The Deadliness Of Israel's Dead End
How many civilians will have to starve for the "total defeat" of Hamas?
What year do you think the following paragraph was written?
The slow cultural shifts in Israel — toward ever more arrogance, more fundamentalism ... contempt for the Muslim world, military adventurism, and the daily grinding of the Palestinians on the West Bank and pulverization and inhumane blockade of the people of Gaza — well maybe others can explain it. All I can say is: it saddens me, as a longtime lover of the Jewish state. It does not represent the historic mainstream of liberal Jewish society, it is a betrayal of many Jewish virtues that goyim like me deeply admire, and it seems designed for war as some kind of eternal and uplifting state of mind. I hope Israel shifts soon. For Israel’s sake.
January 2010 is the answer (and, of course, I was lambasted as a vicious anti-Semite for writing it). The core reason for my frustration back then was the Israeli government’s refusal to stymie its settlement project in the West Bank for a second, its willingness to kill so many civilians so wantonly in Gaza, and its open attempt to sabotage Obama’s foreign policy in the wake of the Iraq War. I’d long been a strong defender of Israel — how can one not admire the staggering success of the place? — but found it harder and harder to ignore the malfeasance.
And my dismay was rooted in what seemed to me the most plausible explanation for most of what I’d seen in the 21st century: that Israel was clearly aiming to kill the two-state solution for good, attack Iran to retain a nuclear monopoly in the region, annex the West Bank and Gaza for keeps, and, at some point, facilitate mass population transfers of non-Jews out of Israel writ large. I didn’t want to believe that, and there was a taboo against even thinking about it, but I found every other explanation for its long-term trajectory lacking. Yes, there was often a proximate short-term explanation for some new attack or egregiously expansionist policy. But over time? You had to be blind — and many Americans put blinders on — not to see what was going on.
The West Bank settlements were the final proof for me. At some point, I just stopped buying the lie that they were intended for future negotiations, and were not designed to preclude a Palestinian state forever. Of course they weren’t going to be frozen, let alone removed; and of course, that made a Palestinian state impossible. So unless the US made ending the settlements the sine qua non of continuing the alliance, and stopped arming and aiding them, we were effectively complicit in a long, grueling war of ethnic cleansing.
And so we have been. “Effectively complicit” is now, in fact, an understatement. The current president of the US has openly championed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, a policy hailed by a bewildered but thrilled Netanyahu as “revolutionary and creative.”
This is the heart of the current debate, is it not? What exactly is Israel all about? And what has it really been trying to accomplish since the evil pogrom of October 7, 2023? Is it a democracy and refuge for the Jewish people, aiming to live alongside a Palestinian entity, while protecting its citizens from terror? Or is it an expansionist ethno-state, dedicated to the removal of an entire ethnic group from its territories and beyond? It’s both, of course. But as the decades have gone by, the direction from one to the other is as unmistakable as it has become unstoppable.
And it can be argued it was part of the project from the get-go. Here is Bibi Netanyahu’s greatest influence, his beloved father, Benzion, in 2009, from Peter Beinart’s 2012 book, The Crisis of Zionism:
In 2009, at the age of ninety-nine, [Benzion] told the Israeli newspaper Maariv that Israel should retake the Gaza Strip, from which it had withdrawn four years earlier. “We should conquer any disputed territory in the land of Israel … Conquer and hold it, even if it brings us years of war … You don’t return land.”
… In a 2003 book on Zionism’s founders, he … described his proposals for relocating the Arabs of Palestine “to Arabia, Iraq, Syria — anywhere — as long as they will get out of the land of Israel,” without a word of criticism. “The Jews and the Arabs are like two goats facing each other on a narrow bridge. One must jump into the river,” Netanyahu told Maariv in 2009. “What does the Arab’s jump mean?” asked the interviewer, trying to decipher the metaphor. Netanyahu explained: “That they won’t be able to face the war with us, which will include withholding food from Arab cities, preventing education, terminating electrical power and more. They won’t be able to exist and they will run away from here.”
All of that, of course, is now routine Israeli policy on the West Bank, alongside arson, murder, pogroms, theft, and constant humiliation and immiseration of the native Arabs. Israel’s current Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, gets it:
No negotiations. Occupy area after area. War until the end. Encourage emigration.
He opposes allowing any food aid into Gaza at all: “I think at this stage, the only thing you should be sending to Gaza are shells — to bomb, conquer, encourage emigration, and win the war.” Ben-Gvir is not only a minister; his faction controls the government. Or in the words of the sociopathic godmother of the settlements, Daniella Weiss:
They will move. They will move. The Arabs will move. … We want our hostages [back]. So we don’t give them food. We don’t give the Arabs anything. They will have to leave. The world will accept them.
