{"id":281104,"date":"2024-11-25T12:01:20","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T12:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=281104"},"modified":"2024-11-24T05:08:03","modified_gmt":"2024-11-24T05:08:03","slug":"i-would-have-dropped-three-nuclear-bombs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/11\/i-would-have-dropped-three-nuclear-bombs\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I Would Have Dropped Three Nuclear Bombs\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Netzarim Corridor in the Gaza Strip on 19 Nov 2024.
Photo by Maayan Toaf\/Israel Government Press Office.<\/p><\/div>\n

Talking to Israelis about the War in Gaza<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

21 Nov 2024 – <\/em>How to explain why Israel does what it does? How to explain the bombing, maiming, and starving of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm in Gaza as if all were active members of Hamas and plotting the next attack? There is history, of course\u2014we all know what history\u2014and it is always present.<\/p>\n

I have an Israeli friend who came to me at a Washington cocktail party thrown in the mid-1980s by the late Milton Viorst, whose New Yorker<\/em> reports on the Middle East were required reading. My new friend\u2014call him Sammy\u2014told me with a small smile, no wink, that he was a consultant now at work in Washington. We talked about the Arab world\u2014his English was fluent if heavily accented\u2014and I overheard him talking in French and Arabic at the party. Some consultant, I thought.<\/p>\n

Always the reporter, I had a few lunches with him and talked a lot about US and Israeli foreign policy. At some point, I invited him to lunch at a wonderful German restaurant near the National Press Building in downtown Washington where I had an office. He was there when I arrived and the German waiter told us the specials. My friend then began a conversation with him in what seemed to be fluent German.<\/p>\n

When the waiter left I said, with some annoyance: \u201cGerman, too. You speak German?\u201d He shrugged: \u201cDo you really think Eichmann was the first?\u201d He was referring to the famed 1960 Israeli apprehension in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, one of the main organizers of the Holocaust during World War II. He went on: \u201cI know every side street and back alley of Damascus.\u201d The Syrian capital was long believed to be a major escape destination for senior Nazi officials after the war.<\/p>\n

That genocide is always present in Israel. Should it be?<\/em> is not a question that is asked, especially today, by the Israeli leadership. The past is enough for Israeli prime ministers to justify foreign assassinations and sabotage.<\/p>\n

It was no surprise that President-elect Donald Trump would nominate a secretary of state and an ambassador to Israel who are totally committed to the Israeli cause after the Hamas surprise attack on October 7 last year in Israel. Trump made his view clear in his debate in June with an addled President Biden when he said of Israel\u2019s war with Hamas that America should let Israel \u201cfinish the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have two friends in Israel who share the history of constant turbulence, amid open war\u2014provoked in many cases by Israeli land grabs\u2014with neighbors since Ben-Gurion declared Israel to be a state in 1948 and the US and the United Nations recognized it the same day. They have fought and suffered grievous wounds for their country. They also despise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his corruption and deceit and believe he should be out of office and in prison for his crimes. Both are educated and readers of history. Both are grandparents of children who have been on and off at war, as reserve members of the Israel Defense Forces, since last fall.<\/p>\n

So I asked both recently to tell me what they thought of the horrid endgame\u2014targeted at civilians with the world watching\u2014now going on in Gaza.<\/p>\n

I admit that I did not like and could not fully understand their answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do feel sorry for the children, Seymour,\u201d said one of my war-hardened friends, \u201cbut not for any of the parents. They know how many kibbutzniks helped them go to Israeli hospitals, employed them for a regular salary eight times higher than in Gaza, with US Jewish entrepreneurs providing them with greenhouses, cutting-edge solar energy, free electricity to all, water. Every adult in Gaza knew that. The plan was to double the number of daily [Gazan] workers from 17,000. This was well known to all. Lists were already provided.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen rape, mutilation, beheading, burning alive of whole families . . . not to mention mass looting and destruction. Why?<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause almost all Gazans and most Palestinians are vile people. Potential happy butchers. In the 1936-39 Arab revolt they killed mainly each other: children, women, the elderly. Three times as many as died at the hands of the British army. Maybe all western Arabs are the same. In March 1991 [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] murdered around 200,000 Shi\u2019as over eight months. Between 2011 and today [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad murdered more than 500,000 Syrians.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in another universe, Seymour. I am glad I am not Israel\u2019s prime minister because had I been that, on October 7, I would have dropped three nuclear bombs on Gaza and turned it into a Hiroshima-Nagasaki black hole. And the Japanese didn\u2019t even do to you one percent of what Hamas did to us.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not mad, Seymour. I\u2019m a professional, and I am a liberal. I still think a Palestinian state or an autonomy-called-state is unavoidable, but the security arrangements must be air-tight.\u201d<\/p>\n

