinken would have even tried to dissuade Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from going ahead with a brutal operation. He told the media that the US would rather leave it to Israel to do what needed to be done. Meanwhile, the US deployment will not only aim to enhance surveillance, intercept communications, and prevent Hamas from acquiring more weapons, but also act as deterrent.

That said, the US cannot afford to watch passively. Washington has no choice but to limit the expected fighting in the coming days and weeks in Gaza  to ensure that it does not spread to other areas. Thus, the US force projection specifically serves as a deterrent to Hezbollah, which possesses a vast armoury of 150,000 missiles that can be launched at major cities in Israel, potentially leading to a broader war not only in Gaza but also in Lebanon, drawing others into the conflict.

Israel knocked out of service the airports in Damascus and Aleppo in Syria in missile strikes simultaneously on Thursday, presumably to prevent reinforcements reaching Lebanon. Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was due to travel to Syria and Lebanon in the weekend.

Through the past four decades, the US and Iran have made a fine art of communicating with each other in dangerous times to set ground rules to avoid confrontation. This time around too, it is happening.

Certainly, the speech by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday on the conflict situation, which was translated into Hebrew by the Iranians and disseminated in an unprecedented move, conveyed a subtle message in three parts to both Israel and the US, signalling essentially that Tehran does not intend to get involved in the conflict. (See my blog Iran warns Israel against its apocalyptic war.)

In turn, the US has signalled that it has intelligence showing that key Iranian leaders were surprised by the Hamas  attacks on Israel. Equally, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s phone conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday — their first ever conversation which Tehran initiated — harped on efforts to “halt the ongoing escalation.”

The ‘known unknown’ scenario

Yet, the big question is, how far the Biden Administration would be confident about the success of any Israeli military incursion into Gaza. During the press conference in Tel Aviv, Blinken underscored in a subtle way the importance of “lessons” learnt from past experiences. The point is, Israel will be involved in urban warfare in a densely populated area with a population of 2.1 million people.

Gaza has an average of 5,500 people per sq. km, and there is bound to be heavy civilian casualties caused by Israel’s advanced American weaponry, which would lead to an international outcry, including in Europe, and lead to condemnation of not only Israel but the US as well. However, Israel is in defiant mood and Netanyahu needs at least some of the operation’s goals achieved before agreeing to a ceasefire.

More importantly, Israel needs an exit strategy, if past experiences in Lebanon and Gaza gave any lessons. Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn rule comes into play — ‘You break it, you own it.’

An extended occupation of Gaza will be an extremely dangerous outcome fraught with great risks, given the deep economic, religious, and social roots that Hamas enjoys. Suffice to say, the Israeli military will be hard-pressed to show “success” and head for the exit door.

Besides, if other Palestinian groups and organisations in the West Bank make decisions that advance Hamas’s strategic goals, all bets are off, as Israeli military will face a two-front war. In fact, the conditions for a third intifada do exist in West Bank.

And in such a scenario, the advantage goes to Hamas, which would position itself as potentially the appropriate and perhaps the sole alternative after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is now 87 years old.

Again, in a worst case scenario, it cannot be ruled out that the Arab Israeli population may draw inspiration from Hamas, and if their violent eruption in 2021 is anything to go by, the long-term viability of the state of Israel will be put to test.

Suffice to say, the best solution lies in a paradigm shift in the Israeli statecraft away from its primacy on coercion and brutal force. Blinken’s remarks suggested that the US hopes that when the dust settles down, with the helping hand of friendly Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Jordan, a turnaround to calm the situation and reach a ceasefire might be possible.

Of course, the longer that takes, the greater the strain it will put on the US-Israeli ties and the harder it will become for the Biden Administration to maintain an equilibrium in what is already a troubled relationship with Netanyahu. Fundamentally, Israel needs to come terms with the new reality that they are no longer invincible or the dominant power in the West Asian region.

 

The Drumbeat of War: Have We Learned Nothing?

DavidKlion

 

I could start with the immediate victims of the incursion—the hundreds of Israeli civilians murdered by Hamas, the most Jews killed in a day since the Holocaust; revelers butchered at a music festival, whole families snuffed out in an instant; the young and the elderly alike violated, mutilated, kidnapped, and held hostage for a ransom that may never be paid. I could, and now I have, but why did I feel compelled to start there? Maybe because I’m a Jew, an American, a Westerner living under the protection of laws and a vast military apparatus that undergirds those laws, and it’s only natural for me to identify first with people like me when violence is inflicted on them. Maybe it’s a gesture of support for my Jewish relatives and friends who feel personally traumatized, and who insist on a brief window in which to grieve without having to consider any wider political context. Or maybe I want to acknowledge that based only on the confirmed facts, what took place on Saturday was gruesome on a level that dwarfs anything we’ve seen inflicted on Israeli civilians. In the current discursive climate, it seems mandatory to dwell on these horrors before I say anything else, to establish that I’m a decent human being who neither endorses nor averts my eyes from Hamas’s depravities. I hope I’ve sufficiently established this, and at the same time I know I haven’t, that acknowledgment isn’t the solidarity many are demanding right now. Real solidarity would mean skipping over the next part.

Regardless, now I could pivot to talking about how two million Palestinian civilians are trapped in Gaza; how most of them have spent their entire lives in the tiny fenced-off enclave with no means of escape, with access to food, fuel, and electricity wholly dependent on Israel’s good graces; how the reason they live in what amounts to an overcrowded refugee camp is because Israel ethnically cleansed countless Palestinian villages during its 1948 war of independence; how the Palestinians of Gaza have known nothing but poverty and dispossession and periodic bombing campaigns in flagrant violation of the Geneva conventions, the worst of which is now only just beginning, as Israel pummels civilian neighborhoods without warning and calls up reserves for a potential ground invasion that will inflict unimaginable suffering; how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet includes multiple outspoken genocidaires whose explicit aim is the further ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and how none of this has stopped the US government from spending billions of dollars a year subsidizing Israel’s criminal colonization of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza. I could, and now I have, but I’ve done so cognizant that at least some of the people reading this already know all that and can’t be bothered to care at the moment.

