Netanyahu says he won't stop until Hama is destroyed, but every day he creates a new wave of Hamas recruits among the boys and girls living amid the daily death and ruins of Gaza. For them, every day is like Israel's Oct. 7, and they will not forget or forgive, and the endless hatred and violence will only continue.
I also see Netanyahu as yet another example of a self-aggrandizing leader who cannot and will not surrender power. A ceasefire, the release of hostages, the beginning of international reconstruction in Gaza, these could all achieved if Netanyahu agreed. But he won't, because then he'd be out of power, and subject to accountability for allowing Oct.7 to happen in the first place. (Not to mention accountability for the crimes for which he tried to over-rule the Supreme Court prior to Oct.7.)
So a man in power refuses to cede power, and his impossible goal of destroying Hamas is only creating a new generation of Hamas. And destroying Israel's reputation in the world.
Every time history repeats itself, the cost goes up.
Netanyahu over-coming his insatiable lust for power and leaving (maybe a family intervention?) might be the beginning of some resolution in Gaza, and easing of some of the inflammatory words and action of people around the world.
A Canadian columnist wrote how during a post-10/7 concert at Vancouver’s Hollywood Theatre, “a band member said something about a free Palestine. This, according to attendee Hanah Van Borek, led to a few shouts from the audience: ‘F--- the Jews!’ It was clearly audible in her area of the crowd, a person who was with her confirms, but nobody around them shut this down. There were some cheers of support, though. ‘My whole body went into shock,’ says Ms. Van Borek, who is Jewish.
“Ms. Van Borek left the venue and explained why to security staff. She says a worker encouraged her to go back inside and reassured her she was safe. ‘Nobody will be able to tell that you’re Jewish,’ he said, according to Ms. Van Borek. (Oy.) She did return to the show, but Ms. Van Borek was — and is — rattled. She supports the band’s right to make political statements. It was the shouts from this group — and the silence around them — that were alarming.”
I have long been, and still am, critical of what I see as clear decades-long maltreatment [to put it mildly] of the general Palestinian populace by the Israeli government and security/defense agencies — and, with few exceptions, the Western mainstream news-media’s seemingly intentional tokenistic (non)coverage of it.
By doing so, that media, whether they realize it or not, have done a disservice to its own reputation and the Israeli/Jewish people themselves [the road to hell, after all, is also paved with good intentions]. Not as widely criticized thus publicized as the violence are the considerable fossil fuel reserves beneath long-held Palestinian land that are a plausible motivator for war.
However, likely due to not having Jewish heritage thus experience, I still never expected the level of anti-Semitic attacks in the West since immediately after the 10/7 Hamas attack against Israel.
It’s plainly wrong for them to be mistreated and even terrorized, as though they are personally responsible for the atrocities being committed overseas. And it should be needless to say that Western-world Palestinians and Muslims similarly must not be collectively blamed and attacked for the acts of Hamas violence in Israel or Islamic extremist attacks outside the Middle East.
Also, great insensitivity was publicly shown by some in the West immediately after the 10/7 attack towards Jews freshly mourning the victims, especially when considering that many or most young Israelis and Jews elsewhere were not accustomed to such relatively large-scale carnage (at least not as much as is seen in other parts of the Middle East) in post-9/11 times.
Additionally concerning about all of the highly publicized two-way partisan exchanges of fury is: what will young non-Israeli Jewish, and Palestinian, children living abroad think and feel if/when they hear such misdirected vile hatred towards their fundamental identity? Scary is the real possibility that such public outpour of blind hatred may lead some young children to feel very misplaced shame in their heritage.
With the Palestinian-Israeli conflict — past and present, but seemingly now more than ever — there has been widespread partisanship via Internet and news commentary. The politics of polarization outside of Israel and even the Middle East, perhaps in part for its own sake, has gotten quite disturbing.
Within social media especially, the angry and thoughtless two-dimensional views are especially amplified, including the majority posted by non-Jews and non-Palestinians.
It arouses a spectator-sport effect or mentality, with many contemptible trolls residing well outside the region yet actively supporting the ‘side’ [via politicized commentary posts] that they hate less. I anticipate many actually keep track of the bloody match by checking the day’s-end death-toll score, however extremely lopsided those numbers.
