As bad as this is, it isn't an existential crisis for Israel, as 48 & 73 were. Hezbollah is containable. The issue is what to do about Hamas. Any effort to completely destroy them will be absolutely horrendous for everyone. I think Biden's right to try to force the Israelis to think through what happens next, whatever the list of "next" looks like. The world would be a better place had we done as much in VN, Afghanistan, & Iraq.
I’m sorry David, but claiming this attack wasn’t as bad as 73 is wrong, and any other Israeli would tell you that too. In no war, including the civil war in 1947-1949 did this many Jewish civilians get massacred in a day. Had Israel listened to the Leftists that want it dead, and given up the West Bank unilaterally we would have Hamas simultaneously attacking millions more Israelis, in the largest metropolitan areas, massacring multiples more Israelis.
This is an existential war, same as before the state existed, when Palestinians plus Arab countries were intent on a genocide from the river to the sea.
Why don’t we hear ‘progressives’ demands from Hamas to release all its hostages? Why don’t they demand Hamas surrender to a trial at the ICC.
The mendacity of this comment is incredible. If Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from the West Bank when Sharon wished it to (has ever a blood clot had more impact on history?) then Israel's military would have been in position guarding the entire border instead of babysitting Jewish settlers in the West Bank and, likewise, Israeli intelligence would have been looking for any and all possible attacks instead of fixating on West Bank settlements. In the unlikely event Hamas survived an Israeli withdrawal (not a sure thing) and also took over the West Bank (an even less likely thing) an attack from it would have been blunted by an Israeli military focused only on border security and international opinion would be even more overwhelmingly in Israel's favor. In every way and dimension withdrawal from the West Bank would have left Israel in a stronger position militarily, diplomatically, morally and especially demographically.
So many words to absolve the democratically elected government of the Palestinians, the Hamas terrorist organization, from responsibility for actually massacring Israeli civilians, both Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, many foreigners (Thai and Nepalese farm workers to name a few) and Palestinians. Nothing says "Progressive credentials" like antisemitic victim blaming.
Sure, let's take you at your wild hypothetical and ignore that (1) Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006 after 13 years of constant terrorism to stop the Oslo peace process, knowing fully that they're both a terrorist organization and completely opposed to any deal that didn't include a full ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. (2) That a total Gaza withdrawal in 2005 left 100% of that territory to the Palestinian Authority, which then lost it in a short, violent civil war to Hamas in 2007. And (3) That since that moment billions in Gaza aid and support went by the Hamas government into tunnels, underground rocket launchers, and planning a massacre, the first installment in their openly declared genocidal plans.
Why should truth stop someone with so many good faith arguments, when our man North and similarly disingenuous anti Zionists can weave hypotheticals.
Heh, so many assumptions, feeble right-wing shibboleths and uncharitable projections.
Hamas, its membership and its backers are entirely responsible for the abhorrent murders they have committed both recently and throughout its miserable misbegotten history. The victims of Hamas’ attacks are not to blame.
Now that the obvious has been stated it bears noting that Hamas was, itself, backed and created by the Israeli right as a means to split of Palestinian political leadership and provide a counterweight to the more secular and left-wing Palestinian Authority of the time as Avner Cohen disclosed back in 2009. So, as Hamas and its backers (like Iran) are partially responsible for its atrocities so too are the Israeli right wingers who helped fund it partially responsible for its atrocities.
Additionally, while Hamas is entirely morally responsible for its attack, it cannot be ignored that the attackers from Gaza found the Gazan border astonishingly undermanned and the Israeli security apparatus was entirely focused on the West Bank and got caught with their pants down. This is objective fact. The Israeli right under the excretable leadership of Bibi has been stoking settlement tension in the West Bank and has been redirecting the IDF in that direction for years and neglecting security around Gaza as a result. The Israeli rights incompetence, complacency and arrogance played a roll both is causing the attack and enabling it to be so devastating. There’s no way to plausibly deny this. Hamas can be entirely responsible for the attack and the Israeli right can be entirely responsible for leaving Israel vulnerable to said attack. Both assertions can simultaneously be true- and they are.
