Sunday, November 12, 2023
From Ian:
Israeli society has shown enormous resilience in response to Hamas massacre
Israeli society has shown enormous resilience in response to Hamas massacre
Increasing circles of griefHamas is seen as representative of the Palestinians
The amount of grief and trauma caused by the loss of life, the horror of kidnapped loved ones and those who still don’t know the fate of family members is on a scale never seen before. Even the Yom Kippur War did not have such an immediate and dramatic impact as we have seen in the first few days of the conflict.
The devastation has left entire communities in the shock of collective trauma requiring some form of national recovery and rehabilitation which will include physical, emotional, and communal needs. It goes without saying, that there is also a massive breach of trust within the country and the powers that be, militarily and politically. This too will be a huge concern as time unfolds. This community will form an important driver of social change. Morally it will be hard to ignore their voice.
The aftermath of 1973
Many have already compared the events of October 2023 to those of October 1973. Most obviously this is due to the surprise attack and to the intelligence and military failure. One can assume that there will be other similarities. As in 1973, there is an understanding that people’s basic assumptions about Israeli life will change. This will not be limited to military or security aspects, nor even the political map (although of course it will include both).
Post-1973 there were enormous social changes. In 1974, Gush Emunim was founded and became the dominant force in building new settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. In 1976, a new political party emerged that altered the face of Israeli politics forever. Middle-class voters, sick of the Labor Party, both due to corruption and also the handling of the Yom Kippur War, founded Dash (Democratic Movement for Change), which helped reshape the politics in Israel.
The movement of Israelis becoming more religious also gained momentum the following year with many disillusioned secular Israelis finding their way into the Haredi community while a steady stream of Israelis left the country. All of these changes, and more, had a deep and lasting effect on Israeli society.
We know that we don’t know
We can be confident that Israeli society will be dramatically different after October 7. What we cannot know is what change is going to look like. The generation that is heroically defending the country, and the generation that is recreating civic society, will likely lead to new movements and ideas as the country faces economic, physical, emotional, and spiritual renewal. The hundreds, if not thousands of bereaved families and uprooted communities, along with the families of the hostages, will likely be a powerful social force for change, and not necessarily along the traditional political or religious lines.
Israeli society has shown enormous resilience in response to the terrible events of Simchat Torah, and we cannot know where that will lead us. If this tragedy generates a new confidence and optimism with a shift from the cynical politics of our era, then the future of Israeli society may be brighter than it currently feels. If Generation V becomes Israel’s Greatest Generation then we have much to look forward to.
Tragically, Abbas and the Fatah party put themselves firmly behind Hamas and its atrocities, celebrating the massacres and even laughing at the victims. One video posted by Fatah on Telegram mocked the Israeli victims by portraying them in an illustration as a dead rat, lying on its back on an Israeli flag and with its feet in the air, about to be trampled by a boot the colors of the Palestinian flag. [Fatah’s Bethlehem Telegram, Oct. 8, 2023]Eli Lake: The Scandal of Robert Malley
Even when pressed by the international community and in particular by the United States to condemn the atrocities, Abbas refused. He finally issued a mild statement – not condemning Hamas, but merely saying that “Hamas’s policy and actions do not represent the Palestinian people.” But after giving it a second thought, even that mild statement was too much for Abbas. A few hours later, his statement was removed and replaced by a general statement that “the PLO is… the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” Abbas has a decision to make
Abbas had to decide whether to be true to the PA ideology of supporting and rewarding the murder of Israelis or to give in to international pressure and condemn the worst atrocities against the Jews since the Holocaust. In past situations like this, Abbas at times had given in to international pressure to ensure that international funding would continue. This time, Abbas wavered but, in the end, remained true to PA principles: A Palestinian can never be defined as a terrorist and can never be condemned for killing an Israeli.
