Outside the Beltway

Ezra Klein on Israel and Hamas

The best statement on the complexity of the Israel-Hamas conflict that I have heard/read.

Steven L. Taylor
62

Comments

I highly recommend this audio essay from The Ezra Klein Show, Israel Is Giving Hamas What It Wants. The transcript can be read via the link if you prefer not to listen. The overall essay is one of the best, in my view, outlining the situation and reflecting my overall position.

I would especially note the following passage, as it eloquently captures my views about the dangers inherent in an Israeli overreaction and why I said that some of the commenters sounded like Dick Cheney to me.

Israel’s 9/11 — that’s been the refrain. And I fear that analogy carries more truth than the people making it want it to. Because what was 9/11? It was an attack that drowned an entire country — our country, my country, America — in terror and in rage. It drove us mad with fear.

And in response, we shredded our own liberties. We invaded Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. Our response to 9/11 led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It made us weaker. It made us poorer. It made us hated around the world. We didn’t pull our forces out of Afghanistan until 2021, 20 years later. And when we left, we did so in humiliation and catastrophe and defeat, abandoning the country to the Taliban.

Our politics still haven’t recovered from the ravages of that era. It was, in large part, the invasion of Iraq that discredited the Republican Party’s leadership class, leading directly to the rise of Donald Trump. 9/11 created a permission structure in American politics to do incredibly stupid brutal things, and we are still paying the costs. Perhaps we always will be.

[…]

If you loathe Hamas, and you should loathe Hamas, you should assume that the place they’re trying to lead us is not where we should be trying to go. If you don’t think Netanyahu’s rule has made Israel safer, or more united, or closer to a resolution of the fundamental threats that face it — and it hasn’t — you should not yourself be cowed into trusting his instincts in this moment. That’s a lesson Americans learned, or should have learned, from 9/11, the one we have to pass on now.

Terrorists want you to act in a haze of fury and fear. The only antidote is to open yourself to criticism and second-guessing. If you don’t, you find yourself doing exactly what they wanted you to do. And you can do terrible damage to yourself and terrible damage to the world, damage they could have never inflicted on their own.

I really do think that the US’s reaction to 9/11 (to include myself, by the way) should be taken as a massive cautionary tale.

At any rate, I commend the entire piece. I think it is just over a 15-minute listen.

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62 responses to “Ezra Klein on Israel and Hamas”

  1. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    It’s the usual liberal mush. Hamas is evil, vengeance is reasonable and necessary but not really because innocents might be killed, so something should be done but I don’t know what, so I’m presenting my non-plan for inaction. The important thing is not to have a plan, not to actually do anything, but to posture as impotently reasonable. TLDR: Die, Jews, and just kind of deal with it.

    There is no easy solution here. There isn’t even a really hard solution here. There is however a lot of people sanctimoniously demanding that someone do something to make it all end happily. This is the thinking of children, wondering why mommy can’t keep them from getting measles but without the shot. Wah. Sometimes all the choices suck and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. That’s what makes this a tragedy and not a sitcom.

    The comparison with 911 is wrong. The existence of the United States was never in question. Israel’s existence is very much in question. And, by the way, despite our failure in Afghanistan I can’t help but observe that the Taliban is keeping a very tight lid on Al Qaeda. We are not seeing a new wave of terrorism coming out of Afghanistan because even the Taliban realize we don’t need forces in-country to fly B-52s over Kabul.

    I despise Netanyahu and the settlers and Likud. The Palestinians have genuine beef, they’ve been screwed by history. There: nuance, context. So? So with all that context, so what? Right: so not a damn thing, because see paragraph 1 above: there is no solution. It doesn’t matter if Israelis kill 10 Gazan children or a thousand, the same people will hate Israel with the same ferocity. And if they don’t hit Hamas hard enough, Hamas declares victory and gets ready for the next round.

    By the way the whole ‘retaliation will only breed more terrorists’ is bullshit, it’s a romantic western notion that ignores history. Seen many ISIS around lately? The Saudis are ready to hop in bed with Israel, where’s Al Qaeda which so famously freaked out over US bases in the KSA? Their ‘just grievances’ weren’t addressed, they were just killed. Which is what Israel proposes to do to Hamas.

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  2. DrDaveT Avatar
    DrDaveT

    @Michael Reynolds:

    It doesn’t matter if Israelis kill 10 Gazan children or a thousand, the same people will hate Israel with the same ferocity.

    Thank you, Michael, for finally stating the key axiom that makes the rest of your position explicable.

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  3. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    @DrDaveT:
    No, the key axiom is: there is at present no good solution, so it’s down to brute force and competitive virtue signaling. We’re watching a train wreck in slow-motion and crying, “Oh no!”

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  4. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    Gee, it turns out Hamas did burn people alive and cut off heads:

    Two spinal cords—one belonging to an adult, one to someone young—a parent and child bound together by metal wires in a final embrace before being set alight.

    Kugel also explained that the age range of the victims spans from 3 months to 80 or 90 years old. Many bodies, including those of babies, are without heads.

    Asked if they were decapitated, Kugel answered yes. Although he admits that, given the circumstances, it’s difficult to ascertain whether they were decapitated before or after death, as well as how they were beheaded, “whether cut off by knife or blown off by RPG,” he explained.

