How Many Children Is Israel Willing to Kill?
The endgame is unclear. Reoccupation? Mass emigration? Who can say? Yes, Hamas can be physically destroyed. But support for it has soared since the war began; and I know of no person more committed to revenge than a parent whose child has been murdered. We were right to note how tight-knit Israeli society is, and how deep a trauma October 7 was for so many. Can we even imagine the psychological impact of 9,000 dead children? The Gazans are humans too. Am I being too sentimental in talking about infanticide rather than just civilian deaths? Not when the vulnerable population is so disproportionately young; not when just war theory would demand safety for every single one of them.
This is how it is when wars are launched swiftly, overwhelmingly, and in an understandable spasm of justified rage. Think of the position of Israel on October 8. The true evil of Hamas was exposed; most of the decent world grieved with Israel. Think of the long-term goals the Israelis could have achieved if they had taken a breath, thought deeply and strategically, and acted deliberately, in consort with their recently acquired Arab interlocutors.
Now look: a wasteland of death, a charge of genocide at The Hague, a huge propaganda loss in the wider world, 132 hostages still out of reach, and no coherent idea of what to do the day after, if the day after ever comes.
Andrew Sullivan, doing his damndest to answer my question, "Who do I want to be like when I grow up?"
This war between Gaza and Israel has been brutal. Old personal relationships have resurfaced, only to be ripped away. The subject feels incredibly fraught and tender, full of strange bedfellows and unexpected allegiances. My long-held opinions have been shaken as I watch people who had no interest in the region suddenly espouse strong and often vitriolic opinions of their own. Like anything in America, the Middle East has become a proxy for our culture wars.
A hundred days in, I find myself back where I was immediately after the attacks: Israel cannot call itself "civilized" if it permits the people of Palestine to suffer as it does. Really — what did Israel think would happen after years of an active blockade of Gaza? Sure, Egypt is party to blame, but come on. Let's not bullshit each other.
Over the last hundred days, I've been more persuaded by the principles Zionism than ever before. When I once thought the pluralism of America was proof enough that Israel did not need to exist, I now see that very pluralism threatening to fade away. And in a world with plenty of nations are explicitly and officially Muslim, why not one that is Jewish? Yes.
But this status quo cannot hold. Israel is losing — and perhaps has already lost — any moral high ground it had on October 6th.