Defending Israel in the Light of the Tree of Life, the Law and the Promise of Palestine: Perspectives for New York, Washington, Chicago, and beyond
Progressive Democrats like Ms. Lee have other constituents to consider, including progressive Jews who remain by her side. Avigail Oren, a nonprofit professional in Pittsburgh, said that the Tree of Life attack led her to conclude that Jewish safety rested with securing the safety of all vulnerable communities, especially those targeted by white supremacists. That propelled her to work toward Ms. Lee’s election, she said, and her support for the congresswoman “was reinforced, not shaken” by the events in Israel, which she said underscored the need for an Arab-Jewish-Muslim alliance.
In the northern suburbs of New York, George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, is contemplating a challenge to Representative Jamaal Bowman, who defeated the staunchly pro-Israel chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel, in 2020.
And progressive organizations are girding for possible challenges to Representatives Cori Bush of Missouri, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and others, funded from the deep pockets of AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups.
“They spent a historic amount of money to intervene, and try and buy primaries in 2022,” said Usamah Andrabi, spokesman for Justice Democrats, the liberal insurgent group that helped elect many of the progressives now on the primary target list. The Democratic leadership will not attempt to stop them, so we will see a doubling and tripling down.
Marshall Wittmann said the group’s priority right now is building and sustaining congressional support for Israel’s fight to permanently dismantle Hamas.
The jabs have begun. Responding to a post by Mr. Bowman extolling his “Ceasefire Now” resolution, the lobbying group called it “a transparent ploy to paint Israel as the aggressor and allow Hamas to control Gaza.” Hitting Ms. Lee, AIPAC wrote on X, “Emboldening a group that massacres Israelis and uses Palestinians as human shields will never achieve peace.”
Waleed Shahid, a former leader of Justice Democrats, predicted that the current environment, in which leaders of both parties, including President Biden, are aligned with Israeli leadership and the Palestinian cause is represented by protesters in the streets and on college campuses, would yield a trove of fund-raising for pro-Israel groups ahead of 2024. He suggested that there may be an “asymmetrical” fight during the primaries.
“I think we’re in a post-9/11 environment where there’s a lot of fear to speak out against war, and there could be political electoral consequences for not lining up for the cause of war, the way there was in 2002,” he said.
Administration officials said the shift in tone and substance was the result of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where the health ministry says more than 8,000 people have been killed, provoking outrage in the United States and around the world.
He added, “We talk about it with the Israelis on a daily basis.” He noticed that hospitals were not legitimate targets as Israel warned that a major hospital in Gaza had to be emptied out before the next round of bombing.
After Hamas slaughtered and kidnapped Israeli citizens, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel made it clear he had no regard for the people of Gaza. He said they would turn all of the places Hamas is hiding and operating in into rubble.
“I told him if the United States experienced what Israel is experiencing, our response would be swift, decisive and overwhelming,” Mr. Biden recalled saying during a call between the two leaders on Oct. 10.
But the president’s message, in which he emphatically joined the mourning that was sweeping through Israel, has shifted dramatically over the past three weeks. While he continues to declare unambiguous support for Israel, Mr. Biden and his top military and diplomatic officials have become more critical of Israel’s response to the terrorist attacks and the unfolding humanitarian crisis.
It certainly seemed that way at the time. I arrived as a correspondent in Israel just a short time ago, and although there was still some hope that the two agreements signed in 1993 and 1995 will lead to a permanent settlement within five years, I was not overly optimistic. The handshake on the White House lawn in 1993 between Mr. Rabin, a warrior-politician who had commanded Israel in great military victories, and his archenemy, Yasir Arafat, a leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
But in the short run, American officials have grown more strident in reminding the Israelis that even if Hamas terrorists are deliberately intermingling with civilians, operations must be tailored to avoid nonmilitary casualties. Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said at the United Nations that “humanitarian pauses must be considered,” a move that Israel has rejected.
While Israel has the right to defend itself, the way that it does so matters, Mr. blinken said, as he underscored the need for essential humanitarian assistance to be able to flow into Gaza.
Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, was harsher in his criticism of Hamas on Sunday, after Israeli leaders said the terrorists were using a hospital in Gaza as a command center. Mr. Sullivan said on CBS that the use of civilians as human shields by Hamas was creating an additional burden for the Israel Defense Force.
Money is given to Israel to buy weapons. Then we give Palestinians money to pay for the damage done by those weapons. We keep doing the same things, repeating the same lines, but the violence just gets worse.