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  5. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @DrDaveT:

    “This Should Clarify”

    How America’s Largest Socialist Organization Went from Supporting Israel to Boycotting It

    Some discussion of currently trendy thinking.

    TLDR: Die, Jews, and just kind of deal with it.

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  6. DK Avatar
    DK

    Nice piece, thanks for sharing.

    If you don’t think Netanyahu’s rule has made Israel safer, or more united, or closer to a resolution of the fundamental threats that face it — and it hasn’t — you should not yourself be cowed into trusting his instincts in this moment.

    Unlike Bush post-9/11, Netanyahu’s current standing in Israel is, um, not good to say the least. Most Israelis seem to understand, at least right, that empowering Netanyahu and his extremist conservative yahoos was a grave error that helped create this hellish moment.

    The question is after Hamas is neutered (if), and after Netanyahu is gone, what comes next. Are Benny Gantz or Yair Lapid and Mahmoud ABBA’s able to recommit to an honest and two-state solution — and will Israelis and Palestinians actually let them deal? I don’t see it happening. And if not, what then? Endless bloodshed?

    Either way, the US cannot allow itself drawn into a boots-on-the-ground Middle Eastern war anti-democratic authoritarians, and there’s no good reason why the US should tie our global reputation to the decisions of a government led by Netanyahu or anyone like him.

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  7. Chip Daniels Avatar
    Chip Daniels

    Calling it “Israel’s 9-11” is just as useless as calling it “Israel’s Pearl Harbor” because invoking historical comparisons like that tends to obscure key differences and suggest a course of action which probably isn’t wise.

    The key point, that Israel can be making some of the same mistakes as we did after 9-11 could easily be true, but in order to verify that, one needs to imagine a different, better, course of action.

    I don’t have any in mind, frankly, but that’s why I don’t pose as a pundit offering advice to world leaders.
    I really don’t know if there is any level of killing and destruction which can convince the Palestinians (and their chosen leaders) to accept Israel’s right to exist which is a precondition to any solution.

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  8. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Here is another piece expanding on your point:

    “Persuasion”

    Meanwhile, academics from leading universities were busy defending these terrorist attacks as a form of anti-colonial struggle. “Postcolonial, anticolonial, and decolonial are not just words you heard in your EDI workshop,” a professor in the school of social work at McMaster University, in Canada, wrote on X. “Settlers are not civilians,” a Yale professor who has written for mainstream outlets including The Washington Post and The New York Times, maintained.

    All of this raises a simple question: How could such a notable portion of the left side with terrorists who openly announce their genocidal intentions? Why have key institutions proven so reluctant to denounce one of the worst terrorist attacks in living memory? What, to them, renders the victims of these attacks so much less worthy of solidarity than those of the many other atrocities they have full-throatedly condemned?

    The ideological roots of the great obfuscation
    In the past days, people have offered many possible explanations for this selective silence. Some focus on outright antisemitism. Others emphasize that an understandable concern over the immoral actions that Israeli governments have taken in the past have blinded many activists to the suffering of innocent Israeli civilians. Others still point out that institutional leaders want to avoid eliciting angry reactions from activists, preferring to stay silent on a sensitive issue out of simple fear for their jobs.

    Each of these explanations contains a grain of truth. Some people in the world really are consumed by one of the world’s most ancient hatreds. Others are indeed hyper-focused on everything that Israel has done wrong, a stance that is easier to understand in the case of Palestinians whose ancestors have been displaced than it is in the case of leftist activists who have for many decades found the missteps of the one state that happens to be Jewish worthy of much greater condemnation than similar, or greater, missteps perpetrated by any other. Finally, it is indeed true that many university presidents, nonprofit leaders and corporate CEOs have, among the institutional meltdowns of the past years, come to believe that they must avoid controversy at all costs if they are to keep drawing their generous paychecks.

    But the double-standard that has in the past days become so obvious on parts of the left also has a more profound source, one that is ideological rather than practical or atavistic. Over the past decades, a new set of ideas about the role that identity does— and should—play in the world have transformed the very nature of what it means to be on the left, displacing an older set of universalist aspirations in the process.

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  9. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Israel’s existence is very much in question.

    Given that Israel has one third of the population stuck in reservations with greatly limited rights, massive poverty, a blockade and frequent bombing from their Air Force, I think that Israel’s existence in its current state should be questioned.

    It’s also just not a stable situation, unless you are ok with periodic attacks from the occupied territories and then another wave of violence every few years.

    If you’re looking for an American historical analogy, Custer’s Last Stand might be a better analogy — a sudden victory by The Other than leads to a massive backlash.

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  10. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @charontwo:

    What, to them, renders the victims of these attacks so much less worthy of solidarity than those of the many other atrocities they have full-throatedly condemned?

    It’s the apartheid. It’s the directly benefiting from ongoing oppression of a third of the people in the borders of their country. It’s the failure to do anything to create a more stable situation.

    This isn’t a hard or profound question.

    Let’s say you have a friend who is fond of binge drinking once a week, and drives home, a wee bit drunk. When the inevitable happens and he smashes into a tree and is injured, do you feel bad? Sure. Do you feel that it is grossly unfair? No, it was basically inevitable and you’ve kind of built that expected tragedy into the relationship years ago.

    That’s a lot of people’s relationship with Israel. They are a lot more like us than the Palestinians are, so we are generally friendly with them. But this is as inevitable as that tree. We’ve mentioned the Palestinians and the drinking before, but there’s only so much you can do for someone who doesn’t want help.

