Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. —Isaiah, 1:17

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “mighty vengeance” has far exceeded Israel’s right to defend itself. It cannot destroy Hamas, and will swell its ranks unless Israel can come to see the folly of the unjust order it maintains.

Since Hamas foresaw a disproportionate response by Israel, and even promised more attacks like October 7, what sense did it make to oblige Hamas?

If we valued Palestinian lives equally with Israeli lives, these considerations would have informed our policy; we would have leveraged our military aid to Israel from the start.

But in Washington, Palestinian blood is cheap. The Israel lobby has made sure of that.

As of March 1, 2024, over 30,228 Gazans had been killed since October 7, 2023, and over 71,377 wounded. Health experts warned that many thousands could perish from starvation and disease even if a cease-fire happened with no further delay.

With conditions still deteriorating, Prime Minister Netanyahu remains determined to “finish the job”. He assumes the Israel lobby can keep America in line. No temporary cease-fire can send the message Israel needs to hear: the slaughter must end now. 

Airdrops of aid will not suffice. Nor will a pier that will take weeks to complete to bring aid to starving people still under bombardment. President Biden must insist now on a permanent cease-fire to allow for the level of humanitarian assistance needed, and for a hostage-prisoner exchange. He should leverage military aid to make it happen and to sustain it.

Israelis will only know security when Palestinians know the same. Israel must retreat to the 1967 “Green Line”, by which it will still retain 78% of historic Palestine. It must begin to abandon all Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and end its  war and blockade of Gaza. 

Surely, the unjust order which Israel has imposed on the Palestinians–who comprised the great majority of the original population of Palestine– would offend the prophets of old.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that Hamas’s demands for a permanent ceasefire–the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, the end of the blockade, and an exchange of hostages for prisoners–are “ludicrous”. 

But what is really ludicrous is Israel’s assumption that it can “destroy” Hamas. 

Implausibly, Israel claimed last month that it had taken out two-thirds of Hamas’s  fighting regiments. Maybe a third, American sources say. 

On February 8, New York Times reporters Julian Barnes and Edward Wong wrote that American officials emphasize that in “war after war” the United States has learned that “counting the number of enemies killed in an insurgency or counter-terrorism operation is a fool’s game. Operations that kill militants often radicalize others, swelling the ranks of enemy organizations.”

They added: “And U.S. officials say death counts of fighters do not give any indication of whether a government has addressed the core issues driving the war.”

Would that such clear-headedness prevailed in Congress and the White House.  Instead, the administration apparently intends to veto another U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire which Algeria plans to introduce on February 20.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the resolution “may run counter” to a hostage deal, which would “bring an immediate and sustained period of calm to Gaza for at least six weeks.” Unfortunately, Netanyahu, in pursuit of  “total victory”, is not interested.

That the administration is planning to take a very unpopular position again demonstrates two things. First, our interests and Israel’s–especially as conceived by the extremists in Tel Aviv– do not align. Second, the Israel lobby is still dictating U.S. policy.

It is important to note that the bulk of Israel’s supporters in the United States are not Jews, but conservative evangelical Christians.  And among American Jews are many champions of the Palestinian cause. 

This months- old slaughter of Gazans is long, long past any defensive operation, especially given that Israel is an occupier. When I see ads asking if I believe Israel has a right to defend itself, I am sorely tempted to answer no.  

By now it is pretty clear that Israel intends to empty Gaza of Palestinians, paving the way for Jewish settlers. That would leave the Palestinians of the West Bank as the sole remaining obstacle to completing the century-old project to repopulate Palestine. 

I know I sound like a broken record, but power does not restrain itself; as sure as you were born, preponderant power will over-extend. It is Israel’s power advantage that best explains its steady takeover of Palestinian land. Paradoxically, its military might has not made Israel more secure, but less. The international political system, which doesn’t give a hoot about “moral clarity”, does not long tolerate unbalanced power. Thus, just as Russia is balancing against Western power, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels, and Iran are all balancing against Israel. 

The restoration of balance often occurs at tremendous costs in blood and treasure. That is why excessive power is more curse than blessing. No country can be trusted with it.

Today is February 19, Day 136 of Netanyahu’s “mighty vengeance” on the Palestinians. Thus far, over 29,100 Gazans have been killed, and over 69,000 wounded. It would be very generous to Israel to assume 9,000 of those killed were Hamas fighters. That would leave 20,000 innocents killed as collateral damage.

A spokesperson for the Biden administration recently said that one innocent death in Gaza is one too many. How about 20,000?

According to Cindy McCain, head of the U.N. World Food Programme, children in Gaza are now starving to death.  America’s complicity in this crime must end. The President and Congress must freeze military aid to Israel, and insist on a permanent ceasefire and the dismantling of the unjust order Israel has imposed on the Palestinians. 

