Palestinians are not allowed to grieve during Israel-Hamas war
A Jewish History professor’s op-ed on the middle point of the Israel-Palestine crisis. David Myers: What happened when Israel and Gaza lost their lives
When you watch a horrible event far away from your home, you can feel uselessness, but the same thing can be felt by your friends and neighbors.
The war in Israel and Gaza created a web of grief that connects friends and strangers. In the days right after the Hamas attack, my neighbor was worried about her extended family in Israel who she was having a hard time tracking down.
Rania says that empathy isn’t the only thing missing from the discourse. Many conversations that are happening here in the U.S. are missing key context, she says, as if everyone is picking up a book in the middle, thinking it’s the beginning.
Yet I happened upon an op-ed by a professor of Jewish history at UCLA. His name is David Myers. He wrote a piece for the paper trying to find a middle point where the Jews and Palestinians on the campus can grieve for one another.
I reached out to him to see if he would be willing to talk about it. I was also looking for a long view. A historian’s take. Because perhaps, with distance, the pain is lessened? It was clear very quickly, that historians are living with us now and it’s too much to bear.
David Myers: Terribly. My heart is broken. I’m grieving, mourning, angry, bewildered, and scared at the same time. And I realize I’m not there. I’m not living in Israel-Palestine. I’m going to remove it. So what is it going to take for it to be on the ground? I have a lot of time there, but I’m not there now. I’m experiencing all of these things. It’s almost unbearable. I spend my time teaching, doing media appearances, and then disappearing back into a cave of depression.
Martin: How did things start to evolve on campus? Because UCLA, like many college campuses around the country, has been beset with a lot of students who are angry, who are hurt, who are suffering, who want justice for all the people who’ve lost their lives. What did you see that caused that emotion to bubble up?
Myers: I think what I encountered was a great deal of mystification about how students on the other side of the divide failed to understand where they were. It was much less about, “Can you help me understand what took place in geopolitical terms?” and more about, “How could that group be so uncomprehending and so lacking in basic empathy?”
He said that he did. Both groups, and I’m sort of generalizing and speaking of these groups, the groups represent those strong supporters of Israel who tend to be Jewish students, and supporters of the Palestinian cause, some of whom are Palestinian and Arab and many of whom are not.
I think they have a deep sense of grievance. The Jewish students are sympathetic to many other issues, while the progressive left is not, so they refused to condemn a massacre of Jews. And those who support the Palestinian cause believe that the university and the broader political culture of the United States are insufficiently attentive to the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Israel-hamas-palestinians-gaza-religion: “His call for empathy has made this professor feel isolated”
The very simple and intuitive claim that this is the time to recognize the humanity of all was what made it clear what I had to write. It is not the time for me to be taking sides.
I knew that that would elicit many suggestions that I was a traitor to my people, the Jewish people. I knew the claims would be that I failed to understand the suffering of the Palestinian people. I had to write it down. I believe that it’s not only intuitive, but it’s also the moral place where I need to be.
Which is to say, it is an absolute moral imperative to condemn without equivocation the massacre that took place on October 7th. It is a moral imperative to attend to the extraordinary suffering of Palestinians in Gaza because the two are not exclusive of one another.
All too often, in the best of circumstances, people feel the need to choose sides. It’s understandable why people feel they can’t hold on to both. But I guess I would ask: Is there not a small portion of our hearts that can be reserved for the other, even in this time of grief?
I don’t consider myself to be a morally better person than the average, but I do think it’s important to try to in such moments, as a manifestation of our humanity, carve out a small portion that can allow us to empathize.
Source: His call for empathy has made this Jewish studies professor feel isolated
What do you do about repeated cycles of violence in the Holocaust? Myers: How can we pray? How do we grieve? What do we do about it?
Martin: As a history teacher, I think part of your job is looking back through time and identifying patterns and teaching students also how to identify them and then to hopefully break the patterns that don’t serve us anymore, right? As a people and as a society. What can you do about the repeated cycles of violence in this conflict?
Someone named Myers. Yeah. Those cycles are related to profound traumas, which made for a conflict with one another. The trauma of the Holocaust and the displacement of over a million Palestinians during the 1948 war are known to almost all. My answer to Rachel is to ask ourselves how it is going, then we can break out of the mold. Is it working? Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen it not work well. That kind of death embrace of two siblings, I often think of them as Jacob and Esau, is detrimental to the health of both.
