Tags: 6 Min Read; Great, Short Videos!
It is sunny in Tel Aviv. Discovered: 1800Flowers.com often fails to include the requested card. (Lesson: Find a local florist and order directly, I mean sheesh, that’s what the interweb is for…. Thanks Y.Z.!) So, I’m not using 1800Flowers any more, even though they sent me a $20 coupon (and delivered the bouquet again… again without a card!). If you can use the coupon, drop me an email.
Read, Heard & Thought
Emigration from Gaza
In a survey in June, well before the war, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 29 percent of Gazans wanted to emigrate due to the political, security and economic conditions. In September, a spate of media reports talked about rising emigration....
Explainer: Genocide & Ethnic Cleansing
This is 90 seconds. It appears again at the end of this segment.
Missing from the above? A note that Jews were forced out of those countries by rioting locals. They typically lost their homes and assets without any compensation.
I have heard a couple of folks use the term "genocide" as applied to the war in Gaza. One, an Arab-American comedian, said, "You might not agree, but that is because you don't know the definition. Look at the definition, you'll see I'm right."
I looked it up. In the definition, intent is required. If nothing else, it will be argued whether or not there is intent. (It is not arguable that there is intent to destroy Hamas, but whether there is intent under the definition is less clear.)
For example, gas chambers and pits with machine guns above are not required by the definition. To my eyes, the U.N. term is not applicable to Gaza (in 2023), but I agree that the point is arguable. In other words, I think a case could be made that some actions by the Israeli Army qualify under the U.N. definition.
We now enter the rabbit hole:
The question, to Raf, isn't: "Is the Israeli Army taking actions X, Y and Z that are consistent with definition of genocide." Why? If we go down that path, what about the actions (and promises) of Hamas, which include some of the same actions against Palestinians[1] that Israel is accused of? What about UNWRA itself that creates a permanent caste of sufferers and whose existence appears to favor its wards while its long term existence harms its beneficiaries? (By making it harder for them to find new situations and being an excuse for Hamas and others to not take responsibility for them.)
In other words: While one can argue it is "dictionary accurate" to accuse the Israeli Army of committing acts that qualify as Genocide in Gaza, it isn't constructive. Armies are blunt instruments. Hamas rockets are blunt instruments. Using blunt things results in civilian deaths. Survey events in the last 55 years in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and other regional countries and find five or ten events that brightly, boldly qualify as Genocide (including against Palestinians).
So what is the point of using that term about the actions of the Israeli Army? (That in recent days is taking disciplinary action against a reserve soldier for using a microphone in an empty mosque.)
Egypt and Hamas won't let Gazans into Sinai (or even transit Sinai to leave the area). Where are the protests against that? (And by taking actions that lead to death of members of a specific ethnic group, is arguably genocidal.)
Oh right. There are no visible protests that are Pro Palestine and Anti Hamas. Or Pro Palestine and Anti Egypt's Closed Gaza Border. Or against Lebanese or other Arab countries that have laws that heavily discriminate against Palestinians. Or against UNWRA that accords its (problematic) refugee status to the children of fathers already in the system but not to mothers.
In this kaledaiscope of conflicting color, one color consistently shines: Anti Jewishness.
Without even touching the ethnic migration no one discusses in the 1940’s and 50’s. I'll let this one minute infographic do that:
To circle back: Using the term “genocide” about what is going on in Gaza isn’t useful. Given the readiness by: Hamas to kill Palestinian civilians (denying them access to plentiful bomb shelters, stealing food aid and money); The Jordanian Army to kill Palestinians (3,400+ killed); and many more instances, using this term related to the Israeli Army adds nothing but anti-Jewish hate. It is consistent with a 50 year campaign to delegitimize Israel and to justify calls for its destruction by military means. Calling out civilian casualties is proper. Condemning the use of bombs in civilian areas is of course fine (extra points to also condemn the thousands of Hamas bombs sent the other way). In this region the word is empty because it is applied narrowly: Palestinian deaths are honored with protests while Syrian, Iraqi, Yemeni and other deaths are ignored, even though there are 500-1000 times more of them.
