October 9, 2024
On October 7
last year, the sky over Gaza ignited. The day began with the shocking scenes of
Hamas rockets fired from Gaza, followed later by a torrent of Israeli missiles
and warplanes. As a journalist who was on the ground in Gaza, I did what I’ve
always done: I wrote, I documented, I interviewed, I bore witness. But nothing
could have prepared me for the days, weeks, and months to come.
Palestinians at site of an Israeli airstrike at an UNRWA school in the
Nuseirat camp, in the central Gaza Strip, September 11, 2024. (Abed
Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
That first day,
my colleagues and I scrambled to understand the basic facts of what was
unfolding. As the details became clearer, I grappled with a mix of complicated
feelings: my staunch belief in our right as Palestinians to resist occupation
and siege; skepticism that the Hamas attacks in southern Israeli communities
would bring us any closer to our quest for freedom; compassion for civilians
who were killed or harmed; and utter terror at the unbridled violence that I
knew would rain down on Gaza in the aftermath.
But I didn’t
have long to grapple with any of this. I remember the early hours of Israel’s
military assault on Gaza, rushing to make sense of the chaos, torn between my
duty to report and the overwhelming grief of seeing my people — neighbors,
friends, family — desperately searching for safety that was nowhere to be
found.
One year later,
now out of Gaza, I’m still writing and still documenting. But the blood on
Gaza’s streets is no closer to drying, the pain no closer to easing, the
explosions no closer to fading. The cacophony of missile barrages and machine
gunfire has become the soundtrack of our lives — a perpetual reality of death
and destruction. People around the world scream for a ceasefire, but on the
ground, we know better than to expect it: the bombs just keep coming.
A part of me
wants to move on, to write about something else, anything else. But as I sit in
front of my laptop, the weight of the past year presses down on my chest.
Writing to mark a war anniversary isn’t just about reflection — it’s a trigger,
forcing me to relive memories of death, displacement, starvation, and survival.
How long can we
live like this?
Although I am
now writing from exile, I spent eight months on the ground covering the war in
northern Gaza. I’ve reported from burning houses and the frontlines of military
ground offensives, covering everything from the initial shock of families torn
apart by displacement to the resilience of children playing in the rubble.
But as a
Palestinian journalist in Gaza, it’s impossible to distance yourself from the
pain and tragedy you document. I was one of the hundreds of thousands
displaced, taking refuge in makeshift shelters and schools, with no access to
medical care. My toddler lived with no home and no proper food for months. Our
children now know the sound of bombs better than the sound of laughter.
There’s one
question I’ve asked over and over, in all my interviews and my columns, and in
quiet conversations with colleagues. I’ve asked it of mothers clutching their
children, their faces weary from the sleepless nights. I’ve asked it of doctors
working in overwhelmed hospitals, surrounded by the injured, the dying, the
dead. “How long can we live like this?” The question continues to echo in my
mind, because I still don’t have an answer.
But as a friend
of mine pointed out: “We’re not living our days, we’re surviving them.”
Survival has become our default mechanism — because we have no other choice.
What else can you do when you’ve lost everything but your breath? How do you
cope when the only certainty is more death?
Meanwhile, a
strange numbness has settled into the bones of the world. The blood of tens of
thousands has stained our streets, but the world has grown accustomed to the
color. The relentless airstrikes, the blockade, and the lack of clean water,
food, and medical supplies, the cries of grieving families — all of this has
become background noise.
That’s the real
tragedy — our suffering, long before this war, has never been seen as urgent.
And it never will be, unless the world remembers that we are human beings who
deserve the most basic rights. Perhaps those of us who survived one year of war
are lucky, but our wounds run deep and our demands are simple.
We keep writing
– and waiting
I’ve lost count
of the number of obituaries I’ve written for friends and loved ones this past
year. I want nothing more than for the day when I can write about rebuilding,
about hope, about a Gaza that is free, peaceful, and thriving.