This obviously well-educated man, and the one to follow, openly share an intense contempt for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration.<\/p>\n

My second friend, like all able-bodied men in Israel, served again and again in Israel\u2019s wars and in highly classified special attack units. Now it is his grandchildren who are at war.<\/p>\n

He responded to my request for an evaluation of the war against Hamas by saying that \u201cthe major \u2018achievement\u2019 of Hamas brought on the Palestinian population their worst tragedy in their short history since the end of the 19th century.\u201d He said that the story of October 7 \u201cis not a simple one. It is a story that flashes out the real colors and motives of Israeli society seventy-five years after creating an independent Jewish state. And it shows the real motive of Hamas: jihad, destruction of all not Muslim and especially Israel. Hamas does not seek a Palestinian state or entity. It seeks the annihilation of all Kafirs, the nonbelievers in Muhammed and the Quran.\u201d<\/p>\n

My friend had friends on the scene within a day of the Hamas slaughter of those at the all-night dance festival that became a main target for Hamas and citizen latecomers from Gaza intent on murder and sexual assault. He did not tell me everything that his friends saw, except to say that he knew of one young IDF soldier, ordered early on October 8 to the festival scene to help collect victims, who has not been the same since that day. \u201cThe Hamas terrorists,\u201d he said, \u201cdid not differentiate between Jews, Bedouin, Israeli Arabs . . . children, babies, or pets. All were butchered.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Bedouin regiment stationed nearby and local Israeli Arabs were attacked too . . . they fought bravely against Hamas terrorists and many got killed while fighting. When the convoys of Hamas returned to Gaza and other towns with live hostages, dead Israeli bodies, they were welcomed as heroes and the mob was beating, cutting, singing, and dancing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the tactical facts. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran really believed they could destroy Israel, the IDF, Mossad, and Shin Bet. We thought: we are better. We know better and no primitive group of Arabs from Gaza or Lebanon will threaten us. . . . We will buy tranquility and succeed in removing the Palestinian issue from every screen or agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were totally wrong . . . in thinking that with bribes\u2014which work well in Israel\u2014that we could buy tranquility. To some extent this happened as the IDF top echelons were penetrated by religious messianic officers convinced that with Jehovah we are sure to win . . . in short we joined Hamas\u2019s brigade. We fight for God and our holy religion.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, to end a confused and mixed report, it is a mess. The Palestinians brought the tragedy on themselves . . . we brought the tragedy on ourselves because we ignorantly refused to see clearly what our enemies were preparing because we refused to see clearly what our enemies were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another element in Israel\u2019s inability to see what was coming on October 7, my friend said, was the leadership of Netanyahu who, he said, well before the current court cases facing the prime minister, \u201cwas partially paralyzed\u201d during the October 7 crisis and for days after because he \u201cwas trying to fix\u201d his personal and office telephone logs and operational diaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are we doing there [in Gaza]? We finished fighting around the time we killed [Yahya] Sinwar, the Hamas leader. Sitting like ducks in a shooting range losing daily one or two soldiers, and preparing for a long stay whereas the settlers might return to Gaza\u201d from the West Bank. Netanyahu, he said, \u201cdoes not want to pull out of Gaza as he wants Hamas to disappear and be replaced by an international force. . . . This is totally unaccepted at this moment by all Arab states. His other reason for continuing the \u2018fight\u2019 in Gaza is to postpone his testimony in the criminal trial\u201d that has been on hold since 2022, though Netanyahu is scheduled to testify in December.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were arrogant\u2014claiming to be the best and a regional mini-super power. BS!\u201d<\/p>\n

My friend closed our chat by stating Israel \u201cwas doomed\u201d under the leadership of Netanyahu until the newly elected Donald Trump \u201ckicks him out.\u201d<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Seymour M. Hersh\u2019s investigative journalism and publishing awards include one Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. Hersh won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest for his 2003 articles <\/span><\/em>\u201cLunch with the Chairman,\u201d \u201cSelective Intelligence,\u201d and<\/span><\/em> \u201cThe Stovepipe.\u201d In 2004 he exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces; in 2005, he again received a National Magazine Award for Public Interest, an Overseas Press Club award, the National Press Foundation\u2019s Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism award, and his fifth George Polk Award, making him that award\u2019s most honored laureate. He lives in Washington DC.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 seymourhersh.substack.com<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Nov 2024 – Talking to Israelis about the War in Gaza<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":254390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[87,865,260,88,767,450,427],"class_list":["post-281104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-history","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281106,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281104\/revisions\/281106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}