Twenty-Fourth Report

            Israel lost big-time on October 7, 2023, with Hamas’ murder of over 1200 people, the kidnapping of 240 others, and the destruction of several residential communities near Gaza.  Israel also knew, in the wake of the October 7 debacle, that it was facing enormous obstacles and uncertainties in ensuring its future security.  The first security priority became prevention of future incursions by uprooting the embedded Hamas military apparatus in Gaza, as Hamas had sworn to repeat its murderous incursions in order to destroy Israel.  All the apprehended costs of a Gaza land invasion have materialized along with some unanticipated complications.

              For starters, Hamas’ tunnel network of underground attack, storage, command, and weapons-manufacturing centers has proven vaster and more elaborate than anticipated.  After 6 months, Israeli forces have destroyed around 60% of opposition soldiers and tunnel infrastructure, but at an enormous cost of 250 Israeli soldiers’ lives, thousands of Gazan civilian collateral casualties, and the dislocation of most of Gaza’s population.  Moreover, to complete the elimination of the Hamas military threat from Gaza, Israel would have to invade Rafiah (where Hamas’ smuggling tunnels are located, but where more than a million Gazan civilian refugees are currently massed).  A key question is whether Israel has already sufficiently eliminated Hamas’ military threat to warrant a war cessation.  The answer depends in part on availability of alternative means to foreclose arms smuggling into Gaza and that depends, in turn, on Egypt’s willingness to cooperate.   

            A further key issue is how to administer Gaza without reinstituting Hamas’ control of the civilian institutions critical to tasks like food distribution, policing of public travel and safety, operation of schools, and ultimately reconstruction of the devastated areas.  The Netanyahu idea of Palestinian tribal or respected family responsibility is a failure.  It’s apparent that outside Arab countries (e.g., Egypt and the United Arab Emirates) must be enlisted in a future administration — as well as non-Hamas Palestinians. 

            The Biden administration sees the Palestinian Authority (PA) as the appropriate non-Hamas Palestinian source to participate in post-war administration of Gaza.  The PA constitutes a highly problematic administrative source, though there may be no better solution.  The PA is widely regarded among Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank as a corrupt and inept entity. 

The PA lacks credibility among Israelis as well.  Rather than embracing a peaceful solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the PA has, in recent years, been encouraging and incentivizing violence.  In the wake of October 7, it has failed to condemn either Hamas’ declared goal of Israel’s annihilation or Hamas’ barbarous tactics exhibited that day.  For now, the prevailing atmosphere of distrust and suspicion undermines any hope for a long-term peaceful solution to the conflict. Any such solution needs significant change of leadership and public sentiment on both sides.

Another unanticipated complication to the Israel/Hamas war derives from Iran’s massive missile and drone attack on Israel.  Israel well knew that it faced Iran’s violent proxies on its northern fronts – Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.  Yet Iran’s direct aerial assault on April 13 constituted a “game-changing escalation” (to quote Thomas Friedman in the NYT). 

Mass media (e.g., the NYT and CNN) offered a myopic “rationalization” of Iran’s launch of 350 missiles and drones, citing Israel’s prior attack on an Iranian “diplomatic mission” or “consular compound” in Damascus, Syria.  You might think from that description that Israel had targeted and liquidated Iranian civilians in charge of passports and visas to Tehran.  In fact, Israel’s assault pinpointed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers in charge of routing arms to Iran’s terroristic proxies in Lebanon and Syria.  Not a single Iranian civilian casualty was reported.  Those IRGC officers were appropriate targets in Israel’s “shadow war” with Iran. 

Even though Israel (with considerable allied help) successfully intercepted all the incoming munitions, the Iranian aerial assault serves as a stark reminder of the existential threats surrounding Israel.  Iran still has over 2,000 long-range missiles and large numbers of drones.   Israel’s anti-missile systems are effective, but also enormously expensive to maintain and resupply.  Continuing anti-missile cooperation from places like Jordan and Saudi Arabia are by no means assured.  Israel’s retaliation – a missile assault on an air base in Iran – was a modest effort to deter further Iranian bombardments by reminding the Iranians that their missile defenses are less effective than Israel’s.  Israel couldn’t wait for implementation of Thomas Friedman’s suggested “massive, sustained global initiative to isolate Iran.” (NYT, 4/15/24).

The last “unanticipated complication” I will mention is the distressing harm flowing from the ultra-nationalist bloc to whom Benjamin Netanyahu’s fumbling coalition is linked.  Itamar Ben Gvir continues apace in undermining Israel’s best interests. As minister of interior security supervising the border police, he continues to coddle the small percentage of West Bank settlers seeking to disadvantage and intimidate nearby Palestinian residents.  He has established a special police unit to discourage not the violent settlers, but rather the left-wing “anarchists” who document abuses against the Palestinians (“false complaints” against Jews, he says).  Even more ominously, Ben Gvir is pushing to facilitate Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, thus undermining the “status quo” arrangement that has prevailed for 75 years and to which Jordan is a party.  A more provocative gesture toward the Moslem world is hard to imagine.  

