Solidarity With Israelis and Palestinians
Both peoples deserve to live in freedom, safety, and dignity
“Somehow this will stop. May it happen now, as you read this. We will see each other’s faces, each other’s pain. We will realize this cannot go on. We will find each other. It is what can come after anger and grief, what must come. I have to believe.”
- Gershom Gorenberg, “Israelis and Palestinians Can’t Go On Like This. Weep For Us.”
An Untenable Status Quo
Perhaps Joe Biden believed that if he continued to ignore Palestinian freedom, that the matter would resolve itself. Perhaps Benjamin Netanyahu believed that he could promise Israelis security through indefinite occupation. Perhaps Yahya Sinwar believed that he could free Palestine through endless war against Israel.
What if Biden had seriously pursued a peace deal for Palestinian statehood? What if Netanyahu had decided to end settlement expansion? What if Sinwar had decided to put more energy into infrastructure than into rockets?
The latest war between Israel and Hamas comes at a low point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israelis and Palestinians both have ancestral claims to the Holy Land. Israelis feel that the creation of the Jewish State in 1948 was a just return of the Diaspora to their homeland. Given 2,000 years of Jewish persecution, they believed that it was necessary to build a nation in their original birthplace. The 1929 Hebron Massacre and the Mufti of Jerusalem’s alliance with Adolf Hitler convinced many Jews that they would never be safe in an Arab state. The Palestinians feel that the land (of which they were once the majority) never should have been partitioned in the first place. They also see the 1948 expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians, the 1967 military occupation of the West Bank, and the 16 year blockade of the Gaza Strip, as crimes which deprive of them of their own self-determination. Reconciliation between these peoples has proven difficult, and the situation has grown most dire.
The Question of Palestine
Life is rough for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. They have to navigate through three different regions of Areas A, B, and C. In the enclaves of Areas A and B, which is 39% of the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority (PA) exercises self-rule, though the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) still handle external security. In Area C, which is 61% of the West Bank, Israel exercises full military control and often limits Palestinian development. Area C is also home to 350,000 Jewish settlers. Settlements are often built through the appropriation of Palestinian land and settlers have a history of inciting violence against Palestinians. Within Area C, movement of Palestinians is severely restricted through military checkpoints and segregated roads. While Palestinians in Area C are subject to Israeli military law, Israeli settlers enjoy more liberal freedoms under Israeli civil law. Israel also routinely demolishes the homes of Palestinian families who have relatives that have committed a crime.
The IDF have also been known to abuse their authority in the Occupied Territories. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have both found that Israeli forces used excessive violence against Palestinians, even when they posed no obvious threat. Members of the Israeli Intelligence Corps have testified that any Palestinian can have their privacy violated, regardless as to whether or not they pose a security threat. The IDF also routinely terrorizes Palestinians through violent night raids of their homes which do not require a warrant. An Al Jazeera investigation found that children are often arrested in these raids and that those arrested can be held in military detention for up to 75 days.
Recently, Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist, was murdered in 2022 by an IDF soldier while covering a raid in Jenin. Only hours after her death, the Israel Police raided her home, telling the mourners to take down their Palestinian flags. The Israel Police even attacked her funeral procession because the mourners had the audacity to sing national songs. Several investigations concluded that Akleh was targeted by an IDF soldier. This came after conflicting accounts from Israeli officials, who initially blamed a Palestinian before concluding that the IDF shot her on accident. As of this writing, however, Israel has refused to conduct a criminal investigation into the killing.
Now the Palestinian leadership is also repressive. In the West Bank, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party leads the PA and is enjoying nineteen years of a four year term. Under his government, graft and embezzlement became widespread. When Palestinian activist Nizar Banat criticized the PA’s corruption in 2011, he was beaten during a police raid and later died in prison. The PA also arrested Ismat Abdul-Khaleq in 2012 for criticizing Abbas on Facebook. Abbas himself has devolved into a senile Anti-Semite who recently claimed that Hitler only killed the Jews because of their role as “moneylenders.”
Groundhog Day In Gaza
If we look to the leadership in Gaza, this brings us to Hamas. Hamas was founded in 1987 to violently resist the Israeli occupation. Its founding charter sought the destruction of Israel and they used suicide bombings to try and sabotage the Oslo Peace Accords of the 1990s. While the Gaza Strip was once also under occupation and settlement, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon disengaged from the territory in 2005. 9,000 Israeli settlers were removed. In 2006, Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian elections. Their victory concerned many Palestinians, as a poll at the time found that 67% of them wanted Hamas to change its position on destroying Israel. When violence broke out between Fatah and Hamas supporters, Abbas attempted to bring peace with a unity government. This quickly failed and Abbas passed an emergency decree to dissolve the Hamas-led government. In response, Hamas forcibly took over Gaza in a violent coup that killed at least 70 Palestinians.
