Current Events: Israel At War October 15

Current Events, Episode 158

israel at war, EXPLAINeD

what happened

BLOG VERSION below | PODCAST VERSION HERE

Unimaginable savagery in the worst attack on the Jewish People since the Holocaust. It's a declaration of war by Hamas, the genocidal group dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel. What's going on? How did we get here? What's next?

I know that this is supposed to be the podcast that explains things. That mostly puts aside the editorializing and visceral emotions to dive into the history of “why this” and “what that” and “how come” and “when did”. That cuts through the noise around Israel to offer a clear narrative based on history and facts and figures and sober analysis. For better or for worse, that appears to be the particular brand of this podcast.

Right now, that’s hard. My knowledge of history is overwhelmed by my emotional state. We have experienced the worst assault on the Jewish People since the Holocaust. It isn’t captured just in the numbers of people killed but in the atrocities that have been visited upon them. Horrors which are both unspeakable, and yet must be spoken of so that the world can see what they are doing to us. Soldiers burned alive. Parents executed in front of their children. Babies stabbed to death. Girls raped next to the dead bodies of their friends. Children as hostages. Prisoners paraded through the streets as trophies. People celebrating, justifying, excusing. The stuff of nightmares in broad daylight. And it’s not even close to being over. Now it’s the daily drumbeat of 19, 20, 21 year old soldiers killed in battle. The black and white images of the Holocaust that we’ve grown up are now filled in with color. All that we were warned about is laid bare before us again.

So today, all I can promise is to try to dig into convoluted chessboard of where we’re at. Hamas and Hezbollah and Gaza and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Benjamin Netanyahu. All the geopolitics and the why now and the what’s going to happen next and what does this all add up to.

But while we’re talking about the history and geopolitics, what has happened in Israel these past few days transcends all sense of reason and humanity. There is no rational explanation that can make sense of this cruelty and savagery. Words like “genocide” and “brutality” and “medieval” don’t suffice. Sure, I’ll give you some of the history today, but it’s important for me that you also understand that there can be no coming to terms with these monsters, who must be so completely destroyed that they can never rise again. That in short order we will only speak of them in the past tense, because they no longer exist, their names obliterated, their ideology mercilessly dismantled.

This was not about geopolitics. Or the cycle of violence. Or the occupation. Or the sanctity of the mosque in Jerusalem or the aspirations of the Palestinian people. This is about Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and their supporters declaring that Jews should not live in this world, even unto the smallest of infants. We have no choice but to win. It is up to Israel to decide the best way to win this war, however bloody and horrible and nasty it is going to be. I criticize the Israeli government far more to my friends than I do in this podcast. But make no mistake. I stand with Israel.

In Hebrew, the word “nation” is spelled the same as the word “with.” Pronounced Am and Im. The idea being that to belong to a nation of people is to be with them. United together. A shared fate. A covenant given at Mt. Sinai that applies to everyone who counts him or herself amongst the People of Israel. We say, Am Yisrael Chai, the People of Israel live. It’s a rallying cry and a promise and a declaration and an act of defiance. Am Yisrael Chai.

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There’s a story going around about a 25 year-old woman named Inbar Lieberman, who is part of the security team for Kibbutz Nir Am, located next to the border with Gaza. On Saturday, October 7, she heard explosions and quickly realized that something major was happening. Racing to the kibbutz’s armory, she distributed guns to a dozen kibbutzniks and then positioned them at key spots around the village. For the next four hours they fought off Hamas. Inbar killed five terrorists herself; the kibbutzniks at least another twenty. Nir Am was saved.

What was happening was a massive invasion of southern Israel by Hamas, the terrorist group that runs the Gaza Strip. Over the course of more than a day, Hamas rampaged through 22 Israeli cities, towns, and army bases, butchering more than — so far — 1,200 people. At least 150 were brought back into Gaza as hostages, their fate currently unknown. It was the single worst surprise attack in Israel’s history, the worst intelligence failure, the worst security failure. In its scale, it may lay claim to the worst terrorist attack in history. In a population comparison, the number of dead in Israel is equivalent to some 40,000 Americans. Imagine that in a single day and you start to get the scope of what Israelis are dealing with. They understand this not as an act of terrorism but as a declaration of war.

So who is in this war? What do we need to talk about? Like multiple highways coming together on a single bridge, it’s going to take a few episodes to pull apart the main lanes, overpasses, under bridges, and on- and off-ramps that have everyone arriving at the same place. I can’t cover everything, but let’s take a quick look at our chessboard:

First is Israel. And by Israel what I want to talk about is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Every Israeli I talk to says that he’s done for. The politician who promised that he was the only one who can keep Israel safe has presided over the worst attack in its history. But more than that is that this attack has revealed the complete failure of his strategy to deal with Hamas and the Palestinians up to now. We’ll get into it.

Then there is Hamas. This is a genocidal terrorist group whose explicit goal has always been the complete elimination of Israel, the death of every Jew in the Middle East, and the creation of an Islamic fundamentalist Palestinian state on top of the ruins. Hamas governs the Gaza Strip.