“This is not an issue with two sides,” Bari Weiss intoned on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday, where she was given more than five uninterrupted minutes to reduce the entire century-old conflict to Hamas rapists and murderers vs. innocent Israelis, and to smear pro-Palestinian demonstrators around the world as antisemites. “Reject, with great force and wrath, the death cult that has gripped so much of American political, public, and intellectual life and that sees virtue in propping up benighted regimes in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” wrote Liel Leibovitz at Tablet. “We don’t need an integrated Middle East, because we don’t wish to integrate with the murderous mullahs and their packs of wild animals.” For those aligned with Weiss’s and Leibovitz’s uncompromising right-wing Zionism, the stakes are unambiguous and the way forward is clear: Israel is licensed to wage genocidal war against Gaza, to treat the Palestinians living there, in the words of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as “human animals.” For those Israeli ministers already committed to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the horror of the incursion brings with it catharsis and clarity: now is the time to execute on their vision, backed morally and financially by all the great powers of the West, and unencumbered by those who would normally hold them to account.

The latter are largely muffled right now. “Level the place” is the line Republicans like Lindsey Graham are taking with Gaza, to zero pushback from cable anchors. The vast majority of Democrats, including the Biden Administration, likewise offer lockstep support for Israel, and the left flank of the party deviates only by degrees when it calls for “restraint” and at least nods at the suffering of Palestinians. I expect New York’s persistently underwhelming Democratic governor Kathy Hochul to preemptively condemn a nonviolent rally in Times Square in support of Palestinian liberation as “abhorrent and morally repugnant,” but for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to echo her by calling out “bigotry and callousness” at the same rally is disappointing. AOC was likely referring to the swastika image one young unidentified demonstrator presented on their phone in front of a camera, not to the premise of ending the occupation, which she is on record supporting (she identified herself with “the thousands of New Yorkers who are capable of rejecting both Hamas’ horrifying attacks against innocent civilians as well as the grave injustices and violence Palestinians face under occupation”), but she’s savvy enough to understand the utility of distancing herself from the cause amid the current political climate in New York. She is far from alone in this; Bernie Sanders and almost every member of the left-leaning “Squad” in Congress have been walking on eggshells since the incursion, aware that even the most tepid pro-Palestinian gesture can backfire politically under these circumstances. Rep. Shri Thanedar, the Michigan Democrat elected to the House last year, announced today he was renouncing his membership in the Democratic Socialists of America over the rally. What progress had been made in recent years pushing liberal Zionists leftward turns out to have been very fragile; one I’m close to read Nathan Thrall’s new book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, a week ago and found its account of the everyday indignities of Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank eye-opening, but this week it’s the furthest thing from his mind.

The events of the past weekend have been called Israel’s 9/11. The comparison is apt. At the most basic level, the scale of Israeli casualties, which are still being tallied, greatly exceeds the casualty count of 9/11 as a percentage of the society in question. The scale of the intelligence failure is likewise comparable; all sides are united in wondering how Israel’s lavishly funded, reputedly sophisticated security state managed to miss a border incursion of this magnitude. 9/11 was America’s greatest humiliation since Pearl Harbor, and Hamas’s incursion is Israel’s greatest humiliation since the Yom Kippur War, a full fifty years ago. (In at least one respect, the analogy fails: it took mainstream US media years to begin to acknowledge that George W. Bush had failed to protect American lives, while Netanyahu’s failure is already a topic of fierce public debate in Israel, where Haaretz and some members of the military elite are calling for the prime minister’s resignation.)

But I also can’t remember a time since 9/11 when emotion and bloodlust overwhelmed reason as thoroughly as they do now, including among liberal elites in media and politics. The lasting impact of the 9/11 attacks was a kind of collective psychosis that overcame most Americans, and perhaps especially those in the DC–NYC corridor charged with crafting and enforcing conventional wisdom, who had witnessed the attacks up close. After 9/11, Christian zealots who longed for a crusade against the Muslim world and secular intellectuals who longed to overthrow Arab dictatorships and remake them in America’s image were free to say so in public without apology, and to see their ideas put into bloody practice. More sober voices, meanwhile, struggled with how to calibrate their words. It wasn’t that American elites were unaware that the United States had committed injustices around the world, or that 9/11 could plausibly be construed as blowback; it was that 9/11 had given them permission not to care. US support for Israeli apartheid, Saudi theocracy, and Pakistani covert operations across the Khyber Pass might all have been hard to defend, but it was distasteful to bring any of that up while Lower Manhattan smoldered and the faces of the missing were posted on every corner. No one could rationally assert the premise of American innocence, but rationality was beside the point. These were the conditions in which it was possible to sell the public, including leading liberal outlets, on a destructive imperial adventure in Iraq that virtually everyone now acknowledges was premised on false intelligence and wildly hubristic ambitions.

As Spencer Ackerman recalls in Reign of Terror, his grim accounting of the disastrous twenty years that followed 9/11, Susan Sontag was the rare public intellectual who tried to express a degree of nuance and historical context in the days following the attacks; for this, she was accused of “moral obtuseness” by the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer and “self-flagellation” by the New Republic’s Lawrence F. Kaplan. Andrew Sullivan named a snarky “award” for moral equivalence after Sontag and continued handing it out long after her death in 2004. It took years for Sontag’s posthumous reputation to fully recover and for her warnings to seem like retroactive common sense—years during which America launched two catastrophic full-scale invasions, established ongoing secret wars spanning a dozen countries, set up a transnational network of torture camps and a prison in Cuba that exists outside the reach of the Constitution, built a dystopian digital panopticon to spy on literally everyone, and killed orders of magnitude more civilians than died on 9/11 itself.

That America overreacted to 9/11 and compounded the scale of the tragedy is now a standard position among progressives, and even some conservatives; these days it takes little courage to denounce “the forever wars” and to condemn the shortsightedness of liberal intellectuals who aligned themselves with George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers to champion the invasion of Iraq. But at the time, it was far more common for conscientious progressives to equivocate and prevaricate. To foreground the suffering of the Americans in the Twin Towers was obligatory; to acknowledge the past, present, or future victims of American violence abroad was at best awkward; to imply these things might be related was something almost no one wanted to hear when it might have made any difference.

Had Twitter existed on 9/11, I have no doubt that there would have been voices on the left taking advantage of the platform to broadcast support for Al-Qaeda’s political agenda and justifications of the tactics employed in service of that agenda. Twitter, or whatever we’re supposed to call it, does exist now. Unverified reports of particular atrocities now circulate uncorrected and unquestioned thanks to Elon Musk’s steady degradation of the platform he acquired a year ago; if in the early 2000s, policymakers relied on a handful of TV networks and the New York Times to disseminate disinformation, today anyone can do so at will. I do know a few people posting defenses of Hamas. I can’t and won’t defend that organization’s methods or its underlying ideology, and I also wish more people on all sides were aware of Netanyahu’s longstanding, documented tacit support for Hamas as a means of dividing Palestinians and entrenching the occupation. Nonetheless, I’m unclear what purpose condemnation serves; when nonviolent resistance to the occupation is all but criminalized (thirty-four US states have passed laws against the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement), it feels almost absurd to object to violent resistance in principle.