If Israel really wants Hamas to go away, it must see to justice.

      

On a recent road trip, my brother read aloud a moving account of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, from the book, “America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation”, by David Goldfield. 

In reference to a northern senator who had supported the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forbade any assistance to an escaped slave and required law enforcement officers to cooperate in the return of any escapee, Stowe wrote: “He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother, a defenseless child.” 

Goldfield adds: “He had not realized that black people held the same sensibilities as whites. That they were people just like himself.”

In the final pages of the novel, this passage appears like a bright shooting star:

“And you, mothers of America,–you, who have learned, by the cradles of your own children, to love and feel for all mankind,–by the sacred love you bear your child; by your joy in his beautiful, spotless infancy; by the motherly pity and tenderness with which you guide his growing years; by the anxieties of his education; by the prayers you breathe for his soul’s eternal good;–I beseech you, pity the mother who has all your affections, and not one legal right to protect, guide, or educate the child of her bosom!” 

Stowe repeatedly invoked the Gospel to illuminate the collective crime that slavery was, and especially the complicity of Northerners. The Fugitive Slave Act had just compounded that complicity.

I noted in a previous post that I grew up believing Israel could do no wrong. The only thing I ever learned to play on the piano was the beginning of the theme song to the movie Exodus: “This land is mine, God gave this land to me.”  

Listening to that song and watching excerpts of the 1960 blockbuster, you might think anyone who would fight against Paul Newman and his courageous comrades must indeed be the enemy of God. 

In hindsight, a necessary corollary of that mindset is that Palestinians are lesser beings than Israelis. Jews comprised a small minority of the population of Palestine before Jewish immigration began in earnest early in the 20th century. For a different but very informed perspective on the founding and growth of Israel, at the expense of the majority population, I recommend Rashid Khalidi’s book, The Hundred Year’s War on Palestine. 

The rights and aspirations of Palestinians are every bit as valid as those of Israelis, and the unjust order Israel maintains, in which Americans remain complicit, would offend the prophets of old.

Pity the Palestinian mother who has the same affections toward her children as any other mother, but is essentially powerless to protect them under Netanyahu’s “mighty vengeance” campaign. Pity the Palestinian child who must endure the amputation of a limb without anesthesia.

As of February 28, day number 145 of that mighty vengeance, the total of confirmed Gazans killed since October 7 is 29,954. The total wounded to date is 70,325. Recently, the numbers have been considerably less than during the worst of the bombardment, but the daily average killed as of February is 207. Seventy percent are women and children. Starvation and disease could quickly send the daily average back up.

What makes these numbers and the destruction of Gaza especially horrific is that anyone who ponders the official purpose of the war–to destroy Hamas–should realize it is impossible. 

This slaughter of mostly innocent Palestinians will only enrage more of the population. Is that not elementary? 

Hamas leaders, aware they were not very popular in Gaza, foresaw such a disproportionate response. So why are we helping Israel oblige them?

The only way Israel can minimize the threat Hamas poses is to undermine it politically, by halting the slaughter of Gazans, commencing the re-settlement back to Israel proper of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, and getting dead serious about a bona-fide Palestinian state. 

The current Israeli government is probably not capable of this, but we need to pull the plug on this war just the same, by freezing military assistance to Israel. 

That would probably be the quickest way to defuse things with Iran and its proxies as well.

Is President Biden complicit in Israel’s war crimes?

It pains me to ask the question, in part because an insecure and demented man, who consistently polls evenly with or better than Biden, is set to run away with the Republican nomination. 

If Biden does not rise to the occasion fast, and pull the plug on Israel’s massacre of the Palestinians, that could leave the Nation to choose in November between an accomplice to war crimes and an insurrectionist. That neither has been convicted does not alter what we all know.

One irony is that Donald Trump is closer than Biden to Netanyahu, and could hardly care less about the Palestinians. But that might not keep millions of Americans from voting for a third party candidate. I especially have in mind Muslims, young voters, and liberal Jews who have long believed that Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians is a betrayal of their Jewish heritage.

Biden has repeatedly called on the Israeli government to take greater care to spare civilians in its war. Early on he may have forestalled a preemptive Israeli attack on Hezbollah. He talks about getting on with a two state solution. He has criticized the “indiscriminate bombing” and sent his Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense to Israel to ask the government to consider scaling down its war. He has pushed for humanitarian pauses in the war.

But twice last month, with no sign of let-up in Netanyahu’s “mighty vengeance”, the Biden administration bypassed Congress to rush offensive weaponry to Israel.