But until that
day comes, I wonder, how many more children have to be pulled from the
wreckage? How many more hospitals will run out of supplies? How much more blood
must be shed before the world decides that enough is enough? It’s as if war has
taken up permanent residence in Gaza, planted its roots, and declared its
eternal presence.
The people of
Gaza long for something as basic as bread, without the fear that a missile will
strike while they wait outside a half-destroyed humanitarian aid office. As
winter approaches, they need proper tents and clothing to keep the rain from
soaking them and their belongings, with nowhere else to go. And most of all,
they need an end to the source of their suffering and daily hardship.
But a ceasefire
isn’t enough: we’ve grown too cynical to believe it will last. We know that for
every brief pause, another trauma is already being prepared.
My fellow
journalists and I continue to speak out, not because we want the world’s pity,
nor do we need lectures on “neutrality” by white news anchors. We write because
we need to live, to breathe. We use our journalism to strive for a future that
doesn’t involve counting the dead. We write because we want the bombs to stop,
the tanks to roll back, and the drones to disappear from our skies. We want to
eat without worrying about where the next meal will come from. We want our
children to go to school and grow up without fear of being buried under the
rubble. We want medical treatment, proper clothing, and water.
But we also want
— and deserve — what feels further than ever since October 7: freedom, dignity,
and self determination. This war can’t go on indefinitely. People on the ground
are trapped in a suffocating cycle of loss and survival, but they also recognize
that some sort of resolution, whatever that might look like, is inevitable.
Will it be more of the same — a repeat of the last 17 years under siege, where
temporary ceasefires only give way to further death? Or will we finally see a
push toward lasting political change, where Palestinians are no longer forced
to choose between silence and suffering?
In the meantime,
I keep writing — and waiting. We wait for the world to hear us, to act, to
finally put an end to our unending trauma. Because one year on, we’re still
waiting. And we can’t endure this forever.
Scott
Ritter
October
8, 2024
I
have previously written about Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, calling it
“the most successful military raid of this century.”
I
have described the Hamas action as a military operation, while Israel and its
allies have called it a terrorist action on the scale of what transpired
against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
“The
difference between the two terms,” I noted,
“is night and day — by labeling the
events of October 7 as acts of terrorism, Israel transfers blame for the huge
losses away from its military, security, and intelligence services, and onto
Hamas. If Israel were, however, to acknowledge that what Hamas did was in fact
a raid — a military operation — then the competency of the Israeli military,
security, and intelligence services would be called into question, as would the
political leadership responsible for overseeing and directing their
operations.”
Terrorism
employs strategies that seek victory through attrition and intimidation — to
wear an enemy down and create a sense of helplessness on the part of the enemy.
Terrorists by nature avoid decisive existential conflict, but rather pursue
asymmetrical battle which pits their strengths against the weaknesses of their
enemies.
The
war that has gripped the Levant since Oct. 7, 2023, is not your traditional
anti-terrorism operation. The Hamas-Israeli conflict has morphed into a
conflict between Israel and the so-called axis of resistance involving Hamas,
Hezbollah, Ansarullah (the Houthi of Yemen), the Popular Mobilization Forces,
i.e. militias of Iraq, Syria and Iran. It is a regional war in every way,
shape, or form that must be assessed as such.
The
Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz noted in his classic work, On War, that
“war is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a
continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other
means.”
From
a purely military perspective, the Hamas raid on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was a
relatively minor engagement, involving a few thousand combatants from each
side.
As
a global geopolitical event, however, it has no contemporary counterpart.
The
Hamas raid triggered a number of varied responses, some of which were by
design, such as luring the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza, where they would
become trapped in a forever war they could not win, triggering the dual Israeli
doctrines governing military response to hostage taking of the “Hannibal
Doctrine” and the Israeli practice of collective punishment, the “Dahiya
Doctrine.”
Both
of these doctrines put the IDF on display to the world as the antithesis of the
“world’s most moral military” by exposing the murderous intent ingrained into
the DNA of the IDF, a propensity for violence against innocents which defines
the Israeli way of war and, by extension, the Israeli nation.