Have Palestinians been failed? Absolutely. By their leaders, by the world, and (for the ones who didn’t get Israeli citizenship) by Israel. Terminology in this context is a distraction and a weapon. The real question is: What is a path forward?
Sovereignty
From a long podcast (transcript here), Aaron David Miller, who worked in the U.S. State Department on Middle East Peace for decades, suggests:
But I don’t and will not surrender to the forces of hopelessness and despair to basically argue that it simply cannot be. You need at least four things. Number one, you need leaders on both sides who are masters of their politics, not prisoners of their ideologies. You do not have that.
Number two, you need a sense of real ownership, the profound piece of philosophy that in the history of the world, nobody ever washes a rental car is critically important because people care about what they own, and there’s no ownership. Every breakthrough, every one, without exception, was preceded by or conducted without the presence of the United States. And you do not have that sense that Israelis and the Palestinians have to do this because it makes sense for them.
Number three, you need effective mediation, if not from the U.S., then by another party that is prepared to apply ample amounts of honey and assurance, and a lot of vinegar and pressure when it’s necessary.
And finally, you’re going to need an organizing framework in which both sides can see the outlines of where this is headed, an end state. We don’t have any of those things.
At what point does the world say "We have had enough. Leadership in Israel and Palestine isn’t delivering. We are imposing a solution"? Early on (October 15) the Raf line was, "Gulf money and Swiss accountants." Celeste Marcus put it this way in a recent Washington Post opinion essay:
The United States is the single actor with the power to force Israel and Palestine toward peace. Yet the only political group poised to advocate Palestinian sovereignty has rendered itself useless. Progressives are the loudest members of their party but also the fringe. Mainstream Democrats — typified by the current president — are slow to pressure Israel to enforce policies that would bring about the necessary change. Progressives are the only people who could pressure the Biden administration to push for a two-state solution. It is a gross dereliction of duty that they instead choose to dehumanize Israelis and call for a fantastical end to the Jewish state. The obscene fetishization of Hamas and the chants for Israel’s extermination have done incalculable damage for the Palestinian cause.
George Will, not someone I generally agree with, published, on about the same day, an essay that discusses why people 45 and older are disgusted with the nature of Pro Palestine agitators and demonstrators. It leans heavily on a book by Peter Englund, "November 1942." Two paragraphs:
Since Vietnam, graphic journalism has given us living room wars, but broadcast snippets of combat have drained war of its power to shock. Englund’s more than 400 pages of words, mere words, excavated from experiences 81 Novembers ago, convey war’s “terrible earnestness.”
Today, academic ethicists at a safe distance are instructing Israel to be “proportionate” in its response to what was done on Oct. 7. Perhaps the students and faculty exhilarated by Hamas need to see pictures of what was done. So, give every U.S. college and university the 46-minute video that Israel compiled from Hamas cameras and other sources, showing the sadists inflicting their carnage. Challenge the schools to screen it. This would be disturbingly educational, but the schools, many of them uneasy about such things, should do it anyway.
Seen
The Benefit Concert
For Kibbutz Be'eri that I went to. It was sold out. On the left below is the pianist. On the right the vocalist. They were joined by a vocalist from Kibbutz Be’eri who was great.
Relief Area
Alef (2 Min Eretz Nehederet)
Bet
Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan displays Yahya Sinwar's number at the General Assembly "If you want a ceasefire - call him"
(This really happened)
Gimmel
Dalet
As mentioned, I expect to skip some days between now and early January. No news means… I did something else that day! The scooter? It is finally listed!
Stay well,
Raf
(Thank you S.F.Z. for content.)
[1] Hamas crimes against Palestinians include: Stealing food (this week) and massive funds--billions of dollars--over the course of 10+ years; Using hospitals, schools, mosques and apartment buildings as locations and/or cover for military facilities; Using deadly force, and killing, while stealing badly needed humanitarian aid from displaced Gazans; Preventing, including by gunfire, Gazans from relocating out of zones being bombed; Summary executions for over a dozen years; Violent repression of women and homosexuals; Blocking exit from Gaza to those who have jobs and university admissions abroad; and much more.