Thread by @shadihamid

I respect @petersavodnik too, and I think these are questions worth addressing. I will answer them in detail here.

1. Yes, Israel has a moral duty to ensure Hamas can never repeat Oct. 7 As I’ve said repeatedly, Israel has a right to defend itself. But even a war whose cause is just does not, and cannot, justify doing anything and everything in the name of that war, i.e. effectively destroying an entire territory, making it uninhabitable, and killing tens of thousands of civilians.

Basically, Hamas argues that everything that Israel did before 10/7 justifies 10/7. Israel then argues that because of what happened on 10/7, everything it does afterwards is justified. They’re not exactly the same, but they rely on a similar, maximalist logic—that the laws of war are suspended when you’re dealing with a uniquely barbaric enemy.

Boiled down to its essence, this is Hamas’ argument. Hamas’ leaders don’t actually rely on theological arguments or defer to the rules of combat in the Islamic just war tradition. They don't even pretend to care. Hamas uses an almost entirely secular, nationalistic logic, a version of 'desperate times call for desperate measures.'

It's odd and unsettling to me that the irony is lost on Israel's most vociferous defenders that they're mirroring Hamas' arguments. As various Israeli officials and ministers have themselves suggested and even at times explicitly state, all Palestinians are fair game now that Hamas has declared war. Which was Hamas' argument on 10/7: that all Israelis were fair game because Israel had declared war on the Palestinians.

2. What about the claim that if Hamas wanted to spare Gazans, it would release the hostages unconditionally and surrender? All of this could end tomorrow, the argument goes. In some ways, this is both the most sensible, straightforward argument and also, practically-speaking, a red herring.

We already know that Hamas is bad and doesn’t care about saving the lives of Gazans. It’s a terrorist organization, and terrorist organizations try to provoke the target country and population into a disproportionate response. We live in the world as it is. An organization that would commit the wanton atrocities of 10/7 isn’t all of a sudden going to become a different organization than the one it was the day before and release the hostages unconditionally.

So if this is not going to happen, then we have to look at more feasible alternatives that don't depend on the goodwill of a terrorist organization.

But for pro-Israel advocates to say, this could all end tomorrow gives away the game. It wouldn't end. Because for Palestinians Oct. 7 is *not* the start date. Going back to the status quo ante might work for Israel, but for Palestinians the blockade, occupation, disenfranchisement, settler attacks, and slow dispossession of their land with America and the world turning a blind eye would persist. This is one of the more unsettling arguments I hear from pro-Israel voices. There's little acknowledgment, and even then it tends to be begrudging, that history began before Oct. 7.

There's something else that is odd about saying that Hamas could end this tomorrow. Sure, anything is possible. But it seems misguided to put our hope in one of the least likely scenarios—and the one scenario that the U.S. has the least control over. We have limited leverage over Hamas. They’re not exactly part of America’s sphere of influence.

So, by saying everything is Hamas’ fault, it’s really a way of absolving the United States and Israel of any moral agency or responsibility. America has choices. Israel has choices. Let’s exercise that agency, instead of pretending that when Israel kills hundreds of civilians that it had “no choice.” This is a logically untenable position. Israel is not a terrorist organization. It’s a state. It’s also a democratic state, for all its faults, and one that is amenable to pressure from its own citizens.

Unlike with Hamas, the U.S. does in fact significant leverage with the Israeli government, because Israel depends on advanced weaponry and emergency military provisions to prosecute its war. That’s why this isn’t Sudan, the Congo, or any other mass casualty conflict. Israel is one of American’s closest allies, so why should it be any surprise that Americans pay more attention to the Gaza war?

It’s a good thing that the U.S. has leverage with Israel. That implicates our own moral agency and responsibility. There is more the Biden administration can do, and that’s why so many Americans, myself included, are so affected by this. This is not some “distant” foreign conflict, so we shouldn’t treat it as such.

