This is all so heartbreaking. And the comments section here is a depressing combination of obnoxious hasbara and actual instances of anti-Israel antisemitism that even the Zionist center-left wrongly assumes is the primary motive behind criticism of Israel. From my perspective, it isn’t that hard to see that the way Israel has been using temporal power for most of its existence constitutes immoral and (from a religious Jewish perspective) sinful domination of another people. To make matters worse, not only does it constitute the sin of oppressing strangers, but actually it’s oppression of people who *aren’t even* strangers. Fellow Semitic people with related language, culture, customs, and two different related religions. It’s obscene. It’s fratricide.
On the other hand, every time someone writes something beautiful and thoughtful as Murtaza has here, the comments section proves that mainstream Jewish voices aren’t hallucinating the fact that plenty of legitimate criticism of Israel or Zionism bleeds over into scapegoating antisemitism. This is morally wrong and tactically unhelpful to everyone’s cause.
This is the tragedy this has actually devolved into a straightforward sectarian tribal conflict without unifying universalist narratives that had existed in the 1990s. So I expect it to continue to descend into mutual hatred and recrimination without reason...
Great point. This also affects how the conflict gets debated in the US and other western nations: there’s no unifying narrative or set of principles to agree upon to form a political center in which a workable policy consensus can move forward.
Back when I first become cognizant of the conflict—in the Madrid Conference and Oslo era—there was a broad moderate consensus in the west and a healthy skepticism of the narrow, obviously self-serving partisan narratives coming from either camp of Israeli or Palestinian leadership as well as an objective standard by which the facts on the ground could be understood..
Young people today, in contrast, are forced to choose between the two extreme (and reductionist) poles on offer: “Israel can do no right” or “Israel can do no wrong”. That’s it—pick which side you’re on and adopt its narrative entirely. That’s the way it seems, anyway.
An important contextualization of the period when peace seemed close was that it was accompanied by a major structural change in global politics which was the end of the Cold War. The 1990s were a period when it seemed like universal liberalism was the only game in town, so disputes like Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Israel-Palestine seemed like they needed to be immediately settled along liberal terms. Now that liberalism seems to be waning and by no means hegemonic there is neither pressure for a plausible universalist ideology for both sides to submit themselves to.
Unfortunately, I think this is just nostalgia about a past that never was.
The Oslo process was never intended to create a Palestinian state. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was Israel's chief negotiator during the 2000 Camp David negotiations (and a well-respected historian in his own right) called the Oslo process "an increasingly unbearable colonialist system of domination and land grab".
He points out that:
"Oslo II legitimised the transformation of the West Bank into what has been called a ‘cartographic cheeseboard’. By the time Barak came to office there were about 250,000 Jews living in more than 120 settlements throughout the West Bank, and another 150,000 in new modern Jewish neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem".
All quotes are from Ben-Ami's book "Scars of War, Wounds of Peace."
I’m familiar with Ben-Ami’s post-mortems on the peace process, but I meant specifically the evolution over the last several decades of how the issue is debated here in the United States, where very few people have skin in the game or direct experience with the conflict.
Ronald Reagan understood the logic of enforcing ceasefires (Lebanon, 1982) and George H.W. Bush understood that it was sometime in the interests of the United States to put substantive pressure on Israel and conditions on US aid, but now those are considered far-left extremist positions to half the country.
Even Dubya, for all his terrible faults, at least understood that Palestinians had basic human rights, including one to sovereign self-determination in their own land, and was willing to say so.
If you were a center-left liberal Democratic voter of the last few years, your standard bearers were Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer, the latter of which was openly pro-settlement and pro-Jerusalem embassy move (which heralded the official US abandonment of the Oslo process and the 2SS) Yet Schumer is nonetheless labeled as too left-wing on Israel to be a real Jew by Trump’s handlers. This is where the public debate in the US is today.
Every week Americans can watch videos or read reports of children being incinerated by American bombs or hungry mothers being gunned down by IDF “warning shots” waiting for food. Half the country responds with a shrug and a good fraction of the other half has only a nominal influence of government policy. 20-30 years ago, that paralysis and indifference to Palestinian suffering would be utterly unthinkable. What the hell happened?
In July 1981, there was a ceasefire negotiated between Israel and Lebanon with US participation.
Israel routinely violated the ceasefire prior to the 1982 war. An example: "From August 1981 to May 1982 — there were 2125 violations of Lebanese airspace and 652 violations of Lebanese territorial waters"
[Source is Noam Chomsky's book, "Fateful Triangle"]
As for the end of the 1982 war, I would not call Reagan "enforcing a ceasefire". The war stopped (for a while) because Israel got what it wanted: expelling the PLO from Lebanon. The Multi National Force was there to enforce the exile of the PLO and they were supposed to protect civilians.
The PLO went into exile in Tunis on 1 September. As soon as the Multi National Force withdrew (on 11 September), what happened? Bashir Gemayel was assassinated and Israel invaded West Beirut in violation of the ceasefire, together with their Phalangist allies. Then the Sabra and Shatila massacre happened.
Again, I would suggest that the past was not quite as rosy as one might remember.
“ However, the exact agreement was not clear. The Palestinians claimed the ceasefire was only for the Lebanese-Israel border and they were free to attack everywhere else. This left Israel at a disadvantage since it could be attacked almost anywhere but could not respond because all of the Palestinian’s political and military infrastructure was in Lebanon. From August 1981 to May 1982 the Palestinians conducted 248 attacks in Israel and overseas.[x] Israel responded with threats and troop deployments, but each time backed-off. In March 1982 and again in April Israel retaliated with air-strikes in Lebanon, and the Palestinians fired dozens of rockets from Lebanon into Israel, though aimed mostly at unpopulated areas so as not to over-antagonize Israel.”
Reagan’s public positions from the Lebanon War to recognizing the PLO in 1988, whatever one thinks about those positions or how faithfully they were ultimately implemented, are useful historical markers of where the staunch pro-security American conservative right was at the time.
It’s remarkable to me that the Schumer-led Democratic Party establishment in 2025 is to the right of that on the P/I conflict. The modern Republican Party, in turn, openly supports mass ethnic cleansing and river-to-the-sea maximalist Zionism.
Yet an American media consumer today would be led to believe that the American center-left position on Israel today is being driven by debt-laden 19 year old campus protestors with keffiyehs and pro-Hezbollah banners.
Not sure how you can have read Ben Ami’s account of Camp David and Taba and come away with the impression that “The Oslo process was never intended to create a Palestinian state.” Ben Ami certainly portrays himself and Barak as serious about creating a Palestinian state in Prophets Without Honour.
I quoted the text in Ben Ami's book. Does a process designed to create a state in the West Bank mean building more and more settlements and roads and stealing more and more land? I don't think so.
Oslo process started in 1993. Barak came into power in 1999. Even if Ben Ami believes Barak was serious about peace, there's the question of the previous 6 years.
Ben Ami wore two hats: historian and diplomat. He is fairly honest as a historian. Not so much as a diplomat when he's trying to justify the actions of the administration of which he was a part.
Books are long for a reason. Authors have a lot to say and expect you to read all of it. Bad practice to extract a few sentences which seemingly express sentiments at odds with the thesis as evidence that the author believes the opposite of their thesis.
Wrt Barak, I don’t know how else you can interpret his premiership. Ben Ami’s account concords with all other evidence. Barak staked his career on reaching a 2 state solution. Arguing that Barak secretly didn’t want the deal which he promised to voters and went to some lengths to achieve requires some 4D chess reinterpretation of his time in office and electoral strategy.
Also ftr Ben Ami is highly critical of Barak and his administration in many respects. He doesn’t play apologist for them.
Agree that it’s unclear to what extent Rabin and early Peres were willing to compromise for peace. We never got the chance to find out because Rabin died and Bibi won the intervening election. Regardless, Oslo culminated under Barak.
Thanks for your thoughtful and nuanced commentary. As Jew who lived in Israel for many years, I disagree with your conclusion regarding "genocide," for reasons I'll spell out on my own Substack, but there's one point I want to emphasize. Though indeed democratically elected, this government is not "Israel." I continue to believe the evidence that the Israeli people, 70% of whom want a new government, is better than this, and will make itself heard. This war is a generational stain on them and on the Jewish people as a whole, even on those of us who oppose it, but I think it will be ending soon and it will require a joint effort, including Israel, to start pick up the pieces.
lol stfu. we’ve seen the way your psychotic barbaric soldiers act on social media. we’ve seen the polls with half of israelis supporting kicking al arabs out of israel and 70+% supporting removing all palestinians from gaza. we’ve seen the way your disgusting media figures talk about gazans, gleeful about gazan children being killed and civilian infrastructure destroyed. stop with “this doesn’t represent israel” bullshit. nobody’s buying it anymore
That Murtaza "liked" that delusional comment demonstrates how divorced from reality he is, and how useless his commentary is. Typical liberal two-siding. Anyone who thinks the current genocide is in anyway surprising or a deviation from previous behaviour hasn't being paying attention. Certainly the severity is worse, but the racist genocidal mentality has always been a part of Israeli social consciousness.
