Tangle and Israel’s War Against Hamas

I read news and opinions from many sources, left and right, but I only subscribe to three. I subscribe to The Wall Street Journal. I subscribe to Crain’s Chicago Business>. And I subscribe to Isaac Saul’s newsletter, Tangle. Isaac describes Tangle as “an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then ‘my take.'” I encourage you to take a look at Tangle and, if you like what you see and happen to subscribe to it, tell him I sent you.

In Friday’s newsletter, Isaac interviewed Palestinian-American writer Yousef Munayyer. There’s a lengthy conversation but I wanted to call out one portion of it:

But I’m curious how you would answer that question. If you could wave a magic wand and have some influence on what happens on October 8th, what’s your guidance?

Yousef Munayyer: I think there’s a few ways to respond to that. First of all, I think there’s no situation that justifies the mass killing of innocent civilians. And we should make no mistake, this is what we are seeing in Gaza. Thousands of people, thousands of children who had absolutely nothing to do with the events of October 7th, are being killed in what is called an act of defense. That’s not justifiable in any circumstances. At the same time though, you do hear people attempting to justify this war by raising the very point that you did. “What is Israel supposed to do? You have to sympathize with this impossible predicament that Israel is in.” I think there’s a couple responses to that.

First, we know that this is not the only way that Israel can defend itself, because Israel was capable of defending itself on October 7th, but failed to do that for a number of reasons. What happened on October 7th was not because Hamas was somehow militarily superior to Israel, somehow had more resources and more guns than Israel, or had superior intelligence. It was made possible by a failure of Israeli intelligence and security apparatus. So there is clearly a way to prevent another attack like that from the Gaza Strip.

What it is seeking to do now in the Gaza Strip is not defense. It’s some form of accountability, in the most generous description, against the key architects behind October 7th. But it’s not defense. And I think it’s important to separate those two things.

Although Michael Reynolds no longer comments here, he continues to comment at Outside the Beltway and I believe that Michael’s response to Mr. Munayyer’s observation would be something along these lines (from one of his comments at OTB):

Look at the ratio of progressives demanding Israel stop, vs. the number calling for Hamas to lay down their arms and release the hostages. I’d guess it’s easily 10 to 1. A lot of ‘From the River to the Sea,’ and a lot of, ‘by any means necessary,’ and a lot of nonsense about ‘indiscriminate bombing,’ and, ‘genocide.’ Not a lot of ‘why the fuck don’t Hamas lay down their arms and stop getting Gazans killed?’

Calling for a permanent ceasefire by Israel while not equally calling for Hamas to lay down its arms is objectively pro-Hamas. Consequently, given the absence of any calls for Hamas to lay down its arms by Mr. Munayyer while demanding that Israel end its campaign against it is objectively pro-Hamas. Maya Angelou’s comment that when someone tells you who they are, believe them is being much-quoted these days. Hamas is antisemitic. Its members want to kill Jews and they won’t be satisfied until the entirety of historic Palestine is Arab, practices their brand of Islam, and that Palestine is governed by Shariah law..

There’s a reason that Bedouins and Druze in Israel agree with the Israelis. It’s because they know they are freer in Israel than they would be in such a Palestine and the Druze, in particular, recognize that once the Jews had been killed by Hamas they would be next.

In conclusion of this post I want to repeat that I think the Israelis have made many mistakes in their response to Hamas’s attack and I don’t think that there is any just solution that is in the U. S. interest. We don’t want either a Greater Israel in which most Arabs can’t vote (if they could vote they’d hold a majority and Israel would cease to exist) or has been ethnically cleansed of Arabs or a Palestine “from the river to the sea” from which Jews, Christians, Druze, and other minorities had been cleansed and, since over the last 30 years both sides have become increasingly radicalized, those are the only available alternatives.