So, yes, if Sharon had been able to evacuate the West Bank, as he did Gaza, then how would matters look today? With no presence or settlements in the West Bank to distract the IDF it is logical to presume that Gazan security would have been better. With no settlements or entanglements with the Palestinians in the territories it is logical to presume that the world would have even more support for the entirely righteous cause of Israels’ integrity and security. And with no entanglement with the West Bank the core cause that fanatics both among the Palestinians like Hamas and the Israeli right like the settlement movement, would no longer have the same rallying cry.
And you have the chutzpah to try and deflect blame for allowing the attacks off the Israeli right and onto the idea of disengagement? That would be master class deflection if it were not so pathetically tin eared and a-historical. There will be a reckoning for the Israeli right once Israel concludes its current campaign against Hamas. Golda Mier paid a steep price for mishandling the run up to the Yom Kippur war and Bibi has screwed up with a million times the malice and a thousand times the incompetence that grand lady suffered from.
Stylistically, let me start with "Heh" being a puerile response, considering the topic. None of this is funny, and neither are you. As for "the mendacity of [your] comment", your use of a thesaurus would be impressive were you 14 years old, but come junior year of high school it would already be a tedious attempt at seeming sophisticated. For example, your claim that a full withdrawal from the West Bank wouldn't risk a massively more dangerous outcome, had Hamas done exactly the same thing there as it did to Fatah in Gaza, means that you're either a gullible optimist, or a lying sack of shit. See, it feels better to use direct language and honest emotions to express yourself. "Heh" wasn't honest, and had the emotional depth of an edgelord 'debating' on Twitter.
Now that we've addressed our mutual appreciation, I completely agree with your assessment of Netanyahu and the Israeli far Right. I have never voted for even a center Right candidate in Israel or the US. Netanyahu is a toxic, polarizing, incompetent big mouth. Mr. Security, Mr. "Only I can Destroy Hamas" (promised since 2009) has shit his pants for the past three weeks, and has been an utter failure in running the country since the massacre. The man will not give interviews or show up at funerals, knowing that he is hated and politically dead. Not to mention his previous willingness to use a marginal parliamentary victory to divide the country for the sake of holding onto his job, in the hope of saving his skin from his many ongoing bribery trials. I also hold his 1996-1999 term against him for pointlessly injecting bad faith and mistrust into the negotiations between Israel and Fatah.
If you think that I'm deflecting blame for Netanyahu or the Israeli Right, you're projecting a whole lot yourself. Polling is consistently showing 75-80% of Israel wanting Netanyahu gone ASAP. I have set aside politics for as long as any Israeli can, which was about two weeks (it's too tough), and just listening to my Likudnik brother-in-law and best friend has been encouraging. They think Bibi is doing a pathetic job and they're angry. I'm not surprised that the patchwork of political appointments, yes men, and sociopaths making up his government has proved to be deeply, infuriatingly incompetent.
Back to your central thesis, you remind me of myself from roughly 1992-2023, with some minor adjustments. The first difference is that you're naive to believe the status of Jerusalem would have been simple to resolve. After all, it tripped the 2000 Camp David negotiations, and gave Arafat the excuse to counter-offer terrorism to Ehud Barak's previous "best offer". The political death of the Left in Israel resulted from that genius Palestinian move of "we didn't like your offer, here's 138 suicide bombings for the next 2+ years". The number of Israelis believing that the Palestinians sincerely want peace plummeted as a result. Personally, though I was a Labor Party voter, I would not accept handing the old city of Jerusalem to the Palestinian, considering that between 1948-1967 all Jews were ethnically cleansed from the West Bank and refused access to pray at the Western Wall. Arafat would not accept anything less than full control of the old city, and nothing more than giving it to neutral UN control would be acceptable to a majority of Israelis.
