Hamas has won the war!
This afternoon I watched the news coverage of the release of the 13 Israeli women and children hostages by Hamas and the corresponding release of 39 Palestinian women and teenagers from Israeli prisons. The BBC, CNN, Euronews: all were factual in their presentations of what occurred. But none tried to make any sense out of it. Let us do that now.
As plainly as one and one makes two, the safe release of the hostages held by Hamas, and the obvious signs that all were in good health tells us something that no one is saying in major media: this is proof positive that the stated objective of the Netanyahu government to eradicate Hamas in Gaza is delusional. Why? Because notwithstanding the savage bombing of Gaza by the Israeli Defense Force which is said to have used the equivalent of two Hiroshima nuclear bombs in explosives, despite the scenes of utter destruction of residential buildings and infrastructure, the starvation, the scarcity of drinking water, the lack of electricity due to the cut-off of all aid deliveries into the enclave since 8 October, Hamas was able to keep the hostages safe and fed all this time in their underground tunnel system.
Netanyahu knows this. All talk now of resuming the onslaught after this brief pause to achieve his war aims is patently an attempt to divert attention from his real objective: to make Gaza uninhabitable and to expel the Palestinian population, preferably driving them into the Sinai desert.
Knowing this, I am obliged to revise my interpretation of the motives of the Hamas attack on 7 October which initially I saw as a way of derailing the approaching normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia brokered by the United States along the lines of the Abraham Accords.
That explanation was good but not sufficient. It left unanswered the nagging question: why did Hamas act so cruelly on 7 October, savagely murdering 1200 Israeli civilians in their homes, in their beds? That the attack was planned from the top and executed to plan rather than spontaneously by the Hamas fighters was known on the 7th. But there seemed to be no reason for the excesses.
Now we know there was a logic to it all: to incite the Netanyahu government to show its real self to the world, to move from the slow genocide of the Israeli settler violence and expropriation of Palestinian properties in the West Bank to point blank expulsion of 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai, to the sea, to anywhere else. The objective was to electrify the Arab neighboring states and the worldwide Muslim community. And through this shock therapy to force the United States and Europe to deal with the two state solution here and now.
Yes, you may object, and the Israelis will resume their bombing and artillery attacks when the hostage exchange is concluded, they will devastate the southern half of the enclave just as they have done to the northern half; the nakba will be taken to its logical conclusion.
However, there is a point when Joe Biden will be forced to take Netanyahu out for a walk in the woods, as we say, and to force a halt to the Israeli atrocities, just as Zelensky is about to be taken out for a walk and persuaded to negotiate a peace with Moscow or face removal from power if not a worse personal fate. American foreign policy is a function of domestic policy, which is a function of the electoral cycle. Continuation of the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza will cost Biden or whoever else is the Democratic candidate the presidency. Whatever their merits from the American imperial perspective, both are very inconvenient to the incumbent in the White House at this particular moment given the way they splinter the Democratic party or heighten the destructive partisanship between the parties that is threatening the federal government’s ability to conduct its business.
In closing, I note that the brief television coverage of the negotiations in Qatar that led to the hostage/prisoner exchange put on air a short interview with the head of the political wing of Hamas who is responsible for their end of the bargain with Israel. That video clip was striking: he is sophisticated looking, well turned out, very different from the terrorist or ‘human animal’ whom Netanyahu and his defense minister Yoav Gallant would have you believe is the typical Palestinian.
As I say, whatever comes next, Hamas has won the War.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
Gilbert Doctorow 
I’m not certain and think it is too early to say. After all, Ukraine’s war effort has been 90% PR (and propaganda) and look where it has gotten them. I think the masses have become numb to such things, expecting everything put before them to be propaganda. And the leadership doesn’t care one way or the other (your notes on the U.S. being run by the election cycle are spot-on, of course). We’ll see how it all turns out, but I think it will take a bit more time to be certain of the win-loss column.
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Dear Dr Doctorow,
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About this much touted barbaric attack by Hamas, here is an interview with The Greyzone’s Max Blumenthal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0gECjlpXF8
Seems that a lot of devastation was created by the IDF to not allow any Hamas fighter to live and not allow any taking of Israeli prisoners…
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Dr Doctorow,
As always, I enjoy your astute analysis, and your timely reports of the Russian news cycle. I also enjoyed this piece, which I cannot but agree with. However I must take issue with one statement:
” savagely murdering 1200 Israeli civilians in their homes, in their beds”- I find this to be problematic. We now know that at least half of the casualties were active-duty IDF. We are also seeing more and more evidence that shows that a significant number of the rest of the casualties- perhaps a majority of them, were inflicted by the IDF themselves. There is photographic evidence, as well as eyewitness testimony that the IDF fired Tank munitions into buildings housing Israelis, and there has been an admission from the pilots themselves, that IDF helicopters fired on a great number of civilian cars, with the added admission that they could not properly identify their targets. It is clear that taking hostages *is* a war crime, but in the current context (Israel holding many thousands of Palestinians hostage on either trumped-up charges, or no charges at all), I fail to understand what else Palestinians were to do in order to gain the release of their own people. Now as to “civilian” casualties attributed to Al Qassam brigade (Hamas) what would be the motive for deliberate plans to kill these civilians? How would Hamas benefit from this? I fail to see how, and in fact, the big change in the tide of public opinion seems to correlate with when it began to be known that the IDF was killing Israelis. Hamas benefited from the perception that they are trying to avoid civilian casualties. I see no evidence, and no motivation, for Hamas having *deliberately* targeted civilians for death. That is not to say that some may not have been killed by Hamas, but I do not see evidence that they set out to do this as any defined plan or strategy. I believe the evidence shows that they only wanted them as hostages.
