I have read Andrew Sullivan for years. His warnings about woke culture infecting every aspect of American life were profound. "We all Live on Campus Now," was one of the best columns ever written. He is also an antisemite. Not because he dislikes Jews. Bari considers herself his friend. He is an antisemite because he does hold Israel to a higher standard than any other nation, including his nation of birth (UK) and his adopted home (US). At no time does Andrew ever come up with a solution that doesn't include the eventual destruction of Israel and at no time does he ever hold the Palestinians in general responsible for their own situation.
I find it interesting that those who support Hamas (not saying Andrew does) keep telling us that nothing happens in a vacuum. That is true. The war that the Palestinians have waged against the existence of a Jewish state goes back well over 100 years. Back to before the existence of the Palestine mandate and definitely to the Palestinian leader Haj Amin el Husseini and his rabid support of Nazism. Pogroms, slaughter, rape and butchery of the Jewish community in Palestine was his calling card. So there is your history.
I don't know anyone of any worth who isn't upset about the civilian casualties in Gaza, except for Hamas and Iran. They are jumping for joy. Why isn't Andrew holding them to account for these killings? They after all are responsible for this war.
Instead of creating Singapore in Gaza, Hamas created a terrorist nation bent on genocide against its neighbor. Does Andrew think there would not be blowback at some point against the entirety of Gaza if Hamas pulled off what it actually did on Oct7?
Israel asks people to move to safe areas, Hamas prevents this. Israel has a map of safe areas for people to go to. UNRWA and other aid UN agencies, actually send people into the unsafe zones to schools, mosques, and hospitals where they become human shields for the Hamas terror infrastructure. Yes, UNRWA and other aide agencies in Gaza are Hamas.
Israel opens civilian corridors so people can escape the fighting and Hamas shoots at those fleeing and plants IEDs to kill their own people. How is this Israel's fault?
Hamas/PIJ have had 2,000 rockets explode in homes, schools and mosques killing their own people, but somehow this is Israel's fault. How many of those killed in the war are actually victims of these rockets and not Israeli airstrikes? Does he ask? No.
Andrew takes at face value the numbers, list of casualties, and causes of death that Hamas puts out, because we all know that people who burn babies to death in ovens, burn whole families alive, torture children in front of the parents before murdering them, and rape women and girls to death are known for their veracity.
What I find truly interesting is that when Joe Biden questioned the number of those killed in Gaza in the earlier days of this war, Hamas somehow had a list with names and ID numbers all ready to go. We were also told we didn't know the names and the number of people killed because they were all lying under rubble. Which is it?
Andrew never writes what Israel should have done in the aftermath of Oct7. Just give up the ship and leave? Go where? Sue for peace? With who? Those who commit such barbaric acts and vow to commit genocide against every Jew in the world? Maya Angelou once said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them." We believe Hamas wholeheartedly.
There is a very ironic cartoon of the 2014 Gaza war with John Kerry asking Bibi could he at least meet Hamas halfway.....Andrew seems to think along those lines.
As Blinken has said, "this would end tomorrow if Hamas returned the hostages and surrendered." No one seems to be saying that, including Andrew.
The only thing that has changed is that the blood of Jewish children is no longer cheap. If Hamas valued the lives of Palestinian children they would never have begun this war. Put the blame where it should be. But Andrew isn't brave enough for that.
It fascinates me that a country supposedly subjected to genocide for the last 18 years has doubled its population (since the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza, with the exception of subsidized water and electricity). I took world history in the early ‘80s, so definitions may have changed, but back then I was taught that a genocide resulted in fewer people, not more.
It's also telling that providing water and electricity at a subsidized rate qualifies as an "occupation." That's a scant one step from Jussie Smollett territory.
Your old definition of genocide has been changed. It no longer must include an intent to partially or completely wipe out an ethno-national group. It now extends to any civilian casualties - especially if involving Israel.
I might even say, only if involving Israel. Thee are numerous other places that could be called genocide throughout Africa, and lets not forget the Uyghurs in China...
Because they don’t have to make their own way. Arab oil and dim bulb western money allow them to breed without the need for the labor it takes to raise them. Those moms are full on board with Hamas and are proud to have their spawn murder and be killed in this conflict.
So, I should be gentle in my rhetoric when talking about racists who dehumanize Jews? What should I call people who demonstrate for genocide? Upstanding citizens? Deep thinking intellectuals?
I think swine covers it quite well.
What would you call these people who are calling for the slaughter of Jews? I love to hear it.
I can be sarcastic but in this case I'm not. Referring to humans as swine, vermin, rodents, etc., just isn't helpful. It's expressive, sure, and it's also what the Nazis did when they were preparing to cull my tribe and send them to the gas chambers. But it's not a good policy, in my view--dehumanizing people you intensely dislike and disagree with.
Again, I ask you what should I call people who call for genocide? The NAZIs disgusted me and I call them inhuman swine. Hamas and the leftist who call for the genocide of Jews disgusts me and I call them inhuman swine. I think I'm right on the money here but you don't. It seems to me you want to play kissy face with these monsters. And that's what they are monsters.
It's what the nazis did? I suppose so. How do we meaningfully distinguish between nazis and hamas in their efforts to dehumanize and exterminate Jews? Maybe scale? The intent is identical even if methods differ.
And what should we call those who have an obscene passion for killing Jews? "Swine" seems tame given their lust for Jewish blood.
I do not agree except on this point about using dehumanizing language. But the respondent is not a political writer or author who is taught to turn down the more
harsh verbage in their rhetoric. Their appears to be to assuage the reader with direct logic and counter arguments to the false premises that the article writer loosely stands on, but without the political and social consequences and judo like responses that real adversarial writers counter with when that dehumanizing language is used.
Support HAMAS. Vote Democrat. The left not only hates Israel but they hate the U.S.
Every election cycle the Dem/Commies yell about white supremist groups, disgusting organizations, but when was the last time you saw marches of tens of thousand white hate groups fill the streets of London, New York and large groups on university campuses screaming for the blood of Jews?
You will never see it because the main stream left far out numbers white hate groups. The main stream left are call Democrats. So once again I say, "Support Hamas. Vote Democrat."
Sorry, Lonesome - I really am. But your statement 'support Hamas, vote Democrat' is sheer nonsense. Don't fall to the level of some commenters here who equate Democrats as adherents of Satan etc.. There are complete progressive idiots on the Dem side, and we know who they are - just like there are imbeciles on the GOP side - but I never equate Republicans as a whole with the people in that party I abhor.
There are far more centrists in the Democrats who support Israel than the Far Left who capture all the eyeballs around here.
Try an experiment. You want the 'other side' to stop painting Trump supporters with a wide negative and ignorant brush? Then try not doing it as well to people who you think fit the stereotype of the party you despise. If you end it, maybe they will too.
Respectfully.
Btw, your previous comment re Hamas valued the lives of their children was right on..
Hamas cares less about their children, about equal to how they care less about the children of Israel. Too bad the spoiled kids on American campuses don't understand that (and who will apparently abandon Biden because he still supplies weapons to Israel..).
Lee, I am as harsh on Trump as I am on the Dems. The Dems not just tolerate communists and hard core antisemites and anti-Israeli jerks they welcome them. Bernie Sanders who is a committee chairman is a hard core communist and has been one since childhood. There are pro-Palestinian and Hamas sympathizers in the Dem congress.
They aren't in the majority but the Dems tolerate them. If Bernie were a NAZI, they would kick him out. The Communist made Hitler look like a girl scout and the pro-Palestinians are racists.
The Reps are doing what parties have done for over 200 years. They are holding up aid in hopes the ever senile Joe will close the border down. It is a pressure play.
Yeah, be sure to vote for Trump, who pretended not to know who David Duke was in 2016, because criticizing him would lose him lots of racist and antisemitic voters, and who said there were "very fine people on both sides" in response to the young brownshirts marching across the UVA campus with Tiki torches yelling, "Jews will not replace us!" You really need to contact the mostly Jewish-run Southern Poverty Law Center in the Alabama, whose whole mission is fighting antisemitism along with racism against blacks, to get help understanding Jews' enemies on the right. It wasn't a "Democratic commie" who murdered the Jews in Pittsburgh, but a red-blooded, gung-ho Trump lover. Israel gets lots of flack from the left, no question about it. But when was the last time you heard about an American Jew being killed by a leftist, as Jews were killed by a right-winger in Pittsburgh? Do you really think it will be great for American Jews to elect a guy who brags about promising to be a dictator who'll tear up our Constitution to go after his enemies? This might turn out to be the old Jewish saw in reverse: "First they came for the Jews, then they came for [Aryan] me" might be "First MAGA sucked up to Jewish donors and went for the blacks and gays, and then they came for the Jews, too." There has never been a fascist state that was good for Jews anywhere.
Not a lot of people know who Duke was. Suggesting that Republicans are racist is a clichéd trope. It is unsubstantiated claptrap used to frighten black people into voting for Republicans. Who could forget Biden telling black voters that Republicans will, "put y'all back in chains!" Oddly enough many no longer buy nonsense. They started looking at Democrat run cities and federal programs offered to appease black voters. And an uncomfortably large number of voters turned their backs on the Democrats.
So, you can wheel out that dusty pile of garbage but fewer and fewer are taking it seriously. Quite rather the Democrats peeling back the curtain and displaying their anti-semitism has also helped shine light on their vicious lies.
Don't forget, Trump has family who are Jews. Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem and was a very strong supporter of Israel.
Anyway, your schtick is old hat, boring, and suffering from a factual deficit that sounds a great deal like projection.
By all means back the party of "Jews will not replace us!" with all your might. Do it till you're satisfied, as they used to say. I'm sure you're looking forward to dancing on Ukraine's grave with Putin and Trump, too.
My word! You certainly are passionate. A bit unhinged with your assumptions about people you know nothing of, but passionate in that ignorance none-the-less.
There's also the fact that he's a little bit racist. He believes the Palestinian people are not capable of electing a responsible government, nor holding them to account. His standards for their civilization are lower than his standards for Israel because he doesn't think they have the "capabilities."
The "subtle bigotry of low expectations". I must point out, however, that there is not one Arab Muslim majority country which is a true democracy. There is always a king, a dictator or a strongman in charge. Democracy does not fit their culture. Some might even say that Islam is more of a political system than a religion.
That's Western thinking. Separation of church and state cannot (and should not) happen in Israel and I am skeptical if it could happen in majority Muslim countries.
Obviously we should have installed a authoritarian King like every nice Arab country has. Instead the liberal imperialists insist everyone follow them off a cliff!
A culture can allow its "capabilities" to degrade. The Palestinians in Gaza have allowed their culture to deteriorate into a death cult of hatred so that they lack capacity to accomplish anything worthwhile except make more babies to be martyrs. Lots of cultures go that direction. Healthy cultures go in the opposite direction. It is not racist to call that out.
I was trying to follow along with an open mind until he characterized the IDF as trigger-happy. Then I just got mad. Open invitation to go down into these dark, booby-trapped tunnels and fight against these monsters, and see how your trigger finger operates.
Sullivan has obviously never been in a war, and all during his military age he would have been 4-F, so he would never have had to be. Neither have I but I know not to judge.
Well said. Clearly you are capable of the nuanced thinking that Andrew and so many others who have been blindsided by the horrific images they are inundated with daily by Hamas, are incapable of. Personally, I think that a strong, armed & incredibly competent Jew is incompatible with the vision of the haggard, tortured Holocaust victims the world would like us to be. Our own sovereignty, and self-determination is enraging to antisemites around the world. And Tehran is egging them on by sabotaging and sacrificing the Palestinian people in order to destroy Israel and ultimately the Jews. There is a clock in Tehran that counts down to the destruction of Israel. The Ayatollah promises that total annihilation will be complete by 2040. Maybe Andrew Sullivan could write about that and propose ways- other than aggressive self-defense- that Israel can prevent its own demise from coming to pass. Until he presents real solutions, this essay and the sentiments expressed are just those of an idealistic teen who has spent too much time consuming social media uncritically.
Here's a solution to the problem of Iranian 2040 certitude (first time I've ever heard of said clock..) - and that is what the Iranians have attempted to prevent with Hamas' help - which is the peace deal that was being negotiated between Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US. This tripartite agreement would have included mutual recognition between Israel and Saudi Arabia with diplomatic and commercial ties, two sworn enemies of Iran, with the added feature of the umbrella of American military security for Saudi Arabia, along with nuclear technology. This is complete anathema to Iran. This scares the hell out of them - thus Hamas, and thus the explicit barbarity of their Oct 7 assault on Israel. They wanted, no worse than that, INVITED, the predictable Israeli response to such an attack. All in order to derail this burgeoning deal, in hope that the Israeli response would certainly cool any aspirations Saudi Arabia would have in a rapprochement with Israel.
But, interestingly, from I've read recently, the Saudi deal with Israel is not dead. It must succeed, in order to isolate Iran. I think it will.
It definitely seems like the Abraham Accords and the tearing up of the JCPOA with Iran set up a series of events that may have led to the events of Oct 7, with the express purpose of perhaps a cornered Iran believing that it could goad Israel into a hostile response against Gaza that would roll back the "Accords" made with the other Arab nations in the region. Seems legit to me, the interesting part so far is the refusal of the other nations in the region to play ball, at least vocally, although who knows what is happening behind the scenes...
But some thoughts anyway: Trump supporters/apologists like to claim that Trump had "no new wars" under his term, of course Trump had only one term, and a fairly consequential artifact of his term was the Abraham Accords, of which he and his supporters claim made "peace" in the Middle East - but did they? The "accords" managed to leave out most critical parts of a comprehensive peace deal (The Palestinians and Iran) and instead set them on the offensive of an otherwise pan-Arab peninsula "accord" with Israel.
So did Trump (really, Kushner, Trump was AWOL pretty much during the actual negotiations since this was mostly occurring around and after Nov 2020 election time, and we all know where Trump's "mind" was preoccupied with at that time, and it certainly wasn't in the Middle East - but kudos to Boy Wonder who walked away with over a few Billion in "investments" into his newly established private equity firm after signing was done! Hunter Biden ain't got shit on Boy Wonder when it comes to profiting from Office, but I digress), really set up the events of Oct 7, by first tearing up the Iranian deal, which was designed to bring Iran into "normalcy" while providing crucial oversight into its internals (and antagonizing Iran by also re-levering sanctions - a terrible look for any foreign nation dealing with the US going forward btw, that every election cycle can undo an agreement : / ), while also putting Iran into the corner by specifically leaving it out of the "accords", leaving very open the intentional marginalization of Iran that may have directly incentivized the Oct 7 play in response?
Imagine a world in which Trump didn't discard the Iran Nuclear Deal, but also did the Abraham Accords as negotiated by actual diplomats, rather than his financially invested and perhaps ideologically motivated SIL who regardless had no business in that situation to begin with, which might have ensured a carve out for the Palestinians in the securing of "peace" in the region - maybe no Oct 7 attack? I think it was ill advised to back out of the Iran deal, and then ramp up hostilities against and think there would be no response. And while the "accords" may be holding back *vocal* engagement from its partners against Israel, who knows where the funding and back end support is going regardless, they sure haven't stepped up to back their new Israeli friend at any rate : /
Perhaps Biden funding Iran and Gaza was a green light for this terrorist outburst. Trump had them on their backs and had peace breaking out. Clearly should have won a Nobel peace prize.
Biden did not "fund" Iran or Gaza. The unfreezing of sanctioned Iranian money from South Korean banks had not yet been accessed by Oct 7, and was also subject to oversight on the disbursement. Yes, you can make the case that "money is fungible" and that *if* Iran accessed the money under the guidance allowed for humanitarian needs, then it freed up other funds for terrorism, but the point still stands that by Oct 7, Iran had not accessed those funds, and it does appear that the Oct 7 attacks were in planning for longer than the deal that went through just that past summer.
Basically, if (and probably) that Iran funded the Hamas operation, this was already in the works and independent of the negotiated deal. And the notion that "Trump had them on their backs" is pretty direct to my point, yeah maybe he did so they reached for the knife in arms reach as a response - and more to my point, Trump "putting them on their backs" was an unnecessary provocation given Iran was following the terms of the JCPOA and by tearing up the agreement (and essentially shitting on the full faith of the US as a negotiating partner in the process, making future such agreements likely a lot harder to get in the future) he set the stage for an Iranian response that led to Oct 7...
BTW- didn't Trump win a "No-Bell" (according to him lol) ; P
An interesting take on the combination of the Accords and the withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal. What of course goes unsaid in this bubble of a comment thread on FP is that had America remained in the deal with sanction relief Iran would probably be not as bellicose as it is displaying today through Hamas and the Houthis (never mind Hezbollah) and would not be so close to actually deploying a nuclear weapon.
