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clarabosswald · 6 months

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"Win all the Battles, Lose the War" by Yuval Noah Harari

Who wins the Israel-Hamas war? It depends, of course, on how you define victory. In a soccer game, the side that scores more goals wins. In a war, the winner is not necessarily the one who kills more people, takes more prisoners, destroys more houses, or conquers more territory - the winner is the side that achieves its political goals. In the Iraq war, for example, the Americans won all the battles, occupied the entire country, captured Saddam Hussein and completely toppled his regime - but the war ended in a crushing political defeat for the USA and Iran becoming the "proprietor" in Iraq and the most powerful country in the Middle East. The existential threat that hovers over our heads today is partly a consequence of the American "victory" on the battlefields in Iraq. It could happen again. If we don't get our policy goals right, we could win all the battles and lose the war. So in the current war, who is closer to achieving their political goals? To answer this question, one must first know what the political goals of the parties are. Hamas' goals are quite clear. In the immediate term, Hamas's goal on October 7 was to sabotage the agreement that was being forged between Israel and Saudi Arabia. It's a bit hard to remember, but in the weeks before October 7 it was reported that Israel came very close to the possibility of a historic peace with Saudi Arabia, which would normalize relations between Israel and most of the Arab world and fundamentally change Israel's position in the world. Hamas stopped that.

In the longer term, Hamas' goal was to sow seeds of hatred in the minds of millions, to ensure that for generations to come there would be neither peace nor normalization between Israel and the Arab world. Hamas planned to carry out a particularly cruel massacre, and even took care to photograph and document the atrocities, in order to cause the Israelis as much pain as possible. Hamas assumed that Israel would respond to this massacre with tremendous force, which would also cause immense pain to the Palestinians. This was all a conscious part of the plan. The name that Hamas gave to its attack indicates its intentions. The attack was called "Tupan" - the flood. Like the biblical flood that destroyed humanity, Hamas intended to wreak havoc on a biblical scale. Does Hamas not care about the suffering that this war has inflicted and continues to inflict on Palestinian citizens? Hamas supporters certainly have different feelings and opinions, but the organization's basic worldview does not attach importance to human suffering. The highest goals of Hamas are dictated by religious fantasies. For Hamas, Palestinians who are killed in the war are martyrs, who now enjoy heavenly pleasures in heaven. As more people die, there are more martyrs who enjoy heaven. And as far as our physical world is concerned, from the point of view of a fundamentalist organization like Hamas, human society on earth can have only one goal - uncompromising loyalty to heavenly principles of purity and justice. Since in order to make peace one must always compromise on justice, organizations like Hamas reject any opportunity for peace, and demand that people will fight at any cost for absolute justice and absolute purity.

This, by the way, explains the apparently strange phenomenon of radical left-wing organizations in Western democracies that absolve Hamas of any responsibility for the atrocities in Israel and the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, and lay the full blame on Israel alone. The connection between the radical left and Hamas is the belief in absolute justice, the unwillingness to accept the complexity of this world, and the division of the world into pure good facing absolute evil. Justice is a noble goal, but the claim to absolute justice inevitably leads to endless war. There was not a single peace treaty in the history of mankind that did not require compromises, and that provided absolute justice.

Finally, Hamas' actual grand plan was that its surprise attack and the Israeli countermeasures would set the West Bank on fire, lead to an uprising of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and also drag Hezbollah, Iran and other forces into the war, who together might land a blow on Israel that would shock and perhaps even destroy the country. This is the flood that Hamas wishes for. So how close is Hamas to achieving its goals?

As far as preventing an Israeli-Saudi agreement and destroying any chance for future peace and normalization between Jews and Arabs - then Hamas is very close to victory. As a matter of fact, Hamas has already achieved far beyond what it hoped for, because it has succeeded in sowing hatred not only in the minds of millions of Israelis and Palestinians, but also in the minds of hundreds of millions more people all over the world. Antisemitism is on the rise, while Israel's international standing is at an unprecedented low, even in the Western democracies that have been our allies for years. Every additional day in which Palestinians are killed or starved in Gaza advances Hamas another step on its path.