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  11. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @Michael Reynolds:

    ‘retaliation will only breed more terrorists … ignores history’

    Quite.
    On that basis Germany and Japan should have been hotbeds of revenge seeking terrorism and radical revanchism after WW2.
    As it turns out, having your armed forces mashed into a bloody pulp, and your cities bombed into smoking rubble, actually inclines a lot of people to decide there’s something to be said for the quiet life.
    There were no “good solutions” to the “German question”.
    So it was eventually resolved with a very bad solution.
    For the Germans.
    Who were, generally, sensible enough to look at East Prussia, Silesia, the DDR, and the Morgenthau Plan, not to mention Hiroshima, and decide it could have ended up even worse.

    It’s very likely that if Israel pulled out of the West Bank tomorrow, and left Gaza alone, Hamas would remain entrenched in Gaza, and still determined on its minimal goal of “right of return” = “from the River to the Sea” = the end of Israel.
    A West Bank settlement would, in and of itself, do nothing to make life in Gaza any better, and is not likely to modify Hamas’s rule of force there.

    An observation:
    People in the West tend to forget that about half the population of Israel is descended NOT from the voluntary settlers and Holocaust survivor refugees from European Jewry, but of the Mizrahim, the Jews of the Arab Middle East, who were pogrom-ed and expropriated in the aftermath of Israel’s survival in 1948.
    At as time when the West Bank and Gaza were controlled by Jordan and Egypt, respectively.
    And that the Palestinian fedayeen and the PLO regularly attacked Israel during the 20 years between 1948 and 1968, when the West Bank and Gaza were not occupied.
    And Egypt, Syria and (half-heartedly) Jordan continued to plan for the extirpation of Israel.

    So, a lot of Israelis are understandably skeptical about assertions that this time their enemies would be willing to make a lasting resolution.

    Please note: this does not mean I think either Likud or the West Bank militant settlers are either justified or sensible in their policies.
    IMUHO Israel would do better, militarily, morally, and political propaganda wise, to vacate the West Bank unilaterally.

    But, as said, that would likely do little to change the situation in Gaza one iota.

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  12. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    “If you don’t think Netanyahu’s rule has made Israel safer, or more united, or closer to a resolution of the fundamental threats that face it — and it hasn’t — you should not yourself be cowed into trusting his instincts in this moment. “

    This assumes Netanyahu is now the main decider.
    I seriously doubt that.
    More likely the Matkal, that is, the IDF, is now in the driving seat, Halevi and Gallant controlling the operations, with Netanyahu and Gantz as roughly equal in signing off their recommendations. And if Gantz is not consulting Lapid, I’d be surprised.
    It’s obvious that Netanyahu is finished, politically.

    2
  13. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @JohnSF:

    A West Bank settlement would, in and of itself, do nothing to make life in Gaza any better, and is not likely to modify Hamas’s rule of force there.

    Hamas’ political leadership is based in Qatar. There is a lot of money flowing into Gaza through places like Qatar, it all goes to buying weapons and ordnance, building tunnels, building weapon manufacturing facilities, like that. In general, supporting Hamas’ religious/military agenda and political entrenchment..

    And, BTW, Hamas is closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

    3
  14. steve Avatar
    steve

    “By the way the whole ‘retaliation will only breed more terrorists’ is bullshit, it’s a romantic western notion that ignores history. Seen many ISIS around lately? ”

    It’s pretty much what we found in Iraq and Afghanistan. Early in Iraq we weren’t so careful about Iraqi lives, we were torturing them and we had contractors shooting stuff up for fun. Resistance increased and the population didnt see much reason to support our efforts. We cut back on that and more selectively killed AQ/ISIS and they became less of a problem. (They also moved out of the country.) It helped that ISI/AQ was incredibly brutal so once the tribes saw that our behavior was markedly better than ours they became helpful. We saw some of the same in Afghanistan. We had major problems with intel as the Afghanis were using us to get revenge on neighbors and we famously bombed wedding parties and other groups that were not Taliban. This made people sympathetic to the Taliban and not helpful to us as well as providing more recruits. Anyway, read Kilcullen’s Accidental Guerrilla. He covers not only Iraq and Afghanistan but IIRC 4 or 5 other conflicts like East Timor.

    Steve

    6
  15. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @charontwo:
    Indeed, Ikhwanites allied with Iranians, which is a fairly surprising turn of events.
    It’s a funny old world.
    In very bad way sometimes.

  16. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @JohnSF:

    On that basis Germany and Japan should have been hotbeds of revenge seeking terrorism and radical revanchism after WW2.

    I suppose that if the Israelis take over Gaza and then pour billions into creating a democratic state (while also working on their own) we might have an analogy here.

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  17. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Michael Reynolds: Where is anyone (i.e., Klein or myself) objecting to Israel taking out Hamas? It would be nice if you addressed the actual points being made.

    And speaking of history, I would note that the history of the region is very much one of violence begetting violence. But let’s not conflate Hamas with all Gazans, because the treatment of Gazans is the issue that Klein (and myself) are concerned about–not about going after Hamas.

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  18. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @steve: Of course, part of the point about Iraq is that ISIS emerged in reaction to the US invasion.