Prior
to Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was able to disguise its true character to the outside
world, convincing all but a handful of activists that its actions in targeting
“terrorists” were proportional and humane.
Today
the world knows Israel as the genocidal apartheid state it really is.
The
consequences of this new global enlightenment are manifest.
Changing
the ‘Face of the Middle East’
President
Joe Biden, on Sept. 9, 2023, during the G20 summit in India, announced a major
policy initiative, the India-Middle East-European Economic Corridor, or IMEC, a
proposed rail, ship, pipeline and digital cable corridor connecting Europe, the
Middle East and India.
Benjamin
Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, commenting on Biden’s announcement,
called the IMEC “a cooperation project that is the greatest in our history”
that “takes us to a new era of regional and global integration and cooperation,
unprecedented and unique in its scope” adding that it “will bring to fruition a years-long
vision that will change the face of the Middle East and of Israel.”
But
because the world now sees Israel as a criminal enterprise, the IMEC looks for
all intents and purposes to be no more — the greatest cooperation project in
Israeli history that would have changed the Middle East likely will never reach
fruition.
For
one thing, Saudi Arabia, a key player in the scheme, having invested $20
billion in it, says it will not normalize relations with Israel, necessary for
the project, until the wars end and a Palestinian state is recognized by
Israel, something the Knesset voted earlier this year would never happen.
The
demise of the IMEC is just part of the $67 billion economic hit Israel has
taken since the Gaza conflict began.
Tourism
is down 80 percent. The southern port of Eilat no longer functions because of
the anti-shipping campaign run by the Houthi in the Red Sea and the Gulf of
Aden. Workforce stability has been disrupted by the displacement of tens of
thousands of Israelis from their homes because of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks
as well as the mobilization of more than 300,000 reservists. All this combine
to create a perfect storm of economy-killing issues, which will plague Israel
so long as the current conflict continues.
The
bottom line is that, left unchecked, Israel is looking at economic collapse.
Investments are down, the economy is shrinking, and confidence in an economic
future has evaporated. In short, Israel is no longer an ideal place to retire,
raise a family, work…or live. The biblical “land flowing with milk and honey,”
if it ever existed, is no more.
This
is an existential problem for Israel.
For
there to be a viable “Jewish homeland,” demographics dictate there must be a
discernable Jewish majority in Israel. There are just short of 10 million
people living in Israel. About 7.3 million are Jews; another 2.1 million are
Arabs (Druze and other non-Arab minorities comprise the reminder.)
There
are some 5.1 million Palestinians under occupation, leaving a roughly 50-50
split when looking at the combined totals between Arab and Jew. An estimated
350,000 Israelis hold dual citizenship with an EU country, while more than
200,000 hold dual citizenship with the United States.
Likewise,
many Israelis of European descent can easily apply for a passport simply by
showing that either they, their parents, or even their grandparents resided in
a European country. Another 1.5 million Israelis are of Russian descent, with
many of those holding valid Russian passports.
While
the main reasons for maintaining this dual-citizen status are convenience and
economic, many view the second passport as “an insurance policy” — a place to
run to if life in Israel becomes untenable.
Life
in Israel is about to become untenable.
Escape
From Israel
Israel
had already suffered from a growing emigration problem derived from
dissatisfaction with the policies of the Netanyahu government — some 34,000
Israelis permanently left Israel between July and October 2023, primarily in
protest over the judicial reforms being enacted by Netanyahu.
While
there was a spike in emigration immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks
(some 12,300 Israelis permanently emigrated in the month following the Hamas
attack), the number of permanent emigrants in 2024 was around 30,000, a drop
from the previous year.
But
now Israel is being bombarded on a near-daily basis by long-range drones,
rockets, and missiles fired from Hezbollah, militias in Iraq, and the Houthi in
Yemen. The Iranian ballistic missile attack of Oct. 1 vividly demonstrated to
all Israelis the reality that there is no viable defense against these attacks.