If you consider Murtaza to be an example of “typical liberal two-siding,” I don’t think you’ve read most of his work over the last five years. The fact that he manages to piss off liberal Zionists AND hardcore leftists at the same time proves he’s doing something more right than most writing in English in this shitty chapter of history. You may not even have read this piece without skimming—the OP makes some of your comment nonsensical. Murtaza is clearly very aware of the history that makes the deterioration of the last year and a half unsurprising, even if morally shocking. You also contradict yourself: you concede “certainly the severity is worse,” but then say that anyone who thinks there is a “deviation from previous behavior hasn’t been paying attention.” If the severity is worse, there MUST be a deviation from previous behavior, by definition, otherwise the severity is the same. This is why I’m “on the left” but not “leftIST.” I believe in leftist approaches to major aspects of public policy because I believe it’s the moral thing to do according to traditional morality. But I find totalizing analysis, ideologies, and worldviews obnoxious. Not everything in reality fits neatly into leftist paradigms, especially Western ones. Murtaza is actually a normal human who absorbs what’s good from multiple traditions of thought and synthesizes them into a humane, compassionate, equitable worldview that can respond to reality as it is, not needing to turn everything into a straw man. Israel can be REALLY terrible even if it wasn’t exactly what it is today from day one. Zionism (or at least most flavors of it) can have been shot through with chauvinism and Jewish supremacy since very early days even if the way it’s expressed in statecraft on the ground has evolved significantly over the decades. It’s almost as if leftists cannot allow anything to be other than a comic-book supervillain or superhero—it’s all binaries. NOTHING can be in-between even for a millisecond of history. I’m so sick of that.
what a dishonest strawman. yeah, leftists are the ones incapable of critical thought unlike you enlightened liberals. hahahahaha i would’ve loved to see that supposed nuance and rational thinking during the shitshow with biden and kamala, where liberals had their eyes and ears buried in the sand completely denying objective reality about biden’s senility, accusing anyone rational of being russian bots, and that the genocide in gaza wasn’t going to have significant electoral ramifications. see we can all play this game of dishonesty
Anecdotally, all the leftists I’ve ever known who were capable of rational thought have left the left. Those who remain are unable or unwilling to engage counterarguments beyond anger, insults and blocks.
I don’t think you read my whole comment. I’m not an “enlightened liberal.” I’m a progressive who still thinks the progressive movement sometimes has intellectual and epistemological issues. I was screaming bloody murder in the last few months of the Harris campaign that they were throwing it all away because of Gaza. At the DNC, I insisted that they had made fatal mistakes and lost a huge portion of my friends over it. Even some people who believed there was a genocide unfolding in Gaza canceled me for daring to say that Kamala had made a mistake in how she handled hecklers or the DNC. It had become a religion to them. I’m just as disillusioned with them as I am with some hardcore progressives. People just need to take a chill pill and stop forming these unbeatable tribalistic bonds with fleeting political movements. Values are what should have our permanent loyalty.
Paul, I’m glad to see you here, reading Murtaza. He’s an under-discovered, under-read gem in our liberal Jewish circles. His voice should be amplified by us. However, given what I know of the values of PPI and the good work it does, it really is ridiculous that its President at this late date is still ignoring the overwhelming expert consensus of genocide scholars, including some diaspora and Israeli Zionists, that the way this war is being waged has met several of the criteria for genocide since its very first few weeks in late 2023, and has met basically all of them since mid 2024. A word is just a word, and we should care more that the crimes end than what people call them. But that being said, it is incredibly destructive to Jewish credibility to openly deny it at this stage. You should reconsider as quickly and as thoroughly as you can possibly manage. Please, please do. I beg you.
As for Israeli society, it is true that many are furious with the current government, but more granular polling since 10/7 shows that as few as 3% of all Jewish Israelis oppose the war because of concern for Palestinian life or dignity. The vast, vast majority who oppose it do so because they don’t want their loved ones in the army to die or be injured, they worry (correctly) that it further endangers the hostages rather than helping them, and of course, it is expensive and financially burdensome to the whole society, even with all the US aid. When they fervently, furiously, sincerely scream for it to end, their anger is at Bibi’s selfishness and recklessness. It is not righteous anger born of empathy with or grief for Palestinians. Only a minuscule fringe within a fringe of the farthest left that exists in Israeli society cites worry for innocent Palestinians as a primary reason for wanting the war to end. I wasn’t shocked by this in the first few weeks after 10/7, but when months and now a year and a half went by without much of a pivot, I realized that the society is pretty far gone. They are highly likely to come to their senses in large numbers eventually, but I fear it could take decades. It will be far too late to recover our honor or reputation. It’s a tragedy of civilization-wide proportions.
Meanwhile the consensus of military scholars is that this is war, not genocide.
At least as of South Africa’s ICJ application in December 2023, there was no evidence of genocidal intent. Section D seeks to establish intent through quoting Israeli leaders. But check out the sources in the footnotes. The application spins explicit statements about Hamas into damnations of civilians. If the lawyers had had better evidence, they would’ve mentioned that instead.
I have seen no scholarly material to the effect that you mention. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but I’m pretty well read. Are there mainstream, non-right-wing military scholars who are on board with the modern liberal consensus on human rights who allege that even now, the continued operations in Gaza are merely war?
Talking to even liberal Israelis in a coffee shop in Jerusalem for 20 minutes or reading any Hebrew-language comment thread on anything ever is evidence of genocidal intent. Spare me your hasbara about the ICJ in 2023. Their evidence was rock-solid then (though any idiot could have figured it out within a week of 10/7), and since that time, there is exponentially more available and relies less on the utterances of officials who may not personally be granular decision-makers regarding conduct on the ground in Gaza. That was the only valid critique of the original case, and it evaporated mere weeks later.
You can assert that South Africa’s evidence was rock solid, but I’ve actually read the application and all of its linked sources which are still accessible online. Far from rock solid - it ranges from misleading to blatant lying. I didn’t even cross check it against outside sources - I just read the application’s own sources, linked in the footnotes.
I’m aware that many Israelis say they’d be cool with actual genocide, including people I know. Doesn’t mean that IDF commanders and civilian decisionmakers are among them.
RUSI has published an in depth analysis on it, treating it as a case study in urban warfare. ISW and IISS have published shorter pieces. CSIS has hosted several panel discussions.
It’s fratricide and it’s awful. There was no justification for occupation 30 years ago - and indeed Israel moved towards withdrawal. But after the second intifada and the Hamas takeover of Gaza it became evident that unfortunately occupation is the lesser of evils.
Occupation is so immoral that nothing exists that can justify it. I refuse to believe that this is a zero sum game in which the only way to avoid Jewish destruction is to do things which are unjustifiable and forever destroy our honor and our character. But hypothetically, if it were truly zero sum, we would have a firm and solemn obligation to go quietly into the night rather than become villains. The means of preserving ourselves paradoxically would make us undeserving of being preserved, while the refusal to be preserved at that cost would make us deserving of being preserved. But again, I don’t believe it’s actually zero-sum.
I hope you’ll turn out to be right and Israelis and Palestinians will find some bloodless, mutually beneficial solution to the conflict. I don’t particularly care if there’s a “Jewish state” (whatever that means) at the end of it. But unfortunately I’m skeptical.
There’s fates worse than occupation. Eg: Gaza, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Ukraine, any other horrific war. If the expected alternative to occupation is 100x more bloodshed and devastation, then ending occupation is an awful idea.
All the massacres, wars and occupations of the century-long Israeli Arab conflict combined have killed fewer than 150,000 people on all sides, far fewer than most protracted modern wars. Unfortunately occupation is blissful compared to realistic alternatives.
I understand what you're saying and I believe that you're saying it in good faith, but it's a species of insight that can only ever be held by someone who is not subject to occupation. Yes, of course, in a vacuum, we can assert in utilitarian fashion that it is easily possible to imagine fates worse than occupation. But people forced into a situation because of geography or identity or whatever do not generally get an opportunity to consent to have their lives ruined for some greater good. They do not consent to be instrumentalized. It must be imposed from without, which of course is part of the definition of occupation. The constriction of freedom of movement, the humiliation, the degradation, the infantilization of curfews, checkpoints, etc. And of course the more direct violence that often comes with it--being able to go innocently about one's daily life without a guarantee that one will not accidentally be embroiled in a situation of brutality of occupying forces. It is possible to have a "cleaner" occupation, but that is not the one that's tended to exist in the history of the I/P conflict. No, from the perspective of the occupied, it is a moral emergency that cries out to heaven.
As for only 150,000 people being killed on all sides during the entire history of this conflict, that would be fewer than most modern wars, as you say. But I'm assuming you were limiting it only to direct deaths and furthermore limiting it to pre-10/7. Since 10/7, there have been roughly 70,000 direct deaths in Gaza alone, and if one includes indirect deaths through starvation, the Lancet estimates it could be over 100k in Gaza alone in the last year and a half. And of course, there are a few thousand outside Gaza in the same time period. I think over the entire history of the conflict, 150k sounds quite low, though I am sure it is still a lower number than protracted modern wars, as you say.