Iran was already not letting the official inspector in to their most sensitive areas. Why do you think that Iran was not simply using the time under the JCPOA to further its nuclear development? If Biden had kept the sanctions in place, Iran would have had $100 billion less to accomplish its mischief.
Dear god, I hadn't heard of that Tehran clock. I don't think the Ayatollah is going to be able to fulfill that goal, not by 2040, not ever, thankfully, but I do hope to see the destruction of Hamas in 2024.
Excellent response/rebuttal. I realize BW considers Sullivan a friend, but unfortunately he has made it a matter of habit to question Israel and its value to the US. He penned a dubious (at best) article in New York Magazine a few years back stating that the US gets worse than nothing from its relationship with Israel. Besides for the countless benefits to the US from what Obama characterized as the US’s best friend, I think there is a better question one should ask: What is the US getting out of its relationship with the Palestinians? Despite taking billions in aid from the US, the leadership of the Palestinians holds almost none of the values that Americans consider essential as important (freedoms of speech, religion, press; gender equality and on and on and on).
Well, in the liberal/Democrat world, we got tunnel technology from Hamas that joe could spend his infrastructure money on. Sea to Sea. A super highway underground with charging stations every mile.
I have come to realize that some, too many, have embraced tolerance to the point of tolerance for those who would destroy us and our way of life. Mr. Sullivan seems to have done so.
I would add that AS *completely* mischaracterizes the combatants — Israel isn’t fighting against “poor besieged militarily limited” Palestinians, but against the soon-to-have-nukes enormously wealthy and armed international hydra of the mullah regime in Iran, including, quite directly, its Hezbolah and Houthi terror proxies. So, yeah, it’s an unfair fight, of a tiny besieged nation of 8 million against an axis of evil of many scores of millions.
Also, what nonsense about indiscriminate bombings and attacks with impunity—is he getting his opinions from Mehdi Hasan or maybe Hasan Nasrallah himself?
Well said! Excellent rebuttal. And specifically to this this note: "Andrew never writes what Israel should have done in the aftermath of Oct7." ....the absolute void of any reasonable alternative in the criticisms of Israel's response is deafening.
It’s not only preposterous but, in my view, irresponsible for those with (unfortunately) a platform to just make these criticisms of Israel without offering any real alternative. These talking heads and other political pundits have no meaningful military knowledge and merely say Israel should or should not do X or Y. I am still waiting for one of these arm-chair generals to offer a realistic alternative. Do they actually think that Israel enjoys, as a democratic nation with an overwhelmingly reservist military, sending its men and women to die? Do they think that the Israeli electorate so devalues life that they would continue a war they didn’t start just out of desire for retribution or some other illogical response? I guess they might judging by Sullivan’s ignorant assumptions, but we all know that nothing could be further from the truth. Israelis -- just like Americans -- value life over all else so this is clearly what they unfortunately but correctly view as the only option. But those they must fight do not of course value life. At all.
Thank you for this. I’m still waiting for one of these armchair generals, usually ones with a doctorate in basket weaving, opining how the IDF has to fight Hamas differently. Of course with zero details given regarding how.
Yes, an armchair general like Sullivan telling the IDF what type of bombs to arm their planes with is pretty rich. (Big bomb bad, little bomb better. Duh.) Dirty little secret: precision guided munitions are very expensive and not in reliable supply as the U.S. State Dept. gets cranky. Their main value is to reduce the number of sorties that your planes have to fly to assure destruction of heavily defended targets or targets that are inherently hard to hit, like bridges. Squandering them on hitting military targets more accurately just to avoid civilian casualties that are being used as human shields anyway is, sadly, more than those civilians are worth, given the number that would actually be saved.
Big bombs dig deeper into tunnels and bunkers than little bombs. That's why Israel is using a lot more 2000-pounders. With time-delay fuses they explode below the surface (where the tunnel is) and don't send a lot of fragments flying around the neighbourhood.
Yes, and every life spared in Gaza means an Israeli soldier dies. That's the equation. Hesitancy in warfare is fatal. Palestinian children are expendable props to Hamas, tragic costs of war to Israelis.
The only point I would add to this terrific rebuttal is why Mr. Sullivan doesn't blame the UN and UNRWA for the casualties as well? The creation of UNWRA (to pacify the Arab block when Israel gained its independence) for the sole purpose of keeping Palestinians tied to the hope of returning to a homeland that was questionably theirs to begin with is perhaps the crux of the Israeli Palestinian problem. Not only have Palestinians been duped by their leaders into believing that rejecting any peace offer while teaching hate filled resistance will bring them the entire land of Israel, they also are maintained as the only people in the World that retains their refugee status down through multiple generations. The notion of a "2 State Solution" to the crisis of Palestinian suffering is not going to solve this problem as long as Arab states continue to use them as pawns for their hegemonic aspirations which include Israel and refuse to accept as refugees Palestinians who want to leave Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas, PIJ and all the other terrorist organizations that run freely through the Palestinian territories stealing money meant for Palestinian civilians will continue to use their predominantly young population as human shields for their barbaric assault on peace loving Israelis. And the world, and people like you, will keep blaming Israel.
One wonders if anyone truly thinks the UN is a legitimate organization with any moral, political, economic, judicial, or enforcement power. United Nations … great name, must admit.
Years ago in a small hotel in the Pyrenees, I met a retired British general who went with the British delegation to San Francisco to found the UN. He said, "The UN was useless then and it is useless now."
Brilliant! I don't use that word lightly, EKB, but this is the most powerful counterpoint I've read yet to the Andrew Sullivan wing, and thank you for taking the time to write it. I agree, Bari, please elevate this from a reply to a full-blown counter-essay to Mr. Sullivan, or include it as a separate essay in the roundup.
Thanks, LP, much appreciate that. I reread Sullivan's columns again and got so angry I put a new comment on his last piece, "How many children is Israel willing to kill?" That sentence alone should get his headline writer fired. The only question is, "How many children is Hamas ready to kill?" because this war ends the day Hamas says, "We surrender." The tens of thousands of Gazans who've died is blood not on the hands of Israel, but Hamas.
I don't believe Sullivan supports Hamas. But he holds Israel to an impossible standard: destroy Hamas but God help you if a single "innocent" is harmed. No other nation can meet that standard, but Israel is required to by global pundits and the Israel-hating hard left.
In his heart he may think he is not supporting Hamas but those who call for a cease fire are certainly doing what Hamas wants. Hamas has been attacking Israel for years and when Israel defends itself the world screams for a ceasefire. They are in fact supporting Hamas and I am tired of it.
Amen to your comments. Your last paragraph made me think of what Golda Meir said, that there will be peace when the Palestinians love their children more than they hate Jews.
Yes! TY! I’ve been saying this right along--why aren’t we (the Western world) blaming Hamas and asking them why? Demand that they stop.
The other day someone put a sticker on my daughter’s door that said Free Palestine. I said to her to paint on the door the rest of that slogan “from Hamas.”
From high atop Mount Virtue, Sullivan delivers his condemnation of Israel. Nevermind that he admits that "Israel’s enemies are the enemies of civilization”. The legions of Andrew Sullivans around the world are the reason Israel will never win the PR battle against its enemies. Isreal knows and accepts this and simply gets on with the business of surviving, by any means necessary.
It's not condemnation of Israel. It's realpolitik. He wants Israel to win. They can't do that if they keep slaughtering kids. At a certain point it just doesn't work, because the parents of those kids never forget. That's his point.
Really great rebuttal. I’ll throw in my friend's point: let’s concede that there’s a tragedy going on in Gaza (the Palestinians are my rock bottom for prioritizing people around the world, but even I can admit there are innocents being killed, etc). What would good, liberal, peace loving people suggest be done about it? All they have is "cease fire now". OK. Then what?
I’m not taking about the protesters - they’re neither good, nor liberal, nor peace loving. Their step two is on their signs, "from the river to the sea". But the good liberals who are terribly upset by what’s happening in Gaza now. What’s your proposed solution? [crickets]
Dresden?! Oh my. Didn’t we firebomb that city and condemn hundreds of thousands of people to the most barbaric suffering and death? The Israeli offensive in Gaza is worse than that?! Good grief Andrew. War is literal hell. Shedding tears for the suffering of innocents changes nothing.
A long term solution can only occur if/when the Palestinians get past the idea they - utterly alone along all people in the history of the world - can reverse history and claim victory from past battles that were long ago lost. It’s this delusion, kept alive by Western coddling for decades, which means the suffering and death must continue forever.
Glad you mentioned WWII. Following WWI, the Allies strategy in WWII was to crush the Axis’ belligerence by destroying their infrastructure to make war, which leveled cities and killed lots of civilians, forcing the belligerence out of the defeated. Sadly, the only way I see Israel coming away with a victory is to do the same to the Iranian backed proxies as well as Iran. Otherwise, this will happen again.
Well said. I found Mr. Sullivan's piece galling. To paraphrase an old saw, Israel and Hamas/Iran are embroiled in deadly chess strategies. Mr. Sullivan and most media are playing checkers.
Your response is perfectly on point. I would add that despite supposed Israeli destruction of Gaza, Hamas continues to bomb Israel along with Hezbollah. Appeasing them would have done what? Israel has almost no true friends and appeasement would have brought no support. If these last few months have taught us ANYTHING it is that.
“In just three months, 23,000 human beings have been killed in Gaza”
Israel warned them what was coming. The obvious question is why didn’t they leave? The unmistakable answer is, nobody wants them. The reason why would be a good question for Mr. Sullivan to ponder.
The 23,000 casualty figure comes straight from Hamas and is accepted by the anti-Israel international press without question. There is no proof or corroboration that the numbers are anywhere near that. And yet, Sullivan throws them around. I wonder what his real angle is?
Perhaps his angle is to harvest clicks/views/subscriptions more than anything else. He has to know that it’s safer to criticize Israel than Hamas. And it gets him a lot of attention.
Yes. This makes me furious. All the casualty figures come from them-like moments after a strike. I am sure that thousands of innocent Palestinians have died-and just like in any war, that is very sad. But why the world's media continues to just report straight from Hamas' propaganda about this is mind boggling.
I love the supposed accuracy of 23000 "human beings." It's like the statement, by the year 2024, the Polar Bears will be drowned by melting polar ice caps.
According to Canada's Dept of the Environment, Polar Bear populations are on the rise and have been for years. This despite then-Environment Minister Catherine McKenna's tweeted in 2020."If greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked then it is highly likely that we’ll lose every polar bear population in the world before the end of the century.
Yes, one wonders, if the world is so concerned (as we should be) with evacuating civilians (particularly children), why is there no pressure to set up new refugee camps, perhaps opening up the Egyptian border?
Yes, Andrew should get his op-ed published in "The Hamas Daily News" so the terrorists can surrender immediately, return the hostages, and end this bloody conflict. That should do it.
The problem is that unless Hamas is destroyed, more children will die. It is Hamas who built the underground structure for its fighters, but did not provide the shelters for the children of Gaza. Hamas and Hamas alone bear the ultimate responsibility for inflicting this catastrophe on the people it pledged to serve. If they truly cared about them, then they would give up the hostages and surrender their weapons. But if they had truly cared, they would not have siphoned off millions of aid money to build tunnels for a few, instead they would have concentrated on building a peaceful and prosperous society where the Palestinian people as a whole could thrive. If they truly cared, they would not have launched 7 October attack which has brought greater retribution than they dreamed possible (what did they think would happen? Because whatever it was, they miscalculated on the response -- I doubt they expected boots on the ground and in the tunnels for as long as they have been there and will be there)
All one has to do is to look at the renewed threat of the Houthis -- who were nearly destroyed until the West's instinct for aid and desire to avoid famine kicked in. Now, the US and the UK have had to do air strikes because the Houthi have decided to threaten global shipping, instead of looking after their people.
Hamas brought this on the Palestinian people. Hopefully, once they are defeated militarily, a new movement which prioritises the children of Palestine's future over death and destruction will emerge. It is what I pray for and however slim that hope might be, it needs to be there as the cycle of war must end and the only people can ultimately stop that cycle are the Palestinians.
I was going to say the same thing but you articulated it far better than I could. Sullivan pretends that Gaza was a civilian city instead of the fortified bunker that it was from which Hamas launched repeated attacks against Israel until their last spasm of barbarity on October 7. Gaza was more Iwo Jima than Dresden. Therein lies the difference that the yammering Sullivan fails to comprehend.
My Dad fought in the Pacific although not on Iwo. Guadalcanal, New Guinea and the Philippines. So it remains an area of interest for me. And, as brutal and sadistic as the Japanese were then, Hamas makes them look tame in comparison.
Thanks. Good for your grand dad! That must have been sweet revenge for the Yorktown, which was almost saved and was being towed back to Pearl when the Jap sub sank it. Although the appalling actions of the Japanese soldiers against Chinese civilians were almost as fiendish as Hamas. How people who claim to have been sickened by the Rape of Nanking (or Manila) can cheer on Hamas just baffles me. So much for Fukuyama's end of history thesis......
The whitewashed kids on campuses screaming plaudits for their Hamas heroes have never heard of Nanking, and I wouldn't be surprised if their profs have heard about that 1937 atrocity either..
I agree about Sullivan missing what was going on in Gaza. The Iwo Jima comparison is an apt one. The Navy thought they had bombed it but they were v wrong.
Have you been reading the daily updates from the Institute for the Study of War? They are worried that Israel has not degraded the Northern Gaza brigades enough.
What if this reaction from Israel was the intent of Hamas? Hamas happens to have an organizational structure, but its heart is an ideology that won’t be wiped out with bombs. What if Israel has played into their hands?
Also, Israel is a grown-up state. It can take responsibility for its own bombs.
Doubtful. The Hamas leadership may have calculated that they would have to wait several weeks but they thought the demonstrations etc in the West would force Israel to quit. It is why I suspect they contributed to the umbrella activist organizations..
I think they thought it would go as it had done for the other times they played this game -- a rapid ceasefire which allowed them to keep control of Gaza. Neither Hezbollah nor the factions on the West Bank have been able to draw to significant fire power away from Gaza like they thought they would. The Houthis have started bombing shipping indiscriminately (including a 'dark ship' carrying Russian oil. And the other Arab states have talked tough but mainly looked out the window. There are a number who like Israel to do the dirty work for them.
I agree the ideology which is in part fuelled by Iran will take far longer to eradicate. It is possible -- see what happened in Germany after WW2. Nazism still exists (unfortunately) but it no longer has any political force and the German people see great value in being part of a wider Europe and at peace with its neighbours.
Israel does take its responsibilities seriously -- it is why among other things they have repaired the water pipelines Hamas cut. They are also facilitating humanitarian aid in (after proper checks) including medical supplies. Should there be more aid? Yes, definitely. But 400 lorry loads is about what Hamas was allowing in prior 7 October (going from memory) and much of that aid wasn't reaching the ordinary Gazan. This is a short film done by the IDF which demonstrates the current state of the humanitarian aid (yes there is a certain bias, but the IDF know it can be fact checked and do care about the fact checking in the way that Hamas doesn't) https://substack.com/home/post/p-140550461
And Hamas should allow its people to use the tunnels as air raid shelters, but they don't. And they continue to use their people as human shields.
It is heart breaking to witness but it still remains in Hamas's gift to surrender.
Michelle Styles, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on motivations. I can’t be certain of the thinking of Hamas leadership, obviously, but I can see that October’s pogrom was designed to terrorize, humiliate, and create a feeling of insecurity in a state that was founded for the very purpose of ensuring that Jews never have to feel that sort of insecurity again. This is nothing like previous acts of terror by Hamas and their leadership is many things but stupid isn’t one of them. They had to know that Israel would respond in unprecedented ways. Something that may have surprised Hamas, I think, is Israel’s unwillingness to be strung along by hostage negotiations. It’s fairly well established that Israel will go to unbelievable lengths to bring a single Jew home. They haven’t been able to leverage the hostages in the ways they expected.
One POV I’ve heard is that Hamas did not expect to have as much "success" as they did thanks to Israel's utterly lax security and over reliance on tech for defense, so they overshot (plus they’re literally barbarians so once they got started they went for broke torturing, raping and killing in sheer delight). But who knows. The leadership sounds like they very much wanted what happened in all its extreme inhumanity, so I’m not sure I buy that POV myself.
It doesn't matter Hamas' intent; what matters is its capability, and that must be destroyed.
I would submit that the best way - and only way - to eliminate an ideology is to destroy the brain that carries it. A brain infected with radical islam is like a brain infected with the rabies virus. There is no treatment except to destroy the animal before it infects others.
I agree that Hamas must be destroyed and the wrongness of the ideology must be exposed. It is a certain brand of Islam (and one which the Ottoman Turks had to struggle against as well) which should be neutralized. Many other strands of Islam do exist and these have a much different slant.
I certainly hope that it is only a strain of Islam that advocates for terrorism and barbarism. How large a strain is it, though, if it is only a strain?
