How To Support Anti-Hamas Protests in Gaza

You may have seen that protests have broken out in the Gaza Strip targeting Hamas.

This is a great thing, and the bravery of these protesters deserves nothing but applause. They should be viewed as of a piece with other brave protesters standing up to authoritarian practices in places like Turkey, Israel, and (for that matter) the United States.

But I've noticed some pro-Israel commenters highlighting these protests with a weird tone of empty triumphalism. They're excited about the protests because they're anti-Hamas (makes sense), but beyond expressing that giddiness there's just ... nothing else there in terms of what they, or we, or anyone outside of Gaza might do to back the protesters up.

Nothing on how we might actually support these protests (hint: I suspect they will not find dropping bombs on their heads helpful). And nothing on what, tangibly, we think these protesters should get as an alternative to Hamas rule (again, I doubt they're excited at the process of being evicted to make room for a MAGA seaside resort development).

But if you're going to claim the mantle of supporting these protests, those are the sorts of questions you need to have answers for. You don't get to say "gee, these protests are swell -- anyway, back to bombing!"  (I suppose there is a very slim chance the protesters want the war to continue as a means of ousting Hamas, but anyone making that claim on the protesters' behalf, absent them saying so themselves, bears a very high burden of persuasion). 

And you also don't get to just be coy about the end status of Gaza. I don't have a direct line to the protesters' ears, but I assume they want some form of genuine self-governance and independence. If one isn't willing to accede to that, you also don't get to claim the protests for your own purposes.

Again, the complete inability of Israel to articulate a plausible "day after" upon toppling Hamas is one reason this war is dragging on without end. As long as the war continues, Gaza is Schrodinger's territory -- neither reoccupied and annexed nor granted freedom and independence. Israel doesn't want to commit to either option, so it delays and delays and delays by extending and extending and extending the war.

Who Has What Leverage Over Hamas?

Ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Gaza continue to grind along, and Hamas has responded negatively to the latest offer on the table. Which makes me wonder -- what are the leverage points that exist on Hamas that might help pressure it towards accepting a ceasefire deal?

Since I was recently pancakes/waffled on this, I want to clarify that I'm not saying that Hamas is the only obstacle that has or does exist in front of a ceasefire. My position continues to be that neither Hamas nor Israel seems especially interested in a ceasefire deal, and since both parties need to agree, that relative lack of interest represents a significant problem.

That problem, in turn, suggests that making progress on a ceasefire deal may -- at different times and contexts -- require exerting pressure or leverage on Israel and Hamas. If what you actually care about is ceasefire now -- that is, it's not a stalking horse for "keep the war going unless and until my side gets what it wants" -- then one needs a model for how one can, where necessary, pressure Israel to move off certain lines as well as a model for how one can, when necessary, pressure Hamas to move off some of theirs.

For Israel, it's pretty clear what the potential pressure points are -- in fact, there's a superabundance of them. Military aid, international legal rulings, even western protest movements all in various ways are mechanisms through which outside actors can exert pressure to get Israel to change its behavior and agree to things that it might otherwise be disinclined to accede to. There are all sorts of debates we can have about which levers it is proper to pull and what the un/anticipated effects of our decisions might be -- Dan Nexon had what I felt was a very thoughtful post on this -- but it's not especially opaque where the leverage points are.

For Hamas, though, things are a lot blurrier. There is an interesting Foucauldian dynamic at work here where Israel's greater power paradoxically also makes it more vulnerable -- being far more tied into American and global centers of power means there are a lot more touch points between Israel and the international community that can converted into areas for exerting pressure. Power and resistance are two sides of the same coin. But when we're talking about Hamas, it's not clear where those touch points are.

This is not, to be clear, the normative argument one sometimes hears whereby because Israel is more powerful it deserves to bear the brunt of pressure or it has the responsibility to take the leading role in changing course. My point is that even if we wanted to "pressure Hamas", how would we do it?

In a military conflict, military force is of course one answer. Problem one with that answer is that the point of this exercise is to try to end the military conflict, not intensify it. But the bigger problem two is that Hamas doesn't actually seem that influenced by military damage. On any conventional metric, after all, Hamas is enduring catastrophic losses on the battlefield -- the sorts that would under normal circumstances constitute significantly losing a war and seeking to sue for peace. But Hamas doesn't seem especially bothered by its battlefield losses, and doesn't seem to view its military defeats as demanding a change in the status quo.

In any event, our whole goal here is to figure out points of leverage that aren't More War (with Israel, for instance, the American pressure points are more diversified and do not take the form of "do it or we start flattening IDF bases"). So what are they? Who has the leverage points over Hamas, and what are they? We can't withhold military aid we don't have. Withholding humanitarian aid is morally abhorrent (and frankly also has not seemed to significantly affect Hamas' behavior). Do people think protests would work? By whom, and where? Are their nations who have more "touch points" with the Hamas leadership that can be brought to bear? If so, how can they been induced to wield their leverage. And if all of this seems far-fetched or fanciful, don't we have a serious problem?

Of course, some people will accuse me of being naive in thinking that the "ceasefire now" crew actually is interested in a ceasefire; others will no doubt think that even suggesting Hamas is not fully committed to stopping the war is a Zionist apologetic. 

(I need to digress a bit to talk about this story on a proposed ceasefire resolution that got tabled by the Yonkers City Council, because it has strong "In a Nutshell" vibes related to this whole problem. Basically, pro-Palestine groups loudly demanded a ceasefire resolution; pro-Israel groups equally vocally opposed it. After a bunch of negotiations and rewrites, the city council came out with a compromise resolution that called for a ceasefire, release of Israeli hostages, and recognition of both Israel and Gaza's right to exist and exercise self-determination. And the result was that the pro-Palestinian groups switched to opposing the ceasefire resolution because it acknowledged Israel's right to exist, and the pro-Israel groups remained opposed it because it called for a ceasefire. By the end, the only groups that seemed to actually support the ceasefire resolution were mainline liberal Jewish groups, who needless to say were catching fire from both sides of the spectrum.)

All of which was to say that while there are plenty of people for whom "ceasefire" is a talking point rather than an actual goal, I also do think there are plenty of people who really are genuinely motivated to see an end to the bloodshed and an immediate-term resolution that is, if not ideal, then at least tolerable as a holding pattern for building a more durable just peace going forward. For that cadre, we need to have theories and ideas regarding how to dislodge Israeli intransigence and Hamas intransigence. The former we basically have, at least at the ideas level. The latter we don't seem to have even in concept, and that's a problem.

