It’s not evidence of actions of the IDF. But IMO considering their actions over the last decade or more, the settlers and their far-right allies are just as much enemies of long-term peace and security for Israelis as Hamas and the other anti-Israel terrorist organizations. And in that sense ISTM that it’s entirely appropriate to link these ongoing actions with the war in Gaza. If Israel (the government and country as a whole) can’t (or is unwilling to) protect Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, then it’s pretty reasonable to suspect that they can’t, or are unwilling to, put serious effort into protecting civilians in Gaza.
Since October 7, in the debate over this war, two premises have gone largely unchallenged.
One is that Hamas is an entity strictly separate from the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The other is that it is only natural for an oppressed people to lash out in the way the militants acted in Israel on October 7.
Neither of these notions stands up under close examination.
Hamas may be unpopular among Gazans for its actual performance in government, but roughly half of the adult population of the Gaza Strip shares its ideology of wiping Israel off the map.
As for October 7, the nihilistic atrocities committed that day are very much the exception and not the rule for national-liberation movements throughout history.
All of this is to say that the above two premises allow for simplistic conclusions and that the reality is far more complicated.
The latest at Al-Shifa hospital:
36 premature infants had to be taken out of incubators after a missile strike near the hospital shut down it’s backup generator. After three of the infants died, hospital staff asked for assistance evacuating the surviving premature infants. The IDF has offered to evacuate the babies to another hospital and 300 liters of fuel to power the hospital’s other smaller generators. So far, Hamas has prevented the evacuation and is placing pressure on the hospital staff not to accept help from the IDF, including firing on people who have tried to leave the hospital.
I can’t speak to everything else, but 300 liters of fuel is probably about twenty minutes worth for a big hospital. Maybe not even that. A big hospital running on a generator would go through thousands and thousands of liters per day. Maybe more than ten thousand.
This is true, the IDF forces in the area were likely just offering what they had on hand. Not much more than a gesture but if you are running out of fuel, every bit helps. Of course it’s not worth accepting if it’s going to get you shot by the armed wing of your own Ministry of Health.
It may be a useful amount if only the incubators are run.
My understanding is that Hamas was pretty popular in Gaza (probably still is?), and less popular in the West Bank. Extremism is quite popular, my assumption is that exposure to violence (mixed with historic/personal grievance) and lack of viable alternative choices is why Gazans are the most extreme (West Bank Palestinians less so, and Israeli Arabs not at all). Cause and effect.
This recent terrorist attack has probably awakened a lot of extremism in Israel (as it would in Canada too). I really feel the best option to fighting extremism is long term investment in lowering the general misery of Gazan Palestinians and investing in the protection of viable political alternatives.
…and from this you get that the notion doesn’t stand up under close examination?
Roughly half of the adult population in the United States is female. Adult women are a distinct entity from the American population as a whole.
If half of the adult population supports Hamas, that accounts to somewhere around a quarter of Gaza’s total population. And “sharing its ideology” is a far cry from enacting its ideology.
Any conflation of Hamas with Palestinians as a whole is bigotry.
How on god’s green earth are you saying this premise has “gone largely unchallenged”? How many more people in this thread do you need to explicitly condemn Hamas’s murderous attacks, before you consider that premise challenged?
I’ve seen a very few people outside of Gaza who support these attacks. Overwhelmingly the people who are criticizing IDF’s behavior in this war have started off by condemning Hamas’s behavior in the harshest possible terms.
One of your two “unchallenged premises” is unchallenged because it’s obviously true. The other is absolutely challenged.
For all those posters who have been refusing to believe Israel’s claims that Hamas has a base under the hospital:
.will you believe it if the statement comes from the White House?
or is CNN not a good enough source for you?
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/13/politics/al-shifa-hospital-us-intelligence/index.html
I didn’t think Israel was lying about that before but I don’t really put much stock in the trustworthiness of the US government.
Not exactly. He says, starting around minute 4 of that video, “We have never seen high-ranking Hamas people in Shifa…we’ve been able to roam freely all around. I’ve never seen anything, nor have my international colleagues.” Nothing he says is inconsistent with a Hamas HQ being below the hospital, and with Hamas foot-soldiers being in the hospital itself.
…nothing is consistent with it. Nobody has seen these bunkers. Nobody has seen these HQ’s. And it isn’t Doctors without Borders job to refute these allegations because to be frank, they have more pressing concerns right now. The obligation is on the attacker to prove that the hospitals should lose their protected status. If they can’t or won’t do that: attacking the hospitals are a war crime.