Israel gets an A for effort, but an F for results thus far. Its post-10/7 efforts have expanded “radical Islam brain” throughout the world. At what point do you decide continuing the strategy is counterproductive?
This is no time for public relations efforts. Israel is facing an existential threat. Meanwhile, the huge Muslim rallies across Europe are more a wake up call for them on the danger their societies are facing from mass Muslim migration.
Bad argument when defenders of Israel & its government’s war strategy respond to critics with “you’re not in a position to judge” but never seem to say that in response to those who agree with them ....
I find the argument that somehow Israel’s actions have caused radicalization to be a willful blindness of the unfortunate long-existing reality. The Arab world by and large has been determined to wipe out the Jewish presence for 100 years. Radicalism is already part of the world. It probably does not help that UNRWA has for years been fostering lies about Jews and Israel. Furthermore, what Hamas did do was change the tenor of the discussion among Israelis. The liberal peace camp has been awakened to a reality which we hoped did not exist -- that there is no interest in peaceful co-existence. Now we have two sides that don’t see that as a possibility.
I think that is very much untested hypothesis. Especially since the various Muslim factions in the middle east do not collaborate. I don't think the Arabs in Israel have any love for Hamas or want to lose their modern conveniences to return to ancien regime.
Brains are tricky things, Jim. What about the pre-symptomatic brains? Or the brains carrying a latent form of the disease? Or the brains that harbor a sympathy for the cause but then experience a sort of conversion of thought and become outspoken enemies of the radical ideology? As we witnessed during the massively failed war on terror, no intervention is free and we probably created much bigger problems for the West than we solved with our overseas adventures.
All good points, but you can't solve every possible permutation. As the say about draining the swamp when you are up to your ass in alligators, when they are out to annihilate you and everything you love, the first process is to stop them - and you do whatever it takes, realizing that your killing some of their innocent is a lesser evil than them killing all of yours.
Good question. I don’t envy the decision makers and would never sign up for a job like that. But if I had to come up with an answer, I’d say in the immediate aftermath, Israel needed to rebuild the security fence which probably would have included having to create a parameter inside Gaza. This likely would have required some bombing since it would have been insane to send troops in to die at that point. So I’m not sure that bombs could have been totally avoided.
They also needed to posture for readiness in case any of the surrounding hostile countries got a wild hair and decided to dip their toe in the chaos.
But Israel is a powerful country and not everything is an existential threat. They could have said that every single person involved in the planning and execution of 10/7 is officially on notice that they are living on borrowed time and at Israel’s earliest convenience, they will take their last breath. They could tell Hamas that their desired response of an Israeli overreaction is not going to happen. That Israel understands that the average Gazan lives under the boot of a garbage terrorist organization and that Israel will not rain hell on innocent children with bombs that can’t tell the difference between innocent and guilty. They could express that the majority of Gazans don’t share the world view of Hamas but that if Gazans don’t want the interference of Israel in their affairs, they need cut out their own rot.
They could have said that while Israel plucks the weeds from the Earth, should any surrounding state or organization decide to misconstrue their response as weakness, they will be promptly corrected in a way that not only neutralizes the threat, but sends a larger message as a deterrent to others who may lack critical thinking or common sense. And during this restrained response, they needed to appeal to the world for the return of the hostages.
Israel can always reserve the right to bomb, but they have known about the tunnels for a long time. They have known about the rockets long enough to build the iron dome. Hamas wasn’t any more of an existential threat after 10/7 than it was on 10/6. They have time to think strategically.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Jolene. I do tend to agree that at the very least, Israel needs to rebuild the fence in a better manner with a DMZ of at least 1/2 mile of razed ground inside of it with any tunnels there completely demolished and sensors in place to capture any underground vibrations of new ones being created. Maybe that is how they can cease the overall bombing...but even so, they know they have an abjectly hostile government on the other side of the DMZ who has stated plainly that if they could, they would do the same thing over and over again. So I believe there is also justification to their current response, as there would be for any government/nation that was invaded/attacked by another. Quickest way for this to end is for Hamas leadership and those perpetrating 10/7 to surrender.
Not an easy or clear solution to this, I am sorry to say. Like you stated, I do not envy those having to make these choices.
What difference does rebuilding the fence make to whether or not the hostages are rescued? Almost half of the original hostages are still being held now, even with the bombing. Some have been killed by the bombs (possibly) and a couple have been accidentally shot by the IDF (definitely). Would you say Israel’s current response involves leaving some hostages to rot? I wouldn’t. I would say it’s complicated, as any response will inevitably be.
The hostages are gone. If we get any back, that would be a bonus. You don't put the lives of 8,000,000 in jeopardy to spare 150. Tragic and painful but when in a war, this is part of the price to be paid.
I think that Israel is now "promptly correct[ing any misconstrued responses] in a way that not only neutralizes the threat, but sends a larger message as a deterrent to others who may lack critical thinking or common sense"
Restraint. Nice thought. Like if Hamas had not broken and twisted the very bones of the dead girls they raped, or had stopped before parading them through the streets to cheering crowds. The Middle East only understands the most brute of force. How many times will the West have to learn this? Europe is enjoying the fruits of its self-loathing immigration policies. The values and culture of Western Civilization are incompatible with those of the Islamic world. Are we naive or suicidal?
next to nothing; a weak response that would only encourage more of the same. Their goal is to follow the Koran explicitly: "expel them from where they expelled you" (The Cow, Sura 2, Verse 191, A.J. Arberry translation). Osama bin Laden said that even applies to Andalusia. So, for sure, it applies "from the river to the sea." Just as the Nazis would not stop until they were completely obliterated, the same is true for Hamas. And just as the Nazis did not try to safeguard civilians, so too Hamas. If the Allies held back for fear of killing civilians en masse, Germany would never have been defeated.
I concur but I fear that the Palestinians have for so long been led to believe that they will somehow someday return to the homes that belonged to their parents and grandparents without a single Jew to be seen that they are unwilling to settle for anything less.
A topic ignored: Why isn't the International Red Cross AND the UN demanding the release of the Israeli hostages? I thought holding civilian hostages was a war crime. Mr. Sullivan?
Why isn't Gaza facing war crime charges at the Hague for using a hospital for a launching pad for military activities? Under the Geneva Convention it is forbidden to use civilian populations, the sick or the injured as human shields, it is a war crime, as is fighting from inside a hospital.
How many Americans remain hostages? How would the MSM react if Trump allowed American citizens to be captured by terrorists for this long? Why did the MSM ignore the story about White House staffers being evacuated because Palestine rioters were tearing down a fence, yet not a single one was arrested?!
The “disappearance’ of the hostages is shameful. They, American and other nationals, should appear every day in the news.
Free Press could you include the kidnap for how many days count, or each day place a name and a photo, or write a few line about the hostage, or in some other manner post by your banner a way to remind your readers who is kidnapped and how long they have endured being a hostage.
Ted Koppel made a name for himself this way on Nightline during the Iran Hostage Crisis. Each night the opening graphic showed "America Held Hostage: Day 185" or however many days it had been.
Day 102 needs to be on the opening page for the same reason that Ted Koppel continually focused the attention on the Hostage Crisis. It is also very important to publish the days of hostage captivity for those that are denying, blaming, or justifying the kidnapping of civilians by Hamas.
Yuri, please edit your comment above to state the date of the most recent DC riot by pro-Palestine supporters. Let people look it up and learn what MSM decides is not worth their time or ink.
Based on this essay Andrew seems to mean well. I would hope he agrees that defeating the enemy of civilization like Hamas is the most important thing, and worse than what is occurring in Gaza would be victory for Hamas. I have not heard any of Israel's well meaning friends who do not have the stomach for the war in Gaza propose a single alternative for how Hamas and Gaza ought to be dealt with, except to imagine the situation to be other than it is.
There was a simple, obvious alternative that could have occurred that I pushed for from the very beginning: evacuate Gazan non-combatants to Sinai while Israel dismantles' Hamas and its terror infrastructure in Gaza. It's completely plausible that the Western countries could have leaned on Egypt to do this. They could have guaranteed that the non combatants would be returned to Gaza after the war, that Israel would face severe consequences for not allowing them back in.
But over the course of this war, for all the ink spilled by the alleged friends of Gaza, I have not heard anyone suggest that Gazans be permitted to leave the war zone. They have asked Israel to do the impossible: do not kill civilians but do not move them either while fighting an enemy embedded amongst civilians and civilian infrastructure.
All these compassionate voices, and not one condemnation for Egypt not opening Sinai. Not one condemnation of no country being willing to take in any Gazans. You can say the Gazans aren't other countries responsibility or they'd be a problem for your own country, but then don't pretend you actually care about them except to the extent they can be weaponized against Israel, either as active fighters or symbols to slander it.
Egypt does not want Gazans for the very simple reason that they view them as dangerous to Egypt.
It's all very well to talk about allowing non-combatants to go to Sinai, but how do you tell who is or is not an non-combatant? When Gazans are habitually infiltrated by Hamas fighters pretending to be civilians, how do you adequately screen refugees to ensure that no terrorists are among them?
Why is it that no one ever asks why the other Arab nations are not pressured by the world to open their borders to make a safe refugee camp (hello Egypt) for woman and children? The world would throw billions to create “Camp Gaza” they have thrown billions to create “camp Hamas” for years this could be a positive reeducation moment even! “Now little Ahmed, stabbing and killing Jews is not a good life goal…” The world that cry’s out for the poor mislead Palestinian people should help make this happen, Israel would love to have the canon fodder of civilians that Hamas uses removed from the area so they can truly finish what Hamas started.
They would go straight into the Moslem Brotherhood, whose goal is to end the secular government and install a religious hierarchy. Say goodbye to every great monument in Egypt if that happens, too. Remember the massive cliff Buddhas in Afghanistan bombed to rubble?
I think Israel and Egypt have decent lists of who is and who isn't. I'd bet Fatah does too. Obviously anyone carrying a weapon. Even if Hamas fighters drop their weapons and uniforms and flee to Sinai, that in itself is a morale defeat for Hamas, showing them to be cowards who cannot or will not defend Gaza. In the meantime while they're disarmed and out of Gaza, IDF can destroy tunnels, weapons, command centers, etc.
I think that it is highly unrealistic to think that either Israel or Egypt can keep up-to-the-minute tabs on the ideological leaning of millions of people in Gaza.
The "Palestianians" themselves are the descendants of people who fled the fighting in 1948, when Arab armies on every side invaded the nation of Israel, newly created by the UN, with the avowed aim of perpetrating a second Holocaust.
Since that time they have made themselves persona non grata in multiple places, including Jordan and Lebanon. They break things and make life harder wherever they go, and amount to abusive house guests no sane person would invite into their home. Then they moan and complain about their fate.
I will say that their misery is perhaps God's way of giving them the opportunity to grow up.
"I have not heard any of Israel's well meaning friends who do not have the stomach for the war in Gaza propose a single alternative for how Hamas and Gaza ought to be dealt with, except to imagine the situation to be other than it is."
This is absolutely the biggest condemnation of the critics of Israel's response. What is the alternative??
Raises a very good point. Why was there suddenly room made for thousands and thousands of Ukrainian refugees along its borders as well as here in the US? Same to be said for those coming out of Iraq.
Apparently Gazans are only and ever Israel’s responsibility. They crave eternal victimhood and the West is giving to them. I think Islam is just a huge inferiority complex actualized. Denying Moses as the only and true prophet and replacing him with Muhammad and consequently denying Judaism it’s unquestionable primacy as the first monotheistic religion. Truly believe that’s the core of their ideology this endless battle.
This at least goes back to year AD 689, when construction began on Dome of the Rock directly over the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (and specifically its Holy of Holiest location of the altar to the Ark). In the most public manner possible, Mohammad/Islam declared superiority over Judaism. But they also simultaneously declared war against Christianity. Running along both sides of the buildings arcade were verses trashing the Trinity, declaring the entire New Testament a fabrication (it must be they argued since it was written by mortal men). The Qur’an by contrast was claimed given to Mohammad by the mouth of God himself, via the angel, Gabriel, and therefore also, superior to the NT. Moses was the only other prophet who heard directly from God (10 Words), and therefore no surprise that Moses is mentioned 137 times in Qur’an. The Arab conquerors in 1st decades of their empire referred to themselves as ‘muhajirun’ or literally ‘those who have undertaken an exodus’. They hijacked Moses/Israel Exodus from Pharoah narrative, to justify their own ‘exodus’ by point of sword across Judea, North Africa and eventually into France, where they were finally defeated at Battle of Tours, AD 732. Many historians agree if Franks had not halted the Caliphate then, we’d all might be speaking Arabic today.
Why is it that no one ever asks why the other Arab nations are not pressured by the world to open their borders to make a safe refugee camp (hello Egypt) for woman and children? The world would throw billions to create “Camp Gaza” they have thrown billions to create “camp Hamas” for years this could be a positive reeducation moment even! “Now little Ahmed, stabbing and killing Jews is not a good life goal…” The world that cry’s out for the poor mislead Palestinian people should help make this happen, Israel would love to have the canon fodder of civilians that Hamas uses removed from the area so they can truly finish what Hamas started.
Well said. Andrew sipping a brandy as his quill drips hypocritical ink. It was interesting that Bari felt the need to qualify Andrew as a friend before publishing this useless, sophomoric drivel. But points for good conversation starter.
Egypt hates Hamas as much as Israel does. And I don't think they much like Palestinians either. Thus no Sinai option. Look how long it took for Americans to exit Gaza and enter Sinai for safety. And imagine the money needed to feed and house two million Gazans? From where would that have come from? And how long would that have taken?
It seems like Mr. Sullivan has not been paying attention to the simplest of truths expressed clearly and succinctly by Secretary of State Blinken:
“What is striking to me is that even as, again, we hear many countries urging the end to this conflict, which we would all like to see, I hear virtually no one saying – demanding of Hamas that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender. This is over tomorrow if Hamas does that. This would have been over a month ago, six weeks ago, if Hamas had done that,”
“Understandably, everyone would like to see this conflict end as quickly as possible,” but, he observed, “if it ends with Hamas remaining in place and having the capacity and the stated intent to repeat October 7th again and again and again, that’s not in the interests of Israel, it’s not in the interests of the region, it’s not in the interests of the world.”
Hamas are cowards, of course - of which Blinken alludes to. They cloak themselves and their weaponry under and amongst the most vulnerable and innocent of their civilian population. They do not have the guts to go toe to toe with the Israelis on open ground. Thus this.
"Coulda, shoulda, woulda"! Sullivan sits on Mount Olympus to criticize those mired in destruction! Who has really said that they glory in the deaths of women and children? Israel? Absolutely NOT! It is Hamas, clearly and simply! And who says that "war" has to conform to some agreed upon metrics? Civilized nations? Yes, but Hamas is NOT part of that group. And they DO, by the way, glory in the deaths of bystanders, women, and children.
Andrew sounds like Democrats in Congress with their moral outrage for Israel, couched in recognition that Hamas must be destroyed, but offering no practical alternative than Israel’s painstaking approach.
If Israel wasn’t a moral country, Hamas could have been destroyed in hours with hundreds of thousands of civilians killed. But instead they put their young soldiers at great risk trying to root out the terrorists from among the civilians.
So, Andrew, what would you have done or be doing now if you were Israel’s Prime Minister?
First, thank you and my heart and prayers are with your son. Second, the hypocrisy is not just breathtaking but revealing. Just like the hypocrisy of what happened (& IS happening to female hostages as we speak) to Israeli girls and women on Oct 7, we are seeing in stark, real time, how Jew hatred suspends all of the rules of civilized behavior. If they are talking about the murder, rape or kidnap of Jews, instead of immediate and resounding expressions of horror and distaste, we will be met with, “BUT.” What we are seeing in the reaction to this war, Oct 7 and every day forward, is the lifting of the veil of Jew hatred.
As a fellow Israeli with very young sons, I thank you from the deepest part of my mother heart and want you to know that we will be thinking of you and your שמואלי every day.
Mr. Sullivan: Thank you for this piece. I never thought I’d say this about your writing though but it is simple-minded and emotional. I agree with the deep moral concern, but it is simple-minded because you conclude with the straw-man alternative world that if the Israelis “had taken a breath, thought deeply and strategically” and acted “in consort with their recently acquired Arab interlocutors.” Seriously? Qatar teaming up strategically? The UAE? You cannot get off so easily. Drop the platitudes. What was that missed path? Even President Obama, days after 10.7, likely reeling and seeing the shocking consequences of his entreaty of the Iranians, tweeted about Israel’s entitlement to “dismantle” Hamas. Please explain your alternative world where that path ever existed. I don’t see it, but if you can, many would be with you in criticizing the current path.