Next, your belief that Hamas, after 13 years of constant terrorism between 1993 and 2006, would have evaporated had the Palestinians received the entire West Bank is wishful thinking. Progressives who demand an immediate ceasefire in the current war also expect that if they ignore Hamas really hard, it'll disappear. The delusional approach to Hamas is no better than what Netanyahu was selling - appease the monsters with Qatari money and work permits and they'll keep acceptably quiet. Well funded, organized, armed and trained islamist movements don't disappear unless they're destroyed (Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas).
I'm someone who deeply believed in a Two State solution, as have most of my friends (including a survivor of the Hamas massacre) and practically nobody believes this anymore in Israel. A majority of Israelis will not accept a Palestinian state that isn't demilitarized after the October 7th massacre. Any progressive claiming that handing over territory without destroying Hamas is invited to immigrate to Israel and live on the Gaza border, replacing the massacred and destroyed families of Leftist true believers who used to live there till October 7th. Don't talk big, volunteer to be the human buffer of the next massacre by Palestinian death squads. We all just witnessed the genocide that the elected government of the Palestinians plans for Jews. I doubt a center Left party can win after this Hamas massacre, but I personally believe a reset in the peace process is possible, if and only if the Hamas members involved have been killed.
Last thing, I appreciate that you're less of a ghoul than you seemed initially. Also, you used shibboleth wrong.
Knowing how Sharon, who I at the time considered shockingly right wing (how the Overton Window shifts as time moves on), operated I would presume he'd have kept East Jerusalem and near settlement blocks, given Palestinians there citizenship and moved on. His withdrawal from Gaza was to positions he and the IDF's leadership considered advantageous for Israel and there's no reason to think he'd have deviated from that posture in the territories.
I agree that Palestinian stubbornness and Arafat's historic uselessness was responsible for the destruction of the broader Israeli left and the Israeli peace movement. That being stipulated you don't need to presume any good will on the part of the Palestinians to still observe that disengagement and withdrawal is a good policy. The territories and the Palestinians living there are the only long-term threat to the existence of Israel as a liberal Jewish state. Note that, horrific and monstrous at they were, Hamas’ attacks have never remotely approached being a threat to the existence of Israel- assertions to the contrary are emotionalism not analysis.
Your original assertion was that military and physical withdrawal from the West Bank would have made an attack like this one worse. It rests on, what appears to me, strategic incoherence and some very large presumptive leaps. You presume that if Israel were out of the West Bank that Hamas would take over there. That’s an enormous assumption. You also assume that if Israel were out of the West Bank, as it is out of Gaza, that Israel would be more vulnerable to an attack like this. I, again, think your assumption is wrong. Consider Gaza. If the Gazan settlements had still been in place now when Hamas launched its attacks it is obvious that with Jewish settlers close at hand the slaughter would have been far worse as the Hamas villains would not have needed to tunnel, travel or paraglide to reach them. The only axis in which Israel would be more exposed would be one of raw geography, but raw geography is primarily a consideration for military engagements, not terrorist actions like this. Organizationally, diplomatically, demographically and morally an Israel that had been disengaged from the Territories (I presume Sharon would have annexed the settlement blocks along the border and East Jerusalem) would have been in a far stronger position. Even if your extraordinary assumptions that Hamas would take over the West Bank, control it unchallenged as it controls Gaza and have the time to plot a similar attack all occurred (and those are huge assumptive leaps), the Israel they’d have been attacking would have been a stronger, more organized and more fearsome foe. I think that even in that circumstance the damage would have been less and the lives lost fewer. Moreover, that alternative Israel would have its future already secure in the long term.
I respect that Israelis, knowing withdrawing from the Territories would be (largely because of their own actions) an extremely painful and difficult proposition, would like to be given something in return for doing so (Palestinian acknowledgement and demilitarization). But withdrawal is a net positive for Israel even if they get nothing from the Palestinians in return. And by conditioning withdrawal on symbolic gestures from the Palestinians the Israeli’s give the Palestinians the power to prevent them from leaving- perpetually. You should not demand payment for removing a ticking bomb from your own chest- the absence of the ticking bomb would be its own compensation.
