You bring up one reason the present conflict is so frustrating - namely, it did not have to be this way! The peace process that appeared to be viable in the 90s offered a different path, and there were many regular people and some courageous leaders on both sides who wanted to take it. But both Hamas and the Netanyahu coalition represent, in their own ways, the hardliners who REJECTED that peace process and wanted it to fail. (In some cases they represent this pretty personally - as a young far-right rioter, Itamar Ben-Gvir publicly threatened Yitzhak Rabin weeks before another right-wing zealot assassinated him). Peace, after all, would require giving up elements of the hardliners' maximalist visions. Ultimately they decided that was unacceptable, and now here we are. We're living in the world the hardliners chose, and it is horrific. And to *actually achieve* the maximalist goals of either side's hard-core ideologues would take orders of magnitude MORE bloodshed than we have seen in these recent months.
I don't know exactly what the diplomatic resolution to this conflict looks like - Nobel Peace Prizes have been given for less complex negotiations than this. But I do think a lasting peace that brings self-determination and security to Israelis and Palestinians alike should be our North Star. And I know that whatever that peace process looks like, it will require compromise to win out over maximalism. I think once peace is made (God willing!) people will find it a significant improvement on the status quo, and it will be obvious in hindsight that making those compromises was worth it.
There was no peace process in the 90's. That was an act of disgraceful cowardly appeasement that was chosen instead of decisive victory and led to a massive increase in horrific violence against not just Israel, but all over the world, with decades of Islamic terrorism giving us all a taste of what Israeli's deal with every day.
The violence that is going to follow our staggering failure of foreign policy that is represented by the fact that Hamas is still even alive, is going to be much, much worse.
We are basically at the Darwin Award level of civilizational suicide at this point.
Critics of the peace process can say many things. One thing they can't do is wash their hands of responsibility for the current situation - they have, after all, dominated Israeli politics since 2009. The ideas that Palestinians deserve no rights and should simply be crushed militarily - and that Israelis can enjoy security with no peace process - these are Netanyahu's core promises. I didn't personally love seeing this ideology dominate election after election in Israel, but the fact is that it did.
And on October 7, THIS is the governing ideology that failed at every level. At the level of tactics, the Netanyahu government's intelligence failures, redeployment of forces to back up West Bank settlers, and hollowing out of the PA (to the benefit of Hamas) all proved to be devastating mistakes. But the even more profound failure was this promise of security with no diplomatic resolution to the conflict - a promise that has been self-evidently discredited after a disaster for Israel on par with 1973.
And the reason this is so is embedded in your comment - because what is "decisive victory"? According to some ultra-hawks like Ben-Gvir, it is conquering and ethnicly cleansing the territories. But that's an insane goal, and a mirror image version of Hamas' insane goal of conquering and ethnicly cleansing Israel. There is a reason that a lot of the leading voices for diplomacy in Israel have come out of its military leadership - because once you have had to seriously consider the implications, the Ben-Gvir maximalist position is just not tenable.
It's also worth saying that Hamas is either so weak that decisive victory was an easy choice available to Yitzhak Rabin in the 90s, or so strong that it threatens the whole world, but it can't be both. My personal view is that although Hamas is a regional actor, it is precisely the *prolonging of the conflict* that increases its strength. After a hypothetical peace agreement, Hamas will go the way of the Ulster Volunteer Force - perhaps it will continue to kick around as a low-level criminal syndicate, but with its maximalist goals off the table it will become irrelevant as a political force and a security threat.
There is no "peace process." There are genocidal antisemites who are using every trick in the book to kill as many jews as they can and destroy the state of Israel. Cowardly appeasers in the West, engaging in Darwin-Award-levels of "peace process" with these murderers and lunatics are the ones who cannot wash their hands of the responsibility for the current situation.
The only criticism of Israel's policies is that they are going along with this evil appeasement of their own destroyers instead of decisively crushing Hamas and co. in a week.
If you genuinely believe that (a) the Netanyahu/Smotrich/Ben-Gvir government could have decisively crushed Hamas in a week but chose not to because ??? and (b) an unspeakably disastrous attack that happened on this government's watch can be blamed instead on Yitzhak Rabin, then I'm not sure we're living in the same reality.
Of course, Israel can defeat Hamas in a week. They are not doing it because they are cowardly appeasers and so is everyone else in the foreign policy departments of every Western country. The West hasn't won a war since WW2 because of the intellectual bankruptcy of our foreign policy "experts."
And the blame for the attack is on Hamas and their apologists and enablers.
I’m neither a Jew nor a Palestinian (so what do I know) but I’ve tried to educate myself about these struggles and mindsets over the past many years.
This seems like the most intelligent and succinct overview I’ve read. So thank you.
The concept of Total Ideology is running rampant throughout the world. It’s time for a different way since we are all in it together. What each of us does says and thinks makes a difference.