You are spot on Chris. Taking a breath to assess what? This suggestion insults the sophisticated effort Israel has long been undertaking in preparation to defend itself in such a situation. Its defense capabilities are the best in the world. It was a surprise attack. Its people deserve protection from the enemy at the door. There is no such thing as a free and independent nation anywhere if elected leaders must check in with the world before it can protect itself.
Yes, the idea that recent Abraham Accord parties would gather arms (or propose a peaceful alternative) with Israel to defeat Hamas / Iran is silly, at this point in the Middle East political ark. The truth is, the Abraham Accord parties are aligned with Israel against Iran. They care about their oil and their security. It is far too early in this process for the Israel + Accords members - to do anything about Iran. Sullivan’s naiveté about the politics is showing.
I'm an Israeli, and I found this to be one of the most thoughtful articles about the war from the other side's perspective, but it was very clearly written by a Westerner on a Middle Eastern conflict.
Let me be very clear about something: I don't want Palestinians to be killed. No Israeli I know wants Palestinians to be killed. Even friends of mine who are very right-wing don't want to kill children. I'm not saying there aren't radical Israelis - there are extremists everywhere in the world - and I'm not defending the words of idiot politicians because I'm part of the half of the country that has spent months protesting them.
But if this is a real question - if he's genuinely asking how many children Israelis are willing to kill, how much can we stomach? - I think the answer most Israelis would give is however much we need to to survive. I'm not saying this easily or flippantly, I feel that this article is right on point: I do feel that I and my friends are losing our souls to war and I don't feel happy or relieved that we're at war, I can't sleep and it pains me to the core of my being.
But we don't have anywhere to go. There isn't a Plan B. The vast majority of Israeli Jews - some 6.5 million out of 7 million - don't have citizenship anywhere else. Losing this war means we die, barbarically if October 7 is any indication. And knowing that you, your family, your friends, everyone that you love could be dragged out of their homes, raped, set on fire and dismembered is a powerful motivator. I don't want to fight a war, I really, really don't, but then I look at my family and I don't see any other way for them to survive, so I force myself to stomach this war. It isn't an easy situation, and I find it appalling that this writer seems to think Israelis are choosing this and that we don't care.
Also, I don't think the writer has a fundamental grasp of what it means to live in the Middle East for a few reasons:
Firstly, America isn't Israel and 9/11 and 10/7 cannot be compared. The US would have survived even if they hadn't responded to 9/11 - al-Qaeda was never an existential threat. Israel is existentially threated by Hamas. And no, it's not nation-state vs. nation-state like WWII, but only a person who has not lived their lives under the threat of a terrorist organization can possibly downplay that threat. There is a psychological difference in seeing a terrorist attack, even on a large scale, and October 7, watching thousands of people with guns and machetes roll across your land and barrel towards you. I am not in any way downplaying the horror of 9/11, I am just pointing out that they are different and incomparable horrors.
Secondly, the writer claims that if Israel had "taken a breath" on Oct 8, there could have been some sort of diplomatic solution to the crisis. I've grown up in the Middle East, and if there's one thing I know with absolute certainty, it's that if Israel didn't respond itself, if Israel sat back and asked for help from others, it would have been seen as weakness. And weakness in my neck of the woods means annihilation - if Iran and Hezbollah had viewed Israel as weak on Oct 8, my country would be gone. Responding forcefully, lethally was a message to enemies that if Israel is attacked, it will hit back harder. That deterrence is the only thing between me and millions of people who want me dead. I can't deny that Israel fighting back is partly motivated by our fury but it's also strategic.
Lastly, this article brought up America's response to ISIS and 9/11 and compared it to Israel's response to Hamas. But there's one really basic fact missing here: America lost that war. America spent 20 years in the Middle East and left it no less radicalized than it was before. And then Americans seemed to just walk away and never speak of it again. The difference, of course, is that Afghanistan doesn't border the US and Americans don't have to continue living their lives 8 minutes away from the Taliban. I do.
Anyway, it was a genuinely thoughtful article, thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Sivan, for your comment, for helping those of us in the US to have a bit more understanding of what it's like to live in the Mideast. Now, more than ever, I stand in solidarity with Israel.
yes Sivan- thank you, and other commentators from Israel. It's important for those of us living in the US to get your perspective. I 100% support Israeli's fighting back for all they are worth (and in my view they are worth "a price above rubies"!
My friends in Israel also express this same horror and sorrow and yet one must protect one's children, home, family, culture and traditions. We would be impoverished without Israel. Your sympathetic retort to Sullivan's naivety is appreciated.
Thanks for your thoughts. Agree that Philadelphia hated by and at war with the entire East Coast is not a world
Americans can readily imagine.
I read a second question in his piece. Surely Israelis must discuss, (and Ukranians as well) aside from the near certainty of a more dangerous and damaging war with Hezbollah or an even bigger one with Iran, what does Israel look like in a year, or a decade?
Many comments here mock Sullivan's concern over 'innocents.' But will Israelis countenance widening the war to Tehran? Pre-emptive nuclear attacks upon Iran? When America sours or simply tires as it does and sends it's carrier fleets' protections elsewhere? What then? I can see Ukraine is likely to end up like South Korea, stalemated with a masssive loss of territory. Harder to see that kind of semi-stable outcome for Israel surrounded by hundreds of millions fixated on Jewish elimination.
Sullivan lost me when he quoted death statistics from terrorists. He also lost me blaming Israel for the hunger and thirst of Gazans. Hamas is responsible for this and Egypt is a neighbor, too. What about Qatar, Hamas' buddies?? Can't they open their doors to Gazans? No one will because Palestinians are historically terrorists. The bring terror wherever they go.
Sorry, Andrew, I didn't even finish your propaganda. As a Catholic sitting in the US, we don't have the right to pass moral judgement on Israel, who are defending themselves from 14th century barbarians.
"Can't they open their doors to Gazans? " -- Why should they? Because Israel wants to clear out Gaza and take the land for itself? Egypt doesn't agree with Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza, so why would it help Israel do that? The fact is no country has historically wanted to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees. FDR turned away the Jewish refugees from Europe after WW2, just like we don't want all the South American refugees pouring into our Southern border. European countries don't want all the Ukrainian refugees, and didn't want the Syrian, Iraqi, or Afghan refugees during our "war on terror" over the last 20 years.
You are plain wrong here. The European countries have taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees. The difference is, they behave differently than Palestinians, who have tried to topple the government of every country that has welcomed them into its borders over the past 75 years. Amazing how your passion matches up with lacking the basic knowledge of facts. Maybe direct it towards educating yourself rather than posting here?
Right?? The Ukranians share the Western values with the European countries. The Palestinians just try to cause trouble and destroy governments. Plus, they are 12th century barbarians. Sorry to sound harsh, but that is the truth. Stoning women, killing homosexuals. No civilized country wants these barbarians.
They took them gladly. Don't know what you're basing your opinion on, but there has been zero documented pushback, at least in mainstream sources, against the millions of Ukrainian refugees.
Which countries specifically - Jordan and Lebanon, how specifically, by attempting coups against the governments that took them in. A basic Google search will provide ample information here.
You have for 16 years and yet you are clueless on the basic facts of the matter if you are unaware of the history of Palestinians in Jordan and Lebanon? Maybe try doing a better job?
"there has been zero documented pushback, at least in mainstream sources," -- There's your problem right there. You know you can't trust the MSM to give us any negative perspective on Ukraine.
"Jordan and Lebanon, how specifically, by attempting coups against the governments that took them in." -- WRT Jordan, I'm guessing you mean the PLO extremist militia Black September. No, I think it's disingenuous to lump regular civilian refugees in with them. As for Lebanon, the PLO may have played a role in the civil war, but at no time did they attempt to overthrown the Lebanese government.
Israel does NOT want to take the land for itself. I can see them putting in a demilitarized zone the way South Korea has, but they are very clean that they don't want the land.
And history shows Palestinians who went into Egypt sided with the Muslim brotherhood and tried to topple the government and tried to topple the king in Jordan. This is why no one likes them or trusts them.
And Europe has taken in millions of Muslims and are now having huge issues with them. So people have taken them in.
Black September's campaign was against King Hussein, not Abdullah (Hussein's grandfather).
Understandable you don't like Mondoweiss because it contradicts the zionist narrative. Which is why I included citations from other sources that back it up. Interesting you have nothing to say about those.
Why do you refer to Israel’s self defense as “ethnic cleansing.” I’ve never heard this and it seems misinformed. Isn’t it the Palestinians who are trying to genocide the Jewish people and that’s why Israel is defending itself against this other genocidal country?
What was the response of the world on Oct 8, before any Israeli response?
Mass cheering in the streets.
Jews are hated no matter what - communist or capitalist, assimilated or isolationist, weak or strong, helpless or fighting back - the oldest of hatreds that this morally condescending article conveniently ignores.
Yup. One wonders how spontaneous these protests really were. Similar to the outbreak of the Second Intifada, so conveniently linked to Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount. I suspect in these cases "follow the money" is the most appropriate descriptive.
I have yet to see any practical recommendations in any media on ways to reduce civilian deaths by someone who has sufficient expertise in methods of warfare. Surely there are relevant experts who could be consulted for background research before publishing ?
I've asked that same question multiple times, to every anti-zionist commenter on the Times of Israel, with not a single response. That's because there isn't any other way. They just like to bash Israel at every opportunity.
I've only seen people answer the question of what Israel could do to be more accurate in the vague of terms or not at all. Because the answer for these people is that Israelis should just lay down and be murdered. It is no coincidence that the astroturf demonstrators are shouting for both a ceasefire and an intafada.
The fact is, this war is a huge win for precision strikes. It is an absolute proof of concept of the dream of air warfare. Weeks ago it was 20k casualties (this includes hamas) and Israel had dropped 29k bombs! That is less than 1 bomb per causlty! That is incredible! If the US was in the position that Israel is in, would there be a Gaza? Would the world condemn us? The answer to both is, lol no.
The assumption that Israel could have leveraged 10/7 among nations to achieve broader strategic goals makes sense only in theory. Unfortunately, time and again, nations don’t show up for her. More likely, had there been no meaningful military response, there would have been another attack but in the North or somewhere else. A return of the hostages would likely result in an immediate ceasefire and would have for the last 70 days. Israel, as always, is the most unpopular and difficult position that no nation should ever find herself in. Rather than the onus being squarely on her - where are nations pressuring Iran, Hamas, Qatar, Egypt? Nowhere to be found because to highlight their complicity in enabling the humanitarian crisis doesn’t fit the script.
Exactly. The idea that is playing out that if Israel developed a "coalition of the willing" or used this "episode" to think more clearly about its "domestic politics" because Bibi is the problem, not Hamas, is not just wishful thinking, it is antisemitism writ large.
Everyone knows that the reason we are here today is because the greater world refuses to step up and support Israel. Look at the number of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN over time. Look at the fucking fact that Israel has to play its fucking FIFA world cup qualifiers in Europe (UEFA) instead of Asia (where Lebanon, Syria and Jordan play) because the Asian Confederation would rather punt than make its members do the right thing.
The world hates Jews. The only thing they may hate more, is being called on it.
I refuse to see a group of people (Palestinians in this) rejoice as another was being murdered and raped. Not a single Israeli was dancing in the streets of Tel-Aviv when those bombs were dropped on houses in Gaza killing hundreds. You said "they're human too" and I believe this is inaccurate. Biologically yes, they're human, but not morally, ethically or socially. The indoctrination for hatred of everything Jewish, the deification of death and deceit, started long before Hamas and will endure long after it. Just like the US dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, killing 150000 civilians, to bring it down to its knees and essentially re-educate a nation, that's what needs to happen in Gaza as well.
Yet you just did. Do you know MOST Palestinians? Have you lived and/or walked among them in Gaza or the West Bank? Have you heard what MOST of them have to say?
I have read Andrew Sullivan for years. His warnings about woke culture infecting every aspect of American life were profound. "We all Live on Campus Now," was one of the best columns ever written. He is also an antisemite. Not because he dislikes Jews. Bari considers herself his friend. He is an antisemite because he does hold Israel to a higher standard than any other nation, including his nation of birth (UK) and his adopted home (US). At no time does Andrew ever come up with a solution that doesn't include the eventual destruction of Israel and at no time does he ever hold the Palestinians in general responsible for their own situation.
I find it interesting that those who support Hamas (not saying Andrew does) keep telling us that nothing happens in a vacuum. That is true. The war that the Palestinians have waged against the existence of a Jewish state goes back well over 100 years. Back to before the existence of the Palestine mandate and definitely to the Palestinian leader Haj Amin el Husseini and his rabid support of Nazism. Pogroms, slaughter, rape and butchery of the Jewish community in Palestine was his calling card. So there is your history.
I don't know anyone of any worth who isn't upset about the civilian casualties in Gaza, except for Hamas and Iran. They are jumping for joy. Why isn't Andrew holding them to account for these killings? They after all are responsible for this war.
Instead of creating Singapore in Gaza, Hamas created a terrorist nation bent on genocide against its neighbor. Does Andrew think there would not be blowback at some point against the entirety of Gaza if Hamas pulled off what it actually did on Oct7?
Israel asks people to move to safe areas, Hamas prevents this. Israel has a map of safe areas for people to go to. UNRWA and other aid UN agencies, actually send people into the unsafe zones to schools, mosques, and hospitals where they become human shields for the Hamas terror infrastructure. Yes, UNRWA and other aide agencies in Gaza are Hamas.
Israel opens civilian corridors so people can escape the fighting and Hamas shoots at those fleeing and plants IEDs to kill their own people. How is this Israel's fault?
Hamas/PIJ have had 2,000 rockets explode in homes, schools and mosques killing their own people, but somehow this is Israel's fault. How many of those killed in the war are actually victims of these rockets and not Israeli airstrikes? Does he ask? No.
Andrew takes at face value the numbers, list of casualties, and causes of death that Hamas puts out, because we all know that people who burn babies to death in ovens, burn whole families alive, torture children in front of the parents before murdering them, and rape women and girls to death are known for their veracity.
What I find truly interesting is that when Joe Biden questioned the number of those killed in Gaza in the earlier days of this war, Hamas somehow had a list with names and ID numbers all ready to go. We were also told we didn't know the names and the number of people killed because they were all lying under rubble. Which is it?
Andrew never writes what Israel should have done in the aftermath of Oct7. Just give up the ship and leave? Go where? Sue for peace? With who? Those who commit such barbaric acts and vow to commit genocide against every Jew in the world? Maya Angelou once said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them." We believe Hamas wholeheartedly.
There is a very ironic cartoon of the 2014 Gaza war with John Kerry asking Bibi could he at least meet Hamas halfway.....Andrew seems to think along those lines.
As Blinken has said, "this would end tomorrow if Hamas returned the hostages and surrendered." No one seems to be saying that, including Andrew.
The only thing that has changed is that the blood of Jewish children is no longer cheap. If Hamas valued the lives of Palestinian children they would never have begun this war. Put the blame where it should be. But Andrew isn't brave enough for that.
This is such an outstanding rebuttal that TFP should include it underneath Andrew’s essay as a counterpoint. Well done, EKB!
"If Hamas valued the lives of Palestinian children they would never have begun this war."
Spot on! This argument should be used every time these leftist swine curse Israel for defending its self.
Why do they have so many children, is a question few ask. Do women really want to keep on getting pregnant in Gaza?
It fascinates me that a country supposedly subjected to genocide for the last 18 years has doubled its population (since the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza, with the exception of subsidized water and electricity). I took world history in the early ‘80s, so definitions may have changed, but back then I was taught that a genocide resulted in fewer people, not more.
It's also telling that providing water and electricity at a subsidized rate qualifies as an "occupation." That's a scant one step from Jussie Smollett territory.
Exactly!
Your old definition of genocide has been changed. It no longer must include an intent to partially or completely wipe out an ethno-national group. It now extends to any civilian casualties - especially if involving Israel.
I might even say, only if involving Israel. Thee are numerous other places that could be called genocide throughout Africa, and lets not forget the Uyghurs in China...
Martyrs are not reusable.
Revenge of the cradle, they called it in Québec.
The poetic French. Give them credit.
They breed like flies.
Because they don’t have to make their own way. Arab oil and dim bulb western money allow them to breed without the need for the labor it takes to raise them. Those moms are full on board with Hamas and are proud to have their spawn murder and be killed in this conflict.
Arafat once said his greatest weapon was the Palestinian womb. It's soldiers, votes, and cannon fodder.
Not sure if "want" enters the conversation.
It's to Sullivan's credit that he doesn't use dehumanizing words like "swine." Think about it.
So, I should be gentle in my rhetoric when talking about racists who dehumanize Jews? What should I call people who demonstrate for genocide? Upstanding citizens? Deep thinking intellectuals?
I think swine covers it quite well.
What would you call these people who are calling for the slaughter of Jews? I love to hear it.
One can only hope this is sarcasm on your part.