Why don't we hear the foreign policy geniuses demand that in order to prevent civilian deaths in Gaza: (1) Hamas stop firing rockets at its own people and Israeli civilians. (2) Hamas release the hostages it grabbed, because that's a crime against humanity. (3) Hamas fighters surrender to a trial at the ICC, that beloved creation of the international order. They get to live, no other bombs need to be dropped on Hamas targets placed conveniently near civilian infrastructure (hospitals, schools, kindergartens, mosques), and we involve the international community's justice apparatus.
I think the reason none of that will come out of the mouths of 'progressives' (celebrities, academics, policy wonks) is because Israel alone isn't allowed to respond militarily to a massacre if a single civilian dies (something no other country is burdened with in war), and Israel alone must accept a genocidal terrorist organization on its border as a normal thing. It's almost like anti-Jewish racism skews the opinions of all these kind-hearted people.
Hamas runs Gaza and steals from everybody and everything to kill Israelis. They are still firing rockets at Israel and people have been harmed. Also, the still have over 200 hostages. So this humanitarian crisis has nothing to do with Israel, and has everything to do with Hamas.
I dunno where you were in 73, but I know where I was. I was slated to go into Sinai with the advance wave to set up security for a corps hq, and then a Soviet airborne unit went on alert, the Pershings deployed, we were told it was DEFCON 2 (though I subsequently read it was only 3), and we got into our battle rattle. Sure looked pretty existential to me, and not only for Israel.
Hamas has stared a war and committed unspeakable atrocities. Israel will respond as it should. I hope they win, with minimal casualties, theirs & noncombatants. But as awful as this is going to be, it's 73.
I know where my family was in 73. My dad fought in the paratroopers. My mom's cousin was killed fighting Syrians in the Golan. My uncle was getting shelled constantly by Egyptians. My earliest memory is the air raid sirens and all the reservist dads lining up to being picked up and driven to defend the country. As bad as 2600 dead soldiers was for a country as small as Israel, 1200 massacred civilians is far worse to any Jewish person, except the pro Hamas ghouls among us. I'd like to suggest that in the psyche of Jewish people around the world, a long memory of pogroms in Europe and the Arab world, and that of the Holocaust, makes the murder, rape, torture and kidnapping of Israeli civilians (most of them Jewish) far worse than the death of soldiers.
Do not expect Israel to simply fall back to yet another ceasefire with a genocidal terrorist organization. If Al Qaeda was bordering any US city none of you would expect the US to 'simply take it' or claim it has nothing existential to worry about. Israel is surround by many more Jewish hating Arabs than Al Qaeda ever had membership.
And I'd like to suggest that no one ever use "the psyche of Jewish people around the world" as a unit of analysis like it can be accurately measured by anyone.
Sure, I'm aware of the 'progressive' Jews who are comfortable with any level of dead Israeli Jews, so it's not 'around the world'.
Let's rephrase, in Israel, by any poll you can look at, Israelis are not willing to continue living next to an organization that successfully massacred over a thousand of its civilians in a single day.
Foreign policy experts in the Biden administration may be comfortable with that outcome. British foreign service experts in the 1940s were happy to throw the Jews of the Yishuv into a genocide, in order to maintain a positive influence in the Arab world. It's why they armed and lead the Jordanian arab legion, why they avoided prosecuting Palestinian leader Amin Al-Husseini for collaborating with the Nazis. Countries have interests, not morals, as the good Dr. Mearsheimer suggests.
Drezner's right; you're wrong. As for your relatives, a couple of comments. No one inherits the high moral ground from family. Their country, their war, not mine. Your country? Your war? Hop to it. Otherwise, you just fucking around.
As a compulsive reader of footnotes, I find them in the email version of the column rather annoying. By the time I get to the end of the article to read the notes, I've forgotten what they refer to. The wit thereof gets lost.
