The Israel-Palestine and Israel-Israel Conflict: How Nguyen’s comments at the Gaza massacre shocked a Jewish student in Israel
There’s a particular feeling of uselessness that can take hold when you are watching a horrible thing happen far away from your home — but that same thing is causing your friends and neighbors deep pain.
The war in Israel and Gaza has created this web of shared grief connecting friends and strangers. After the Hamas attack, my neighbor was worried about her extended family in Israel and she didn’t have a good idea how to find them.
Myers: I first came into contact with the deep sorrow and grief of Jewish students who were just in a state of shock. Some students who I have taught in the past include a class on Israel-Palestine. I’ve taught with a Palestinian American colleague of mine at Tufts University, and I connected with them to hear how they were doing, and they were in a state of complete shock.
I don’t like the fact that the statement Nguyen signed gestured only vaguely at Hamas’s slaughter of Israeli civilians. In calling off his Friday evening appearance, 92NY, a Jewish organization, was playing by rules much of the left established, privileging sensitivity to traumatized communities ahead of the robust exchange of ideas. Zionists feel silenced and intimidated on college campuses because of supporters of Israel’s censorious atmosphere. The professor at the University of California, Davis, is under investigation by the university for a social media post calling for the targeting of “Zionist journalists” which included “They have houses with addresses and kids in school,” an ax and three drops.
Is Israel-Palestine in the Classroom? Myers’s Call for Empathy: A Jewish Studies Professor Feels Isolated
I felt like there was hope in that idea, so I reached out to see if he’d be willing to talk. I also wanted to look in the same direction. A historian’s take. Because perhaps, with distance, the pain is lessened? It became clear very quickly that historians fix their gaze in the past, but they live with us here, now, in this present moment, and it can be too much to bear.
David Myers: Terribly. My heart is broken. I’m grieving, sad, angry, bewildered, and scared. And I realize I’m not there. I’m not in Israel-Palestine. I’m going to get rid of it. So what must it be to be there on the ground? I spend a lot of time there, even though I am not currently. I’m feeling all of these things. And it’s almost unbearable. I spend my time teaching and doing media appearances, but then disappear into a cave of depression.
Martin: So in all this, you’re dealing with your own grief over the tragedy. You are trying to still be a history professor. You are watching these tensions build among the students on your campus. What is the point at which you need to write an op-ed?
I think that there was a lot of mystification that students on the other side were unable to understand where they were. It was much less about, “Can you help me understand what took place in geopolitical terms?” and more about, “How could that group be so uncomprehending and so lacking in basic empathy?”
Myers: I did. One of the groups represents the supporters of Israel who are mostly Jewish students, while the other represents the supporters of the Palestinians who are mostly Arabs.
I believe they have a deep sense of grievance. The Jewish students or the pro-Israel students feel like the progressive left, with whom they have natural solidarity on many other issues, refused to condemn unequivocally a massacre of Jews. And those who support the Palestinian cause believe that the university and the broader political culture of the United States are insufficiently attentive to the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Israel hamas palestinians gaza religion: a call for empathy from the Israeli studies professor feels isolated. An anthology by S.M. Myers
Myers: What became clear was that I had to write something that made the very simple and intuitive claim that now is the time to recognize the humanity of all. Now is not the time, at least for me, to take sides.
I knew that people would think I was a traitor to the Jewish people. And I knew it would elicit many claims that I failed to understand the depth of suffering of the Palestinian people. I needed to write what I had to write. And I believe it’s not only intuitive, it’s the moral place where I need to be.
It is an absolute moral necessity to condemn the killings that took place on October 7th. For a moral obligation to attend to the extraordinary suffering Palestinians in Gaza are going through is what it is.
In the best of circumstances, people may need to choose between sides. In this environment, it is understandable that people feel like they cannot hold on to both. I wonder if there is a small portion of our hearts that can be used for the other in this time of grief.
I don’t consider myself morally better than the average, but I do think it is important to try to carve out a small portion that can allow us to empathise in such moments.
Source: His call for empathy has made this Jewish studies professor feel isolated
What Have We Learned in the Last 50 Years? How Do We Break Out of the Mold? Why Have We Gone? What Do We Do About It?