I can be sarcastic but in this case I'm not. Referring to humans as swine, vermin, rodents, etc., just isn't helpful. It's expressive, sure, and it's also what the Nazis did when they were preparing to cull my tribe and send them to the gas chambers. But it's not a good policy, in my view--dehumanizing people you intensely dislike and disagree with.
Again, I ask you what should I call people who call for genocide? The NAZIs disgusted me and I call them inhuman swine. Hamas and the leftist who call for the genocide of Jews disgusts me and I call them inhuman swine. I think I'm right on the money here but you don't. It seems to me you want to play kissy face with these monsters. And that's what they are monsters.
It's what the nazis did? I suppose so. How do we meaningfully distinguish between nazis and hamas in their efforts to dehumanize and exterminate Jews? Maybe scale? The intent is identical even if methods differ.
And what should we call those who have an obscene passion for killing Jews? "Swine" seems tame given their lust for Jewish blood.
Come read down the thread I got into with LP. I actually framed what became a nice historical metaphor and wonder what you think of it.
I do not agree except on this point about using dehumanizing language. But the respondent is not a political writer or author who is taught to turn down the more
harsh verbage in their rhetoric. Their appears to be to assuage the reader with direct logic and counter arguments to the false premises that the article writer loosely stands on, but without the political and social consequences and judo like responses that real adversarial writers counter with when that dehumanizing language is used.
I am still waiting for your response. What would you call racist, genocidal asshole?
Support HAMAS. Vote Democrat. The left not only hates Israel but they hate the U.S.
Every election cycle the Dem/Commies yell about white supremist groups, disgusting organizations, but when was the last time you saw marches of tens of thousand white hate groups fill the streets of London, New York and large groups on university campuses screaming for the blood of Jews?
You will never see it because the main stream left far out numbers white hate groups. The main stream left are call Democrats. So once again I say, "Support Hamas. Vote Democrat."
Sorry, Lonesome - I really am. But your statement 'support Hamas, vote Democrat' is sheer nonsense. Don't fall to the level of some commenters here who equate Democrats as adherents of Satan etc.. There are complete progressive idiots on the Dem side, and we know who they are - just like there are imbeciles on the GOP side - but I never equate Republicans as a whole with the people in that party I abhor.
There are far more centrists in the Democrats who support Israel than the Far Left who capture all the eyeballs around here.
Try an experiment. You want the 'other side' to stop painting Trump supporters with a wide negative and ignorant brush? Then try not doing it as well to people who you think fit the stereotype of the party you despise. If you end it, maybe they will too.
Respectfully.
Btw, your previous comment re Hamas valued the lives of their children was right on..
Hamas cares less about their children, about equal to how they care less about the children of Israel. Too bad the spoiled kids on American campuses don't understand that (and who will apparently abandon Biden because he still supplies weapons to Israel..).
Lee, I am as harsh on Trump as I am on the Dems. The Dems not just tolerate communists and hard core antisemites and anti-Israeli jerks they welcome them. Bernie Sanders who is a committee chairman is a hard core communist and has been one since childhood. There are pro-Palestinian and Hamas sympathizers in the Dem congress.
So I believe my statements are correct.
There may be Democratic pro Palestinian and Hamas sympathizers in Congress. But are they in the majority? No.
And who right now is holding up aid for Israel as we speak?
www.timesofisrael.com/us-senate-republicans-block-aid-for-israel-and-ukraine-demand-border-policy-changes/
They aren't in the majority but the Dems tolerate them. If Bernie were a NAZI, they would kick him out. The Communist made Hitler look like a girl scout and the pro-Palestinians are racists.
The Reps are doing what parties have done for over 200 years. They are holding up aid in hopes the ever senile Joe will close the border down. It is a pressure play.
I don't think they will abandon Israel.
Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat (large D).
No but he caucuses with them and votes with them and is a committee chairman in the Dem controlled senate.
The Dem rewarded this communist with a chairmanship. If the Reps did this with a NAZI, I bet you would be upset.
"There are far more centrists in the Democrats who support Israel than the Far Left who capture all the eyeballs around here."
No, there aren't. If there were, the leaders of your party would denounce the "far left" rather than always only ever serving their interests.
No one group hates like the LEFT. Hate is their raison d'etre. That's what they do.
Yeah, be sure to vote for Trump, who pretended not to know who David Duke was in 2016, because criticizing him would lose him lots of racist and antisemitic voters, and who said there were "very fine people on both sides" in response to the young brownshirts marching across the UVA campus with Tiki torches yelling, "Jews will not replace us!" You really need to contact the mostly Jewish-run Southern Poverty Law Center in the Alabama, whose whole mission is fighting antisemitism along with racism against blacks, to get help understanding Jews' enemies on the right. It wasn't a "Democratic commie" who murdered the Jews in Pittsburgh, but a red-blooded, gung-ho Trump lover. Israel gets lots of flack from the left, no question about it. But when was the last time you heard about an American Jew being killed by a leftist, as Jews were killed by a right-winger in Pittsburgh? Do you really think it will be great for American Jews to elect a guy who brags about promising to be a dictator who'll tear up our Constitution to go after his enemies? This might turn out to be the old Jewish saw in reverse: "First they came for the Jews, then they came for [Aryan] me" might be "First MAGA sucked up to Jewish donors and went for the blacks and gays, and then they came for the Jews, too." There has never been a fascist state that was good for Jews anywhere.
Not a lot of people know who Duke was. Suggesting that Republicans are racist is a clichéd trope. It is unsubstantiated claptrap used to frighten black people into voting for Republicans. Who could forget Biden telling black voters that Republicans will, "put y'all back in chains!" Oddly enough many no longer buy nonsense. They started looking at Democrat run cities and federal programs offered to appease black voters. And an uncomfortably large number of voters turned their backs on the Democrats.
So, you can wheel out that dusty pile of garbage but fewer and fewer are taking it seriously. Quite rather the Democrats peeling back the curtain and displaying their anti-semitism has also helped shine light on their vicious lies.
Don't forget, Trump has family who are Jews. Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem and was a very strong supporter of Israel.
Anyway, your schtick is old hat, boring, and suffering from a factual deficit that sounds a great deal like projection.
Yawn.
By all means back the party of "Jews will not replace us!" with all your might. Do it till you're satisfied, as they used to say. I'm sure you're looking forward to dancing on Ukraine's grave with Putin and Trump, too.
My word! You certainly are passionate. A bit unhinged with your assumptions about people you know nothing of, but passionate in that ignorance none-the-less.
Thank you so much.
There's also the fact that he's a little bit racist. He believes the Palestinian people are not capable of electing a responsible government, nor holding them to account. His standards for their civilization are lower than his standards for Israel because he doesn't think they have the "capabilities."
The "subtle bigotry of low expectations". I must point out, however, that there is not one Arab Muslim majority country which is a true democracy. There is always a king, a dictator or a strongman in charge. Democracy does not fit their culture. Some might even say that Islam is more of a political system than a religion.
It is both. It is Exhibit A on why there should be significant separation of church and state.
That's Western thinking. Separation of church and state cannot (and should not) happen in Israel and I am skeptical if it could happen in majority Muslim countries.
Iraq is the closest to democracy. Thanks to the USA.
Close but no cigar! Iraq is nothing like a democracy and I'm sure you know that Iran is very busy there. Another failed state.
And what a stupid decision that was.
Obviously we should have installed a authoritarian King like every nice Arab country has. Instead the liberal imperialists insist everyone follow them off a cliff!
A culture can allow its "capabilities" to degrade. The Palestinians in Gaza have allowed their culture to deteriorate into a death cult of hatred so that they lack capacity to accomplish anything worthwhile except make more babies to be martyrs. Lots of cultures go that direction. Healthy cultures go in the opposite direction. It is not racist to call that out.
I mean maybe he’s right? We can only go based on years of evidence
He’s right
Yes, Bari, you actually need to publish this!!!!
I just emailed it to him as I am a paid subscriber to his weekly column.
I was trying to follow along with an open mind until he characterized the IDF as trigger-happy. Then I just got mad. Open invitation to go down into these dark, booby-trapped tunnels and fight against these monsters, and see how your trigger finger operates.
Sullivan has obviously never been in a war, and all during his military age he would have been 4-F, so he would never have had to be. Neither have I but I know not to judge.
Me too. Its the same as equating allies fighting Nazi on equal
footing with them.
Well said. Clearly you are capable of the nuanced thinking that Andrew and so many others who have been blindsided by the horrific images they are inundated with daily by Hamas, are incapable of. Personally, I think that a strong, armed & incredibly competent Jew is incompatible with the vision of the haggard, tortured Holocaust victims the world would like us to be. Our own sovereignty, and self-determination is enraging to antisemites around the world. And Tehran is egging them on by sabotaging and sacrificing the Palestinian people in order to destroy Israel and ultimately the Jews. There is a clock in Tehran that counts down to the destruction of Israel. The Ayatollah promises that total annihilation will be complete by 2040. Maybe Andrew Sullivan could write about that and propose ways- other than aggressive self-defense- that Israel can prevent its own demise from coming to pass. Until he presents real solutions, this essay and the sentiments expressed are just those of an idealistic teen who has spent too much time consuming social media uncritically.
Here's a solution to the problem of Iranian 2040 certitude (first time I've ever heard of said clock..) - and that is what the Iranians have attempted to prevent with Hamas' help - which is the peace deal that was being negotiated between Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US. This tripartite agreement would have included mutual recognition between Israel and Saudi Arabia with diplomatic and commercial ties, two sworn enemies of Iran, with the added feature of the umbrella of American military security for Saudi Arabia, along with nuclear technology. This is complete anathema to Iran. This scares the hell out of them - thus Hamas, and thus the explicit barbarity of their Oct 7 assault on Israel. They wanted, no worse than that, INVITED, the predictable Israeli response to such an attack. All in order to derail this burgeoning deal, in hope that the Israeli response would certainly cool any aspirations Saudi Arabia would have in a rapprochement with Israel.
But, interestingly, from I've read recently, the Saudi deal with Israel is not dead. It must succeed, in order to isolate Iran. I think it will.
The Saudis won't mind if Israel kills all the Palestinians if it's militarily necessary.
They wouldn't mind if Israel killed them all just for the hell of it. This war won't set back rapprochement between SA and Israel.
You’re correct. It won’t stop it, but it will delay it for a long time.
It definitely seems like the Abraham Accords and the tearing up of the JCPOA with Iran set up a series of events that may have led to the events of Oct 7, with the express purpose of perhaps a cornered Iran believing that it could goad Israel into a hostile response against Gaza that would roll back the "Accords" made with the other Arab nations in the region. Seems legit to me, the interesting part so far is the refusal of the other nations in the region to play ball, at least vocally, although who knows what is happening behind the scenes...
But some thoughts anyway: Trump supporters/apologists like to claim that Trump had "no new wars" under his term, of course Trump had only one term, and a fairly consequential artifact of his term was the Abraham Accords, of which he and his supporters claim made "peace" in the Middle East - but did they? The "accords" managed to leave out most critical parts of a comprehensive peace deal (The Palestinians and Iran) and instead set them on the offensive of an otherwise pan-Arab peninsula "accord" with Israel.
So did Trump (really, Kushner, Trump was AWOL pretty much during the actual negotiations since this was mostly occurring around and after Nov 2020 election time, and we all know where Trump's "mind" was preoccupied with at that time, and it certainly wasn't in the Middle East - but kudos to Boy Wonder who walked away with over a few Billion in "investments" into his newly established private equity firm after signing was done! Hunter Biden ain't got shit on Boy Wonder when it comes to profiting from Office, but I digress), really set up the events of Oct 7, by first tearing up the Iranian deal, which was designed to bring Iran into "normalcy" while providing crucial oversight into its internals (and antagonizing Iran by also re-levering sanctions - a terrible look for any foreign nation dealing with the US going forward btw, that every election cycle can undo an agreement : / ), while also putting Iran into the corner by specifically leaving it out of the "accords", leaving very open the intentional marginalization of Iran that may have directly incentivized the Oct 7 play in response?
Imagine a world in which Trump didn't discard the Iran Nuclear Deal, but also did the Abraham Accords as negotiated by actual diplomats, rather than his financially invested and perhaps ideologically motivated SIL who regardless had no business in that situation to begin with, which might have ensured a carve out for the Palestinians in the securing of "peace" in the region - maybe no Oct 7 attack? I think it was ill advised to back out of the Iran deal, and then ramp up hostilities against and think there would be no response. And while the "accords" may be holding back *vocal* engagement from its partners against Israel, who knows where the funding and back end support is going regardless, they sure haven't stepped up to back their new Israeli friend at any rate : /
Perhaps Biden funding Iran and Gaza was a green light for this terrorist outburst. Trump had them on their backs and had peace breaking out. Clearly should have won a Nobel peace prize.
Biden did not "fund" Iran or Gaza. The unfreezing of sanctioned Iranian money from South Korean banks had not yet been accessed by Oct 7, and was also subject to oversight on the disbursement. Yes, you can make the case that "money is fungible" and that *if* Iran accessed the money under the guidance allowed for humanitarian needs, then it freed up other funds for terrorism, but the point still stands that by Oct 7, Iran had not accessed those funds, and it does appear that the Oct 7 attacks were in planning for longer than the deal that went through just that past summer.
Basically, if (and probably) that Iran funded the Hamas operation, this was already in the works and independent of the negotiated deal. And the notion that "Trump had them on their backs" is pretty direct to my point, yeah maybe he did so they reached for the knife in arms reach as a response - and more to my point, Trump "putting them on their backs" was an unnecessary provocation given Iran was following the terms of the JCPOA and by tearing up the agreement (and essentially shitting on the full faith of the US as a negotiating partner in the process, making future such agreements likely a lot harder to get in the future) he set the stage for an Iranian response that led to Oct 7...
BTW- didn't Trump win a "No-Bell" (according to him lol) ; P
An interesting take on the combination of the Accords and the withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal. What of course goes unsaid in this bubble of a comment thread on FP is that had America remained in the deal with sanction relief Iran would probably be not as bellicose as it is displaying today through Hamas and the Houthis (never mind Hezbollah) and would not be so close to actually deploying a nuclear weapon.
Iran was already not letting the official inspector in to their most sensitive areas. Why do you think that Iran was not simply using the time under the JCPOA to further its nuclear development? If Biden had kept the sanctions in place, Iran would have had $100 billion less to accomplish its mischief.
Dear god, I hadn't heard of that Tehran clock. I don't think the Ayatollah is going to be able to fulfill that goal, not by 2040, not ever, thankfully, but I do hope to see the destruction of Hamas in 2024.
Yes, it's real. https://www.timesofisrael.com/irans-doomsday-clock-for-israels-end-halts-amid-power-cuts/
😡🥲
Amen- from a shiksa sista!
Excellent response/rebuttal. I realize BW considers Sullivan a friend, but unfortunately he has made it a matter of habit to question Israel and its value to the US. He penned a dubious (at best) article in New York Magazine a few years back stating that the US gets worse than nothing from its relationship with Israel. Besides for the countless benefits to the US from what Obama characterized as the US’s best friend, I think there is a better question one should ask: What is the US getting out of its relationship with the Palestinians? Despite taking billions in aid from the US, the leadership of the Palestinians holds almost none of the values that Americans consider essential as important (freedoms of speech, religion, press; gender equality and on and on and on).
As you know, the US gets military intelligence from Israel that is invaluable. But Andrew Sullivan purposefully turns a blind eye to this.
Well, in the liberal/Democrat world, we got tunnel technology from Hamas that joe could spend his infrastructure money on. Sea to Sea. A super highway underground with charging stations every mile.
EKB....you expressed every “counter-thought” I had as I read Sullivan’s essay.
I have come to realize that some, too many, have embraced tolerance to the point of tolerance for those who would destroy us and our way of life. Mr. Sullivan seems to have done so.
I would add that AS *completely* mischaracterizes the combatants — Israel isn’t fighting against “poor besieged militarily limited” Palestinians, but against the soon-to-have-nukes enormously wealthy and armed international hydra of the mullah regime in Iran, including, quite directly, its Hezbolah and Houthi terror proxies. So, yeah, it’s an unfair fight, of a tiny besieged nation of 8 million against an axis of evil of many scores of millions.
Also, what nonsense about indiscriminate bombings and attacks with impunity—is he getting his opinions from Mehdi Hasan or maybe Hasan Nasrallah himself?
Well said! Excellent rebuttal. And specifically to this this note: "Andrew never writes what Israel should have done in the aftermath of Oct7." ....the absolute void of any reasonable alternative in the criticisms of Israel's response is deafening.
