The Real Gaza Dynamic is Hard Left Attempts to Destroy Israel
People want to either eliminate or secure Israel — all other arguments flow from that
Many people want Israel to unilaterally stop fighting in Gaza, handing Hamas a tragic form of victory. “Ceasefire now” is the slogan for this.
Many others, including myself, insist on Hamas being destroyed at almost any cost, since there can be no peace with Hamas in power. Minimize the deaths, but achieve the goal.
Each view corresponds to a different underlying assumption that we should clarify.
Israel should exist, and the Jews should be protected
My view is that Israel, like every other country in the world, including many others with borders drawn by the Great Powers after WWII, should continue to exist. The people who were born there, or immigrated legally, or arrived as refugees, should be respected and protected.
As I have written before, this is virtually impossible while Hamas remains in power, as they exercise an assassin’s veto.
Ergo, the goal of a peaceful, secure Israel leads inevitably to the removal of Hamas from power.
Then military tactics and other questions flow from that.
Many people want Israel destroyed
Most of the Arab world, and the New Left in the West, would like to see Israel destroyed. This is what “peace” looks like to them. The New Left wants to see darker-pigmented people from the “global south” take over from “settler colonialist” white people (Israelis are mostly brown, actually). Arabs want their humiliation in 1948 and 1967 avenged, and would like to see Arab, and possibly Islamic, rule over the entire Middle East.
To be fair, many of the New Left have not really thought through what driving 7 million Jews out looks like; how many people would be made refugees at best, or killed at worst. So while this approach is murderous and brutal in effect, it is likely motivated by simple naiveté and misinformation rather than savage Jew hatred.
I wrote about their fixation on “settler colonial oppression” earlier:
From this anti-Israel perspective, it naturally follows that any attempt to kill or drive out the jews is “resistance.” Thus they tolerate, excuse, or even support Palestinian terrorism and the Iranian proxy war against Israel and the West.
Even attacks as savage as we saw on October 7th. Notorious self-hating Jew Norman Finklestein gleefully wrote that the Hamas massacre on October 7th, “warms every fiber of my soul.” These are some sick puppies.
In any case, leaving Hamas in power is actually a good outcome for those demanding the destruction of Israel, as an immediate ceasefire would have no real downside for them — it would keep Hamas in place as an obstacle to Israeli stability, and would save lives in the short term. (In the long term, a ceasefire would embolden Hezbollah, Iran, and others, and likely lead to a huge regional war, if not WWIII, costing vastly more lives.)
Critically, they envision a “peace” without Jews. Keeping both Jews and Hamas in the region can never bring peace, and is not their goal¹.
Goals first, tactics follow
People on both sides of this issue speak to many other topics, such as each people’s historic claims to the land, nuances of international law, how many people died in Israeli attacks, how savage and bloodthirsty Hamas attacks are, etc. etc.
But at the end of the day, everything flows from the desire to either ethnically cleanse or kill all the Israeli Jews, or (on the other side) to maintain Israel as a healthy, secure state.
Talk to anyone long enough, and you’ll find one of these end goals motivating their position, consciously or not.
Consider the goal, adjust the policy
To be more rational, and ultimately more humane and productive, we should consider what outcomes we can accept. The New Left should accept that a two-state solution is better than an Arab takeover and ethnic cleansing of all the Jews. Pro-Israel advocates should consider that a robust, stable and trustworthy Arab entity must be built up — in the PA, or with a Saudi takeover, to allow for peace rather than another Gaza-like entity.
Looking towards a humane end goal can clarify our actions today.
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We need to consider our real motivations, and strive for peace. Please share this article with others. As always, I write for free, and encourage sharing.
¹ footnote: Hamas newer 2017 charter reads: “20. Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.” The latter part is often mis-quoted to mean that “establishing a Palestinian state” is an offer for peace, rather than an interim stage that allows Hamas to militarize and prepare for a final attack against Israel.