There is something obscene about being able to discuss and haggle over these numbers calmly. I don't know if you're a religious person, but I am. Every single death, either of an innocent person or of a person born innocent and subsequently misguided, is a civilization-ending tragedy. Civilization-ending in the sense of honor. If major decision-makers viewed it that way, it would end.
Super interesting and thoughtfully worded as always.
However, you write: "I condemned the Israeli killings of civilians on October 7 with utmost sincerity. But that has become an irrelevant side note to events at this point. Every perpetrator of genocide claimed to have been driven by compelling political or security concerns." [I assume you mean 'the killing of Israeli civilians']
The following is besides the point as to whether the Gaza war constitutes a genocide or not, but: As far as the Israeli perspective goes, It seems to me you focus a bit too narrowly on just Gaza. In Israel, this war was not experienced as merely an attack by Hamas, but as a (more or less concerted) multi-front attack by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran - enemies that had (especially in the case of the two former) armed themselves to the teeth and rigged their own territories for maximal aggression against Israel. The subsequent war effort has above all been concerned with ensuring that no enemy armed to the teeth can ever again constitute itself on Israel's borders (the IDF's operations in Syria should also be seen in this light). This has been - and is being - borne out through destruction of military infrastructure as well as deterrence in the case of Hamas, in the sense of setting an example of what will happen to an enemy who elects to go the distance with Israel. This is obviously just a rough sketch of the overall picture. Mixed in it, and complicating it, are Netanyahu's personal interest in extending the war for his political survival as well as his messianic coalition's interest in full-fledged ethnic cleansing (this is also to say: I don't take your Netanyahu quote as actual intention (though it would obviously be entirely fair to construe it as such), but I do take Smotrich's as intention). However, the present and future destruction of military threats on Israel's borders remains the guiding principle overall. I would argue that even the Smotrich approach is far from being just messianic, it is also (perhaps even above all) a more hardline take on the concept of annihilating military threats on Israel's border.
The above is intended as a bit of nuance, not to outright disagree with anything you write. However, I would certainly argue that the threats against Israel are far greater than the threats against the Turks by the Armenians or against the Serbs by the Bosnians. But that is of course only if you consider the threats against Israel in a regional scope and not just look at Hamas in Gaza.
I think it is an issue of perception. Israel does feel a sense of permanent besiegement for the reasons you outline. But on the other hand, its the only nuclear power in the region, has the most advanced airforce and military, enjoys unprecedented superpower support, etc. Meanwhile its enemies are mostly nonstate militias with light armaments who have to make due in relative poverty of resources. So why this lack of confidence and sense of siege? They could easily make peace from a position of strength and this offer of full normalization with the Arab League has been on the table since 2002.
The Second Intifada made a Palestinian State - and thus, the Arab League initiative - a non-starter to a majority of Israelis. To a majority of Israelis, The Second Intifada made it abundantly clear that the extermination of Israel is more important to the Palestinian national movement than a Palestinian state is (this is not my own assumption, I am just, as you put it, stating a particular perspective). October 7 turned that majority into the vast majority, who now see any form of actual Palestinian autonomy in Gaza or the West Bank as an existential threat. Thus, many prefer some form of de facto normalization and zero prospects of a Palestinian state to real normalization and even just lip service to a Palestinian state. Again, in the eyes of Israelis, the Palestinian national movement and the threats it contains are connected to many more regional actors and enemies than merely the Palestinians themselves who are of course powerless in a military sense.
I think it's not just a question of a sense of besiegement. It's also connected to the fact that contrary to its enemies, the social contract in Israel dictates that the state is fundamentally supposed to serve the citizens. This creates a completely different type of vulnerability. As long as that social contract is still functional, even the possibility of another Second Intifada or October 7 is severely socially corrosive, even if such events in isolation do not in and of themselves constitute existential threats.
Although I did not get into the chronology of the conflict in this post I agree that the Second Intifada was a significant turning point in the demise of the Israeli left. But I actually think that apportioning blame is just irrelevant to future conditions. Both sides feel considerably aggrieved but its besides the point now. The question is what can happen or should happen in the future. The 2SS was an elegant and common solution to ethnic conflict (partition) but if its off the table we are just stuck with a permanent conflict without solutions and this will involve the whole region and beyond for an indefinite period even if the war is not always expressed kinetically.
This was not an attempt at apportioning blame, not at all. I agree that it's completely irrelevant to do so. I write all this as an Israeli living in Jerusalem, so it's just an attempt to reflect the perspective I see around me.
I completely agree with everything you write here regarding the future. Again - and I am once more merely a purveyor of vibes; not expressing my own opinion on the matter - I cannot for the life of me see a majority of Israelis ever acceping a 2SS after The Second Intifada and October 7. The *only* slight chance would be if there was to be a complete about-face in the entire Palestinian national movement, and a trustworthy Palestinian leader was to do a Palestinian equivalent of "Sadat goes to Jerusalem" and offer the resignation of the right of return (as always and ever the biggest stumbling block on the Israeli side) for a Palestinian state. But this is not what the Palestinian national movement has traditionally been concerned with, and of course the Israeli right (in the widest sense of 'right') would do everything in its power to prevent the formation and consolidation of such a Palestinian leader. So yes, I firmly agree with your bleak prognosis for the future.
The solution is Palestinian rejection of violence.
Palestinians are unaware of their historical aggression, so they believe that Jews are bloodthirsty demons who can only be fought. If they knew more about the origins of the violence they might consider that Jews could be willing to settle once they’re no longer under lethal threat.
Israel is strong in 2025. Doesn’t mean that they should rest on their laurels and let their enemies build their strength while probing for weaknesses. No one knows what the situation will be like in 2050 or 2075.
The Arab league proposal punts on Palestinian right of return to Israel (what does “fair resolution to the refugee problem based on UN 194” mean?), one of the main sticking points in the negotiations at Camp David and Taba. Israelis won’t accept a Palestinian majority Israel for obvious reasons. (The mainstream of the Palestinian movement has shown zero regard for Jewish lives since the 1920s). Lebanonization is no solution.
The Arab League proposal minus the refugee issue is just a demand for unilateral withdrawal (and we’ve seen how that went). Peace requires a final status agreement, with Palestinian leadership agreeing that all claims have been resolved.
I find the idea of this article -- that a state which commits massive war crimes can't be "normalized" or integrated into the region -- to be very unrealistic.
Take the Sri Lankan civil war against the LTTE. It was comparable in brutality to the Syrian and Israeli wars. Yet, the Sri Lankan govt. decisively defeated the LTTE using extremely brutal methods.
The Tamils in Sri Lanka are still oppressed and many of the problems remain. But there isn't much of a move to isolate Sri Lanka internationally. Sri Lankan govt. officials even visit India -- where there are a lot of Tamils and sympathizers -- regularly. Sri Lanka is not a pariah state.
Coming back to Gaza, let's take the surrounding states. It's unclear to me how much effect Israel's actions are going to have long term. Take the Arab League. Except for issuing various condemnatory statements, did it ever lift a finger against Israel? What exactly have Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia done? Nothing, that's what. Did any of the countries in the "Abraham Accords" withdraw? No.
What has the EU done? What has the US done? Nothing.
Violence is depressingly common in world affairs. I don't think you can necessarily draw long-term lessons from what Israel has done.
There is a unique characteristic of the Israel-Palestine conflict which is that has been successfully globalized by both sides over the past seven decades, so its unlike the many other ethno-religious conflicts in the world. People just didn't care about the LTTE-Sri Lankan conflict outside South Asia (I was an exception and actually cared a lot for various personal reasons) so whatever happened the consequences were highly local. It would be wrong to assess the lack of immediate reaction to people not caring, this has had a huge impact especially on lower-mid level military and political officials in surrounding countries who do not remember or respect the Camp David and Oslo Accords-era realities of their superiors. So I expect we will see downstream changes absent some significant course correction inside Israel that I also deem unlikely.
I agree that the Israel-Palestine conflict has been globalized to a much bigger extent. But that in itself doesn't mean much.
From my vantage point, the Palestinian cause is much diminshed in global stature and prestige. Sure, it command sympathy in the population of the surrounding countries. But are there serious practical efforts at a state level to resist Israel's actions? No.
Even Hezbollah only responded in a limited way to the Israeli attack on Gaza, mindful of attracting Israeli wrath (which it attracted anyway). The Houthis are probably the only ones doing something serious, but they're really no match for Israel militarily.
Is anyone stopping the Israeli actions in the West Bank? No.
You say that there may be effects on mid-level military and political officials. Perhaps.
But what does that mean in concrete terms?
I just don't see anything concrete, nor do I see anything on the horizon.
Well you have to be patient. By which I mean be ready to wait generations and beyond your own lifetime potentially. The Reconquista took 500 years but it was a generational project based on people never losing a sense of rejection and antipathy. The most important thing is having competent and capable states, not useless non-state groups with light-weapons and no political economy. In my opinion an arc of such states is gradually forming and recent events in Syria are a boost for that.
If it was really true that the Israel-Palestinian conflict will take generations to be solved, that would fundamentally alter my viewpoint.
In my opinion, it is immoral to ask people to follow a path which will doom them and their descendants to misery.