And one more thing just to be clear -- one dimension of why this serious problem is serious is that the inability to influence Hamas' behavior does not justify just indefinitely blitzing Gaza into dust. The only thing worse than dropping bombs on Gaza until Hamas changes its behavior is dropping bombs on Gaza without it having any impact on Hamas' behavior, but just doing it anyway because it's something. The lack of meaningful points of leverage over Hamas represents I think a genuine puzzle for folks working in this arena that I'm not sure how to effectively resolve, but it's something that has to be dealt with by anyone who thinks Hamas has even a share of responsibility for ending the current state of affairs.

The Point of Hamas' "Narrative"

Hamas has released a slickly produced document providing a belated "narrative" of what happened on October 7. I link to it for reference, even though it's sickening reading for anyone with the slightest sense of justice or empathy for Israelis. 

It's quite obvious that this is written for a particular western audience and that Hamas knows how to write for that audience; it echoes many of the apologias one hears from its foreign sympathizers seeking to excuse its atrocities. Some of these are inserted in almost on reflex -- for example, in a section asserting that only military sites were targeted, the authors write that "the Palestinian fighters were keen to avoid harming civilians despite the fact that the resistance does not possess precise weapons." The lack of "precise weapons" is a line typically used in reference to Hamas' use of indiscriminate rocket fire, but it obviously has no bearing on the sort of close-quarters, ground operation that occurred on October 7 (Hamas' machine guns and grenades are more or less as "precise" as anyone else's machine guns and grenades; "imprecision" was not the problem here). But that follows from the overall tenor of the piece, which is to align Hamas' narrative with the way its most credulous apologists speak about Hamas -- to further bind these groups together as "all on the same side."

That said, for the most part this document should be read as an official extension of the 10/7 denialism that the Washington Post reported on the other day: that 10/7 essentially "didn't happen" (the targets were military, any civilians killed were either targeted accidentally or were actually murdered by Israelis, reports of atrocities like rape are propagandist fabrications, and so on).

What's the point of a document like this? There are several:

First, it is piggybacking on the aforementioned denialist movement that was from the get-go primed to accept any possible narrative of Israeli perfidy. This tendency exists on a continuum, but even "soft-core denialists" who are primarily invested in viewing some of the more heart-wrenching charges (mass rapes, slaughtered infants) as exaggerated or fictious will treat Hamas' document as moving the Overton Window further. Certainly, the useful idiots who promote this sort of view didn't need Hamas to give them this document, but they will be encouraged by it and will hungrily consume it and use it to fuel further excretions.

Second, it is attempting to rewrite history. Everyone and their mother has congratulated themselves for the "realization" that Hamas' goal on 10/7 was to commit an attack of sufficient brutality so as to compel a bruising Israeli response that would wreck Israel's reputation and bolster the profile of the Palestinian cause. Having succeeded in generating such a response, it only makes sense to try and erase the initial provocation. If October 7 essentially "didn't happen", then everything that happened after October 7 is simply random unmitigated acts of Israeli aggression -- no longer "backlash", now just "lash".

Third, it is a form of "I know you are but what am I" trolling. At various points, the document characterizes Hamas' operation as an "arrest" mission ("Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 ... sought to arrest the enemy’s soldiers"). Here I actually don't think the goal is directly to rewrite history, because (though lord knows where this optimism comes from) I don't think even Hamas' most credulous dupes could possibly believe October 7 was actually an arrest operation. Rather, here the very absurdism is the point -- the goal is not to make anyone believe something as absurd as October 7 being an attempt at effectuating arrests, it's to make people associate claims about effectuating arrests with absurdist propaganda.

We're all familiar with the Sartre line about how antisemites "like to play with discourse" while aware of the "absurdity" of their arguments. and that's what we're seeing here. Israel does engage in genuine arrest operations on a regular basis. By "genuine", I don't mean that these operations are not or cannot be abusive, legally dubious, violent, unethical, etc.. But that doesn't mean the label of "arrest" operation is an absurd one; it's an accurate characterization of the operation (even if it is an abusive arrest, a legally dubious arrest, a violent arrest, and so on). Hamas' goal, though, is to render that word something absurd; the sort of thing we all know is just a euphemism for lawless authoritarian abuse. Think of a term like "re-education" -- when we hear a government say that a given political dissident was "re-educated", we go beyond viewing it with a skeptical eye ("was this an abusive form of education?"). We don't view it literally at all -- we understand that "re-education" is just a term authoritarians use to bowdlerize taking dissidents into a warehouse and beating them until they recant. "Re-education" isn't (sometimes, often, even always) "done abusively", "re-education" isn't done at all. The goal here is to make "arrest" be treated similarly -- an absurd term that Israel and Hamas use in obviously non-literal fashion to describe periodically raiding the territory of the other and killing people in it.

And finally, we should not overlook that this document is a means for Hamas to retraumatize its victims. There is power and sadistic pleasure in not just inflicting hurt, but also then being able to stand impassively (or -- perhaps even better -- with the most subtle of smirks) and declare that nothing actually happened, that the victim is making it all up. That, alone, would suffice as a motivator -- a psychological insult on top of injury. The forced photographs of captives "smiling" -- cited in the document as proof of Hamas' gentle hands -- are of course part of this play; a means through which victims are coerced into serving as testifiers against themselves.

A Palestinian friend of mine, responding to the article about increased 10/7 denialism, reposted comments by former Palestinian Israeli MK who observed that Palestinians are "not good people that only do good things." "Victims of the occupation aren't good people, they're victims. They are not righteous, they have a just cause." The cause of ending the occupation is just, but this does not mean that all persons under occupation -- or even all those who purport to act under the banner of "ending occupation" -- behave righteously (any more than the justness of the cause of Jewish self-determination means that all those who act under that banner behavior righteously). It is no adjunct to opposing the occupation that one must believe Hamas incapable of the horrific acts of violence and sadism that the evidence overwhelmingly documents occurred exactly as alleged, and to spread Hamas' lies on this front is not "solidarity" but sadism. The fellow travelers here -- for example, Mondoweiss, which was highlighted for the particularly vicious denial of sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas fighters -- should be called exactly what they are.

The Day After Hamas

The New York Times reports increasing "daylight" (to use an old term) between President Biden and Netanyahu regarding what the aftermath of the Gaza campaign will look like -- specifically, regarding the role that the Palestinian Authority might have in governing Gaza once (knock on wood) Hamas is defeated. 