Biden’s defenders will say that he had no choice, with his request for $14.3 billion in military assistance to Israel stalled in Congress. But it is clear that the Israeli government has no internal mechanism to restrain itself. At the outset of Israel’s reprisal, Biden could have placed firm conditions on aid that growing numbers of legislators are calling for.

The message received in Tel Aviv is clear: Don’t worry about our qualms, proceed with your plans. 

It might be different if the civilian toll was far less, and if it were possible to eradicate Hamas by military means. But we all should know that is not possible. The President and his many advisors have been around long enough to know that Hamas or something even worse will survive. Presumably they are familiar with America’s misadventures in the Muslim world.

Biden and his advisors are fully aware that this mass slaughter will send thousands of more Palestinians to the recruiting offices of Hamas.

And when Hamas so clearly intends a fight to the finish, what sort of foolishness is willing to oblige that? 

What part of this disaster is President Biden missing?

Middle East policy veteran Dennis Ross cautions that putting conditions on our military aid to Israel could backfire, leaving Israelis convinced that they will have to go it alone.

Really? It seems that freezing military aid would tell the Israelis they better try a different strategy. Hamas is not especially popular in Gaza; it would be no trick to undermine the terrorist group politically.

How about taking seriously Palestinian aspirations for self-determination and security? For starters, Israel could reverse its settlement policy. There are plenty of Jews who still take to heart the warnings of the prophets, that those who ignore justice and oppress others may not be long for this world.

There is no peace without justice. It’s time we get that in our heads. 

Please get the word to Washington.

Update. On December 30, 2023, the Associated Press reported that in the previous 24 hours another 165 Gazans were killed, bringing the total deaths accounted for to 21,672, with an additional 56,165 wounded. If 70 percent of those deaths have been women and children, unlikely hardcore militants, we can estimate that something like 120 to 150 of those 165 killed were innocent, assuming from Hamas’ poor polling that even most men are not hardcore militants. 

The number 165 is about half of the daily toll for the first half of the war. The brutality of the October 7 Hamas attack notwithstanding, including horrific sexual violence (despite Hamas denials), the Israeli response has flagrantly violated international law. This is indisputable. Just as indisputable is America’s complicity in this colossal war crime.

In response to growing demands to put firm conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel, or freeze such aid, Middle East policy veteran Dennis Ross recently wrote an op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “The Limits of U.S. Influence Over Israel” (12/28/2023). 

Ross wrote that “threatening to withhold U.S. aid unless Israel changes its policies would only have the effect of making the Israelis feel they must go it alone. As one senior Israeli official recently told me, ‘If America says you have to stop or we will cut you off, we will fight with our fingernails if we have to—we have no choice’” (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/the-limits-of-u-s-influence-over-israel/ar-AA1m9Daa). 

What does Dennis Ross think is happening in Gaza? 

Better the Israelis go it alone or fight with their fingernails than we support this slaughter one more day. Israel’s collective punishment of Gazans cannot destroy Hamas, and our complicity in it is not in our national interest. 

Mr. Ross could learn from Mr. Rogers, who understands that Israel’s war will not bring Israel the security it desperately seeks, but will most likely boomerang by producing thousands of more recruits for Hamas (see Appendix below). 

I am not talking about the beloved Fred Rogers played by Tom Hanks in the movie, but the similarly mild-mannered Paul Rogers, war expert and Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, England (see Paul Rogers’ interview by the animated Owen Jones at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML1Vc3B-y2w).

After comparing Israel’s war on Gaza to other recent wars intended to stomp out insurgencies but which seeded more of the same, Mr. Rogers notes that the United States could pull the plug on this war rather easily by simply freezing military assistance.

If it did so, the Israelis could then choose between fighting with their fingernails or trying a more thoughtful approach: undermining Hamas by honestly addressing Palestinian aspirations for security and self-determination, with a state of their own comprising the West Bank and Gaza. What modest popularity Hamas now enjoys is only by virtue of the unjust order Israel has imposed for decades.

Mr. Rogers also notes that the Israel lobby in the United States is comprised primarily of conservative Christian evangelicals, perhaps 20 to 30 million faithfully conservative voters, who far outnumber conservative Jewish voters. Indeed, an impressive number of Jewish voters are adamantly opposed to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

That last fact by the way, is indicative of how Mr. Netanyahu and his fellow loonies in the war cabinet betray the best of the Jewish heritage.

Appendix

 Below is a highlighted version of “Skepticism Grows Over Israel’s Ability to Dismantle Hamas”, by Neil MacFarquhar (New York Times, December 27, 2023). 

Standing in front of a gray backdrop decorated with Hamas logos and emblems of a gunman that commemorate the bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Osama Hamdan, the organization’s representative in Lebanon, professed no concern about his Palestinian faction being dislodged from the Gaza Strip.