There’s a pervasive censoriousness right now—conservatives denouncing liberals, liberals denouncing leftists, leftists denouncing other leftists—that’s immediately familiar from the days and weeks after 9/11. Somehow, the upshot of all the denunciations and condemnations is the right’s unchallenged hold over the discourse, and, more importantly, the ultimate facts on the ground.

“They’re already dead,” I recall a campus antiwar activist saying to me on the night Bush announced that the US had begun bombing Iraq. He was right; hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were about to die in Bush’s folly, their fates already decided. At the time I understood and somewhat appreciated what the activist was saying, but I also was parochial enough to wonder whether he even cared about the Americans at Ground Zero who were literally already dead (never mind that Iraq had nothing to do with what happened to them). Today, though, his words echo in my head as I think about the Palestinians in Gaza, and the agony of knowing that they’re already dead no matter what any of us feel or think or say.

 

I Wish Americans Could See the Humanity of Palestinians as They Do With Israelis

Sa’edAtshan

Part of being Palestinian American is having to watch Israel treated as the U.S.’s “special ally” and essentially the 51st state. This week, that feeling is particularly acute as the U.S. is planning to augment its aid to Israel with an additional $2 billion, even as Israeli officials call for genocidal acts, horrific human rights abuses and collective punishment in the Gaza Strip.

 

In these moments, Palestinian Americans like me face the constant guilt that our tax dollars are funding the oppression and apartheid conditions faced by our families and people in Israeli-occupied Palestine. For instance, U.S. funds help subsidize Israel’s illegal settlements across the West Bank. Israel has now placed Palestinian cities and villages in the West Bank under closure, and Israeli forces have just provided already heavily armed Israeli settlers with over 1,000 additional M16 rifles, which is terrifying given the history of settler violence.

While my family in the West Bank live in fear from soldiers and settlers, the reports from our friends and contacts in the Gaza Strip are nightmarish. Israeli officials are referring to Palestinians as “human animals” and confirmed having cut off access to water, electricity, food and medicine. Israeli bombardment has been underway for days now in preparation for a ground invasion in Gaza.

The past few days have been grueling on so many levels, particularly as Israeli officials — in what has been described as the most far right government in Israel’s history — call for and carry out atrocities against Palestinians with full backing from U.S. officials.

U.S. leaders have been inciting Israel to inflict large-scale assaults on Hamas without regard for civilian life in a besieged and impoverished territory where half the population are children and most are refugees. Already there are reports of Israel’s use of white phosphorus weapons and Israel’s bombardment killing women, children, men, journalists and medics, while Gazan hospitals are on the brink of losing power.

A core part of the Palestinian American experience in moments like these is our escalated experience of systemic racism and the silencing of our voices — not only in Palestine/Israel, but here in the U.S. as well. The campaigns of demonization of Palestinians and targeting of visible voices are in full force as we speak. Students and others in the U.S. who are attempting to raise awareness about the need for Palestinian rights and protection are being smeared, doxed and even fired by their employers.

As I worry about my own loved ones back home and try to keep up with the staggering statistics on the decimation of Palestinian lives and livelihoods, I also am grieving for Israeli civilians as they process the unprecedented scale of killing they experienced this past weekend. I know Palestinians and Israelis who have been killed, maimed and displaced, and who are missing, and my heart is broken in a million pieces.

It has also been painful to endure the barrage of accusations and suspicion. Palestinians, despite our immense heterogeneity like any other people, are writ large associated with Hamas. While some Palestinians support Hamas for political, religious or utilitarian reasons, others oppose Hamas on ideological or practical grounds.

Most Palestinians merely want to lead ordinary lives with dignity and now cannot think of anything beyond survival. I keenly experience how, as a Palestinian American, I am deemed guilty of support for “terrorism” until proven innocent. In the U.S., individuals overwhelmingly tend to assume that we are sympathetic to Hamas and to the massacres and war crimes they carried out this weekend that have resulted in over 1,300 Israeli deaths. Of course, I am unequivocally opposed to the targeting of Israeli civilians. But it’s demeaning for us to endure being asked to declare this so constantly. As a pacifist, I am deeply committed to nonviolent resistance, even as we are aware of Israel’s history of repression against nonviolent resistance. The expectation seems to be for Palestinians to acquiesce to our oppression and the theft of our ancestral homes, lands and natural resources.

It’s also surreal to be pressured to muzzle ourselves about the 75 years of Israeli state-sponsored terrorism against the Palestinian people. For my 39 years of existence on this planet, my homeland has always been under Israeli military occupation, with massive violations of international law. Within American academia, scholars such as myself, who specialize in the Middle East and are people of color, often face heightened surveillance from external organizations and internal forces that decontextualize our words and attempt to smear us as violent and antisemitic.

Certainly, antisemitism must be named, condemned and combatted with moral clarity. Yet false accusations of antisemitism should not be leveled against individuals advancing informed criticisms of the Israeli state and its egregious human rights violations. The Palestinian freedom movement includes many Jewish and Israeli voices who are furthering solidarity between our communities and who are challenging the chilling of free speech on Palestine/Israel.

It is disheartening to witness political forces in the U.S., who are instrumentalizing compassion regarding Israeli suffering, to help channel further U.S. military support for Israeli violence against innocent Palestinians in Gaza. It is an upsetting experience to realize that many of the same folks justifiably expressing horror about the murder and abduction of Israeli women, men, children and the elderly have never uttered a word about the murder and disappearance of Palestinians, even though Palestinians have disproportionately shouldered the casualties of this conflict and settler colonialism.

I find the empathy and compassion that so many Americans have for Israeli life to be beautiful. Yet the extreme imbalance in recognizing the humanity of Israelis versus Palestinians has been relentlessly stoked by the biases of mainstream U.S. media, which have yielded a U.S. public that has largely never seen the countless images of Palestinian children being abducted from their beds and neighborhoods and taken to Israeli dungeons over decades now. I hope that one day we will get to the point that the sort of empathy that the majority of people in the U.S. so readily feel for Israelis can also be extended to the Palestinian people as well.

Moving forward, the global movement for Palestinian freedom continues, and the U.S. is a major part of this equation. Americans in solidarity with Palestine play an important role in lobbying their elected officials to push for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and to provide humanitarian protection to all civilians. We also raise public awareness about the gross violations of human rights in the Occupied Territories.

