Desperate times

I wrote in May about the growing split between the Israeli government and the Israeli people about the continuation of the war in Gaza, and about the difficulty for Jews in the diaspora to express concerns, or fears, about that war in an environment where every criticism of Israel is exploited by those pursuing an antisemitic campaign against Israel’s very existence.

Both of those trends have become more pronounced since then. According to the latest polls, 80% of the Israeli public now want this war to end. They are exhausted, they don’t see the purpose of the military operations that are still ongoing, and they desperately need the remaining hostages to be brought brought home. And Israel’s image right now is worse than ever, with all that entails for anyone associated with it - which inevitably means Jews.

The evidence that some people in Gaza are starving has become overwhelming. Questions of how many, who they are, and why it is happening, will be fiercely argued. Israel blames Hamas and the UN; everyone else, inevitably, blames Israel. It has often proven difficult to know exactly what is happening in Gaza over the past 21 months, and enough previous allegations of impending starvation have turned out to the groundless that it is understandable why many people are reluctant to believe these latest stories. But it has reached the point where the broad picture is undeniable. Not enough food is reaching not enough mouths, and some people, including children, are starving. And that should be a red line for anyone, whatever else you think about this painfully unrelenting conflict.

Worst of all for those of us who want Israel to survive, prosper and thrive, who always want to believe the best of Israel and can see just how cynical and malevolent Israel’s enemies are, the uncomfortable truth is that these food shortages are the end result, directly or indirectly, of Israel’s decision to block independent food aid from entering Gaza and channel all provision through the American/Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). It’s a difficult thing to accept, and I would like to think it is not deliberate, but the cause and effect are clear enough.

The Israeli/American plan was based on the insight that Hamas controlled or hijacked enough of the aid flowing into Gaza that it had become their main source of revenue. Stop that, so the logic went, and you cut off Hamas’s last lever of control. Having dismantled Hamas as a military force, this would be the pathway to removing them as a political authority, which is the ultimate goal of the war. It might have seemed like a clever idea - in theory.

However, whether this works in theory is moot: in practice, it has been an absolute disaster. Day after day, Palestinian civilians have been killed trying to access food at the GHF food distribution points. Even if the numbers are exaggerated, and whether the IDF, American contractors, or Hamas are responsible for the shootings - there is evidence for all three playing a role - it is obviously not working as it should. And beyond the ongoing problem of shootings at the GHF distribution sites, it is clear that not enough food is reaching enough people, regularly enough, to feed everyone. This is the risk with using food supply as a strategic tool of warfare: people go hungry as a result, and it tends to be the ones without guns who go hungry first. Once Israel decided to take responsibility (via its partners) for feeding every Palestinian in Gaza, if that fails then the failure falls on Israel’s shoulders. The international pressure Israel is now inevitably and predictably facing, including from friends and allies, means that even if you don’t care about the morality of it all, the strategy will fail because Israel will be forced to allow in more food from other sources, and it will be back to square one.

It may well be the case that Hamas is to blame for all of this: that Hamas is creating the problems at the GHF distribution points, and Hamas is either commandeering the other aid that exists in Gaza or making it too unsafe for others to access it. There are reports of 950 UN food trucks laying idle in another part of Gaza, for want of someone to distribute their contents. If this is correct - if it is all indeed Hamas’s doing - then that is scant consolation. It would mean that Hamas still has more influence over what happens in Gaza than the IDF does, to the extent that it is able to subvert and defeat the central plank of Israel’s current strategy. It’s a sobering thought, given all the warring of the past 21 months, all the lives taken and lost, all the ground conquered, held, relinquished and then re-conquered, that Hamas might still have this power, after everything. It makes you wonder what is being achieved by continuing the war at all, at this point.

The argument that Hamas doesn’t care, that they welcome the suffering of their own people, and that they benefit when people in the West protest about it, is true but also meaningless. Of course Hamas is a disgusting, malign, cynical entity. Of course they are right now stalling on a ceasefire deal even while their own people are dying. This is exactly what Hamas is like, and always will be. Israel knows this, and it should be priced in that Hamas will behave in this way, even to the point of allowing Palestinians to die. There’s no point appealing to Hamas’s better nature when they don’t have one. Israel is capable of amazing achievements, as it showed in its campaigns against Hizbollah and Iran. Zionism is all about Jewish self-empowerment (not Jewish power per se, which is different) and the idea that Israel should control its own destiny. Blaming others, especially the antisemites and Islamists of Hamas, is not a very Zionist thing to do.

Nor does Hamas’s undoubted role in this disaster compel Israel, or those of us watching from afar, to dispense with our own compassion. It may seem hard, given the atrocities of October 7, the videos of Palestinians celebrating on that day, and the ongoing, unbearable trauma of the remaining hostages, to care. But compassion is an essential part of our own humanity, and a child is a child, whoever they are. On Passover, it is customary to remember the suffering of the Egyptians who persecuted our ancestors, even as they deserved their retribution. Arguments that ordinary Palestinians deserve whatever they get not only contravene modern humanitarian standards: they go against ancient Jewish values too.

The whole situation, whichever way you look at it, is awful, and difficult to stomach. The greatest issue here is the immediate suffering of ordinary Gazan civilians and the fact that fifty hostages remain in Gaza, held in unimaginable conditions (and if previous evidence is anything to go by, almost certainly starving too). Besides this, the angst that this situation is causing diaspora Jews seems rather trivial. But I write about antisemitism, and more broadly about the impact this conflict has on diaspora Jews. For those of us who know and love Israel as a country and a people, this is not something we can ignore or simply explain away, not least because it has an impact on us too. The enduring levels of antisemitism are testament to that.

Meanwhile, every day, people are still dying in Gaza: Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. You have to ask what they are dying for by this stage. The taking of a human life ought to be an act of utmost gravity, only justified by necessity. After October 7, Israel retained that justification, with full legitimacy to wage war in response to the atrocities of that day. Military experts who visited Gaza and inspected the IDF’s operations felt reassured that its operational methods were broadly in line with Western standards. But now? It’s hard to see any strategic purpose to further loss of life. It doesn’t bring the expulsion of the remnants of Hamas any closer, nor does it rescue any more hostages. It lacks the support of a growing majority of Israelis, and it has done untold damage to the reputation and image of Israel abroad - and with it, to the standing of Jews around the world. The sooner a viable and acceptable solution is found, with an end to the suffering of all involved, the better for everyone.