As far as dragging more forces into the war, so far Hamas' success is much more limited. But time plays in their favor. Hamas has already bet the whole jackpot, and even if so far they have not won the big prize, the roulette is still spinning. Every day a battle between Israel and Hezbollah, and every confrontation on the Temple Mount, are another round of the roulette. One wrong decision or a rocket that hits the wrong place may realize Hamas' grand plan and bring forth the flood.

And what about Israel? Do our tremendous sacrifices and the IDF's achievements on the battlefield bring us closer to our political goals? Even if Hamas has achieved some of its goals, perhaps we have also achieved some of our goals, so that a draw can be declared? These questions are very difficult to answer, because the Netanyahu government manages this war is without defining political goals. The government repeatedly says that the goal is to eliminate Hamas. Israel of course has a full right and even obligation to protect its territory and its citizens. The elimination of Hamas' military capabilities is also essential in order to open the way to future peace and normalization, because as long as Hamas possesses significant military power, it will use it to thwart any serious attempt at an arrangement. Whenever we get close to an agreement, Hamas will attack, as it did on October 7. But even if Israel succeeds in disarming Hamas, that is a military achievement, not a political goal. As stated before, the Americans in Iraq eliminated all the military power of Saddam Hussein and collapsed his regime, and still suffered a crushing political defeat. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to eliminate the threat of Fatah. The threat of Fatah was successfully removed - and in its place we got the threat of Hezbollah. Does Israel have an orderly plan that explains how defeating Hamas leads to saving the peace treaty with Saudi Arabia, to a sustainable arrangement in Gaza, to the restoration of our international status, or to some other desired political goal? Without such a plan, it is impossible to make military decisions such as whether to attack Rafah or to cease fire.

When we have to choose between an attack in Rafah and a ceasefire, it reminds me of Alice in Wonderland who came to a crossroads and wasn't sure whether to turn right or left. She asked the Cheshire Cat which way she should go. The cat said to her: "Where do you want to go?" "I don't know," replied Alice. "Then," the cat decided, "it doesn't matter which way you choose." If we don't know where we want to go, how do we know if the road there leads through an attack in Rafah or through a ceasefire?

So does Israel have political goals in the war? It seems not. Some of the members of the government are captive to their own biblical visions and dreams of divine revenge and absolute justice. The prime minister, for his part, has not given a single speech since the beginning of the war in which he articulates his political vision, and it seems that this vision is summed up in one and only one goal: to retain his seat. The October 7 War extends by a month and another month, and the Hamas-ian flood threatens to drown the entire region in blood. It is impossible to wait until after the war to establish an alternative government that does have a political vision. The war is only a tool to achieve political goals. Letting a policy-less government lead a war is a sure recipe to defeat. No matter how many victories are achieved on the battlefield, and at what cost, it is impossible to translate a military victory into a political achievement if there is no policy.

Political goals are also essential for Israeli hasbara. If Israel chooses to initiate a certain military action, there are three main ways to justify it. It can be argued that this is revenge for October 7. That won't convince anyone but ourselves, because even our greatest friends think we've had enough revenge. It can be argued that everything we do is to free the hostages. It no longer convinces even the families of the hostages, certainly when only three were released militarily. The alternative is to present a political plan to the world, and explain why additional military operations are necessary to realize it. As long as the Israeli government does not present a political plan, Israeli hasbara has no chance of convincing world public opinion. And who knows, if we finally define political goals, maybe we will discover that there is no need at all for more military operations to fulfill them?

For all these reasons, it is necessary to immediately establish a government that has a political vision, based on striving for a sustainable compromise and not on biblical fantasies and demands for absolute justice. And if you insist on some biblical fantasy, then here is one: at the end of the flood, a dove with an olive branch in its beak arrived. Of course, after the October 7 massacre, compromise and peace seem completely impossible. But such things have happened before.