Paul Campos thinks this is reflective of the worries regarding "the administration’s up until now very muted response to the siege of Gaza, and the gathering human rights and public health catastrophe that it represents." I'm not sure that's quite right, though it's perhaps lurking in the background. The more prominent instinct, I think, is that Biden fundamentally agrees with Israel regarding the merits and necessity of destroying Hamas, but fundamentally disagrees with Bibi regarding "the day after". The more "the day after" becomes salient in our minds and we start thinking not in terms of the war's prosecution but its aftermath, the more we're going to see latent but always-present disagreements between Bibi and Biden come to a fore. One sees this dynamic particularly in how Biden relates his response to Bibi's claim that the allies "carpet bombed Germany" -- "I said, 'Yeah, that’s why all these institutions were set up after World War II, to see to it that it didn’t happen again.'" The former point is about prosecution of the war, the latter point is about how we handled the aftermath.

For Biden, destroying Hamas has to be followed by aggressive state-building efforts meant to provide a real future (economically, socially, and politically) for the Palestinian people. The allusion to the Marshall Plan after World War II is clearly part of this, and other relevant players are also insisting that any plans for rebuilding Gaza credibly commit to a realistic pathway for Palestinian statehood. For Bibi -- well, I really have no idea what Bibi's "day after" plan is. I don't think he actually wants to fully reoccupy Gaza; but he also doesn't want the PA involved; or international involvement; and certainly Hamas is out the question; so ... where are we left? He seems much more interested in what he'll say "no" to than what he can plausibly say "yes" to, because at this stage in the game reality has become Bibi's unconquerable enemy. And Biden, in turn, isn't going to have a lot of patience for Israel post-war simply refusing to let Gaza rebuild itself or have any sort of self-governance structure whatsoever just because Bibi can no longer square the circle of "no formal occupation" and "no Palestinian independence" by building a castle around Gaza and then never thinking about it again..

Even if one accepts that Israel is pot committed to destroying Hamas, that doesn't obviate but rather accentuates the need to have a serious answer to the "day after" question. Anyone remotely serious figure understands that the war in Gaza is the middle of the story, not the end, which makes it unsurprising that Bibi wants to treat it as an end and just close his eyes to what happens in the aftermath. Biden is a more serious person, and so he's actually contemplating these questions. 

Pot Committed

The Israel/Hamas war in Gaza has resumed. Hamas ended the pause with rocket fire into Israel slightly before the expiration of the ceasefire Friday morning (it also conducted a mass shooting in Jerusalem, though I suppose one could argue that was outside the "theater of operations" covered by the ceasefire).

There's no joy in seeing a period of relative calm -- hostages being returned to Israel, humanitarian aid reaching Gazans -- yield to the resumption of hostilities. But I'll admit I was cynical that this ceasefire would last. Indeed, despite the growing intense international pressure on Israel in particular to wrap up its military operation, I thought it was quite likely that they'd see through their campaign to the end (whatever "end" means in this context). A durable ceasefire, in the present moment, always felt out of reach.

Why? For starters, Israel has been quite public that the ceasefire was temporary and that it would resume operations at its conclusion. There was no hiding the ball on that. There's also the fact that most political observers think that Netanyahu is toast the second the war concludes, which obviously gives him a political incentive to drag the war out for as long as possible in the hopes that some deus ex machina will reverse his fortune. Of course, that's contingent on Bibi's willingness to put his own private political interests over the good of his country while indefinitely imperiling millions in the process. Which is to say, obviously Bibi will try to drag the war out for as long as possible.

But aside from all of that, I think the Israeli government may well think that this is their last, best chance to destroy Hamas. As I've written, I think even some relatively hard-bitten "pro-Israel" (and Israeli) observers were stunned at just how quickly the world's sympathy evaporated towards Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 attack (and these were people whom I suspect, if you talked to them on October 6, would have described themselves as hard to surprise on that front). Even though Hamas has promised it will try to conduct October 7-style attacks again and again in the future, it is unlikely that one of those future attacks would give Israel even the limited window for responsive actions it enjoyed this time around -- the turnabout will if anything occur even faster.

Given all that, Israel might calculate that it's now or never. It could conclude that it's already absorbed the brunt of international opprobrium overs its Gaza campaign -- things have already topped out; they won't get worse if the campaign drags on for another month or two (that's the problem with going to the "genocide" accusation too quickly -- you don't have anything to escalate to). The question of destroying Hamas, from Israel's vantage point, was always something like "is the benefit worth the cost in terms of the international reputational consequences that would inevitably flow from the campaign?" But for better or worse, now Israel's already eaten the costs. It's pot committed. So it might as well gain the benefit of destroying Hamas; take some sweet to go with the bitter. After all, it might argue, the only thing worse than wreaking all this devastation on Gaza in the course of destroying Hamas would be to wreak all this devastation on Gaza and not destroy Hamas.

That's the logic on the Israeli side. But it's worth noting (though far fewer do) that Hamas doesn't seem especially interested in an enduring ceasefire either. 

Again, we can start with their own revealed preferences: Hamas broke a ceasefire that existed on October 6, and it was the party that ended the ceasefire that was negotiated at the end of November. It is not acting like a party that feels significant pressure to wind down the conflict.

Beyond that, Hamas' entire mid-term strategy behind October 7, after all, was to bait Israel into an apocalyptic conflict whose inevitable destruction upon the Palestinian population would fixate the world's gaze -- and in that endeavor, October 7 can only be seen as a smashing success for Hamas. A durable ceasefire doesn't help that strategy, it thwarts it -- Hamas needs the scenes of death and devastation in Gaza to rivet international attention and keep the world's eyes on the Palestinian situation. Under normal circumstances, the countervailing pressure on Hamas would be a desire to limit Palestinian casualties, but it's beyond clear that Hamas simply does not care about Palestinian life. The dead are martyrs to the cause, and just as Israel has been clear about its intent to continue the fighting, so too has Hamas been clear about its willingness to sacrifice Palestine's civilian population to its military agenda. And once you take limiting Palestinian misery off the table, what exactly does Hamas gain from a ceasefire?

Moreover, any realistic proposal for getting a durable ceasefire will likely include terms that Hamas will have little interest in accepting. It's not going to return the male, military-age hostages without a lot more than Israel probably is willing to give (it got a 1:3 ratio this time around exchanging the elderly and toddlers for Palestinian security prisoners; it's obviously going to ask for more in the next round and it's equally obvious that Israel will want to give less). Disarmament (as several Arab nations have proposed)? Fat chance it agrees to that. And there's little chance Israel will make its own offerings that will sweeten the deal. I've said from the get-go that Israel cannot, under any circumstances, let "the moral of the story" for 10/7 be that massacring Israeli civilians is a winning Palestinian strategy, which means that Israel couldn't offer a "good deal" to Hamas even if it were hypothetically interested in doing so (which it won't be). Again, given the fact that Hamas doesn't seem especially motivated to pursue a durable ceasefire, these obstacles are likely fatal to the endeavor.

