This is gonna make some people mad, but…
There’s something facile, something simplistic, about antiwar protests like the one at U.S. Rep. Becca Balint’s fundraiser last week. Because given the current situation, calls for a cease-fire or a unilateral Israeli cessation of hostilities are unrealistic. It’s just not gonna happen.
It can’t happen, at least not right now. The single goal of Hamas is the destruction of Israel. Hamas impoverished its own people in order to build an infrastructure of war and terror. It launched an attack on Israel knowing it couldn’t win, knowing it would trigger a destructive counterattack on combatant and non-combatant Palestinians alike.
And Israel is supposed to do what now? Stand down? Give peace a chance?
In the wake of October 7, Israel had no choice but to disrupt and destroy Hamas’ terrorist infrastructure. I wish they would do more to limit civilian casualties, and they have certainly committed war crimes. But they were not the first to do so. Hamas committed some real atrocities, and they still hold hundreds of Israeli hostages.
Israel bears some responsibility for the destruction in Gaza, the deaths, the casualties, the carnage. But Hamas bears far more responsibility. It chose to enmesh its war machine in Palestinian population centers. It knew the consequences of its choices.
Israel’s assault is a bad long-term strategy. It’s one more brick in the wall. Tomorrow’s Hamas fighters are being created by today’s war. But Israel did not have the luxury of thinking long-term when it faced an all-out terror attack. The immediate situation called for an immediate response.
And this immediate situation is of a piece with Israel’s history. Since its founding, it has been surrounded by enemies. I have no idea what that’s like or how that shapes your world view, because I’ve always lived in a big, powerful country whose enemies are either distant, relatively weak, or imaginary.
And Israel’s history is of a piece with the history of the Jewish people, who have faced persecution since, well, since they became a people. Existential threats are a recurring theme for them. I have no idea what that’s like either.
Nor do the protesters who asserted their moral superiority at Balint’s fundraiser.
The Vermont Political Observer. 
Bullshit post. From any rationale perspective. You’re history sucks, and you’re letting half the terrorists off. If you are interested, I’d be happy to do an extended public exchange on this issue.
Oh gad, thank you for articulating this impossible moral and heart-rending impossible dilemma.
Removing the VPO bookmark. There’s been a steep decline for a while, but this is the final nail. I guess our tax dollars supporting a genocide is just another issue that armchair Jon has thought about deeper than you and come to the brilliant conclusion that some things are just hard and maybe two wrongs do make a right when it comes to ethnic cleansing.
Good for you, John. A thoughtful analysis. I was talking with a man online who had a Palestinian flag as his photo ID, and posted his name in Arabic. He ranted about Israel being an occupier, how the Jews had no right to that land, how the Palestinians were there first, etc. He obviously didn’t know any history. Mohammed didn’t even found Islam until approx. 624 AD. The Jews have been in Israel since 2,000 years before the birth of Jesus. Remember King David? King Solomon? Kings of what nation? Oh, that’s right. Israel. I was using some historical context like this in debating with him, but he would have none of it. He just kept posting “Jews out of Gaza. Jews out of Israel.” So I finally wrote back to him: “Then where should the Jews go? Where should the Jews go? Where should the Jews go?” three times. He immediately stopped responding. And that is the dilemma. I think I know where this particular man wants them to go. There are approx. 50 Muslim nations on the planet but only one Jewish nation. The rest of us are Gentile nations. Think about that. In the 200 or so nations on the planet, there is only one Jewish nation. And people are screaming for them to get out of Gaza, which is part of their land of Israel. So where should they go? Should they keep shrinking and shrinking their land until there is no place left for them but the camps? The ovens? In World War II, there was no really safe place for the Jews in Europe and the majority of them were exterminated. That’s what led the UN to re-establish the nation for a second time on their historical land. That happened in 1948. The nations surrounding Israel declared war on them immediately after that historic UN vote. Israel has been the “bad guy” in the eyes of much of the world ever since. We non-Jewish nations need to remember past history. Israel is not the demon here. The demons are those people who are calling for their extermination. Our brainwashed college students who are chanting “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” have NO IDEA what they are really calling for — the extermination of Jews once again.
I usually look forward to your writing and the insights of your experience and knowledge. This reads like a knee jerk. You are capable of so much more.
Spectacularly unhelpful comment.
Okay I’ll give it another try. You might have acknowledged some part of the 60+ years that this conflict has gone on without resolution despite multiple UN resolutions blocked by the US. You might have managed to acknowledge the key role that decades of multi billion dollar arms shipments from the US played in the ongoing conflict.
You might have wondered as I did at the apparent about face by Senator Sanders who argued in a 2016 debate with Madame Secretary Clinton that Israeli military and financial support should be predicated on human rights progress for Palestine. Many of his supporters are as dismayed as I am at his recent statements that “Hamas must be destroyed” and “There can be no ceasefire in Gaza”.