Israel responded to the Hamas takeover by imposing sanctions such as power cuts and border closures. After repeated rocket attacks from Hamas, Israel sealed its border completely and its blockade has been in effect ever since. In 2008, Egypt sealed the Rafah Crossing which borders Gaza, for fear of a Hamas spillover into their country. The effects of this joint blockade have been staggering and indiscriminate.
A 2015 report from the World Bank found that 40% of Gazans were unemployed, 1.8 million lived in poverty, and that 80% were dependent on international aid. In 2017, Amnesty reported that at least 90% of water in Gaza was unfit for drinking. In 2020, B’Tselem found that most Gazans live on eight hours of electricity a day, with power cuts of up to twelve hours in the summer. In 2022, UNICEF found that only 64% of Gazan medical patients are approved to receive treatment in the West Bank, and some have died while waiting for approval.
HRW has noted that most Gazans can’t easily leave the area for better opportunities. Israel restricts Gazan travel to the West Bank, even if the go through Egypt and Jordan instead of through Israel. When Gazans cross into Egypt, they often face onerous wait times and high travel fees from the Egyptian government.
Now Hamas also bears a good deal of the blame for the sorry state of Gaza. Although they seized the land under less than ideal conditions, Hamas still had the opportunity to prove that Israel could safely exist alongside a Palestinian state. Instead, their rule of Gaza has been repressive, thoughtless, and suicidal. They have thrown more resources into militarism than into welfare. Recall that in 2023, while 80% of Gazans languished in poverty, Hamas spent at least $100 million on its military budget.
Hamas has not allowed an election in Gaza since 2006, which means that they lack the people’s mandate. In 2012, the International Federation of Journalists accused them of harassing Gazan reporters. That same year, HRW also accused Hamas of torturing Gazan prisoners. Amnesty reported that Hamas abducted, tortured, and executed political rivals during the 2014 war with Israel. Hamas has also used child labor to build its numerous smuggling tunnels, and at least 160 minors have died in the process.
By far, the worst thing Hamas has done is expose its people to endless war with Israel. Hamas and other militants have fired over 11,000 rockets at Israeli civilians since the 2005 withdrawal. B’Tselem found that from 2004 to 2014, these rockets have killed 24 Israeli civilians. While Israel can keep its casualties low through defense systems like Iron Dome, the psychological effects are lasting. A 2008 study found that most Israeli children from the town of Sderot have post-traumatic stress disorder. These rockets can also misfire and kill Gazan civilians. This rocketing inevitably provokes a military response from Israel, and when these wars start, Gazan civilians make for most of the victims.
In the Gaza Strip, over 2 million Palestinians are crowded into 139 square miles. In such a small space, any large-scale military action, no matter how precise, will likely involve some civilian deaths. We need only take a look at the previous Israel-Gaza wars to see this. The 2008 war killed 759 Palestinian civilians, the 2012 war killed 87 Palestinian civilians, the 2014 war killed 1,492 Palestinian civilians, and the 2021 war killed 129 Palestinian civilians. The blame for these deaths lies with both sides.
When Hamas launches rockets at Israel, they do so from within their civilian population. As HRW reported during the 2012 war, Hamas and other militant groups “repeatedly fired rockets from densely populated areas, near homes, businesses, and a hotel, unnecessarily placing civilians in the vicinity at grave risk from Israeli counter-fire.” A UN inquiry also found that between 2012 and 2014, Hamas stored weapons within a UNRWA school. A Gaza bishop also alleged during the 2014 war that Hamas used his church to launch rockets. Hamas clearly views their people as little more than sacrificial pawns for endless war with Israel, as they said early on in 2006, “The citizens will continue defending their pride and houses and will continue to serve as human shields until the enemy will withdraw.”
The brutality of Hamas, however, does not absolve Israel from scrutiny. Some analysts have alleged that Israel practices the “Dahiya Doctrine” in its wars with Gaza. This doctrine, first practiced during the 2006 Lebanon War, was promoted in 2008 by Colonel Gabi Siboni as disproportionate force necessary to defeat the enemy:
“With an outbreak of hostilities, the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes. The strike must be carried out as quickly as possible, and must prioritize damaging assets over seeking out each and every launcher.”
