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This week I’ll be looking back at recent events that help me understand the war between Israel and Hamas, choosing a notable person of the week, and showcasing one of my favorite literary genres.
Some new events should deepen public understanding of the war in Gaza – if the public is willing to pay attention. President Biden presented a ceasefire plan. Israel accepted it. Hamas did not accept it. As National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on ABC's “This Week,” “If Hamas came and said yes to the deal that was on the table, there would be no need for these operations because the hostages would be released peacefully, not by military action.” He repeated this on “Face the Nation.” “The most effective, sure and right way to release all the hostages is to get a comprehensive ceasefire and hostage agreement, which President Biden publicly explained a few days ago, which Israel has accepted, and which we are now waiting for Hamas to respond to.” The UN Security Council voted 14-0 in favor. Calls for a ceasefire should be directed to Hamas, not Biden or Israel.
And one faction is deliberately inflating the civilian death toll: Hamas. “Yahya Sinwar resisted pressure to end the ceasefire and hostage agreement with Israel. Messages sent by Hamas military leaders in Gaza to intermediaries suggest the calculation behind his decision is that more fighting — and more Palestinian civilian deaths — will work in his favor,” reports The Wall Street Journal. Yes. Civilian deaths are the goal. “In his messages, Sinwar urged his fellow Hamas political leaders outside Gaza to not back down and to press for a permanent end to the war. High civilian casualties, Sinwar said, would increase global pressure on Israel.”
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More recently, a daring operation by the Israel Defense Forces to rescue four Israeli hostages who had been held for more than eight months gave new context to the war. The hostages were apparently rescued from a civilian apartment building. The Times of Israel reported that “At 11 a.m., orders were given to Yamam and Shin Bet officers to storm two high-rise buildings in Nuseirat where Hamas was holding the hostages.” It added:[Noa] Al-Ghamani was held alone in a Palestinian family's home by Hamas guards, while the other three hostages were held by guards in a different home. According to the IDF, Hamas pays such families to hold hostages captive in their homes. (Reports that one of the hostages was held in the home of an Al Jazeera journalist were “strongly denied” by the Qatari news network.) Civilians were killed during the raid, but the US government has not yet confirmed the number, and it is unclear whether the dead included hostage-takers or guards.
The hostages' location requires a rethinking of how we evaluate Israel's war effort and how we count and categorize casualties.
Hamas committed war crimes on October 7 by killing, raping, and abducting civilians. It continues to commit war crimes by taking civilians hostage and treating them inhumanely. Hamas has also committed a war crime again by turning civilian homes into hostage huts and military targets. While any civilian death is unfortunate, in this scenario Hamas is solely responsible for any casualties incurred during the rescue operation.
This rescue does raise the troubling question of the extent to which civilians aid terrorists (whether voluntarily or by force). To the extent that civilians become terrorist participants, i.e. hostages, they lose the protection of international law. To assess whether Israel's actions comply with international law and to count civilian casualties, we need to know whether and to what extent they became terrorist fighters or collaborators. Until we know that, the civilian casualty figures are uninformative.
Finally, many reports have called last weekend's protests in front of the White House “pro-Palestine” or “pro-Gaza.” Is that true? They included blatant praise for Hamas and overt anti-Semitic messages. NBC News reported:
“We don't want a second state, we want '48 back,” some protesters chanted, referring to the 1948 war that led to the creation of the state of Israel.
A group of protesters also chanted: “Say it loud and say it clearly: We don't want Zionists here.”
A small number of protesters wore green headbands similar to those worn by Hamas members.
One protester wearing the headband said it was “for Hamas,” but said he didn't speak Arabic and didn't know what it said. Asked if he supported Hamas, the protester, who did not give his name, said, “I wouldn't say I'm a supporter, but I would probably say I'm a sympathizer.”