I would then be much more open to "solutions" which don't meet the standards of justice, but which are nevertheless practical and promise a decent path forward.
Suppose there's a settlement which rules out a Palestinian state but creates a viable federation with Jordan while annexing some of the West Bank to Israel. Suppose Palestinians get citizenship within the federation and decent economic prospects. Suppose this settlement is achieved in a much shorter timeline, maybe a couple of decades.
Even though this is completely against elementary principles of justice and international law, I would be open to supporting it if the only alternative is several generations of misery for Palestinians.
Posting because you seem good faith and open to pushback.
You quote Karhi supporting Israeli settlement (which doesn’t imply genocide anyways), but omit Netanyahu’s repudiation of settlement in the article you linked on his comments. You quote Netanyahu saying that emigrating Gazans won’t return, but omit the fact that he’s discussing Trump’s plan and that he calls such emigration voluntary. You also omit his stated war aims per the same article.
I can’t find the article you say Eiland published in Yedioth, but every comment I’ve seen by him has included claims that his plan is legal under IHL. And you exclude his consistent and sensible rationale: incentivizing Gaza’s civilians to move out of fortified areas allows the IDF to combat Hamas and destroy tunnels, IEDs and fighting positions there without killing civilians.
You say GMH “only records deaths from direct trauma among people whose identities it can verify. The present official toll… thus does not account for tens of thousands more believed to be buried under the rubble… as these people have neither been recovered by the morgue nor identified.” But GMH says that they include names submitted by family of the dead and missing via online forms. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx25x35476yo.amp
So I’m not persuaded by your evidence.
On the other hand, if Israel wants to eradicate Gazans, why are they bothering with expensive and bloody bombings, combat operations and mobilizations at all? They could just shut down the border crossings and wait for Gaza to starve to death. Instead they’re allowing food in; have lost 800 troops in combat with thousands more wounded; and spent a fortune on mobilization and munitions.
"That is why even the fiercest opponents or critics of those wars never levelled the accusation of genocide."
This section is pretty dumb. The parsimonious explanation for why the term genocide was not used against the Allies was that the term was first used in a published work in 1944 as part of Allied propaganda.
More broadly, the point that Allied war crimes were justified by a plausible end-game is an important difference between those and Israeli war crimes today. It's an equally important criticism also of Israeli military actions that are not war crimes. But it's not the same as these actions actually being worse. It's plainly obvious that people in the mid 20th century just had a much higher tolerance for civilian casualties and Allied actions were interpreted in that light, whereas Israeli actions today are judged by a higher standard, which is a good thing, but it doesn't justify writing silliness.
No endgame in Gaza? Hamas is losing its munitions and veteran commanders. Barring a far right electoral takeover, Israel will eventually withdraw but maintain the Philadelphi corridor. (Perhaps Netzarim as well if periodic raids are still necessary.) Hamas will be unable to regroup. Unable to wage war and disillusioned by its impacts, Gazans will turn toward reconstruction and peaceful protest.
So MoD and IDF in the west bank basically, as far as the occupation is concerned. But i think what your saying is that there will not be an end to occupation, apartheid, expanism...so in an security institutions will have to be replaced essentially? (And that such a replacement will not happen)
To the broader point of the long term I think need to give it some thought and also might be a basis of an article eventually. As a principle we need to foster alternative non-Zionist institutions that give Israeli Jews a bridge out of their current ones otherwise they’re going to stand on this hill til the end no matter how much it deteriorates and that will be not good for anyone
Even as this juncture marks a turning point for Jews in postwar history, I dont think Zionists will give up their Zionism in the near term. Maybe their children will. This conflict devolving further will probably intensify their Zionism.
Giora Eiland is literally retired. In order to prove genocide, you need genocidal intent on chela of the people who actually set the Gaza policy. Even Finance Minister Smotrich and Public Security Minister Ben-Gvir do not set the policy.
"As terrible of those events were, they did not qualify as genocide. The U.S. goal in the wars in Iraq and Syria was never described by its leaders as destroying those populations, driving them from permanently from their homes, or eradicating their sovereignty."
No, special intent to ethnically cleanse is not genocidal. That does not count as per the Genocide Convention. Else the expulsion of the Germans from the East would be genocidal. Did Stalin commit genocide in the late 1940s? No.
It is not genocide, because there is no special intent ("dolus specialis") to destroy the Palestinian people as such.
Israel evacuates civilian areas before starting operations. It is not genocide.
I didn’t say he was or wasn’t. What I said was that even if he was, that would prove nothing. Since he is retired.
I agree in any case. Even his comments about a medieval siege with a humanitarian disaster and starvation and disease don’t count as genocide. The specific intent is to “bring victory closer” and “reduce casualties among IDF soldiers”, not to destroy the Palestinians as such. Even if the intent is to kick all the Palestinians I still think no. You need a special intent to destroy a people as such.
Not a special intent to ethnically cleanse them and for them to then assimilate into another country. Still not enough. Even if you starve them and give them disease until they surrender and move to Egypt and assimilate into Egypt. Israel is not doing that and it’s feeding them but I’m saying even this policy doesn’t count. Doesn’t count as genocide unless you have a special intent to destroy the people as such. What happened to the Germans in the East after WWII doesn’t count.
It’s difficult to take this writer seriously. There is no genocide in Gaza but he flogs it like a dead horse. It’s not a surprise because Drop Site is basically another propaganda outlet for Hamas.
In the concluding paragraph the author uses the word 'fate' twice, to describe the slaughter of people in Gaza which is due to the century-long policies of the UK/USA and their partners in colonial criminality.
If certain leaders were not blackmailed/bribed/bought by the Zionists during this century of suffering, this so-called 'fate' would not have come to be.
UK policy in the mandatory period seemed sensible and humane at the time. Primary responsibility for the violent conflict belongs to Amin Husseini and the nationalists who applauded his violence and elevated him to leadership of the supreme Muslim council. The British weren’t oracles and can’t be blamed for a conflict they couldn’t have foreseen. As it is, in 1939 they offered Husseini a Palestinian state on 100% of the territory if he’d agree not to expel Jews and to accept another 75,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Husseini refused.
I appreciate your argument but please explain why you are not advocating for Hamas to surrender? This could have been done months ago which would have put an end to the kinetic war. Given the involvement of the international community, once surrender occurred there would be significant resources available to take care of the civilians and rebuild Gaza under Palestinian comtrol. Using your examples, Japan surrendered after the devastating nuclear strikes and the Allies set about rebuilding Japan, including keeping the Emperor.
For about a year now Hamas has been trying to negotiate a deal where they exit the territory in exchange for a technocratic government of the PA, Egypt etc. taking over. This is basically a surrender in all but name and would result in ending their control of Gaza and the hostages returning. The problem is the Israeli government actually rejects this outcome as they do not want any Palestinian-led entity ruling Gaza. They've now started expressing that this is because the goal is to kick the population out in which case leaving power would just hasten this process.
Israelis have bitter experience with this kind of “exit”, which in fact means a situation where there is a “technocratic” government which is in charge of collecting the trash while beside it there is an armed militia which is more powerful than the government and feels free to continue plotyong attacks. This is what we had for decades in Lebanon. The only role of the thecnocratic government is to serve as a diplomatic shield for the armed militia. It's not at all surrender. Surrender is for Hamas to accept Israel’s offer of complete disarmament and exile of the leaders (this part may be moot now seeing as they're all dead by now).
There’s not really any point debating now, both sides feel the other is acting in bad faith and can’t be trusted. If Hamas leaves the next step according to the government is expelling the remaining population so they’re obviously not going to do that. absent outside intervention or radical change domestically inside Israel I eventually foresee the total liquidation of the prewar population of Gaza through death and exile
I doubt that the Netanyahu government is set on expulsion. Netanyahu’s comments are about allowing voluntary emigration and are aimed at sucking up to Trump. Either way, the opposition is set to win the next election, October 2026 at the latest.
It’s worked in most of the West Bank (except Jenin and Tulkarm, but even there PA security forces have been reasserting control). If Murtaza’s right that Hamas is willing to accept this deal, it’s a no brainer.
This is all so heartbreaking. And the comments section here is a depressing combination of obnoxious hasbara and actual instances of anti-Israel antisemitism that even the Zionist center-left wrongly assumes is the primary motive behind criticism of Israel. From my perspective, it isn’t that hard to see that the way Israel has been using temporal power for most of its existence constitutes immoral and (from a religious Jewish perspective) sinful domination of another people. To make matters worse, not only does it constitute the sin of oppressing strangers, but actually it’s oppression of people who *aren’t even* strangers. Fellow Semitic people with related language, culture, customs, and two different related religions. It’s obscene. It’s fratricide.
On the other hand, every time someone writes something beautiful and thoughtful as Murtaza has here, the comments section proves that mainstream Jewish voices aren’t hallucinating the fact that plenty of legitimate criticism of Israel or Zionism bleeds over into scapegoating antisemitism. This is morally wrong and tactically unhelpful to everyone’s cause.
This is the tragedy this has actually devolved into a straightforward sectarian tribal conflict without unifying universalist narratives that had existed in the 1990s. So I expect it to continue to descend into mutual hatred and recrimination without reason...