As a history teacher, I think part of your job is looking back through time and identifying the patterns that have been around for a long time and teaching students how to break them, so that they don’t serve us anymore. As people, as societies, as humankind. How do you do that in this conflict when the same cycles of violence repeat themselves over and over for generations?
That’s the case, Myers: Yeah. The cycles are stemming from traumas and they clashed with one another. The trauma of the Holocaust and the displacement and expulsion of million of Palestinians in the 1948 war are two things that are known to almost all. I think my answer to your question about how we break out of the mold is asking ourselves how it is going. What is it doing? From what we have seen in the last few weeks, it is not working well at all. That kind of death embrace of two siblings, I often think of them as Jacob and Esau, is detrimental to the health of both.
Myers: It’s a very tricky question, in part because I take solace in prayer and in prayer in community. But this is a period in time in which I do not feel in sync with my community and I feel my community does not feel in sync with me. I feel a little measure of what many of us are feeling at the moment, just extraordinary loneliness.
But I also see how, particularly the Psalms, offer sources of consolation. We should be able to move beyond where we are. And every day we say a verse, which I wrote down, because I carry it with me now. It said that you turned my lamenting into dancing. You girded me with joy and undid my sackcloth.
The State of the State of Gaza in the Light of Daylight Savings and the High-Financial-Particle-Aeconomy Geneva Report
Fighting outside Gaza has also escalated. Several Israeli towns nearby the Israel-Lebanon border were evacuated over the weekend due to intense gunfire and rocket fire from Hezbollah. Israel has stepped up its air strikes in the West Bank in order to get rid of Hamas.
The Israel Defense Forces said the military struck over 320 military targets on Sunday, with a focus on Hamas headquarters, tunnels and firing positions in Gaza.
The overnight airstrikes killed more than 200 people, including in Rafah and Khan Younis, two cities in the south of Gaza that are crowded full of Palestinians who have evacuated from the northern part of the territory at Israel’s urging. More than half of Gaza’s population of some 2.2 million people has been displaced from their homes, according to the United Nations.
On Monday, Israeli Defense Forces raised the confirmed number of Hamas hostages to 222, saying the total now includes a number of foreign nationals who were not initially on the list.
The weekend Israeli raids into Gaza were intended to gather information on the hostages, and Hagari said they were working in all ways to free them.
The secretary of state told reporters on Friday that at least 10 Americans are still missing and that two Americans who had been held hostage have been released.
After an initial delivery of 20 truckloads worth of aid Saturday, another 14 followed on Sunday. There was an additional shipment entered Monday.
But humanitarian workers say the relief is not nearly enough. The UN says that about 3% of what would normally cross the border before hostilities began are in the shipments.
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries. aid won’t reach desperate people without fuel. Without fuel, there will be no humanitarian assistance,” said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, in a statement issued Sunday. “Without fuel, we will fail the people of Gaza whose needs are growing by the hour, under our watch.”
With Gaza’s main power plant still out of operation, fuel is also needed to power generators for critical infrastructure, including hospitals, desalination plants and wastewater treatment facilities.
The UN agency for Palestine will run out of emergency fuel within a few days, according to officials.
Virtually every medical specialty in Gaza has run out of supplies, said Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian surgeon working at al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical center.
He said that an estimated 14,700 wounded have consumed all of the supplies needed to care for them.
Israeli Defense of the Right to Protect itself and the Protection of the Humanel, Against Terrorism, in the Near-Infrared
A group of Western leaders in a joint statement Sunday supported Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism, but also advocated for the country to abide by humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians.
The statement was made after a phone call between President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada, along with other leaders from Italy, France, and Germany.
The leaders committed to coordinating with partners in the region to ensure aid reached those in Gaza, as well as “close diplomatic coordination, including with key partners in the region, to prevent the conflict from spreading, preserve stability in the Middle East, and work toward a political solution and durable peace,” the statement reads.
Biden has supported Israel’s right to defend itself, even though he urged it to limit civilian casualties during this latest conflict. He hasn’t publicly condemned the siege of Gaza or called for an end to the bombing.
Netanyahu has spoken with a lot of world leaders in the last few days. Mark Rutte is visiting Israel today, and France’sEmmanuelMacron will visit tomorrow.
