‘The Barbarism of The Enemy’

Edited by Sam Thielman

THE 20 SURVIVING Israeli hostages are home. The nearly 2000 living Palestinian hostages—1700 of them taken captive by the IDF in Gaza after October 7—are on their way home, minus 154 whom Israel is forcing into yet another exile. Phase 1 of the third ceasefire since October 7 is under way. As wary as we should be of claims that "the war is over," as President Trump put it today on Air Force One en route to Israel, this is a relief that comforts an ache in our souls. We can experience these two feelings simultaneously.

A diplomatic conference in Sharm El Sheikh, ongoing as of this writing, aims to establish parameters for who will govern Gaza. Trump's plan would place Gaza under an international receivership, chaired by him and perhaps managed by Tony Blair, in an ominous echo of the British Mandate that began over 100 years ago and incubated the State of Israel. There is no clear path to Palestinian statehood, independence or even autonomy here just a sick dream of reviving the Abraham Accords over the bodies of the Palestinians. And under the plan, the IDF will remain in Gaza even after a still-unassembled "international security force" deploys. Israeli forces will retain a "buffer zone" of Palestinian territory, in much the same way that it has taken territory from Lebanon and Syria that it intends to keep. Those positions permit Israel to retain substantial control over Gaza's access to the outside world—perhaps with the exception of the Rafah Crossing, but I'm not sure about that—thus ensuring that Israel, not Palestinians, continue to control Gaza's economic future.

Most importantly, 67,869 Palestinians whom the Gaza Ministry of Health can name did not live to see today. Hundreds of thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble. No one in the Middle East and likely beyond will ever forget the Israeli slaughter, nor the U.S. weaponry that facilitated it, nor the U.S. mercenaries of the "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation" who murdered starving people seeking aid.

If Israel wants to actually prevent the next October 7, in whatever form it will take, it must free Palestine. The rest is commentary. Or avoidance. 

Israel failed at removing the Palestinians from Gaza, but it has made Gaza a wasteland. Its major miscalculation, the one that prompted the U.S. to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire framework at all, came not in response to Gaza but to bombing Qatar, home to the U.S.' largest Middle East airbase, and rattling the Arab clients of the U.S. military into wondering if they were next. Once again, the Palestinians were an afterthought even as they remained within the crucible.

And while Haaretz's Amos Harel thinks this really is the end—and while I hope he's right—Defense Minister Israel Katz posted that once the Israeli hostages are out, the IDF will destroy Hamas' tunnel network in Gaza, which will amount to yet another Israeli ceasefire violation. As we have been writing since June 2024, Netanyahu has yet to progress to the second phase of a ceasefire, most recently shattering one in March—with Trump's full backing—and opting instead to intensify the mass starvation that has been a hallmark of these past two horrific years. Once the ceasefire was announced on Thursday, Drop Site reported, the IDF launched an arson spree in Gaza City. 

I thought of that arson spree when I heard Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, address an Israeli crowd on Saturday. He told them: "Instead of replicating the barbarism of the enemy, you chose to be exceptional. You chose to stand for the values that you stand for."

The first thing to say about that is that Israel visited upon Gaza a barbarism literally an order of magnitude—and quite possibly two—greater than the barbarism it experienced on October 7. Forced starvation, forced expulsion, the firebombing of children in tents, the destruction of Gaza's health and education infrastructure, the babies dead in their incubators, the quadcopter drones now capable of stable gunfire, the artificial intelligence used to target people at scale, the soldiers gleefully looting the lingerie drawers of Palestinian women, the rape of Palestinian detainees, the endless justifications presented in Israeli media—this is a barbarism that will never be forgotten. American audiences might not like to hear West Bank settlers talk about seeking to destroy Gaza "from infant to old woman" or ex-parliamentarians call "every child in Gaza" the enemy, but two successive U.S. administrations, representing both parties, and a bipartisan majority in Congress, facilitated a slaughter that unfolded on precisely those terms.

I believe that each and every one of us lives our values as reflected in the choices we make every day. Our true values, not our stated values, are found not in what we say but revealed by what we do. In that respect, I agree with Kushner. The Israelis chose to stand for the values that they stand for. The Americans did exactly the same. If we don't like hearing that, we have to change our actions.

The second thing to say is that Kushner voiced something that the U.S.-Israeli genocide made clear: The U.S., not just Israel, considers Palestinians subhuman. There is no way to spend two years arming Israel and defending it diplomatically as it culls the open-air concentration camp of Gaza if you believe that a Palestinian life and an Israeli life carry the same importance. FOREVER WARS friend and contributor Stephen Semler tallied $38 billion in U.S. material support to Israel since October 7 alone. The U.S. plan for a new Gaza administration does not envision the Palestinians governing themselves, which is the most basic demand of human freedom.

Relatedly, the third thing to say is that even should Trump's 20-point plan take hold, another October 7 will happen. It is foretold by the conditions of Palestinian oppression that the plan leaves intact. Hamas, which remains armed, is not the first Palestinian militant group to take its revenge on Israel, and it will not be the last. I do not pretend to be an expert in Palestinian politics, and you should listen to Palestinians about this and not me, but the leader most likely to unite Palestinian factions and accordingly negotiate a lasting and just status quo for everyone between the river and the sea is Marwan Barghouti, and the Israelis struck his name from the list of prisoner releases. That is a clue that we will be back to this horrific place once again. If Israel wants to actually prevent the next October 7, in whatever form it will take, it must free Palestine. The rest is commentary. Or avoidance. 

Trump declaring himself a peace president is the arsonist putting on the firefighter's jacket. As Nesrine Malik writes today in The Guardian, there is no accountability on offer, should this be the end, for the indicted war criminal who remains the prime minister of Israel, nor for those who executed the many war crimes that characterized the genocide. There can be no return to a "rules-based international order" after the U.S. helped Israel set it on fire. The ash of the American-guaranteed order will yield something else, and we know not yet what. But if liberals don't like hearing Trump and his supporters declare themselves men of peace who stopped a war, they have Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and their administration to blame, for every single day of the entire first 16 months of this genocide was a day the Biden administration could have ended it and didn't.

May the genocide finally be over. May its perpetrators face justice. Free Marwan Barghouti. Free Palestine. 

THIS NEWSLETTER will publish once a week—or close to it—until I've finished my book manuscript. I'm not there yet, but today is a day I felt I owed you an edition. We'll be back to a normal twice-weekly publication schedule once THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN is fully drafted.

Hopefully I'll be done with the book before this, but on Wednesday, November 13, come to the Francis Kite Club on New York's Lower East Side, where we'll be honoring the publication of Luke O'Neil's excellent and moving fiction collection We Had It Coming. I'll be leading a discussion with Luke, and there will be readings from the similarly excellent writers Kylie Cheung, Edward Ongweso Jr. and Grace Robins-Somerville. And it's all free to the public. Maybe I'll even read a bit from the new book; who knows.