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“Israelis held somber ceremonies Monday to mark a year since the deadliest attack in the country’s history, a Hamas-led raid that shattered its sense of security and has since spiraled into wars on two fronts with no end in sight…
“Hamas marked the anniversary of its Oct. 7, 2023 attack by firing a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv, underscoring its resilience after a year of war and devastation in Gaza. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel for the past year in support of its ally, Hamas, launched more than 170 across the border on Monday… There is also a mounting conflict with Iran — which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah — that threatens to drag the region into an even more dangerous conflagration.” AP News
The left is critical of Israel’s continuing offensives.
“What did [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar want on Oct. 7? At a moment when Israel was normalizing relations with some Arab countries and the Palestinian cause was dimming geopolitically and in the region, he wanted to recenter his people, their suffering, their fight… [He wanted] to call his allies — Hezbollah, Iran — into the fight…
“He wanted to lure Israel into a massive, brutal invasion of Gaza that would become an occupation with no obvious end, that would shred Israel’s international legitimacy… So where are we, then, a year later? Israel’s possible peace deal with Saudi Arabia has vanished. Israel’s invasion of Gaza has left more than 40,000 Palestinians dead… They do not admit they are reoccupying Gaza, but it is clearly what they have done…
“Hostages remain in Gaza… Israel is now at war in Lebanon. It has been exchanging fire with Iran. Its international reputation is abysmal… The Palestinian cause has been revived as a central matter of international concern and activism. Even in America, support for Israel is now generational.”
Ezra Klein, New York Times
“Netanyahu has vowed that Hamas would be ‘destroyed.’ But this is quixotic; Hamas is more an idea among Palestinians than a collection of individuals or equipment. And Netanyahu’s call for the group’s destruction has allowed Hamas to declare victory simply by surviving… Its fighters are popping up in areas across the Gaza Strip that months ago the Israeli military had declared pacified and abandoned…
“Israel is now playing whack-a-mole with militants who emerge for quick attacks before disappearing. When Israel strikes back, it usually leaves a pile of dead civilians behind. Hamas can likely keep this dynamic going for a decade or two—and in doing so, stake its claim to Palestinian leadership by waving the bloodied shirt of martyrdom and preaching the virtues of armed struggle.”
Hussein Ibish, The Atlantic
Meanwhile, “[The] Israeli government is doing whatever it can to handicap any potential, viable, acceptable (to its own people) Palestinian leadership. The popular Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti (who has openly supported a two-state solution), remains in an Israeli prison… Other Fatah leaders – the core party of the Palestinian national movement that signed the Oslo accords aiming for two states in 1993 – have been dismissed by the Israeli leaders…
“At the recent UN general assembly, Jordan’s minister of foreign affairs, Ayman Safadi, proclaimed: ‘The Israeli prime minister came here today and said that Israel is surrounded by those who want to destroy it,’ he began…
“‘We’re here – members of the Muslim-Arab committee, mandated by 57 Arab and Muslim countries – and I can tell you very unequivocally, all of us are willing to guarantee the security of Israel in the context of Israel ending the occupation and allowing for the emergence of a Palestinian state.’ In the past, an Israeli leader would pounce on the chance to transform these words into facts on the ground. Yet, Netanyahu shamefully ignores them.”
Jo-Ann Mort, The Guardian
The right supports Israel’s offensives, and worries about rising antisemitism.
The right supports Israel’s offensives, and worries about rising antisemitism.
“Mr. Biden resents Mr. Netanyahu for not deferring to his call for a cease-fire and two-state solution. To Mr. Netanyahu, that’s status quo thinking that led to the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. He doesn’t want to get Hamas and Iran back to the status quo ante. He wants to change the environment so that they can no longer threaten Israeli lives… The president wants to restore the status quo, while Netanyahu wants to win.”
William McGurn, Wall Street Journal
“The tragedy of October 7 has been followed by victories that nobody could have imagined. Hamas, whose brutality knows no bounds, is now on its knees. Hezbollah, until last week viewed as an existential threat to Israel, has been defeated in what will inevitably be viewed as the most jaw-dropping counterterrorism campaign in history. The targeted killings of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran serve as a stark warning to the Grand Ayatollah that nowhere, not even within the heart of Iran, is safe.”
Eitan Fischberger, City Journal
“Since it came to power in 1979, Iran’s Islamist regime has declared itself at war with two Satans: the little one, Israel; the big one, us. This has meant suffering for thousands of Americans: the hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran; the diplomats and Marines in Beirut; the troops around Baghdad and Basra, killed by munitions built in Iran and supplied to proxies in Iraq; the American citizens routinely taken as prisoners in Iran; the Navy SEALs who perished in January trying to stop Iran from supplying Houthis with weapons…
“The war Israelis are fighting now — the one the news media often mislabels the ‘Gaza war’ but is really between Israel and Iran — is fundamentally America’s war, too: a war against a shared enemy; an enemy that makes common cause with our totalitarian adversaries in Moscow and Beijing; an enemy that has been attacking us for 45 years. Americans should consider ourselves fortunate that Israel is bearing the brunt of the fighting; the least we can do is root for it.”
Bret Stephens, New York Times
Many also note, “A new study released on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel finds that an astonishing 3.5 million American Jews say they have experienced some form of antisemitism in the year since…
“According to the Anti-Defamation League, there have been at least 150 instances of physical assaults on Jews because they are Jews in the US over the past year. And more than 8,000 incidents of verbal or written harassment targeting Jews. And 1,840 incidents of vandalism…
“That means nearly 10,000 explicitly antisemitic crimes have been committed against Jewish people in the US. In the year prior, there were 3,300 such incidents… On Oct. 7, the scapegoating of the Jews emerged from the hidden tunnels of Gaza and the crevices of the darkest areas of the human heart and returned as the threat it always has been. Fortunately today, Jews now have a nation, a mighty army, a determination to triumph over their enemies — and nuclear weapons.”
John Podhoretz, New York Post