The problem with this doctrine is that it prioritizes destruction over protecting civilians. It is true that the IDF does take some measures to avoid civilian death, such as dropping leaflets, phone calls, radio transmissions, and even calling off airstrikes. At the same time, though, they have also launched attacks against Gaza that have been careless at best and criminal at worst.
During the 2009 war, an investigation from The Guardian found that the IDF used Gazan children as human shields to protect their tanks and that medics were targeted when they tried to help the wounded. Several IDF soldiers also testified to the Israeli human rights group, Breaking The Silence, that the rules of engagement were relaxed, with one saying, “there was no way our soldiers would get killed for the sake of leaving civilians the benefit of the doubt."
In the 2012 war, an IDF strike killed 10 members of the Al-Dalu family. An investigation from HRW threw doubt on the Israeli assertion that the target, Mohamed Jamal Al-Dalu, was a terrorist operative, adding that even if he was, “Attacks in which the expected civilian loss exceeds the anticipated military gain are serious violations of the laws of war.”
In the 2014 war, the IDF bombed a cafe, killing nine soccer fans watching the FIFA World Cup. A local policeman told AFP that the cafe was not a military area. The IDF claimed that they were targeting a terrorist, but provided no evidence of probable terror activities in the area. Only seven days later, the IDF also killed four boys playing on the beach. Peter Beaumont, a journalist who witnessed the killings at the Al-Deira Hotel, said that from 200 meters away it was clear that they were children. He also added that the second strike seemed to target the boys who fled from the first strike. Another journalist, Paul Mason, who also witnessed the killing, added that, “I did not at any time during my 10 days in Gaza see an operational Hamas base.”
During the 2021 war, B’Tselem observed that the IDF bombed several residential buildings, sometimes wiping out entire families. When HRW investigated three IDF strikes that killed 62 Palestinian civilians, they found no evidence of military targets in the area. These are all terrible crimes.
What has been gained by these wars in Gaza? Have they ended the occupation of the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza, and brought Israel to its knees? Have they brought an end to rocketfire or toppled Hamas? Neither side has tried to change its strategy by engaging in negotiations or providing a political alternative to Palestinian grievance. The status quo has been allowed to fester for too long, and the innocents, both Israeli and Palestinian, have paid the price.
The Zionist Crisis
It isn’t my intent to say that there is nothing good about Israel: It is democratic, it has provided safe haven for Jews around the world, it allows Arab representation in its government, it has a flourishing scientific community, it protects LGBT rights, and it provides its citizens with universal healthcare. It is my intent, however, to critique Israel’s inherent contradiction: a democracy which runs an occupation over people who have no say in it. In recent years, this contradiction has begun to fold in on itself.
Israel’s current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has long courted the far-right and has never supported a Palestinian state. When Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin began the Olso Peace Accords with Palestine’s Yasser Arafat in the 1990s, Netanyahu attended anti-Rabin rallies where the crowds chanted “Death To Rabin!” Rabin was later assassinated by a Jewish extremist. Netanyahu succeeded Rabin as Prime Minister, and in a leaked 2001 video, he boasted of sabotaging Oslo, “I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the ’67 borders.” Netanyahu has recently said that he was proud to have prevented the creation of a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu’s most recent cabinet has anti-Arab extremists in major positions. Itamar Ben-Gvir was named National Security Minister in 2022, which allows him to oversee policing in the West Bank. Ben Gvir has been convicted of inciting racism, wants to deport Arab citizens who are “disloyal” to Israel, and has recently said that his rights to move about in the West Bank are more important than those of its Palestinians. Bezalel Smoritch was named Finance Minister in 2022 and is in control of much of the West Bank. Smoritch has claimed that the Palestinians aren’t a real people, supports annexing the West Bank, and said that founding father David Ben-Gurion should have expelled all the Arabs from Israel.
Netanyahu’s rule, furthermore, has been bad for Israeli democracy. He has been indicted on three separate charges of corruption, including pressure to restrict negative coverage in Israeli papers. In 2023, Netanyahu’s appointed justice minister, Yariv Levin, detailed two proposals to reduce the powers of the Supreme Court. The first would allow a majority of lawmakers to overrule any blocking of their laws by the Court. The second allows the government to appoint a majority of members to a panel that selects new judges. As one could reasonably imagine, this would permit whoever is in power to pass constitutionally questionable laws with little check. As Israeli intellectual Yuval Noah Harari observed, “Sixty-one members of Knesset could pass any racist, oppressive and anti-democratic law they think of; 61 members of Knesset could also change the electoral system, to stop us from replacing the regime.” When the proposals were made law, hundreds of thousands of Israelis bravely protested the proposals, and in early 2024, the Israeli Supreme Court struck down the reforms.