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  19. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Chip Daniels: For me the issue is not whether 9/11 is a a great analogy. The point for me, and in the quoted passage, is the way in which US reaction to 9/11 had some costly consequences for the US, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

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  20. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Michael Reynolds: Was someone around here denying Hamas’ brutality?

    @Michael Reynolds: How the force is used is still a relevant question.

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  21. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/on-strategy-law-and-morality-in-israel-s-gaza-operation

    Let’s start, then, first, with the highest-altitude moral point: that when a state is attacked militarily, it will respond militarily to the extent that it can. This is legitimate both morally and legally, and it makes intuitive sense strategically as well. The state’s most fundamental purpose is the protection of its citizens. A state that fails militarily to defend its people forsakes its reason to exist.

    Note that this point in no way depends on whether you like the state in question, whether you support its policies, or whether the state was—as a great many states were—born in some original sin it has not fully expiated. The right of self-defense is not a reward for good behavior. It’s simply a fundamental attribute of statehood or, more generally, peoplehood.

    It thus will not do to condemn the Israeli response because you hold Israel responsible for conditions in Gaza as an antecedent matter. That is as illogical as blaming the United States for responding militarily to the attack on Pearl Harbor because it never should have annexed Hawaii decades earlier. Nobody objected to the Soviet Union’s response to Operation Barbarossa on grounds that the Baltic and Polish and Ukrainian territories invaded were illegally occupied by the Soviets anyway—and that the Soviet regime was deeply objectionable and murderous.

    Relatedly, it also will not do to insist that a state has no right of self-defense because it shouldn’t, in your judgment, exist. Most states don’t exist as a result of some pristine moral logic. Their existence is just a reality, often to the irritation of their critics. And they defend themselves because peoples who don’t choose governments capable of defending them tend not to last very long.

    It also will not do to insist that the fact that one party is stronger than the other means that it shouldn’t respond at all or that it must somehow constrain its response to even the playing field. Sometimes, weaker parties attack stronger parties, and thus trigger the need for stronger parties to defend themselves. It seems to me quite naive to expect that they will do so only with a discounted fraction of their capabilities and powers. War and conflict are not golf, and they are not waged with handicaps.

    Second, this high-altitude moral point has an important, and very tragic, corollary, and I’m going to state it bluntly: As an inherent part of Israel’s legitimate response, a lot of civilians have died and been injured, and many more will be hurt and killed. There are major military operations that armies can pull off with minimal civilian casualties; for example, you haven’t heard a lot about Russian civilian casualties during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, because the battle is being fought in Ukraine—not in Russia—and thus Ukrainian forces, in targeting the enemy, mostly need not fear collateral consequences to civilians.

    Gaza is a wholly different story. The space is extremely constrained. Hamas is deeply embedded within the civilian population and infrastructure. There is no antiseptic operation possible that will clear Hamas out of Gaza. So to accept the Israeli right of self-defense, or even to accept the obvious reality that Israel will defend itself, is to accept that a high level of human suffering will take place.

    snip

    The Israeli targeting actions, by contrast, are not nearly as easy to assess. (I address the siege policy distinctly below.) You don’t simply get to look at a grim humanitarian picture and conclude that whatever produced it must be a war crime. Each action that has resulted in civilian harm requires separate examination. Each case will require an answer to questions such as whether the civilians were targeted or whether they were killed or injured in a strike against a legitimate military target. Each case will also require an answer to questions about what military necessity may have prompted the strike and what awareness the relevant actor may (or may not) have had of civilian presence. Each will also require an assessment of whether the anticipated civilian injury was reasonably deemed proportionate to the expected military gain. Each of these questions has to be asked separately about each incident of civilian harm in which a war crime may be suspected.

    And there’s a catch. You don’t get to say that because the Israeli cause is just and legitimate self-defense, we should construe all of these fact-intensive individual judgments in favor of the lawfulness of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF’s) conduct in the field. And you similarly don’t get to say that because the Palestinian cause is just and we don’t like Israel, we will apply a strict liability standard to Israeli actions in the field and construe all civilian harm in the light least favorable to Israeli soldiers. You actually have to do the analysis before you decide whether and where war crimes were committed—and that analysis requires facts we don’t yet have.

    Fifth, it is thus a grave analytic and legal error to conflate an apparently large number of Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza with war crimes. I understand the temptation to equate human-inflicted disaster with war crimes. But it’s wrong. To be sure, some strikes that have killed civilians may be war crimes to the extent the civilian death was the result of intentional targeting. But some strikes may reflect mere error, bad intelligence, or collateral damage permissible under the laws of war. In this conflict, civilian death may—as I fear—reflect a campaign taking place without a clear strategy in an area in which a terrorist group is dug in among densely-packed civilians.

    And here’s the problem: Whatever the reality is will all look more or less the same as what is happening right now. If Israel is committing war crimes, it will look like this. If the Israeli strategy is perfect and every strike complies fully with the law of armed conflict in every particular, it will still look like this. If the reality is anything in between these two poles? It too will look like this.

    Attempting to assess Israeli targeting actions right now is a mug’s game.

    Lots more at the link than the quoted excerpts.

    How the force is used is still a relevant question.

    See the paragraph I emphasized:

    And here’s the problem: Whatever the reality is will all look more or less the same as what is happening right now. If Israel is committing war crimes, it will look like this. If the Israeli strategy is perfect and every strike complies fully with the law of armed conflict in every particular, it will still look like this. If the reality is anything in between these two poles? It too will look like this.