Several statues in Lafayette Square across from the White House were vandalized with spray paint, graffiti and red handprints during protests. Protesters attached signs to the statues with slogans such as “Keep your hands off Rafa! Stop the genocide!” Others also defaced the statues with slogans such as “Liberate Gaza,” “Kill the pigs” and “Damn pigs.”
Social media posts showed protesters chanting, “Hezbollah, Hezbollah, kill the Zionists now.” Videos also circulated of protesters holding banners that read, “Jihad of Victory or Martyrdom.” Where is the condemnation from those who claim to fight for human rights for all and who deny anti-Semitic motives?
The bottom line is that Israel must be held accountable for its failure to comply with international law and for its inadequate measures to protect civilians and facilitate humanitarian aid. But missing from the condemnation of Biden and Israel is any recognition that Hamas committed serious legal and moral errors by sparking the war with its brutal attacks, by taking responsibility for civilian deaths during hostage rescues, and by erasing the line between civilians and combatants. Hamas wants more civilians to die. Israel's harshest critics have an obligation to distance themselves from those who support Hamas and from anti-Semites; otherwise, they are not granted the moral high ground.
This week's celebrities
Former federal judge David S. Teitel's “Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice” describes his work as a civil rights lawyer, his 30 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and his struggle with blindness. The book has also attracted attention for its candidness about the Supreme Court.
According to the Post, Teitel has accused the Supreme Court of “chip-at-a-timely undermining past precedents, notably overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022 and limiting the use of race in college admissions last year.” (Teitel retired in part out of disgust with, in his words, “a Supreme Court that seems to be flouting the principles to which I have dedicated my life.”)
Teitel is not shy. “It is one thing to follow a decision you believe to be wrong as a result of a judicial process you respect,” he wrote. “It is quite another to be bound by the decisions of an institution you barely recognize.” He also calls for term limits for judges.
Our democracy cannot survive the collapse of the Supreme Court's legitimacy so long as legal scholars and former legal scholars remain complicitly silent. Retired and current justices need to be forthright about the Supreme Court's crisis. (Retired Justice Stephen G. Breyer showed little candor in his memoirs.) Legal scholars have the credibility to demand that justices adhere to mandatory ethical guidelines that bind all lower courts. State and retired judges can go a step further and urge justices to refrain from partisan speech, respect precedent, and avoid playing up history or distorting the facts.
With the Supreme Court's approval rating at an all-time low, Congress and the American people need to push for reform, but judges are uniquely equipped to elevate and guide the debate — and Teitel is the perfect role model.
One of my favorite genres is historical fiction, which, if the author has done their research, can reveal hidden aspects of history and bring important figures out of obscurity. Here are some of the works I've come across recently:
“Berlin Letters: A Cold War Novel”: Catherine Ray weaves a gripping tale of a family divided by the Berlin Wall, exploring the intellectual and moral trauma of life under a dictatorship. Though the characters are fictional, the setting and the division were all too real.
“Shadows of Moscow: A Cold War Novel”: Also by Ray, this is a story of two women and generations of espionage, which often requires deceiving one's own family. The personal betrayals and psychological isolation of the spies are as fascinating as the politics of the superpowers.
“March”: Geraldine Brooks' “sequel” to “Little Women” depicts Mr. March's experiences during the Civil War. Brooks describes in horrifying detail the plantation system and the emotional and physical toll of war.
“Looking for Margaret Fuller”: Alison Pataki traces the life of Fuller, a member of the Transcendentalists, a close friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and David Thoreau, a feminist, a publisher, author, and foreign journalist who broke the glass ceiling. If Fuller had not been a woman, she would have been just as famous as her male colleagues.
“The Women”: Kristin Hannah portrays the harrowing experiences of female nurses in Vietnam and the emotional impact of the war on women whose service was ignored or denied.
“Death in Harlem”/”Missing in Harlem”: Carla F.C. Holloway depicts the struggles of the district's first black police officer in a crime thriller set in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance, a masterful exploration of race and class.
Every other Wednesday at noon, we'll be hosting a Q&A session with our readers. Send in your questions for next time.