Meanwhile, Western-government political indifference towards the mass starvation and slaughter of helpless Palestinian non-combatants will only have further inflamed long-held Middle Eastern anger towards the West.
Some countries’ actual provision, mostly by the U.S., of highly effective weapons used in Israel’s onslaught will likely have turned that anger into lasting hatred seeking eye-for-an-eye redress.
The tragedy of war is heart-breaking enough, but to see it spreading as political opportunism in the US and elsewhere only diminishes the human toll of the conflict.
"Winning" that war is only, as you say, "turning that anger into lasting hatred seeking eye-for-an-eye redress." Netanyahu has already created the next generation of Hamas, guaranteeing a deeply conflicted and dangerous future for Israel (and other nations).
I think the long shadow of the Holocaust is still an underlying motivating factor for many in Israel, but they don't see (or don't care) that they are now inflicting yet another long shadow through mass deaths in Gaza.
And now that shadow is looming over American elections.
Israel needs a Bob Dylan or a John Lennon to rally the population to make peace, not war.
Micah, I agree with your insight that Bowman-Latimer has resonances far beyond NY-16. If only other difficult primaries received such thorough, thoughtful coverage--and if only the disinformation funded by super PACs could get such effective debunking elsewhere!
Thanks for walking this line and for caring. For what it’s worth I am not exhausted by your analysis of the BowmanLatimer race and am glad you highlight the AOC online dialogue. Most days talking is all we have….
I am sorry to hear that people are tuning out your analysis of the election in the 16th from both moral and data perspectives. I think it is quite excellent and insightful. That said, I think you are still too harsh on the foibles of the left and not harsh enough on the venality of the right. The right does not entertain any of Spitalnick' of Burdett's caveats about weaponizing anti-Semitism. Such weaponization is the right's and Israel's chief strategy for changing the subject and agenda from Genocide to Antisemitism. The right specifically wantsall Jews to be blamed for the actions of the Israel government precisely so they can cynically charge anti-Semitism, a truly dystopian set-up the left responds to (gets trapped by). Further, even Spitalnick's and Burdett's assertions about Zionism's connection to Judaism and Jews are serious conflations of political speech and attitudes versus hate speech and attitudes. Their insistence is a serious violation of the separation of church and state, a fundamental distinction that keeps Jews safe in America.
I think a helpful distinction is between private support for Zionism – like visiting Israel and supporting its economy as an individual – and Zionism as a U.S. public policy position, where U.S. taxpayer dollars are used to sustain Israel. This public policy question will be very present in the coming years, I think, because Israel is now in a very unsustainable military and economic situation.
I probably agree. However, I do not think Zionist’s who take offense (or who claim to speak for all Jews as being offended) make that distinction or even allow that distinction to be made
AOC - no I haven’t heard criticism of the Israeli giver t. I have heard absolute denial of Israel’s right to exist. Why she has a thing to say about Jew hatred is beyond me. I guess the spectacle of Anerican Hamas and Hezbollah at the Reim festival memorial got a bit too much even for her. Too bad. Too little too late.
Thanks for another highly informative and insightful article. You rightly criticize the degree of influence that AIPAC / UDP achieve via massive spending in our elections, and the unfairness of that situation to Bowman. But you offer no path to actually extricate ourselves from that unfair situation, except for your somewhat guarded and reserved support for Bowman in this primary election. Meanwhile pro-Israel advocates are able to say the most extreme things with relative impunity – Latimer is on record opposing the provision of humanitarian aid to the Gaza strip Palestinians – whereas when Bowman takes a strident position on Israel / Palestine, his extremism is quickly pointed out and used to limit him politically. As, perhaps, it should be, but why the double standard?
An inhumane devaluation is observable in external attitudes, albeit perhaps on a subconscious level, toward the daily civilian lives lost in protractedly devastating war zones and famine-stricken nations. The worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the protracted conditions under which it suffers; and those people can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page of the First World’s daily news.
At the same time, with this conflict there has been widespread partisanship via Internet and news commentary. The politics of polarization outside of Israel and even the Middle East, perhaps in part for its own sake, has gotten quite disturbing. Especially on social media are the angry and thoughtless two-dimensional views amplified, including the majority posted by non-Jews and non-Palestinians.