Further- and not to deliberately convolute matters, what exactly is a civilian in Israeli society? Of course we can definitely include children and the elderly in this group, but what about military-aged Israelis? I think here, we run into difficulties. All military-aged Israelis (excepting disqualified groups, such as the orthodox) are by law, members of the IDF reserve. Even further, the Kibbutzim are deliberately structured as offensive/defensive fortifications- even including having garrisons of small squads of IDF members, and the settlers are, by definition and action, a paramilitary group- one that is effectively a vanguard of Israel’s ethnic cleansing project. I strongly suspect that all of this would seem to make the Kibbutzim, along with the military-aged residents, legal military targets. Yes, there are houses on the Kibbutzim, but so are there houses on standard military bases in almost every nation on earth.
Israel is a very different society than most of us, even those of us in the United States, are accustomed to understanding due to it’s being so thoroughly militarized, especially in the rural areas, let alone the so-called settlements, which are basically heavily armed camps- I have seen photographs of settlers with crew-served weapons (belt fed machine guns), and almost all of them appear to have access to military-grade small arms.
At any rate, I think it is time for us to challenge the idea that Hamas targeted civilians in two aspects:
1. There is little available evidence, other than the word of the state of Israel, that Hamas militants deliberately targeted visibly unarmed individuals.
2. The basis that military-aged civilians can even be said to exist in the area surrounding Gaza.
Apologies if you feel my comments are out of line, and again- thank you very much for your work, and sharing your thoughts with the world in the way you do.
I hope you enjoy the remainder of your weekend.
Arkady
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Thank you for expressing most of what I wanted to say. You were able to do so in a much more calm and collected way than I would have been able to do. I too thoroughly value Dr Doctorow’s commentaries, and appreciate his efforts to offer an alternative view on geopolitical events based on his knowledge and experience. This makes it all the more disappointing that at this late stage he has continued to reproduced the thoroughly discredited Israeli narrative about what exactly occurred on 7 October. Specifically, I refer to this sentence: “why did Hamas act so cruelly on 7 October, savagely murdering 1200 Israeli civilians in their homes, in their beds?” There is absolutely no doubt that the number of Israeli civilians and civilian foreign workers killed on 7 October was not even close to the oft-quoted 1,200. The lists published in Haaretz (many times edited) suggest that around 900-1200 were killed, including military and police numbering somewhere in the range of 300-500. Of the 400-900 civilians killed, much evidence has been published to suggest that the IDF killed between 50% and 80%. These figures cannot yet be stated with certainty, but simply accounting for military casualties alone debunks the “1,200 civilians” lie. And finally, eye-witness testimonies have provided strong evidence to suggest that almost all of deaths in Israeli homes were the result of IDF assaults.
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I too must point to the error with regard to 1200 civilian deaths.
Only about half the deaths were by Hamas, and of these half were IDF and security forces, not civilians. The remaining half were casualties caused by the IDF, as can clearly be seen by the car wrecks (hellfire missiles and 30mm cannon) as well as tank grenade attacks and tank tread tracks in some of the kibbutzim. This picture has also been confirmed by various eye witness testimonies.
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Dear Gilbert, I add my support for the very well considered and detailed views about the extent of Hamas killing of civilians, expressed in the above comments. As someone deeply engaged with the questions of Israel and Palestine for much of my life, and who has read extensively – and still does so – the views from both sides of the conflict, I think your basis for assuming Hamas atrocities against civilians reflects a standard western echo about Palestinians being equivalent to terrorists, even through the general tenor of your articles on Israel and Hamas do not fall into that narrative. Like with all truths, the devil is in the detail, which has been provided by journalists like Max Blumenthal and others with sound credentials for objective reporting. One can draw analogy between the western narratives about the current Hamas-Israel conflict (and Israel’s genocidal attacks) and those about US/NATO support for Ukrainean nationalists to provoke Russia. They tend to paint US/NATO/Ukraine and Israel as the ‘enlightened’ (rational, progressive… ) forces versus backward (authoritarian, irrational …..) forces. As always the devil is in the detail of the meaning of these terms as well as the empirically verifiable facts, a point that you have consistently made in your writings over the years about the question of Ukraine’s Euro-development and its participation in the encirclement of Russia. Likewise, I have tried to do the same ever since I was a young Zionist in my teens, and have confronted a persistent cancelling of critique of Israel and its arms, based on the assumption of irrational Arab hatred of Jews and genocidal risk for Jews qua Jews. Best wishes, Paul Hendler, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
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Not to pile on, because I always find your commentary sober-minded and important, containing relevant information not found elsewhere, but I had to say something about your characterization of Hamas raid on 10/7.