China’s special envoy to the Middle East, Zhai Jun, is also in the region today. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, is also planning to head to the Middle East, but will start with allies in Iran on Monday.
Nathan Thralls’s 92NY: Resolving the Hateful Case of War and the Human Rights of the Free and Irregular
As a result of the massacres and mass kidnappings committed by Hamas this month, I was reminded of how important Nathan Thralls new book is. The book seems important now that people are struggling to understand this conflict.
I asked the man if he was happy to be asked the question. The book’s ambition was to portray real people, rather than villains and saints.
According to The Guardian, the Los Angeles nonprofit called off an event with Thrall because of how the program would be promoting people on all sides of the conflict. American Public Media pulled ads for the book. “We aim to avoid any perception of endorsing a specific perspective,” an APM spokesman said in an email, insisting that airing sponsorship spots for Thrall’s book would be “insensitive in light of the human tragedies unfolding.”
Nevertheless, a commitment to free speech, like a commitment to human rights, shouldn’t depend on others reciprocating; such commitments are worth trying to maintain even in the face of unfairness. One of the ways in which art can help us see beyond the hatred of war is by making us understand that we are all humans, even if we were different in appearance.
If the statement he signed was not up to his own words, 92NY would be a good place to ask him why. The most fraught moments in dialogue are the ones that most leaders have to model.
The U.S. Raises Concerns About Israel’s Plan of Action in Gaza, Officials Associated with the Oct. 7 Hamas Attacks
The administration is worried about the Israel Defense forces being able to achieve the goal of eliminating Hamas, according to the officials. In conversations with Israeli officials since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, American officials said they have not yet seen an achievable plan of action.
In phone conversations with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has stressed the need for careful consideration of how Israeli forces might conduct a ground invasion of Gaza, where Hamas maintains intricate tunnel networks under densely populated areas.
The United States did not tell Israel what to do and still supported the ground invasion, according to officials from the Biden administration. But the Pentagon has sent a three-star Marine, Lt. Gen. James Glynn, along with other officers to help the Israelis with the challenges of fighting an urban war.
Mr. Austin told Mr. Gallant about the effort to clear the Iraqi city of Deir el-Zour of Islamic State fighters. At the time, Mr. Austin was the head of United States Central Command, and American troops were backing their Kurdish and Iraqi counterparts in the fight.
Urban combat is difficult and everyone knows that, according to Mr. Austin.
He said that he had asked Mr Gallant to conduct their operations in a way that followed the law of war. American officials have become increasingly concerned that a ground invasion in Gaza could lead to a huge loss of civilian lives.
He was speaking to Mr. Gallant on Monday, emphasizing the importance of civilian protection. In an emailed statement, Brig. The two men talked about US security assistance to Israel, according to the Pentagon press secretary.
The American officials said that Israel would have to decide whether to take out Hamas by using surgical airstrikes combined with targeted raids by special ops troops, or by expelling Hamas from Gaza with tanks and infantry.
Although both tactics will result in heavy losses, a ground operation could be more violent for troops and civilians. At the Pentagon, many officials believe that the Mosul and Raqqa clearing operations in Iraq more than a decade after Falluja are a better model for urban warfare.
The War Against Hamas in Gaza: The Legacy of the First Five Years in the Army and the Last 15 Years, Replied by Rep. Jack Reed
The law of war requires us to do what is necessary to protect civilians, and one of the ways that we have learned is how to account for them in the battle space.
There were some civilian casualties in Raqqa. According to The AP, between 9,000 and 11,000 people were killed in the effort to rid the city of Islamic State fighters. And the Islamic State had only two years to prepare defenses in Mosul, argued Michael Knights, a fellow with The Washington Institute.
“Hamas has had 15 years to prepare a dense ‘defense in depth’ that integrates subterranean, ground-level and aboveground fortifications, communication tunnels, emplacements and fighting positions,” Mr. Knights wrote in an analysis earlier this month, “as well as potential minefields, improvised explosive devices, explosively formed penetrator anti-armor mines and buildings rigged as explosive booby traps.”
Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, called on Israel on Monday to delay a ground invasion of Gaza to buy time for hostage negotiations, allow more humanitarian aid to reach Palestinian civilians and give Israeli commanders more opportunity to fine-tune their urban-combat planning.