I give the above analysis without any normative endorsement of any party's behavior. There's no joy in a prediction of more weeks or months of violence and death. But I'm not optimistic. The structural dynamics here just aren't good.

Roundup for Reading Days

We've just concluded our semester here at Lewis & Clark -- it's now "reading days" as students prepare for exams. I've already written my exam, so I'm going to use this time to clear some tabs off my browser. It's a roundup!

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My latest article, "Liberal Jews and Religious Liberty," has been published in the N.Y.U. Law Review. It's good -- you should read it!

Standing Together is a joint Jewish-Arab Israeli group with a simple idea: under any future for Israel and Palestine, Jews and Arabs are going to have to live together. So no matter what your plan is for the future of Israel and Palestine, we have to start laying the foundations for mutual co-existence now. In that vein, organizational co-head Sally Abed, a Palestinian feminist socialist, had a message for the way international leftists are talking about current goings-on in Israel and Palestine: "If it's not helping, then shut the fuck up." I already posted a link to this on BlueSky and it basically went viral, but it's worth being memorialized here (and the entire piece is worth reading).

It's not surprising that Arab-Americans are reacting negatively to the Biden administration's policies regarding the Israel/Hamas war, but it may be surprising that more Arab-Americans now identify as Republicans than Democrats. That said, maybe not that surprising -- up through the 1990s, Arab-Americans were a swingy but lean-GOP voting bloc. And that makes sense when you think about it: it's a relatively socially conservative and comparatively affluent community; there's plenty of room for GOP appeal. 9/11 changed things dramatically, and one might think that continued rampant anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia would make the GOP brand toxic today. But between frustration with Democrats' continued pro-Israel stances and a backlash against socially liberal policies, there does seem to be an at least momentary shift back towards the Republican camp. We'll see if it holds through 2024.

I don't speak German so I can't backcheck the cited study, but this post claims that antisemitism is on the rise in Austria's Turkish- and Arabic-speaking communities ... but that rates are actually higher amongst persons who were born in Austria or lived there for some time compared to new immigrant arrivals. So far from validating the "imported antisemitism" narrative, the problem perhaps is that immigrants are assimilating a bit too well into traditional Austrian culture.

A sometimes-overlooked variable in the Israel/Hamas conflict is that most neighboring Arab states are not fans of Hamas either, viewing it as a destabilizing influence. Though Hamas' threat isn't as immediate to them as it is to Israel, it definitely still poses a threat. So there is quiet pressure emerging from Arab nations on Hamas to "disarm before it is destroyed."

Mark Harris is much, much more empathetic towards folks tearing down posters of Israeli hostages than I am, but in some ways that makes this essay -- documenting the sense of abandonment such an act generates amongst the Jews who see it -- even more powerful.

Tom Friedman has a great column from a few weeks ago on the "rescuers" in the Israeli Arab community who helped save their compatriots in the midst of Hamas' 10/7 attack.

I first heard about today's shooting attack in Jerusalem (which killed three civilians) via a social media post which used it to further emphasize the need for a "ceasefire". My first thought was "we're already in a ceasefire"; my second thought was "this demonstrates a problem with a 'ceasefire' -- even if Hamas agrees to it, other armed Palestinian factions won't feel bound." But apparently Hamas actually has claimed responsibility for this attack, so, take from that what you will vis-a-vis the vitality of the ceasefire.

I try not to be an alarmist about campus antisemitism, while simultaneously not being a denialist about its presence. Jews are not perpetually on the verge of mass expulsion, but nor is the entire concept of campus antisemitism a concocted astroturf campaign by bad faith right-wingers. All that said, this account in Rolling Stone (from a current student at Columbia) feels fairly reported and is harrowing.

In the Middle of It All

Shaul Magid has a very interesting, provocative, and thoughtful essay in Religion Dispatches about the current state of affairs in Israel and Palestine -- where it came from, and where it is going. Magid is an author for whom my general orientation is that I rarely agree with everything he says, but always find him worth reading, and so it is here. But one point in particular that he makes that very much resonates is that Hamas' attack on Israel "is not the beginning, nor the end, but as with most things, somewhere in the horrifying middle."

Nothing in geopolitics comes on a fresh slate, and there will always be history trailing behind us (and laid out in front of us). It is not justification or excuse to observe the obvious truth that Hamas' attack did not emerge ex nihilo. The same, of course, goes for the responses to that attack, which also cannot be viewed as wholly discrete, isolated events that can be analyzed and approved of/condemned atomistically. But one thought I keep returning to, as I read both justifications for Israel's campaign against Hamas and calls for that campaign to end in a ceasefire, is that a lot of people seem to think that we're not in the middle, that we could be on the verge of (if we make the right moves, anyway) the end. And in doing so, I think they're skipping past some essential but difficult question about what comes after whatever comes next.

Start with Israel's backers, for whom the call of the day is that things cannot proceed as they did before vis-a-vis Hamas in Gaza. I agree. As I said in my very first post on these atrocities, they were (among other things) a catastrophic failure of Israeli security policy; a complete discrediting of what came before. But before we go into what might change, we need to correctly identify what it is that was "before".

For most of the time following Israel's disengagement from Gaza and Hamas' ensuing takeover of the territory, Israel's policy has been one colloquially dubbed "mowing the lawn." In this metaphor, "the lawn" is Hamas' military capacity and willingness to inflict violence against Israelis across the border. When that capacity/willingness gets too dangerous (the grass grows too high), Israel launches an attack that depletes Hamas' stockpiles of men and munitions (the grass is cut), forcing Hamas to recuperate and recover. As time passes, Hamas inevitably replenishes its stockpiles of weaponry and its willingness to use them (the grass starts growing again), and the cycle repeats itself.

Notice that this policy is not one even aimed at securing a durable peace. It presupposes an ongoing and essentially endless cycle of violence; albeit one controlled at levels that are presumptively tolerable (for Israelis, anyway). That each Israeli attack inevitably will be followed by another one however many months or years later is not a failing of the strategy, it is the point of the strategy (just as it is not a "failure" when mowing the lawn that you'll have to do it again in a few months).

This was the strategy that failed and was decisively discredited on October 7. It is a failure both in its view that an endless cycle of low-grade violence could be kept at "tolerable" levels indefinitely, and in its broader apathy towards actually pursuing something that looks like a just and durable peace.

So now we move to today. The call to "destroy Hamas" is presented as a change from the prior policy of mowing the lawn; it's no longer about temporarily depleting Hamas' capacity to inflict violence, it is a decisive resolution -- the end of the story.