As bad as this is, it isn't an existential crisis for Israel, as 48 & 73 were. Hezbollah is containable. The issue is what to do about Hamas. Any effort to completely destroy them will be absolutely horrendous for everyone. I think Biden's right to try to force the Israelis to think through what happens next, whatever the list of "next" looks like. The world would be a better place had we done as much in VN, Afghanistan, & Iraq.
I’m sorry David, but claiming this attack wasn’t as bad as 73 is wrong, and any other Israeli would tell you that too. In no war, including the civil war in 1947-1949 did this many Jewish civilians get massacred in a day. Had Israel listened to the Leftists that want it dead, and given up the West Bank unilaterally we would have Hamas simultaneously attacking millions more Israelis, in the largest metropolitan areas, massacring multiples more Israelis.
This is an existential war, same as before the state existed, when Palestinians plus Arab countries were intent on a genocide from the river to the sea.
Why don’t we hear ‘progressives’ demands from Hamas to release all its hostages? Why don’t they demand Hamas surrender to a trial at the ICC.
The mendacity of this comment is incredible. If Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from the West Bank when Sharon wished it to (has ever a blood clot had more impact on history?) then Israel's military would have been in position guarding the entire border instead of babysitting Jewish settlers in the West Bank and, likewise, Israeli intelligence would have been looking for any and all possible attacks instead of fixating on West Bank settlements. In the unlikely event Hamas survived an Israeli withdrawal (not a sure thing) and also took over the West Bank (an even less likely thing) an attack from it would have been blunted by an Israeli military focused only on border security and international opinion would be even more overwhelmingly in Israel's favor. In every way and dimension withdrawal from the West Bank would have left Israel in a stronger position militarily, diplomatically, morally and especially demographically.
So many words to absolve the democratically elected government of the Palestinians, the Hamas terrorist organization, from responsibility for actually massacring Israeli civilians, both Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, many foreigners (Thai and Nepalese farm workers to name a few) and Palestinians. Nothing says "Progressive credentials" like antisemitic victim blaming.
Sure, let's take you at your wild hypothetical and ignore that (1) Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006 after 13 years of constant terrorism to stop the Oslo peace process, knowing fully that they're both a terrorist organization and completely opposed to any deal that didn't include a full ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. (2) That a total Gaza withdrawal in 2005 left 100% of that territory to the Palestinian Authority, which then lost it in a short, violent civil war to Hamas in 2007. And (3) That since that moment billions in Gaza aid and support went by the Hamas government into tunnels, underground rocket launchers, and planning a massacre, the first installment in their openly declared genocidal plans.
Why should truth stop someone with so many good faith arguments, when our man North and similarly disingenuous anti Zionists can weave hypotheticals.
Heh, so many assumptions, feeble right-wing shibboleths and uncharitable projections.
Hamas, its membership and its backers are entirely responsible for the abhorrent murders they have committed both recently and throughout its miserable misbegotten history. The victims of Hamas’ attacks are not to blame.
Now that the obvious has been stated it bears noting that Hamas was, itself, backed and created by the Israeli right as a means to split of Palestinian political leadership and provide a counterweight to the more secular and left-wing Palestinian Authority of the time as Avner Cohen disclosed back in 2009. So, as Hamas and its backers (like Iran) are partially responsible for its atrocities so too are the Israeli right wingers who helped fund it partially responsible for its atrocities.
Additionally, while Hamas is entirely morally responsible for its attack, it cannot be ignored that the attackers from Gaza found the Gazan border astonishingly undermanned and the Israeli security apparatus was entirely focused on the West Bank and got caught with their pants down. This is objective fact. The Israeli right under the excretable leadership of Bibi has been stoking settlement tension in the West Bank and has been redirecting the IDF in that direction for years and neglecting security around Gaza as a result. The Israeli rights incompetence, complacency and arrogance played a roll both is causing the attack and enabling it to be so devastating. There’s no way to plausibly deny this. Hamas can be entirely responsible for the attack and the Israeli right can be entirely responsible for leaving Israel vulnerable to said attack. Both assertions can simultaneously be true- and they are.