It’s not only preposterous but, in my view, irresponsible for those with (unfortunately) a platform to just make these criticisms of Israel without offering any real alternative. These talking heads and other political pundits have no meaningful military knowledge and merely say Israel should or should not do X or Y. I am still waiting for one of these arm-chair generals to offer a realistic alternative. Do they actually think that Israel enjoys, as a democratic nation with an overwhelmingly reservist military, sending its men and women to die? Do they think that the Israeli electorate so devalues life that they would continue a war they didn’t start just out of desire for retribution or some other illogical response? I guess they might judging by Sullivan’s ignorant assumptions, but we all know that nothing could be further from the truth. Israelis -- just like Americans -- value life over all else so this is clearly what they unfortunately but correctly view as the only option. But those they must fight do not of course value life. At all.
Thank you for this. I’m still waiting for one of these armchair generals, usually ones with a doctorate in basket weaving, opining how the IDF has to fight Hamas differently. Of course with zero details given regarding how.
Yes, an armchair general like Sullivan telling the IDF what type of bombs to arm their planes with is pretty rich. (Big bomb bad, little bomb better. Duh.) Dirty little secret: precision guided munitions are very expensive and not in reliable supply as the U.S. State Dept. gets cranky. Their main value is to reduce the number of sorties that your planes have to fly to assure destruction of heavily defended targets or targets that are inherently hard to hit, like bridges. Squandering them on hitting military targets more accurately just to avoid civilian casualties that are being used as human shields anyway is, sadly, more than those civilians are worth, given the number that would actually be saved.
Big bombs dig deeper into tunnels and bunkers than little bombs. That's why Israel is using a lot more 2000-pounders. With time-delay fuses they explode below the surface (where the tunnel is) and don't send a lot of fragments flying around the neighbourhood.
Yes, and every life spared in Gaza means an Israeli soldier dies. That's the equation. Hesitancy in warfare is fatal. Palestinian children are expendable props to Hamas, tragic costs of war to Israelis.
So true! I increasingly think that if you are going to criticize what someone has done, you need to have a viable alternative.
Yes! This!
The only point I would add to this terrific rebuttal is why Mr. Sullivan doesn't blame the UN and UNRWA for the casualties as well? The creation of UNWRA (to pacify the Arab block when Israel gained its independence) for the sole purpose of keeping Palestinians tied to the hope of returning to a homeland that was questionably theirs to begin with is perhaps the crux of the Israeli Palestinian problem. Not only have Palestinians been duped by their leaders into believing that rejecting any peace offer while teaching hate filled resistance will bring them the entire land of Israel, they also are maintained as the only people in the World that retains their refugee status down through multiple generations. The notion of a "2 State Solution" to the crisis of Palestinian suffering is not going to solve this problem as long as Arab states continue to use them as pawns for their hegemonic aspirations which include Israel and refuse to accept as refugees Palestinians who want to leave Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas, PIJ and all the other terrorist organizations that run freely through the Palestinian territories stealing money meant for Palestinian civilians will continue to use their predominantly young population as human shields for their barbaric assault on peace loving Israelis. And the world, and people like you, will keep blaming Israel.
All great points !
I have gone one step further.
My opinion is that the children of Gaza are future terrorists, who are brainwashed by UNRWA - - to kill Jews.
The blame for the death of children in Gaza rests with Hamas.
One wonders if the U.N. will rescind its approval of Balfour
One wonders if anyone truly thinks the UN is a legitimate organization with any moral, political, economic, judicial, or enforcement power. United Nations … great name, must admit.
Years ago in a small hotel in the Pyrenees, I met a retired British general who went with the British delegation to San Francisco to found the UN. He said, "The UN was useless then and it is useless now."
This week finding UNRWA cooperation in Gaza … no surprise there. Our America-hating regime in DC has to go.
Brilliant! I don't use that word lightly, EKB, but this is the most powerful counterpoint I've read yet to the Andrew Sullivan wing, and thank you for taking the time to write it. I agree, Bari, please elevate this from a reply to a full-blown counter-essay to Mr. Sullivan, or include it as a separate essay in the roundup.
Thank you so much.
Well said. Shane, I have just added another comment to EKB's brilliant essay.
Thanks, LP, much appreciate that. I reread Sullivan's columns again and got so angry I put a new comment on his last piece, "How many children is Israel willing to kill?" That sentence alone should get his headline writer fired. The only question is, "How many children is Hamas ready to kill?" because this war ends the day Hamas says, "We surrender." The tens of thousands of Gazans who've died is blood not on the hands of Israel, but Hamas.
I agree but try telling that to the nuts who support Hamas. How can anyone support a terror group. Apparently, Sullivan can.
I don't believe Sullivan supports Hamas. But he holds Israel to an impossible standard: destroy Hamas but God help you if a single "innocent" is harmed. No other nation can meet that standard, but Israel is required to by global pundits and the Israel-hating hard left.
In his heart he may think he is not supporting Hamas but those who call for a cease fire are certainly doing what Hamas wants. Hamas has been attacking Israel for years and when Israel defends itself the world screams for a ceasefire. They are in fact supporting Hamas and I am tired of it.
Amen to your comments. Your last paragraph made me think of what Golda Meir said, that there will be peace when the Palestinians love their children more than they hate Jews.
She also said, (paraphrasing from memory); We can forgive the Muslims for killing our children. We can't forgive them for making us kill theirs.
Clearly, they never will.
Yes! TY! I’ve been saying this right along--why aren’t we (the Western world) blaming Hamas and asking them why? Demand that they stop.
The other day someone put a sticker on my daughter’s door that said Free Palestine. I said to her to paint on the door the rest of that slogan “from Hamas.”
From high atop Mount Virtue, Sullivan delivers his condemnation of Israel. Nevermind that he admits that "Israel’s enemies are the enemies of civilization”. The legions of Andrew Sullivans around the world are the reason Israel will never win the PR battle against its enemies. Isreal knows and accepts this and simply gets on with the business of surviving, by any means necessary.
“ From high atop Mount Virtue…” love it (and stealing it)! 😁
It's not condemnation of Israel. It's realpolitik. He wants Israel to win. They can't do that if they keep slaughtering kids. At a certain point it just doesn't work, because the parents of those kids never forget. That's his point.
Really great rebuttal. I’ll throw in my friend's point: let’s concede that there’s a tragedy going on in Gaza (the Palestinians are my rock bottom for prioritizing people around the world, but even I can admit there are innocents being killed, etc). What would good, liberal, peace loving people suggest be done about it? All they have is "cease fire now". OK. Then what?
I’m not taking about the protesters - they’re neither good, nor liberal, nor peace loving. Their step two is on their signs, "from the river to the sea". But the good liberals who are terribly upset by what’s happening in Gaza now. What’s your proposed solution? [crickets]
Dresden?! Oh my. Didn’t we firebomb that city and condemn hundreds of thousands of people to the most barbaric suffering and death? The Israeli offensive in Gaza is worse than that?! Good grief Andrew. War is literal hell. Shedding tears for the suffering of innocents changes nothing.
A long term solution can only occur if/when the Palestinians get past the idea they - utterly alone along all people in the history of the world - can reverse history and claim victory from past battles that were long ago lost. It’s this delusion, kept alive by Western coddling for decades, which means the suffering and death must continue forever.
Glad you mentioned WWII. Following WWI, the Allies strategy in WWII was to crush the Axis’ belligerence by destroying their infrastructure to make war, which leveled cities and killed lots of civilians, forcing the belligerence out of the defeated. Sadly, the only way I see Israel coming away with a victory is to do the same to the Iranian backed proxies as well as Iran. Otherwise, this will happen again.
Very well said
Well said. I found Mr. Sullivan's piece galling. To paraphrase an old saw, Israel and Hamas/Iran are embroiled in deadly chess strategies. Mr. Sullivan and most media are playing checkers.
An extremely well written response and rebuttal that far better articulates my own thoughts than I could have written.
Thank you.
Your response is perfectly on point. I would add that despite supposed Israeli destruction of Gaza, Hamas continues to bomb Israel along with Hezbollah. Appeasing them would have done what? Israel has almost no true friends and appeasement would have brought no support. If these last few months have taught us ANYTHING it is that.
Yes!!! Agree with this 100%.
These arguments support a speedy surrender from Hamas. In the meantime, Israel’s assault on Gaza remains morally justified.
“In just three months, 23,000 human beings have been killed in Gaza”
Israel warned them what was coming. The obvious question is why didn’t they leave? The unmistakable answer is, nobody wants them. The reason why would be a good question for Mr. Sullivan to ponder.
The 23,000 casualty figure comes straight from Hamas and is accepted by the anti-Israel international press without question. There is no proof or corroboration that the numbers are anywhere near that. And yet, Sullivan throws them around. I wonder what his real angle is?
"I wonder what his real angle is?"
It could be he's trying to engender sympathy for Gazans. It could be he's trying to engender antipathy for Israelis. My guess is its both.
Perhaps his angle is to harvest clicks/views/subscriptions more than anything else. He has to know that it’s safer to criticize Israel than Hamas. And it gets him a lot of attention.
Yes. This makes me furious. All the casualty figures come from them-like moments after a strike. I am sure that thousands of innocent Palestinians have died-and just like in any war, that is very sad. But why the world's media continues to just report straight from Hamas' propaganda about this is mind boggling.
it makes me sad and mad. they are people. kids, moms, babies. they aren't numbers. yet for hamas, that's all they are.
I love the supposed accuracy of 23000 "human beings." It's like the statement, by the year 2024, the Polar Bears will be drowned by melting polar ice caps.
There is no proof of any of this data.
According to Canada's Dept of the Environment, Polar Bear populations are on the rise and have been for years. This despite then-Environment Minister Catherine McKenna's tweeted in 2020."If greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked then it is highly likely that we’ll lose every polar bear population in the world before the end of the century.
Yes, one wonders, if the world is so concerned (as we should be) with evacuating civilians (particularly children), why is there no pressure to set up new refugee camps, perhaps opening up the Egyptian border?
23000 was one day at Gettysburg.
AI says less than 8000
Yes, Andrew should get his op-ed published in "The Hamas Daily News" so the terrorists can surrender immediately, return the hostages, and end this bloody conflict. That should do it.
The problem is that unless Hamas is destroyed, more children will die. It is Hamas who built the underground structure for its fighters, but did not provide the shelters for the children of Gaza. Hamas and Hamas alone bear the ultimate responsibility for inflicting this catastrophe on the people it pledged to serve. If they truly cared about them, then they would give up the hostages and surrender their weapons. But if they had truly cared, they would not have siphoned off millions of aid money to build tunnels for a few, instead they would have concentrated on building a peaceful and prosperous society where the Palestinian people as a whole could thrive. If they truly cared, they would not have launched 7 October attack which has brought greater retribution than they dreamed possible (what did they think would happen? Because whatever it was, they miscalculated on the response -- I doubt they expected boots on the ground and in the tunnels for as long as they have been there and will be there)
All one has to do is to look at the renewed threat of the Houthis -- who were nearly destroyed until the West's instinct for aid and desire to avoid famine kicked in. Now, the US and the UK have had to do air strikes because the Houthi have decided to threaten global shipping, instead of looking after their people.
Hamas brought this on the Palestinian people. Hopefully, once they are defeated militarily, a new movement which prioritises the children of Palestine's future over death and destruction will emerge. It is what I pray for and however slim that hope might be, it needs to be there as the cycle of war must end and the only people can ultimately stop that cycle are the Palestinians.
I was going to say the same thing but you articulated it far better than I could. Sullivan pretends that Gaza was a civilian city instead of the fortified bunker that it was from which Hamas launched repeated attacks against Israel until their last spasm of barbarity on October 7. Gaza was more Iwo Jima than Dresden. Therein lies the difference that the yammering Sullivan fails to comprehend.
Iwo Jima! How many people know about that tunnel system? Not very many. Nicely articulated.
My Dad fought in the Pacific although not on Iwo. Guadalcanal, New Guinea and the Philippines. So it remains an area of interest for me. And, as brutal and sadistic as the Japanese were then, Hamas makes them look tame in comparison.
Oh interesting -- my grandfather served in the Pacific (destroyers -- one of his ships sank the sub which sank the Yorktown).
But yes I agree the Japanese military command which did not care at all for the ordinary Japanese soldier seem v tame in comparison to this lot.
Thanks. Good for your grand dad! That must have been sweet revenge for the Yorktown, which was almost saved and was being towed back to Pearl when the Jap sub sank it. Although the appalling actions of the Japanese soldiers against Chinese civilians were almost as fiendish as Hamas. How people who claim to have been sickened by the Rape of Nanking (or Manila) can cheer on Hamas just baffles me. So much for Fukuyama's end of history thesis......
The whitewashed kids on campuses screaming plaudits for their Hamas heroes have never heard of Nanking, and I wouldn't be surprised if their profs have heard about that 1937 atrocity either..
History, what's that?
I agree about Sullivan missing what was going on in Gaza. The Iwo Jima comparison is an apt one. The Navy thought they had bombed it but they were v wrong.
Have you been reading the daily updates from the Institute for the Study of War? They are worried that Israel has not degraded the Northern Gaza brigades enough.
Just signed up, thank you.
This is the same argument as those who still oppose the use of the atomic bomb on Japan.
What if this reaction from Israel was the intent of Hamas? Hamas happens to have an organizational structure, but its heart is an ideology that won’t be wiped out with bombs. What if Israel has played into their hands?
Also, Israel is a grown-up state. It can take responsibility for its own bombs.
Doubtful. The Hamas leadership may have calculated that they would have to wait several weeks but they thought the demonstrations etc in the West would force Israel to quit. It is why I suspect they contributed to the umbrella activist organizations..
I think they thought it would go as it had done for the other times they played this game -- a rapid ceasefire which allowed them to keep control of Gaza. Neither Hezbollah nor the factions on the West Bank have been able to draw to significant fire power away from Gaza like they thought they would. The Houthis have started bombing shipping indiscriminately (including a 'dark ship' carrying Russian oil. And the other Arab states have talked tough but mainly looked out the window. There are a number who like Israel to do the dirty work for them.
I agree the ideology which is in part fuelled by Iran will take far longer to eradicate. It is possible -- see what happened in Germany after WW2. Nazism still exists (unfortunately) but it no longer has any political force and the German people see great value in being part of a wider Europe and at peace with its neighbours.
Israel does take its responsibilities seriously -- it is why among other things they have repaired the water pipelines Hamas cut. They are also facilitating humanitarian aid in (after proper checks) including medical supplies. Should there be more aid? Yes, definitely. But 400 lorry loads is about what Hamas was allowing in prior 7 October (going from memory) and much of that aid wasn't reaching the ordinary Gazan. This is a short film done by the IDF which demonstrates the current state of the humanitarian aid (yes there is a certain bias, but the IDF know it can be fact checked and do care about the fact checking in the way that Hamas doesn't) https://substack.com/home/post/p-140550461
And Hamas should allow its people to use the tunnels as air raid shelters, but they don't. And they continue to use their people as human shields.
It is heart breaking to witness but it still remains in Hamas's gift to surrender.
Michelle Styles, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on motivations. I can’t be certain of the thinking of Hamas leadership, obviously, but I can see that October’s pogrom was designed to terrorize, humiliate, and create a feeling of insecurity in a state that was founded for the very purpose of ensuring that Jews never have to feel that sort of insecurity again. This is nothing like previous acts of terror by Hamas and their leadership is many things but stupid isn’t one of them. They had to know that Israel would respond in unprecedented ways. Something that may have surprised Hamas, I think, is Israel’s unwillingness to be strung along by hostage negotiations. It’s fairly well established that Israel will go to unbelievable lengths to bring a single Jew home. They haven’t been able to leverage the hostages in the ways they expected.
One POV I’ve heard is that Hamas did not expect to have as much "success" as they did thanks to Israel's utterly lax security and over reliance on tech for defense, so they overshot (plus they’re literally barbarians so once they got started they went for broke torturing, raping and killing in sheer delight). But who knows. The leadership sounds like they very much wanted what happened in all its extreme inhumanity, so I’m not sure I buy that POV myself.
Could be.
It doesn't matter Hamas' intent; what matters is its capability, and that must be destroyed.
I would submit that the best way - and only way - to eliminate an ideology is to destroy the brain that carries it. A brain infected with radical islam is like a brain infected with the rabies virus. There is no treatment except to destroy the animal before it infects others.
The only way it has worked historically is de-Nazification. In Japan, the Emperor was the key. No emperor in Gaza. de-Hamasification.
I might know another place.... This just hits a few high spots, but gives the flavor of post-Culloden Scotland. It became a very different country.
https://www.military-history.org/feature/18th-century/after-culloden-from-rebels-to-redcoats.htm
I agree that Hamas must be destroyed and the wrongness of the ideology must be exposed. It is a certain brand of Islam (and one which the Ottoman Turks had to struggle against as well) which should be neutralized. Many other strands of Islam do exist and these have a much different slant.
I certainly hope that it is only a strain of Islam that advocates for terrorism and barbarism. How large a strain is it, though, if it is only a strain?