But how is it different, really, from "mowing the lawn"? To be clear, I shed no tears for Hamas' destruction; they're an evil terrorist organization who've inflicted untold misery on Israelis and Palestinians alike. But it's hard to imagine what "destroying Hamas" means in practice. If we're just talking about degrading the actual, social-political-military organization's specific ability to conduct operations, then maybe it's feasible -- but only because another organization will rise to take its place (and if "Hamas" is in 2024 replaced by "Babas" which does all of the same things, what has actually been accomplished?). If the goal is to permanently obliterate the ability of any actor, under any name, in the Gaza Strip to engage in insurgent violence against Israel, then it's not feasible at all -- surely, at this point, we've discredited the notion that Gaza can be bombed into permanent acquiescent quietude vis-a-vis Israel.

Put differently, a call to "destroy Hamas", without more, is just another iteration of mowing the lawn -- cutting the grass shorter, perhaps, but otherwise a repetition of the same failed strategy. It is not an end, it is a middle, and if left to its own devices it will continue the endless immiseration of the Palestinian people in service of eventually leading to another repetition of the terror we saw on October 7. So anyone calling to "destroy Hamas" has to have some plan for what to do afterwards. Those who say "destroy Hamas" and then stop there are committing the fallacy of assuming that "destroying Hamas" is the end of the problem in Israel and Gaza, and that's just obviously untrue.

So what is the "more" I propose? Simple: massive aid and reconstruction for Gaza. I spoke a few days ago of the grimmest silver lining of terrible war sometimes finally yielding a comprehensive peace, and if the terrible war is already upon us, we might as well try to leverage it to get the lasting peace.  Call it realistic, call it an ego-salve, but exploit the opportunity to say "now that Hamas has been destroyed, we can do ...." X, where X is good, humanitarian, reconstructive policies that break the pattern of entrapment and immiseration that has characterized the Gaza Strip for decades. 

There will be plenty of people who resist this; who say "how can you propose giving billions to Gaza after what happened on October 7?" Worse, Hamas -- being a terrorist organization -- isn't as prone to being "destroyed" in the way that, say, a corporation or even a state government could be. It'd likely be impossible to fully obliterate them; there will always be someone with a gun and a commitment to Hamas' ideology running around somewhere.

But my mind returns to the Marshall Plan after World War II, which surely was one of the greatest foreign policy decisions in modern history. No doubt, one could say, no country deserved less in the way of repair and support than Germany after World War II. Yet there's little doubt, comparing the outcome of post WWII to post WWI, that the choice to invest in reconstruction and repair paid off in incalculable dividends. The decision to focus less on retribution ala the Treaty of Versailles -- or, perhaps more accurately, to let "retribution" be in the military defeat and in the Nuremburg Tribunals, not in the post-war occupation of Germany (on the western side, at least) -- and more on creating future conditions of prosperity and fraternity seems, in context, almost impossibly humanistic, and yet it paid off beyond I imagine even the wildest hopes of its architects. If we can do it for Germany in 1946, we can do it for Gaza in 2023. Otherwise, we're just going to relive the same cycle again and again. 

So that has to be the deal: if you're going to destroy Hamas, then once you've declared "mission accomplished" there has to be a commitment to reconstruction. And moreover, one cannot use the impossibility of fully, completely, and in toto destroying Hamas as an excuse to never declare "mission accomplished". There's no universe in which a commitment to reconstruction doesn't take some leap of faith, but that has to be part of the deal.

That's the short-sightedness I see on the pro-Israel side of things. But there's actually something similar happening from those calling for a "ceasefire". Now, ceasefire can mean many things, and at its most literal it can mean nothing more than an intentionally temporary and short-term reprieve of hostilities to permit humanitarian aid to enter and medical and civilian evacuations to proceed without danger. It also can be temporary in the sense of a hope that the objectives which parties might rightfully be able to pursue in war could also be achieved via peaceful negotiation, so we should at least try the latter before (if talks fail) resorting to the former. 

But my sense is that most people calling for a "ceasefire" want something more durable than a few days where aid trucks can go in and out of the territories unmolested. Nor are they, in any realistic sense, hoping that with a few days of conversation Israel will be able to achieve its valid security objectives through a process of negotiation, while recognizing that a military option remains validly on the table. They think that any Israeli military response is inherently unjust and must be opposed, under any circumstances. "Ceasefire" is in some ways a misnomer; the actual demand is something closer to "the international community's position should be a flat rule that Israel is not permitted to pursue any of its security objectives via projection of military power".

A few days ago I wrote about why the call for a cease-fire seemed so futile. The basic thrust of my argument was that (a) Israel existentially cannot allow Hamas to view October 7 as a net victory, and (b) nobody has yet come up with a credible alternative beyond a bruising military response that would prevent Hamas from seeing October 7 as a net victory. An "everyone, go back to your corners" ceasefire would, at this point in time, still be seen by Hamas as it coming out ahead. Horribly, this sense would be amplified, not diminished, the more "ceasefire" is conjoined with new momentum for aid to the Gaza Strip or alleviations of the Israeli blockade -- it would suggest that brutally and shockingly massacring Israeli civilians is the most effective strategy at convincing the international community to come to Palestine's aid. And internalizing that lesson, as I said, really would be an existential threat to Israel -- it's something that the state absolutely cannot allow to happen.

But what I've come to realize over the past few days is that, just as many of Israel's supporters thinking "destroying Hamas" will be the end, rather than the middle, of the story; many of its detractors also think that we could be close to the end. Anyone who went to Hebrew School is familiar with an old saw, repeated ad nauseum in certain circles, that goes "If the Palestinians laid down their weapons there would be no more war; if the Israelis laid down their weapons there would be no more Israel." And it occurs to me that many of the pro-ceasefire commentators genuinely believe this, but in the reverse. They really believe, with absolute, 100% confidence, that if Israel just stands down and turns the other cheek, and presumably does various other pro-Palestine actions (which might include anything from "end the blockade of Gaza" to "permit a right of return for descendants of refugees"), this whole thing will be over. In a sense, Israel has no valid security interests going forward because it always, at any point it chooses, has the immediate and unconditional capacity to end the situation of security threat at its sole discretion.

From that vantage point, proponents of a ceasefire don't have to come up with an "alternative" to military action that will prevent Hamas from viewing October 7 as a net victory, because the whole thing will be moot. It wouldn't matter if Hamas "internalized the message" that brutally and shockingly massacring Israeli civilians is the most effective strategy at convincing the international community to come to Palestine's aid, because they'd have already achieved all that they wanted, and wouldn't have need to resort to that tactic again. We'd be at the end of the story, not the middle.

