Watch Your Six
Hamas. Iran and its other proxies. Social networks and other digital narratives about who is good and who is evil. The intellectual/philosophical struggle between the international progressive movement and Israel. The settlers inside Israel and the occupied territories. Divisions among Jewish citizens inside Israel itself. Tom Friedman argues that those are the elements of Israel’s six front war, a struggle that can only be won “if Israel — and the United States — can assemble a global alliance. Unfortunately, Israel today has a prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a ruling coalition that will not and cannot produce the keystone needed to sustain such a global alliance. That keystone is to declare an end to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the overhaul of Israel’s relations with the Palestinian Authority so that it becomes a credible, legitimate Palestinian partner than can govern a post-Hamas Gaza and forge a broader two-state solution including the West Bank.” NYT (Gift Article): Israel: From the Six-Day War to the Six-Front War. “I believe that some elements of that progressive movement, which I realize is big and diverse, have lost their moral bearings on this issue … For an intellectual community seemingly concerned about nations occupying other nations and denying their right to self-rule, you don’t see a lot of progressive college campus demonstrations against the biggest oppressing power in the Middle East today: Iran.”
+ Pro Palestinian rights? Hell yes. Pro two-state solution? Yes. Against airstrikes killing innocent people in Gaza. That’s not a hard case to make. Think the expanding settlements in the West Bank are wrong? Me too. Can’t stand Bibi. Same here. Pro Hamas? Crazy. Unthinkable. Indefensible. Bernard-Henri Lévy on the protests in Paris (though it could be about the protests on US college campuses, too). The Protests of Fools. “Antisemitism, it was once said, is the socialism of fools. Today it is Hamasism that reproduces that same criminal imbecility—making these protests an offense to the republican spirit.”
+ “The Hamas terrorists would train at the border fence nonstop, Desiatnik told Kan. At first, it was once a week, then once a day, and then nearly constantly.” Surveillance soldiers warned of Hamas activity on Gaza border for months before Oct. 7.
+ Ian Bremmer on what Israel should (and shouldn’t) do next. “I fully understand and share Israel’s desire to destroy the terrorist organization that is Hamas. Israel has every right to defend itself and retaliate against attacks on its citizens. But just because this objective is understandable, legitimate, and desirable, it does not mean it is feasible or strategically wise. There is no military way for Israel to fully destroy Hamas without killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and radicalizing even more. An invasion of Gaza would be a humanitarian, moral, and strategic catastrophe, not only inflicting unfathomable human costs but also badly undermining Israel’s long-term security. Nothing it can hope to achieve – beyond satisfying Israeli demands for revenge – can outweigh the harm it is certain to do even in the best of scenarios.”