Israel gets an A for effort, but an F for results thus far. Its post-10/7 efforts have expanded “radical Islam brain” throughout the world. At what point do you decide continuing the strategy is counterproductive?
This is no time for public relations efforts. Israel is facing an existential threat. Meanwhile, the huge Muslim rallies across Europe are more a wake up call for them on the danger their societies are facing from mass Muslim migration.
When you are in a position to judge.
Bad argument when defenders of Israel & its government’s war strategy respond to critics with “you’re not in a position to judge” but never seem to say that in response to those who agree with them ....
The "radical Islam brain" (your characterization, not mine) was there all along. It's been a bit more unmasked,
I find the argument that somehow Israel’s actions have caused radicalization to be a willful blindness of the unfortunate long-existing reality. The Arab world by and large has been determined to wipe out the Jewish presence for 100 years. Radicalism is already part of the world. It probably does not help that UNRWA has for years been fostering lies about Jews and Israel. Furthermore, what Hamas did do was change the tenor of the discussion among Israelis. The liberal peace camp has been awakened to a reality which we hoped did not exist -- that there is no interest in peaceful co-existence. Now we have two sides that don’t see that as a possibility.
Good news: UNRWA will no longer get US money. Finally!
I think that is very much untested hypothesis. Especially since the various Muslim factions in the middle east do not collaborate. I don't think the Arabs in Israel have any love for Hamas or want to lose their modern conveniences to return to ancien regime.
The latest polling I have seen reflects that 70% of Arab Israeli citizens supports the actions of the IDF.
And the other 25% of the 30% did not want to publicly say they support or are indifferent to the IDF actions. Thanks Mr. Nachman.
Brains are tricky things, Jim. What about the pre-symptomatic brains? Or the brains carrying a latent form of the disease? Or the brains that harbor a sympathy for the cause but then experience a sort of conversion of thought and become outspoken enemies of the radical ideology? As we witnessed during the massively failed war on terror, no intervention is free and we probably created much bigger problems for the West than we solved with our overseas adventures.
All good points, but you can't solve every possible permutation. As the say about draining the swamp when you are up to your ass in alligators, when they are out to annihilate you and everything you love, the first process is to stop them - and you do whatever it takes, realizing that your killing some of their innocent is a lesser evil than them killing all of yours.
Belligerence must be destroyed. Yes.
In case you haven't noticed, they are taking responsibility. And they don't give a shit about the reaction.
I know that in Oppenheimer, Gary Oldman's Truman was supposed to be the bad guy. But in the real world, he wasn't.
Jolene, what would you have had Israel do then? Honest question.
Good question. I don’t envy the decision makers and would never sign up for a job like that. But if I had to come up with an answer, I’d say in the immediate aftermath, Israel needed to rebuild the security fence which probably would have included having to create a parameter inside Gaza. This likely would have required some bombing since it would have been insane to send troops in to die at that point. So I’m not sure that bombs could have been totally avoided.
They also needed to posture for readiness in case any of the surrounding hostile countries got a wild hair and decided to dip their toe in the chaos.
But Israel is a powerful country and not everything is an existential threat. They could have said that every single person involved in the planning and execution of 10/7 is officially on notice that they are living on borrowed time and at Israel’s earliest convenience, they will take their last breath. They could tell Hamas that their desired response of an Israeli overreaction is not going to happen. That Israel understands that the average Gazan lives under the boot of a garbage terrorist organization and that Israel will not rain hell on innocent children with bombs that can’t tell the difference between innocent and guilty. They could express that the majority of Gazans don’t share the world view of Hamas but that if Gazans don’t want the interference of Israel in their affairs, they need cut out their own rot.
They could have said that while Israel plucks the weeds from the Earth, should any surrounding state or organization decide to misconstrue their response as weakness, they will be promptly corrected in a way that not only neutralizes the threat, but sends a larger message as a deterrent to others who may lack critical thinking or common sense. And during this restrained response, they needed to appeal to the world for the return of the hostages.
Israel can always reserve the right to bomb, but they have known about the tunnels for a long time. They have known about the rockets long enough to build the iron dome. Hamas wasn’t any more of an existential threat after 10/7 than it was on 10/6. They have time to think strategically.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Jolene. I do tend to agree that at the very least, Israel needs to rebuild the fence in a better manner with a DMZ of at least 1/2 mile of razed ground inside of it with any tunnels there completely demolished and sensors in place to capture any underground vibrations of new ones being created. Maybe that is how they can cease the overall bombing...but even so, they know they have an abjectly hostile government on the other side of the DMZ who has stated plainly that if they could, they would do the same thing over and over again. So I believe there is also justification to their current response, as there would be for any government/nation that was invaded/attacked by another. Quickest way for this to end is for Hamas leadership and those perpetrating 10/7 to surrender.
Not an easy or clear solution to this, I am sorry to say. Like you stated, I do not envy those having to make these choices.
So rebuild the fence and leave hostages to rot?
What difference does rebuilding the fence make to whether or not the hostages are rescued? Almost half of the original hostages are still being held now, even with the bombing. Some have been killed by the bombs (possibly) and a couple have been accidentally shot by the IDF (definitely). Would you say Israel’s current response involves leaving some hostages to rot? I wouldn’t. I would say it’s complicated, as any response will inevitably be.
The hostages are gone. If we get any back, that would be a bonus. You don't put the lives of 8,000,000 in jeopardy to spare 150. Tragic and painful but when in a war, this is part of the price to be paid.
Thanks. One of the few readers here who fully appreciates the paradoxes that Sullivan is writing about. Great post.
I think that Israel is now "promptly correct[ing any misconstrued responses] in a way that not only neutralizes the threat, but sends a larger message as a deterrent to others who may lack critical thinking or common sense"
Sure. But at what cost? Did it have to be this way?
Unfortunately, yes.
So the US should have done nothing after 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, which proportionately were much less severe than 10/7?
Well, the USA should not have invaded Iraq due to 9/11, which they did.
That may be, but I assume you are not saying that the USA should not have gone after Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
No, I didn’t suggest that Israel do nothing.
Restraint. Nice thought. Like if Hamas had not broken and twisted the very bones of the dead girls they raped, or had stopped before parading them through the streets to cheering crowds. The Middle East only understands the most brute of force. How many times will the West have to learn this? Europe is enjoying the fruits of its self-loathing immigration policies. The values and culture of Western Civilization are incompatible with those of the Islamic world. Are we naive or suicidal?
next to nothing; a weak response that would only encourage more of the same. Their goal is to follow the Koran explicitly: "expel them from where they expelled you" (The Cow, Sura 2, Verse 191, A.J. Arberry translation). Osama bin Laden said that even applies to Andalusia. So, for sure, it applies "from the river to the sea." Just as the Nazis would not stop until they were completely obliterated, the same is true for Hamas. And just as the Nazis did not try to safeguard civilians, so too Hamas. If the Allies held back for fear of killing civilians en masse, Germany would never have been defeated.
I concur but I fear that the Palestinians have for so long been led to believe that they will somehow someday return to the homes that belonged to their parents and grandparents without a single Jew to be seen that they are unwilling to settle for anything less.
As often noted, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
100% correct.
A topic ignored: Why isn't the International Red Cross AND the UN demanding the release of the Israeli hostages? I thought holding civilian hostages was a war crime. Mr. Sullivan?
The international Red Cross now bears the mark of shame over its deliberate mishandling of hostages. They have betrayed their primary mission.
Why isn't Gaza facing war crime charges at the Hague for using a hospital for a launching pad for military activities? Under the Geneva Convention it is forbidden to use civilian populations, the sick or the injured as human shields, it is a war crime, as is fighting from inside a hospital.
Cause it isn’t a real country, for one.
It is a territory of Palestine and the fighters and government of this area should be held responsible.
Crickets, yes.
How many Americans remain hostages? How would the MSM react if Trump allowed American citizens to be captured by terrorists for this long? Why did the MSM ignore the story about White House staffers being evacuated because Palestine rioters were tearing down a fence, yet not a single one was arrested?!
The “disappearance’ of the hostages is shameful. They, American and other nationals, should appear every day in the news.
Free Press could you include the kidnap for how many days count, or each day place a name and a photo, or write a few line about the hostage, or in some other manner post by your banner a way to remind your readers who is kidnapped and how long they have endured being a hostage.
Ted Koppel made a name for himself this way on Nightline during the Iran Hostage Crisis. Each night the opening graphic showed "America Held Hostage: Day 185" or however many days it had been.
Day 102 needs to be on the opening page for the same reason that Ted Koppel continually focused the attention on the Hostage Crisis. It is also very important to publish the days of hostage captivity for those that are denying, blaming, or justifying the kidnapping of civilians by Hamas.
We have also heard nothing in MSM about the 30+ American citizens who were murdered by hamas.
Yuri, please edit your comment above to state the date of the most recent DC riot by pro-Palestine supporters. Let people look it up and learn what MSM decides is not worth their time or ink.
It was 1/13/2024
Based on this essay Andrew seems to mean well. I would hope he agrees that defeating the enemy of civilization like Hamas is the most important thing, and worse than what is occurring in Gaza would be victory for Hamas. I have not heard any of Israel's well meaning friends who do not have the stomach for the war in Gaza propose a single alternative for how Hamas and Gaza ought to be dealt with, except to imagine the situation to be other than it is.
There was a simple, obvious alternative that could have occurred that I pushed for from the very beginning: evacuate Gazan non-combatants to Sinai while Israel dismantles' Hamas and its terror infrastructure in Gaza. It's completely plausible that the Western countries could have leaned on Egypt to do this. They could have guaranteed that the non combatants would be returned to Gaza after the war, that Israel would face severe consequences for not allowing them back in.
But over the course of this war, for all the ink spilled by the alleged friends of Gaza, I have not heard anyone suggest that Gazans be permitted to leave the war zone. They have asked Israel to do the impossible: do not kill civilians but do not move them either while fighting an enemy embedded amongst civilians and civilian infrastructure.
All these compassionate voices, and not one condemnation for Egypt not opening Sinai. Not one condemnation of no country being willing to take in any Gazans. You can say the Gazans aren't other countries responsibility or they'd be a problem for your own country, but then don't pretend you actually care about them except to the extent they can be weaponized against Israel, either as active fighters or symbols to slander it.
Egypt does not want Gazans for the very simple reason that they view them as dangerous to Egypt.
It's all very well to talk about allowing non-combatants to go to Sinai, but how do you tell who is or is not an non-combatant? When Gazans are habitually infiltrated by Hamas fighters pretending to be civilians, how do you adequately screen refugees to ensure that no terrorists are among them?
Why is it that no one ever asks why the other Arab nations are not pressured by the world to open their borders to make a safe refugee camp (hello Egypt) for woman and children? The world would throw billions to create “Camp Gaza” they have thrown billions to create “camp Hamas” for years this could be a positive reeducation moment even! “Now little Ahmed, stabbing and killing Jews is not a good life goal…” The world that cry’s out for the poor mislead Palestinian people should help make this happen, Israel would love to have the canon fodder of civilians that Hamas uses removed from the area so they can truly finish what Hamas started.
They would go straight into the Moslem Brotherhood, whose goal is to end the secular government and install a religious hierarchy. Say goodbye to every great monument in Egypt if that happens, too. Remember the massive cliff Buddhas in Afghanistan bombed to rubble?
I think Israel and Egypt have decent lists of who is and who isn't. I'd bet Fatah does too. Obviously anyone carrying a weapon. Even if Hamas fighters drop their weapons and uniforms and flee to Sinai, that in itself is a morale defeat for Hamas, showing them to be cowards who cannot or will not defend Gaza. In the meantime while they're disarmed and out of Gaza, IDF can destroy tunnels, weapons, command centers, etc.
I think that it is highly unrealistic to think that either Israel or Egypt can keep up-to-the-minute tabs on the ideological leaning of millions of people in Gaza.
Good points.
Tough to tell who is who.
The "Palestianians" themselves are the descendants of people who fled the fighting in 1948, when Arab armies on every side invaded the nation of Israel, newly created by the UN, with the avowed aim of perpetrating a second Holocaust.
Since that time they have made themselves persona non grata in multiple places, including Jordan and Lebanon. They break things and make life harder wherever they go, and amount to abusive house guests no sane person would invite into their home. Then they moan and complain about their fate.
I will say that their misery is perhaps God's way of giving them the opportunity to grow up.
"I have not heard any of Israel's well meaning friends who do not have the stomach for the war in Gaza propose a single alternative for how Hamas and Gaza ought to be dealt with, except to imagine the situation to be other than it is."
This is absolutely the biggest condemnation of the critics of Israel's response. What is the alternative??
Raises a very good point. Why was there suddenly room made for thousands and thousands of Ukrainian refugees along its borders as well as here in the US? Same to be said for those coming out of Iraq.
Because the Ukrainians were not aligned with a government and religious sect that wanted to destroy Sweden.
“He meant well,” as I was taught, is about the worst thing you can say about someone.
Apparently Gazans are only and ever Israel’s responsibility. They crave eternal victimhood and the West is giving to them. I think Islam is just a huge inferiority complex actualized. Denying Moses as the only and true prophet and replacing him with Muhammad and consequently denying Judaism it’s unquestionable primacy as the first monotheistic religion. Truly believe that’s the core of their ideology this endless battle.
This at least goes back to year AD 689, when construction began on Dome of the Rock directly over the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (and specifically its Holy of Holiest location of the altar to the Ark). In the most public manner possible, Mohammad/Islam declared superiority over Judaism. But they also simultaneously declared war against Christianity. Running along both sides of the buildings arcade were verses trashing the Trinity, declaring the entire New Testament a fabrication (it must be they argued since it was written by mortal men). The Qur’an by contrast was claimed given to Mohammad by the mouth of God himself, via the angel, Gabriel, and therefore also, superior to the NT. Moses was the only other prophet who heard directly from God (10 Words), and therefore no surprise that Moses is mentioned 137 times in Qur’an. The Arab conquerors in 1st decades of their empire referred to themselves as ‘muhajirun’ or literally ‘those who have undertaken an exodus’. They hijacked Moses/Israel Exodus from Pharoah narrative, to justify their own ‘exodus’ by point of sword across Judea, North Africa and eventually into France, where they were finally defeated at Battle of Tours, AD 732. Many historians agree if Franks had not halted the Caliphate then, we’d all might be speaking Arabic today.
Why is it that no one ever asks why the other Arab nations are not pressured by the world to open their borders to make a safe refugee camp (hello Egypt) for woman and children? The world would throw billions to create “Camp Gaza” they have thrown billions to create “camp Hamas” for years this could be a positive reeducation moment even! “Now little Ahmed, stabbing and killing Jews is not a good life goal…” The world that cry’s out for the poor mislead Palestinian people should help make this happen, Israel would love to have the canon fodder of civilians that Hamas uses removed from the area so they can truly finish what Hamas started.
Well said. Andrew sipping a brandy as his quill drips hypocritical ink. It was interesting that Bari felt the need to qualify Andrew as a friend before publishing this useless, sophomoric drivel. But points for good conversation starter.
Egypt hates Hamas as much as Israel does. And I don't think they much like Palestinians either. Thus no Sinai option. Look how long it took for Americans to exit Gaza and enter Sinai for safety. And imagine the money needed to feed and house two million Gazans? From where would that have come from? And how long would that have taken?
A non starter.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It seems like Mr. Sullivan has not been paying attention to the simplest of truths expressed clearly and succinctly by Secretary of State Blinken:
“What is striking to me is that even as, again, we hear many countries urging the end to this conflict, which we would all like to see, I hear virtually no one saying – demanding of Hamas that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender. This is over tomorrow if Hamas does that. This would have been over a month ago, six weeks ago, if Hamas had done that,”
“Understandably, everyone would like to see this conflict end as quickly as possible,” but, he observed, “if it ends with Hamas remaining in place and having the capacity and the stated intent to repeat October 7th again and again and again, that’s not in the interests of Israel, it’s not in the interests of the region, it’s not in the interests of the world.”
I really can't stand Blinken in general, but he got it right here!
Blinken’s words are good but his deeds (support of Iran JCPOA) are bad.
Hamas are cowards, of course - of which Blinken alludes to. They cloak themselves and their weaponry under and amongst the most vulnerable and innocent of their civilian population. They do not have the guts to go toe to toe with the Israelis on open ground. Thus this.
"Coulda, shoulda, woulda"! Sullivan sits on Mount Olympus to criticize those mired in destruction! Who has really said that they glory in the deaths of women and children? Israel? Absolutely NOT! It is Hamas, clearly and simply! And who says that "war" has to conform to some agreed upon metrics? Civilized nations? Yes, but Hamas is NOT part of that group. And they DO, by the way, glory in the deaths of bystanders, women, and children.
And Sullivan has spent how much time in the military, that he’s qualified to be an armchair general? People like him make me sick.