Achieving sustainable peace necessitates addressing the root of the Gaza crisis: the ongoing displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people. As we embrace political rather than military solutions, we also call for an end to unconditional U.S. aid to Israel, and demand that international law be consistently applied to Israeli, Palestinian and American parties to the conflict. There are organizations on the ground worthy of our support, including Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and Medical Aid for Palestinians.

I hope for an immediate end to the bloodshed, the return of Palestinian and Israeli detainees to their homes, and building peace and justice for all in Palestine/Israel.

 

7 big questions about the Israel-Hamas war, answered

EllenIoanes, Jonathan Guyer, and Zack Beauchamp

Israel and Hamas are involved in their worst outbreak of violence in decades, one that has already claimed over 2,000 lives, and likely will claim many more.

 

The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas launched a massive, complex, and well-coordinated attack on Israel early Saturday from the territory it controls in Gaza. Militants killed more than 1,200 people — including at least 25 US citizens — wounded 3,000, kidnapped civilians, including US citizens and reportedly soldiers, and fired rockets on Israeli civilians.

It was the most devastating and brutal assault Israel had suffered in decades; Israeli officials described it as their country’s 9/11. The horror of the attack has only become clearer in the days since, as reports of some — if not all — of the worst atrocities were confirmed.

In response, the country officially declared war against Hamas on Sunday. The declaration comes after the Biden administration’s promise of additional support for Israel and the announced movement of several US warships and aircraft squadrons into the Eastern Mediterranean. Several countries, including Egypt and Jordan, have volunteered to try to defuse the situation diplomatically.

On Thursday, the IDF told Gazans in the north of the region — where approximately 1.1 million people live — that they should relocate to the south within 24 hours. According to Axios’s Barak Ravid, the IDF announcement indicated that the military would “continue to operate significantly in Gaza City” and will “make extensive efforts to avoid harming civilians.”

Many observers are taking this to indicate that a ground invasion is imminent.

UN officials have warned that such an evacuation — which includes UN staff and those sheltering in UN facilities — will be impossible without “devastating humanitarian consequences,” according to Stéfane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, quoted in the Axios story. Israel has shut its border with Gaza, and while Egypt has offered aid, its border with Gaza is effectively closed, leaving nowhere to go.

Israel had announced a siege against Gaza Monday after a barrage of airstrikes against the territory starting Saturday that has already killed over 1,100 people there, according to local authorities. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres denounced the siege in a Monday briefing, saying, “The humanitarian situation in Gaza was extremely dire before these hostilities; now it will only deteriorate exponentially.”

There were factors that likely contributed more immediately to this outbreak of violence — months of simmering conflict in Jerusalem and the West Bank over increased Israeli settlements, a far-right Israeli government that has been conducting a de facto annexation of the West Bank, and Israeli-Saudi negotiations about normalizing relations — but it is also a war decades in the making.

Most Gazans are either refugees from the 1948 Nakba, when mass numbers of Palestinians were displaced during the Arab-Israeli War, or descendants of those refugees, said Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. They’ve lived under a strict blockade by Israel and Egypt since Hamas assumed control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, relying on foreign aid to access basic necessities. About one-third of Gazans live in extreme poverty, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

The international community has largely abandoned efforts to find a political solution to this crisis. Now there is likely to be a long, bloody battle causing significant deaths on both sides, with Palestinians set to bear the brunt of the casualties and destruction going forward.

1. Where does the conflict currently stand?

The Israeli military said Tuesday it had retaken and secured the border with Gaza; its retaliation against Hamas and bombardment of Gaza has ramped up.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced Monday a siege on Gaza, on top of the blockade that Egypt and Israel enacted on the region 16 years ago after Hamas took power. So far, access to electricity, fuel, and food has been cut off to Gaza during the siege.

The next phase of the war could include a ground invasion of Gaza; more than 360,000 reservists have been called up, a record number. Such an invasion would be highly fraught for the Israeli Defense Forces, which will have to contend with chaotic fighting on Gaza’s dense streets. Netanyahu has been reluctant to put boots on the ground in Gaza since Israel formally withdrew troops in 2005 after 38 years of occupation.

But now, given political pressures — not to mention the fact that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants are holding Israeli civilian and military hostages inside Gaza — a ground invasion is certainly possible.

“We have to go in,” Netanyahu reportedly told US President Joe Biden Sunday, according to Axios’s Barak Ravid.

It’s not yet clear how these decisions might be affected by the emergency “unity government” Netanyahu formed with an opposition party Wednesday that will reduce the influence of some far-right members of Netanyahu’s government and create a small war cabinet to oversee the fighting.

In addition to those killed so far, thousands of Israelis have been wounded. As many as 150 are currently being held hostage, and Hamas officials have threatened to execute one civilian captive each time IDF strikes hit a civilian target in Gaza without prior warning. “These actions constitute heinous violations of international law and international crimes, for which there must be urgent accountability,” UN independent experts said in a statement Thursday.

Palestinian casualties are also high, as Israel bombards the densely populated strip. Thus far, IDF air strikes have injured more than 6,000 Gazans and killed more than 1,500 people, according to local authorities. On Tuesday, the IDF said it had killed 1,500 Hamas militants in fighting; it was not immediately clear how many of those casualties overlap with previously reported figures from Palestinian authorities. Some 218,600 people are sheltering in facilities run by UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees; two of those facilities have been hit during the bombardment.

“Hospitals are overcrowded with injured people, there is a shortage of drugs and [medical supplies], and a shortage of fuel for generators,” Ayman Al-Djaroucha, MSF deputy coordinator in Gaza, said Sunday. Ambulances are also unable to run, according to MSF staff, as they are being hit in airstrikes.

Israeli security forces and some settlers have killed 27 Palestinians in the West Bank amid clashes as of Thursday.

—Ellen Ioanes

2. What do I need to understand about Gaza and Israel’s relationship to understand today?

Palestinians living in Gaza and Israelis have always been deeply connected.

With Israel’s victory in the 1967 War, it conquered Gaza and became an occupying power overseeing the Palestinians living there. (Egypt had controlled the territory from 1948 to 1967.) Israel had not always so severely fenced off Gaza from the rest of the world or blockaded flows in and out of it. For several decades, Palestinians from Gaza worked in the Israeli economy. Starting in 1970, Israel established settlements in the territory and military installations. Israel restricted most Palestinians’ movement in and out of Gaza from the onset of the Second Intifada, or uprising, in 2000.