Framed that way, the logic -- indeed, the moral imperative -- of a ceasefire becomes undeniable. But it all depends on believing, with 100% certainty, that all Hamas wants is whatever boons and succor would result from a ceasefire and any ensuing alleviation of Gaza's humanitarian conditions. That seems unrealistic on two levels. First, of course, a ceasefire could not realistically provide conditions that represent a permanent and durable end to the conflict. But second, it is based off a dogmatic and unsustainable believe that all Hamas wants and all Hamas is fighting for is justice. It fails to take seriously the seemingly undeniable reality that Hamas actually, genuinely wants unjust things vis-a-vis Israeli Jews, and will be inclined to keep fighting in order to attain these unjust ends. It's not all they want, but it is the height of naivete to think that Hamas will be satisfied -- that the story would end -- if only Israel agreed to the demands of justice as conceptualized by western peace activists. And again, that belief is essential to the project, because if we're still in the "horrifying middle", then we do have to think about the risks and consequences of enabling Hamas to view October 7 as a winning strategy, and we do have to figure out what alternative to a military campaign could prevent that being the moral of the story.

That last part is an earnest plea. War is awful in general, and will be especially awful here to innocent Palestinian civilians who are functionally trapped in a zone of active hostilities. Moreover, as alluded to above I'm dubious this war, for all the death and destruction it will ladle onto an already overflowing pile of human misery, will even achieve the (not-so-)modest objective of permanently degrading the ability of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to inflict violence on Israeli civilians. Nobody should be excited for this, nobody should think this is a good thing.

What's needed now is an off-ramp, something that can plausibly induce Israel to not go down a seemingly inexorable path without it being seen as giving Hamas a win. How do we, to alter the sardonic advice given to the U.S. as it found itself stuck in Vietnam, convince Israel to declare victory and then stay home? Keep in mind that, with respect to everything I just said about the strategic necessity of shifting the moral of the story, none of it at all alters the initial set of observations that an Israeli ground campaign in Gaza would be disastrous for Israel, to say nothing of Palestinians. The whole problem is that this terrible option still seems to be "better" than all the alternatives, and if that is to change it will only be if an alternative that successfully convinces Israel that Hamas didn't win and won't perceive itself as having won.

If someone can propose a genuine off-ramp that can credibly avert this calamity, they deserve a Nobel Peace Prize and everyone's support. And I'll say I'm not opposed to a ceasefire that's meant to hold the peace while that solution is generated. But to come up with an alternative, it's necessary to recognize that we're in the middle of the story, not the end. As much as we might like to, we cannot skip to the conclusion.

What Will You Say "No" To?

We are still processing the fallout of the past week's brutal assault by Hamas on southern Israel, a vicious attack whose only tactical objection was the infliction of terror and death on a civilian population. At the moment, it appears that Israel has reestablished control over most if not all of its territory, but the situation remains fluid and the military and government response remains shockingly disorganized. We also don't know yet exactly how Israel plans to respond to Hamas' attack, but few seem to harbor hopes for anything that could be remotely characterized as positive.

Right now, it seems, we sit in the relative calm before -- or more accurately, between -- the storm. And so right now, those of us who rightfully are aghast at Hamas' wanton murder of Israeli civilians, and who've pledged to stand with Israel as a result, must force ourselves to think through a very difficult thought:

What will we say "no" to?

What form of Israeli retaliation or response to Hamas' sadistic campaign of slaughter we will commit to saying we won't support? This is not a roundabout way of saying Israel is not entitled to respond at all; a military response here is warranted and justified. But warranted and justified military responses still carry limits, and it's important to be clear about what those limits are even in the wake of an unimaginable atrocity.

Indeed, I say to those standing with Israel that we need to think about this right now because we just witnessed in real-time a catastrophic failure to grapple seriously with this question on the part of those who've pledge to stand with Palestinians and Palestine. Suddenly forced to decide whether, in the wake of occupation and besiegement, a Palestinian response of "a systemic campaign of house-to-house kidnappings, rapes, and executions" is a valid one, we saw far, far too many individuals unable to say "no" (or at least, say it with any level of decisiveness). This failure stems directly from the tempting broth that assures us that, if the provocation is severe enough and the injury severe enough, no amount of "response" could ever be disproportionate. And so we see that, if you refuse to let yourself think that anything could be "too far", there's no end to the depths of hell you may find yourself apologizing for.

For example, today the Israeli defense minister announced that one response Israel was committing to vis-a-vis Hamas was a "complete siege" upon the Gaza Strip, including a blockade on the delivery of food. Starvation of civilian populations is expressly forbidden as a violation of the laws of war. We can  consequently expect to hear, very shortly, calls from a variety of sources -- perhaps even the U.S. government -- that contravene Israel's announced policy of "complete siege", and insist that Israel cannot be permitted to block the entry of food, water, and medical supplies into the Gaza Strip. And we already know exactly one form of response that will be leveled at such calls: 

"How dare you tell Israel how it can respond to the unspeakable atrocity Hamas just committed? Hamas should have thought about food security in Gaza before it decided to slaughter Israeli civilians en masse! It's up to Hamas to free the hostages and submit to justice for their crimes; until they do that, any civilian deaths brought upon by Israel's blockade are on their heads, not ours."

There will, in short, be immeasurable pressure brought to bear to silence anyone who says "this is too much"; the waving of the bloody shirt of countless dead, dismembered, and abducted Israeli children and daring anyone to stare that bloodshed in the face and say "this is too much" in response.

Which is why it is so important to commit in advance to what we'll say in the thick of that inevitable discourse. If the Biden administration does step out and try to say "this choice -- not every choice, but this choice -- is too far", what will we say in the face of the inevitable backlash? How will navigate the hue and cry of those who are furious -- furious -- that anyone could have the temerity of telling Israel it is going too far? But the truth is that if your answer is to say "I'm sorry, but in this moment, at this time, in this situation, I cannot bring myself to tell Israel what it can and cannot do" -- then you've committed yourself to the same catastrophic failure we saw just days ago of those who could not, in the midst of sickening massacres, bring themselves to tell Palestinians what they could and could not do. It is the same failure of those who could not bring themselves to oppose Japanese internment after Pearl Harbor; the same as those who could not stand up for the rights of Muslims to build Mosques in New York after 9/11. No matter what flag you fly or how you think of yourself, you are cut from identical cloth.

The picture above is of Jacob Argamani. His daughter, Noa, was among those abducted by Hamas militants. Her kidnapping was broadcast, and even the description of it is sickening beyond words. These are the words Jacob spoke the other day, as her daughter's whereabouts remain unknown:

Let us make peace with our neighbors, in any way possible. I want there to be peace; I want my daughter to come back. Enough with the wars. They too have casualties, they too have captives, and they have mothers who weep. We are two peoples to one Father. Let’s make real peace.

