A Chain to Be Broken: A Chronicle of Violence
In 1929, as part of a wave of violence that swept through Mandatory Palestine, false rumors reached the mixed city of Safed claiming that Zionist Jews (“Muscovites”) had killed Arabs who went to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque (“Al-Haram”) as part of an effort to take control of the Western Wall (“Al-Buraq”). In response, and what they perceived as a “revolt for honor”, the city’s Arabs quickly organized and began massacring their Jewish neighbors. Eighteen were killed, and 80 were injured. Among the injured was a five-year-old boy named Israel, who later recounted the events:
“The Arabs pelted the house, windows, and shutters with hundreds of stones. They struck the doors and shutters with large clubs and threw burning torches at the windows. The house began to burn. The shutters, curtains, and even my mother’s and sister’s nightgowns caught fire. The Arabs piled up heaps of stones outside the doors so we couldn’t open them and escape. The house started to burn. The three of us—my mother, my sister, and I—broke into tears and screams.”
Fortunately for Israel, his mother, and his sister, family friends managed to break down the back door of the house and smuggle them to a shelter used by many of the city’s attacked Jews. Israel grew up and joined the Jewish Brigade in 1942. He was stationed in Italy and fought against German and Austrian divisions. Later, he arrived in Germany, where, in his words: “We rampaged. We carried out pogroms against Germans.” After World War II, Israel returned to his homeland and joined the ranks of the Haganah. According to him, during the 1948 Palestine civil war—referred to by some as the “War of Liberation” and by others simply as “the Catastrophe”—he replaced the (well deserved) Germans with Arabs and acted as follows:
“I shot them with my personal machine gun, and with every burst that hit, I added: Take this and take more. This is the blood vengeance for the Jews of Safed. I believed it was my right and duty to exact Arab blood for the murdered of Safed. To this day, I believe revenge is a moral duty.”
This Israel was Israel Tal, a former IDF general, deputy chief of staff, and one of the developers of the Merkava tank. Some regard him as one of the greatest armored warfare commanders in history. Tal participated in several of Israel’s wars, including the Six-Day War, during which Israel captured the Western Wall—the same wall in whose name the Arabs of Safed attacked his family—and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in whose name Gazans attacked their Israeli neighbors across the border on October 7.
Tal’s story is just one of many forming the endless chain of violence created by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over nearly 150 years of fluctuating intensity. Its latest links can be found in the Gaza Strip and the surrounding Israeli communities.
Gaza emerges from the 2024 war as an island of rubble. According to the Palestinian Authority’s Health Organization (whose reliability is disputed by Israeli and Western sources), the death toll in Gaza stands at 46,000. According to the medical journal The Lancet, by the end of June 2024, 64,000 had died in Gaza. The humanitarian aid organization Gisha estimates 45,000 deaths in Gaza. Additionally, various estimates suggest that 1.9 million people were displaced during the war, while Gaza’s population numbers about 2.1 million.
Though I do not present estimates from Israeli right-wing organizations (as none were found), for a more comprehensive picture, one can turn to the description by the most popular mainstream right-wing commentator in Israel, Amit Segal, who wrote the following impressions during a journalistic visit to Jabalia:
“Images cannot convey the scale of destruction, from horizon to horizon. In the northern Gaza Strip, mostly mounds of concrete rubble, sand dunes, massive trash heaps, and packs of starving dogs remain. Aside from IDF soldiers, there are almost no humans left.”
Throughout the war, senior defense officials, speaking anonymously, emphasized the importance of formulating a plan for “the day after” in Gaza. The prevailing assessment (still relevant) is that a lack of a clear plan for the Strip’s governance will lead to Hamas’s resurgence, fueled by Gazans’ anger and thirst for revenge against Israelis.
Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz is famous for saying, “War is the continuation of politics by other means”. From a rational perspective, war is not an end but a means to achieve political goals. Israel’s declared and official policy goal is “the collapse of Hamas.”
Indeed, during the war, the IDF destroyed an unprecedented number of Hamas’s military infrastructure, eliminated its leadership, and decimated its ranks. But does this mean Hamas has been toppled? It seems, according to experts and informed individuals, that achieving this goal requires the establishment of a sovereign alternative for the Gaza Strip and the creation of a massive reconstruction effort to turn the “mounds of concrete rubble” into a place fit for human habitation. Hamas will cling to Gazan society as long as no alternative is offered—whatever that may be.
This is an organization that will find its place in the hearts of every Gazan who sees no path other than violence, killing, and revenge. Evidence of this can be found in recent videos showing destitute Gazan children shouting with euphoria that they are “the children of Mohammed Deif”. Mohammed Deif—who embezzled aid funds from Western governments, the United Nations, and human rights organizations for 20 years, leaving Gazans to starve—and used those resources to prepare for a campaign he knew would leave his people destitute, staggering amid a scene of destruction and death.
Such blindness, as seen among these Gazan children, can only be attributed to the desire for revenge they harbor against Israel and its forces—a desire more powerful than many human instincts, one that people who have suffered horrific traumas often confuse with a moral obligation, as General Tal could attest.
The State of Israel must make every effort to offer these children an alternative to revenge; otherwise, the chain of violence will lengthen, stretching into the next decade and possibly the next century.
How should this reconstruction be undertaken? One of the popular terms in Israel regarding the future of Gaza is “de-Nazification,” or its variations: “de-Hamasization,” “de-Islamization,” and “de-Jihadization.” This term refers to the need to minimize Palestinian attraction to Hamas and various Islamist ideologies, encouraging a pragmatic approach that prioritizes personal well-being over harm to Israelis. Indeed, such a process is essential, as any future of relative peace between the peoples depends on it.
What is puzzling, however, is that many of those who use such terms oppose mobilizing Israeli state resources for the reconstruction of Gaza. They argue that funneling funds to rebuild Gaza after the horrific attack its residents perpetrated against Israeli communities on October 7 is akin to “rewarding terrorism”. This perspective does not align with the approach taken by the US government when it implemented the Marshall Plan—the original de-Nazification program.
The Marshall Plan, named after General George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the US Army during World War II, was the program for rebuilding Western Europe after the war. Under his command, the US channeled $2.7 billion to France, $1.4 billion to West Germany, and $1.2 billion to Italy. Adjusted for current values, the US invested approximately $79.5 billion in rebuilding it’s yesterday’s fiercest adversaries. The program’s architect was a distinguished general, and the US president overseeing it was Harry Truman—the man who ordered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Their view was that the US had a duty to invest as much as possible in rebuilding Western Europe to draw it into the democratic bloc and curb the spread of communism in the region. Similarly, if Israel wishes to sever the Palestinians from Islamist ideologies, it must work to establish a coalition—including itself—that will lead and oversee Gaza’s reconstruction. For this mission, Saudi Arabia—viewing the Muslim Brotherhood (to which Hamas belongs) as a clear ideological enemy—and the US, which has economic interests in the region, must be enlisted. Only in this way can Hamas be toppled, and the next disaster prevented.