“without unifying universalist narratives”
Great point. This also affects how the conflict gets debated in the US and other western nations: there’s no unifying narrative or set of principles to agree upon to form a political center in which a workable policy consensus can move forward.
Back when I first become cognizant of the conflict—in the Madrid Conference and Oslo era—there was a broad moderate consensus in the west and a healthy skepticism of the narrow, obviously self-serving partisan narratives coming from either camp of Israeli or Palestinian leadership as well as an objective standard by which the facts on the ground could be understood..
Young people today, in contrast, are forced to choose between the two extreme (and reductionist) poles on offer: “Israel can do no right” or “Israel can do no wrong”. That’s it—pick which side you’re on and adopt its narrative entirely. That’s the way it seems, anyway.
An important contextualization of the period when peace seemed close was that it was accompanied by a major structural change in global politics which was the end of the Cold War. The 1990s were a period when it seemed like universal liberalism was the only game in town, so disputes like Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Israel-Palestine seemed like they needed to be immediately settled along liberal terms. Now that liberalism seems to be waning and by no means hegemonic there is neither pressure for a plausible universalist ideology for both sides to submit themselves to.
Unfortunately, I think this is just nostalgia about a past that never was.
The Oslo process was never intended to create a Palestinian state. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was Israel's chief negotiator during the 2000 Camp David negotiations (and a well-respected historian in his own right) called the Oslo process "an increasingly unbearable colonialist system of domination and land grab".
He points out that:
"Oslo II legitimised the transformation of the West Bank into what has been called a ‘cartographic cheeseboard’. By the time Barak came to office there were about 250,000 Jews living in more than 120 settlements throughout the West Bank, and another 150,000 in new modern Jewish neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem".
All quotes are from Ben-Ami's book "Scars of War, Wounds of Peace."
I’m familiar with Ben-Ami’s post-mortems on the peace process, but I meant specifically the evolution over the last several decades of how the issue is debated here in the United States, where very few people have skin in the game or direct experience with the conflict.
Ronald Reagan understood the logic of enforcing ceasefires (Lebanon, 1982) and George H.W. Bush understood that it was sometime in the interests of the United States to put substantive pressure on Israel and conditions on US aid, but now those are considered far-left extremist positions to half the country.
Even Dubya, for all his terrible faults, at least understood that Palestinians had basic human rights, including one to sovereign self-determination in their own land, and was willing to say so.
If you were a center-left liberal Democratic voter of the last few years, your standard bearers were Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer, the latter of which was openly pro-settlement and pro-Jerusalem embassy move (which heralded the official US abandonment of the Oslo process and the 2SS) Yet Schumer is nonetheless labeled as too left-wing on Israel to be a real Jew by Trump’s handlers. This is where the public debate in the US is today.
Every week Americans can watch videos or read reports of children being incinerated by American bombs or hungry mothers being gunned down by IDF “warning shots” waiting for food. Half the country responds with a shrug and a good fraction of the other half has only a nominal influence of government policy. 20-30 years ago, that paralysis and indifference to Palestinian suffering would be utterly unthinkable. What the hell happened?
Let's talk about ceasefires in Lebanon.
In July 1981, there was a ceasefire negotiated between Israel and Lebanon with US participation.
Israel routinely violated the ceasefire prior to the 1982 war. An example: "From August 1981 to May 1982 — there were 2125 violations of Lebanese airspace and 652 violations of Lebanese territorial waters"
[Source is Noam Chomsky's book, "Fateful Triangle"]
As for the end of the 1982 war, I would not call Reagan "enforcing a ceasefire". The war stopped (for a while) because Israel got what it wanted: expelling the PLO from Lebanon. The Multi National Force was there to enforce the exile of the PLO and they were supposed to protect civilians.
The PLO went into exile in Tunis on 1 September. As soon as the Multi National Force withdrew (on 11 September), what happened? Bashir Gemayel was assassinated and Israel invaded West Beirut in violation of the ceasefire, together with their Phalangist allies. Then the Sabra and Shatila massacre happened.
Again, I would suggest that the past was not quite as rosy as one might remember.
“ However, the exact agreement was not clear. The Palestinians claimed the ceasefire was only for the Lebanese-Israel border and they were free to attack everywhere else. This left Israel at a disadvantage since it could be attacked almost anywhere but could not respond because all of the Palestinian’s political and military infrastructure was in Lebanon. From August 1981 to May 1982 the Palestinians conducted 248 attacks in Israel and overseas.[x] Israel responded with threats and troop deployments, but each time backed-off. In March 1982 and again in April Israel retaliated with air-strikes in Lebanon, and the Palestinians fired dozens of rockets from Lebanon into Israel, though aimed mostly at unpopulated areas so as not to over-antagonize Israel.”
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/israeli-strategy-in-the-first-lebanon-war-1982-1985
Brittanica similarly refers to it as an “ambiguous ceasefire.”
Did Chomsky mention this?
Reagan’s public positions from the Lebanon War to recognizing the PLO in 1988, whatever one thinks about those positions or how faithfully they were ultimately implemented, are useful historical markers of where the staunch pro-security American conservative right was at the time.
It’s remarkable to me that the Schumer-led Democratic Party establishment in 2025 is to the right of that on the P/I conflict. The modern Republican Party, in turn, openly supports mass ethnic cleansing and river-to-the-sea maximalist Zionism.
Yet an American media consumer today would be led to believe that the American center-left position on Israel today is being driven by debt-laden 19 year old campus protestors with keffiyehs and pro-Hezbollah banners.
Not sure how you can have read Ben Ami’s account of Camp David and Taba and come away with the impression that “The Oslo process was never intended to create a Palestinian state.” Ben Ami certainly portrays himself and Barak as serious about creating a Palestinian state in Prophets Without Honour.
I quoted the text in Ben Ami's book. Does a process designed to create a state in the West Bank mean building more and more settlements and roads and stealing more and more land? I don't think so.
Oslo process started in 1993. Barak came into power in 1999. Even if Ben Ami believes Barak was serious about peace, there's the question of the previous 6 years.
Ben Ami wore two hats: historian and diplomat. He is fairly honest as a historian. Not so much as a diplomat when he's trying to justify the actions of the administration of which he was a part.
Books are long for a reason. Authors have a lot to say and expect you to read all of it. Bad practice to extract a few sentences which seemingly express sentiments at odds with the thesis as evidence that the author believes the opposite of their thesis.
Wrt Barak, I don’t know how else you can interpret his premiership. Ben Ami’s account concords with all other evidence. Barak staked his career on reaching a 2 state solution. Arguing that Barak secretly didn’t want the deal which he promised to voters and went to some lengths to achieve requires some 4D chess reinterpretation of his time in office and electoral strategy.
Also ftr Ben Ami is highly critical of Barak and his administration in many respects. He doesn’t play apologist for them.
Agree that it’s unclear to what extent Rabin and early Peres were willing to compromise for peace. We never got the chance to find out because Rabin died and Bibi won the intervening election. Regardless, Oslo culminated under Barak.
Dear Murtaza,
Thanks for your thoughtful and nuanced commentary. As Jew who lived in Israel for many years, I disagree with your conclusion regarding "genocide," for reasons I'll spell out on my own Substack, but there's one point I want to emphasize. Though indeed democratically elected, this government is not "Israel." I continue to believe the evidence that the Israeli people, 70% of whom want a new government, is better than this, and will make itself heard. This war is a generational stain on them and on the Jewish people as a whole, even on those of us who oppose it, but I think it will be ending soon and it will require a joint effort, including Israel, to start pick up the pieces.
Paul Scham
President, Partners for Progressive Israel
lol stfu. we’ve seen the way your psychotic barbaric soldiers act on social media. we’ve seen the polls with half of israelis supporting kicking al arabs out of israel and 70+% supporting removing all palestinians from gaza. we’ve seen the way your disgusting media figures talk about gazans, gleeful about gazan children being killed and civilian infrastructure destroyed. stop with “this doesn’t represent israel” bullshit. nobody’s buying it anymore
That Murtaza "liked" that delusional comment demonstrates how divorced from reality he is, and how useless his commentary is. Typical liberal two-siding. Anyone who thinks the current genocide is in anyway surprising or a deviation from previous behaviour hasn't being paying attention. Certainly the severity is worse, but the racist genocidal mentality has always been a part of Israeli social consciousness.