3. To address the question of what makes the "pro-Palestinian" position compelling, I'd start with the here and now.

The post-Oct. 7 argument goes something like this. The level of mass killing in this war is unprecedented in the 21st century. On a per capita, per day basis, no conflict has been as destructive, not the Assad regime’s siege on Aleppo, which was considered the pinnacle of brutality, not the U.S. war in Iraq. According to Iraq Body Count, the US military was directly responsible for about 14,000 Iraqi civilian deaths over 8 years, from 2003 to 2011. Iraq’s population was also 15 times larger than Gaza’s so adjusted for population, it was if the US killed only 1,000 Iraqi civilians over 96 months, where the Israeli military reached the 14,000 civilian death figure in about 3.5 months. This is, for lack of a better word, remarkable. I don't know quite how to process this.

But I also hate that we've been reduced to explaining Palestinian grievances in such numerical fashion, which does a disservice to the memory of all the innocent civilians who have been killed. They are individuals—flesh and blood endowed by their created with inherent worth and dignity—and they had nothing to do with what Hamas did on 10/7. And yet so many still insist on putting the entire onus for Palestinian deaths on Hamas. And so, in effect, Hamas has moral agency but Israel somehow has none, which is nonsensical. There's a phrase for this: collective punishment.

My own views have evolved somewhat. I did not call for a ceasefire immediately. To do so before Israel had barely done anything would have been tantamount to saying that Israel, unlike other nations, had to just sit idly by and take it. I don't think is a tenable position. But there were other ways to conduct this war. It didn't "have" to be this way. Again, this brings us back to the narrative of Israel having no choice, which again is a morally untenable position. If Hamas has choices, then Israel has choices too.

4. Does Israel has a right to destroy Hamas?

The problem here is that the Israeli government has not defined what "destroy" means, offering a wide range of sometimes contradictory statements. If it means "ending Hamas' rule," then yes Israel has a right and even obligation to ensure this outcome. But if it means kill every single Hamas fighter (or member), then needless to say, this is unrealistic and would require bloodletting at an unimaginable scale. It is also a standard that is rarely, if ever, applied in modern warfare.

The question of Israel's war aims is fundamental, because it is impossible to say that Israel "needs" to do everything it has done if you can't even be bothered to outline what the military objectives are, or what the day after will look like, another aspect of this that Israel refuses to offer clarity on.

There is also the simple fact, which is worth stating again, that having a moral cause does not give one the license to do immoral things. Once you indulge this justification, then be careful what you wish for, because this is effectively Hamas' argument too—that anything in the name of an ultimate, existential struggle can be justified precisely because it's an existential struggle.

5. What if Israel stops fighting now, and Hamas is allowed to regroup and launches future attacks on Israel (as it has promised to do)?

Israel has already succeeded in ending Hamas' rule. Hamas leaders and fighters, for obvious reasons, are not operating above-ground. Gaza is chaos and warlordism. I see no plausible scenario in which Hamas could reconstitute itself as the governing entity under the current circumstances. This is why it's important to distinguish between the goals of "ending Hamas' rule" and "destroying Hamas." They are not the same. To state the obvious, the question of who governs Gaza after Hamas cannot be resolved through military means. It's a fundamentally political question.

I've also seen no plausible evidence to suggest that Hamas is currently capable of launching another attack like Oct. 7. If the argument is that they still can, that has to be explained rather than asserted. To state the obvious, Israel is not about to leave its border with Gaza unattended. That massive security lapse isn't likely to be repeated. So how exactly would Hamas be able to launch a similar attack? Is the assumption here that Israel is not capable of protecting its own border going forward?

The key to preventing a revival of Hamas or a Hamas-like organization is to offer a political vision and to allow for the emergence of a viable Palestinian alternative. Again, this is something that the Israeli government has opposed and undermined. The key is to provide a political path forward to Palestinians so that they have a reason to hope for something better than the status quo ante. Easier said than done of course, but at the very least Israel should not be working to obstruct that political path, which is precisely what it has been doing up until now.