Though Netanyahu found other ways to harm Israel. While he refused to sincerely engage Abbas in negotiations for a Palestinian state, he was a little more conciliatory towards Hamas in Gaza. This may sound counterintuitive, but it allows the Israeli far-right to say that the Palestinians are divided and that there is no partner for peace. As Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group observed, Netanyahu and Hamas “provide each other with a way to continue to use force and rejectionism as opposed to making sacrifices and compromises in order to reach some kind of resolution.”
A major way Netanyahu supported Hamas was by allowing money to flow to their leaders. In 2018, Israeli intelligence uncovered Hamas’s financial operations that sometimes totaled up to $500 million, but Netanyahu refused to act. In fact, Knesset member Avigdor Lieberman claimed in 2020 that Netanyahu sent Mossad chief Yossi Cohen to beg the Qataris to continue funding Hamas. In the interest of preventing a Palestinian state, Netanyahu put his own people at risk, and it is a price that they have paid for dearly.
Carnage In Israel
October 7th will long be remembered as a black day for humanity and a defining moment of horror in the annals of Antisemitism. Hamas launched a barrage of 3,000 rockets against southern Israel and joined it with a ground invasion, where militants managed to slip through the Gaza border fence. From there, they wrought havoc, killing anyone in sight. They massacred 260 people at a music festival, which became the worst civilian massacre in Israeli history. They killed 15 Israelis in Netiv HaAsara. They slaughtered 100 Israelis in Kibbutz Be’eri. They massacred at least 52 Israelis at Kfar Aza. In total, around 1,200 were killed, including at least 29 children. Hamas also claimed some 250 people hostage, among them children, the elderly, and dozens of foreigners.
The videos emerging from the attack have been hard to stomach. Noa Argamani being dragged away from her boyfriend as she pleads for her life. Two parents trying to calm their children after their sister was executed before their eyes. A father expressing gratitude that his daughter was killed and not made captive. This was the worst day for Jewish death since the Holocaust, and indeed, we saw the trauma of that slaughter play out anew. Once again, Jews hid in their homes while soldiers with guns hunted them down for extermination.
There have also been sickening allegations of sexual violence against Israeli women. Some of the videos have alluded to these crimes. Such as that of Naama Levy, a peace activist last seen bleeding from the pants as she was forced into a truck. Or that of Shani Louk, whose dead body was stripped to her underwear and paraded around Gaza like a trophy. Israeli human rights lawyer, Dr. Elkayam-Levy, told the UN that a civil commission found evidence of “teenage girls found in their beds, pants pulled down with vaginal bleeding...” BBC journalists saw evidence and testimony of sexual assault and mutilation provided by Israeli forensic specialists, including photos of “women naked from the waist down, or with their underwear ripped to one side, legs splayed, with signs of trauma to their genitals and legs.” Some released hostages testified to the Knesset that both men and women were raped in captivity. Two Israeli doctors also told USA Today that several of the released female captives they treated were assaulted by Hamas.
The Hamas Charter has always made clear its genocidal hatred towards the Jews, and on October 7th, they made that hatred clear for all the world to see. This was a pogrom. They not only soiled themselves, but also the very cause which they claim to stand for.
There were many, however, who celebrated the attacks as justified resistance against the Israeli occupation. Many Palestinians danced and sang in the major cities of the West Bank. This joy was even shared by some Palestinian intellectuals, such as the novelist Susan Abulhawa, who said that “those few freedom fighters inspired not only the whole of Palestine, but the oppressed masses worldwide, to imagine what freedom looks like.” Or the late Gazan poet Rafaat Alareer, who praised the attack as “the Gaza ghetto uprising against one hundred years of European and Zionist colonialism.”
Support for the massacre was also prevalent across the Middle East. From Beirut to Damascus and from Baghdad to Cairo, crowds cheered and even handed out candies. These people may not represent the views of all Arabs in the region, but they reveal that Antisemitism is still a major problem there.
The pogrom schadenfreude was also extended to some quarters of the Western Left. Only one day after the massacre, many leftists took to the streets of New York City in a pro-Palestine rally. Several at the rally gleefully chanted “700" in reference to the then-known number of Israelis murdered. One speaker at the rally joked about the “resistance” killing “hipsters” at the music festival. Several independent chapters of Black Lives Matter expressed various levels of support for the massacre, such as BLM Chicago, who posted a picture of a militant heroically swooping in on a paraglider.