It arouses a spectator-sport effect or mentality, with many contemptible trolls residing well outside the region yet actively supporting the ‘side’ [via politicized commentary posts] that they hate less. I anticipate many actually keep track of the bloody match by checking the day’s-end death-toll score, however extremely lopsided those numbers.
Some people do get swept in by the lurid news coverage of the conflict, and certainly many people have reductive views. However, I think we must keep in mind the premise of U.S. backing of Israel. Too often Americans are asked to evaluate the rectitude of Israel's actions and those of the Palestinian groups in the abstract, without critical thought about whether the U.S. should be so involved in the first place. For example, when Israel is accused of war crimes such as indiscriminate bombings, part of my concern is the U.S. involvement and the fact that Israel's acts might reflect back on my own country. I find when people say "Israel has a right to exist" or ask "What would you have Israel do?" they are making an abstract statement or asking an abstract question. Meanwhile our real policy question, the only question our government actually has to answer, is what level of involvement we should have and how we should use the resulting influence.
Frank describes how this arouses "a spectator-sport effect or mentality"
A very apt phrase and pointed commentary on so much of our "news" coverage, from politics to actual wars.
It's all described as a game, winning and losing, counting deaths like score-keeping, we "track of the bloody match by checking the day’s-end death-toll score," without any moral or ethical compass. We're like the Romans entertained by the death-scenes.
Putin is "winning," Palestinians in Gaza are "losing," LePen is "up" in France, Sunak is "down" in UK, and the "game" goes on and on.
Can there really be a "winner" in the Israeli-Gaza conflict?
And in America (as elsewhere) isn't the whole thing just fodder for opportunistic politicians?
History doesn't decide right and wrong, it decides winners and losers.
Netanyahu says he won't stop until Hama is destroyed, but every day he creates a new wave of Hamas recruits among the boys and girls living amid the daily death and ruins of Gaza. For them, every day is like Israel's Oct. 7, and they will not forget or forgive, and the endless hatred and violence will only continue.
I also see Netanyahu as yet another example of a self-aggrandizing leader who cannot and will not surrender power. A ceasefire, the release of hostages, the beginning of international reconstruction in Gaza, these could all achieved if Netanyahu agreed. But he won't, because then he'd be out of power, and subject to accountability for allowing Oct.7 to happen in the first place. (Not to mention accountability for the crimes for which he tried to over-rule the Supreme Court prior to Oct.7.)
So a man in power refuses to cede power, and his impossible goal of destroying Hamas is only creating a new generation of Hamas. And destroying Israel's reputation in the world.
Every time history repeats itself, the cost goes up.
Netanyahu over-coming his insatiable lust for power and leaving (maybe a family intervention?) might be the beginning of some resolution in Gaza, and easing of some of the inflammatory words and action of people around the world.
A Canadian columnist wrote how during a post-10/7 concert at Vancouver’s Hollywood Theatre, “a band member said something about a free Palestine. This, according to attendee Hanah Van Borek, led to a few shouts from the audience: ‘F--- the Jews!’ It was clearly audible in her area of the crowd, a person who was with her confirms, but nobody around them shut this down. There were some cheers of support, though. ‘My whole body went into shock,’ says Ms. Van Borek, who is Jewish.
“Ms. Van Borek left the venue and explained why to security staff. She says a worker encouraged her to go back inside and reassured her she was safe. ‘Nobody will be able to tell that you’re Jewish,’ he said, according to Ms. Van Borek. (Oy.) She did return to the show, but Ms. Van Borek was — and is — rattled. She supports the band’s right to make political statements. It was the shouts from this group — and the silence around them — that were alarming.”
I have long been, and still am, critical of what I see as clear decades-long maltreatment [to put it mildly] of the general Palestinian populace by the Israeli government and security/defense agencies — and, with few exceptions, the Western mainstream news-media’s seemingly intentional tokenistic (non)coverage of it.