Myers: It’s a very tricky question, in part because I take solace in prayer and in prayer in community. But this is a period in time in which I do not feel in sync with my community and I feel my community does not feel in sync with me. And therefore I feel some measure of what many of us feel at this time, just extraordinary loneliness.
I also see the ways in which the Psalms offer sources of consolation. We can open up the possibility of moving beyond where we are. I carry a verse I wrote down, which is what we say every day. It says: “You turned my lament into dancing. You undid my sackcloth and girded me with joy.”
The Defense Forces and UNRWA Monitor Gaza Strip: The U.S. Department of State says two Israeli hostages are still missing and that humanitarian aid is not enough
There is fighting outside of Gaza. Several Israeli towns, near the Israel-Lebanon border, were ordered to evacuate over the weekend due to rocket exchanges with Hezbollah. In an attempt to fight off Hamas, Israel has increased its airstrikes in the West Bank.
The Israel Defense Forces said the military struck over 320 military targets on Sunday, with a focus on Hamas headquarters, tunnels and firing positions in Gaza.
In the southern part of Gaza, which is populated by Palestinians at Israel’s request, there are two cities where more than 200 were killed in the overnight airstrikes. More than half of Gaza’s population of some 2.2 million people has been displaced from their homes, according to the United Nations.
On Monday, Israeli Defense Forces raised the confirmed number of Hamas hostages to 222, saying the total now includes a number of foreign nationals who were not initially on the list.
Hagari said they were working to free the hostages and bring them home, adding that the weekend Israeli raids inside Gaza were intended to gather information on them.
At least 10 Americans remain unaccounted for, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday while briefing reporters about the release of two Americans who were being held hostage — Judith Raanan, 59, and Natalie Raanan, 17, a mother and daughter from Illinois.
After an initial 20 truckloads of aid were delivered Saturday, more followed on Sunday. An additional shipment entered Monday, according to the AP.
But humanitarian workers say the relief is not nearly enough. The shipments amount to about 3% of what would normally cross the border before the hostilities began, according to the U.N.
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries. Without fuel, aid will not reach those in desperate need. Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, said in a statement Sunday that there would be no humanitarian assistance without fuel. “Without fuel, we will fail the people of Gaza whose needs are growing by the hour, under our watch.”
Fuel is also necessary to power generators for critical infrastructure, including hospitals, desalination plants and wastewater treatment facilities, because Gaza’s main power plant is still out of operation.
The emergency fuel held by the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians is about to be exhausted.
The biggest hospital in Gaza has run out of supplies, said a British-Palestinian surgeon.
He told NPR that an estimated 14k wounded have consumed all of the supplies in the system to care for them.
Israeli Defense of the Humanrights During the Gaza Crisis: A U.N.-Broken Dialogue Between the U.S., France, and Italy
The group of Western leaders issued a joint statement on Sunday saying they supported Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism while also calling for the country to abide by humanitarian law, including protection of civilians.
The statement was issued after a call between President Biden, Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada, President Emanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Scholz of Germany, and Prime Minister Meloni of Italy.
Gaza is in a humanitarian crisis because of the bombing and blockade by Israel, according to human rights groups. Over the weekend, the first trucks carrying aid started to trickle through from Egypt to Gaza, part of a U.N.-brokered deal helped along by leaders of various countries, the U.S. among them. While urging that country to minimize civilian casualties, president Biden has continued to say his administration stands with Israel.
During this latest conflict, Biden has urged Israel to limit civilian casualties, but his support for the country has not wavered, and he’s reiterated his support for Israel’s right to defend itself. He has not publicly condemned the siege of Gaza and has not called for an end to the bombing.
The conversation was just one of dozens Netanyahu has had with world leaders in recent days. Dutch PM Mark Rutte is in Israel today and France’s president is expected to visit tomorrow.
China’s special envoy to the Middle East, Zhai Jun, is also in the region today. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, is heading to the Middle East and will start with his allies in Iran on Monday.