Some of the Left’s public intellectuals took a similar stride. Norman Finkelstein said that the attacks warmed every fiber of his soul. When India’s Prime Minister, Nadrendra Modi, condemned the massacre, Vijay Prashad replied by comparing Hamas to Indian freedom fighters and the dead Israelis to British imperialists. Tariq Ali was also in a jovial mood, making no mention of Hamas’ crimes, as he declared that the Palestinians, “are rising up against the colonizers.”
We’ve also seen an uptick in Anti-Semitic incidents. Posters of Israeli hostages were torn down in U.S. cities. A Jewish woman in New York City was punched in the face. A Jewish student at vigil for the hostages in Massachusetts was also punched. A high school basketball game in New York had to be stopped after audience members hurled insults at the Jewish athletes like “I support Hamas, you fucking Jew!”
Advocates for Palestinian freedom often criticize the IDF for failing to distinguish between military and civilian, and yet many of them are guilty of the very same blindness. If the Ukrainians committed a massacre of Russian civilians, should we cheer? Should a person get a death sentence simply for being Israeli? Should it be open season on every American for the horrors of Afghanistan and Iraq? Should we champion theocratic fascists simply because they oppose Israel?
No. This is the logic of evil, and those leftists who indulge in it are just as inhuman as the fascists they claim to oppose. I should note, however, that there were many longtime critics of Israel, like Ben Burgis, Naomi Klein, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ralph Leonard, and Bernie Sanders, who justly condemned the violence. The same goes for many Palestinians, like journalist Daoud Kuttab, historian Rashid Khalidi, Arab Spring activist Iyad El-Baghdadi, peace activist Mubarak Awad, novelist Rula Jebreal, and the humanitarian Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib.
If to weep for the dead Palestinian is not to dignify Hamas, then to weep for the dead Israeli is not to dignify the occupation.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Terror In Gaza
Israel had to use military force to push back the Hamas militants and by October 11th, the IDF had killed 1,000 them, largely securing their southern border. At this stage, Israel had two terrible options: 1) Negotiate with Hamas to trade prisoners for hostages 2) Wage a military offensive to overthrow Hamas and destroy their military capabilities.
The first option will seem palatable to many, since, if successful, the negotiations will allow the hostages to return home without a war. This will also mean no civilian casualties in Gaza. The obvious problem is that it would essentially reward Hamas for one of the worst massacres in recent Jewish history and it might encourage them to do more. Consider that one year after the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, which saw over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released for a single Israeli soldier, Hamas held celebrations and vowed to capture more. The prisoners released from the deal also went on to kill six Israelis. The current Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, was himself released as part of the exchange.
After securing its southern border, a ceasefire and a hostage deal certainly may have prevented the bloodshed that we are seeing today, but simply allowing Hamas to get away with this crimes would also be unjust. I am not against Israel using strategic military force to bring the culprits of 10/7 to justice, my problem is that I don’t trust the current government to do so. The racist Netanyahu has overseen wars against Gaza that have killed numerous civilians and have failed to stop Hamas. The powers who support Israel made a grave mistake in passively allowing Netanyahu to take charge of this operation, naively hoping that he would choose justice over vengeance.
The words of Israeli officials have been very concerning on this front. Israeli Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that the airstrikes will focus on “damage not on accuracy.” One unnamed defense official said that Gaza would “turn into a city of tents.” Israeli president Isaac Herzog implied at a press conference that all of Gaza is guilty for the acts of Hamas, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up.” This is pretty insulting to the Gazans who protested Hamas in July of last year or to the Gazan peace activist Rami Aman who was tortured by Hamas for attempting dialogue with the Israelis. As the Arab Spring taught us, overthrowing tyranny is far from easy.
How have these statements translated into action? First, we have the 2023 blockade, where Israel began a complete siege of Gaza, cutting off any food, water, electricity, and fuel to the area. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant justified the move, saying, “We are fighting human animals and we acting accordingly.” Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz also defended the blockade as a means of hostage negotiation, “No electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home.”