Gaza [link to map]. This is the small strip of Mediterranean coastline that borders both southern Israel and Egypt. It was occupied by Israel from 1967 until 2005, but since then has been 100% Palestinian. Both Israel and Egypt have imposed a harsh blockade since Hamas took it over in 2006. Ever since Hamas has used its territory as a platform to attack Israel.

The Palestinian Authority. Also known as Fatah. Arch rivals to Hamas. This is the group that runs the West Bank, which Israel still partially occupies. They are utterly corrupt and incompetent, and led by an ailing 87 year-old president who hasn’t held an election since 2005. But the PA is also moderate and officially rejects violence against Israel, preferring instead to cooperate on security matters. They are generally hated by the Palestinians.

You’ve been hearing about Hezbollah. This is another fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organization dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel. They partially control Lebanon, and are stacked along Israel’s northern border. They are vastly more powerful militarily than Hamas, and have been threatening to jump into this war.

Iran. Iran effectively controls both Hamas and Hezbollah with money, weapons, and support. It uses those two groups as a proxy army to attack Israel. Iran is not Arab, but it wants to control the entire Middle East. It’s trying to build nuclear weapons because that will give them cover to act however they want without fear of retaliation. In that it has two powerful enemies: Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is another severe Islamic state, but of the opposite sect of Iran. It has long been an official enemy of Israel, but that has been changing in recent years as both countries recognized their common foe in Iran. It’s become clear in recent months that the two countries, with the United States’ help, are nearly at the point of formally making peace. That’s a disaster for Iran.

So this is our field for now. Today I want to get into the Israeli side of the equation. Next episode I’ll do Hamas, Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Then another episode on the bigger geopolitics around Iran and Saudi Arabia, and maybe some other stuff.

But whatever are my criticisms of Israel to follow, there is no justification, excuse, or explanation for these sadistic horrors. Whatever mistakes Israel has made, it is up against a genocidal regime that seeks its total destruction without compromise. That doesn’t leave Israel with a whole lot of choices.

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So let’s talk about Israel. Israelis cannot fathom how this colossal failure happened, how the entire system designed to keep them safe so completely collapsed. How did Israel’s famous intelligence service miss this? How come the military was so unable to respond to the attack? Why did it take so long for the politicians to get organized?

No doubt there are lots of intersecting answers. Israel over-relied on its high-tech border fence, neglecting its weaknesses. There was hubris and a lack of imagination, the belief that Hamas could never stage this kind of attack and, if they tried, that the military would instantly beat them back. There was the movement of troops from the Gaza area to the West Bank, in order to support the settler patrons of Netanyahu’s right-wing government. This left the Gaza area undermanned.

And there is the government. Desperate to stay in power, Netanyahu stacked his government with the only people who would support him: ultra-nationalists, religious zealots, anti-Arab racists, and outright criminals. He has enabled them to pursue a political agenda that has torn apart the nation’s cohesion and solidarity. That has included a crisis in military morale and readiness, which the government has repeatedly dismissed as the work of leftist traitors.

No doubt more reasons will come to light. But at the end of the day, responsibility for the Israeli side of things is with the man at the top, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has made the single worst miscalculation in Israeli history, which is that he could do business with Hamas in Gaza, undermine the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and make peace with the Arab states without having to create a Palestinian state that is anathema to his right-wing base. Huge gamble, and he was utterly wrong.

The Palestinian areas of the West Bank [link to map] are controlled by the Palestinian Authority. As I mentioned, it is corrupt and hated by the Palestinians, and hasn’t held elections since 2005. But it’s also the most moderate of the Palestinian groups out there and it generally rejects violence. In other words, it’s the worst partner for peace except for all the others. But Netanyahu and his right-wing base don’t want to see the creation of a Palestinian state. So his goal in the West Bank is to keep the Palestinian Authority strong enough to govern the Palestinians so that Israel doesn’t have to. But also keep the PA weak enough that it can’t provide the level of stability and prosperity that would move the peace process forward. This keeps things humming along in perpetual limbo, moving neither forwards nor backwards.

But Netanyahu took a different approach in Gaza. He didn’t want to undermine Hamas so much that they would lose control of the territory. Why? Two big reasons. One is that Hamas controls the terrorists, so can prevent attacks against Israel. And two, Hamas is so obviously not a partner for peace that it provides the excuse Netanyahu needs not to pursue the creation of a Palestinian state. So what Israel did was basically buy off Hamas. So for instance, the senior Israeli diplomat Nimrod Novak writes that Israel allowed millions of dollars to flow to Hamas from Qatar, allowed thousands of Gazans into Israel for work every day, increased the amount of water and electricity coming in from Israel, and more. With the deal being that Hamas would prevent attacks on Israel. And because the two million people in Gaza benefitted from this, Netanyahu bet that they would make sure Hamas held to the deal. But as Novik points out, Israel missed the part where Hamas cares more about inflicting pain on Israel than it does about meeting the needs of the people it governs. Netanyahu thought he could successfully manage this by smacking Hamas back a notch every time they did launch attacks on Israel. He was very, very wrong.