If he can say it, then we can say it. But we have to commit to it now.

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.

Lessons from the UN's Failure to Condemn Hamas

A UN General Assembly resolution that would have condemned Hamas for terrorism and incitement was rejected today. The resolution received a majority of votes (87-57, with 36 abstentions), but did not pass after an earlier vote pushed by the Arab League successfully required the resolution to secure a two-third majority.

Some lessons to draw:

• Let's not get too excited about Israel's new "friendship" with Arab states. There's been a lot of talk about Israel's increasingly warm ties with Arab nations, and to be fair, it isn't entirely a mirage. But it hasn't progressed anywhere close to the point where an Arab state is willing to vote to condemn a Palestinian actor in an international forum. American diplomats had sought to pick off at least a few Arab League nations as aye votes -- not only did they not succeed, they didn't even convince these countries to adopt the potentially face-saving route of voting against the resolution while allowing it pass or fail on a majority vote. Push came to shove, and the Arab League continued to stand as a rock-solid wall against anything that looks like it might deviate away from the UN's extreme and reflexive anti-Israel slant.

• Nothing that is viewed as a "victory for Trump" is going to pass easy, particularly when it comes to the Middle East. As much as everyone likes to tout Nikki Haley, miracle-worker, the fact is that the Trump Administration's bull-in-a-china-shop orientation to foreign policy has severely circumscribed its negotiating leverage in international fora. This resolution, had it passed, would have been viewed as a major international triumph for the Trump administration. Nobody wants to give Donald Trump a major triumph in anything right now. In large respect, the failure of this resolution is the fruit of Trump's alienating unilateral recklessness in decisions like the embassy move. Trump-tactics come with a cost, and it's paid in the defeat of resolutions like this.

• Is criticizing Palestine the "last taboo" in international diplomacy? We hear so much about how it's "impossible" or "taboo" to criticize Israel. Clearly, nobody has ever told the UN that -- it criticizes Israel all the time (indeed, sometimes it seems like it literally spends all of its time criticizing Israel). But, as this resolution demonstrates, even a single solitary denunciation of Hamas (not even the Palestinian Authority -- just Hamas!) yields a knockdown, drag-out fight -- and a fight that few are surprised to see Hamas ultimately win. That's a testament to just how sacrosanct and untouchable the United Nation's anti-Israel orientation really is.

• Chile, New Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland (among many others) are weasel states. I mentioned before that the Arab League successfully moved to require that the anti-Hamas resolution require a two-third majority. That vote was extremely close -- it passed by a 75-72 margin, with 26 abstentions. Among the abstaining states were Chile, Norway, New Zealand, and Switzerland -- all of whom proceeded to vote in favor of the resolution they'd just ensured could not pass. Nice try. Even worse than them were states like Argentina, Japan, and the Bahamas, who outright voted in favor of the two-thirds requirement before voting to pass the resolution. Nobody is fooled by this play.

Red Crescent Chief Complains of Hamas Firing From Their Hospitals

The Secretary General of the Red Crescent revealed that Hamas had deliberately fired rockets from Red Crescent medical facilities during the 2014 conflict, prompting retaliation from Israeli forces. Worse, he said that Hamas forces viewed the Red Crescent as spies or undercover agents, and fired upon staff as they were fleeing the area.

The news isn't exactly earth-shattering -- it's long been reported that Hamas used civilian and humanitarian shields during military operations -- but it is interesting both that this charge is now coming from top officials in the Red Crescent and being reported in Arab newspapers (the source about is the The National in the United Arab Emirates).


UPDATE: Elder of Ziyon gives some reasons to doubt the veracity of these reports. What a world we live in, where the UAE accuses Hamas of war crimes against Palestinians and a Zionist blogger throws cold water on the claims!

Are Hamas Rockets "War" or "Terrorism"? Thanks To Insurance, We May Find Out

A lawsuit just filed in California federal district court seeks to determine whether Hamas rocket fire in 2014 is an act of "war" or "terrorism".

Was the suit filed by human rights advocates? Survivors of the violence? Maybe an international NGO?

Nope. It was filed by the USA network against its insurance company. You see, USA was filming a series in Israel that was interrupted due to the rocket fire. It claimed coverage under its policy, which was denied as the policy excluded losses stemming from "war or warlike action". But it does not exclude losses incurred due to terrorism, and the network contends that is the proper descriptor of Hamas' activities.

I have no legal commentary to provide -- I'm just darkly amused that this very important issue (as a rhetorical matter, if nothing else) may well gain legal resolution due to an insurance claim.

Hamas Arrests Mortar Team

Hamas has reportedly arrested a cell which fired a mortar into Israel yesterday, breaching an agreed-upon ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. And hey, good for them. I know I should have some snarky comment, or at least some cynical statement about how they're just biding their time yadayada, but you know what? We can't ask them to do things like this and then grope for reasons why it doesn't matter when they follow through. I'll curse their sudden-but-inevitable betrayal when it happens, but for now? Good on them.

UPDATE: ... or not?

When the Chips Are Down

The ongoing conflict in Syria has created a new Palestinian refugee problem, as Palestinians (and other minority groups) have been among the most vulnerable and heavily impacted by the ongoing brutal civil war. Refugees have began pouring into Jordan and Lebanon, but both countries' support for Palestinians in other countries notoriously exceeds the hospitality they display to Palestinians in their own borders. Facing an escalating crisis, the UN has asked that the Palestinian Authority (West Bank) and Hamas (Gaza) take in some of their compatriots themselves.

Both refused. The PA's excuse is at least facially reasonable: they don't have any money. But Hamas gives a different reason: rescuing these Palestinians now, you see, would denigrate any "right of return" claims they have against Israel later. I'd say these Palestinians are only useful to Hamas as a bargaining chip against Israel, except that Hamas has no interest in striking a bargain: Palestinians living abroad have precisely one role to play in Hamas' vision of Palestinian nationalism: a human wave to wash away the Jewish state. If they can't serve that function, they have no value and Hamas couldn't care less about them. It's that simple.

Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore Meets Tommy Hilfiger

Gaza manufactuers have created a new perfume scent named "M-75", after the rockets Hamas shot into Israel during the last flare-up of violence. The director of the manufacturing company says it serves as the "smell of victory" over Israel, and customers seem to agree. One tourist from neighboring Egypt bought thirty vials and said "I hope the smell is strong enough for them to whiff in Tel Aviv and remind the Jews of the Palestinian victory." Charming.