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  22. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @charontwo: Do you think I am saying that Israel should not respond militarily?

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  23. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @charontwo: Also: did you read/listen to the entire Klein piece?

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  24. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    I read your description of it and I am sure I have read a vast number of pieces making similar points.

    I have yet to listen to my first podcast, I just do not have the patience for podcasts as I read a lot faster than people talk.

    I looked at the NYT site but could not find the transcript.

    2
  25. steve Avatar
    steve

    I dont know if you would call it a hotbed of revenge but there were hundreds of attacks on US citizens/soldier in Germany in the first 3 years after the war. There were many acts of sabotage ad they didnt keep track of fights were no one was seriously hurt. As I recall this was not such an issue in Japan probably because the Emperor had approved the surrender.

    https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Other/14-F-0091_attacks_on_American_troops_postwar_Germany.pdf

    Steve

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  26. steve Avatar
    steve

    “Of course, part of the point about Iraq is that ISIS emerged in reaction to the US invasion.”

    Not just the invasion but also the way we did it. Shinseki told Congress and the Bush admin that we needed a lot more troops and especially military police. Absent that we would have a lot more chaos and civilian deaths. That helped create ISIS and our behaviors after the occupation provided more recruits.

    Steve

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  27. wr Avatar
    wr

    @Michael Reynolds: With all due respect, Michael, you’re sounding just like Homer Simpson when he changed his name and persona to Max Power:

    Homer: There’s three ways to do things: The right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way.

    Bart: Isn’t that the wrong way?

    Homer: Yeah, but faster!

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  28. wr Avatar
    wr

    @charontwo: Nice to see that your focus is not where it should be — on Israel and Hamas and what can be done, but on using this horror show as an excuse to attack those Americans whose politics you dislike. Now that’s helpful!

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  29. wr Avatar
    wr

    Remember, kids, cancel culture is very very very bad, probably the worst thing that can happen in the world. Unless, of course, we’re talking about someone who dislikes Israel, and then they should be driven out of all society, because that’s just right.

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  30. DK Avatar
    DK

    @steve:

    Early in Iraq we weren’t so careful about Iraqi lives, we were torturing them and we had contractors shooting stuff up for fun. Resistance increased and the population didnt see much reason to support our efforts.

    There’s no shortage of Palestinians that hate Hamas, but Netanyahu infamously sidelined them to explicitly bolster Hamas. Years and years into that awful policy, there’s a giant trust deficit on all sides. At least Lapid and Abbas claim to be committed to a two-state solution, but more extreme voices on both sides seem to have more power.

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  31. gVOR10 Avatar
    gVOR10

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    I suppose that if the Israelis take over Gaza and then pour billions into creating a democratic state (while also working on their own) we might have an analogy here.

    Supporting your point, we didn’t do that because we’re nice guys. Partly it was recognition that what we had done, the punitive treaty of Versailles, had proven to be a disaster. But mostly it was that we wanted the West Germans and Japanese as allies against Russia and China. One wonders if the Israelis couldn’t find selfish reasons to be generous. Or at least take a long term view.

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  32. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @gVOR10: Indeed: the Cold War helped that policy decision for sure.

    4
  33. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    I suppose that if the Israelis take over Gaza and then pour billions into creating a democratic state (while also working on their own) we might have an analogy here.

    Well, the DDR did not have billions poured in, and was not a democratic state, and was fairly peaceful.

  34. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @gVOR10:

    But mostly it was that we wanted the West Germans and Japanese as allies against Russia and China.

    Not at the outset. The MacArthur reforms in Japan were being implemented before the Cold War began (taking 1947 as the start date). As were the initial stages of democratisation in Germany.
    And the economic revival of Germany was arguably more part of the initiation of the Cold War, than a response to it, based on the realisation that without reviving at least W German industry, France, the Low Countries and Italy etc were also going to flatline.

    …the punitive treaty of Versailles, had proven to be a disaster…

    The “disastrousness” and “punitiveness” of Versailles is an entrenched truism, but debateable.
    There is a good case for arguing that its main failing was not vindictiveness, but in it being not nearly punitive enough with regard to Germany, its lack of enforcement mechanisms, and hence the ability of Germany to renege upon it.

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  35. drj Avatar
    drj

    @JohnSF:

    Regarding the usefulness of retaliation, when did the violence in Northern Ireland stop? When 1 Para gunned down unarmed protestors in Derry? When the British security services ran their own death squads/death squad-adjacent units (Military Reaction Force, Force Research Unit, the RUC’s Special Patrol Group)?

    Or perhaps when the Good Friday Agreement finally gave the Northern Irish Catholics a good reason to believe that they were no longer doomed to remain second-class citizens in their own country?

    And speaking of Germany (and regardless of what was being intended after the end of WW2), what was it that finally removed the threat of German militarism?

    Forced disarmament or Germany’s inclusion in various European and transatlantic structures?

    The fact of the matter is that unless you’re willing to contemplate genocide, you can’t just rely on the stick alone.

    (And it goes without saying that the Northern Irish Catholics never had it as bad as the Gazans. And still they wouldn’t stop committing violence until they got a fair deal.)

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  36. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    @charontwo: Here’s the transcript of the Klein monologue. It’s relatively short.

    The Ben Wittes piece you linked is characteristically thoughtful. He previewed it a few days ago but I never got around to reading the finished piece until you linked it.

