Once more, my guest on Q&A is Haviv Rettig Gur, the Israeli journalist. He has an extraordinary gift for explanation. Gur tells us what has been happening in Israel in the ten days since the massacre. We address some fundamental questions too (for they are related to the massacre): What is Israel for? What is Zionism, at heart?
For our Q&A, go here.
At the outset, Gur says, “There’s a very curious lack of war happening. There’s a very distant Israeli air war in Gaza.” You have “Gazan civilians being asked to move to the south” and “Hamas trying to prevent them.” But there is a general “motionlessness.”
And this is “not a normal motionlessness,” says Gur. “It seems very quiet and responsible and thoughtful. There aren’t ridiculous leaks or posturing. There’s something afoot.”
The Americans, meanwhile, are “in absolute full swing.” They are “moving intensely, and loudly, and publicly.”
Both the Israeli motionlessness and the American activity are, in Gur’s word, “fascinating.”
I remember 20 years ago — 20-plus years ago — in America. People spoke of “9/10” and “9/11,” or “post-9/11.” The 9/10 America was one country, the post-9/11 America another. (That sense lasted about two weeks, I think.)
At any rate, Haviv Rettig Gur speaks of a 10/6 country and the country after the massacre. If the massacre “doesn’t upend the Middle East,” he says, “then it’s not clear what Israel’s purpose in history is.” Therefore, the massacre “is going to upend the Middle East. The only question is how, when, where.”
About the Americans, Gur says this:
President Biden has been extraordinary. He has been an extraordinary leader in this moment, when Israelis needed to hear, and didn’t imagine they would hear from any world leader, the things they have heard. The Biden administration genuinely wants Israel to destroy Hamas, and just basically hopes it can. It also wants the destruction of Hamas to be the beginning of a strategic turnaround in terms of Iran and its proxies. They really, genuinely are backing Israel.
But.
But you don’t need the carrier task forces to do that. And you certainly don’t need Secretary of State Antony Blinken sitting in on the war cabinet yesterday. And you certainly don’t need President Biden to visit today. There is a bear hug that I can’t help interpreting as an American belief that the Israelis are going crazy, that this silence hides something boiling under the surface.
Different people have different conceptions of Zionism. In our podcast, Gur lays out these conceptions. Here is the bottom line, for many people: Zionism “is about defending yourself, protecting yourself, standing up for yourself,” in your own state. “You are the only one who will do it. Do not place your faith in others. And then you will survive.”
Gur adds that Israel is “a place of refuge” for Jews, wherever they live. A place to run to, when other options run out.
This is all basic stuff — Israel 101, Zionism 101. But the present moment seems like a time for basics.
Gur stresses the bigness of the moment. “This isn’t about Gaza. Gaza is going to be dealt with, in the sense that Hamas has to be destroyed. That’s not even a conversation here. It’s axiomatic.”
But “there will have to be strategic surprises in the Middle East.” There has to be a “cost exacted” on all the tentacles of the octopus, including its head — which is in Tehran. The cost exacted on these entities has to be “so painful that it begins to deter them.” And “if it doesn’t do that, then Israel is not fulfilling its foundational promise.”
Gur continues, “The Hamas massacre — and the way it was broadcast to us, hour after hour, with every atrocity videotaped by laughing gunmen and then sent to Israelis on social media — was a violation of our founding promise to ourselves and to our children. And now we have to reclaim that promise.”
Again, for this Q&A with Haviv Rettig Gur, go here.