Intermittent, Selective Attention Or Real Solutions for Gaza and Israel

Never has embracing complexity rather than seeking simple, one-sided, partisan answers, been more urgently needed than about the current, woeful situation in Gaza, the policies of the current Israeli government, and the dangerous, growing maelstrom of Israel-hate assuming violent, global proportions against Israelis and Jews altogether.

First, some facts about Gaza.

There is widespread hunger, malnutrition, and diseases and death that come from malnutrition and hunger in Gaza.

There is a severe lack of potable water.

There is no sanitation system. Personal hygiene is next to impossible. Disease follows. Without adequate food, antibiotics, potable water, otherwise healthy people succumb to things not in themselves fatal.

People already vulnerable– with heart conditions, diabetes, cancer, and all the rest of conditions people have– more readily succumb. As do infants, children, birthing and nursing mothers, the elderly, the many injured.

It is hollow, if true, to say that Hamas is responsible; that they made Gaza an offensive base for operations against Israel, making the entire population captive to that purpose, human shields for Hamas, mere extras to Gaza’s purpose as a base of attack against Israel; that Hamas intentionally embedded themselves in schools, hospitals, mosques, universities and civilian residences; that they started the war. True to restate what their murderous intentions regarding us were and remain, however battered they now are, yet still far from the absurd “surrender” that the uninformed or the wilfully misleading have peddled as an obtainable goal.

Right now, a few miles from wherever we are in this country, it is what it is over there for two million people, the vast majority of whom are babies, children, women, the elderly. It is as hot there as it is here. No showers, fans, never mind, air conditioning. Getting drinking water is an unsure and often unsafe, ongoing struggle.

There needs to be massive intervention not just for the supply of food and other essentials but for its secure its distribution to the population as an end in itself, enforced as realities require. There must be separation of access to food and other essentials from other purposes, to the use of food as a weapon or as a tool to obtain and use weapons. Thus far, this demand has been put entirely on Israel. While that demand is justified, it is obscenely partial.

Hamas is a jihadist mafia. Control of food and other essentials and its distribution in Gaza is Hamas’ key to power, to the funds that keep it going. It seizes supply trucks and their donated contents, takes a huge share for itself, thereby keeping its hold on and recruiting new fighters and violent enforcers of its rule, and sells the rest to Gazans at exorbitant prices– 100% profit to Hamas. Food is utterly reliable in the cynical game Hamas plays, using the needs and suffering of Gazans to assure an ongoing supply to itself for immediate and strategic (its own funding) purposes.

To advocate for massive intervention for the population of Gaza without advocating equally for the replacement of Hamas as the Strip’s governing entity, with a coherent plan of implementation, is, intentionally or not, to serve Hamas, giving them what they desperately need as they struggle to maintain themselves and rebuild their base in Gaza. It is not out of concern for Gazans that Hamas insists on unrestricted entry of — free to them– supplies, no other strings.

To accede to this on Hamas’ terms is to collude with Hamas and its well-rehearsed manipulation of the media, western governments, the UN, “pro-Palestine” demonstrators. It is to participate in Hamas’ use and abuse of the population of Gaza and its suffering for Hamas’ murderous ends.

For the horror truly to end, it has to be both.

Massive intervention to bring essential supplies into Gaza– and an end of Hamas through its replacement in civil governance of Gaza. Just ending its military abilities, now reduced to guerilla actions, however lethal these remain after the massive IDF campaign, is both misleading as a claim and insufficient even if it were achievable. The current Israeli government speaks only of “defeating” Hamas militarily, when it is Hamas’ continued civilian governance that underlies the organization’s military capacities and jihadist, Jew-hating, murderous, ambitions.

For truly different to happen, there must be a fundamental change in Israeli policy, for Israel to engage actively in developing a comprehensive regional plan of states with allied interests– Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel—with the US– each with its own but also common interests, including Gaza’s future without Hamas and Islamic Jihad rule or Israel’s presence there; cemented by the common, imperative, priority on dealing effectively with Iran and stabilizing the whole region.

This is on Israel. Netanyahu has refused to engage any such plan, whether proposed under Biden or since, because he prioritizes his political survival and his coalition partners won’t accept a plan that gets Israel out of Gaza, no presence, military or civilian. In the past few days alone, these partners, whose positions many in Likud share, celebrated openly racist, fascist-theocratic plans for Gaza and for Israel; this, on the public payroll, funded with our taxes. As they send our children to war and simultaneously, fight inventively, fervently, to exempt haredim from army service. They wage no such urgent effort to get the hostages home, but to keep their coalition going, no effort spared. Because that one has real deadlines, in the governing coalition’s definition of “real” and “deadline,” which terms do not apply to the lives of any hostages still alive or to the families of the living and the dead.

This is where the pressure has to go. Not just for food shipment but for a comprehensive regional plan, including a firm, “no” to continued Israeli presence in, occupation of, settlement in, Gaza.

To pressure for a massive emergency effort for Gaza without taking Hamas out of governance there is to guarantee that Gazans and Israelis experience another version of the current horror, that this is but another round. Hamas’ civilian governance underlies its terror regime. It is wholly insufficient to treat this as a military problem, to speak of “demilitarizing” Hamas, while allowing them control of food and supplies.

Yes, the situation in Gaza requires urgent intervention while regional plans won’t be implemented immediately.

But if those advocating urgent intervention don’t couple that with an openly declared recognition that Hamas’s governance in all its manifestations must end and be replaced, their calls only bolster Hamas and do its bidding. There can be no pretending otherwise.

These two issues are inseparable and must be treated as such. Treating them as if they are separate is what keeps the horror going, ensures its perpetuation.

For there to be popular consensus in Israel against the current policies of this government regarding Gaza, we have to hear loudly, clearly, and convincingly that Hamas-Gaza will not just return to being our problem, awaiting the next Oct. 7. That is what Israelis fear– rightly: intermittent, partial attention to a huge, compound, intertwined problem, that ends with Israel’s urgent needs ignored until and unless Israelis are again massacred, when the spotlight turns on us for an instant. The fact that the current Israeli government is a huge part of the problem must not be used to evade what is needed to effect real change, as an excuse to continue on the path of sloppy, partial thinking and action.

Paying intermittent attention– now to the horrors of Oct. 7, now, to the horrors in Gaza– is what keeps all this going. It is Hamas’ ticket to survival and rebuilding.

Hamas is the common denominator to the agonies of Gazans and Israelis. Only concerted attention to both and to solutions that address the urgent needs of both will get us anywhere other than where we’ve been and are.

We all need to hear that it is not Gazans vs Israelis but a practical route to something radically different and better that encompasses us all.