    While I agree with the setup you excerpted, I also agree with where he winds up: that Israel has a moral and perhaps legal duty to act strategically. I agree with him (and you and MR) that even a constrained Israeli response is going to kill a lot of noncombatants; that’s simply the nature of a war under these circumstances. There is simply a lot in the actions they’ve taken (the illegal cutting off of food and water) and language they’ve used (“animals” and the like seemingly in reference to the Palestinians writ large vice just Hamas) that make me think war crimes are coming.

    Oh: I’ve been following Klein for 20-plus years now. He’s given me no reason to think that he’s a Jew-hater.

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  37. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @Gustopher:

    It’s the apartheid. It’s the directly benefiting from ongoing oppression of a third of the people in the borders of their country. It’s the failure to do anything to create a more stable situation.

    You, supporting collective punishment for the behavior of Netanyahu, his unpopular government and the West Bank settlers.

    Targeting a bunch of pacifists, left-leaning kibbutzim along with teenagers at a rave “for peace.” And lots of children.

    Some of the websites I check still blame Israel for bombing the alhi hospital because, doncha know, the IDF and Israeli government lie, so initial Hamas exaggerations still good to go. Revealing confirmation bias is my opinion.

    the larger quote you excerpted:

    All of this raises a simple question: How could such a notable portion of the left side with terrorists who openly announce their genocidal intentions? Why have key institutions proven so reluctant to denounce one of the worst terrorist attacks in living memory? What, to them, renders the victims of these attacks so much less worthy of solidarity than those of the many other atrocities they have full-throatedly condemned?

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    Do you think I am saying that Israel should not respond militarily?

    No, but that is a sentiment I see expressed frequently, including by a few of the screen handles here at OTB.

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  38. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @James Joyner:

    Oct. 7 was Israel’s Sept. 11. That’s been the refrain. I fear that analogy carries so much more truth than the people making it intend.

    You can listen to this audio essay by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.

    (A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

    Above is what I see at your link, same as what I have seen before. I still can not find an actual transcript.

    Separate point: I see lots of pundits asserting that Israel is preparing to make a big mistake – and yet, what Israel is really planning is not yet publically known.

  39. drj Avatar
    drj

    @charontwo:

    No, but that is a sentiment I see expressed frequently, including by a few of the screen handles here at OTB.

    Yeah, right.

    If you are unable unwilling to distinguish between “Israel shouldn’t be deliberately committing war crimes” and “Israel should refrain from responding with military means” that is on you.

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  40. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @drj:
    That’s one reading of the Northern Ireland peace process.
    There are alternative views, stressing that the replacement of the Unionist controlled devolved government by British direct rule in 1972 (imperfectly) removed the second-class status of Catholics, which was a function of the misrule by the Unionist majority in the Six Counties.
    After that the main problem was bringing SinnFein/IRA to accept Ireland would not be unified by force, and the Unionists to accept that they would not be allowed to use revived NI assembly to re-impose their privilege and that an all-Ireland aspect would be part of the settlement.

    Greatly aided by the massive success in suborning the IRA by British intelligence, and bribing both sides by dangling the prospect of sharing the budgetary spoils of Stormont.

    The relevance to Gaza appears limited, as neither side looks likely to accept a one-state solution on the basis of equal standing.
    The majority of Unionists always regarded themselves as Irish, an attitude which sometimes surprises outsiders. (As does the fact that some “Catholics” were not Nationalists.)
    There is no such commonality between Palestinians and Israelis.

    As to (West) Germany, it only disarmed for the ten years from 1945 to 1955, and you also need to account for Austria and East Germany as well as West Germany.
    Neither Austria nor East Germany were included in pan-European and/or transatlantic structures until the 1990’s.

  41. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @James Joyner:

    Oct. 7 was Israel’s Sept. 11. That’s been the refrain. I fear that analogy carries so much more truth than the people making it intend.

    Hard disagree. Analogies are only useful to the extent the analogy compares truly similar situations, which IMO neither the 9/11 attack or the PNAC motivated and grossly fubarred Iraq adventure were.

    Osama’s people were not part of a government, Hamas is the people in control .in Gaza. Saudi Arabia lacks a border with the U.S.

    Pearl Harbor might be a bit better, at least the Japanese navy was an arm of government. Still not a very useful analogy IMO.

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  42. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @drj:

    If you are unable unwilling to distinguish between “Israel shouldn’t be deliberately committing war crimes” and “Israel should refrain from responding with military means” that is on you.

    That is an extraordinarily dishonest assertion. Lots of you all appear to regard Israel as incapable or unwilling of military means that do not feature war crimes.

    I need to go now, will be back a while later.

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  43. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    @charontwo: At least in Chrome, there’s a button with TRANSCRIPT in it right below the sub-headline.

    2
  44. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @James Joyner:

    I also agree with where he winds up: that Israel has a moral and perhaps legal duty to act strategically.

    They also have pragmatic reasons to think strategically, have I ever suggested otherwise?

    1
  45. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @James Joyner:

    Thanks, the button was so grayed out I did not see it.

  46. drj Avatar
    drj

    @JohnSF:

    There are alternative views

    Even your “alternative views” (which I don’t see as being very different from what I was describing) contain a lot of carrot. Where is the carrot for the Palestinians?

