On Israel, Hamas, and Where This Goes

An attempt at clarity

I’ve been struggling to make sense of what started happening in Israel over the weekend and I can honestly say I’m surprised by my own reaction, which is one of more emotional investment than I had originally expected. I’m not Israeli; despite what my DNA tests tell me, I’m not really a Jew in any meaningful way; despite my unequivocal support of Jewish statehood, I still consider myself “Zionism-sympathetic-but-agnostic-at-best” kind of person (which is probably more related to my atheism than anything else). But having read a lot about the history of the place, of the people, and learning the broad historical context that most laymen miss when the subject of Israel, Jews, or the Holocaust comes up, I’ve become incapable of shutting my brain off to world events and feeling the need to stay aware.

Obviously, we have no real idea of what’s going to happen—we can make guesses, and they’re sure to involve massive amounts of suffering—but at the moment we’re fully aware of what has happened. The numbers of dead and wounded are in the thousands at this point, and the crimes being shown and reported are nearly unspeakable. The main thing that matters to me starting out is providing context for the horror that has befallen the Jewish state and, by psychological extension, most Jews around the world: that this is the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

Let that sink in.

On numbers alone—and there is obviously so much more to this or any event than just numbers—this event ranks second to the most destructive act taken against the Jewish people in the last century. And as of this writing, we’re only about four days in.

More meaningful historical comparisons can be made to events from about 100 years ago, that is, in the early years of the Zionist project that began in earnest after the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Some might see comparisons to the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, and others likely see better comparisons to the violence that ripped Palestine apart in 1929 or that destroyed the Iraqi Jewish community during the Farhud of 1941. There is never a perfect comparison and truth be told, all of those events—events that I’ve covered in pretty excruciating detail on History Impossible—serve as handy historical proxies for what is going on. I recommend listening to those episodes—Parts II, III, and IV of the “Muslim Nazis” series—if you want to get a better idea of what was happening from around 1918-1941, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t promote my comrade Darryl Cooper’s still unmatched Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem series that he used to kick off his famous MartyrMade podcast. Where I covered the details of the story primarily from the perspective of a very particular figure in Palestinian history—that is, Hajj Amin al-Husseini—Darryl does me one way better by actually delving into the broader experience of Arabs and Jews trying to make sense of their goals in a rapidly changing world around them and how they fought to achieve those goals. Obviously, if you haven’t, check out my series, but if you want to remain focused on the origins of the conflict, you can’t do better than MartyrMade.

As it turns out, the first half of this post is really just a from-the-seat-of-my-pants dispatch for all of you fine people who follow me here. I was hoping I could provide a little moral clarity to what’s happening, especially since the armchair radicals are already polluting the proverbial airwaves with equivocations, cynical pleas to remember the complexity of what’s going on, and just generally really gross whataboutism, but in the end I don’t think I’m concise enough for that. If you want a morally clear-eyed take on the events on the ground and the heinous reaction from many “decolonialists” and Palestinian fetishists, check out my frequent collaborator, friend, and editor Jamie Paul’s piece today over on the American Dreaming Substack. One can blame an ironic lack of awareness for the calls to fall back on “nuance” and “complexity,” but the fact that many of the people making these calls tend to have a vested interest in doing so can’t be ignored, even if they make a 100% true point that the politics and history of the Israel-Palestine region is complicated. The tell-tale sign of good faith analysis is one that takes the bigger picture view of examining this pogrom and tries to understand how and why it’s happened in the way that it did and when it did.

So while I’m not sure how well this will age, that’s what I want to try and do from here on out in this post.

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It’s very hard for me to believe that there wasn’t a more zoomed-out goal intended with this attack. Given things that threaten the interests of states that have little compunction in backing Hamas (and who apparently had a part to play in this attack—no surprise there), this isn’t unreasonable to assume. As we know, the Iranian government was never a fan (to put it mildly) of the Abraham Accords that aimed to normalize relations between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab nations since it effectively would isolate Iran and threaten to contain its obviously-controversial nuclear program. There are many stacked implications of this kind of arrangement, especially given things like Muslim sectarianism, geopolitical moves, and the Iranian government’s historically Jew-hating regime, but the point is that Iran had incentive to challenge this potential new state of affairs. Hamas was thus a perfect weapon for them to wield. The deeper strategy, as best I can see it (and this is truly just my own speculation, so please don’t take this as any more than that—stick to real experts on this if you just want the facts), is one that aims to delegitimize Israel in the eyes of their Western allies before Iran is rendered irrelevant—or, in their view, delegitimized—among their Muslim neighbors.