By doing so, that media, whether they realize it or not, have done a disservice to its own reputation and the Israeli/Jewish people themselves [the road to hell, after all, is also paved with good intentions]. Not as widely criticized thus publicized as the violence are the considerable fossil fuel reserves beneath long-held Palestinian land that are a plausible motivator for war.
However, likely due to not having Jewish heritage thus experience, I still never expected the level of anti-Semitic attacks in the West since immediately after the 10/7 Hamas attack against Israel.
It’s plainly wrong for them to be mistreated and even terrorized, as though they are personally responsible for the atrocities being committed overseas. And it should be needless to say that Western-world Palestinians and Muslims similarly must not be collectively blamed and attacked for the acts of Hamas violence in Israel or Islamic extremist attacks outside the Middle East.
Also, great insensitivity was publicly shown by some in the West immediately after the 10/7 attack towards Jews freshly mourning the victims, especially when considering that many or most young Israelis and Jews elsewhere were not accustomed to such relatively large-scale carnage (at least not as much as is seen in other parts of the Middle East) in post-9/11 times.
Additionally concerning about all of the highly publicized two-way partisan exchanges of fury is: what will young non-Israeli Jewish, and Palestinian, children living abroad think and feel if/when they hear such misdirected vile hatred towards their fundamental identity? Scary is the real possibility that such public outpour of blind hatred may lead some young children to feel very misplaced shame in their heritage.
With the Palestinian-Israeli conflict — past and present, but seemingly now more than ever — there has been widespread partisanship via Internet and news commentary. The politics of polarization outside of Israel and even the Middle East, perhaps in part for its own sake, has gotten quite disturbing.
Within social media especially, the angry and thoughtless two-dimensional views are especially amplified, including the majority posted by non-Jews and non-Palestinians.
It arouses a spectator-sport effect or mentality, with many contemptible trolls residing well outside the region yet actively supporting the ‘side’ [via politicized commentary posts] that they hate less. I anticipate many actually keep track of the bloody match by checking the day’s-end death-toll score, however extremely lopsided those numbers.
Meanwhile, Western-government political indifference towards the mass starvation and slaughter of helpless Palestinian non-combatants will only have further inflamed long-held Middle Eastern anger towards the West.
Some countries’ actual provision, mostly by the U.S., of highly effective weapons used in Israel’s onslaught will likely have turned that anger into lasting hatred seeking eye-for-an-eye redress.
The tragedy of war is heart-breaking enough, but to see it spreading as political opportunism in the US and elsewhere only diminishes the human toll of the conflict.
"Winning" that war is only, as you say, "turning that anger into lasting hatred seeking eye-for-an-eye redress." Netanyahu has already created the next generation of Hamas, guaranteeing a deeply conflicted and dangerous future for Israel (and other nations).
I think the long shadow of the Holocaust is still an underlying motivating factor for many in Israel, but they don't see (or don't care) that they are now inflicting yet another long shadow through mass deaths in Gaza.
And now that shadow is looming over American elections.
Israel needs a Bob Dylan or a John Lennon to rally the population to make peace, not war.
As do the Palestinians.
Micah, I agree with your insight that Bowman-Latimer has resonances far beyond NY-16. If only other difficult primaries received such thorough, thoughtful coverage--and if only the disinformation funded by super PACs could get such effective debunking elsewhere!
Hope your London sessions are productive.
Thanks for walking this line and for caring. For what it’s worth I am not exhausted by your analysis of the BowmanLatimer race and am glad you highlight the AOC online dialogue. Most days talking is all we have….
I am sorry to hear that people are tuning out your analysis of the election in the 16th from both moral and data perspectives. I think it is quite excellent and insightful. That said, I think you are still too harsh on the foibles of the left and not harsh enough on the venality of the right. The right does not entertain any of Spitalnick' of Burdett's caveats about weaponizing anti-Semitism. Such weaponization is the right's and Israel's chief strategy for changing the subject and agenda from Genocide to Antisemitism. The right specifically wantsall Jews to be blamed for the actions of the Israel government precisely so they can cynically charge anti-Semitism, a truly dystopian set-up the left responds to (gets trapped by). Further, even Spitalnick's and Burdett's assertions about Zionism's connection to Judaism and Jews are serious conflations of political speech and attitudes versus hate speech and attitudes. Their insistence is a serious violation of the separation of church and state, a fundamental distinction that keeps Jews safe in America.