Israel withdrew its security forces and settlements from Gaza in 2005, but the territory nevertheless has remained effectively under Israeli occupation. Hamas won legislative elections in 2006, and amid a violent split with the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, the Islamist movement assumed control of the territory the next year. Israel has blockaded the territory since. The more than 2 million people in Gaza live in what human rights groups have called an “open-air prison.” The territory’s airspace, borders, and sea are under Israeli control, and neighboring Egypt to the south has also imposed severe restrictions on movement.

The United Nations describes the occupied territory as a “chronic humanitarian crisis.”

Map showing the Gaza strip, Israel, and the West Bank.

“This pressure being put on Palestinians — it just assumes that they’re insignificant and they will tolerate any degree of humiliation, and that’s just not true,” Rashid Khalidi, the Columbia University historian, says.

Israel has launched intense military operations on the densely populated territory many times over the past decade and a half in response to rocket attacks from Palestinian militants. The Israeli military has called it “mowing the grass”: a tactic of conducting semi-regular attacks on alleged terrorist cells to take out leaders and new militant groups, which also kill noncombatants and destroy civilian infrastructure in the process. But mowing the lawn almost by definition does not address the root causes of terrorism but only reduces the level of Hamas’s violence temporarily and perpetuates an escalating cycle of violence. Experts say that there is no military solution to the political problem posed by Hamas.

Hamas’s wanton violence does not by any means represent the views of all Palestinians. A survey of Palestinians from this summer showed that if legislative elections were held for the first time since 2006, about 44 percent of Gazan voters would choose Hamas. But there has been no opportunity for elections, and so in addition to Israeli military action, Palestinians living in Gaza must endure an unrepresentative government that imposes some Islamic tenets, implements repressive policies against LGBTQ people, and abusive policies against detainees.

Even as the situation for Palestinians living in Gaza has gotten worse in the past 15 years, less and less attention from world leaders and US administrations has been paid to it. Yet the cause of Palestine — to secure an independent, sovereign, and viable state — continues to galvanize grassroots support in the Arab Middle East and the Muslim world.

—Jonathan Guyer

3. But why did Hamas launch such a huge attack now?

According to Hamas itself, the attack was provoked by recent events surrounding the Temple Mount, a site in Jerusalem holy to Jews and Muslims alike. Earlier this month, Israeli settlers had been entering the al-Aqsa Mosque atop the mount and praying, which Hamas termed “desecration” in a statement on their offensive (which they’ve named Operation Al-Aqsa Storm).

It’s implausible, to put it mildly, that Hamas was simply outraged by these events and is acting accordingly. This kind of complex operation had to be months in the making; Hamas sources have confirmed as much to Reuters.

But at the same time, Hamas’s choice of casus belli does tell us something important.

Palestinian politics is defined, in large part, by how its leadership responds to Israel’s continued occupation — both its physical presence in the West Bank and its economically devastating blockade of the Gaza Strip. Hamas’s strategy to outcompete its rivals, including the Fatah faction currently in charge of the West Bank, is to channel Palestinian rage at their suffering: to be the authentic voice of resistance to Israel and the occupation.

And the past few months have seen plenty of outrages, ones even more significant than events in Jerusalem. Israel’s current hard-right government, dominated by factions that oppose a peace agreement with the Palestinians, has been conducting a de facto annexation of the West Bank. It has turned a blind eye to settler violence against West Bank civilians, including a February rampage in the town of Huwara.

Israel’s focus on the West Bank may also have created an operational opportunity for Hamas. According to Uzi Ben Yitzhak, a retired Israeli general, the Israeli government has deployed most of the regular IDF forces to the West Bank to manage the situation there — leaving only a skeleton force at the Gaza border and creating conditions where a Hamas surprise attack could succeed.

There are also geopolitical concerns at work, with some experts arguing this was intended to fundamentally shift how the world approaches Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Israel is currently in the midst of a US-brokered negotiation to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, a major follow-up to the Abraham Accord agreements struck with several Arab countries during the Trump administration. Normalization is widely seen among Palestinians as the Arab world giving up on them, agreeing to treat Israel like a normal country even as the occupation deepens. Hamas could well be trying to torpedo the Saudi deal and even trying to undo the existing Abraham Accords. Indeed, a Hamas spokesperson said that the attack was “a message” to Arab countries, calling on them to cut ties with Israel. (It’s worth noting that planning for an attack this complex very likely began well before the Saudi negotiations heated up.)

Together, these are all conditions in which it makes more strategic sense for Hamas to take such a huge risk.

To be clear: Saying it makes strategic sense for Hamas to engage in atrocities is not to justify their killing of civilians. There is a difference between explanation and justification: The reasoning behind Hamas’s attack may be explicable even as it is morally indefensible.

We’ll find out more in the coming weeks and months about which, if any, of these conditions proved decisive in Hamas’s calculus. But they’re the necessary background context to even try to begin making sense of this week’s horrific events.

—Zack Beauchamp

4. How did this become an outright war, worse than we’ve seen in decades?

Hamas’s attack was well-coordinated, massive in scale, included an unprecedented incursion into Israeli territory, and managed to evade the Israeli security apparatus, which is why it was so surprising — and able to inflict so much carnage.

“The Israelis pride themselves on having world-class intelligence, with the Mossad, with Shin Bet, with Israeli military intelligence,” Colin Clarke, director of research at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy, told Vox. “They do — from the most exquisite human sources to the most capable technical intelligence gathering capabilities [including] cyber and signals intelligence.”

As explained above, there are both longstanding and immediate reasons a conflict of some sort was likely.

“The message has been clear to Palestinians,” Hassan said. “They can’t wait on some Arab savior and they can’t wait on the US government to act as peace broker — that they’re going to have to take matters into their own hands, whatever that looks like.”

But the sheer brutality and devastation has been a shock to Israeli society. Rhetoric from Netanyahu and the IDF has reflected the “vengeance,” as Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, characterized it, that Israeli society is feeling in the wake of the devastating attack.

“In a way, this is our 9/11,” IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said in a video statement posted to the social network X on Sunday. Videos have circulated showing dead Israelis, as well as Israeli civilians being captured by Hamas militants, presumably to be held in Gaza. Though Israeli towns near the Gaza border are now largely under IDF control, the full understanding of the horror of the Hamas attack continues to grow, and at least 100 Israeli hostages remain in captivity and some are presumed dead. Hamas has threatened to execute captive Israelis if IDF operations strike civilian targets in Gaza without warning, the Associated Press reports.