WITH SUPPORT for Hamas crossing the political divisions, it is no wonder that one week into the fighting, Palestinians marched through the streets of Hebron, Nablus, and even in the PA seat of government, Ramallah, chanting: “The people want the [Hamas’] Al-Qassam Brigades!” As the fighting increases, public support for Hamas increases. This past week, videos of large marches all across the West Bank supporting Hamas were being posted on social media. In one, hundreds of young schoolgirls marched and chanted, “We are the daughters of [Hamas leader] Muhammad Deif… Allahu Akbar, blow up the Zionist’s head… strike Tel Aviv… strike Ashkelon… Jihad is our path… the Quran is our savior… Death for Allah is our sublime wish…” [Quds New Network (Hamas), Twitter, Oct. 29, 2023]
By refusing to offer Palestinians an alternative to even unspeakable atrocities and by supporting the “heroic” slaughter, Fatah and Abbas have sent a clear message to Palestinians: Hamas is doing the right job and clearly doing it better than PA/Fatah.
Ironically, Abbas’s public response to the atrocities, including his repetition of the slogan that “the PLO is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” has turned that slogan into an irrelevant anachronism. The PA and Fatah, with their own actions, have handed the loyalty of the West Bank on a silver platter to Hamas, which must now be recognized as the uncontested representative – not only of the Palestinian people, but also of Fatah and Abbas himself.
After Biden won the 2020 election, Malley was perfectly positioned to guide U.S. policy toward Iran. He was close friends with Antony Blinken, who would become Biden’s secretary of state. Malley and Blinken attended the same high school in Paris and worked on the yearbook together. In Washington, they played on a recreational soccer team. To some, this might suggest that the current investigation into Malley is so serious that even his old and powerful friend could not save him from it.
That said, it’s too early to know the nature of the probe into Malley’s mishandling of state secrets. There has always been a tension between the State Department and the FBI when it comes to rogue regimes. The job of a diplomat is to engage with foreign officials. One hazard of this work is that sometimes a piece of classified information may slip into a conversation. For example, Henry Kissinger, in a meeting with his Soviet counterpart, famously shared the fact that America was reading Egyptian cable traffic. Or consider the case of Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel. His clearance was suspended in 2000 after it was learned he had been sending classified emails from the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. No evidence ever emerged that Indyk or Kissinger was a spy.
A better way to understand the scandal around Malley is to look at the people he himself hired and mentored in recent years. These include Ali Vaez, who is currently an analyst at the International Crisis Group. The emails disclosed in the Iran International and Semafor investigations show Vaez seeking approval from his contact at Iran’s foreign ministry for op-eds he would later publish in Western outlets. In an October 2, 2014, missive to Iran’s foreign minister, Vaez wrote, “As an Iranian, based on my national and patriotic duty, I have not hesitated to help you in any way.”
Malley tried to bring Vaez into the Biden administration, but Vaez could not get a security clearance. Malley did hire Ariane Tabatabai as an adviser. According to Semafor and Iran International, Tabatabai actually asked for guidance from her Iranian foreign-ministry contact on whether she should visit Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Tabatabai is now chief of staff to Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. Last month, Maier testified before the Senate that the Pentagon is investigating “whether all law and policy was properly followed in granting my chief of staff top-secret special compartmented information.” In October, the Pentagon announced that Tabatabai would keep her security clearance after the investigation.
Says Gerecht, “If you’ve known Malley’s position on Iran, it makes perfect sense he would hire these people. The fact that these individuals were apparently acting somewhat obsequiously toward Iranian officials is a separate issue.”
This cuts to the heart of the Rob Malley scandal. He is not an interloper and neither are his protégés. They are instead implementers of a worldview that pretends fanatics and terrorists can be tamed through negotiations and that acts of savagery can be explained away by root causes. And we have just seen and are now living through the response to the greatest challenge in our time to the idea that such people can somehow be treated as anything but the monsters they are.
In his 2008 lecture, Rob Malley acknowledged the tragedy and failure of the secular radicalism his father embraced. “And how ingloriously it all ended,” he wrote. “No last brave stand for fight to the finish. Instead a muted, slow, nondescript decline. As early as the 1980s, the illusions had all but expired.”
But Malley never learned the lessons of his father’s expired illusions—the bizarre fantasy that revolutionary violence would liberate the Third World. He has instead himself succumbed to the dangerous fantasy that engaging violent revolutionaries will persuade them to renounce their illusions. His security clearance may yet be restored and his name cleared, but Robert Malley should not be allowed inside the corridors of power ever again.