Add to all this the ultra-extremists government that Netanyahu has allowed to flourish. These people have backed up their rhetoric of hate with actual support for extremist settlers who have visited their own acts of criminality and terrorism against Palestinians in the West Bank. Nothing even remotely approaching what Hamas just did, but let’s not be shy about calling out our own bad apples. Netanyahu has failed miserably, and he’s failed in the one area that he always boasts he is the best at: keeping Israel safe.

This is just scratching the surface. And whatever we can say about Israel, the Palestinians have their own faults. And, ultimately, the genocidal regime of Hamas that will stop at nothing to completely destroy Israel. This has forced Israel to faced one of the greatest challenges in its history: now what?

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Israel has to consider so many calculations of response that you have to be a mathematician to parse them all out. The biggest is whether or not to invade Gaza with ground troops. I’m posting this on Sunday, October 15, and so far it looks like Israel is getting ready to invade, but hasn’t yet.

Israel has declared its goal to completely eliminate Hamas. To do that, it has to invade, because Hamas is hiding in bomb shelters out of reach of Israel’s air strikes. There’s no other way to get them than to root them out house-to-house, bunker-to-bunker.

But that is exactly what Hamas wants. They have prepared for years to make an invasion of Gaza as miserable as possible. This involves two things: ensuring that Israel will lose huge number of its own soldiers. And two, ensuing that Israel will kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible, since that will lose Israel all of its international sympathy. Israel hasn’t invaded yet and we’re already seeing both these things happening. Israel has lost over 200 soldiers so far, a staggering number that will certainly climb much higher. And Hamas claims that thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed, blaming Israel for atrocities.

Here’s the calculation that Israel faces. It knows that a certain mosque is filled with weapons. Hamas know that Israel will bomb it. So they make sure that civilians are trapped inside or in the buildings next door, using them as human shields. If Israel therefore shies away from bombing the mosque, Hamas gets to use its weapons against Israeli civilians. If Israel bombs the mosque anyway, Hamas gets to accuse Israel of war crimes. Either way, Hamas wins, either the military victory or the court of public opinion. They are perfectly happy to sacrifice Palestinian civilians to make Israel look bad. And Israel, which does not deliberately target civilians, is forced to choose between Palestinian lives and Israeli lives.

So while Israel has demanded that Palestinian civilians leave northern Gaza to make room for what we can assume is an invasion, Hamas has placed roadblocks to prevent a mass exodus. And Israel has been condemned for creating a humanitarian disaster. It’s all designed so that Israel cannot possibly win. If it attacks Gaza without warning civilians away, it gets accused of war crimes. If it does warn civilians away, it still gets accused of war crimes. And if it therefore does not attack these targets, Hamas gets to use those weapons against Israel.

Plenty of commentators are therefore calling on Israel not to invade. Writing in the Atlantic, the scholar Hussein Ibish says its a trap. And they are right. It is a trap, and Israel knows that it is. But it is looking at no good choices here. Hussein Ibish and others suggest there are other ways: that restraint now might lead to better outcomes in the long-term. That there are ways — though they don’t specify what those are — to attack Hamas without harming Palestinian civilians. That ending the occupation will end the threat of terrorism.

Maybe these commentators are right. But from Israel’s standpoint, allowing Hamas to remain in place now is a direct and dire threat to Israeli life. Because Hamas isn’t going to stop. Ever. They are dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel, whatever Israel does or does not do with respect to the occupation.

So make no mistake, Israel is in a terrible position. The Economist summed it up well. “Israel has no good options: occupation is unsustainable, a Hamas government is unacceptable; rule by its rival, Fatah, is untenable; an Arab peacekeeping force is unattainable; and a puppet government is unimaginable. If Israel destroys Hamas in Gaza and pulls out, who knows what destructive forces will fill the vacuum left behind?”

In Tel Aviv, Noam Tibon a retired general, saw that his son and his family were trapped by terrorists in their home at Kibbutz Nahal Oz. Noam grabbed his handgun and he and his wife raced south into the fighting. He first rescued survivors from the music rave and drove them out of danger. Then he rescued injured soldiers and drove them away, too. Finally he corralled a small squad and burst into Nahal Oz. They killed the Hamas terrorists and rescued the family. His 3 year-old daughter said, “We are safe. Grandpa saved us.”

Some people murder children, others save them. Jewish survival has been our act of resistance for millennia. Hopefully the world will join Israel to once and for all remove Hamas from the face of the earth. If not, Israel will do it itself. It’s going to be a long and bloody road. Israel will prevail because it must. As Ukraine defines the front lines of democracy and human freedom, in Israel now runs the front lines of humanity itself, between the world that values life and the world that glorifies death. Am Yisrael Chai, the Jewish People live.

This episode we talked about Israel. Next, Hamas, Gaza, and Hezbollah. I’ll put out another episode soon, as fast as I can write it. Thanks for listening everyone. L’hitra’ot - see you later.