Israel’s Comically Inconsistent Critics

By Seth Mandel

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

 

Critics of Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza, especially those in the media, really need to settle on a complaint. Too often they are effectively arguing with each other, though unintentionally. To read the daily newspapers is to see Israel accused of mutually exclusive sins.

 

Take the fights over humanitarian aid and postwar governance in Gaza. Today’s New York Times carries a story on the fact that an aid convoy of 109 trucks was hijacked and looted over the weekend. Only 11 of the trucks made it to their destination.

 

Who’s to blame? Well, we know the one group that isn’t looting convoys is the IDF. Miraculously, the IDF is also the one at fault, according to the press. “Aid agencies have said for months that woefully inadequate food supplies have led to looting, hoarding and profiteering, exacerbating the shortages,” the Times explains. That is, when food is let into Gaza, it gets stolen, usually by Hamas. This means if there are starving Gazans it is most likely Hamas that is starving them.

 

What’s the fix here? You guessed it—more cowbell. The aid agencies insist “that the only solution is a significant increase in deliveries.”

 

Just to review: Israel let in a convoy of over 100 aid trucks. Nearly 100 of them were looted. Had the convoy been 150 trucks, they would… not have been looted? It begins to sound like a riddle: How many trucks must an aid convoy be before Hamas chooses not to loot it?

 

And when it’s not Hamas looting the supplies, it’s still Israel’s fault. “Gaza is basically lawless,” a UN coordinator tells the Washington Post. “There is no security anywhere. Israel is ‘the occupying power,’ he said, so ‘this is on them. They need to make sure that the area is protected and secured.’”

 

The Post, in fact, makes a provocative accusation: that Israel is looking the other way as local gangs are becoming bolder in areas controlled by the IDF. Says the Post: “The thieves, who have run cigarette-smuggling operations throughout this year but are now also stealing food and other supplies, are tied to local crime families, residents say. The gangs are described by observers as rivals of Hamas and, in some cases, they have been targeted by remnants of Hamas’s security forces in other parts of the enclave.”

 

The problem, according to the Post and the UN, is that Israel is trying to crush Hamas. Local families are trying to take the reins from Hamas, and Israel stands accused of letting them steal cigarettes.

 

But it’s not clear the New York Times sees it that way. “The Israeli campaign in Gaza toppled much of the Hamas government, and there is no civilian administration to take its place,” states the Gray Lady. So Israeli security measures regarding humanitarian aid are too strict and too lax at the same time. Trucks are getting looted because Israel won’t reduce security enough to let more trucks in, and there’s no replacement for Hamas but also Israel needs to crack down on Hamas’s would-be replacements.

 

Is Israel exercising too much control over Gaza while at the same time not enough control over Gaza? I don’t think so. The complaints sound a lot like pleas to let Hamas remain in control of Gaza. The Times and the Post think the Palestinians are ungovernable except by foreign Iranian imperial forces, apparently. It’s an Orientalist version of Homo Sovieticus—the authoritarian-seeking servile Russian.

 

Gaza has been governed by Hamas for less than two decades. In that time, Hamas has ripped the social and economic fabric of the enclave to shreds. The solution is not to let Hamas finish what it started. It is to finish Hamas. Until then, let the Times and the Post argue with each other till they’re blue in the face, while Israel does its job.