So, yes, if Sharon had been able to evacuate the West Bank, as he did Gaza, then how would matters look today? With no presence or settlements in the West Bank to distract the IDF it is logical to presume that Gazan security would have been better. With no settlements or entanglements with the Palestinians in the territories it is logical to presume that the world would have even more support for the entirely righteous cause of Israels’ integrity and security. And with no entanglement with the West Bank the core cause that fanatics both among the Palestinians like Hamas and the Israeli right like the settlement movement, would no longer have the same rallying cry.
And you have the chutzpah to try and deflect blame for allowing the attacks off the Israeli right and onto the idea of disengagement? That would be master class deflection if it were not so pathetically tin eared and a-historical. There will be a reckoning for the Israeli right once Israel concludes its current campaign against Hamas. Golda Mier paid a steep price for mishandling the run up to the Yom Kippur war and Bibi has screwed up with a million times the malice and a thousand times the incompetence that grand lady suffered from.
Stylistically, let me start with "Heh" being a puerile response, considering the topic. None of this is funny, and neither are you. As for "the mendacity of [your] comment", your use of a thesaurus would be impressive were you 14 years old, but come junior year of high school it would already be a tedious attempt at seeming sophisticated. For example, your claim that a full withdrawal from the West Bank wouldn't risk a massively more dangerous outcome, had Hamas done exactly the same thing there as it did to Fatah in Gaza, means that you're either a gullible optimist, or a lying sack of shit. See, it feels better to use direct language and honest emotions to express yourself. "Heh" wasn't honest, and had the emotional depth of an edgelord 'debating' on Twitter.
Now that we've addressed our mutual appreciation, I completely agree with your assessment of Netanyahu and the Israeli far Right. I have never voted for even a center Right candidate in Israel or the US. Netanyahu is a toxic, polarizing, incompetent big mouth. Mr. Security, Mr. "Only I can Destroy Hamas" (promised since 2009) has shit his pants for the past three weeks, and has been an utter failure in running the country since the massacre. The man will not give interviews or show up at funerals, knowing that he is hated and politically dead. Not to mention his previous willingness to use a marginal parliamentary victory to divide the country for the sake of holding onto his job, in the hope of saving his skin from his many ongoing bribery trials. I also hold his 1996-1999 term against him for pointlessly injecting bad faith and mistrust into the negotiations between Israel and Fatah.
If you think that I'm deflecting blame for Netanyahu or the Israeli Right, you're projecting a whole lot yourself. Polling is consistently showing 75-80% of Israel wanting Netanyahu gone ASAP. I have set aside politics for as long as any Israeli can, which was about two weeks (it's too tough), and just listening to my Likudnik brother-in-law and best friend has been encouraging. They think Bibi is doing a pathetic job and they're angry. I'm not surprised that the patchwork of political appointments, yes men, and sociopaths making up his government has proved to be deeply, infuriatingly incompetent.
Back to your central thesis, you remind me of myself from roughly 1992-2023, with some minor adjustments. The first difference is that you're naive to believe the status of Jerusalem would have been simple to resolve. After all, it tripped the 2000 Camp David negotiations, and gave Arafat the excuse to counter-offer terrorism to Ehud Barak's previous "best offer". The political death of the Left in Israel resulted from that genius Palestinian move of "we didn't like your offer, here's 138 suicide bombings for the next 2+ years". The number of Israelis believing that the Palestinians sincerely want peace plummeted as a result. Personally, though I was a Labor Party voter, I would not accept handing the old city of Jerusalem to the Palestinian, considering that between 1948-1967 all Jews were ethnically cleansed from the West Bank and refused access to pray at the Western Wall. Arafat would not accept anything less than full control of the old city, and nothing more than giving it to neutral UN control would be acceptable to a majority of Israelis.