The gamble made by Hamas is striking to me, not simply because of the ghastly violence that’s unfolded—the horror of the atrocities we’ve actually seen is already beyond belief; the rumors and unconfirmed claims are the stuff of nightmares. As someone who has studied the early history of Arab-Jewish relations (however cursorily, compared to real experts and peers of mine) and who has recently been looking at guerrilla tactics in modern war, it was striking to see something so tactically nihilistic (and perhaps evidence of a hand being overplayed). What Hamas did, as insane as it appears from the outside, is a tried and true tactic of terrorists and freedom fighters alike (who are, yes, often one in the same depending on your perspective). As we saw on the last episode of History Impossible, the Partisans of Yugoslavia engaged in hit and run strikes against German and Ustashe forces in order to provoke an overreaction that would result in hundreds—sometimes thousands—of civilian deaths. The reason the Partisans thought this was a good idea was one of cold, cynical pragmatism—if the occupying Germans or the Ustashe did enough evil things to the civilians, even if it was the Partisans’ fault, it would thus incentivize the people to see that the Partisans were the only people that would protect them. And, hey, if your entire family has been slaughtered by the Germans and the Ustashe, what else do you have to lose by joining the communists, right?

To be clear, I don’t believe that Hamas is engaging in a recruiting drive of that sort. But if we loop back to Iran’s goals—which are largely Hamas’ goals vis-à-vis Israel—we can see a picture start to form. Thanks to the Abraham Accords, Iran is about to be delegitimized, at least in the eyes of their theocratic state apparatus, and lose what they likely believed was a form of leverage. The best way to prevent that isn’t to give Israel the Bay of Pigs treatment (though it certainly might look that way)—there was no way that Hamas (or especially Iran’s government) actually believed that Hamas would stream into parts of the Jewish homeland, occupy, and control it, perhaps setting up an invasion corridor for more forces to destroy Israel once and for all. Yes, that sounds like a fantasy they all might indulge in, but let’s be clear: that was always a fantasy, and Hamas’ leadership, however questionable their judgment might be, likely understood that. As former ambassador Michael Oren recently pointed out on Bari Weiss’ Honestly podcast, Hamas is not stupid. As much as I question the judgment of Hamas fighters providing real-time videographic evidence of their animalistic behavior—from trying to behead a Thai man with a garden hoe to spitting on a dead, mostly-naked festival goer (and no, I will not link to those videos; I’m not watching them again)—I don’t doubt for a second that these were tactical decisions and not some vile equivalent of “doing it for the Gram.” The pure, crystalline rage expressed at the images and videos coming out of Gaza was, in my opinion, exactly what Hamas hoped to achieve. There was no notion that this was going to spark fear in the hearts of the government with whom Hamas has been essentially at war since their inception in 1987; this is the same song, fifty-trillionth verse for Hamas. The only distinction with this attack, apart from its scale and brutality, is how brazen it has been. So what’s going on?

This is problematic because it’s going to sound like I’m denying the antecedent, but bear with me: the disgusting reactions of the “decolonialist” set and the pro-Palestinian LARPer set (which, surprise surprise, includes Black Lives Matter) were probably inevitable. As much as we (okay, I) have talked about “vibe shifts” and “realignments” and so on (and I’ll still stand by my predictions at least to a degree), there is still plenty of ideological division in the West (particularly in the Great Satan that is the United States, as Ayatollah Khomeini once called us), and many of it tracks onto the support of Israel or the support of Palestine, to put it all in the crudest of terms. This is something of which Hamas and Iran were no doubt aware. The entire world is more than aware of how divided America is (or at least is perceived to be). What better way to delegitimize Israel’s standing with her Western allies than to fundamentally divide them over the question of Israel’s right to defend herself against obvious acts of barbaric terror? That was, again in my opinion, likely their thinking.