The Israeli blockade is a clear attack on the people of Gaza. The results of which are nothing short of horrific. The blockade led to a 90% drop in electricity for Gaza, with many losing Internet access. It also led to the shut down of Gaza’s only power plant and its only cancer hospital. By late October 2023, Gaza’s healthcare system had completely collapsed. By November 2023, many Gazans had to undertake medical procedures without anesthetic. The UN said in November 2023 that 70% of Gazans lost access to clean drinking water. Healthcare workers have resorted to drinking IV solution, while many other citizens have been driven to drinking saltwater and sewage. This has resulted in widespread dehydration and kidney failure. In December 2023, the UN added that 97% of Gazans lacked proper food consumption, with many going whole days without meals. That same month, the World Health Organization found 180,000 cases of respiratory infection, 136,400 cases of diarrhea, 55,400 cases of lice and scabies, 5,330 cases of chickenpox, 42,700 cases of skin rash, and 4722 cases of impetigo. The UN also found that 600,000 Gazan girls and women will experience menstruation without adequate hygiene. There is also severe overcrowding in many UN facilities, with one facility having one toilet for 600 people. What justifies this?
Next we have the bombing, which may be the most destructive of the 21st century. An investigation from +972 Magazine found that the IDF expanded the authorization to bomb non-military targets in order to put civilian pressure Hamas. In fact, they found that the IDF has files on most of the targets in Gaza, which list the number of civilians likely to be killed by a bombing. +972 also concluded that many of these civilian deaths aren’t accidents, but calculated as worthwhile costs to eliminate a potential militant. A U.S. intelligence assessment further found that between 40–45% of munitions dropped on Gaza are unguided “dumb bombs” which are less precise than guided ones. An analysis in Haaretz found that civilians make for 61% of deaths of the Israeli airstrikes in October 2023.
The military targets themselves have been questionable indeed: Schools, health facilities, refugee camps, and churches. The Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) claims that since October 7th, 4,800 students and 240 faculty and teachers have been killed, while 285 schools have been damaged. Many of these schools were sheltering displaced civilians, such as the Al-Buraq school, where at least 25 were killed after an airstrike.
Medical facilities and workers aren’t safe, either. The GHM has further claimed that 340 health workers have been killed and that 123 ambulances have been destroyed. The Palestinian Red Crescent says that a November 4th attack on an Al-Shifa ambulance killed 15 civilians. HRW found no evidence that the ambulance was used for military purposes. The war has also proved deadly for UN relief workers, with 136 of them killed.
Refugee camps are also far from safe. On October 31st, the IDF used at least two 2,000 pound bombs on the Jabaliya refugee camp, leaving craters 40 feet wide and killing 195 according to the GHM. The IDF justified the attack as necessary to kill a Hamas commander. The IDF struck the camp again the next day. The IDF also repeatedly bombed the Nuseirat refugee camp. A strike in November targeted the homes of medical personnel and killed 20 people, four children died after a strike on a residential square in December, and a February strike killed 12. Several of them were children.
Nor can churches provide sanctuary. While striking a Hamas rocket, an IDF airstrike damaged the Church of St. Porphyrius, the third oldest church in the world, which killed 18. Among the dead were several relatives of former U.S. Congressman Justin Amash. It has also been alleged that IDF snipers killed two women at the Holy Family Parish. Rockets from an IDF tank also may have struck a Missionaries of Charity convent, making the place uninhabitable.
Nor is there rest even for the dead. The IDF has bulldozed 16 cemeteries since the war began, using the grave sites for military outposts. At one such graveyard, CNN found no evidence of Hamas activity.
The IDF strikes have led to an incalculable loss of Gaza’s cultural heritage. The bombing has so far damaged or destroyed 200 Gazan cultural heritage sites, including the Great Omari Mosque, which was the oldest mosque in Gaza, the Rafah Museum, which held ancient coins and jewelry, and a 2,000 year old Roman cemetery.
Israel may claim that their war is with Hamas and not the Gazan people, but that’s not what it looks like. The GHM claims that the war has killed 30,000 Palestinians and injured another 71,000. Recall that Haaretz concluded that 61% of the Gazans killed in October were civilians, though even that analysis might be conservative because it excluded adult men. The war has also allegedly killed 5,300 Gazan women and 10,000 Gazan children. So many people have died, in fact, that the morgues became overcrowded and the dead had to be stored into ice cream trucks. This is a moral catastrophe.
The IDF often defends its high death toll in this and previous Gaza wars by stating that Hamas uses civilians as human shields to protect their military targets. Netanyahu has accused Hamas of preventing civilians from leaving for safe zones and of using hospitals, mosques, and schools as military centers. This is partially true. Hamas has historically put Gazans at risk by firing rockets from densely populated civilian areas and storing rockets in schools and mosques. During this war, Hamas has also encouraged Gazans to defy Israeli evacuation orders, and may have physically restrained civilians from leaving. While it is clear that Hamas has neglected the safety of its people, there are still issues with the IDF’s “human shields” defense.
