Violence in the Holy Land always reverberates through the great mass of humanity, but this latest breathtaking explosion of brutality feels uniquely perilous, and extraordinarily close to home. Far beyond the scalding Middle East, the war has already fractured the American left and roiled Ivy League college campuses, led to massive street protests in London, Istanbul, Washington, and New York City, and even what can only be described as medieval-style pogroms in the Russian Caucasus.
And it will all likely get worse, as Israel’s war against Hamas continues, and the human cost rises inexorably higher, the pain spreading outward.
Predictably, antisemitism has reached terrifying levels, accompanied by another scourge, Islamophobia. Hatred is rife. People in nations far from the fighting are angry and activated, as the entire world revolves around crushing events in Israel and Gaza, and an intractable conflict going back some two thousand years. But this latest iteration promises to be extremely bloody, and impossible to escape. Smartphones will capture the agony and the combat in real time, as propagandists blast useful bits across the globe via social media, constructing competing narratives with images of suffering, savagery, and death.
As the IDF plunges deeper into the Gaza Strip, in an “intensifying” operation designed to “wipe Hamas off the map,” according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the conflict is exploding outward with incredible velocity along predictable cultural, ethnic, religious, and political lines. It’s difficult to imagine anything bridging this gaping divide, as humanity convulses and cracks, riven by ancient hatreds and catastrophic violence, and a dwindling capacity for mutual understanding or even comprehension.
Counterstrike
Following Hamas’s October 7th massacre of 1400 Israelis, with hundreds more kidnapped and taken into Gaza, the IDF has bombed targets throughout Gaza in a punishing air campaign, amid reports of 8,000 dead Palestinians, and a dire humanitarian crisis, and that’s before the ground operation has even begun in earnest. Meanwhile, Hamas continues firing mostly ineffective rockets into Israel, many of which are intercepted and neutralized by Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome air defense system.
The IDF continues to move armor and infantry deeper into Gaza, encircling Gaza City, Hamas’s stronghold, and brutal fighting is expected to continue there as the IDF attempts to dislodge Hamas in treacherous urban warfare that’s already claimed several Israeli casualties.
The IDF rescued its first Israeli hostage, Ori Megidish, a female soldier who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th. Tragically, the IDF also located the skull of another young woman who was at the decimated Nova Music Festival, where at least 260 young people were slaughtered by Hamas. Shani Louk, a dual German-Israeli citizen, had probably been shot in the head, her naked body paraded by militants through Gaza after her death.
The endless violence is overwhelming to the senses. It feels apocalyptic; for the Israeli civilians, kidnapped and murdered on October 7th, and the Palestinian families suffering Israel’s reprisals, caught between Hamas and the IDF. Today, the IDF bombed a densely packed refugee camp in northern Gaza in the Jabaliya neighborhood, leaving a massive crater. They were apparently targeting a Hamas commander involved in the planning of the October 7th attack, though the collateral damage was extensive, as in the rest of the IDF’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza. It’s unclear how long Washington or the wider world will tolerate this much carnage.
Antisemitism
Meanwhile, the world has seen startling images of Jews being hunted by enraged crowds chanting “Allahu Akbar,” at an airport in predominantly Muslim Dagestan in the Russian Caucasus, searching for a flight arriving from Israel. Apparently, this horror was organized on Telegram. In solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinian cause, hundreds of young Muslim men were determined to find and kill arriving Jews. Several people died in the melee, dozens were injured, and about 60 were arrested.
While these medieval rampages are evoking a painful history of past pogroms targeting Jews, the West is seeing pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have veered into open antisemitism, with crowds chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” One need only glance at a map to understand that this phrase implies the destruction and erasure of the entire state of Israel, which exists between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. It’s not exactly a two-state solution, though this chant is widely heard on the American left, along with calls for “Intifada,” or a violent uprising against civilians, as in the past two intifadas.
And the rhetoric continues to darken, tilting toward calls for violence against Jews. In Ithaca, New York, Jews are being advised to avoid the Center for Jewish Living at Cornell University, amid credible online threats made against them there, and febrile demonstrations in recent days. At Tulane University in New Orleans, a video emerged of young men wearing Kaffiyeh’s over their faces and holding Palestinian flags. They attempted to burn an Israeli flag, and beat several Jewish counter-protesters.
Antisemitic graffiti has been discovered everywhere from wealthy Montauk, Long Island and Beverly Hills, California to Sacramento, California, as people vent their rage at American Jews in anger over Isreal’s increasingly bloody war in Gaza, and what is a grievous toll on civilians caught in the crossfire. Today, FBI Director Christopher Wray reported that antisemitism has reached what he called “historic levels” in the United States, with antisemitic attacks up 400% since the October 7th attack in Israel, according to the ADL.
A time for war
While Hezbollah is sending a limited barrage of missiles, artillery, and sniper fire across the Lebanese border into northern Israel, it’s ideological patron and primary financier, Iran, appears reticent to see a wider war. For now, a regional war seems unlikely, though that could change rapidly depending on events in the Gaza Strip, and what is likely to be a steady stream of human devastation there.
On Israeli’s southern border, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have fired missiles into Israel; American Navy ships intercepted several incoming missiles, and Israel intercepted more today.
At a news conference yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu rejected calls for a ceasefire, saying “This is a time for war.” The Biden administration is backing that position, though it is calling for humanitarian corridors in Gaza. Netanyahu compared Israel’s struggle against Hamas with America’s fight against Japan and Germany during WWII, and Al Qaeda and ISIS in more recent years. He’s been under fire in recent days for a tweet blaming Israeli military and intelligence agencies for Hamas’s devastating attack, though he later deleted that post, and apologized for it.
In any case, this war is just getting started. Israel was savagely attacked by Hamas, in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and the IDF won’t rest until Hamas is no longer in power in Gaza. This will require an extensive campaign, though as officials in the Biden administration, and President Biden himself, have noted, Israel must observe the laws of war and do everything in its power to avoid collateral damage. It’s unclear how exactly this will happen, with Hamas embedded so deeply in the civilian population of Gaza.
Unfortunately, Hamas operates entirely among civilians in densely packed Gaza, alongside hundreds of Israeli hostages trapped there with them in the bowels of the Gaza Metro, Hamas’s extensive tunnel network. On the one hand, Israel must ensure Hamas can never again mount the kind of murderous rampage the world saw on October 7th. On the other, Israel must not squander its political support in Washington, and around the world, by killing scores of Palestinian civilians unnecessarily.
Ultimately, though, this war will be brutal. Hamas began it by targeting innocent men, women, and children in their homes, a music festival, and Kibbutzim, and the violence continues to ripple outward from that singular event. It’s in Gaza in the form of IDF airstrikes; it’s in the West Bank, between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli extremists, attacking Palestinian civilians themselves. It’s on the northern and southern borders of Israel, where a wider war beckons, one miscalculation away.
Hamas has unleashed something that will claim an untold number of lives, and which will be extremely difficult to contain. Violence has a way of taking on its own dark logic, and extending itself, like a virus. Perhaps that was the goal: so much foul violence the entire region disintegrates into war, offering a new geopolitical dynamic for a Palestinian state that seemed increasingly out of reach. Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that relies primarily on the death and agony of Palestinian and Israeli civilians merely trying to live their lives in peace, who find themselves suddenly engulfed by the flames of war.
The innocent will pay the heaviest price. Lord have mercy on us all