Andrew sounds like Democrats in Congress with their moral outrage for Israel, couched in recognition that Hamas must be destroyed, but offering no practical alternative than Israel’s painstaking approach.
If Israel wasn’t a moral country, Hamas could have been destroyed in hours with hundreds of thousands of civilians killed. But instead they put their young soldiers at great risk trying to root out the terrorists from among the civilians.
So, Andrew, what would you have done or be doing now if you were Israel’s Prime Minister?
Alternatively, what would he have recommended had he a soldier son in Gaza right now, trying to separate civilians from combatants - as I do?
The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
First, thank you and my heart and prayers are with your son. Second, the hypocrisy is not just breathtaking but revealing. Just like the hypocrisy of what happened (& IS happening to female hostages as we speak) to Israeli girls and women on Oct 7, we are seeing in stark, real time, how Jew hatred suspends all of the rules of civilized behavior. If they are talking about the murder, rape or kidnap of Jews, instead of immediate and resounding expressions of horror and distaste, we will be met with, “BUT.” What we are seeing in the reaction to this war, Oct 7 and every day forward, is the lifting of the veil of Jew hatred.
10/7 has exposed all of it.
We now know who they are.
Liora, please let me know your son’s name for a misheberach. He will be in my prayers every day.
Thank you so much.
שמואל עזרא בן ליאורה שירה
Prayers for your son to return home safely.
Thank you....
As a fellow Israeli with very young sons, I thank you from the deepest part of my mother heart and want you to know that we will be thinking of you and your שמואלי every day.
Thank you.....
Praying for your son, Liora.
Praying for him, Liora
Mr. Sullivan: Thank you for this piece. I never thought I’d say this about your writing though but it is simple-minded and emotional. I agree with the deep moral concern, but it is simple-minded because you conclude with the straw-man alternative world that if the Israelis “had taken a breath, thought deeply and strategically” and acted “in consort with their recently acquired Arab interlocutors.” Seriously? Qatar teaming up strategically? The UAE? You cannot get off so easily. Drop the platitudes. What was that missed path? Even President Obama, days after 10.7, likely reeling and seeing the shocking consequences of his entreaty of the Iranians, tweeted about Israel’s entitlement to “dismantle” Hamas. Please explain your alternative world where that path ever existed. I don’t see it, but if you can, many would be with you in criticizing the current path.
You are spot on Chris. Taking a breath to assess what? This suggestion insults the sophisticated effort Israel has long been undertaking in preparation to defend itself in such a situation. Its defense capabilities are the best in the world. It was a surprise attack. Its people deserve protection from the enemy at the door. There is no such thing as a free and independent nation anywhere if elected leaders must check in with the world before it can protect itself.
Yes, the idea that recent Abraham Accord parties would gather arms (or propose a peaceful alternative) with Israel to defeat Hamas / Iran is silly, at this point in the Middle East political ark. The truth is, the Abraham Accord parties are aligned with Israel against Iran. They care about their oil and their security. It is far too early in this process for the Israel + Accords members - to do anything about Iran. Sullivan’s naiveté about the politics is showing.
I'm an Israeli, and I found this to be one of the most thoughtful articles about the war from the other side's perspective, but it was very clearly written by a Westerner on a Middle Eastern conflict.
Let me be very clear about something: I don't want Palestinians to be killed. No Israeli I know wants Palestinians to be killed. Even friends of mine who are very right-wing don't want to kill children. I'm not saying there aren't radical Israelis - there are extremists everywhere in the world - and I'm not defending the words of idiot politicians because I'm part of the half of the country that has spent months protesting them.
But if this is a real question - if he's genuinely asking how many children Israelis are willing to kill, how much can we stomach? - I think the answer most Israelis would give is however much we need to to survive. I'm not saying this easily or flippantly, I feel that this article is right on point: I do feel that I and my friends are losing our souls to war and I don't feel happy or relieved that we're at war, I can't sleep and it pains me to the core of my being.
But we don't have anywhere to go. There isn't a Plan B. The vast majority of Israeli Jews - some 6.5 million out of 7 million - don't have citizenship anywhere else. Losing this war means we die, barbarically if October 7 is any indication. And knowing that you, your family, your friends, everyone that you love could be dragged out of their homes, raped, set on fire and dismembered is a powerful motivator. I don't want to fight a war, I really, really don't, but then I look at my family and I don't see any other way for them to survive, so I force myself to stomach this war. It isn't an easy situation, and I find it appalling that this writer seems to think Israelis are choosing this and that we don't care.
Also, I don't think the writer has a fundamental grasp of what it means to live in the Middle East for a few reasons:
Firstly, America isn't Israel and 9/11 and 10/7 cannot be compared. The US would have survived even if they hadn't responded to 9/11 - al-Qaeda was never an existential threat. Israel is existentially threated by Hamas. And no, it's not nation-state vs. nation-state like WWII, but only a person who has not lived their lives under the threat of a terrorist organization can possibly downplay that threat. There is a psychological difference in seeing a terrorist attack, even on a large scale, and October 7, watching thousands of people with guns and machetes roll across your land and barrel towards you. I am not in any way downplaying the horror of 9/11, I am just pointing out that they are different and incomparable horrors.
Secondly, the writer claims that if Israel had "taken a breath" on Oct 8, there could have been some sort of diplomatic solution to the crisis. I've grown up in the Middle East, and if there's one thing I know with absolute certainty, it's that if Israel didn't respond itself, if Israel sat back and asked for help from others, it would have been seen as weakness. And weakness in my neck of the woods means annihilation - if Iran and Hezbollah had viewed Israel as weak on Oct 8, my country would be gone. Responding forcefully, lethally was a message to enemies that if Israel is attacked, it will hit back harder. That deterrence is the only thing between me and millions of people who want me dead. I can't deny that Israel fighting back is partly motivated by our fury but it's also strategic.
Lastly, this article brought up America's response to ISIS and 9/11 and compared it to Israel's response to Hamas. But there's one really basic fact missing here: America lost that war. America spent 20 years in the Middle East and left it no less radicalized than it was before. And then Americans seemed to just walk away and never speak of it again. The difference, of course, is that Afghanistan doesn't border the US and Americans don't have to continue living their lives 8 minutes away from the Taliban. I do.
Anyway, it was a genuinely thoughtful article, thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Sivan, for your comment, for helping those of us in the US to have a bit more understanding of what it's like to live in the Mideast. Now, more than ever, I stand in solidarity with Israel.
yes Sivan- thank you, and other commentators from Israel. It's important for those of us living in the US to get your perspective. I 100% support Israeli's fighting back for all they are worth (and in my view they are worth "a price above rubies"!
My friends in Israel also express this same horror and sorrow and yet one must protect one's children, home, family, culture and traditions. We would be impoverished without Israel. Your sympathetic retort to Sullivan's naivety is appreciated.
בול 👌🏻
Thanks for your thoughts. Agree that Philadelphia hated by and at war with the entire East Coast is not a world
Americans can readily imagine.
I read a second question in his piece. Surely Israelis must discuss, (and Ukranians as well) aside from the near certainty of a more dangerous and damaging war with Hezbollah or an even bigger one with Iran, what does Israel look like in a year, or a decade?
Many comments here mock Sullivan's concern over 'innocents.' But will Israelis countenance widening the war to Tehran? Pre-emptive nuclear attacks upon Iran? When America sours or simply tires as it does and sends it's carrier fleets' protections elsewhere? What then? I can see Ukraine is likely to end up like South Korea, stalemated with a masssive loss of territory. Harder to see that kind of semi-stable outcome for Israel surrounded by hundreds of millions fixated on Jewish elimination.
Sullivan lost me when he quoted death statistics from terrorists. He also lost me blaming Israel for the hunger and thirst of Gazans. Hamas is responsible for this and Egypt is a neighbor, too. What about Qatar, Hamas' buddies?? Can't they open their doors to Gazans? No one will because Palestinians are historically terrorists. The bring terror wherever they go.
Sorry, Andrew, I didn't even finish your propaganda. As a Catholic sitting in the US, we don't have the right to pass moral judgement on Israel, who are defending themselves from 14th century barbarians.
100%.
"Can't they open their doors to Gazans? " -- Why should they? Because Israel wants to clear out Gaza and take the land for itself? Egypt doesn't agree with Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza, so why would it help Israel do that? The fact is no country has historically wanted to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees. FDR turned away the Jewish refugees from Europe after WW2, just like we don't want all the South American refugees pouring into our Southern border. European countries don't want all the Ukrainian refugees, and didn't want the Syrian, Iraqi, or Afghan refugees during our "war on terror" over the last 20 years.
You are plain wrong here. The European countries have taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees. The difference is, they behave differently than Palestinians, who have tried to topple the government of every country that has welcomed them into its borders over the past 75 years. Amazing how your passion matches up with lacking the basic knowledge of facts. Maybe direct it towards educating yourself rather than posting here?
Right?? The Ukranians share the Western values with the European countries. The Palestinians just try to cause trouble and destroy governments. Plus, they are 12th century barbarians. Sorry to sound harsh, but that is the truth. Stoning women, killing homosexuals. No civilized country wants these barbarians.
That's a strawman argument. I didn't say EU countries didn't take in Ukrainian refugees. I said they don't WANT them.
Which countries, specifically, have Palestinians tried to topple? And how, specifically, did they do that?
"Amazing how your passion matches up with lacking the basic knowledge of facts." Pure PROJECTION.
"Maybe direct it towards educating yourself rather than posting here?" -- I have. For the last 16 years. I suggest you take your own advice.
They took them gladly. Don't know what you're basing your opinion on, but there has been zero documented pushback, at least in mainstream sources, against the millions of Ukrainian refugees.
Which countries specifically - Jordan and Lebanon, how specifically, by attempting coups against the governments that took them in. A basic Google search will provide ample information here.
You have for 16 years and yet you are clueless on the basic facts of the matter if you are unaware of the history of Palestinians in Jordan and Lebanon? Maybe try doing a better job?
"there has been zero documented pushback, at least in mainstream sources," -- There's your problem right there. You know you can't trust the MSM to give us any negative perspective on Ukraine.
"Jordan and Lebanon, how specifically, by attempting coups against the governments that took them in." -- WRT Jordan, I'm guessing you mean the PLO extremist militia Black September. No, I think it's disingenuous to lump regular civilian refugees in with them. As for Lebanon, the PLO may have played a role in the civil war, but at no time did they attempt to overthrown the Lebanese government.
Israel does NOT want to take the land for itself. I can see them putting in a demilitarized zone the way South Korea has, but they are very clean that they don't want the land.
And history shows Palestinians who went into Egypt sided with the Muslim brotherhood and tried to topple the government and tried to topple the king in Jordan. This is why no one likes them or trusts them.
And Europe has taken in millions of Muslims and are now having huge issues with them. So people have taken them in.
"Israel does NOT want to take the land for itself." -- Then why are they openly stating their goals to ethnically cleanse Gaza?
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/israeli-think-tank-lays-out-a-blueprint-for-the-complete-ethnic-cleansing-of-gaza/
https://truthout.org/articles/new-israeli-regime-moves-toward-cleansing-all-palestinians-from-palestine/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ben-gvir-brushes-off-us-criticism-repeats-calls-for-emigration-of-gazan-civilians/
https://theintercept.com/2023/12/03/netanyahu-thin-gaza-population/
Please cite sources for your claims that Palestinians tried to topple Egypt and Jordan.
You either already know about Black September and its campaign against King Abdullah or you don't know enought o be talking about this.
Don't cite Mondoweiss if you want people to take you seriously.
Black September's campaign was against King Hussein, not Abdullah (Hussein's grandfather).
Understandable you don't like Mondoweiss because it contradicts the zionist narrative. Which is why I included citations from other sources that back it up. Interesting you have nothing to say about those.
Why do you refer to Israel’s self defense as “ethnic cleansing.” I’ve never heard this and it seems misinformed. Isn’t it the Palestinians who are trying to genocide the Jewish people and that’s why Israel is defending itself against this other genocidal country?
Well, they just used “Oxy”-clean to genocide whites in the US. Cleaner. Neater. Blame the Sacklers/Jews. We just didn’t KNOW!
I don't follow. Please elaborate.
Oxycodone.
What was the response of the world on Oct 8, before any Israeli response?
Mass cheering in the streets.
Jews are hated no matter what - communist or capitalist, assimilated or isolationist, weak or strong, helpless or fighting back - the oldest of hatreds that this morally condescending article conveniently ignores.
So true, and Sullivan conveniently ignores have fast the antii-Israeli protests started. It seems like everything was already in place...
Yup. One wonders how spontaneous these protests really were. Similar to the outbreak of the Second Intifada, so conveniently linked to Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount. I suspect in these cases "follow the money" is the most appropriate descriptive.
But our contributions to the arts are recognized.
I have yet to see any practical recommendations in any media on ways to reduce civilian deaths by someone who has sufficient expertise in methods of warfare. Surely there are relevant experts who could be consulted for background research before publishing ?
I've asked that same question multiple times, to every anti-zionist commenter on the Times of Israel, with not a single response. That's because there isn't any other way. They just like to bash Israel at every opportunity.
Exactly. If you're pro Gaza, but don't give a fuck about the Uighur...
I've only seen people answer the question of what Israel could do to be more accurate in the vague of terms or not at all. Because the answer for these people is that Israelis should just lay down and be murdered. It is no coincidence that the astroturf demonstrators are shouting for both a ceasefire and an intafada.
The fact is, this war is a huge win for precision strikes. It is an absolute proof of concept of the dream of air warfare. Weeks ago it was 20k casualties (this includes hamas) and Israel had dropped 29k bombs! That is less than 1 bomb per causlty! That is incredible! If the US was in the position that Israel is in, would there be a Gaza? Would the world condemn us? The answer to both is, lol no.
You wrote, "That is less than 1 bomb per causlty!" It should be, "That is less than 1 casualty per bomb!" It's a lot less, almost a third (0.68).
Great thought!
Correcting grammar on the internet is an uphill battle. Thank you!
The assumption that Israel could have leveraged 10/7 among nations to achieve broader strategic goals makes sense only in theory. Unfortunately, time and again, nations don’t show up for her. More likely, had there been no meaningful military response, there would have been another attack but in the North or somewhere else. A return of the hostages would likely result in an immediate ceasefire and would have for the last 70 days. Israel, as always, is the most unpopular and difficult position that no nation should ever find herself in. Rather than the onus being squarely on her - where are nations pressuring Iran, Hamas, Qatar, Egypt? Nowhere to be found because to highlight their complicity in enabling the humanitarian crisis doesn’t fit the script.
Exactly. The idea that is playing out that if Israel developed a "coalition of the willing" or used this "episode" to think more clearly about its "domestic politics" because Bibi is the problem, not Hamas, is not just wishful thinking, it is antisemitism writ large.
Everyone knows that the reason we are here today is because the greater world refuses to step up and support Israel. Look at the number of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN over time. Look at the fucking fact that Israel has to play its fucking FIFA world cup qualifiers in Europe (UEFA) instead of Asia (where Lebanon, Syria and Jordan play) because the Asian Confederation would rather punt than make its members do the right thing.
The world hates Jews. The only thing they may hate more, is being called on it.
The Arab street would not allow what you are asking.
Though quietly some leaders are siding with Israel.
But they cannot speak.
WTAF. Annihilation of the Jews is their mission and purpose and reason for getting up in the morning. #PalGoals!
I refuse to see a group of people (Palestinians in this) rejoice as another was being murdered and raped. Not a single Israeli was dancing in the streets of Tel-Aviv when those bombs were dropped on houses in Gaza killing hundreds. You said "they're human too" and I believe this is inaccurate. Biologically yes, they're human, but not morally, ethically or socially. The indoctrination for hatred of everything Jewish, the deification of death and deceit, started long before Hamas and will endure long after it. Just like the US dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, killing 150000 civilians, to bring it down to its knees and essentially re-educate a nation, that's what needs to happen in Gaza as well.
Most Palestinians seems just like Hamas - 14th century barbarians.
And I generally don't like to brush with a broad brush.
Yet you just did. Do you know MOST Palestinians? Have you lived and/or walked among them in Gaza or the West Bank? Have you heard what MOST of them have to say?
I know 80% of them support Hamas' actions on Oct 7th. I saw them jeer and spit and hit the dead woman in the back of the pickup truck on Oct 7th.
What more do I need to know?
Please cite source(s) for your "80% support" claim.
According to this link, a majority of Gazans do not support Hamas. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-show-majority-gazans-were-against-breaking-ceasefire-hamas-and-hezbollah
She's off by 8%.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/21/middleeast/palestinians-back-hamas-survey-intl-cmd/index.html
Even death cults have their poetry. Doesn’t make it art.
100%.
The only way to eliminate the belligerence of Hamas is to destroy it root and stem.
Like the Allies did to the Axis powers in WWII.
Well said, Age of Insanity!