A Year Later: Revisiting the Israel-Hamas Conflict

Author: Logan Tantibanchachai

Last November, the New York Times described the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict as releasing a “deluge of online propaganda and disinformation” that was “larger than anything seen before.” Russia, China, Iran and its proxies used, and have continued to use, state media and covert influence campaigns on social media networks to create support for Hamas and undermine support for the state of Israel. With 89% of college students getting their weekly news from social media, it’s no surprise that a large coalition of college students have gotten misled into taking radical pro-Palestine positions. What’s more, SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) chapters across the United States have far surpassed a simply pro-Palestine position to now often effectively supporting Hamas and encouraging blatant antisemitism on college campuses. 

Statistics and sensationalized media stories about pro-Palestine protestors are one thing, but seeing what is truly happening is another. On your typical university campus, merely uttering anything pro-Israel is sufficient to get people to begin screaming slurs or even spit on you (and, yes, both things have happened to me). So why am I writing this piece now, if I’ve seen what has been happening for over a year? Because enough is enough. Recently, the University of Houston’s SJP chapter had a slate of events that all but celebrated October 7, one of the most depraved terrorist attacks in recent history. It’s simple: that is a morally unacceptable position. More broadly, the pro-Palestine position is entirely incoherent when put under the slightest pressure.  To that end, I will be succinct in articulating a pro-Israel position. Ultimately, I will argue for two things: (1) Israel’s founding does not constitute a colonial state (2) Israel has time and time again pushed for a two-state solution, with little to no reciprocity from the former or current governments of Palestine. 

To understand the founding of Israel, we first need to understand the history of the Jewish people and the region that is now occupied by the modern state of Israel. Around 1000 BCE, the Kingdom of Israel is established (remember, that’s over 1500 years before Islam ever exists). Then, in 722 BCE the Kingdom of Israel falls and the Jewish people are exiled from Israel by the Neo-Assyrians and then again exiled in 586 BCE by the Babylonians. In 322 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered the same region, and following his death the region became fractured until it came under Roman control in 37 BCE. Following the decline of the Roman empire, the Arabs conquered the region between 636 and 641 CE, and for thirteen centuries the region was a province of several Islamic regimes (the exception being the Crusader period of 1099-1291 CE). (Note that I stayed away, and will continue to stay away, from region-specific names as their meanings are seldom straightforward: the name Palestine is derived from the Philistines, which is why in the 2nd century CE, Rome renamed Judea to Palaestina to punish the Jewish people for revolting, leading to the name Palestine). 

With the historiography now in view, it is self-evident that the history of the region is far too complicated to simply say that Israel is a colonial-settler state. Let’s be clear about what a colonial state is defined as: fundamentally, a colonial-settler state is predicated on the notion that the group of people “colonizing” the region are not the indigenous people. Under that understanding of colonialism, the state of Israel does not seem to constitute a colonial-settler state by any reasonable interpretation of Jewish history—the Jewish people were in the region far before Islam even existed, continually thrown out of their native land, and historically repressed. In fact, following the demise of the Kingdom of Israel, there was no sovereign nation in the region until 1948—between 722 BCE and 1948 CE, the region was just a province of several other empires (up to 1867, when Mark Twain visited the region, it was still sparsely populated by his description). In other words, before 1948, the Kingdom of Israel—a Jewish regime—was the only truly sovereign nation occupying the region. Therefore, at the very least it is clear that a pro-Palestine argument grounded in indigeneity is largely incompatible with the reigning historical analyses of the region. Moreover, given the Jewish people’s deep historical roots in the region, their repeated displacement, and the absence of any sovereign nation in the area for centuries, the founding of Israel in 1948 is not only historically justified but also justified by virtue of the Holocaust and the persecution the Jewish people went through in the 20^th century. At the same time, though, it’s also true that there are currently two groups of people in the area—and, thus, a two-state solution seems to be the only reasonable outcome. It’s unfortunate, then, that only Israel desires a two-state solution. 

In 1948, immediately following its independence, Israel was attacked by Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Since then, Israel has been repeatedly attacked, with no justified casus belli, most notably in 1973 and 2006. And note here: arguments that Israel has initiated war, such as in the Six-Day War, hold very little weight. In the Six-Day War, for example, the Egyptian military had already mobilized against Israel’s border, and, thus, Israel had justified casus belli. And over the last 20 years, Hamas has broken every ceasefire, whereas Israel’s military actions have been defensive in nature. In 2014 alone, for example, Hamas broke nearly a dozen ceasefires. Ask yourself: who wants peace more? 

More than who wants peace and who doesn’t, though, Israel has continued to come to the negotiating table, with no reciprocation from either the Palestinian Liberation Authority (PLO) or Hamas. During the 2000 Camp David Accords, for example, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the PLO a deal that included 100 percent of Gaza and 92 percent of the West Bank. However, the then-president of the PLO didn’t even negotiate with Israel. Even after that, though, Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip in 2005. What happened after that? Hamas was ‘elected,’ they destroyed all the infrastructure Israel had built for the Palestinians, and they started launching rockets by using sewage pipes. It’s plain and simple: the side that negotiates and does not break ceasefires is the one that wants a two-state solution. 

If you’re reading this and still unconvinced, perhaps it’s because you think that nothing can justify genocide, and that’s what Israel has been guilty of, during the past year. The defining feature of genocide is that the actions taken under it are  “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” That such a definition applies to Israel’s military operations over the last year is preposterous. Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties than any military in history. Estimates for the ratio of enemy belligerent deaths to civilian deaths in Gaza are about 1 to 1.5. In contrast, the United Nations (UN) estimates that civilians usually account for about 80 to 90 percent of war-time casualties. Why is the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ratio comparatively low, then? Before its ground campaign in northern Gaza, Israel issued extensive warnings for civilians to evacuate, dropping over 7 million flyers. The IDF also made over 70,000 phone calls, sent 13 million text messages, and delivered 15 million voicemails to guide evacuations, alongside deploying drones and parachuted speakers for broadcast instructions. These efforts successfully evacuated about 85 percent of civilians from urban areas in northern Gaza. And even following those evacuations, Israel has continued to minimize civilian casualties. Before taking down a military target, the IDF calls the building manager, tells residents to evacuate, tap-tap-tap go the small missiles as a final warning—and then a big one brings the building down. All in all, all the available evidence shows that Israel has followed the wars of war, legal obligations, best practices in civilian harm mitigation, and still found a way to reduce civilian casualties to historically low levels. That doesn’t constitute genocide; that doesn’t even constitute a war crime.

This must stop. The oversimplified narrative of Israel as a colonial state ignores the historical realities and the genuine efforts for peace, while the reckless accusations of genocide deny the complexities of a conflict that deserves a nuanced discussion rooted in facts and nothing but the facts.