This is my last report from Tel Aviv, as I will be returning to the U.S. within days.  My current mailing list was premised on observations from the vantage point of Tel Aviv and I will reuse that mailing list if and when I resume my reports from Tel Aviv in September.   Over the next 5 months, I plan to sporadically draft blog-length commentaries on Israeli/American issues from the vantage point of Hoboken, NJ.  If you wish to be included on a mailing list for those pieces, just let me know at nlc64@alumni.princeton.edu.  

Twenty-Third Report

            Just when you think that the scene has reached rock bottom, it gets more dismal.  The horrific drone attack killing 7 humanitarian food workers in Gaza left people here in shock wondering how that calamity could have occurred.  Israelis were confident it couldn’t have been a purposeful act, while much of the world was willing to attribute malicious intent to IDF forces. Mass media saw the incident as reinforcing a widespread “indiscriminate killing” calumny.  The latest IDF report is that serious misjudgments and deviations from protocol did occur and several officers have been dismissed.  Too little, too late. 

Heightened anxiety also flows from Iran’s newest threats of retaliation following Israel’s liquidation of a high-level Iranian revolutionary guards’ commander in Syria.  That operation was fully understandable, given the targeted commander’s integral role in transferring weaponry to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria.  But Israeli civil defense authorities have issued a strong alert.  So we are stocking up on batteries, flashlights, and water anticipating a possible retaliatory attack on civilian infrastructure.

            In the meantime, Israelis are still bearing the yoke of Benjamin Netanyahu’s fumbling coalition.  Anti-coalition demonstrations have resumed and Tamar and I dutifully appeared last Saturday evening at the protest in Tel Aviv.  After many months of wartime silence, we resumed our public denunciation of Netanyahu while this time demanding only prompt new elections.  As expected, coalition supporters have branded such demonstrations as “disloyal” in a time of warfare.  We, like most demonstrators, try to stress the issue of elections and the necessity of rebuilding confidence in leadership.  Yet that message gets blurred by some demonstrators’ demand for a prompt deal to return captured hostages at virtually any cost to the current war effort and to the intended destruction of Hamas’ military capabilities.  Benny Gantz, a current member of the war cabinet, subscribes to our pro-election focus.  Gantz has come out in favor of advancing elections to September 2024 in order to restore faith in leadership while still not necessarily acquiescing in Hamas’ continued entrenchment in Gaza.

              As you can sense from these reports, public morale here is low and dejection is widespread.  Perhaps we (and you) can draw some consolation and inspiration from the multiplicity of heroic stories constantly emerging from this Israel/Hamas war.  In my second report, I noted the extraordinary valor of Inbal Rabin-Lieberman, the 26 year-old combat veteran and security coordinator at Kibbutz Nir Am near Gaza.  On October 7, she organized and supervised a 12-person team that kept 12-15 Hamas terrorists at bay for several hours until Israeli soldiers arrived and killed the attackers.  Also on October 7, an all female tank unit was among the first responders to the massive near-Gaza Hamas incursion.  That unit engaged terrorists for 17 hours near two kibbutzim (Holit and Sufa), preventing what would have been many more Israeli casualties.  I had also mentioned in my second report the extraordinarily courageous conduct of Bedouin drivers who drove vehicles through live fire to reach and rescue scores of young people fleeing the desert concert scene where Hamas murdered 365 of the spectators. 

            For the moment, I want to highlight a different minority with whom I more closely identify – older men.  For example, consider 61 year-old retired general Noam Tibon.  On October 7, Tibon grabbed a gun and drove south toward Kibbutz Nahal Oz where his journalist son, Amir, and 2 young granddaughters were trapped in their cottage’s reinforced “safe room.”  Tibon reached the kibbutz and joined other Israelis in door to door combat until 10 hours later he flung open the safe room door as one granddaughter remarked “Grandpa is here!” 

            Older men were also among the people who presented themselves for reserve duty upon the outbreak of this war despite not having been called up for duty.  Yizhar Ginaton is a 79 year-old retired officer who had served full-time in the military from 1962 to 1986, including a stint in the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur war in 1973.   Following October 7, 2023, Yizhar volunteered for reserve duty and is still serving as a civil defense liaison person between the IDF and local emergency agencies in Rishon le Tzion. 

Older men were also among the considerable number of ex-IDF troops living abroad who rushed back to Israel to bolster reserve forces even though not called up.   Itzik Mishal is a 71 year-old born in Israel who moved to Miami with his family at age 14 in 1966.  In 1973, while a business school student in Florida, he flew to Israel, became a lone soldier, and served as a tank commander.  Mishal had long ago returned to his Miami residence, but following October 7, 2023, he returned to Israel and, as a volunteer, served in a logistical unit of the armored corps stationed for several months in the Golan Heights. 

            These stories about the elderly strike a responsive chord with me, a fellow traveler. They by no means erode the countless heroic stories emanating from the younger ranks.  The most heart-rending of these chronicles are perhaps among the eulogies.  Yet dozens of soldiers have been seriously wounded, have undergone extensive treatment and rehabilitation, and at the end of the process have insisted on returning to their fighting units.  They exhibit an amazing and inspiring determination to fight and persist.  With that kind of dedication to Israel’s welfare, there is still hope of overcoming the looming threats and hardships.