Israel’s First Year in the War: Threats From a Set of Modern Human Forces, Armies And Cyber-Technical Support
First, Israel is facing threats from a set of enemies who combine medieval theocratic worldviews with 21st century weaponry — and are no longer organized as small bands of militiamen, but as modern armies with brigades, battalions, cyber capabilities, long-range rockets, drones and technical support. I am talking about the Iranian-backed Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic militias in Iraq and the Yemen, as well as the openly Hamas-embracing Vladimir Putin. All of these foes seemed to surface like dragons during the conflict, threatening Israel with a big war all at once.
I’m amazed by how many Israelis now feel this danger personally no matter where they live, starting with a friend who told me that she and her husband just obtained gun licenses. No one is going to snatch their children and leave them in a tunnel. Hamas has frightened many Israelis far away from the Gaza border.
The fighting in the Gaza strip creates thousands of civilian casualties, including men, women, and children, as Hamas tries to force Israel to kill those innocents in order to eliminate the Hamas leadership.
But President Biden can only sustainably generate the support Israel needs if Israel is ready to engage in some kind of a wartime diplomatic initiative directed at the Palestinians in the West Bank — and hopefully in a post-Hamas Gaza — that indicates Israel will discuss some kind of two-state solutions if Palestinian officials can get their political house unified and in order.
Kiryat Shmona, Israel, When the Hezbollah Gunmen Come Over, or Who Wants to Come Over and Kill You?
One of the most important towns on the border with Lebanon is Kiryat Shmona. The father said his family had left the northern fence line with thousands of other Israeli families after the pro- Iranian Hezbollah militias and Palestinian militias in southern Lebanon began throwing rockets at each other.
When might they go back? They had no idea. Like more than 200,000 other Israelis, they have taken refuge with friends or in hotels all across this small country of nine million people. Israeli citizens have been driving up real estate prices in central Israeli towns for a few weeks. That alone is mission accomplished, without any invasion by Hamas. They are also Shrinking Israel with Hamas.
I asked Liat Admati, 35, a survivor of the Hamas attack who ran a clinic for facial cosmetics for 11 years in Be’eri, what would make it possible for her go back to her Gaza border home, where she was raised.
“The main thing for me to go back is to feel safe,” she said. I feel I have trust in the army. I feel like the trust is broken. I don’t want to feel that we are covering ourselves in walls and shelters all the time, while behind this fence there are people who can one day do this again. I really don’t know at this point what the solution is.”
Before Oct. 7, she and her neighbors thought the threat was rockets, she said, so they built safe rooms — but now that Hamas gunmen came over and burned parents and kids in their safe rooms, who knows what is safe? “The safe room was designed to keep you safe from rockets — not from another human who would come and kill you for who you are,” she said. She found that it appears that some Gazans working for the kibbutz gave Hamas maps of the layout.
The Hamas man identified by his father as “Mehmoud” called his parents from the phone he used to murder a Jewish woman after listening to the recording.
I killed many with my own hands. Your son killed Jews,” he says, according to an English translation. He later says that his son is a hero. His parents can be heard rejoicing.
This kind of chilling exuberance — Israel was built so that such a thing could never happen — explains the homemade sign I saw on a sidewalk while driving through the French Hill Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem the other day: “It’s either us or them.’’
This conflict has always been the most biblical and primordial. This seems to be a time of eyes for eyes and teeth for teeth. The morning-after policy thinking will have to wait for the mourning after.
Really? Consider this context: “According to Israel’s official Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2021, 9.449 million people live in Israel (including Israelis in West Bank settlements), the Times of Israel reported last year. “Of those, 6.982 million (74 percent) are Jewish, 1.99 million (21 percent) are Arab and 472,000 (5 percent) are neither. The Palestinian Bureau of Statistics puts the West Bank Palestinian population at a little over three million, and the Gaza population at just over two million.”
So, Netanyahu is saying that seven million Jews are going to indefinitely control the lives of five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza — while offering them no political horizon, nothing, by way of statehood one day on any demilitarized conditions.
After being slammed by the public for digitally stabbing his army and intelligence chiefs in the back in the middle of a war, Netanyahu published a new tweet. I apologized for the things I said after the press conference and it should not have been said. I fully support the heads of [Israel’s] security services.”
But the damage was done. How much do you suppose those military leaders trust what Netanyahu will say if the Gaza campaign stalls? What real leader would behave that way at the start of a war of survival?
The society is better than its leader. It is too bad it took a war to drive that home. The founder of Brothers in Arms is a retired member of Israel’s most elite special forces unit. Immediately after the Hamas invasion, Brothers in Arms started to organize volunteers and aid workers to get to the front, even if it was only left, right, religious, and secular.
It was an amazing story that showed how much solidarity is still buried in this area and was unlocked by a other prime minister who was not a divider. I heard that when you go to the front you are overwhelmed by what has been lost.
So it’s reasonable to ask why the death of a single olive farmer has captured such attention. Numerous news outlets, including NPR, covered the killing of Bilal Saleh outside his village last month. Human rights groups and think tanks have highlighted the case.
The episode represents a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s generally described as a struggle over land because of the many differences it reflects over identity, security and faith.
Saleh’s home was in As-Sawiya, a village on a ridgeline overlooking a valley filled with olive trees. An Israeli settlement called Rehelim stood on the opposite side of the valley, encroaching on what As-Sawiya residents regard as their land.
Hazem Saleh stated that the harvest was more than agriculture. It was a big event. Families are walking in the fields. We take a lot of food. He told Morning Edition that they take kids. Residents of the village knew they were also taking a risk when they harvested on October 28. They had strained relations with Rehelim across the way, and knew a war was underway. But they went ahead.
They were on wooden ladders picking olives when Israeli settlers approached. The Palestinians decided to back off, and then they realized that he left his cell phone behind. The last time he was seen by his family, he was in the trees to get it.
At least two gunshots sounded when his wife heard him shout out in the trees. His friends found him with stab wounds to the chest and arm. They used a ladder as an improvised stretcher to carry him uphill after being without first aid supplies. His wife and children were with him when he died.
The killing of a Palestinian soldier by settlers in the West Bank is unacceptable: Israel Defense Forces, the prime minister, and the Prime Minister of Australia
When we spoke with her, the suspect in the crime was in jail. The Israel Defense Forces arrested an off-duty soldier. Israeli military law is supreme in the occupied territories. The arrest made the case different from other violent incidents on the West Bank, but Ikhlas was unimpressed. I don’t think he will be charged or punished. He will be there for a few days. Ikhlas said that he would be released after that. “The law that they have for themselves is stronger than our existence.”
Days later, her prediction came true. The soldier’s lawyer said that he was free. The IDF did not give a response on the status of the case. The suspect’s lawyer accused Saleh of supporting Hamas, but Saleh’s family denies any connection to the group.
Palestinian authorities say that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, 176 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank. Most were killed by Israeli forces in what Israel characterized as counter-terrorism operations. Some of them were killed by settlers.
On Oct. 25, President Biden said he was alarmed by extremist settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, equating it to “pouring gasoline on fire.” In a joint press conference with the prime minister of Australia, Biden said, “They’re attacking Palestinians in places that they’re entitled to be, and it has to stop. They have to be held accountable.”
The U.S. administration has cautioned Israel against actions that would widen the war, including acts that would inflame the West Bank. Israeli authorities have often ignored the advice of their allies on the issue of West Bank settlements.