Hamas “savagely murdering 1200 Israeli civilians in their homes” (in their beds, no less) is not an accurate portrayal of that day. It was, first and foremost, a brilliant (and yes, of course, brutal) attack on the IDF, who were caught with their pants down, which as others have pointed out here, suffered heavy casualties as a result. The other major goal was to take hostages in order to bargain for the release of Palestinians held by Israel. From that understanding, the already debunked stories of decapitated babies and rape marathons, never made any sense. There is eyewitness testimony from Israeli soldiers and civilians alike that the IDF used force indiscriminately, resulting in the deaths of many civilians is available (please see below).
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Dear Mr. Doctorow,
while I read your analysis of the current event in Palestine two thoughts went through my mind:
– is the current leadership in Israel really interested to have Biden (or any other Democrat) for the next term or would they not feel more comfortable with Trump and therefore actively undermine Biden domestically?
– how much does the electorate in the US really decide the outcome of the next election?
I find it very difficult to gain a real understanding of that conflict and the dynamics at play, your comments are very helpful in that respect. Thank you for your work.
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Your article is headed in the right direction, but I do not think it reaches the truth. Your comment about the well-fed, healthy hostages is on the mark. But what mark? Simply this, the war is an existential war for Israel. It cannot stop. Effectively, there can be no more healthy hostages. The extreme nature of the violence must continue, because if it does not Israel will cease to exist. Yes, Israel’s goal is definitely to drive every Palestinian into the desert, another day’s work for the chosen people, but that will not happen. And when it does not happen, one will have to toss the Old Testament and the State of Israel with it. This is a religious war on the part of Israel and there is no cost too great to preserve her religion. Emphasis religion. A belief system totally unmoored from reality… like all religion.
The United States? The Presidential Election? What foreign leader, the only foreign leader, has addressed a Joint Session of Congress three times. Benjamin Netanyahu. And you contend the U.S. will take Netanyahu for a walk in the woods. It is the other way around.
But these are conjectures, just as yours are. One of us will be proved correct.
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It is not about religion. Most of the Jews in the state of Israel are secular and non-believers. It is simply a settler state, WHO hast driven the original population into reservates.
Even the biblical justification that the land has been promised to them ist wrong.
Israel was the Name of the Kingdom of the ten tribes of Israel who had been driven out of the Land by the Assyrians.
The Jews are only the descendants of the Tribe of Judah and therefore cannot represent all Israel and cannot claim the promised Land for them.
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“This is a religious war on the part of Israel and there is no cost too great to preserve her religion. Emphasis religion. A belief system totally unmoored from reality… like all religion.”
Your own views on religion are considered by many to be “unmoored from reality”. Netanyahu will, like all political leaders, use everything in his power to achieve his goals. How that plays out, especially the long-term picture, is yet to be discovered.
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If I may add to the above comments correcting the view that Hamas committed a civilian massacre on October 7, certain conclusions flow from this.
One is the speed with which the narrative spread that Hamas had violated and murdered civilians – wantonly and cruelly – compared with the slowness with which the IDF actually responded to the attack. Hamas conducted a brilliant military raid, but Israel owned the global communications channels. Many commentators, including world leaders, to this day still suffer from the propaganda delusion exposed here.
Two is that the IDF immediately went into its “Hannibal Directive” mode, and slaughtered innocents and guilty alike, in order to prevent more hostages being taken. In other words, not extraordinary provocation was required for IDF soldiers to turn into beasts: they were already conditioned to this degree.
The single act by Hamas of breaking the several myths about Israeli force and power served to trigger all that has followed. No barbarity by Hamas was ever needed. Indeed, those who are familiar with the resistance forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas, understand that the Hamas team was on a very tight and disciplined mission, and the mission was to capture people alive and unharmed – otherwise they would be of no use in negotiation.
This mission was quick, and fraught with peril. This was not an invading army rampaging through a country, with time and opportunity to despoil. Rape and murder had no place in the mission tactics: getting in and getting out was the task, and it was successful, for those who survived the carnage visited on Israeli and Palestinian alike by the IDF tanks and helicopters.
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