The counter-arguments fail. We are told these voices are not mainstream. But they are in the cabinet and dictate policy (the settlements were just massively expanded again). And the Israeli public is not in revolt. We are told this is just about the “total defeat” of Hamas, and not the further immiseration of Palestinians. But what does “total” mean? There is no Gaza left, to speak of. If Hamas can survive that lunar landscape, even as a ragtag group of young maniacs, and those maniacs still won’t release hostages, Hamas will never be totally defeated by military force.
Israel all but admitted as much by resorting to famine as a weapon this spring. And what’s left of Hamas callously called their bluff. So now, in a battle between two depravities, Israel has to preside over mass starvation in order to achieve its ends. Not an optimal war strategy, as even The Free Press now understands. But as a way to reduce the Arab population in Gaza by death or escape? There is a grim logic to it.
Is the goal the return of the hostages? Not without unconditional Hamas surrender, says Netanyahu. But Hamas controls at best a quarter of Gaza; its leaders are dead; its allies scattered; Arab states have turned on it. At this point, the hostages (also presumably malnourished) are all that Hamas has left. As the founder of the World Central Kitchen, José Andrés, put it, “The blockade that was supposed to pressure what’s left of Hamas only strengthened these gunmen and gangs.”
Is creating a failed state with a starving population a prelude to setting up a non-Hamas Palestinian government to bring back some kind of order after the “total defeat”? Nope: Netanyahu has specifically ruled that out. Is it about keeping him out of jail? If his whole career had not been about attacking Iran, destroying the two-state solution, and forcing all Palestinian Arabs to jump off his father’s bridge, I might be persuaded. But these past two years, he has been living the Benzion dream.
Is all of this Hamas’ fault? In some sense, yes, of course. They started this round, they are beyond depraved, and their willingness to sacrifice children for their theocratic hatred remains despicable. But Israel could have ended the war and claimed victory a year ago; instead, it initiated a blockade to foment hunger, prevented effective food aid groups from operating, made its own food distribution sites death-traps, and provided ration boxes that “lack nutrients that are essential for starving populations, especially children.”
Is all this simply disinformation? Is the Gaza famine a “myth” — as The Free Press insisted a couple of months ago, and as many Israelis still appear to believe. Of course we should keep our skepticism attuned. But reports of alleged horrors — using children as target practice, firing guns, mortars, and even tanks at crowds of civilians — also suggest that what’s been going may be even worse then we now fear. And without any international journalists allowed near the area, how can we know? A military that hides its mass destruction should not be given the benefit of the doubt.
No: Occam’s razor would suggest that this is what it looks like: opportunistic ethnic cleansing, facilitated by mass terror, mass death, and now mass starvation of already shell-shocked civilians. The younger generations in the West (on right and left) can see this, because they lack the memory of an Israel that was once liberal, besieged, and the underdog. They see Israel today as an illiberal, hegemonic bully. And they know, as we all must, that this leaves the US and the West with a choice: do we support Israel as an ongoing exercise in relentless ethnic cleansing, theocratic terror, and constant warfare against its neighbors, or do we not?
Because there is currently no other Jewish state available.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: a discussion and debate with Shannon Minter over trans issues; reader dissents over my piece on Vance’s view of citizenship; five notable quotes from the week in news; 20 pieces on Substack we recommend on a variety of topics; a Mental Health Break of a medley of mirrors; a gorgeous window in Garmisch; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
A new subscriber was nudged by last week’s column:
My Substack subscription budget is finite; I choose paid subscriptions like an oenophile chooses their reds. Balance, complexity, finish, and structure are all important.
Yesterday, on a long flight home from Paris and a two-week European adventure, I upgraded to paid status for the Dish. After two weeks appreciating the many differences and similarities between France, Belgium, Germany, and the US, you gave voice to something I’ve only come to understand through travel abroad. Our culture has the capacity for deep generosity — the kind you described in your piece.
I do not always agree with your opinions — which is precisely why I want to read and listen to more of them. You take great care cultivating your vineyard, and the proof is in the bottles. Cheers!
Most grateful for the support. From a renewing subscriber:
I like the way you assume that your readers already know the basic facts about all the subjects you take up. That implies a close, intimate relationship with your readers. You know who they are. You know you can trust them to be informed, and to already have their own opinions on the top subjects in the news. It feels like a conversation with a friend who is passionate about his topics of conversation but is civil, well-mannered enough to acknowledge and even welcome differences of opinion or corrections of facts.
I’ve disagreed with you about this, that, or the other — many times — but I usually feel simply grateful for the Dish’s existence. Long may it flourish, and publish.
It’s a privilege to do this, for both of us at the Dish. And please subscribe. Every sub counts.