Thanks for bringing some clarity to this one person.
One thing that really rang a bell for me personally was the critique of Post-Modernism. In a sense (for the wrong reasons) Florida's Governor, Ron DeSantis, intuitively has grasped how "totalizing" post-modernism has become within academia. Of course, replacing one totalizing ideology with another totalizing ideology is not a solution.
It's the extreme right in the United States, including DeSantis and Trump who have wholeheartedly embraced post-modernism. If they are attacking left post-modernism, it is through their own right-wing version. Eg., white Christians are the most discriminated group in America, also embracing Russian techniques of propaganda, with the concomitant belief that every government is corrupt and you cannot trust anyone.
One opposite to Total Ideologies is world federalism with citizenship and democracy. Among other things by accepting that all humans are equal and that we need common institutional framework from local to global level
I really enjoyed this piece, well written and thoughts are deep and refined. It’s funny because it reminded me of an observation that my Canadian politics professor had about the parties — that they all tried to frame themselves as pragmatists focused on ‘the economy’ and mostly avoided ideological stances, lest they polarise the electorate and lose votes. On the other hand, when it comes to this 75+ years cause, the voice of pragmatists seems to be lost against the ideologues. We need more Logos and less Pathos, and I say that to America first who has been towing the ideological Zionist line for far too long instead of playing the role of the pragmatically neutral arbiter in this seemingly existential conflict. To prevent it from being an existential conflict, we need more Logos and less Pathos.
And that’s how I know your piece was that good, because I learned from it and it made me think! Thank you, Professor Al Kassimi.
Wow! Somebody making sense about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict! Thankyou for this excellent thought provoking analysis. The whole world right now seems infected with fascism and other totalizing ideologies. It's like Gresham's law of money. Extremist ideas drive out sensible ones and we are left with people screaming at each other over an unbridgeable divide. If only calmer heads would prevail!
Sorry guys, I don't mean to be rude, but this is yet another delusional piece on this subject coming from the UnPopulist. I can't imagine the level of dishonest evasion required to try and both sides such a black and white issue as this conflict. If this kind of thinking was dominant during WW2 then Germany and Japan would've easily crushed the West.
If you cannot call for the immediate military destruction of Hamas, whatever the cost, then you are no different to what we are seeing on college campuses.
There really is no way to excuse this. The UnPopulist is disgracing itself with these incompetent articles.
Thank you for this excellent piece!
You bring up one reason the present conflict is so frustrating - namely, it did not have to be this way! The peace process that appeared to be viable in the 90s offered a different path, and there were many regular people and some courageous leaders on both sides who wanted to take it. But both Hamas and the Netanyahu coalition represent, in their own ways, the hardliners who REJECTED that peace process and wanted it to fail. (In some cases they represent this pretty personally - as a young far-right rioter, Itamar Ben-Gvir publicly threatened Yitzhak Rabin weeks before another right-wing zealot assassinated him). Peace, after all, would require giving up elements of the hardliners' maximalist visions. Ultimately they decided that was unacceptable, and now here we are. We're living in the world the hardliners chose, and it is horrific. And to *actually achieve* the maximalist goals of either side's hard-core ideologues would take orders of magnitude MORE bloodshed than we have seen in these recent months.
I don't know exactly what the diplomatic resolution to this conflict looks like - Nobel Peace Prizes have been given for less complex negotiations than this. But I do think a lasting peace that brings self-determination and security to Israelis and Palestinians alike should be our North Star. And I know that whatever that peace process looks like, it will require compromise to win out over maximalism. I think once peace is made (God willing!) people will find it a significant improvement on the status quo, and it will be obvious in hindsight that making those compromises was worth it.
There was no peace process in the 90's. That was an act of disgraceful cowardly appeasement that was chosen instead of decisive victory and led to a massive increase in horrific violence against not just Israel, but all over the world, with decades of Islamic terrorism giving us all a taste of what Israeli's deal with every day.
The violence that is going to follow our staggering failure of foreign policy that is represented by the fact that Hamas is still even alive, is going to be much, much worse.
We are basically at the Darwin Award level of civilizational suicide at this point.
Critics of the peace process can say many things. One thing they can't do is wash their hands of responsibility for the current situation - they have, after all, dominated Israeli politics since 2009. The ideas that Palestinians deserve no rights and should simply be crushed militarily - and that Israelis can enjoy security with no peace process - these are Netanyahu's core promises. I didn't personally love seeing this ideology dominate election after election in Israel, but the fact is that it did.
And on October 7, THIS is the governing ideology that failed at every level. At the level of tactics, the Netanyahu government's intelligence failures, redeployment of forces to back up West Bank settlers, and hollowing out of the PA (to the benefit of Hamas) all proved to be devastating mistakes. But the even more profound failure was this promise of security with no diplomatic resolution to the conflict - a promise that has been self-evidently discredited after a disaster for Israel on par with 1973.