“We are not worried about the future of the Gaza Strip,” he recently told a crowded news conference in his offices in Beirut’s southern suburbs. “The decision-maker is the Palestinian people alone.

Hamdan thus dismissed one of Israel’s key objectives since the beginning of its assault on Gaza: to dismantle the political and military organization that was behind the massacre of about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and which still holds more than 100 hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly emphasized that objective even while facing mounting international pressure to scale back military operations. The Biden administration has dispatched senior envoys to Israel to push for a new phase of the war focused on more targeted operations rather than sweeping destruction.

And critics both within Israel and outside have questioned whether resolving to destroy such a deeply entrenched organization was ever realistic. One former Israeli national security adviser called the plan “vague.”

“I think that we have reached a moment when the Israeli authorities will have to define more clearly what their final objective is,” French President Emmanuel Macron said this month. “The total destruction of Hamas? Does anybody think that’s possible? If it’s that, the war will last 10 years.”

Since it first emerged in 1987, Hamas has survived repeated attempts to eliminate its leadership. The organization’s very structure was designed to absorb such contingencies, according to political and military specialists. In addition, Israel’s devastating tactics in the war with Hamas threaten to radicalize a broader segment of the population, inspiring new recruits.

Analysts see the most optimal outcome for Israel probably consisting of degrading Hamas’ military capabilities to prevent the group from repeating such a devastating attack. But even that limited goal is considered a formidable slog.

Hamas is rooted in the ideology that Israeli control over what it regards as Palestinian land must be opposed by force, a tenet likely to endure, experts said.

“As long as that context is there, you will be dealing with some form of Hamas,” said Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank. “To assume that you can simply uproot an organization like that is fantasy.”

The Israeli military said this week that it had killed about 8,000 Hamas fighters out of a force estimated at 25,000 to 40,000. But it is unclear how the count is being made. About 500 have surrendered, according to the military, though Hamas has denied that all were from its ranks.

The military has at times delivered positive progress reports on its objectives, describing as “imminent” full control over the areas in northern Gaza where it began its ground offensive in late October.

But Netanyahu acknowledged Sunday that the war “is exacting a very heavy cost from us” as the military announced that 15 soldiers had been killed in the previous 48 hours alone. Rockets are still being fired almost daily from southern Gaza into Israel, albeit far fewer than before.

Michael Milshtein, a former senior intelligence officer for Israel, criticized statements by some Israeli leaders depicting Hamas as being at its breaking point, saying that might create false expectations about the length of the war.

“They’ve been saying this for a while, that Hamas is collapsing,” Milshtein said. “But it’s just not true. Every day, we’re facing tough battles.”

The Israeli military distributed flyers in Gaza recently offering cash for information leading to the arrest of four Hamas leaders.

“Hamas has lost its power. They couldn’t fry an egg,” said the flyer in Arabic, quoting a folk expression. “The end of Hamas is near.”

The military promised $400,000 for Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, and $100,000 for Mohammed Deif, head of its military wing, the Qassam Brigades. The two are considered the architects of the Oct. 7 attack.

Although long among the most wanted men in Gaza, the elusive Deif has avoided assassination or capture. The only picture of him in public is a decades-old headshot.

The bounties appeared to be another indication that Israel is struggling to remove the Hamas leadership.

The group’s top echelon are believed to be sheltering, along with most of its fighters and the remaining hostages, in deep tunnels. Although the Israeli army has said that it demolished at least 1,500 shafts, experts consider the underground infrastructure largely intact.

The tunnels, built over 15 years, are believed to be so extensive, estimated at hundreds of miles long, that Israelis call them the Gaza Metro.

“Hamas is actually weathering this assault quite well,” said Tareq Baconi, an author who wrote a book about the group. “It’s still showing that it has an offensive military capability.”

Giora Eiland, a retired major general and former head of Israel’s National Security Council, said Hamas had demonstrated the ability to quickly replace commanders who are killed with others equally capable and equally devoted.

“From a professional point of view, I must give credit to their resilience,” he said. “I cannot see any signs of collapse of the military abilities of Hamas nor in their political strength to continue to lead Gaza.”

Hamas is rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood, which was born in Egypt in 1928 as a religious social reform movement but has often been blamed for fomenting jihadi violence in recent decades. Israel once allowed the group to grow as an Islamic counterweight to the more mainstream and secular Palestine Liberation Organization.

In one of Israel’s notorious first efforts to dismantle Hamas, in 1992, it deported 415 of its leaders and allies, dumping them in a buffer zone along the Israel-Lebanon border. Over the months before their return, they built an alliance with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the most powerful Iran-backed militia in the region.

The United States and Israel condemn both Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations.

