How does it end? I have been asking myself this question since 7 October 2023. In January, three months into the State of Israel’s War on Gaza, I mused, “This is the eleventh entry in my Gaza Journal, and I could never have believed, when I began, that I would still be writing and publishing it, and I cannot now imagine a time when I will stop.” That was the week when the official death toll in Gaza topped 22,000.
It has become clear that the Israeli government has no clear answer, nor does it particularly seem to want one. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his gang keep talking about “the complete destruction of Hamas” as the IDF remains bogged down and facing significant resistance from the Al-Qassam Brigades. And it is beyond the realm of rational belief that the rage at Israeli brutality which has sustained Hamas for decades will be somehow appeased by ore Israeli brutality. Every Israeli bomb is a recruiting poster for the Al-Qassam Brigades.
Netanyahu might be a craven man, but he is not stupid. No politician could have survived 36 years in the Knesset, almost half of that time as prime minister, without great intelligence, or at least cunning, and the gift of realism. He must know that “the complete destruction of Hamas” is simply not realistic or, for that matter, a real goal, and thus the State of Israel is fighting a war that it can never win.
While an argument might be made, moreover, that the State of Israel’s initial counteroffensive on 7 October 2023 had the specific, and attainable, goal of repulsing the Hamas attack and securing Israeli borders, as a “special home front situation,” that objective had been achieved within three days. Thus, any military action subsequent to that date is not, strictly speaking, defensive. One must wonder if, in making “the complete destruction of Hamas” (an unattainable goal) the point of Israeli military operations in Gaza, the intentions of Netanyahu and his gang are to ensure that they do not end.
There has been a great deal of ink spilled and verbiage expectorated about Israeli plans to develop beachfront properties and fully annex Gaza, necessitating the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Yet, despite the popularity of this idea on the Israeli right, and especially among messianic Zionists, I find it extremely unlikely. Israeli political culture is founded on the idea of “promise,” and a promise only exists until it is fulfilled. Netanyahu’s whole political appeal is based on his ability to dangle promises ahead of Israelis without ever fulfilling them – and he knows this.
Remember the introduction of the rhetoric of “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the Occupied Territories (itself a fascinating admission, in fact), or the almost-announcement of the full Israeli Anschluss of the West Bank four years ago? This is the politics of promise. Netanyahu has managed to retain his position in Israeli politics, and to avoid prosecution for the career of corruption that maintained his family’s riches, precisely by not fulfilling his promises. He expertly keeps Israelis in that plateau phase of buzzing expectation with no possibility of resolution and thereby remains the essential figure in the country’s national life. And Israelis take it because, once committed, they can’t step away, and the payoff of the happy ending is just so inviting.
The problem facing Netanyahu is that he cannot agree to a ceasefire, lest he reveal weakness and give up the only thing keeping him in power, let alone to Palestinian statehood, which the Knesset voted to reject this week. Nor can the IDF win in Gaza, according to the goal he has set. And despite the refrain about “this land is our land” that has become so common in Zionist circles – including diaspora liberal Zionist circles – Netanyahu has no compelling reason to satisfy that desire, ever.
So, the war goes on, and will go on. The price, for the State of Israel, is cheap – 325 Israeli soldiers to date, and soon 40,000 Palestinians who have no value in the Israeli calculus – and can be sustained indefinitely. The latter will live in unceasing and unimaginable misery forever, and there will always be enough of the former to have new names to refresh Yom HaZikaron services. The no win-no lose war is a win-win for Netanyahu and, to be honest, for Israelis broadly.
Of course, the State of Israel has become increasingly isolated diplomatically, and is fast becoming a global pariah. While this is true, one has to wonder how that could bring an end to the killing. Even if the ICJ rules that the State of Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza (and I suspect that it will), how does that alter the equation? Netanyahu, or whoever succeeds him will shrug it off and denounce the decision as antisemitism (to the dutiful bovine nods of diaspora Zionists).