If you consider Murtaza to be an example of “typical liberal two-siding,” I don’t think you’ve read most of his work over the last five years. The fact that he manages to piss off liberal Zionists AND hardcore leftists at the same time proves he’s doing something more right than most writing in English in this shitty chapter of history. You may not even have read this piece without skimming—the OP makes some of your comment nonsensical. Murtaza is clearly very aware of the history that makes the deterioration of the last year and a half unsurprising, even if morally shocking. You also contradict yourself: you concede “certainly the severity is worse,” but then say that anyone who thinks there is a “deviation from previous behavior hasn’t been paying attention.” If the severity is worse, there MUST be a deviation from previous behavior, by definition, otherwise the severity is the same. This is why I’m “on the left” but not “leftIST.” I believe in leftist approaches to major aspects of public policy because I believe it’s the moral thing to do according to traditional morality. But I find totalizing analysis, ideologies, and worldviews obnoxious. Not everything in reality fits neatly into leftist paradigms, especially Western ones. Murtaza is actually a normal human who absorbs what’s good from multiple traditions of thought and synthesizes them into a humane, compassionate, equitable worldview that can respond to reality as it is, not needing to turn everything into a straw man. Israel can be REALLY terrible even if it wasn’t exactly what it is today from day one. Zionism (or at least most flavors of it) can have been shot through with chauvinism and Jewish supremacy since very early days even if the way it’s expressed in statecraft on the ground has evolved significantly over the decades. It’s almost as if leftists cannot allow anything to be other than a comic-book supervillain or superhero—it’s all binaries. NOTHING can be in-between even for a millisecond of history. I’m so sick of that.
what a dishonest strawman. yeah, leftists are the ones incapable of critical thought unlike you enlightened liberals. hahahahaha i would’ve loved to see that supposed nuance and rational thinking during the shitshow with biden and kamala, where liberals had their eyes and ears buried in the sand completely denying objective reality about biden’s senility, accusing anyone rational of being russian bots, and that the genocide in gaza wasn’t going to have significant electoral ramifications. see we can all play this game of dishonesty
Anecdotally, all the leftists I’ve ever known who were capable of rational thought have left the left. Those who remain are unable or unwilling to engage counterarguments beyond anger, insults and blocks.
I don’t think you read my whole comment. I’m not an “enlightened liberal.” I’m a progressive who still thinks the progressive movement sometimes has intellectual and epistemological issues. I was screaming bloody murder in the last few months of the Harris campaign that they were throwing it all away because of Gaza. At the DNC, I insisted that they had made fatal mistakes and lost a huge portion of my friends over it. Even some people who believed there was a genocide unfolding in Gaza canceled me for daring to say that Kamala had made a mistake in how she handled hecklers or the DNC. It had become a religion to them. I’m just as disillusioned with them as I am with some hardcore progressives. People just need to take a chill pill and stop forming these unbeatable tribalistic bonds with fleeting political movements. Values are what should have our permanent loyalty.
Paul, I’m glad to see you here, reading Murtaza. He’s an under-discovered, under-read gem in our liberal Jewish circles. His voice should be amplified by us. However, given what I know of the values of PPI and the good work it does, it really is ridiculous that its President at this late date is still ignoring the overwhelming expert consensus of genocide scholars, including some diaspora and Israeli Zionists, that the way this war is being waged has met several of the criteria for genocide since its very first few weeks in late 2023, and has met basically all of them since mid 2024. A word is just a word, and we should care more that the crimes end than what people call them. But that being said, it is incredibly destructive to Jewish credibility to openly deny it at this stage. You should reconsider as quickly and as thoroughly as you can possibly manage. Please, please do. I beg you.
As for Israeli society, it is true that many are furious with the current government, but more granular polling since 10/7 shows that as few as 3% of all Jewish Israelis oppose the war because of concern for Palestinian life or dignity. The vast, vast majority who oppose it do so because they don’t want their loved ones in the army to die or be injured, they worry (correctly) that it further endangers the hostages rather than helping them, and of course, it is expensive and financially burdensome to the whole society, even with all the US aid. When they fervently, furiously, sincerely scream for it to end, their anger is at Bibi’s selfishness and recklessness. It is not righteous anger born of empathy with or grief for Palestinians. Only a minuscule fringe within a fringe of the farthest left that exists in Israeli society cites worry for innocent Palestinians as a primary reason for wanting the war to end. I wasn’t shocked by this in the first few weeks after 10/7, but when months and now a year and a half went by without much of a pivot, I realized that the society is pretty far gone. They are highly likely to come to their senses in large numbers eventually, but I fear it could take decades. It will be far too late to recover our honor or reputation. It’s a tragedy of civilization-wide proportions.
Meanwhile the consensus of military scholars is that this is war, not genocide.
At least as of South Africa’s ICJ application in December 2023, there was no evidence of genocidal intent. Section D seeks to establish intent through quoting Israeli leaders. But check out the sources in the footnotes. The application spins explicit statements about Hamas into damnations of civilians. If the lawyers had had better evidence, they would’ve mentioned that instead.
I have seen no scholarly material to the effect that you mention. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but I’m pretty well read. Are there mainstream, non-right-wing military scholars who are on board with the modern liberal consensus on human rights who allege that even now, the continued operations in Gaza are merely war?
Talking to even liberal Israelis in a coffee shop in Jerusalem for 20 minutes or reading any Hebrew-language comment thread on anything ever is evidence of genocidal intent. Spare me your hasbara about the ICJ in 2023. Their evidence was rock-solid then (though any idiot could have figured it out within a week of 10/7), and since that time, there is exponentially more available and relies less on the utterances of officials who may not personally be granular decision-makers regarding conduct on the ground in Gaza. That was the only valid critique of the original case, and it evaporated mere weeks later.
You can assert that South Africa’s evidence was rock solid, but I’ve actually read the application and all of its linked sources which are still accessible online. Far from rock solid - it ranges from misleading to blatant lying. I didn’t even cross check it against outside sources - I just read the application’s own sources, linked in the footnotes.
I’m aware that many Israelis say they’d be cool with actual genocide, including people I know. Doesn’t mean that IDF commanders and civilian decisionmakers are among them.
RUSI has published an in depth analysis on it, treating it as a case study in urban warfare. ISW and IISS have published shorter pieces. CSIS has hosted several panel discussions.
https://static.rusi.org/tactical-lessons-from-idf-gaza-2023.pdf
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/israels-operational-success-and-strategic-shortcomings-gaza-strip
It’s fratricide and it’s awful. There was no justification for occupation 30 years ago - and indeed Israel moved towards withdrawal. But after the second intifada and the Hamas takeover of Gaza it became evident that unfortunately occupation is the lesser of evils.
Occupation is so immoral that nothing exists that can justify it. I refuse to believe that this is a zero sum game in which the only way to avoid Jewish destruction is to do things which are unjustifiable and forever destroy our honor and our character. But hypothetically, if it were truly zero sum, we would have a firm and solemn obligation to go quietly into the night rather than become villains. The means of preserving ourselves paradoxically would make us undeserving of being preserved, while the refusal to be preserved at that cost would make us deserving of being preserved. But again, I don’t believe it’s actually zero-sum.
I hope you’ll turn out to be right and Israelis and Palestinians will find some bloodless, mutually beneficial solution to the conflict. I don’t particularly care if there’s a “Jewish state” (whatever that means) at the end of it. But unfortunately I’m skeptical.
There’s fates worse than occupation. Eg: Gaza, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Ukraine, any other horrific war. If the expected alternative to occupation is 100x more bloodshed and devastation, then ending occupation is an awful idea.
All the massacres, wars and occupations of the century-long Israeli Arab conflict combined have killed fewer than 150,000 people on all sides, far fewer than most protracted modern wars. Unfortunately occupation is blissful compared to realistic alternatives.
I understand what you're saying and I believe that you're saying it in good faith, but it's a species of insight that can only ever be held by someone who is not subject to occupation. Yes, of course, in a vacuum, we can assert in utilitarian fashion that it is easily possible to imagine fates worse than occupation. But people forced into a situation because of geography or identity or whatever do not generally get an opportunity to consent to have their lives ruined for some greater good. They do not consent to be instrumentalized. It must be imposed from without, which of course is part of the definition of occupation. The constriction of freedom of movement, the humiliation, the degradation, the infantilization of curfews, checkpoints, etc. And of course the more direct violence that often comes with it--being able to go innocently about one's daily life without a guarantee that one will not accidentally be embroiled in a situation of brutality of occupying forces. It is possible to have a "cleaner" occupation, but that is not the one that's tended to exist in the history of the I/P conflict. No, from the perspective of the occupied, it is a moral emergency that cries out to heaven.
As for only 150,000 people being killed on all sides during the entire history of this conflict, that would be fewer than most modern wars, as you say. But I'm assuming you were limiting it only to direct deaths and furthermore limiting it to pre-10/7. Since 10/7, there have been roughly 70,000 direct deaths in Gaza alone, and if one includes indirect deaths through starvation, the Lancet estimates it could be over 100k in Gaza alone in the last year and a half. And of course, there are a few thousand outside Gaza in the same time period. I think over the entire history of the conflict, 150k sounds quite low, though I am sure it is still a lower number than protracted modern wars, as you say.
There is something obscene about being able to discuss and haggle over these numbers calmly. I don't know if you're a religious person, but I am. Every single death, either of an innocent person or of a person born innocent and subsequently misguided, is a civilization-ending tragedy. Civilization-ending in the sense of honor. If major decision-makers viewed it that way, it would end.
Super interesting and thoughtfully worded as always.