A Conversation with the Slain Saudi Dissident, David Thrall, on the Importance of Humanizing the Occupation
On the day before Israel was attacked by Hamas, an interview with Thrall was published by the organization that was founded by the slain Saudi dissident. In it, Thrall was asked about his depictions of Israelis, and whether he had qualms about “humanizing the occupation.”
“I was very glad to be asked that question,” Thrall told me. The book had an ambition to depict real people instead of villains and saints.
“How does one promote a program on this subject to a largely Jewish audience when people on all sides are being bombed, killed and buried?” Andrea Grossman, whose Los Angeles nonprofit called off an event with Thrall, said in The Guardian. American Public Media, which distributes content for public radio stations nationwide, even pulled ads for the book. The spokesman for the APM said in an email thatSponsoring a book would be insensitive in light of the human tragedies unfolding, and wanted to avoid the perception of endorsing a specific perspective.
Nevertheless, a commitment to free speech, like a commitment to human rights, shouldn’t depend on others reciprocating; such commitments are worth trying to maintain even in the face of unfairness. “Art is one of the things that can keep our minds and hearts open, that can help us see beyond the hatred of war, that can make us understand that we cannot be divided into the human versus the inhuman because we are, all of us, human and inhuman at the same time,” Nguyen wrote on Instagram.
92NY would be a good place for him to explain why the statement he signed didn’t live up to his words. When leaders need to model it is the moments when dialogue is bitter.
President Biden made a reference to that. During his speech in Tel Aviv last week, he warned that Israel would need “clarity about the objectives and an honest assessment about whether the path you’re on will achieve those objectives.”
In phone conversations with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has stressed the need for careful consideration of how Israeli forces might conduct a ground invasion of Gaza, where Hamas maintains intricate tunnel networks under densely populated areas.
Biden administration officials insisted that the United States had not told Israel what to do and still supported the ground invasion. The Pentagon has sent a three-star Marine to assist the Israelis in fighting an urban war.
During their conversations, Mr. Austin described the campaign to clear the Iraqi city of Mosul of Islamic State fighters. At the time, Mr. Austin was the head of United States Central Command, and American troops were backing their Kurdish and Iraqi counterparts in the fight.
Everyone knows that urban combat is extremely difficult, but the first thing that everyone should know is that.
He urged Mr. Gallant to conduct their operations according to the law of war. A ground invasion in Gaza could cause a huge loss of civilian lives, which has American officials worried.
Pentagon officials said that on Monday he was on the phone with Mr. Gallant. In an emailed statement, Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said that the two men also discussed American security assistance to Israel.
American officials said that Israel must decide whether, for instance, to try to take out Hamas by using surgical airstrikes combined with targeted raids by special operations troops — as American warplanes and Iraqi and Kurdish troops did in Mosul — or to roll into Gaza with tanks and infantry, as American Marines and soldiers, along with Iraqi and British forces, did in Falluja in 2004.
Both tactics will result in heavy losses, U.S. officials said, but a ground operation could be far bloodier, for troops and civilians. At the Pentagon, many officials believe that the Mosul and Raqqa clearing operations in Iraq more than a decade after Falluja are a better model for urban warfare.
The Battle of Raqqa and the City of Mosul: State of the State and Israel’s Position on the Right Side of the War
“One of the things we’ve learned is how to account for civilians in the battle space, and they are a part of the battle space, and we, in accordance of the law of war, we’ve got to do what’s necessary to protect those civilians,” Mr. Austin said on Sunday.
Both Raqqa and the city of mosul resulted in significant civilian casualties. The number of civilians who died in the fight against the Islamic State was put by the Associated Press at between 9000 and 11,000. The Washington Institute fellow Michael Knights said that the Islamic State had only two years to prepare for the battle.
Mr. Knights wrote in an analysis earlier this month that Hamas has had 15 years to build a dense defense in depth and that includes subterranean, ground level and aboveground fortifications.
Jack Reed, the Rhode Island Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, called for Israel to delay a ground invasion of Gaza and allow more humanitarian aid to reach Palestinian civilians in order to give their commanders more time to fine-tunes their urban-combat planning.
“From an operational standpoint, this is very complicated, and the more intelligence you gather and your forces can take into urban combat, the better,” Mr. Reed said by phone from Cairo. “A little extra time might be helpful. There are so many factors. It is probably not the best approach to rush into this.