I read it again quite carefully and found nothing I couldn’t have learned from a US State Department press conference. If this is the best you can do regarding world affairs, perhaps it’s better to stick to the story out of Montpelier where I am more likely to be informed by your reporting and analysis.
And in re: The title of this post, I will further comment that it’s probably a lot easier if you don’t have to bother with any historical truths too.
“The single goal of Hamas is the destruction of Israel.” The goal is Israel is to remove the Palestinians from Israel, and for the United States to pay for it, which is my fundamental objection.
I was quick to criticize, but failed to be just as quick to point out that the title is 100% correct.
PS. When I use my ramabahama.net url, my comments seem to get through; but if I use my Reddit home page link it doesn’t. Is that deliberate? Just askin’ for a me that needs to know.
And now Rep Balint has announced her support for a ceasefire. Whose moral superiority is being asserted here I wonder?
Is the problem the facile simplicity? Or the effectiveness?
It’s the complete nonspecificity.
While I usually appreciate your posts, I think this one missed the mark. There’s something facile, something simplistic, about takes like this which vastly oversimplifies a decades long conflict, while smugly punching down at youthful activists who are themselves oversimplifying a conflict (but seem to understand the core points, like the fact that Israeli atrocities are carried out with our tax dollars, but Hamas atrocities are not). Say what you will about their tactics and goals, but Balint’s recent reversal on the issue seems to indicate that their ‘childish’ tactics are actually have something of an effect.
The fact is that Israel has been hurtling towards this horror on the backs of the hard right, who by the way were in the process of destroying any checks and balances held by the supreme court just prior to this attack. Something which caused a massive rift in Israeli society and led many young IDF members to protest their service, stretching the security resources of the state thin. (https://apnews.com/article/israel-protest-netanyahu-judicial-overhaul-e094f16ac3d06a41dbd05d1ce9ddc4d3) That tension is also related to the strange situation that has emerged with the orthodox Haredi, who are a key plank of Netanyahu’s government which has been driving for greater conflict with Palestinians in the west bank through increased settling. These Haredi of course despite continually voting for right wing hawks, do not participate in mandatory service due to religious objections, in other words they start fights that they do not finish. (https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230606-israel-faces-crisis-due-to-conscription-dispute-over-ultra-orthodox-jews/) The Haredi also do not believe in any birth control, leading them to have large families which are effectively outvoting the more liberal and left elements of Israeli society. (https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredim-are-fastest-growing-population-will-be-16-of-israelis-by-decades-end/) So at the same time as the hard right electorate grows and pushes for more and more confrontation in the West Bank, the IDF is not keeping pace with the population due to the growth of Haredi, who continually support governments who get into situations where military force is needed, and then expect more liberal Israelis to do the dying for them.
Perhaps you might remember the assassination of Yitzak Rabin, who was killed by a fanatical right-wing terrorist, who opposed Rabin’s signing of the Oslo Accords. The Israeli right was literally willing to kill its own Prime Minister for daring to try and find a diplomatic solution. These are the kind of people who have brought Netanyahu and his cronies to power and keep them there, and this is the type of government we are aiding and abetting. Netanyahu himself is one of the primary ones responsible for Hamas becoming what it is today, due to his cynical realpolitik strategy that sought to divide Gaza from the West Bank using Hamas as a wedge to undermine the Palestinian authority. (https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/) This is something that might be familiar to Americans, whose government massively aided Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan because it served their geopolitical interests at the time, only for this support to massively blow up in their faces on 9/11 (something the Hamas attacks have often been compared to), as well as the failed occupation of Afghanistan.
This project has been and continues to be aided and abetted by the United States, which provides huge amounts of aid to Israel that allow it to take such a belligerent position on the international stage and refuse any calls for a change to a more humane policy. My heart goes out to everyone who was affected by these horrible tragedies. But from my position, it looks an awful lot like this situation was created and enabled by the Israeli hard right as much if not more than Hamas. Placing all the blame at the door of Hamas, and not even so much as mentioning that Israel is a divided county and many are harshly critical of Netanyahu and his policies, is a surface level understanding of the situation. While I would freely admit that not all of the young activists have a clear understanding of the situation, I continually see this that argument directed primarily at the pro-Palestine side. It all smacks of consent manufacturing, and an older generation who grew up understanding Israel through tightly controlled news and propaganda, coming to grips with a younger generation that is able to not only see live videos of horror on their cell phones in, but is also able to literally track the destruction of Gaza building by building through live satellite mapping while knowing that it is their country, their tax dollars, their smart bombs which are supporting this.
I didn’t mean for my post to be a comprehensive analysis of the situation, which literally goes back millennia. I focused on the situation Israel faced on October 6, when a determined enemy launched a devastating attack. In that circumstance, Israel’s reaction was understandable, at least to me. Us folks in America have no idea what it’s like.