This is a day of prayer for many of us, the prayer that more innocents won’t die in Palestine and Israel. And fears for the days that are coming.
But of course, many are surveying the political effects in the U.S. of yesterday’s surprise attacks by Hamas and Israel’s military response under the claim that it is now “at war.”
The apparent targeting of civilians has unified American politicians and political groups as much as ever in their condemnations of Hamas as a “terrorist” organization. Mainstream Democrats are all in for Israel. Even Ilhan Omar condemned the attacks on “children, women, the elderly and unarmed.” Cornel West has decried “the killing of innocent people,” by Hamas and Israel.
There were notable statements by progressives pointing out the context for the attacks — among them Cori Bush, Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Institute for Middle East Understanding.
Rep. Bush strongly condemned Hamas’s apparent targeting of civilians but said the violence demanded that the U.S. end its support for “military occupation and apartheid.” The IMEU said, “The source of the problem in all of Palestine/Israel is Israel’s brutal military occupation and apartheid system.” Said Arikat said the U.S. media has given a platform to endless apologists for Israel and no Palestinians. The non-Zionist Jewish group IfNotNow said the context is “apartheid,” and it is wrong to describe the attacks as unprovoked, though IfNotNow “absolutely” condemned the targeting of civilians.
“The Hamas attack on Israel was part jailbreak (from Gaza, the world’s largest prison since the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto) but more than that it was a revolt of the hopeless by the hopeless for the hopeless. Sometimes suffering becomes so unbearable that anything goes,” former ambassador Chas Freeman wrote. “Martyrdom is fatal but politically empowering.”
Jewish Voice for Peace grieved the lives of those killed but pointed out that Israel had been at war on Palestinians for 75 years. “The Israeli government routinely massacres Palestinians in Gaza,” JVP said. A 10-year-old in Gaza has been traumatized by nine Israeli bombing campaigns on the open-air prison where 2 million live.
Yousef Munayyer stressed the inevitability of violence when human rights violations are committed with impunity:
The entire policy of trapping people in Gaza in a calorie-counted fishbowl and periodically bombing it for years on end was never sustainable. International organizations have been warning about this FOR YEARS and most decision makers in the US and Israel just shrugged.
Diana Buttu made this context clear on MSNBC, speaking to Ali Velshi. “While many of us were surprised, we actually shouldn’t really be surprised by what’s happening. This is the natural consequence, unfortunately, of 56 years of military occupation and the denial of freedom.” The press must acknowledge that it has failed to cover endless Israeli attacks on Palestinians, Buttu said.
Many of us have long said that Israel’s humiliating persecution of Palestinians has created a revolutionary situation of the sort that historically has been resolved only after great violence, and that Palestinian history is actually one of great restraint under those circumstances. “There is no appealing to the better angels of the Israeli populace, that notion passed long ago,” Scott Roth observes, truly.
The word “game-changer” was used often on TV yesterday. And it is hard to imagine what will arise from the attack politically. Munayyer noted what many of us have felt in the last day, that an era is passing: “I think what we are witnessing now is the inevitable bursting of this unsustainable policy. Hard to imagine a return to the status quo ante.”
That would seem to include the Saudi normalization scheme of the U.S. government. Palestinians were justifiably enraged by these plans, and Hamas took a hammer to them.
But today, the Zionist community in the U.S. is as unified as ever behind a policy of managed conflict — i.e., persecution. Liberal Zionists compared this moment to the surge in Israel support in the U.S. Jewish community 50 years ago “while the Yom Kippur War raged on.”
U.S. politicians are sure to echo that support. Just when some on the left glimpsed a possibility of reducing U.S. military aid, Biden is going to pour on more, with applause from almost all Democrats. “Statements of unwavering support for the Israeli government…. are erasing decades of Israeli occupation, blockade, and apartheid rule over Palestinians,” Beth Miller of JVP writes.
And what will be the effect on social attitudes? That new plurality of Democrats who sympathize with Palestinians more than Israelis — by 49 to 38 percent, according to the shocking Gallup poll of last spring— I think that number may fall.
As a longtime supporter of BDS and a one-state democracy, it is hard for me to see where those nonviolent goals are today, and what Hamas’s evident targeting of civilians does for that agenda. The idea that things need to get a lot worse before they get better has been given a great boost by the weekend’s events. But an outcome of armed struggle, in which Israel acts with crushing force to enforce apartheid, and Western opinion is on its side, sends some of us to our knees.