Moreover,
if the Israel-Iran conflict continues to escalate (and Israel has promised a
retaliation of immense proportions), Iran has indicated it will destroy
Israel’s critical infrastructure — power plants, water desalinization plants,
energy production and distribution centers — in short, Israel will cease being
able to function as a modern nation state.
At
that point, insurance policies will be cashed in as hundreds of thousands of
Israelis holding dual passports vote with their feet. Russia has already told
its citizens to leave. And if millions of other Israelis who qualify for
European passports opt to exercise that option, Israel will face its ultimate
nightmare — a precipitous drop in the Jewish population that skews the
demographic balance decisively toward non-Jews, making moot the notion of an
exclusive homeland for the Jews.
Israel
is rapidly becoming unsustainable, both as a concept (the world is rapidly
tiring of the genocidal reality of Zionism) and in practice (i.e., economic and
demographic collapse.)
The
Changing View From the US
This
is the current reality of Israel — in one year’s time, it went from “changing
the face of the Middle East” to being an unsustainable pariah whose only
salvation is the fact that it has the continued support of the United States to
prop it up militarily, economically, and diplomatically.
And
herein lies the rub.
That
which made Israel attractive to the United States — the strategic advantage of
a pro-American Jewish enclave in a sea of Arab uncertainty — no longer holds as
firmly as it previously did. The Cold War is long gone, and the geopolitical
benefits accrued in the U.S.-Israeli relationship are no longer evident.
The
era of American unilateralism is fading, rapidly being replaced by a
multi-polarity with a center of gravity in Moscow, Beijing and New Delhi. As
the United States adapts to this new reality, it finds itself engaged in a
struggle for the hearts and minds of the “global south” — the rest of the world
outside the EU, NATO, and a handful of pro-Western Pacific nations.
The
moral clarity that American leadership seeks to bring to the global stage is
significantly clouded over by its ongoing unquestioned support for Israel.
Israel
has, in its post-Oct. 7, 2023, actions, self-identified as a genocidal state
totally incompatible with any notion of international law or the basic precepts
of humanity.
Even
some Holocaust survivors recognize that modern-day Israel has become the living
manifestation of the very evil that served as the justification for its
creation — the brutally racist ideology of Nazi Germany.
Israel
is anathema for everything modern civilization stands for.
The
world is gradually awakening to this reality.
So,
to, is the United States.
For
the moment the pro-Israeli lobby is mounting a rear-guard action, throwing its
weight behind political candidates in a desperate attempt to buy the continued
support of their American benefactors.
But
geopolitical reality dictates that the United States, in the end, will not
commit suicide on behalf of an Israeli state that has lost all moral legitimacy
in the eyes of most of the world.
There
are economic consequences attached to American support for Israel, especially
in the increased gravitational pull of the BRICS forum, whose growing list of
members and those who are seeking membership reads as a who’s who of nations
fundamentally opposed to the Israeli state.
The
deepening social and economic crisis in America today will create a new
political reality where American leaders will be compelled by electoral
realities to address problems which manifest on American soil.
The
day when Congress can allocate billions of dollars without question to oversees
wars, including those involving Israel, is coming to an end.
Political
operative James Carville’s famous adage, “It’s the economy, stupid” resonates
as strongly today as it did when he penned it back in 1992. To survive
economically, America will have to adjust its domestic and international
priorities, requiring conformity not only with the will of the American people,
but a new, law-based international order which largely rejects the ongoing
Israeli genocide.
Apart
from die-hard Zionists who will hold out in the unelected “establishment” of
government civil service, academia, and mass media, Americans will gravitate
toward a new policy reality where unquestioned support for Israel is no longer
accepted.
This
will be the final straw for Israel.
The
perfect storm of global rejection of genocide, sustained resistance on the part
of the Iranian-led “axis of resistance,” economic collapse and realignment of
American priorities will result in the nullification of Israel as a viable
political entity. The timeline for this nullification is dictated by the pace
of collapse of Israeli society — it could happen in a year, or it could unfold
over the course of the next decade.
But
it will happen.
The
end of Israel.
And
it all began on Oct. 7, 2023 — the day that changed the world.
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