Next, your belief that Hamas, after 13 years of constant terrorism between 1993 and 2006, would have evaporated had the Palestinians received the entire West Bank is wishful thinking. Progressives who demand an immediate ceasefire in the current war also expect that if they ignore Hamas really hard, it'll disappear. The delusional approach to Hamas is no better than what Netanyahu was selling - appease the monsters with Qatari money and work permits and they'll keep acceptably quiet. Well funded, organized, armed and trained islamist movements don't disappear unless they're destroyed (Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas).
I'm someone who deeply believed in a Two State solution, as have most of my friends (including a survivor of the Hamas massacre) and practically nobody believes this anymore in Israel. A majority of Israelis will not accept a Palestinian state that isn't demilitarized after the October 7th massacre. Any progressive claiming that handing over territory without destroying Hamas is invited to immigrate to Israel and live on the Gaza border, replacing the massacred and destroyed families of Leftist true believers who used to live there till October 7th. Don't talk big, volunteer to be the human buffer of the next massacre by Palestinian death squads. We all just witnessed the genocide that the elected government of the Palestinians plans for Jews. I doubt a center Left party can win after this Hamas massacre, but I personally believe a reset in the peace process is possible, if and only if the Hamas members involved have been killed.
Last thing, I appreciate that you're less of a ghoul than you seemed initially. Also, you used shibboleth wrong.
Knowing how Sharon, who I at the time considered shockingly right wing (how the Overton Window shifts as time moves on), operated I would presume he'd have kept East Jerusalem and near settlement blocks, given Palestinians there citizenship and moved on. His withdrawal from Gaza was to positions he and the IDF's leadership considered advantageous for Israel and there's no reason to think he'd have deviated from that posture in the territories.
I agree that Palestinian stubbornness and Arafat's historic uselessness was responsible for the destruction of the broader Israeli left and the Israeli peace movement. That being stipulated you don't need to presume any good will on the part of the Palestinians to still observe that disengagement and withdrawal is a good policy. The territories and the Palestinians living there are the only long-term threat to the existence of Israel as a liberal Jewish state. Note that, horrific and monstrous at they were, Hamas’ attacks have never remotely approached being a threat to the existence of Israel- assertions to the contrary are emotionalism not analysis.
Your original assertion was that military and physical withdrawal from the West Bank would have made an attack like this one worse. It rests on, what appears to me, strategic incoherence and some very large presumptive leaps. You presume that if Israel were out of the West Bank that Hamas would take over there. That’s an enormous assumption. You also assume that if Israel were out of the West Bank, as it is out of Gaza, that Israel would be more vulnerable to an attack like this. I, again, think your assumption is wrong. Consider Gaza. If the Gazan settlements had still been in place now when Hamas launched its attacks it is obvious that with Jewish settlers close at hand the slaughter would have been far worse as the Hamas villains would not have needed to tunnel, travel or paraglide to reach them. The only axis in which Israel would be more exposed would be one of raw geography, but raw geography is primarily a consideration for military engagements, not terrorist actions like this. Organizationally, diplomatically, demographically and morally an Israel that had been disengaged from the Territories (I presume Sharon would have annexed the settlement blocks along the border and East Jerusalem) would have been in a far stronger position. Even if your extraordinary assumptions that Hamas would take over the West Bank, control it unchallenged as it controls Gaza and have the time to plot a similar attack all occurred (and those are huge assumptive leaps), the Israel they’d have been attacking would have been a stronger, more organized and more fearsome foe. I think that even in that circumstance the damage would have been less and the lives lost fewer. Moreover, that alternative Israel would have its future already secure in the long term.
I respect that Israelis, knowing withdrawing from the Territories would be (largely because of their own actions) an extremely painful and difficult proposition, would like to be given something in return for doing so (Palestinian acknowledgement and demilitarization). But withdrawal is a net positive for Israel even if they get nothing from the Palestinians in return. And by conditioning withdrawal on symbolic gestures from the Palestinians the Israeli’s give the Palestinians the power to prevent them from leaving- perpetually. You should not demand payment for removing a ticking bomb from your own chest- the absence of the ticking bomb would be its own compensation.