The Biden administration gave the same advice to Israel. Like U.S. officials, Mr. Reed said he also still supports the ground invasion to destroy Hamas. But he warned that a block-by-block urban fight in Gaza would be “a long-term effort,” noting that it took the Iraqi army, assisted by the United States, nine months to rout the Islamic State from Mosul.
“There cannot be a cease fire, negotiated solution or peaceful coexistence with murderers,” said Marco Rubio (R-FL), who has advocated for Israel to respond disproportionately.
“If you look at how they behave — not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic,” DeSantis said to voters in Iowa, arguing that the U.S. should not accept Palestinians who might flee as refugees. “None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist,” he said.
People were using social media like Facebook andX to beat the drums of war. Sometimes they were people he knew. “You find many decent people — they’re frothing at the mouth, ‘Hey, we want to burn Gaza to the ground, finish them,’ ” he says.
It is certain that Palestinians would face real-world violence because of the rhetoric. He was not surprised at how the Palestinian American family was attacked by their landlord. The mother, Hanaan Shahin, was severely wounded — her six-year-old son, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was killed.
“There is this huge rhetoric of speaking for Palestinians or against Israel is antisemitic. “It’s not”, says the man. Jews in the US and Israelis speak up against Israeli occupation and the war.
“I barely have time to engage in the act of living,” he says. From his home in Detroit, he’s watching as his family’s home is demolished block by block.
The U.S. government has been abandoned by the Palestinians in Gaza, according to Hani. “Palestinians in Gaza are dead, and nobody is paying attention,” he says.
Luthun does data engineering by day. By night he’s a poet and a community organizer. He mostly has done work around disability justice, but ever since the war started, he’s been on Zoom calls and group texts with other organizers, strategizing the best way to call for a ceasefire and stop the bombing. He says that 75 percent of his family lives in Gaza. So far, they’ve made it.
More recently, Biden has emphasized that Palestinian civilians are being harmed, and stated that the “vast majority” of Palestinians “have nothing to do with Hamas” – but many Palestinian Americans listening say it feels like his rhetoric has privileged Israeli pain over their own.
There haven’t been elections since 2006 in Gaza which is controlled by Hamas. More than half of Gaza’s population are children, meaning many weren’t alive, let alone old enough to vote back then.
Hani Almadhoun works at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the primary relief organization in Gaza, so he knows how things work on the ground. He lives in the D.C. area, but was visiting with his family, just a few weeks ago.
Some of the family went south after Israel ordered 1 million Palestinians to leave Gaza City. The southern part of the peninsula was bombed by Israel as well.
He says most of his family members are huddled together in an apartment building, staying away from windows during the day, sleeping under staircases at night, aware they could die at any moment.
The ‘Nakba’ – the story of Israel’s 1967 war with Gaza, as taught by Sen. Lindsey Graham
When she finally got in touch with her son, she asked to have a video call so that she could see him in case he died in the bombing.
His sister-in-law lost her family in an air strike on their home over the weekend. All of her siblings are dead, and she cannot find her father in the rubble.
He says it’s not just the stories of loss and horror he’s hearing from Gaza – it’s also what he feels is a callous response to those horrors by people here in the U.S.
She said that Americans were stuck in a false narrative, that the siege began with Hamas’ attack, when there was a lot of complicated history behind it.
This is the fifth time Israel has had a war or conflict with Gaza in the past 15 years. But the history goes back even further she says, to what Palestinians call ‘the Nakba’ — or ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic – the mass displacement of 700,000 Palestinians during the establishment of Israel.
For the past 16 years, Israel has maintained a land, sea and air blockade of Gaza – restricting the movement of people and goods. Egypt also has a blockade on its border with the enclave. Both countries say it’s necessary to protect against militants, though some humanitarian groups have called Gaza an “open-air prison.”
Israel has been supported by the United States. Some human rights groups have called what is happening to Palestinians in parts of the occupied territories, including Gaza, apartheid, but Washington has continued its support.
“Level the place,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News. When World War II is over, Gaza will look like Tokyo and Berlin. And if it doesn’t look that way, Israel made a mistake,” he said.