Netanyahu formally declared war on Hamas one day after the attack. That war effort will be governed by a small “war management cabinet” composed of Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Benny Gantz, the leader of the opposition National Unity party who joined Netanyahu in an emergency unity government Wednesday. Gadi Eizenkot, another former army chief, will join the broader security cabinet, potentially instilling more trust in a government that has widely been seen to have failed at its most important task: to keep Israelis safe.

Yair Lapid, Netanyahu’s main political rival, has refused to join the unity government as long as ministers like Itamar Ben Gvir, the right-wing national security minister who has repeatedly made anti-Arab comments, remain on the security cabinet.

—EI

5. What will declared war mean?

No one knows how this war will play out. But given Israel’s highly advanced military, its response to the Hamas’s attack will be massive and devastating in turn. On Monday, Netanyahu vowed to attack Hamas with a force “like never before” and has vowed to kill every member of the group. Israel on Monday said it would place Gaza under a “complete siege” and announced it called up 300,000 military reservists, a number that’s now grown by 60,000. Many analysts expect that Israel will send in ground troops.

“I ordered a complete siege on Gaza. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly,” Gallant said on Monday. “As of now, no electricity, no food, no fuel for Gaza.”

A man stands in the left side of the frame in front of a building that has a crater in the upper left side of it. There is rubble everywhere.

Buildings damaged and destroyed by Israeli airstrikes on October 10, 2023, in Gaza City. Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

But Gaza has been described as effectively living under siege since 2007, as documented by United Nations experts, journalists, and human rights researchers.

What will change is the scale of violence: It has already exceeded the most recent severe conflict between Israel and Hamas in 2021, and is likely to get much worse.

Already, Israel has launched what it describes as one of its largest aerial bombardments ever on Gaza. After barrages of artillery and rocket fire, ground operations to target Hamas fighters may follow.

Relations between Israel and Palestinians has always been asymmetrical: Israel, an undeclared nuclear power, has received tens of billions of dollars of US military aid. This past weekend, Hamas ruptured Israeli society with wanton violence and mass killing. But it is the Israeli state that retains the capacity to perpetuate an all-out war on the Gaza Strip. Israel has often responded disproportionately to suicide bombings and rocket attacks from Hamas, partially as a deterrent strategy. The result, however, is an intensity of violence in an occupied territory where residents have nowhere to run, and where civilians are regularly killed in Israel’s assaults on Hamas targets.

—JG

6. How is the US responding?

Biden and Netanyahu’s relationship had grown strained over the Israeli leader’s rightward drift and recent judicial overhaul — but after the attack, the US is standing firmly behind its closest ally in the Middle East.

“In this moment of tragedy, I want to say to them and to the world and to terrorists everywhere that the United States stands with Israel,” Biden said on Saturday. Tuesday, after his third phone call with Netanyahu, he again denounced the “pure, unadulterated evil” of Hamas’s attack on civilians, and reiterated that there should “be no doubt: The United States has Israel’s back.”

The US has pledged to send additional military materiel, “including munitions,” according to a news release from the Department of Defense, with the first tranche of security assistance already headed to Israel. At a press conference in Israel on Thursday, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Israelis that American “will always be there by your side.”

In addition to the material support, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in Sunday afternoon’s statement that the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which includes an aircraft carrier and multiple guided missile destroyers, has been deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean to deter other actors like Iran or Hezbollah. However, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said in a briefing Monday, “There’s no intention to put US boots on the ground.”

Some human rights and Middle East experts have criticized US officials for not also prioritizing de-escalation in their public statements, or for not emphasizing the need to avoid further civilian casualties, particularly given the massive civilian casualties Palestinians have endured during previous rounds of violence.

“As we’ve said before, Israel has the right to defend itself and you’re seeing them do that. And in some ways, they’re doing it aggressively, and given the size and scale and the scope of the violence, we understand where that’s coming from,” Kirby said in Monday’s briefing, stating that the US and Israel’s shared values include “respect for life. The kind of respect that Hamas is clearly not showing at all.”

—EI

7. What does this mean for the region — and world?

One of the largest questions going forward is whether this outbreak of violence draws in other countries or groups.

The US defense posture, for instance, seems to anticipate escalation from Iran and Hezbollah, the Shia militant group based in southern Lebanon. US statements have explicitly warned other countries from “looking at this as a chance to take advantage” of Israel’s vulnerability, Kirby said.

Though there is speculation about Iranian and Hezbollah involvement in the operation, there are no concrete details linking them yet. Generally, “Iran has played a major role in helping Hamas with its rocket and missile programs, and mortar programs,” Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Vox. And Iran and Hezbollah also provide funding, training, and intelligence to Hamas fighters, all of which could have contributed to Saturday’s attack, both Byman and Clarke said.

But so far there is minimal to no corroborated evidence linking Iran to this attack. While officials from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah told the Wall Street Journal that Iran helped plan Saturday’s attack starting in August and gave the go-ahead for the attack one week ago, many others have rejected that assessment. US officials have thus far said publicly that they have no indication of Iran’s involvement in the planning of Saturday’s assault, and Israeli officials have said similar things. “This is a Palestinian and Hamas decision,” Mahmoud Mirdawi, a senior Hamas official, told the Journal. And Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has denied Tehran’s involvement in the operation, per Reuters.

Hezbollah fired rockets and guided missiles into Shebaa Farms, territory Israel captured from Lebanon during the 1967 War, Sunday “in solidarity” with the Palestinian people, Reuters reported. “Our history, our guns, and our rockets are with you,” Hashem Safieddine, a senior Hezbollah official, said at an event outside of Beirut Sunday. The IDF reportedly launched a Patriot missile into Lebanon in response. Rocket fire exchanges between the two are ongoing.

Though there is little indication of a bigger regional conflagration as of yet, it remains a possibility that other Arab nations could become involved — or that efforts to normalize relations between those nations, particularly Saudi Arabia, and Israel could be derailed.

There is only one sure thing in this conflict: The suffering will continue without significant international effort behind a political solution.

-El

 

Lawless in Gaza: Why the West Backs Israel No Matter What

JonathanCook

As Western politicians line up to cheer on Israel as it starves and bombs Gaza’s civilians, it’s important to understand how we reached this point – and what it means for the future, writes Jonathan Cook.

More than a decade ago, Israel started to understand that its occupation of Gaza through siege could be to its advantage. It began transforming the tiny coastal enclave from an albatross around its neck into a valuable portfolio in the trading game of international power politics.

The first benefit for Israel, and its Western allies, is more discussed than the second.

The tiny strip of land hugging the eastern Mediterranean coast was turned into a mix of testing ground and shop window.