However, you write: "I condemned the Israeli killings of civilians on October 7 with utmost sincerity. But that has become an irrelevant side note to events at this point. Every perpetrator of genocide claimed to have been driven by compelling political or security concerns." [I assume you mean 'the killing of Israeli civilians']
The following is besides the point as to whether the Gaza war constitutes a genocide or not, but: As far as the Israeli perspective goes, It seems to me you focus a bit too narrowly on just Gaza. In Israel, this war was not experienced as merely an attack by Hamas, but as a (more or less concerted) multi-front attack by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran - enemies that had (especially in the case of the two former) armed themselves to the teeth and rigged their own territories for maximal aggression against Israel. The subsequent war effort has above all been concerned with ensuring that no enemy armed to the teeth can ever again constitute itself on Israel's borders (the IDF's operations in Syria should also be seen in this light). This has been - and is being - borne out through destruction of military infrastructure as well as deterrence in the case of Hamas, in the sense of setting an example of what will happen to an enemy who elects to go the distance with Israel. This is obviously just a rough sketch of the overall picture. Mixed in it, and complicating it, are Netanyahu's personal interest in extending the war for his political survival as well as his messianic coalition's interest in full-fledged ethnic cleansing (this is also to say: I don't take your Netanyahu quote as actual intention (though it would obviously be entirely fair to construe it as such), but I do take Smotrich's as intention). However, the present and future destruction of military threats on Israel's borders remains the guiding principle overall. I would argue that even the Smotrich approach is far from being just messianic, it is also (perhaps even above all) a more hardline take on the concept of annihilating military threats on Israel's border.
The above is intended as a bit of nuance, not to outright disagree with anything you write. However, I would certainly argue that the threats against Israel are far greater than the threats against the Turks by the Armenians or against the Serbs by the Bosnians. But that is of course only if you consider the threats against Israel in a regional scope and not just look at Hamas in Gaza.
I think it is an issue of perception. Israel does feel a sense of permanent besiegement for the reasons you outline. But on the other hand, its the only nuclear power in the region, has the most advanced airforce and military, enjoys unprecedented superpower support, etc. Meanwhile its enemies are mostly nonstate militias with light armaments who have to make due in relative poverty of resources. So why this lack of confidence and sense of siege? They could easily make peace from a position of strength and this offer of full normalization with the Arab League has been on the table since 2002.
The Second Intifada made a Palestinian State - and thus, the Arab League initiative - a non-starter to a majority of Israelis. To a majority of Israelis, The Second Intifada made it abundantly clear that the extermination of Israel is more important to the Palestinian national movement than a Palestinian state is (this is not my own assumption, I am just, as you put it, stating a particular perspective). October 7 turned that majority into the vast majority, who now see any form of actual Palestinian autonomy in Gaza or the West Bank as an existential threat. Thus, many prefer some form of de facto normalization and zero prospects of a Palestinian state to real normalization and even just lip service to a Palestinian state. Again, in the eyes of Israelis, the Palestinian national movement and the threats it contains are connected to many more regional actors and enemies than merely the Palestinians themselves who are of course powerless in a military sense.
I think it's not just a question of a sense of besiegement. It's also connected to the fact that contrary to its enemies, the social contract in Israel dictates that the state is fundamentally supposed to serve the citizens. This creates a completely different type of vulnerability. As long as that social contract is still functional, even the possibility of another Second Intifada or October 7 is severely socially corrosive, even if such events in isolation do not in and of themselves constitute existential threats.
Although I did not get into the chronology of the conflict in this post I agree that the Second Intifada was a significant turning point in the demise of the Israeli left. But I actually think that apportioning blame is just irrelevant to future conditions. Both sides feel considerably aggrieved but its besides the point now. The question is what can happen or should happen in the future. The 2SS was an elegant and common solution to ethnic conflict (partition) but if its off the table we are just stuck with a permanent conflict without solutions and this will involve the whole region and beyond for an indefinite period even if the war is not always expressed kinetically.
This was not an attempt at apportioning blame, not at all. I agree that it's completely irrelevant to do so. I write all this as an Israeli living in Jerusalem, so it's just an attempt to reflect the perspective I see around me.
I completely agree with everything you write here regarding the future. Again - and I am once more merely a purveyor of vibes; not expressing my own opinion on the matter - I cannot for the life of me see a majority of Israelis ever acceping a 2SS after The Second Intifada and October 7. The *only* slight chance would be if there was to be a complete about-face in the entire Palestinian national movement, and a trustworthy Palestinian leader was to do a Palestinian equivalent of "Sadat goes to Jerusalem" and offer the resignation of the right of return (as always and ever the biggest stumbling block on the Israeli side) for a Palestinian state. But this is not what the Palestinian national movement has traditionally been concerned with, and of course the Israeli right (in the widest sense of 'right') would do everything in its power to prevent the formation and consolidation of such a Palestinian leader. So yes, I firmly agree with your bleak prognosis for the future.
Yes its depressing conclusion. Hope you are safe and not affected unduly by current conditions. Thank you for reading and your thoughtful feedback.
The solution is Palestinian rejection of violence.
Palestinians are unaware of their historical aggression, so they believe that Jews are bloodthirsty demons who can only be fought. If they knew more about the origins of the violence they might consider that Jews could be willing to settle once they’re no longer under lethal threat.
Israel is strong in 2025. Doesn’t mean that they should rest on their laurels and let their enemies build their strength while probing for weaknesses. No one knows what the situation will be like in 2050 or 2075.
The Arab league proposal punts on Palestinian right of return to Israel (what does “fair resolution to the refugee problem based on UN 194” mean?), one of the main sticking points in the negotiations at Camp David and Taba. Israelis won’t accept a Palestinian majority Israel for obvious reasons. (The mainstream of the Palestinian movement has shown zero regard for Jewish lives since the 1920s). Lebanonization is no solution.
The Arab League proposal minus the refugee issue is just a demand for unilateral withdrawal (and we’ve seen how that went). Peace requires a final status agreement, with Palestinian leadership agreeing that all claims have been resolved.
I find the idea of this article -- that a state which commits massive war crimes can't be "normalized" or integrated into the region -- to be very unrealistic.
Take the Sri Lankan civil war against the LTTE. It was comparable in brutality to the Syrian and Israeli wars. Yet, the Sri Lankan govt. decisively defeated the LTTE using extremely brutal methods.
The Tamils in Sri Lanka are still oppressed and many of the problems remain. But there isn't much of a move to isolate Sri Lanka internationally. Sri Lankan govt. officials even visit India -- where there are a lot of Tamils and sympathizers -- regularly. Sri Lanka is not a pariah state.
Coming back to Gaza, let's take the surrounding states. It's unclear to me how much effect Israel's actions are going to have long term. Take the Arab League. Except for issuing various condemnatory statements, did it ever lift a finger against Israel? What exactly have Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia done? Nothing, that's what. Did any of the countries in the "Abraham Accords" withdraw? No.
What has the EU done? What has the US done? Nothing.
Violence is depressingly common in world affairs. I don't think you can necessarily draw long-term lessons from what Israel has done.
There is a unique characteristic of the Israel-Palestine conflict which is that has been successfully globalized by both sides over the past seven decades, so its unlike the many other ethno-religious conflicts in the world. People just didn't care about the LTTE-Sri Lankan conflict outside South Asia (I was an exception and actually cared a lot for various personal reasons) so whatever happened the consequences were highly local. It would be wrong to assess the lack of immediate reaction to people not caring, this has had a huge impact especially on lower-mid level military and political officials in surrounding countries who do not remember or respect the Camp David and Oslo Accords-era realities of their superiors. So I expect we will see downstream changes absent some significant course correction inside Israel that I also deem unlikely.
I agree that the Israel-Palestine conflict has been globalized to a much bigger extent. But that in itself doesn't mean much.
From my vantage point, the Palestinian cause is much diminshed in global stature and prestige. Sure, it command sympathy in the population of the surrounding countries. But are there serious practical efforts at a state level to resist Israel's actions? No.
Even Hezbollah only responded in a limited way to the Israeli attack on Gaza, mindful of attracting Israeli wrath (which it attracted anyway). The Houthis are probably the only ones doing something serious, but they're really no match for Israel militarily.
Is anyone stopping the Israeli actions in the West Bank? No.
You say that there may be effects on mid-level military and political officials. Perhaps.
But what does that mean in concrete terms?
I just don't see anything concrete, nor do I see anything on the horizon.
Well you have to be patient. By which I mean be ready to wait generations and beyond your own lifetime potentially. The Reconquista took 500 years but it was a generational project based on people never losing a sense of rejection and antipathy. The most important thing is having competent and capable states, not useless non-state groups with light-weapons and no political economy. In my opinion an arc of such states is gradually forming and recent events in Syria are a boost for that.
If it was really true that the Israel-Palestinian conflict will take generations to be solved, that would fundamentally alter my viewpoint.
In my opinion, it is immoral to ask people to follow a path which will doom them and their descendants to misery.
I would then be much more open to "solutions" which don't meet the standards of justice, but which are nevertheless practical and promise a decent path forward.
Suppose there's a settlement which rules out a Palestinian state but creates a viable federation with Jordan while annexing some of the West Bank to Israel. Suppose Palestinians get citizenship within the federation and decent economic prospects. Suppose this settlement is achieved in a much shorter timeline, maybe a couple of decades.