Why don't we hear the foreign policy geniuses demand that in order to prevent civilian deaths in Gaza: (1) Hamas stop firing rockets at its own people and Israeli civilians. (2) Hamas release the hostages it grabbed, because that's a crime against humanity. (3) Hamas fighters surrender to a trial at the ICC, that beloved creation of the international order. They get to live, no other bombs need to be dropped on Hamas targets placed conveniently near civilian infrastructure (hospitals, schools, kindergartens, mosques), and we involve the international community's justice apparatus.
I think the reason none of that will come out of the mouths of 'progressives' (celebrities, academics, policy wonks) is because Israel alone isn't allowed to respond militarily to a massacre if a single civilian dies (something no other country is burdened with in war), and Israel alone must accept a genocidal terrorist organization on its border as a normal thing. It's almost like anti-Jewish racism skews the opinions of all these kind-hearted people.
Hamas runs Gaza and steals from everybody and everything to kill Israelis. They are still firing rockets at Israel and people have been harmed. Also, the still have over 200 hostages. So this humanitarian crisis has nothing to do with Israel, and has everything to do with Hamas.
So Josh Paul resigned on a matter of principle. Good for him.
I note, though, that he served in the same position for all four years of the Trump administration. No disagreements about principles then!
I dunno where you were in 73, but I know where I was. I was slated to go into Sinai with the advance wave to set up security for a corps hq, and then a Soviet airborne unit went on alert, the Pershings deployed, we were told it was DEFCON 2 (though I subsequently read it was only 3), and we got into our battle rattle. Sure looked pretty existential to me, and not only for Israel.
Hamas has stared a war and committed unspeakable atrocities. Israel will respond as it should. I hope they win, with minimal casualties, theirs & noncombatants. But as awful as this is going to be, it's 73.
I know where my family was in 73. My dad fought in the paratroopers. My mom's cousin was killed fighting Syrians in the Golan. My uncle was getting shelled constantly by Egyptians. My earliest memory is the air raid sirens and all the reservist dads lining up to being picked up and driven to defend the country. As bad as 2600 dead soldiers was for a country as small as Israel, 1200 massacred civilians is far worse to any Jewish person, except the pro Hamas ghouls among us. I'd like to suggest that in the psyche of Jewish people around the world, a long memory of pogroms in Europe and the Arab world, and that of the Holocaust, makes the murder, rape, torture and kidnapping of Israeli civilians (most of them Jewish) far worse than the death of soldiers.
Do not expect Israel to simply fall back to yet another ceasefire with a genocidal terrorist organization. If Al Qaeda was bordering any US city none of you would expect the US to 'simply take it' or claim it has nothing existential to worry about. Israel is surround by many more Jewish hating Arabs than Al Qaeda ever had membership.
And I'd like to suggest that no one ever use "the psyche of Jewish people around the world" as a unit of analysis like it can be accurately measured by anyone.
Sure, I'm aware of the 'progressive' Jews who are comfortable with any level of dead Israeli Jews, so it's not 'around the world'.
Let's rephrase, in Israel, by any poll you can look at, Israelis are not willing to continue living next to an organization that successfully massacred over a thousand of its civilians in a single day.
Foreign policy experts in the Biden administration may be comfortable with that outcome. British foreign service experts in the 1940s were happy to throw the Jews of the Yishuv into a genocide, in order to maintain a positive influence in the Arab world. It's why they armed and lead the Jordanian arab legion, why they avoided prosecuting Palestinian leader Amin Al-Husseini for collaborating with the Nazis. Countries have interests, not morals, as the good Dr. Mearsheimer suggests.
Drezner's right; you're wrong. As for your relatives, a couple of comments. No one inherits the high moral ground from family. Their country, their war, not mine. Your country? Your war? Hop to it. Otherwise, you just fucking around.
Shouldn't it be 'Professor Drezner' or 'Dan'?
"Hop to it". Okay man.
As a compulsive reader of footnotes, I find them in the email version of the column rather annoying. By the time I get to the end of the article to read the notes, I've forgotten what they refer to. The wit thereof gets lost.