Israel could use Gaza to develop all sorts of new technologies and strategies associated with the homeland security industries burgeoning across the West, as officials there grew increasingly worried about domestic unrest, sometimes referred to as populism.

The siege of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, imposed by Israel in 2007 following the election of Hamas to rule the enclave, allowed for all sorts of experiments.

How could the population best be contained? What restrictions could be placed on their diet and lifestyle? How were networks of informers and collaborators to be recruited from afar? What effect did the population’s entrapment and repeated bombardment have on social and political relations?

And ultimately how were Gaza’s inhabitants to be kept subjugated and an uprising prevented?

The answers to those questions were made available to Western allies through Israel’s shopping portal. Items available included interception rocket systems, electronic sensors, surveillance systems, drones, facial recognition, automated gun towers, and much more. All tested in real-life situations in Gaza.

Israel’s standing took a severe dent from the fact that Palestinians managed to bypass this infrastructure of confinement last weekend – at least for a few days – with a rusty bulldozer, some hang-gliders and a sense of nothing-to-lose.

Which is part of the reason why Israel now needs to go back into Gaza with ground troops to show it still has the means to keep the Palestinians crushed.

Collective Punishment

Which brings us to the second purpose served by Gaza.

As Western states have grown increasingly unnerved by signs of popular unrest at home, they have started to think more carefully about how to sidestep the restrictions placed on them by international law.

The term refers to a body of laws that were formalised in the aftermath of the second world war, when both sides treated civilians on the other side of the battle lines as little more than pawns on a chessboard.

The aim of those drafting international law was to make it unconscionable for there to be a repeat of Nazi atrocities in Europe, as well as other crimes such as Britain’s fire bombing of German cities like Dresden or the United States’ dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Gaza is about as flagrant a violation of this prohibition as can be found”

One of the fundamentals of international law – at the heart of the Geneva Conventions – is a prohibition on collective punishment: that is, retaliating against the enemy’s civilian population, making them pay the price for the acts of their leaders and armies.

Very obviously, Gaza is about as flagrant a violation of this prohibition as can be found. Even in “quiet” times, its inhabitants – one million of them children – are denied the most basic freedoms, such as the right to movement; access to proper health care because medicines and equipment cannot be brought in; access to drinkable water; and the use of electricity for much of the day because Israel keeps bombing Gaza’s power station.

Israel has never made any bones of the fact that it is punishing the people of Gaza for being ruled by Hamas, which rejects Israel’s right to have dispossessed the Palestinians of their homeland in 1948 and imprisoned them in overcrowded ghettos like Gaza.

What Israel is doing to Gaza is the very definition of collective punishment. It is a war crime: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks of every year, for 16 years.

And yet no one in the so-called international community seems to have noticed.

Rules of War Rewritten

But the trickiest legal situation – for Israel and the West – is when Israel bombs Gaza, as it is doing now, or sends in soldiers, as it soon will do.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted the problem when he told the people of Gaza: “Leave now.” But, as he and Western leaders know, Gaza’s inhabitants have nowhere to go, nowhere to escape the bombs. So any Israeli attack is, by definition, on the civilian population too. It is the modern equivalent of the Dresden fire bombings.

Israel has been working on strategies to overcome this difficulty since its first major bombardment of Gaza in late 2008, after the siege was introduced.

A unit in its attorney general’s office was charged with finding ways to rewrite the rules of war in Israel’s favour.

At the time, the unit was concerned that Israel would be criticised for blowing up a police graduation ceremony in Gaza, killing many young cadets. Police are civilians in international law, not soldiers, and therefore not a legitimate target. Israeli lawyers were also worried that Israel had destroyed government offices, the infrastructure of Gaza’s civilian administration.

Israel’s concerns seem quaint now – a sign of how far it has already shifted the dial on international law. For some time, anyone connected with Hamas, however tangentially, is considered a legitimate target, not just by Israel but by every Western government.

“If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it”

Western officials have joined Israel in treating Hamas as simply a terrorist organisation, ignoring that it is also a government with people doing humdrum tasks like making sure bins are collected and schools kept open.

Or as Orna Ben-Naftali, a law faculty dean, told the Haaretz newspaper back in 2009: “A situation is created in which the majority of the adult men in Gaza and the majority of the buildings can be treated as legitimate targets. The law has actually been stood on its head.”

Back at that time, David Reisner, who had previously headed the unit, explained Israel’s philosophy to Haaretz: “What we are seeing now is a revision of international law. If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it.

“The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries.”

Israel’s meddling to change international law goes back many decades.

Referring to Israel’s attack on Iraq’s fledgling nuclear reactor in 1981, an act of war condemned by the U.N. Security Council, Reisner said: “The atmosphere was that Israel had committed a crime. Today everyone says it was preventive self-defence. International law progresses through violations.”

He added that his team had travelled to the U.S. four times in 2001 to persuade U.S. officials of Israel’s ever-more flexible interpretation of international law towards subjugating Palestinians.

“Had it not been for those four planes [journeys to the U.S.], I am not sure we would have been able to develop the thesis of the war against terrorism on the present scale,” he said.

Those redefinitions of the rules of war proved invaluable when the U.S. chose to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq.

‘Human Animals’

In recent years, Israel has continued to “evolve” international law. It has introduced the concept of “prior warning” – sometimes giving a few minutes’ notice of a building or neighbourhood’s destruction. Vulnerable civilians still in the area, like the elderly, children and the disabled, are then recast as legitimate targets for failing to leave in time.

And it is using the current assault on Gaza to change the rules still further.

The 2009 Haaretz article includes references by law officials to Yoav Gallant, who was then the military commander in charge of Gaza. He was described as a “wild man”, a “cowboy” with no time for legal niceties.

Gallant is now defence minister and the man responsible for instituting this week a “complete siege” of Gaza: “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything is closed.” In language that blurred any distinction between Hamas and Gaza’s civilians, he described Palestinians as “human animals”.

That takes collective punishment into a whole different realm. In terms of international law, it skirts into the territory of genocide, both rhetorically and substantively.

But the dial has shifted so completely that even centrist Western politicians are cheering Israel on – often not even calling for “restraint” or “proportionality”, the weasel terms they usually use to obscure their support for law breaking.

https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1712401412120879271

Listen to Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour opposition and the man almost certain to be Britain’s next prime minister. This week he supported the “complete siege” of Gaza, a crime against humanity, refashioning it as Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

Starmer has not failed to grasp the legal implications of Israel’s actions, even if he seems personally immune to the moral implications. He is trained as a human rights lawyer.