Can you provide a cite that Hamas is preventing the evacuation, and firing on people trying to leave the hospital. Are they doing that from their alleged HQ inside or below the hospital?
Because I’m only seeing claims that the IDF are shooting at people trying to leave.
Regarding the fuel:
It was only about 30 minutes of fuel, the hospital were called at 2am in the morning, the fuel was left in a place that was unsafe to send anyone to pick up, they asked instead for the transfer to be facilitated by the Red Cross, but that never eventuated.
Why should we? What have they said that is materially different from the evidence presented by the IDF? The US official doesn’t even go on the record.
I don’t usually do this, but I’d like you all to to read this article. It captures my feelings about this war almost perfectly. Look its writer Yossi Klein Halevi up; he’s no right-wing shill.
The US government trashed its credibility when it lied about WMD in Iraq in order to start a war. I don’t feel it has fully recovered from that. I understand that it was a Republican administration that did the lying but I’m not confident the Democrats are morally superior. Especially since the Democrat currently in the White House voted to go to war with Iraq - you know the war that was started based on lies.
It lends some credibility to the Israeli claims, but third party confirmation would be gold. I have no idea if that’s even possible.
I don’t know if we’ll get solid proof either way until after this war ends.
Gee, that’s profound, Gandhi. How about some reality: a single death of a mass murderer for his mass murder leaves future people living. The destruction of an aggressive army by a defensive army leaves future people living, and prevents future aggressive actions.
Really? Did Hamas and its predecessors fail to attack Israeli targets when non-Netanyahus were in charge? If Arafat hadn’t instigated a series of terror attacks in 1996 - when Shimon Peres, peacenik extraordinaire, was in charge and up for re-election - Netanyahu’s political career may never have been started. The second intifada was started when Ehud Barak was prime minister. The last major outbreak happened under the Lapid-Gantz government. No matter what you think of Netanyahu (and you’ve made it very clear what that is), to say his policies (beyond the security failure that allowed the imminent attack to go undetected) led to the current situation makes little sense.
You mean during the handful of fleeting moments that someone else was in charge? Bibi got to be in the driver’s seat for almost the entire existence of Hamas, and he did that by telling us over and over how dangerous it is to have leftists in power because they’d let the Arabs get us, while big strong Bibi would never let that happen on his watch. And yet, the months since Bibi’s far right coalition took power have been an utter mess for Israeli security, even before Oct 7. That’s because Bibi’s tough guy routine does not work. It doesn’t make us safer. It just keeps Bibi in power.
You can add “creating Bibi Netanyahu as a political force” to Arafat’s long list of crimes. I’m not going to pretend that the Palestinian leadership hasn’t spat on the peace process over and over again throughout the years, or that they could have had peace many times over by now if they were willing to accept the existence of Israel. There’s a reason why Netanyahu’s message does resonate with some Israelis, who are tired of having peace offers rejected. At the same time, there’s no question that despite this a two state solution is the only solution. By getting into bed with messianic extremists like Ben Gvir or Smotrich, Netanyahu is putting Israel on a truly suicidal path, which he must not get away with.
So who is to blame for Hamas putting down these sorts of roots in Gaza?
Who is to blame for the redeployment of soldiers from Gaza to the West Bank to protect settlements, and who is to blame for the growth of these settlements in recent years?
If the news reports are true, Netanyahu had the policy of unofficially helping Hamas stay in power in Gaza, because having extremists in power on the other side made it easier for his allies to enact extreme policies. So yes, if those reports are true, Netanyahu absolutely deserves a share of the blame.
Very good article. The response to the Oct 7 attacks has indeed revealed more anti semitism on the American left than I’d realized.
I agree, this was an excellent article.
Question:
Hamas was the elected government in Gaze for over 15 years.
Where is their specific seat of power? The Legislature? They were a government and a terrorist group.
I’m just wondering what happened to those locations? Bombed? Captured? Is the seat of government outside Gaza? They have officals negotiating for release of the hostages.
I vividly remember Arafat holed up in his gov building. Israeli forces surrounded the building, cut utilities etc. 20/20 or a similar show went in for a interview with Arafat. It was quite surreal under the circumstances.
Obviously Israel was provoked much, much more strongly this time.