New On The Dishcast: Shannon Minter
Shannon is a civil rights attorney, most notably as the lead counsel for same-sex couples in the landmark marriage case in California. He’s currently the legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, where he is leading several federal court challenges to the trans military ban and other new federal policies targeting transgender people.
I’ve long tried to find an interlocutor on the new radical direction of trans activism and its hostile takeover of the gay rights movement. Shannon was the first to agree, and we got along great. In some areas, we strongly agree; in others, we strongly disagree; but we can talk and not hate each other. If we want to restore liberal democracy, this is the way.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the new “conversion therapy,” and how trans activists need to adopt persuasion as a tactic. That link also takes you to commentary on our recent pods with Tara Zahra on anti-globalization and Paul Elie on crypto-religion in pop music. Readers also debate my column over JD Vance’s view of American identity and share their own stories.
In our debate over kids seeking puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, Shannon emphasized a recent study out of Utah that he wanted to share with Dish readers:
Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services and experts from the state's leading health organizations concluded from a study of thousands of transgender people that gender-affirming care generated “positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes.”
He recommended a few more links:
This is an amicus brief from clinical guidelines experts about the WPATH standards of care. This is an amicus brief from Drs. Erica Anderson and Laura Edwards-Leeper, who are often invoked to justify banning this care and who have clarified here that they adamantly oppose such bans.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Scott Anderson on the Iranian Revolution, Jill Lepore on the history of the Constitution, Katie Herzog on drinking your way sober, and Johann Hari interviewing me. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
Dissents Of The Week
A reader writes:
I believe you may have misinterpreted Vance’s remark that you quoted:
But at the same time, that answer would also reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.
Your interpretation begins, “I presume Vance is referring here to the many Americans whose forefathers backed the monarchy in the War of Independence or who once defended slavery as an American principle.”
But I think this presumption is incorrect. It sounds to me that Vance is referring to those Americans whose statements or actions — excessive ones, as judged by the contemporary ADL — make them seem “beyond the pale,” in terms of the American creed. From the ADL point of view, they basically can/should be excluded, because they’re in a fundamental sense un-American.
Vance seems to be saying that even these folks should nevertheless be included, in part because their ancestry dates back to America’s early conflicts. I’m not trying to defend or criticize Vance’s argument, but simply trying to understand it.
So is this reader:
I just have a quibble with your interpretation of the Vance quote, which based solely on your excerpt, suggests to me something darker. It reads as if he’s worried about “under-inclusiveness” of the creedal definition in the case of a present-day US citizen who doesn’t fully buy into the creed.
I do not think Vance is primarily talking about the views or actions of the older family line. Contra your example, that person’s ancestors could have fought for the Revolutionary or Union sides, but if the contemporary descendent believes in, for example, Christo-fascism or two-tier citizenship for certain groups (or other views that would be extremist per the ADL), Vance nevertheless suggests that s/he is still fully American — at least so long as such person has the right genealogy, with ancestors who for centuries have resided in the US.
In other words, pity the poor contemporary “Heritage Americans” with extremist views. Or in Hillbilly Elegy terms, if Vance’s Scotch-Irish family were to include someone with Klan-ish sympathies, they are just as much a part of the nation as anyone else. And perhaps he would assert — whether because of ancestral military service, generations-long rootedness, and/or the “right” ethnicity and religion — that such a person has more of a claim to American-ness than a recent immigrant who fully endorses our founding documents and a creed of liberty and equality. He’s saying his ancestors’ past service to, and membership in, the nation gives the now-living extremist a pass to reject the American creed.
As always, please keep the dissents coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com. Much more discussion of Vance’s speech is over on the pod page. Maybe I could try for a Hail Mary and ask the veep to come on the Dishcast to talk about it all. No harm in trying.
In The ‘Stacks
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as tariffs and trade deals, the war in Gaza, and nitazenes. A few examples:
Asha Rangappa looks at Trump’s pattern of “self pardon by proxy.”
A sex scandal in Canadian hockey is a “failure in feminist ethics,” says Marilyn Simon.
Here’s a list of the substacks we recommend in general — call it a blogroll. If you have any suggestions for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday at 11.59 pm (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month sub if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the VFYW). Contest archive is here. Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. Here’s a followup on last week’s contest:
As soon as I saw “queenies” in the headline, I knew it could only be (as the song goes) “my own dear Ellan Vannin, with its green hills by the sea.”
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for eight years now (after a ten-year stint in Beijing!), and seeing this view of my hometown warmed my heart. I was born and raised in Douglas, and my earliest memory is breaking my kneecap falling off the horse-drawn trams that go up and down that promenade.
I wonder who sent this … odds are we’re direct blood relatives!
Thank you for this lovely moment.
See you next Friday.