One Year On

A year after the October 7th attacks, has anything changed?

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Yesterday the world recognized the anniversary of the attacks on Israeli citizens on October 7th. Both major party candidates in the United States participated in memorials.

Since the attacks last year, Israel has embarked on an aggressive campaign against Hamas in Gaza (and some of the West Bank), as well as Hezbollah to the north in Lebanon. In its ruthless elimination of these terrorists and their proxies, Israel has also caused a significant number of civilian casualties.

The morality of specific IDF engagements and actions are highly debatable, with the Israeli forces being justified in some cases and wildly out of line in others. But this is not the article for discussing specific cases.

Rather, I want to discuss how we have come to talk about the conflict over the past year, what we can learn, and how we can engage on difficult questions on better terms.

The Intractable Pro-Palestine Problem

In the wake of the attacks one year ago, many pro-Palestine influencers and voices celebrated. The attacks were hailed as an act of resistance, or decolonization. One infamous tweet from that day shows quite clearly what the attitude has been on much of the pro-Palestine left:

And since that day, much of these same people have bounced between celebrating their “resistance fighters taking on Israel and winning” and proclaiming that Israel is engaging in an active genocide against their helpless population:

By tweeting and shouting these two contradictory statements at the same time, these bad actors have shown themselves to be unreliable and acting in bad faith. And these proclamations are not the only ones; videos and posts like the ones below have been used to show the disastrous effects of IDF strikes and warfare in the area:

Videos and posts like this show Gaza before October 7th as a beautiful, vibrant, bustling community on the water. And my heart aches that this beauty has been destroyed. But at the same time, these groups also proclaim that the attacks on October 7th were justified acts of resistance from a people trapped in an “open air prison” or even a “concentration camp”:

So, on the left, we have groups of activists and partisans that are willing to use any and every story, narrative, motif, etc. to paint Israel in a bad light. Whether the Palestinian people are brave soldiers on the march or helpless, emaciated people cornered by the evil Zionists, all that matters is that Jews are the villains.

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Bibi’s Career Protection Racket

At the same time, much of the situation and the dialogue around it has been exponentially worsened by the Israeli government. Specifically, by Bibi Netanyahu.

In October 1973, Egyptian and Syrian forces launched a surprise attack on Israel, setting off the Yom Kippur War. In the following two weeks, Israel responded with force, as did the international community. Soviet and US forces engaged in standoffs as they tried to support their allies. The world teetered on the brink of a major conflict.

Then Israel won. After pushing back the Arab militaries, Israel expanded its footprint by nearly 1000 square miles, including the Golan Heights. A success of this level disrupted the status quo in the Middle East, cementing Israel as a major power capable of defending itself.

But the people were not happy. In the wake of the greatest Israeli intelligence failure in the country’s history, Golda Meir was pressured to resign.

Fifty years later, an Israeli intelligence failure allowed for Hamas terrorists to cross into Israel and murder over a thousand innocent civilians. And it is guaranteed that Netanyahu has looked to history to tell him that simple victory is not enough to protect his political career.

In the wake of the October 7th attacks, nearly 3 out of every 4 Israelis felt Netanyahu should resign:

For Netanyahu to not go the way of Meir, it is not enough for Israel to win this conflict; from Netanyahu’s perspective, the incentive exists for Israel to totally and irrevocably dominate the Palestinian people.

Because for Bibi and Likud, it’s not just a matter of political power; it’s one of avoiding prison and generational public embarrassment.

In 2019, Netanyahu was indicted on three corruption charges. Since then, he has been in a fight for survival. In 2020, Bibi requested to be granted immunity from prosecution, only to rescind that request when it became clear it would not happen. In 2022, his Likud party regained power and then passed a controversial law that effectively rendered Netanyahu immune from prosecution so long as he was Prime Minister.

But if he is ousted from power, all of that very easily goes away. Bibi has no interest in an amicable peace, because an amicable peace likely means a prison sentence.

This motivation drives his decisions. It drives his communications. And as the leader of Israel, it drives the communications from the Israeli government.

At the end of this influence chain lies people like you and me.

While pro-Palestine progressives are influenced to incessantly villainize the very existence of an Israeli state, pro-Israel moderates and conservatives are influenced to insist that the Israeli government can do no wrong.

The result is not just an unending conflict with a dense civilian population caught in the crossfire, but a global population picking sides and refusing to acknowledge that the opposing position has even a modicum of merit.

So what do we do?

Guidance can be found in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which effectively ended the conflict between the British government and Irish Republican forces in Northern Ireland known as “The Troubles.”

Much like the current round of intifadas in the Levant, The Troubles lasted for thirty years. And much like the current conflict, The Troubles were a conflict fueled by ethnic, religious, sectarian, and nationalistic divisions.

But while our current discourse has us running into either a pro-Israel or pro-Palestine corner and accepting all of the insane arguments that our “team” makes, the Good Friday Agreement acknowledged that there was a lot of grey in between. The agreement acknowledged, to paraphrase Wikipedia:

  • That some in Northern Ireland wanted to remain a part of the United Kingdom,

  • That some in Northern Ireland, and most in the Republic of Ireland wanted a united country of Ireland, and

  • That both of these views were legitimate.

Where we argue incessantly about who should be driven from what lands and who has a right to commit acts of violence on whom, the greatest blueprint for a lasting peace means accepting that nobody has all of the answers.

My view of the Good Friday Agreement influences my personal position that a two-state solution or something similar is most proper. In the context of The Troubles, that meant:

  • Creating a legislature for Northern Ireland (similar to the Scottish Parliament)

  • Creating a set of bodies that formalized cooperative governance with the Republic of Ireland

  • Creating a set of bodies that formalized cooperative governance with Great Britain

This will likely look different in the Palestinian context. Notably, there is no equivalent of Ireland for the people of Gaza and the West Bank—there is no third-party nation they wish to join.

But again, this is not the post for us to get into specifics and ironing out a hypothetical peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people. That is far beyond my area of expertise, and there are far smarter people at the US State Department that can’t crack that egg.

My point is, though, that we’ve seen long-term conflict resolved with creative statecraft. We’ve seen an Ireland where children can play and grow up not having to fear for their lives or their families’ lives. This same resolution, or a similar one, is possible in the Levant.

But it demands that we acknowledge that each side has some level of merit. The Israeli people have a legitimate desire for a land where they will not be persecuted. And the Palestinian people have a legitimate desire for self-governance. And each side has a legitimate desire to not have rockets constantly illuminating the night sky over its homes.

The Israeli people have a legitimate desire for the remaining hostages to be returned.

The Palestinian people have a legitimate desire for their political prisoners jailed by the IDF to be returned.

The Israeli people have a legitimate desire for Hamas to be disarmed and replaced with a civilian-run government.

The Palestinian people have a legitimate desire for internal Israeli politics to not dictate whether they live or die, and for Netanyahu to go.

The past year has not seen any elevation of our discussion about this conflict.

But maybe, just maybe, making concessions and acknowledgements like this can help us make a little bit of progress in the next year.

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