I think a helpful distinction is between private support for Zionism – like visiting Israel and supporting its economy as an individual – and Zionism as a U.S. public policy position, where U.S. taxpayer dollars are used to sustain Israel. This public policy question will be very present in the coming years, I think, because Israel is now in a very unsustainable military and economic situation.
I probably agree. However, I do not think Zionist’s who take offense (or who claim to speak for all Jews as being offended) make that distinction or even allow that distinction to be made
Please read "The Anti-Semitism Money and Power Network—and How to Smash It"
by Danielle Pletka on Commentary:
https://www.commentary.org/articles/danielle-pletka/anti-semitism-money-power-network/
AOC - no I haven’t heard criticism of the Israeli giver t. I have heard absolute denial of Israel’s right to exist. Why she has a thing to say about Jew hatred is beyond me. I guess the spectacle of Anerican Hamas and Hezbollah at the Reim festival memorial got a bit too much even for her. Too bad. Too little too late.
Thanks for another highly informative and insightful article. You rightly criticize the degree of influence that AIPAC / UDP achieve via massive spending in our elections, and the unfairness of that situation to Bowman. But you offer no path to actually extricate ourselves from that unfair situation, except for your somewhat guarded and reserved support for Bowman in this primary election. Meanwhile pro-Israel advocates are able to say the most extreme things with relative impunity – Latimer is on record opposing the provision of humanitarian aid to the Gaza strip Palestinians – whereas when Bowman takes a strident position on Israel / Palestine, his extremism is quickly pointed out and used to limit him politically. As, perhaps, it should be, but why the double standard?
An inhumane devaluation is observable in external attitudes, albeit perhaps on a subconscious level, toward the daily civilian lives lost in protractedly devastating war zones and famine-stricken nations. The worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the protracted conditions under which it suffers; and those people can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page of the First World’s daily news.
At the same time, with this conflict there has been widespread partisanship via Internet and news commentary. The politics of polarization outside of Israel and even the Middle East, perhaps in part for its own sake, has gotten quite disturbing. Especially on social media are the angry and thoughtless two-dimensional views amplified, including the majority posted by non-Jews and non-Palestinians.
It arouses a spectator-sport effect or mentality, with many contemptible trolls residing well outside the region yet actively supporting the ‘side’ [via politicized commentary posts] that they hate less. I anticipate many actually keep track of the bloody match by checking the day’s-end death-toll score, however extremely lopsided those numbers.
Some people do get swept in by the lurid news coverage of the conflict, and certainly many people have reductive views. However, I think we must keep in mind the premise of U.S. backing of Israel. Too often Americans are asked to evaluate the rectitude of Israel's actions and those of the Palestinian groups in the abstract, without critical thought about whether the U.S. should be so involved in the first place. For example, when Israel is accused of war crimes such as indiscriminate bombings, part of my concern is the U.S. involvement and the fact that Israel's acts might reflect back on my own country. I find when people say "Israel has a right to exist" or ask "What would you have Israel do?" they are making an abstract statement or asking an abstract question. Meanwhile our real policy question, the only question our government actually has to answer, is what level of involvement we should have and how we should use the resulting influence.
Frank describes how this arouses "a spectator-sport effect or mentality"
A very apt phrase and pointed commentary on so much of our "news" coverage, from politics to actual wars.
It's all described as a game, winning and losing, counting deaths like score-keeping, we "track of the bloody match by checking the day’s-end death-toll score," without any moral or ethical compass. We're like the Romans entertained by the death-scenes.
Putin is "winning," Palestinians in Gaza are "losing," LePen is "up" in France, Sunak is "down" in UK, and the "game" goes on and on.
Can there really be a "winner" in the Israeli-Gaza conflict?
And in America (as elsewhere) isn't the whole thing just fodder for opportunistic politicians?
History doesn't decide right and wrong, it decides winners and losers.
To quote the historian Yuval Noah Harari, "there is no justice in history, just winners and losers."
yes and no, depending on your time frame: in 1932 Hitler was the Winner; in 1945, not so much.