A string of Israeli assassinations of Hamas political, military and religious leaders also failed to weaken the group. It won control of Gaza in free Palestinian elections in 2006, then evicted its more moderate rival, the Palestinian Authority, in a bloody conflict the next year.

Israel fought three other wars in Gaza targeting Hamas between 2008 and the current crisis.

The operations of the Hamas military wing, the Qassam Brigades, remain opaque. The units were designed to continue functioning even if Israel destroyed parts.

Divided geographically, its five main brigades were in northern Gaza; Gaza City; central Gaza; and two southern cities, Khan Younis and Rafah.

Most of the elite troops were in the two northern brigades, which constitute about 60% of the force, said an Israeli military official who requested anonymity under military regulations. About half of them have been killed, wounded, arrested or fled south, the official claimed.

For Israel, the aim is first to dismantle the government, then to disperse the fighters and eliminate the commanders and their primary subordinates, the Israeli official said.

But Azzam Tamimi, a Palestinian journalist and member of the Muslim Brotherhood who has written a book about Hamas, said the group was prepared for that.

“The top leadership can disappear at any time because they can be killed, they can be arrested, they can be deported,” he said. “So they developed this mechanism of the easy transfer of command.”

The Qassam Brigades are divided into battalions, with even smaller units defending individual neighborhoods. Other specialized battalions include an anti-tank unit, a tunnel-construction unit and an air wing whose drones and paragliders were an important element of the surprise attack on Oct. 7, according to analysts and former military and intelligence officials.

The Nukhba Brigade, consisting of about 1,000 highly trained fighters, also appears to have played a central role on Oct. 7.

Trying to eliminate Hamas entirely would require fighting from street to street and house to house, and Israel lacks both the time and personnel, said Elliot Chapman, a Middle East analyst with Janes, a defense analysis firm.

As the United States found in attempting to squash al-Qaida or the Taliban, the organizations tend to spring back once the armed pressure is lifted. The Gaza fight has been compared with the campaign to wrest Mosul, Iraq, from the Islamic State group less than a decade ago, but there are significant differences.

Notably, Hamas is organic to Gaza — it grew out of frustration with the mainstream factions abandoning the armed struggle against the Israeli occupation. Hamas refuses to recognize Israel, and according to its founding charter, is committed to its destruction.

The scale of Israel’s war is likely to radicalize a new generation: More than 20,000 people in Gaza have been reported killed thus far, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Some in Gaza curse Hamas, even taking to the airwaves or social media to do it, despite the organization’s history of repressing opponents. Others, however, say that they still back “the resistance,” and Hamas has long attracted support by providing services like schools and clinics.

A recent poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that most respondents endorsed the Hamas attack on Israel. Support for Hamas in Gaza since the war started has risen to 42%, from 38%, the poll reported.

At best, Israel can probably contain Hamas, experts said.

But even if Israel somehow succeeds in dismantling the group in Gaza, there are still branches in the West Bank and abroad, in places like Lebanon and Turkey, that could revive it.

“The right way to think about it is to degrade the organization to the point that it is no longer a sustainable threat,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA officer who specialized in Middle East counterterrorism.

“You cannot just have a strategy of killing everybody,” he added. “You have to have that day-after scenario.”

I never voted for Bernie Sanders. He always reminded me of two old, cynical codgers on the Muppet Show, except he came off as positively angry. He did not seem to have the gift of persuasion, so vital in politics.

But Sanders is dead-on with his attempt to freeze $10.1 billion of the $14.3 billion in additional military aid President Biden has requested for Israel. He would allow aid for Iron Dome, but no more offensive weaponry (https://news.yahoo.com/sanders-presses-biden-deny-israel-180035347.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall).

The Israeli government has aptly demonstrated that it is not to be trusted with any more offensive weaponry. Not from us. 

Despite his increasingly clear criticism of how Netanyahu is prosecuting this war, President Biden recently engineered an end-run around Congress to rush 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel, the day after we vetoed the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Do I wish that resolution had specifically condemned the October 7 attack by Hamas? Yes. Was that omission reason to tolerate the slaughter one more day? No.

We don’t have to be naive about Hamas to understand that Netanyahu’s war on Gazans is only raising the stature of the terrorist organization among Palestinian youth. Hamas might very well refuse to comply with a Security Council ceasefire. That would be one sure way to reverse its recent gain in popularity. 

And despite its stated aspirations, Hamas does not pose an existential threat to Israel. With the help of other nations if need be, Israel can defend itself against Hamas attacks without resuming its massacre of Palestinians. 

But the imperative must be to undermine Hamas politically.