Iowa Reveals the GOP's Anti-Israel Slant

For the past few years, Republicans have incessantly attempted to argue that Barack Obama -- one of the most authentically Zionist politicians America has ever seen -- is "anti-Israel". It was always a laughable claim. But it's more so given the three Republican candidates who finished in an essential dead-heat for first place amongst Iowa Caucus voters: Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul. None of them can lay a strong claim to being "pro-Israel", and two of them I think have to be considered actively antagonistic to Israel's perpetuation as a Jewish, democratic state.

Start with Mitt Romney. Romney famously declared that Obama "threw Israel under the bus" because he said a peace agreement should be based on 1967 borders. I remain baffled by what other basis there might be for a two-state solution (The partition plan? Drawing straws?), and I doubt Romney has any better idea, because I doubt Romney actually knows or cares that much about Israel's longevity.

But you know what? Spot them Romney. Let's just look at Paul and Santorum. Paul is an easy case -- his own aides admit he's been anti-Israel, and belated efforts to describe his isolationist foreign policy as the most pro-Israel act of all notwithstanding, few in the Jewish community see him as a friend.

That leaves Santorum, who is filling the niche of this year's Mike Huckabee. And like Huckabee, Santorum has come out as a one-stater, proclaiming that everyone currently residing between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean is an "Israeli" and thus the West Bank should be part of Israel, permanently. Since all Israelis must presumably be given equal rights of suffrage (among other things), this will render Israel's Jewish majority precarious at best and likely lead to its demise as a Jewish state.

He joins folks like Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) as part of the Hamas wing of the Republican Party, as the radical one-state policies they espouse bear far more in common with the ambitions of the Islamist terrorist movement than they do those of any Israeli government or serious political party. And what we've seen is that, amongst Republican voters, this sort of outlook -- one that is fundamentally apathetic, at best, towards Israel's long-term survival as a Jewish, democratic state -- is overwhelmingly popular.

ZOA: Honoring One-Staters and Anti-Semites Alike

The Zionist Organization of America is having its annual gala, and the theme seems to be "revealing ourselves to be a parody". Their first award went out to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. You may remember the good Representative from such pro-Israel actions as kneecapping efforts to improve relations between Israel and Cuba, apparently on the theory that what Israel needs most of all is more countries for it to be in an inexorable state of hostility. During her speech, Ros-Lehtinen proceed to hop into one-stater land, declaring that building settlements is "not an impediment, that’s the solution." The solution to what problem, exactly? Oh yes, the problem of a two-state solution where the same nation is not in control of Tel Aviv and Nablus. Which, in turn, can be recharacterized as the problem of there existing a Jewish, democratic state at all. Ros-Lehtinen and ZOA are now official members of the Hamas wing of the "pro-Israel" camp.

Oh, but it gets better. The next honoree was none other than Glenn Beck. The Forward informs us that part of the reason for his award was Beck's flagrantly anti-Semitic attacks on George Soros, so it is good to see that the ZOA also endorses that sort of behavior. Beck, for his part, went on one of his typical reality-deprived tirades about how the status of Jews is more precarious now than it was in 1939. Such a serious organization they're running.

Welcome Home, Gilad Shalit

After five years in captivity, Cpl. Gilad Shalit has returned home. Shalit's capture revealed some very dark things about a certain segment of pro-Palestinian activists (not to mention about Hamas, which held in violation of international law and basically incommunicando for the past five years), and his redemption from captivity is a joyous day. Even though there are reasons to be concerned about the utility of the deal that released him (and reasons to view it optimistically, as I'll explain below). But today is a day for happiness.

Still, it is important to try and tease out the implications of the prisoner exchange. The main argument against it, here made by Ilya Somin, is that by releasing Hamas prisoners Israel incentivizes future like kidnappings, thus causing a net loss. This, of course, is the standard reasoning behind a firm "don't negotiate with terrorists" position. And it's not exactly a stretch of a supposition -- various Palestinians, from Hamas officials to some of the released prisoners (this one a woman who tried to detonate a bomb after being admitted to Israel for medical treatment) -- have made just this claim (compare to Shalit, who upon release said of Palestinian prisoners: "I would be happy if they are released, on condition that they stop fighting against Israel.").

One could say this is Hamas exploiting an Israeli weakness. And in a sense, this is true -- but that is always the case when a terrorist organization is fighting a democracy. It is the same principle behind locating forces in residential areas and wearing civilian clothes -- it takes advantage of Israel's aversion to killing civilians and attempts to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Moral constraints often come at the expense of pure utilitarian concerns, and a clever (and amoral) enemy can exploit that. Still, one hopes that the adherence to norms of human dignity and solidarity can provide benefits of their own. The Israeli Supreme Court's mantra always stuck with me:

This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day, they strengthen its spirit and its strength and allow it to overcome its difficulties.

The fact of the matter is that -- some blustery rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding -- Israel does negotiate with terrorists. It knows that, and Hamas knows that. And that means that any time Hamas has an Israeli captive, they have leverage over Israel. Yesterday, they had such a captive. Today, they don't. And even if they try and get another one, there is a window of time that just opened where Israel is in a stronger negotiating position than it was before, and I'm hopeful that will lead to good things.

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Hamas)

Freshman Republican Representative Joe Walsh (R-IL) has introduced a resolution endorsing any Israeli annexation of the West Bank. In doing so, he explicitly promoted a "one state" solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:

Walsh asserted that "there is no such thing as a two-state solution, and no such thing as land for peace. The ultimate peace is going to come through annexation, through Israel having sovereignity over the whole land, from the Mediterranean to Jordan."

Hamas could scarcely say it better. A one-state solution ends up with a huge Palestinian minority; likely an eventual Palestinian majority. At which point they vote to rename "Israel" "Palestine", abolish the state's Jewish character, and in all probability inaugurate all sorts of illiberal and discriminatory legislation against Jewish residents.

I've noted before that Walsh is no friend of Israel or the Jews. And here we see proof of that. Walsh is advocating nothing less than the end of Israel, the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish democratic homeland. It renders him arguably the most overtly anti-Israel Congressman since Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), and the Jewish community should let him hear it.

Gaza Students Prevented from Studying in the US

A group of Gaza students with scholarships to study in America were prevented from leaving the Gaza Strip. This is part of a larger effort by the governing authority to crack down on academic freedom and independent civil society in the Palestinian territories, and just another minor indignity and human rights violation Palestinian children must endure ....

Oh, wait -- it was Hamas' decision. Well, never mind.

(But, to be clear, the part about it being one piece of a larger effort to crackdown on independent civil society is absolutely true. Hamas has recently taken several steps to tighten its grip on all aspects of life in the Gaza Strip, with independent NGOs and aid groups being the primary targets).

UPDATE: Speak of the devil, Hamas also has been notably sanguine about Syria's shelling of Palestinian civilians in refugee camps as part of the anti-uprising crackdown.