First, Article 51 of the Geneva Protocol states that directing civilians to “shield military objectives” is a war crime, and that the presence of civilians, even if they are used as human shields, doesn’t make those “areas immune from military operations.” It also states, however, that such an attack is still illegal when the cost to civilians “would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” In other words, even if Hamas is actively using its civilians as “human shields”, the IDF is still obligated to ensure that its attacks don’t cause excessive civilian death. If the reported civilian death tolls are accurate, then this doesn’t appear to be the case.
Second, there are many instances where the IDF has struck targets of dubious military value. They have knowingly bombed hospitals, schools, mosques, and refugee camps, which were often sheltering civilians. Some have even been killed in their own homes. The poet Refaat Alareer was a hateful reactionary, but he was not a serious threat to Israel. What was the IDF’s justification for bombing his sister’s apartment to kill him and many in his family? What of the killing of novelist and poet Hina Abu Nada, who was sheltering in her home when an airstrike hit? What of the killing of painter Heba Zagout and two of her children at their home? The burden on the IDF should be high to prove that these attacks were of great military necessity, but it is a burden that I do not see them meeting.
Third, there is nowhere safe for Gazans to hide. Hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, refugee camps, and houses have all been bombed. Where is a Gazan supposed to go if they don’t want to die? What will it take for a Gazan not to qualify as a human shield? The IDF’s evacuation order of northern Gaza seemed like a safety measure at first, but it hasn’t worked out that way. There are allegations of the IDF firing on fleeing Gazans, such as when a grandmother waving a white flag was killed by an IDF sniper on an evacuation route. When the IDF released a map of “safe zones” for Gazans to evacuate to, Sky News, CNN, and the New York Times all found that the IDF bombed these places anyways.
Fourth, the IDF has already tried this military strategy in four previous wars with Gaza. They all failed to pacify Hamas and discourage future militancy. If anything, they have done the opposite. If you look at a December 2023 poll of Palestinian opinion, support for Hamas rose by 12% in the West Bank and by 4% in Gaza, 60% support armed struggle against Israel, 72% are satisfied with how Hamas has waged the war, 69% support Sinwar, and 54% believe Hamas should lead the Palestinians. Even if the IDF manages to eliminate Hamas, they have clearly failed to discourage the idea of armed struggle, and so long as the occupation continues, there will always be other militants ready to fill Hamas’s place. Will all have the innocent bloodshed and suffering have been worth such a bleak outcome?
The fact that three of the Israeli hostages were mistakenly killed by the IDF speaks to the wider failure of this blunt force approach. The fact that the hostages were shirtless, waved a white flag, and shouted in Hebrew did not matter. The soldiers had been told to fire on any military-age men who approached them, due to incidents of militants hiding in civilian clothes. At least 32 Israeli hostages have been killed since the start of the war. Could an earlier ceasefire have saved their lives?
Again, none of this excuses Hamas. They knew exactly what Israel’s reaction would be when they attacked. They knew war would come. They knew that their people would be put into danger. And as usual, they did little to safeguard the innocent. This was a deliberate provocation to excite the most vengeful response from Israel. In fact, Hamas official Ghazi Hamad called for more attacks like 10/7 until Israel is wiped out. These are grim facts, but they do not absolve the IDF of its conduct. When you combine the reckless bombing with the cruel blockade, it becomes evident that this war is more about terrorizing Gaza than it is about saving the hostages.
Now some believe that even questioning the wisdom of Israel’s reaction makes one pro-Hamas or an Anti-Semite. I reject this. In 2014, China suffered a Uighur terror attack in Xinjiang that killed 39 Chinese people. Does this mean criticizing China’s internment of over a million Uighurs in concentration camps is Sinophobic? In 2017, a Rohingya terror group massacred 99 Hindus in Myanmar. Does this mean that criticizing Myanmar’s killing of 25,000 Rohingya is anti-Myanmar bigotry? In 2016, a Kurdish terror group killed 18 Turks. Does this mean that criticizing Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of Syrian Kurds in 2019 is Anti-Turk? Israel’s tactics are no less subject to criticism than those any other country which has dealt with terror. To say otherwise is to demand an absurd double standard.