Thanks for reading,
Phil Weiss
The killings of Israeli’s by Hamas are horrific. The killings by Israel of Palestinians for decades upon decades have been and continue to be horrific. “An eye for an eye makes the whole worlde blind.”
Have been watching and listening to ABC, CBS, MSNBC, PBS, NPR, CNN. No one pointing out the context, the history of the oppression, death and destruction of Palestinian homes, property. The anger that has been building in the Palestinians/Hamas and comes out in smaller ways over decades and now just burst into flames. How no one in many ways should be surprised. If only these same media outlets would have been reporting the oppression, horror, theft of land, homes, loss of life, persistent humiliation, violence out of illegal settlers that Palestinians have been dealing with for decades…we would not be here. Israel and the I lobby have kept a tight lid on the crimes Israel has been committing against the Palestinians for decades.
Bush, Obama, Biden, etc etc have essentially ignored for decades. The complicit media, willfully complicit leaders have fueled this powder keg. No one should be surprised that the Palestinians fuse blew. Still the killings are heart wrenching on both sides.
Phil you and your team mates have been doing your part getting the facts out now for almost two decades. Thank you over and over again.
Got on Washington Journal as a caller on Sunday with Katrina Vanden Heuvel about this issue.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?530965-5/katrina-vanden-heuvel-upcoming-house-speaker-battle-campaign-2024
Whole segment is great, however, I got on at 37;36. Katrina gives Mondoweiss a plug after my comment and questions. She makes comments about the conflict all through the program
Velshi, Richard Engel many others on NBC, MSNBC keep repeating that Israel’s intelligence failed. After hearing the die hard decades long Israeli firster Dennis Ross was on spouting more Hasbara propaganda, Hamas and other Palestinians are always the ones at fault, they have been given so many chances…”they committed unspeakable acts” Yes they did, but Ross has no ability, never has been able to criticize Israel’s decades long unspeakable acts. Ok ok two wrongs do not make a right, however, the crimes committed against Palestinians by Israel’s military, citizens and illegal settlers has been going on for decades. Ross has NEVER been able to admit.
When Ross said “all the divisions are gone now” Had me wondering if Israel could have just pulled a Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz 9/11 move. Ignore the dangerous signs about potential violence creating a possible overt reason to go to war with Iran and drag the U.S. into it. All of this takes the spotlight off of Netanyahu’s personal legal problems and the Judicial issues. I generally do not lean towards conspiracies, but so unlike Israel not to be paying attention to threats.
My heart truly is with all of the Israeli people who have had family members killed, taken captive…So truly disturbing, criminal, heartless. Just as the bombing of Gaza right now is taking more innocent life.
October 7, 2023, the holiday of Simhat Torah, was the darkest day in Israeli history. A colossal failure of the IDF, of the Intelligence agencies , and above all, of Netanyahu’s horrible government.
The criminal negligence will have to be investigated as soon as possible.
The savagery of the Hamas attack has reminded us- and the world – as to the nature of the enemy that has to be defeated. The massacre of innocent civilians, women and children and the elderly, including entire families, leaves us no choice but to defend ourselves against the face of evil.. The sentiment in Israel this time is not to mess around with negotiations, ceasefires and deals with Hamas. They get no electricity, no water, no fuel, no supplies, no fishing, no exits and entrances – as long as Hamas remains in power. By the end of the war all of the Hamas and PIJ leadership and perpetrators of the attack should be dead or in custody.
There have been comparisons to Pearl Harbor: a surpise attack, which caught the military off-guard , but also united the country in war. The analogy is inaccurate, of course: Pearl Harbor wasn’t primarily an attack on innocent civilians. But the analogy could work , in the end-game. When the war ends Gaza may look like Japan in 1945.
That said , the matter of the hostages abducted by the Hamas beasts certainly complicates matters both practically and morally.
I have no idea how that aspect will be resolved.
Hamas may have achieved a “victory” on Oct.7, mass-murdering hundreds of innocent people, Jews, Arabs and others. But they have also caused Israel to unite after so many months of internal crisis. Reports of incredible heroism of soldiers police and civilians on that day are coming out. And there have been impressive manifestations of support for Israel and revulsion towards Hamas atrocities from all over the world. Personally, I’ve been flooded by messages of concern and support from relatives and friends . I’m grieving for the casualties, including some acquaintances . My son-in-law has been called up, along with many others.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/prayer-for-the-well-being-of-the-israel-defense-forces