Anyone who has paid attention to Israel’s wars against Palestinian militants since 1982, and our own “war on terror”, knows that the law of unintended consequences applies superbly. As Arab leaders have warned, Israel cannot destroy Hamas by military means, and anyone who thinks it can does not know what he is talking about.

The only promising course for Israel is to reverse course, and commit fully to a real Palestinian state, beginning with dismantling settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and relocating settlers back to Israel proper.

Netanyahu’s government may not be capable of such a reversal. It might take a new Israeli government to right the ship. So be it. We need to freeze the lion’s share of our aid to Israel to convey the message clearly.

With the Israel lobby enjoying disproportionate influence in American politics for many years, the great majority of lawmakers and Presidents have chosen the path of least resistance. But that path has resulted in policies that are very unpopular in the Muslim world, and decidedly not in our national interest. It has also left Israel with too much military power for its own good, leaving it in no hurry to address Palestinian aspirations.

On December 9, 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined that the national interest required the emergency sale of 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel, bypassing congressional review. The day earlier, the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Neither of these actions was in the national interest.  Both confirmed our complicity in Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians, now entering its third month.

Born in 1957, I grew up thinking Israel could do no wrong, and despite being under attack since day one, Israel had made a desert “bloom” where no people had before. 

The movie “Exodus” was hard to watch, and I had no notion that it was only half of the story. The idea that survivors of the Holocaust might be imposing an unjust order on another people would have been a mental leap for me.

When it came to Palestinian violence, like the kidnapping and deaths of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, probably few Americans knew, or bothered to learn, the context. 

The Palestinians did not seem to play fair. But did it dawn on many of us that neither Americans nor Israelis, were they in similar circumstances as the Palestinians, likely would have limited their resistance to nonviolence? Probably not.

Fast forward fifty years. Hamas is bad news, period. But when any people are oppressed and out-gunned by another, asymmetrical warfare results. It is no surprise that the Hamas attack of October 7 was preceded by especially provocative actions by the Israeli government and West Bank settlers.

Hamas fully expected the “mighty vengeance” Israel visited on Gaza in return. Incredibly, Hamas then promised more October sevens. Hamas and this Israeli government deserve each other. Each derives whatever legitimacy it enjoys from the actions of the other.

What is the solution? As hard as it is to imagine Israel relocating some 700,000 settlers back to Israel proper, which a viable two-state solution would entail, it is harder to imagine Israelis agreeing to one democratic state, in which they would soon be outnumbered by Palestinians.

It might take a whole new Israeli government to do what needs to be done.

Israel’s main problem is that it is too powerful. Were it not for the great discrepancy in military strength between Israel and the Palestinians, they probably would have hashed out a two-state arrangement long ago. But Israel’s preponderant power has meant that peace has not been pressing enough to compel it to honestly consider terms that would be acceptable to the Palestinians.

If the situation were reversed, the Palestinians might be no more accommodating of Jewish aspirations for peace and security. Power corrupts us all.

If all Israeli settlements, which by international law are illegal, were dismantled, Israel would still retain 78 percent of historical Palestine. Why that is not enough for Israel can only be explained by the power discrepancy, which has left Israeli governments believing Israel is entitled to more.

That sense of entitlement, which a power advantage gives a nation, has probably left Israel less secure than had it settled for 78 percent of Palestine decades ago.

Somehow, Israeli power will be balanced, because the international system, which derives spontaneously from nation-states competing for security, does not long tolerate an imbalance. Either hostile states will eventually balance Israel, likely at great cost in lives, or the United States, as Israel’s chief backer, will. Most Americans, and Israelis as well, would probably prefer America did not leave the job to states hostile to Israel.

America will need to leverage the massive amount of military aid it gives Israel. It might be necessary to end or freeze most of it to make clear that those settlements need to go, and that Israel needs to end its policy of dominating the Palestinians and dismantle the entire structure by which it does so. 

Israel cannot destroy Hamas by military means. But it can undermine Hamas politically by finally accepting a viable Palestinian state.

A pause in Israel’s war on Gaza to allow for a hostage-prisoner exchange, and for increased humanitarian assistance to reach Gazans, is good news. But Israeli leaders are eager to get back to their war. 

That war cannot bring security for Israel, and could very well produce something worse than Hamas. That is the only way Hamas could truly be an existential threat to Israel, even though many Israelis are convinced it is now. 

Israeli leaders seem heedless of the warnings to oppressors by the prophets of old. Any true friend of Israel should insist that it halt for good its self-defeating collective punishment of the Palestinians, and end the unjust order it has imposed on them.

The United States should seize this moment to leverage its massive military assistance to Israel, and press for a permanent cease-fire.