His approach even appears to be taking aback journalists not known for being sympathetic to the Palestinian case. When asked by Kay Burley of Sky News if he had any sympathy for the civilians in Gaza being treated like “human animals”, Starmer could not find a single thing to say in support.

Instead, he deflected to an outright deception: blaming Hamas for sabotaging a “peace process” that Israel both practically and declaratively buried years ago.

Confirming that the Labour Party now condones war crimes by Israel, his shadow attorney general, Emily Thornberry, has been sticking to the same script. On BBC’s Newsnight, she evaded questions about whether cutting off power and supplies to Gaza is in line with international law.

It is no coincidence that Starmer’s position contrasts so dramatically with that of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. The latter was driven out of office by a sustained campaign of antisemitism smears fomented by Israel’s most fervent supporters in the U.K.

Starmer does not dare to be seen on the wrong side of this issue. And that is exactly the outcome Israeli officials wanted and expected.

Starmer is, of course, far from alone. Grant Shapps, Britain’s defence secretary, has also expressed trenchant support for Israel’s policy of starving two million Palestinians in Gaza.

Rishi Sunak, the U.K. prime minister, has emblazoned the Israeli flag on the front of his official residence, 10 Downing Street, apparently unconcerned at how he is giving visual form to what would normally be considered an antisemitic trope: that Israel controls the U.K.’s foreign policy.

Starmer, not wishing to be outdone, has called for Wembley Stadium’s arch to be adorned with the colours of the Israeli flag.

“The media is playing its part, dependably as ever”

However much this schoolboy cheerleading of Israel is sold as an act of solidarity following Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli civilians at the weekend, the subtext is unmistakeable: Britain has Israel’s back as it starts its retributive campaign of war crimes in Gaza.

That is also the purpose of Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s advice to the police to treat the waving of Palestinian flags and chants for Palestine’s liberation at protests in support of Gaza as criminal acts.

The media is playing its part, dependably as ever. A Channel 4 TV crew pursued Corbyn through London’s streets this week, demanding he “condemn” Hamas. They insinuated through the framing of those demands that anything less fulsome – such as Corbyn’s additional concerns for the welfare of Gaza’s civilians – was confirmation of the former Labour leader’s antisemitism.

The clear implication from politicians and the establishment media is that any support for Palestinian rights, any demurral from Israel’s “unquestionable right” to commit war crimes, equates to antisemitism.

Europe’s Hypocrisy

This double approach, of cheering on genocidal Israeli policies towards Gaza while stifling any dissent, or characterising it as antisemitism, is not confined to the U.K..

Across Europe, from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, to the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Bulgarian parliament, official buildings have been lit up with the Israeli flag.

Europe’s top official, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, celebrated the Israeli flag smothering the EU parliament this week.

She has repeatedly stated that “Europe stands with Israel”, even as Israeli war crimes start to mount.

The Israeli air force boasted on Thursday it had dropped some 6,000 bombs on Gaza. At the same time, human rights groups reported Israel was firing the incendiary chemical weapon white phosphorus into Gaza, a war crime when used in urban areas. And Defence for Children International noted that more than 500 Palestinian children had been killed so far by Israeli bombs.

It was left to Francesca Albanese, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the occupied territories, to point out that Von Der Leyen was applying the principles of international law entirely inconsistently.

Almost exactly a year ago, the European Commission president denounced Russia’s strikes on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine as war crimes. “Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity and heating with winter coming – these are acts of pure terror,” she wrote. “And we have to call it as such.”

Albanese noted Von der Leyen had said nothing equivalent about Israel’s even worse attacks on Palestinian infrastructure. 

https://twitter.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1712348700188500107

Sending in the Heavies

Meanwhile, France has already started breaking up and banning demonstrations against the bombing of Gaza. Its justice minister has echoed Braverman in suggesting solidarity with Palestinians risks offending Jewish communities and should be treated as “hate speech”.

Naturally, Washington is unwavering in its support for whatever Israel decides to do to Gaza, as secretary of state Anthony Blinken made clear during his visit this week.

President Joe Biden has promised weapons and funding, and sent in the military equivalent of “the heavies” to make sure no one disturbs Israel as it carries out those war crimes. An aircraft carrier has been dispatched to the region to ensure quiet from Israel’s neighbours as the ground invasion is launched.

“Washington is unwavering in its support for whatever Israel decides to do to Gaza”

Even those officials whose chief role is to promote international law, such as Antonio Guterres, secretary general of the U.N., have started to move with the shifting ground.

Like most Western officials, he has emphasised Gaza’s “humanitarian needs” above the rules of war Israel is obliged to honour.

This is Israel’s success. The language of international law that should apply to Gaza – of rules and norms Israel must obey – has given way to, at best, the principles of humanitarianism: acts of international charity to patch up the suffering of those whose rights are being systematically trampled on, and those whose lives are being obliterated.

 

Western officials are more than happy with the direction of travel. Not just for Israel’s sake but for their own too. Because one day in the future, their own populations may be as much trouble to them as Palestinians in Gaza are to Israel right now.

Supporting Israel’s right to defend itself is their downpayment.

 

Blinken: ‘As long as America Exists,’ It Will Support Israel

byDave DeCamp

Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared in Tel Aviv on Thursday that “as long as America exists,” it will support Israel, a pledge that came amid a relentless Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

“The message that I bring to Israel is this: You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself – but as long as America exists, you will never, ever have to. We will always be there, by your side,” Blinken said alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Since Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, the US has shipped more military equipment to Israel, deployed an aircraft carrier strike group, and augmented its fighter jets in the region. Congress is poised to authorize more military aid on top of the $3.8 billion Israel receives each year.

“We’re delivering on our word — supplying ammunition, interceptors to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome, alongside other defense materiel. The first shipments of US military support have already arrived in Israel, and more is on the way,” Blinken said.

“As Israel’s defense needs evolve, we will work with Congress to make sure that they’re met. And I can tell you there is overwhelming — overwhelming — bipartisan support in our Congress for Israel’s security,” he added.

Blinken said it’s “important to take every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians” but did not mention the hundreds of children who have been killed by Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.

Also on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the new aid for Israel was unconditional. “In terms of conditions that we would place on the security assistance that we’re providing to Israel, we have not placed any conditions on the provision of this equipment,” he said.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 1,537 Palestinians — including 500 children and 276 women — have been killed and 6,612 wounded in Israel’s airstrikes on the besieged enclave since Saturday. On the Israeli side, at least 1,300 people have been killed and 3,200 wounded. Israeli officials have also said 1,500 Hamas militants were killed in southern Israel, but the death toll hasn’t been confirmed.