    The relevance to Gaza appears limited

    Far more relevant than the analogy of Germany that you embraced, though.

    Neither Austria nor East Germany were included in pan-European and/or transatlantic structures until the 1990’s.

    Oh, come on.

    You know as well as I do that the DDR was part of alternative Moscow-directed structures that gave the East Germans enough say in their own government to keep the population largely compliant (and kept them from trying anything abroad). Austria was pretty much left alone and far too small to do anything by itself. Who were they going to attack? The Warsaw Pact?

    (And, of course, of the FRG, DDR, and Austria, it was the regime most dependent on control imposed from abroad that didn’t last.)

    This is silly nitpicking.

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  47. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @drj:
    Maybe it is silly nitpicking, but there was no great momentum in West Germany for revanchism in the decade when it was disarmed and formally an occupied country.

    Where is the carrot for the Palestinians

    The West Bank might be such.
    But in 2000 Palestinian representatives rejected an offer of rule over 92% of the West Bank, with some compensating territory from Israel.
    Also, there seems to be no carrot on hand re. Gaza at all; you might think that Palestinian control of the West Bank would reconcile Gazans to their lot.
    Perhaps, but I doubt it.

    And as regards Northern Ireland, you are missing that the carrot was not very much.
    Essentially Sinn Fein accepted that the IRA strategy of “armed struggle” to end in uniting Ireland had failed.

    1
  48. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @Gustopher:

    “It’s the apartheid. It’s the directly benefiting from ongoing oppression of a third of the people in the borders of their country. It’s the failure to do anything to create a more stable situation.”

    This rather assumes that an offer regarding the West Bank would resolve the issue.
    It’s worth trying, but IMO is still likely to fail.
    – The 2000 offer (92% of the West Bank, some territorial compensation, limited control for Palestinians over East Jerusalem) was about as far as any Israeli offer is likely to go, and was rejected by the Palestinians.
    – A better situation in the West Bank would do little to alleviate the situation of the population of Gaza.
    – Fatah and the Fedayeen were attacking Israel for 20 years before it occupied the West Bank and Gaza; and at the same time as the Mizrahi Jews were being pogromed and expelled across the Middle East and North Africa.

    “They are a lot more like us than the Palestinians are…”

    It’s arguable that the Mizrahi had a lot more in common with the Palestinians and other Arabs than they did, or do, with Americans.

    3
  49. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    OK, I have read the Klein piece, finally.

    – Cutting off the water was stupid, no doubt. Ostensibly, it was a ploy to get back the hostages, trade water restoration for them. Clearly stupid, Hamas would benefit too much from people suffering, maybe dying, resulting in a hit to Israel’s moral standing.

    – Gallant and Ben-Gvir are not all powerful any more than Lindsay Graham and Tom Cotton are. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are pretty discredited, they do not have bright political futures.

    – Klein spends a lot of effort comparing American responses to this, 10/07, and 9/11 – yeah, there are a lot of similarities in American behavior. And it’s true the Bush response to 9/11 surpassed any reasonable Osama expectations for an excessive and inappropriate response, so that much is a parallel to Hamas motivation.

    4
  50. SC_Birdflyte Avatar
    SC_Birdflyte

    @JohnSF: True. The Treaty of Sevres with the Ottomans was more punitive, but that was largely because Great Britain, France, Greece, and Italy all had designs on some Ottoman territories.

  51. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    Hamas and other like minded terrorists, as well as many everyday Palestinians, do not recognize Israel’s right to exist. In turn, under this unconditional threat, Israel balks at any notion of a Palestinian self-governing state. This toxic environment of petrified ideologies, religiosities, and racial identities, as well as nefarious territorial designs, contributes to an unending cycle of hate and retribution. The path to peace has long been seen as the “two state” solution. Too many in the breach of this conflict see the solution as being the final eradication of their proximate enemy. The disparate who wail in the sadness of this situation, and who are ever resolved to hate and kill, must somehow be reclaimed into peace with their neighbors. The hard work to end this nightmare must continue.

    1
  52. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @JohnSF: We can quibble about timing and motivation, but the reality remains that there was a substantial investment in Japan and West Germany, as well as full entry back into the international system that makes analogizing to the Palestinian situation problematic.

    1
  53. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @charontwo: You are missing the obvious point that he is making in terms of action and reaction.

    Further, he is obviously building off of the way the event has been talked about not directly saying that what happened was identical in all ways to 9/11, as that isn’t the point he is trying to make.

    It is perfectly fine to disagree with him (or me) but it seems requisite for constructive conversation that we at least not talk past one another.

    2
  54. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @charontwo: Thanks for taking the time to read and respond.

  55. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @drj: Indeed.

  56. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @Steven L. Taylor:
    Certainly true.
    But my quibble remains,and it’s a rather large one.
    I suspect the experience of utter and catastrophic defeat was also a major factor in shaping public and elite perceptions regarding the utility of war.
    Carrot and a experience of a very ruthlessly wielded stick.
    The problem regarding Palestine is that carrots that would be appetizing to the Palestinians seem in short supply.
    And as I have pointed out, the Israeli experience is that what might be thought reasonable carrots ie acceptance of 1948 Israel; the 2000 offer were not only rejected but responded to by the violence of the fedayeen and the intifada.
    I seriously doubt there is any good outcome to be had in the short to medium term.