But if you ask me—and perhaps it is too early to say—Hamas and Iran fucked up.

As I suggested earlier, thanks to the sheer volume of videographic evidence—much of which I’m willing to bet we haven’t even seen yet—we are witness to some of the worst real time documentation of criminal behavior ever captured and shared by the perpetrators. Many likely haven’t and will never see it, but they’ve been hearing about it and they’re going to keep hearing about it. Even still images of children weeping will sear themselves into people’s minds. And apart from the most deranged decolonialist jagoffs LARPing as Palestinian allies on social media, no one is going to see that footage or those images and think that there is nuance to be had. Not to make a crude comparison lightly, but as truly horrifying as the video of George Floyd’s killing (or, to appease some in my audience, Tony Timpa’s) was, the horror and shock produced by that video simply pales in comparison to what we’ve seen so far out of Gaza. Until there is leaked footage of IDF soldiers doing just as, if not worse, things to Palestinian women, children, and elderly, it’s unlikely there is ever going to be much sympathy for the Palestinians. And that footage may come; I’m not saying it won’t. But without that counterbalance, any sympathy most people who see these crimes has will not be with the Palestinians of Gaza. They just won’t. You might want to call that racist, you might want to call it unfair, you might want to simply call it wrong—it doesn’t particularly matter when you understand that perception matters more than reality.

This is why, at least until the picture actually becomes more complicated (and believe me, I won’t be surprised if it does), Hamas and Iran fucked up. They overplayed their hand and, as it currently appears to be, it’s backfiring on them, even as the entire weight of the Israeli military colossus is about to land on top of them. At this point, all they have left is the possibility that the IDF will act just as just as heinously as Hamas did and leave a trail of bloody destruction in their wake on the level of Rwanda, Darfur, or, well, Israel. If their actions don’t inspire the actual collective punishment of civilians they clearly desire, they will have written their own destruction. And perhaps even if the IDF is shown to be responsible for what anyone with a moral compass would call “collective punishment,” given what we have seen, I’m not sure it will move the needle in the way they’d like. Again: they overplayed their hand. And, perhaps ironically, it might be the people here in the West who are making it worse for their plans.

Founder of Compact Magazine and “political chimera” (which I say in jest; his evolution is the most interesting and compelling in the political commentary world) Sohrab Ahmari recently pointed out that “The faction of the left that celebrates Hamas savagery also tends to push the craziest stuff on race, policing, etc.” and that “they just committed credibility seppuku by…cheering Hamas.” I don’t think he’s wrong, at least for the time being. But if we’re to take the emerging commentary out there as our guide, it’s pretty clear that cheering on Hamas is doing very little other than alienating pretty much everyone who isn’t already in these camps (“anti-imperialist” left camps, BLM, maybe some very fringe elements of the “dissident” right). Now true, many of these camps are just like the rest of us on the content engagement treadmill, so any attention is good attention, so it may well serve to enrich them further. But that just reveals the game; the grift, if you will. Thus far, I find it hard to believe that these people are going to move the needle with anyone who didn’t already agree with them. This leaves the footage taken and distributed by Hamas to the heavy lifting, which, as we know, isn’t going too great for their cause.

This, in turn, suggests that I may not be speaking too soon when I say that Hamas and Iran basically fucked up by overplaying their hand. The one part of the United States political culture that they could rely on to widen the ideological wedge over their most vital issue—the issue of Israel itself—is discrediting itself. Barring further complications and perhaps even IDF atrocities—remember: anything is possible—his makes the probability that Israel becomes delegitimized in the eyes of her Western allies far less likely.

There’s nothing like watching a self-inflicted deathblow.

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This was indeed a “seat of the pants” piece—very scattershot and, I fear, contradictory in places. But if enough changes in my heart and mind over the coming days, I’ll likely follow up. If the IDF goes full-Wehrmacht-on-the-Eastern-Front, I’ll definitely be back with more to say. Or if it’s still occupying my mind, I’ll try to organize my thoughts better for you. If you like these kinds of posts, let me know. Thanks for reading.