We can thank the right wing extremists in the U.S. House of Representatives for one thing. The weeks they held Congress in limbo spared us from rushing a huge package of military aid, $14.3 billion worth, to Israel. That package was conceived before it was obvious to so many that the Israeli government was incapable of restraining itself, and happy to oblige the equally hell-bent leaders of Hamas.

If President Biden and enough lawmakers summon the courage to leverage military aid and insist on a permanent cease-fire, that will be in the interest of all Israelis, whether or not the loose screws behind the wheel can see that.

And as many Americans have recently learned, for years Netanyahu viewed the existence and growth of Hamas favorably, for it helped keep the Palestinians divided. With Hamas ruling Gaza, he could claim there was no point in negotiating a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority because it did not represent most Palestinians, and negotiating with Hamas, sworn to Israel’s destruction, was a non-starter.

For all most of us can know, Hamas was not always single-mindedly determined to rid Israel and the Palestinian territories of all Jews. And for all most of us can know, it was, with those committed to that goal calling the shots.

But now it should be clear to all that Hamas is up to no good. By promising more October sevens, it basically told Tel Aviv: Bring it on!

And that is the last thing Palestinian families need.

In truth, Netanyahu and his cohorts may have the opposite plan as Hamas, to rid Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians. In any case, the collective punishment entailed in the Prime Minister’s“ mighty vengeance” reveals a low regard for Palestinian lives, especially children’s lives.

It did not have to come quite to this. Hamas had plenty of time to consider what sort of attack to carry out to rescue the Palestinian cause. It could, for instance, have conducted a much more surgical attack to kidnap adult males only, with minimal loss of life.

A surgical attack to get hostages, justified or not depending on where you stand, would have been proportional, as most of its actions up until October 7 were. Many will dispute that assertion, but over many years, Israeli attacks and military campaigns, though often “targeted”, killed more civilians than Hamas attacks did.

For many years the United States has made sure that Israel enjoyed preponderant military power over any potential enemies. And it is unfortunately the nature of preponderant power that it is lousy at restraining itself. America’s War on Terror, which featured two disastrous wars, illustrates the point.

Because Hamas has always been out-gunned as we say, it has resorted to asymmetrical warfare. Lacking the means to carry out surgical strikes on Israeli leaders, it has resorted to primitive rocket attacks, suicide bombings, car bombings, and hostage-taking. 

Until 1994, Hamas had largely if not exclusively targeted Israeli military and police forces, which it regarded as instruments of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. In 1994, following a massacre of 29 worshipers in a mosque during Ramadan, committed by an American settler in the West Bank city of Hebron, Hamas began attacking Israeli civilians.

Should the Palestinians have limited their resistance all these years to nonviolent means? History has powerful examples of successful nonviolent campaigns, but that is asking something of Palestinians that neither Israelis nor Americans would feel obligated to do, were they in the same circumstances.

Considering recent provocations by Israeli leaders and illegal settlers in the West Bank, Israel was due for something on October 7. But not what it got.

I bet that most Americans who now support an immediate cease-fire and are questioning all that military aid to Israel are not trying to justify or in any way minimize the atrocities Hamas committed on October 7. They don’t need to. They can clearly see that both Hamas and the Netanyahu gang are polarizing forces, and both derive their support from the actions of the other.

If Israel cannot destroy Hamas at any tolerable cost, what should it do? It should do what it has methodically tried to make impossible: it must accept the necessity of a Palestinian state. That will mean relocating several hundred thousand illegal settlers back to Israel proper. But it’s gotta be done. Maybe a couple billion of that $14.3 billion can induce some of those settlers to move. A few billion more could help rebuild Gaza.

The Netanyahu gang is absolutely not willing to accept a viable Palestinian state. And the only thing that could possibly change their minds, or produce a new government willing to negotiate in good faith, is if the United States froze military assistance.

Should Iron Dome be an exception to a freeze on military aid? Only once Israel has clearly reversed course, is clearly committed to negotiating a political solution, and the United States can be confident that Israel is finished with its collective punishment of the Palestinians on the assumption of impunity by virtue of Iron Dome.

With whom can Israel negotiate? In the worst case, the current leadership of the Palestinian Authority. But a more promising prospect might be Marwan Barghouti, currently in an Israeli prison, who is likely more popular among Palestinians than either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority (see: https://prospect.org/world/2023-10-20-barghouti-palestines-nelson-mandela/). He and the rest of the prisoners should be released in exchange for Hamas freeing all of the hostages, as Hamas has demanded.

We should insist that Netanyahu agree to such an exchange, even though he will say that the hostages are all innocent and Palestinian prisoners are not. We should insist because Hamas will agree to nothing less. It is the price of ending this catastrophe and getting on with the only thing that can bring real security to Israel: a political solution. 

Since October 7, Netanyahu has murdered thousands more innocent Palestinians than Hamas took innocent Israelis as hostages.