30 years ago, in 1994, a terrible massacre took place in Rwanda reminiscent of the horrors of October 7. In one day the Hutus tortured, raped and murdered thousands of Tutsis - men and women, elderly and children. Entire families and villages were wiped off the face of the earth. It was a horrifically brutal killing spree, with machetes, hatchets, hoes and clubs. The next day, it happened again. And the next day, it happened again. And the next day, it happened again. What the Israelis experienced on the terrible Saturday of October 7, the Tutsis experienced for about a hundred consecutive days between April 7 and mid-July 1994. It is estimated that during these hundred days the Hutus murdered about 800 thousand people and raped hundreds of thousands of women. The massacre ended when the Tutsi resistance movement defeated the Hutu army, and took control of Rwanda. About two million Hutus fled the country. 30 years later, peace reigns between the Tutsi and Hutu. The Tutsi leadership led a process of reconciliation and healing, and accepted back to Rwanda the vast majority of Hutus who fled. Today Hutu and Tutsi live together in peace in Rwanda, which is considered one of the most peaceful and prosperous countries in Africa. Recently it has even become a popular tourist destination. People fly on vacation to Rwanda and visit picturesque villages in the hills where Hutu and Tutsi live together, and the tourists are unable to believe what happened in their vacation spots just 30 years ago. If they succeeded, maybe we have hope too.

Jewish history can also teach us similar lessons. On October 7, many Israelis, including several members of my family and friends, experienced horrors reminiscent of the darkest moments of the Holocaust. But eight decades after the Holocaust, Germans and Israelis are now good friends. It is important to emphasize that healing processes such as those between the Tutsis and the Hutus and between the Jews and the Germans are not based on achieving absolute justice. How is such justice possible? Can anyone bring the corpses back to life, or put the scream back into the throat? As a historian, I know that the curse of history is the attempt to save the past. This attempt stands no chance. We cannot save the past. We must focus on the future. We need to heal the wounds of the past, instead of using them as an excuse for more and more new wounds.

After hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost their homes in 1948, Arab countries expelled hundreds of thousands of Jews from their territories. Since then, wound haunts wound in a seemingly endless cycle of blood. But we don't have to continue this cycle indefinitely. There is a possibility of stopping it, as can be learned from the behavior of Palestinian citizens of Israel. When Hamas gave the signal for the flood, it hoped that the Israeli Palestinians would join the circle of blood and attack their Jewish neighbors. Many Jews - and quite a few Arabs - lived in fear that this was exactly what was going to happen. In practice, the behavior of the Palestinian citizens of Israel since October 7 is a ray of light in the darkness. On October 7 itself, some of the Palestinian citizens of Israel were murdered by Hamas while trying to help the Jews, such as Abd al-Rahman Al-Nassara of al-Kasifa, who was murdered by terrorists when he came to rescue survivors from the [Nova] party, and Awad Musa Darawshe of Iksal, who was killed near Kibbutz Re'im while helping the wounded. Every day that has passed since then, tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens have continued to serve faithfully in all the institutions of Israeli society, from hospitals to government offices, while their friends and relatives in Gaza face death, refugeehood and hunger. The chairman of the Joint List party, Iman Odeh, denounced the October 7 massacre, saying that these were "horrific scenes that cannot be described. I cannot accept that in the name of the Palestinian people innocents are being killed in this way," and Ra'am Chairman Mansour Abbas called the massacre "an inhumane and unjustifiable act that goes against the values of Islam," and said that "the armed Palestinian organizations should lay down their weapons" and strive for peace with the State of Israel.

In order for all of us to have a real chance to get out of the cycle of bloodshed, the first step is to define a clear political goal for this war. Hamas has such a goal: to eliminate any chance of peace between Israel and the Arab world and the Palestinians. Israel's goal should be no less clear: to maintain the chance for peace. If Israel succeeds in disarming Hamas at the military level, but is left without a political horizon, then Hamas has defeated us.

#ישראבלר #been sitting on this opinion piece for a couple of days and finally got around to translating it #once again i'm glad that i don't waste time on writing my own pieces here #first and foremost because nobody cares as i've come to learn #but secondly because israeli peace activists just do it so much better than i ever could #anyway here's the daily prayer that bibi and his coalition end in prison as soon as possible a fucking men

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