Mr Reed was talking from Cairo when he said that intelligence gathered from Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt will be helpful in urban combat. “A little extra time might be helpful. There are so many factors. It is probably not the best approach to rush into this.
The same advice has been given to Israel by the Biden administration. Mr. Reed said he still supports the ground invasion to destroy Hamas. He warned a block-by-block fight in Gaza would be a long-term effort, noting that it took the Iraqi army nine months to destroy the Islamic State.
“There can be no cease-fire, negotiated solution or peaceful coexistence with depraved barbarians who murder teen-aged girls, children & the elderly,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on X, formerly known as Twitter, advocating for Israel to respond “disproportionately.”
“If you look at how they behave — not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic,” DeSantis said to voters in Iowa, arguing that the U.S. should not accept Palestinians who might flee as refugees. He said that none of them believed in Israel’s right to exist.
People were also beating the drum of war on social media like Facebook and X, says Almadhoun. Sometimes they were people he knew. “You find many decent people — they’re frothing at the mouth, ‘Hey, we want to burn Gaza to the ground, finish them,’ ” he says.
A friend and colleague in Gaza uploaded a video onto social media and he had seen the video when he first spoke with NPR. The pictures showed dead people in the body bags.
Rania says that after the October 7 attacks she’s been receiving calls from Palestinian Americans who have been told not to speak on the matter because it might be seen as antisemitic.
He says that he only has time to act of living. From his home in Detroit he’s watching his family’s home of Gaza be flattened, block by block.
The dozen Palestinian Americans NPR talked to from around the U.S. say they are mourning Gaza, while feeling completely abandoned by their country. They fear that anti-Palestinian sentiment is on the rise.
Data engineering is done by luthun each day. By night he’s a poet and a community organizer. He mostly has done work around disability justice, but ever since the war started, he’s been on Zoom calls and group texts with other organizers, strategizing the best way to call for a ceasefire and stop the bombing. He says 75 percent of his family is in Gaza. They’ve survived so far.
“I’m literally watching my family get bombed and then being gaslit to say, ‘Oh, they deserve it,'” Luthun says. He hears Hamas being conflated with innocent Palestinians like his family, or that all Palestinians bear responsibility for Hamas’ attack on Israel.
Since 2006 there haven’t been elections in Gaza. More than half of Gaza’s population are children, meaning many weren’t alive, let alone old enough to vote back then.
Hani Almadhoun works at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the primary relief organization in Gaza, so he knows how things work on the ground. He lives in the D.C. area, but was visiting with his family, just a few weeks ago.
Almadhoun says some of his family went south, after Israel ordered 1 million Palestinians to leave Gaza City. The other members stayed together on the edge of northern Gaza because Israel bombed the south.
He said most of his family are in the same building and sleeping in the same places, knowing they could die at any moment.
The loss of Almadhoun, his sister-in-law, and the death of Hamas: what americans can do to stop Israel
When Almadhoun finally got in touch with his mother a week into the bombing, she asked to do a video call so she could see his face, in case it’s the last time.
12 people died in an air strike on their home, his sister-in-law. She can’t find her father in the rubble of her siblings’ destroyed home.
He says it’s not just the stories of loss and horror he’s hearing from Gaza – it’s also what he feels is a callous response to those horrors by people here in the U.S.
She says American politicians, media and culture are stuck in what she calls a false narrative that this latest siege began with Hamas’ attack – when decades of complicated history preceded this moment.
In the past fifteen years, Israel has had war or conflict with Gaza five times. She says the history goes back even further to the mass displacement of a million Palestinians during the establishment of Israel.
Israel has kept a land, sea and air blockade of Gaza for the past 16 years. Egypt also has a blockade with the enclave. Both countries say it’s necessary to protect against militants, though some humanitarian groups have called Gaza an “open-air prison.”
The United States has long supported Israel, diplomatically, militarily and financially. Washington has continued that support even as some human rights groups have called what is happening to Palestinians in parts of the occupied territories, including Gaza, apartheid.
“Level the place,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News. “Gaza is going to look like Tokyo and Berlin at the end of World War II when this is over. And if it doesn’t look that way, Israel made a mistake,” he said.