Ghouls, Failures, Fatalism and Responsibility

I doubt I need to inform you of the horrific news coming out of Israel, where a large-scale Hamas attack -- perhaps the single largest military incursion Israel has experienced in my lifetime -- has resulted in hundreds of Israeli deaths, thousands wounded, and an untold number of abductions. Terrifying reports of house-to-house executions and kidnappings are emerging on the ground, and even as we speak, Israeli forces still have reportedly not retaken all of towns and outposts that were overrun by Hamas militants.

I don't have much that's novel to say, in part because so much of what I could say seems so obvious. 

First, this is a brutal, criminal act. Full stop. The fact that people on the internet are celebrating it is unsurprising to anyone who has been on the internet -- the murdered Israelis are dying politically, with all the normal consequences that follow -- but that doesn't make it any less ghastly. The same goes for those people on the internet calling for genocidal violence in Gaza in "retaliation". Those people are in the exact same moral category as the murderers who slaughtered civilians today, they only fly a different flag. It's not a material distinction.

And on that note: you are under no obligation to not think of the people celebrating murders as anything other than ghouls. You don't have to twist yourself into knots to tell yourself why they may have a point or they're not adopting the right tone but... or any other apologia of the sort. You can, and should, just recognize that there are ghouls out there, and figure out how to assimilate that reality without sacrificing one's own broader commitment to humanism and justice for Israelis and Palestinians.

Second, this is a complete and abject failure of the Israeli government at every level.

Zoom in, and it's a massive intelligence and operational failure the likes of which Israel's security services have never seen in my lifetime. An operation of this size should not have been able to be launched without something being tipped; and once it was launched the IDF should not have been caught so flat-footed. 

At the middle, the above failings, in turn, can be directly attributed to Bibi and the current Israeli government's single-minded obsession about ripping the country's national fabric to pieces. In service of this mania they (among other things) placed incapable lickspittles in key security posts whose only "qualification" was that they were even more aggressively fascistic than Bibi is. Said fascists, in turn, spent all their time gleefully egging on settler violence in the West Bank, forcing the IDF to expend disproportionate resources putting out forest fires price taggers set on behalf of settler expansionism, and diverting their attention from goings-on in Gaza. It is no exaggeration to say, as one of my Facebook friends commented, that the reason nobody in the IDF was there to respond to cries for help in Israel's south was that they were too busy doing settlers' bidding in the north.

And if you zoom out, Hamas' operation represents an explosive repudiation of the notion that Gaza and Hamas could be besieged into obedience. The right-wing fantasy-nightmare that Israelis could (only) be kept safe through ever-greater oppression of Palestinians has been finally and completely falsified. From an Israel security standpoint, the rightwing playbook has only accomplished an unprecedented endangerment of Israeli lives in service of the furthest right-wing fringe. At what point do we say these policies are leading to nowhere but universal damnation? 

Finally, there is almost no chance that the fallout from this assault has any consequence other than catastrophe for innocent Israelis and Palestinians alike. And yet, we must resist the sort of fatalism about that seeming inevitability that leads to an abdication of responsibility. Too many voices I've seen today have, in one way or another, expressed sentiments to the effect that the events of today and/or those to come are the inevitable consequence of history's weave. How could you expect Hamas wouldn't seize an opportunity to massacre Israeli civilians en masse? How could you expect Israel won't respond with zero regard for Palestinian life?

No. There is agency here. The word of the day I'm already growing to hate is "(un)provoked", as in an emergent discourse which wants to be absolutely sure we all know that whatever hideous crime Hamas just committed or whatever overwhelming military incursion Israel may be about to launch, there is a reason behind it -- it didn't just happen out of air. Which -- no kidding. In the context of a conflict that's resulted in a half dozen international wars in the space of less than century, nothing is ever "unprovoked". But that doesn't absolve anyone of agency. Hamas made a choice to launch this attack -- a brutal, violent, targeted assault on a civilian population whose only tactical objective was the sowing of terror. They are not the passive receptacles of historical forces beyond their ken. And Israel's choices too (both those that preceded today's events and those that will follow) are choices -- they are not the inevitable consequence of some immutable historical arc.

I don't mean to downplay the real difficulties here. There is purchase in the armchair activist complaint "well, what is the right way for Palestinians to resist the occupation", even as it reaches a parodic pinnacle when it takes the form of "if Palestinian terror cells can't go house-to-house kidnapping and executing Israeli families, why, you might as well say Palestinians can't do anything at all!" And likewise, Israel's security needs absolutely require a robust military response to Hamas' attack for reasons that are by no means reducible to mere vengeance or bloodlust, even as too many commentators use the reality of the former as a preemptive apologia for the latter. But all of that emphasizes the need to acknowledge agency, it doesn't obviate it. Decisions taken in tough times are still decisions.

That's a lot of words, but I continue to think that the principles here are quite simple. Hamas is responsible for this murderous assault, and we should view it as nothing other than a murderous assault. Israel's policy choices in the orbit of these events have been demonstrated to be catastrophic failures at every level -- the sort of disaster that should permanently wreck the political careers of every functionary in power who let authoritarian thuggery and anti-democratic hate blind them to emergent danger. And ultimately, the most essential line to be drawn is not between "Israel" and "Palestine". It is between all those horrified by the kidnapping and butchering of civilians and all those, of any political stripe, who are excited at the prospect of dead civilians. No matter what flag they fly, all those in the latter camp are fundamentally on the same side. And in the final analysis, they are together -- not as opponents but as fundamental allies -- the truest enemy of all those who dream of justice, peace, democracy, and self-determination for Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, alike.