And the reason this is so is embedded in your comment - because what is "decisive victory"? According to some ultra-hawks like Ben-Gvir, it is conquering and ethnicly cleansing the territories. But that's an insane goal, and a mirror image version of Hamas' insane goal of conquering and ethnicly cleansing Israel. There is a reason that a lot of the leading voices for diplomacy in Israel have come out of its military leadership - because once you have had to seriously consider the implications, the Ben-Gvir maximalist position is just not tenable.
It's also worth saying that Hamas is either so weak that decisive victory was an easy choice available to Yitzhak Rabin in the 90s, or so strong that it threatens the whole world, but it can't be both. My personal view is that although Hamas is a regional actor, it is precisely the *prolonging of the conflict* that increases its strength. After a hypothetical peace agreement, Hamas will go the way of the Ulster Volunteer Force - perhaps it will continue to kick around as a low-level criminal syndicate, but with its maximalist goals off the table it will become irrelevant as a political force and a security threat.
There is no "peace process." There are genocidal antisemites who are using every trick in the book to kill as many jews as they can and destroy the state of Israel. Cowardly appeasers in the West, engaging in Darwin-Award-levels of "peace process" with these murderers and lunatics are the ones who cannot wash their hands of the responsibility for the current situation.
The only criticism of Israel's policies is that they are going along with this evil appeasement of their own destroyers instead of decisively crushing Hamas and co. in a week.
If you genuinely believe that (a) the Netanyahu/Smotrich/Ben-Gvir government could have decisively crushed Hamas in a week but chose not to because ??? and (b) an unspeakably disastrous attack that happened on this government's watch can be blamed instead on Yitzhak Rabin, then I'm not sure we're living in the same reality.
Of course, Israel can defeat Hamas in a week. They are not doing it because they are cowardly appeasers and so is everyone else in the foreign policy departments of every Western country. The West hasn't won a war since WW2 because of the intellectual bankruptcy of our foreign policy "experts."
And the blame for the attack is on Hamas and their apologists and enablers.
Thank you everyone for your comments.
I’m neither a Jew nor a Palestinian (so what do I know) but I’ve tried to educate myself about these struggles and mindsets over the past many years.
This seems like the most intelligent and succinct overview I’ve read. So thank you.
The concept of Total Ideology is running rampant throughout the world. It’s time for a different way since we are all in it together. What each of us does says and thinks makes a difference.
Thanks for bringing some clarity to this one person.
Thank you for another top flight analysis.
One thing that really rang a bell for me personally was the critique of Post-Modernism. In a sense (for the wrong reasons) Florida's Governor, Ron DeSantis, intuitively has grasped how "totalizing" post-modernism has become within academia. Of course, replacing one totalizing ideology with another totalizing ideology is not a solution.
It's the extreme right in the United States, including DeSantis and Trump who have wholeheartedly embraced post-modernism. If they are attacking left post-modernism, it is through their own right-wing version. Eg., white Christians are the most discriminated group in America, also embracing Russian techniques of propaganda, with the concomitant belief that every government is corrupt and you cannot trust anyone.
One opposite to Total Ideologies is world federalism with citizenship and democracy. Among other things by accepting that all humans are equal and that we need common institutional framework from local to global level
I really enjoyed this piece, well written and thoughts are deep and refined. It’s funny because it reminded me of an observation that my Canadian politics professor had about the parties — that they all tried to frame themselves as pragmatists focused on ‘the economy’ and mostly avoided ideological stances, lest they polarise the electorate and lose votes. On the other hand, when it comes to this 75+ years cause, the voice of pragmatists seems to be lost against the ideologues. We need more Logos and less Pathos, and I say that to America first who has been towing the ideological Zionist line for far too long instead of playing the role of the pragmatically neutral arbiter in this seemingly existential conflict. To prevent it from being an existential conflict, we need more Logos and less Pathos.
And that’s how I know your piece was that good, because I learned from it and it made me think! Thank you, Professor Al Kassimi.
Wow! Somebody making sense about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict! Thankyou for this excellent thought provoking analysis. The whole world right now seems infected with fascism and other totalizing ideologies. It's like Gresham's law of money. Extremist ideas drive out sensible ones and we are left with people screaming at each other over an unbridgeable divide. If only calmer heads would prevail!
Sorry guys, I don't mean to be rude, but this is yet another delusional piece on this subject coming from the UnPopulist. I can't imagine the level of dishonest evasion required to try and both sides such a black and white issue as this conflict. If this kind of thinking was dominant during WW2 then Germany and Japan would've easily crushed the West.
If you cannot call for the immediate military destruction of Hamas, whatever the cost, then you are no different to what we are seeing on college campuses.
There really is no way to excuse this. The UnPopulist is disgracing itself with these incompetent articles.