    1
  57. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    I have not been able to bring myself to participate in the squaring the circle thread, I can not see a way to avoid being totally Debbie Downer, not a status I find appealing.

  58. Jay L Gischer Avatar
    Jay L Gischer

    We appear to be presented with a choice between “Do Nothing” and “Destroy Gaza and Hamas with it”.

    This is a false dichotomy. Ezra gives a good read of what Hamas was trying to provoke. What they wanted to accomplish with the attacks, which has been puzzling me. They want their survival to be equated with the survival of the general citizenry of Gaza. The thing that would be effective, that would neutralize them, would be to drive a wedge between those two things.

    But no, anything less that would be “mush”, as that rhetoric goes. It’s a predictable response from a people who have been harmed in the way the people of Israel have been harmed. To be sure, I am only about 3 links away from actual hostages, and casualties. Thing is, I have known a few Palestinians, too. Some I liked a lot, some I didn’t. So, I really don’t want to get emotional over this. I don’t trust that language, I don’t trust that emotion, I don’t trust myself when I get to that state.

    And, by refusing the emotion, some of y’all are probably not going to trust me. So it goes.

    4
  59. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    The issue I have with Klein’s piece is the same as most pieces by pundits (even smart ones like Klein) when it comes to intractable problems – it’s good at describing the broad context of the problem and why it is so intractable, but it offers nothing in terms of “what should be done” or suggesting an alternative. That goes for what he says about 9/11 and 10/7.

    On the former, I think what he says about the lessons of 9/11 is valid, especially with Iraq, but it’s unclear what that means in the real world regarding what the US should have done differently in Afghanistan – even with the benefit of 22 years of hindsight – or what Israel should do without the benefit of any hindsight. Klein offers neither.

    And some of our mistakes after 9/11 only appear to be mistakes in hindsight. One example is that we thought we were being noble and wise by not just routing AQ and the Taliban but by attempting to create a better Afghanistan with a representative democratic government. The idea was that we had an obligation to leave Afghanistan better than we found it, which would also prevent the return of groups like AQ and the Taliban. We failed in that goal and should have seen it as folly, but that goal did not come from being “mad with fear,” it came from naive good intentions that everyone wants democracy and that the US has a special role in promoting that.

    So what was the alternative to nation-building in Afghanistan?

    – Well, we could just not have done anything, leave the Taliban and AQ in place, and maybe try more cruise missile strikes. That was not only politically impossible but also what we had been doing and was, therefore, already a policy failure.
    – We could have done the punitive campaign but not the nation-building and left the so-called “Northern Alliance” of warlords in charge and left. Or maybe leave behind a few special operations personnel to continue working with the Northern Alliance and going after AQ. Had we done that, critics today would be blaming us for consigning Afghanistan to another bloody civil war or rule by despotic warlords which could bring about the return of the Taliban, as had previously happened.

    No good choices.

    To me, it’s a similar situation with Gaza. Hamas is the de facto government of Gaza for better or worse, and whether the people of Gaza support them or not. Hamas, as the de facto government of Gaza, attacked Israel deliberately and with a brutality rare in history. Hamas knowingly and intentionally opened the door to war and all that followed and will follow from war.

    Ezra Klein, you, me, and everyone else who has commented on this blog do not have an answer for how to attack, punish, or otherwise get rid of Hamas without a lot of innocent suffering in Gaza, especially considering the extent to which Hamas purposely enables that suffering by its actions each and every day.

    The brutal reality is that Hamas ensures there will be maximum civilian suffering. Indeed, this seems to be Hamas’ strategy – start a war against a stronger power and then survive by taking deliberate steps to ensure that lots of civilians will die, that world opinion will blame Israel and force Israel to stop before Hamas is beaten. Seems to be on track to be a successful strategy, given how blame is being apportioned by many.

    4
  60. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Andy: I suppose in regards to Afghanistan the mistake was not, in my mind, going in. The mistake was using the broader 9/11-induced mania to go into Iraq, which diverted resources from Afghanistan and helped lead to the 20 years and ultimate failure of policy there.

    And the lesson for dealing with Hamas is similar: it is one thing to go in and root out a specific enemy. It is yet another to have a longer-term solution.

    And unlike Afghanistan, which is a world away from the US, Gaza is next door to Israel so an Afghanistan-like outcome will not be to Israel’s long-term security benefit.

  61. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    Iraq was a mistake, but it’s not one that Israel can repeat. But we’ll see if – in two years – Israel decides to do something similar.

    And the lesson for dealing with Hamas is similar: it is one thing to go in and root out a specific enemy. It is yet another to have a longer-term solution.

    War is inherently uncertain. No one knows the long term impact much less any kind of solution. When it comes to Ukraine and Russia I’ve continually pushed back against various predictions made with too much confidence. This war is no different. I don’t think anyone can say what is going to happen much less what the effects will be. The long-term solution problem and uncertainty also applies to Hamas, who started this war and whose goals Hamas doesn’t have the power to achieve. They don’t know how this will end either, and have chosen war based on a set of assumptions which will be tested.

    So I think Klein’s warning is an appropriate one to make – it’s always wise to step back and think about what one is doing – but that doesn’t give us any insight into what should or shouldn’t be done.

  62. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Andy:

    So I think Klein’s warning is an appropriate one to make – it’s always wise to step back and think about what one is doing – but that doesn’t give us any insight into what should or shouldn’t be done.

    Indeed.

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