Take it from an American. The 9/11 attacks killed 3,000 innocents on live television. While the U.S. was right to seek justice against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, we were so drunk with rage that we engaged in two disastrous wars abroad and eroded our civil liberties at home. In fact, the militarization of immigration, the growth of Anti-Muslim bigotry, and the failed leadership in Iraq contributed to rise of Donald Trump. I worry that Israel is going down a similar route, and I fear for what the future may yield for it. When the IDF says, “You either stand with Israel or stand with terrorism”, they echo George W. Bush’s infamous adage, “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.” This is lazy rhetoric that exploits grief to shame criticism of questionable decisions.
We have also seen a rise in Anti-Palestinian sentiment abroad. Lawyer Alan Dershowitz has argued that we shouldn’t feel bad for Gazan civilians because some of them voted for Hamas in 2006. A six year old Palestinian-American boy was stabbed to death by his landlord. Florida state lawmaker, Michelle Salzman, called for all Palestinians to die during a ceasefire debate. Three Palestinian students were shot and wounded in Vermont.
At the end of this war, Gaza will have little to hope for. UNICEF estimates that 1,000 children have lost limbs and that 19,000 have been orphaned. The survivors will also have nowhere to return to, considering that 70% of housing has been destroyed. Netanyahu has also made it clear that after the war, Israel will control the Holy Land from the river to the sea. No self-determination for the Palestinians. The oppression will continue, and so too will the hate.
This war needs to end. Both Hamas and the IDF need to commit to a permanent ceasefire. A deal must be made to free the remaining hostages as soon as possible, a massive project must be undertaken to rebuild Gaza, and a peace deal must be forged to prevent future Israel-Gaza wars. No more rockets. No more bombs. No more blockade. This war has devolved into pointless carnage, piling horror upon horror, atrocity upon atrocity, and trauma upon trauma. The further this continues, the further it will plunge humanity into hell. To quote the Gazan peace activist Rami Aman, “Israeli and Palestinian, in this conflict? Both of them are losers. No need to blame each other. Both of us are killers, and both of us are paying the price. This war must end now.”
The Possibility of Peace
Right now, it feels impossible to think of peace, but we must. For the sake of the innocent Israelis and Palestinians caught in the crossfire, we must fight for a better future. Many people don’t view Israelis and Palestinians as human beings, but rather as sports teams in an ongoing soccer match. Some may find empathy for both peoples difficult, but it is necessary. This is not an easy discussion, but that’s not an excuse to avoid it.
The plain fact is that the Israelis aren’t going anywhere and neither are the Palestinians. They’ll need to learn how to live with each other in peace. Whether that’s one state, two states, or something in-between is up to them, so long as the final model provides justice, security, and freedom for all peoples in the Holy Land. Though at some point, the current leaders of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza either have to moderate or leave power.
It must be understood that Israel cannot indefinitely deny millions of people their rights and expect them not to make a fuss. We cannot go back to status quo of occupation, siege, and war. True security for Israel is dependent upon the freedom of the Palestinians. This ultimately requires a political solution, not a military one. By ending the occupation, not only will the Palestinians be free, but so too will the Israelis. This will be difficult to do, no doubt, but it must be understood as a necessity.
However, the Israeli government will not end the occupation without pressure. If the occupation doesn’t have a cost, then Israel will feel no urgency to end it. For this reason, we should support non-violent resistance against the occupation. For just as the killing of Gazan civilians will radicalize Palestine against Israel, so too will the killing of Israeli civilians radicalize Israel against Palestine. If we are serious about reducing the influence of Hamas and other militant groups, then we must reward Palestinians when they practice non-violent resistance. We should also uplift Israelis who are committed to justice for their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
The United States has a special role here. It has effectively given Israel decades of military and diplomatic support with little censure. That has to stop. Military aid to Israel should be ended until its government makes concrete steps on ending the occupation and negotiating with the Palestinians. The United States should also sanction any persons on both sides who violate the human rights of the innocent, be they Israeli or Palestinian. Biden’s executive order targeting violent settlers is a good first step. If our nation wants to be taken seriously when it acts against the crimes of Russia, China, or Venezuela, then it must also be willing to act against the crimes of its closest allies.
Reasonable people of goodwill can disagree on the particulars of how best to end the conflict. I don’t pretend to have all the answers here, either, but I refuse to give in to hatred. We must stand for the humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians. We must continue to push for peace and justice in the Holy Land. We must fight against the evils of Antisemitism and Anti-Palestinianism. We must never abandon hope for a free and democratic Palestine and a safe and progressive Israel.
B’tzelem elohim