Even though this is completely against elementary principles of justice and international law, I would be open to supporting it if the only alternative is several generations of misery for Palestinians.
Hezb opened the front on 10/8. They weren’t reacting to Israeli attack on Gaza - they were showing solidarity with Hamas.
You motherfuckers have been accusing your victims of “genocide” for defending themselves for more than two decades. Nobody believes you. Eat shit.
No thanks. I detest eating you.- You stink!
Nice comeback. You must be captain of the middle school debate team.
You backward barbarians need to be booted to the sea just as your ancestors were throughout the world
Enjoy your forever war 🙄
For the safety of my family and yours, please reconsider your views and rhetoric
How genocidal.
Child murderers deserve to die. I didn’t know that was controversial
Blogging isn’t child murder
Kfir Bibas was a child murderer?
No, that’s why the Israelis murdered her
It’s a him. And Palestinians murdered him and danced with his coffin. Fuck you.
And slowly.-
Posting because you seem good faith and open to pushback.
You quote Karhi supporting Israeli settlement (which doesn’t imply genocide anyways), but omit Netanyahu’s repudiation of settlement in the article you linked on his comments. You quote Netanyahu saying that emigrating Gazans won’t return, but omit the fact that he’s discussing Trump’s plan and that he calls such emigration voluntary. You also omit his stated war aims per the same article.
I can’t find the article you say Eiland published in Yedioth, but every comment I’ve seen by him has included claims that his plan is legal under IHL. And you exclude his consistent and sensible rationale: incentivizing Gaza’s civilians to move out of fortified areas allows the IDF to combat Hamas and destroy tunnels, IEDs and fighting positions there without killing civilians.
You say GMH “only records deaths from direct trauma among people whose identities it can verify. The present official toll… thus does not account for tens of thousands more believed to be buried under the rubble… as these people have neither been recovered by the morgue nor identified.” But GMH says that they include names submitted by family of the dead and missing via online forms. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx25x35476yo.amp
So I’m not persuaded by your evidence.
On the other hand, if Israel wants to eradicate Gazans, why are they bothering with expensive and bloody bombings, combat operations and mobilizations at all? They could just shut down the border crossings and wait for Gaza to starve to death. Instead they’re allowing food in; have lost 800 troops in combat with thousands more wounded; and spent a fortune on mobilization and munitions.
Great article
"That is why even the fiercest opponents or critics of those wars never levelled the accusation of genocide."
This section is pretty dumb. The parsimonious explanation for why the term genocide was not used against the Allies was that the term was first used in a published work in 1944 as part of Allied propaganda.
More broadly, the point that Allied war crimes were justified by a plausible end-game is an important difference between those and Israeli war crimes today. It's an equally important criticism also of Israeli military actions that are not war crimes. But it's not the same as these actions actually being worse. It's plainly obvious that people in the mid 20th century just had a much higher tolerance for civilian casualties and Allied actions were interpreted in that light, whereas Israeli actions today are judged by a higher standard, which is a good thing, but it doesn't justify writing silliness.
No endgame in Gaza? Hamas is losing its munitions and veteran commanders. Barring a far right electoral takeover, Israel will eventually withdraw but maintain the Philadelphi corridor. (Perhaps Netzarim as well if periodic raids are still necessary.) Hamas will be unable to regroup. Unable to wage war and disillusioned by its impacts, Gazans will turn toward reconstruction and peaceful protest.
You talk about the need to come up with "new political architecture" inside Israel in place of the current regime (I think that's what you meant).
Do you mean that the Israeli regime basically needs to be toppled? So their current federal system? Including Knesset? IDF?
Can you clarify and elaborate a bit more on what that should look like? Or perhaps I am misinterpreting...
If you take the Syrian example the proximate problem is the security institutions, including the MoD which runs the occupation.
So MoD and IDF in the west bank basically, as far as the occupation is concerned. But i think what your saying is that there will not be an end to occupation, apartheid, expanism...so in an security institutions will have to be replaced essentially? (And that such a replacement will not happen)
To the broader point of the long term I think need to give it some thought and also might be a basis of an article eventually. As a principle we need to foster alternative non-Zionist institutions that give Israeli Jews a bridge out of their current ones otherwise they’re going to stand on this hill til the end no matter how much it deteriorates and that will be not good for anyone
Even as this juncture marks a turning point for Jews in postwar history, I dont think Zionists will give up their Zionism in the near term. Maybe their children will. This conflict devolving further will probably intensify their Zionism.
Read your DMS dickhead
Giora Eiland is literally retired. In order to prove genocide, you need genocidal intent on chela of the people who actually set the Gaza policy. Even Finance Minister Smotrich and Public Security Minister Ben-Gvir do not set the policy.
"As terrible of those events were, they did not qualify as genocide. The U.S. goal in the wars in Iraq and Syria was never described by its leaders as destroying those populations, driving them from permanently from their homes, or eradicating their sovereignty."
No, special intent to ethnically cleanse is not genocidal. That does not count as per the Genocide Convention. Else the expulsion of the Germans from the East would be genocidal. Did Stalin commit genocide in the late 1940s? No.
It is not genocide, because there is no special intent ("dolus specialis") to destroy the Palestinian people as such.
Israel evacuates civilian areas before starting operations. It is not genocide.
Eiland isn’t genocidal. Read any of his articles or interviews.
I didn’t say he was or wasn’t. What I said was that even if he was, that would prove nothing. Since he is retired.
I agree in any case. Even his comments about a medieval siege with a humanitarian disaster and starvation and disease don’t count as genocide. The specific intent is to “bring victory closer” and “reduce casualties among IDF soldiers”, not to destroy the Palestinians as such. Even if the intent is to kick all the Palestinians I still think no. You need a special intent to destroy a people as such.
Not a special intent to ethnically cleanse them and for them to then assimilate into another country. Still not enough. Even if you starve them and give them disease until they surrender and move to Egypt and assimilate into Egypt. Israel is not doing that and it’s feeding them but I’m saying even this policy doesn’t count. Doesn’t count as genocide unless you have a special intent to destroy the people as such. What happened to the Germans in the East after WWII doesn’t count.
It’s difficult to take this writer seriously. There is no genocide in Gaza but he flogs it like a dead horse. It’s not a surprise because Drop Site is basically another propaganda outlet for Hamas.
In the concluding paragraph the author uses the word 'fate' twice, to describe the slaughter of people in Gaza which is due to the century-long policies of the UK/USA and their partners in colonial criminality.
If certain leaders were not blackmailed/bribed/bought by the Zionists during this century of suffering, this so-called 'fate' would not have come to be.
UK policy in the mandatory period seemed sensible and humane at the time. Primary responsibility for the violent conflict belongs to Amin Husseini and the nationalists who applauded his violence and elevated him to leadership of the supreme Muslim council. The British weren’t oracles and can’t be blamed for a conflict they couldn’t have foreseen. As it is, in 1939 they offered Husseini a Palestinian state on 100% of the territory if he’d agree not to expel Jews and to accept another 75,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Husseini refused.
I think there's a typo in the paragraph about Oct 7., instead of "Israeli killing of civilians", I imagine you meant "killing of Israeli citizens"?
Thank you yes. Very important
I appreciate your argument but please explain why you are not advocating for Hamas to surrender? This could have been done months ago which would have put an end to the kinetic war. Given the involvement of the international community, once surrender occurred there would be significant resources available to take care of the civilians and rebuild Gaza under Palestinian comtrol. Using your examples, Japan surrendered after the devastating nuclear strikes and the Allies set about rebuilding Japan, including keeping the Emperor.
For about a year now Hamas has been trying to negotiate a deal where they exit the territory in exchange for a technocratic government of the PA, Egypt etc. taking over. This is basically a surrender in all but name and would result in ending their control of Gaza and the hostages returning. The problem is the Israeli government actually rejects this outcome as they do not want any Palestinian-led entity ruling Gaza. They've now started expressing that this is because the goal is to kick the population out in which case leaving power would just hasten this process.
Israelis have bitter experience with this kind of “exit”, which in fact means a situation where there is a “technocratic” government which is in charge of collecting the trash while beside it there is an armed militia which is more powerful than the government and feels free to continue plotyong attacks. This is what we had for decades in Lebanon. The only role of the thecnocratic government is to serve as a diplomatic shield for the armed militia. It's not at all surrender. Surrender is for Hamas to accept Israel’s offer of complete disarmament and exile of the leaders (this part may be moot now seeing as they're all dead by now).
There’s not really any point debating now, both sides feel the other is acting in bad faith and can’t be trusted. If Hamas leaves the next step according to the government is expelling the remaining population so they’re obviously not going to do that. absent outside intervention or radical change domestically inside Israel I eventually foresee the total liquidation of the prewar population of Gaza through death and exile
I doubt that the Netanyahu government is set on expulsion. Netanyahu’s comments are about allowing voluntary emigration and are aimed at sucking up to Trump. Either way, the opposition is set to win the next election, October 2026 at the latest.
It’s worked in most of the West Bank (except Jenin and Tulkarm, but even there PA security forces have been reasserting control). If Murtaza’s right that Hamas is willing to accept this deal, it’s a no brainer.