I’ve Been Under Bombardment. There Must Be a Cease-Fire in Gaza. A Trace of a Troubled Time for a Regime
And here we are, watching the cycle spin around again, pretending to think it might have a different result this time. Like it’s all just a game with improbable but not impossible odds.
I imagine Gaza now, how it must be. I know that it must be like hell, like a hallucination, like time itself is stretched and stuck. I know at such times there is only one coherent thought: Stop the bombs. I was in southern Lebanon in 2006, when Israel bombed medical teams and fleeing civilians and villages filled with people too old or disabled to get away, and what I remember now is the pain of knowing that the rest of the world was flowing along as usual. Knowing they could stop the bombs, but chose not to. Not at this time; a little more death before then.
I can still feel the rage that surged — in the people who were around me and within my own mind — against a powerful nation that would kill like that, from a distance.
Looking at pictures of the ominous lunar landscapes of bomb-crushed Gazan blocks, I see the birth of a new generation of fighters. Or terrorists, if you like — I don’t see why it matters very much. The children who survive this onslaught will grow even more radicalized and traumatized than the generations who came before.
This lesson should have been learned by us as Americans. All the military might of the United States could not defeat the ragtag bands of Taliban or force a nation of conquered Iraqis to accept a U.S. occupation. Maybe we do not want to understand.
The Gaza massacre: The fate of human beings in the presence of Israel and a threat to the rule of the Palestinians, as described by Gen. Alian
Getting blasted from the sky is a particular horror, as the feeling of death hanging over your head can be heard until it is too late. Maybe this moment. Or this. Or this. Your heartbeat is hammering through your skull.
I’ve watched U.S. warplanes attack Afghanistan; barely escaped a direct strike from a Russian MiG in Georgia, and lived for weeks under relentless Israeli bombardment in Lebanon.
White House officials have said a cease-fire only benefits Hamas; that even to ask for the bombing to stop is “disgraceful” and “repugnant.” I think that if these officials had been under bombardment and shelling ever, they would not have been capable of defending this terrible attack on Gaza.
Israel has so far killed more than 8,000 people, the Gaza Health Ministry said, more than 40 percent of them children. The ministry, having no doubt heard President Biden suggesting they could be lying about their casualties, released a registry of the dead — page after page of names, dozens of members of the same family.
The assault on Gaza was driven first by straightforward vengeance, if the Israeli political and military leadership is to be believed.
“You wanted hell, you will get hell,” Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian of the Israeli Defense Forces warned the residents of Gaza, whom he referred to as “human beasts.”
The political grievances of generations of Palestinians is why their lives are defined by military occupation. They have no state to call their own, their basic rights are systematically curtailed and the world has given them little reason to anticipate better days. Palestinian political violence is older than Hamas, extends beyond Hamas across society, and will surely outlive Hamas in the absence of a political solution.
Israel knows this. Israel has bombed Gaza pitilessly before, but Hamas is still there. Hezbollah is still present in southern Lebanon despite Israel turning the area to rubble.
Although it plays out in ways that lead to an solution, the root of the problem is the same: the Palestinians will be freed only if Israelis are accepted and security is maintained.
By 2002, Mr. Arafat was isolated in his headquarters in Ramallah, surrounded by Israeli forces; two years later he was dead of a sudden ailment that has never been conclusively explained, leaving the Palestinian Authority in the hands of Mahmoud Abbas, an aging and ineffective leader who lost control over Gaza in 2007 to Hamas. The majority of the 2.1 million residents of the densely populated enclave are refugees or descendants of refugees driven from their homes after the creation of Israel in 1948.
Uri Savir, a principal Israeli negotiator during Oslo, described his initial exchange with the chief Palestinian negotiator, Ahmed Qurei, in his book “The Process”: “I believe we’ve arrived at the root of the problem,” he recalled Mr. Qurei, better known as Abu Ala, saying. “We have learned that our rejection of you will not bring us freedom. You can see that your control of us will not bring you security. We must live side by side in peace and equality. Mr. Savir and Mr. Qurei emerged close friends from the negotiations. Last year both Mr. Qurei and Mr. Savir died.
The wisdom of Oslo is a credit to the negotiators, who came to recognize the validity of each other’s guiding narratives: of Israel’s return to a promised land after an unspeakable tragedy; and of the Palestinians’ dispossession and humiliating occupation. The narratives can not be reconciled, but the talks were able to acknowledge the other person’s desires, history and grievances.
The terrible carnage in Israel and Gaza makes that handshake 30 year ago almost a sad footnote in the history of the conflict. I think the hopes raised by those agreements are still relevant.