The Qur’an warns that nations face trials so that they might learn humility. Those who do not learn but continue to oppress others and perpetrate injustice may not be long for this world. Both Israel and America should heed this wisdom.

Only the freezing of military assistance will send the message the gang needs to receive. Until we act decisively to stop this God-awful crime, we remain complicit in it.

It may be impossible to overstate the savagery committed by Hamas on October 7. Yet, that cannot justify the massacre of far greater numbers in Gaza since. The world is witnessing a “mighty vengeance”, in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own words.

Israel’s goal of eradicating Hamas is unachievable at any human cost a Jewish state, or any state, could justify. And the history of the region demonstrates that pursuing that goal is sure to produce something worse than Hamas. 

That was the experience of the United States in Iraq, with the emergence of ISIS, which has surpassed the brutality of Al Qaeda. And it was the experience of Israel in the 1980’s when it waged war in Lebanon against the PLO, only to produce Hezbollah (see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/03/israel-hamas-terrorism-war-response-history/).

The only way Hamas could be the existential threat to Israel that it aspires to be, and so many people imagine it is, would be if Israeli leaders keep doing what they are doing. 

Extremists need each other, as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote recently. Hamas, heedless of Palestinian lives, needs an Israeli government that is also heedless of those lives in order harvest Palestinian rage and despair. For Prime Minister Netanyahu, Hamas has been the ticket to keeping the illegal settlement project going in the West Bank, and keeping the two-state process frozen.

American lawmakers need to be clear that the Israeli government’s war on Gaza is definitely not in our interest, nor in the interest of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians.

Preponderant power does not check itself, as the United States demonstrated in its monstrous “war on terror”. Likewise, Israel, enjoying a considerable power advantage over Hamas, is not capable of a proportionate response. And yes, even the viciousness of the Hamas attack requires a proportionate response. Israeli power must be checked by its principal backer and supplier, the United States.

The United States must demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and an end to settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. And if the price of releasing the hostages is the release of all Palestinian prisoners by Israel, that will have to be. Every day, the deaths of innocent Palestinians in Gaza exceeds the number of innocent Israelis taken as hostages by Hamas on October 7.

The dysfunction of the House of Representatives saved Congress from rushing a huge package of additional military aid to Israel, which was conceived of before the Israeli government demonstrated just how reckless with offensive weaponry it can be.

Given that the package the House did recently approve will not get a hearing in the Senate, Congress has  the opportunity to reconfigure that aid package. Israel does not need the means to continue the collective punishment of Palestinians. It needs the resources and above all the change of heart to address the despair and to meet the aspirations of the Palestinians. 

Allowing for some defensive weaponry for Iron Dome, the lion’s share of any aid package should be earmarked for rebuilding Gaza, dismantling the entire unjust order Israel has imposed over decades, and getting on with the long-conceived two state resolution. 

As President Biden put it soon after October 7, there can be no return to the status quo. Israelis will not know peace and security until Palestinians know the same.

In these trying times for Palestinians and Israelis, Muslims and Jews, it is important for American Muslims and their supporters to be morally consistent. We are on solid ground condemning an Israeli government which regards Palestinians as second class. We are justified in demanding a course correction for our own government which essentially gave a green light to Israel’s war on Gaza, knowing full well that it would be reckless with Palestinian lives.

At the same time, we need to take an unequivocal stand against groups which seek the annihilation of Israel in the name of Islam. 

Put aside for a moment anything one could find in the Qur’an to supposedly justify that stance. Consider only what is best for Palestinian families, Israeli families, and everyone else. Apart from ego gratification, no one benefits when a Hamas leader promises more attacks like that of October 7, with the goal of annihilating Israel.

No one. Such talk and thinking will only lead to more horror and suffering. It should infuriate Muslims everywhere.

Hamas is bad news. If Allah wants a Palestinian state from the river to the sea, Allah will find a way. In the meantime, Muslims are obliged to observe Islam faithfully, and reject terror and hatred of any people. Muslims are called to return evil with something better.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Allowing for some difference of opinion as to what that phrase means exactly, it is fair to say the most obvious one envisions the elimination of Israel. 

That is not helpful now, and I cannot imagine a time when it will be. 

Muslims everywhere should rally around the two-state solution, including the abandonment of every Israeli settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

With all settlements removed from Palestinian territory, Israel would still retain 78 percent of historical Palestine. That is not fair to the Palestinians, but it is the best deal within reach. Someday, Allah-willing, there might be some accommodation of the Palestinian right of return, but first there must be sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Because 78 percent of historical Palestine is plenty fair to Israelis, it is eminently reasonable for peace-loving people to insist on it.