Not wasted, I certainly value your voice of sanity, and I hope it’s not wishful thinking that a decisive majority of Israelis now reject right wing extremism.
What I find worrying is (in the short term) who in the Israeli government is making decisions about what’s happening in the West Bank. If there really is a backlash against the right, why are we still seeing disgusting settler behavior, and (anecdotally at least) that it’s getting worse? No firm hand there is not good.
It’s getting worse because some of these messianic fanatics are ecstatic about the events of October 7. They’d like nothing more than to spark a holy war between Israel and all the Arabic countries of the Middle East - a war they are confident they will win because God is on their side.
But those are the most extremist of the extremists. The fact that their goals, and the goal of their enabler Bibi, have been discredited will not make those sorts of extremists abandon their views; but the settlers as a whole make up around 4% of the population, and most of them aren’t quite this extreme (though even the most peaceful ones are part of the problem).
The fact that they are now going out and causing chaos has more to do with them sensing an opportunity to stir shit up than with an upswelling in support for them.
Eta: none of this should be read as me saying that they aren’t a problem or that they aren’t super dangerous to Israeli national security. They are. Like Rabin said, that ideology is cancerous. But what these people are not doing, is calling the shots on how the IDF will bomb Gaza.
Thank you, Babale, for these two posts that lay out so clearly the situation in Israel, and thanks to Alessan, too, for the nuanced view of the situation.
Thanks for the very thoughtful reply. I don’t think I disagree with your points. The biggest disagreements, or at least worries, I have about the IDF in Gaza, are about when and where to institute ceasefires, evacuations, and similar humanitarian efforts. I don’t trust that the Israeli government is doing everything they can to support Gazan civilians, both in and around the fighting, and the refugees who’ve had to flee.
Further, the lack of any signaling by the leadership towards some sort of long term peace plan means that even the successful destruction of Hamas might be fruitless in the long run. Until an Israeli government emerges that sees the Israeli far right as just as much a barrier to long term peace as Hamas and Hizbollah, it’s hard to imagine and sort of real peace, and thus real security, for Israel.
It would help if hamas stopped murdering Israelis.
Thank you for this post. I appreciate it far more than I would have expected from my understanding of some of your previous posts. I am sorry for the pain and confusion these dynamics and events cause WRT your relationship with a country you love.
I see considerable comparisons between Israel and the US (admitting the vast difference in size.) I’ve said before that I really don’t care much about Israel or the Palestinians. I’m not sure how much all that many people care - or even know - about many countries on a different continent. To THIS American, it is hard to distinguish “Israel” from the settlers or the “far right fanatics.” The same way I don’t expect anyone in the Middle East to view America other than as a bunch of lazy, greedy, Bible thumping, MAGA… And - I have to admit, even I don’t know that it is fair to differentiate what I WANT America to be from its worst elements. We elected Trump - and he’s still leading in the polls. And you elected Bibi, expanded the settlements… So this formally proud American now is far less proud of his country. I hope your country does better than the US has recently - tho you aren’t on a great path.
The US completely shot itself in the foot after 9/11 - invading Iraq and getting bogged down in Afghanistan, pissing away international support, casting off our personal liberties, encouraging people to focus on fear and hatred … Yeah, Hamas’ attack on Israel was horrible. But Israel’s response might have a more lasting longterm effect in solidifying anti-Israel sentiment than Hamas could have hoped for.
I did not spend the time and care you did in crafting my response. But I thank you again for your post. I hope your country succeeds better than the US did.
Sorry, but I get a completely different takeaway from that article than you did. Your takeaway is how the Israeli military went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, going to “lengths beyond any military that you’ve heard of”.
My takeaway was that the Israeli military destroyed whole residential areas, with no indication that they were military targets:
The Gazan civilian in the article, Mahmoud, gets a phone call, presumably from Israeli intelligence, ordering him to inform people in the area to evacuate as it’s going to get bombed. Rather than saying that military objectives were being targeted, it sounds like the guy on the phone is invoking revenge for Hamas’ actions and collective punishment:
You don’t really think that the caller would have revealed what the target was in that situation, do you? I can’t think of any circumstance where they would.
Mahmoud is called on two separate occasions in the article with orders to get people to evacuate their homes. In the first, there seems to be some sort of attempt at a military justification:
I can’t really read the second in any other way than an invocation of revenge/collective punishment:
Again, did you expect the caller to do anything besides deflect the question? It’s simply not his job to go leaking military intelligence.
I just read this very differently than you, but let’s agree to disagree:
(paraphrasing:) “You need tell everyone in the neighborhood to leave their homes because we are going to bomb them. Did you see how Hamas slaughtered those children with knives?”
Yeah, it would have been better if the caller had replied “It doesn’t matter what the target is, it has been decided that it will be bombed, and you and I cannot change that. We can change how many civilians will die, though.”
But they didn’t give that answer. Trying to discern what the target was from that conversation is an exercise in futility.
One can make inferences based on the overall picture:
Babale and Alessan have written long and well-written explanations.
But after over a thousand posts in this thread, and millions of words from journalists all over the world, there is really only one very simple answer to all of this, stated perfectly in the post right after yours::
Blaming Israeli leaders for not inventing a fantasy called “some sort of peace plan” is silly. The one and only force that can create a peace plan is the group of terrorist barbarians who have sworn to never do so. (And the perhaps half million or more citizens in Gaza who proudly support them).
Even if you could get such an agreement from them in writing–well, it’s been tried before.
Ask Neville Chamberlain.
And one can infer that the IDF at least thinks they’re hitting Hamas’ extensive tunnel network when they destroy or damage those homes. Are they correct? I have absolutely no idea.
One thing that doesn’t take any inference to understand is the article quite clearly documents that the IDF is taking some rather unusual steps to avoid killing the civilians that live in those homes.
Hamas (and other terrorists) stopping killing would not be enough, though hopefully they will stop or will be made to stop. Israeli settlers also need to stop brutalizing and killing Palestinians. The Israeli right wing needs to stop settling and displacing Palestinians. Palestinians and Gazans need to have a decent chance at a prosperous life. And undoubtedly much more.
Hamas and the Israeli right wing are the enemies of peace, not Gazans. Reducing it to Hamas alone is false on the facts (and frankly just trivializes an awful situation). And AFAICT, Babale didn’t disagree with that part of what I said.
Listing those two in the same sentence, as if they are equals, is not a productive way to look at the conflict.
Palestinians have been trying to kill Israelis for 80 years, before there were any settlers in the West Bank. I despise the settlers; they are dangerous and inflame the conflict, But I know that even if they never existed, the Palestinians would be attempting to destroy Israel.
For the past 2 decades, they have had a wonderful opportunity to prosper, and offer to live in peace with Israel. They refused to even try.
There is no need to equate anything, as Israel has its own internal problems, with its own Hamas wannabes, Nazi wannabes, people who would like to see the entire region drawn into a war, religious fundamentalists, terrorists, racists, people who would like to see apartheid, you name it. Not all of Israel’s woes directly have to do with any Palestinians.
I do not know that I would describe the Gaza Strip over the past 2 decades as “prosperous”, even if it’s no Burundi.
Your conflation of the entire Palestinian people, millions of men women and children, with those relative few who have committed mass murder, is “not a productive way to look at the conflict”.
There’s little point in discussion with someone who can’t distinguish between desperate civilians and terrorists.
Well, yeah, they were too busy settling the rest of Palestine first.