There are no means by which the international community can press the State of Israel, except by using their own domestic policies. The United States, Canada, Great Britain, Europe, and everyone else can complain and condemn, but they are loathe to impose sanctions on Israeli companies when they are Monday.com and Wix, and even less inclined to impose sanctions on American (and other countries’) companies deeply invested in the State of Israel, when they are Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and Google. Nor should we expect them to, especially since I know of no BDSer who has thrown away their iPhone and laptop.
The leaders of the State of Israel have shown themselves perfectly willing and able to shoulder the stigma of pariah-hood and, in fact, it plays very well into the deeply-rooted victim ideology that drives Israeli political culture. “If everyone hates us,” the Israeli reasons, “it must be because they are wrong, and we are right.
So this horrific, brutal, obscene war will go on as long as it suits Benjamin Netanyahu and the State of Israel.
How does it end? I might ask. It doesn’t.
21 July 2024
***
Remember that temporary pier that President Biden announced in the State of the Union Address last March that would “receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters” to help ease the suffering of Gaza? Yeah, that one. Today, after less than three weeks of operation, the US Navy announced that they were shutting it down and dismantling it forthwith.
One might be excused for concluding that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has passed and that there was no further need for large quantities of aid in Gaza. That, certainly, was what the American commander of the project would have us think. “Our assessment is that the temporary pier has achieved its intended effect to surge a very high volume of aid into Gaza and ensure that aid reaches the civilians in Gaza in a quick manner,” US Navy Vice Admiral Brad Cooper told reporters on Wednesday. (Not that Brad Cooper.)
Yet, thousands are still dying in Gaza, at an average of almost 1,000 per week, and more than two million Gazans – most of the population – are displaced. Just last month, U.N. World Food Program deputy director Carl Skau said that food stocks in South Gaza are dangerously depleted. “It’s hot, the sanitation situation is just terrible, he continued. “We were driving through rivers of sewage. And it’s a public health crisis in the making.”
Yet, the United States is confident that everything is hunky dory, and the Navy can roll up its pier and go home after less than three weeks. Admiral Cooper reassured the world that the job of supplying Gaza can be done more efficiently using Israeli ports instead of the unreliable and accident-prone temporary pier. Yet, that ignores the fact that one of the main arguments for a temporary pier in the first place was that the Israelis could not be counted on to let supplies through to Gaza in the first place. Besides, the majority of Gaza’s population has migrated south, meaning that the only practical border crossing is at Rafah, through Egyptian territory.
See the problem?
Not that the Admiral is likely to lose any sleep over it, or his Commander-in-Chief for that matter. The temporary pier was only ever meant to be window dressing to allow President Biden to claim that he was doing something to help ease the suffering of Gaza without calling for a ceasefire. This, even though the only thing that can conceivably relieve the misery of Gaza is, in fact, a ceasefire. The massacres of the last weeks have shown that the State of Israel fully has both the capability and willingness to escalate the suffering as a high as it can go.
Is a ceasefire possible? Yes. Is it likely? No. And the bland indifference with which the United States announced that it was just giving up, reported below the fold of the inside pages of your favorite newspaper (or its digital equivalent) is only evidence that Washington doesn’t care one way or the other.
17 July 2024
***
I had a revealing exchange with a Canadian Zionist in social media the other day. They denounced the Prime Minister of Canada for being anti-Israel, and I asked why, considering that the Canadian government’s military support for the State of Israel has continued, despite its warnings otherwise this spring. And I noted that Prime Minister Trudeau has defended the State of Israel’s “right to self-defense” (a “right” of which I have become very skeptical). How, I asked, can this be considered “anti-Israel?”
“Because Prime Minister Trudeau keeps calling for a ceasefire, peace and, eventually, Palestinian statehood.”
I had to let this sink in for a while; the implications were earthshaking. If advocating for peace is “anti-Israel,” then Israel must be war; if calling for Palestinian statehood is “anti-Israel,” then the State of Israel must be the antithesis of the principle of the right of self-determination – the principle upon which the Zionist project was always based. None of this was, or is, surprising, of course, what is earthshaking is the fact that a presumably literate adult is able not only to maintain these contradictions in her mind, but to passionately advocate for them without collapsing into a foaming mess of cognitive dissonance.
We have truly entered a non-rational age.
15 July 2024