Any civilized person shudders in contemplating the savagery of what Hamas loyalists did in southern Israel on Oct. 7. There can be no justification for intentionally killing civilians. Committing rape and kidnapping put this into the category of an atrocity worse than most war crimes. Like most other Jews, I was horrified by the news.
For traumatized Israelis, almost any amount of destruction is justified if it destroys Hamas’s military capacity.
Oct. 7 traumatized the entire Israeli nation. A year later, that trauma continues, deeply affecting how Israeli Jews view Palestinians. The Israeli response, a massive invasion of Gaza, can only be understood in that context. Most Israelis have avoided thinking about the death of Palestinians — the massive number of injuries as a result of Israeli bombing and the wholesale destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure. For traumatized Israelis, almost any amount of destruction is justified if it destroys Hamas’s military capacity.
The reporting of Palestinian deaths by Hamas-controlled health authorities is designed for propaganda purposes. That is why there is no distinction between the deaths of Hamas soldiers and other deaths. Furthermore, many Hamas soldiers are teenagers and are thus listed as children. Even allowing for that, the number of civilians killed is shockingly high from the perspective of non-traumatized Europeans and Americans.
The current political leadership of Israel acts on the assumption that the death of hostages held by Hamas may be a necessary price for defanging Hamas and retaking control of Gaza. This is a violation of the mitzvah of pidyon shvuyim, “redeeming captives,” that has guided Jewish conduct for many centuries. And it ignores than an ideology cannot be ended by violence. Traumatizing a population often leads to the recruitment of more radicals.
To me, it is important to remember how the Oct. 7 attack came to pass. Some of that is the underestimation of Hamas military sophistication, which is partly the result of ethnic triumphalism. More important is the long-term shifting of Israeli troops to the West Bank to protect the rapidly expanding Jewish settlements there. As settler violence has increased on the West Bank, resistance to them has expanded. Were those settlements not expanding, the troops would have been near Gaza, and they would have been effective at stopping the incursion.
Why did Benjamin Netanyahu allow Hamas to flourish in Gaza, building massive underground tunnels and mistreating the local population? He encouraged Arab funders to provide the resources that Hamas requested, even as Hamas neglected building the infrastructure that the Palestinian population needed. For Netanyahu, strengthening Hamas and weakening the Palestinian Authority meant that he could tell the world that there was not a unified Palestinian organization with which to negotiate. He wants to completely absorb the West Bank and keep the Palestinians there in a second-class status. His right-wing governmental partners agree with him.
For those of us who believe in Palestinian rights, this plan is not only a profound moral violation. It will inevitably continue to radicalize young Palestinians, guaranteeing continued violence. If that approach is pursued, Israel will never be free of destabilizing factors.
Some questions surround why the United States and the European Union are so involved in this conflict. That can only be fully understood with reference to the fact that Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon are all allies of Iran, which supplies them with sophisticated weaponry and funding. The goal of this alliance is to put an end to Israel as a Jewish state, and for Iran, it is additionally to establish a Shi’ite empire in the Middle East. The broader alliance including Iran, Russia, China and others is a threat to world peace, and Israel is fighting against Iran and its partners. For the sake of democracies around the world, Iran and Russia must be stopped.
Israel has real, powerful enemies. Israelis know this but cannot distinguish their very real enemies from the rest of the Palestinian people. Traumatized ethnic triumphalists have a very difficult time seeing the moral issues regarding their treatment of those they consider lesser people. From our distance, we can see that more clearly. From here, pidyon shvuyim clearly takes precedence over continuing to pursue Hamas at this time.
