It’s September 2024, and unfortunately Israel’s actions have not de-escalated since last year’s check-in post.
Last year’s post in December was 60 days in to the current conflict, and I reflected on what I had learned about in the preceding nine years. This year, I want to look back at what’s happened since, and reflect on how I continue to learn about my past ignorance.
Bottom Line Up Front: Arms Embargo Now
The post will be long and meandering as I try to share what I’ve learned in the hopes that others can also learn and grow too. However, I don’t want to bury the most important part: calls for a ceasefire like I made last year have not been enough, most importantly I want readers to demand an arms embargo now. That is, the US government should stop selling weapons to Israel, which are immediately deployed to commit genocide. This year, the Uncommitted Movement has sprung up as a group of democratic delegates who have attempted to leverage their votes in the Democratic primary election, to use US influence to de-escalate the situation, and I am thankful for their clear-headed leadership in this space.
Last year’s calls for a ceasefire have become watered down as the Biden Administration has voice abstract support for a ceasefire in Gaza, but as recently as August this year has still authorized $20B in weapons sales to Israel. And so, arms embargo now is the new bare minimum we can demand to de-escalate.
Taking one step back, I want to quickly explain why an arms embargo is so important. Israel would likely not be able to continue its attacks without US support. And it’s important to prevent those attacks, for justice and fairness, and also to prevent more human suffering. The death toll numbers in Gaza are over 40,000 and by all accounts that must be an undercount, because so many of the survivors are seriously injured, maimed, and sick with things like polio that can be easily prevented with access to vaccines, the bare minimum of care.
You don’t have to try very hard to dig up coverage of infants killed in Gaza. The linked article names a pair of twins, but there are countless more who go un-named. This is all to say, the Israeli attacks clearly constitute war crimes and don’t show any sign of stopping.
Gaza and The West Bank
I am embarrased to admit that one of the biggest things I’ve learned in the last year is the difference between Gaza and the West Bank. As a quick aside, I remember my sixth grade history/social studies teacher giving us an assignment to go and research various things for homework, this would have been probably 2002 or 2003. Two items on the list were Gaza and the West Bank. I probably Googled the terms and wrote down a sentence or two, but I am pretty sure the goal of the assignment was to better understand the Israel-Palestine conflict, which was nasty and lopsided even back then. Unfortunately, none of that got across to middle school me.
I never fully internalized this year how geographically separate Gaza and the West Bank are, and how for decades, the Israeli government has prevented free movement of Palestinians between those two parts. Sure, the whole area of Israel/Palestine is not so large, but it’s large enough that preventing movement actively harms people. This was the year that I started to finally understand the “open air prison” term, describing the harsh restrictions the Israeli government has placed on the Palestinians for decades.
The biggest thing that I learned this year was how the two Palestinian areas, Gaza and the West Bank, have been governed differently. In 2007, voters in Gaza elected Hamas, the so-called terrorist organization, as their government. But that does not mean all Palestinians are members of Hamas, nor does it mean all Palestinians support Hamas. The West Bank continues to be governed by the Palestinian Authority instead, but that hasn’t made a difference: while Israel blames Hamas for last year’s October 7th attacks, they continues to aggressively invade the West Bank. Again, the West Bank is not governed by Hamas.
This is the year that I finally started to unpack how Gaza and the West Bank get to be conveniently confused in order to legitimize attacks on one or the other, even if the attacks on either are unjust.
I never watched anything from the late Anthony Bourdain, but this is the year I’ve come across the his 2013 Parts Unknown documentary episode where he goes to the West Bank and Gaza. In 2013 he voices frustration at the treatment of Palestinians, and things have gotten worse for the Palestinians since then.
Gaza Geography
This is also the year I learned much more about Gazan geography. Unfortunately, it has been at the expense of too many Palestinian lives.
Last year in December, Israel’s attacks were focused on Gaza city in the north of the Gaza strip. In the time since, they have escalated to level most of the entire Gaza strip.
In January, Israel attacked Khan Yunis, slightly to the South. Palestinians were told that the city Rafah (all the way in the south) was safe, and that refugees from the other cities could relocate there. President Biden declared that if Israel attacked Rafah, that would cross a “red line” and that he would intervene.
Well, Israel attacked Rafah, crossing the so-called “red line”, and Joe Biden didn’t do anything meaningful.
The attacks have been so brutal that South Africa made a case against Israil in the ICJ, and the ICJ ordered Israel to stop. Of course, Israel ignored the orders. The US State Department chose to criticize the ICJ. Some articles echo a talking point that “the ICJ decisions are not binding” but I’m pretty sure that’s incorrect.
So I guess, in learning about the geography of the Gaza Strip, so too have I learned about the American government’s complete lack of a spine.
Yemen
While some folks spoke up against Israel’s actions, the Houthi government put their money where their mouth is. The Houthis used their location at the mouth of the Red Sea to attack commercial ships bound for or linked to Israel. This key intervention lead to commercial ships re-routing all the way around Africa (instead of using the shorter Suez Canal route). I think it’s incredible and admirable what a relatively small force was able to do, and to see how commercial interests were easily affected. It gives me more hope that that the BDS movement could be successful in influencing Israel.
The US government and military intervened, bombing Yemen. I’m disappointed in our government, to say the least.
Self-Immolation
In December, a person (whose name I’m not able to locate online), set themselves on fire outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. They had a Palestinian flag and we can assume this was in support of Palestinians.
In February, 25-year old Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in DC. In recorded verbal statements, he explicitly did so as an act of protest against the US government and its active involvement in Israel’s active genocide in Gaza.
And now, just last week a man named Matt Nelson also self-immolated outside the Israeli consolute in Boston.
By all accounts, each one of these is one of the most extreme acts of protest. While the Atlanta protestor’s motivations may not have been as widely distributed, Bushnell’s and Nelson’s were. I wish more people were aware of their brave acts so that more of us could honor their sacrifices by agitating for a change.
The Jewish Calendar
The Jewish High Holidays are Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. These are in the S-tier of Jewish Holidays, the tier where observant Jews make sure to travel and visit family during them (they share this tier with Passover, but not Hannukah, that one is just conveniently close to Christmas and New Years.)
Coincidentally, the one-year anniversary of last year’s Hamas attack, October 7, falls in between Rosh Hashanah. This period of time is sometimes referred to as the Ten Days of Repentance. I fully expect a full-court press of alligator tears from the Israeli government and their proxies. I can only imagine what will be demanded of Palestinians during this time.
Palestinians are not a religious monoculture, some Palestinians are Christian and some are Muslim. The Israeli government shows absolutely no mercy during important holidays or religous holidays such as Eid, but I expect any slight or criticism of Israel during this time will be treated as uncouth or insensitive.
Just like last year, it’s important to remember that Israel and Judaism are not the same thing! Criticizing Israel, while there are Jewish people who live and create its policies, is not the same as condeming Judaism or all Jews! Anecdotally I feel like people in my bubble have gotten better at separating Israel the state from Judaism as a whole.
Lebanon
The last few months have also seen Israel escalate violence outside of Gaza into Lebanon, their neighbor to the north.
In Lebanon, hundreds of pagers exploded. Many of these pagers and the associated deaths and injuries were linked to Hezbollah, another organization that’s an enemy of the state of Israel. However, many non-Hezbollah people were harmed in these attacks as well.
Sources linked these pagers to a years-long supply chain hack by Israel’s Mossad. They’re a cybersecurity person’s worst nightmare, having what you assume to be consumer grade tech be augmented with military-grade explosives, being carried around in people’s pockets. As somebody who is literally gleud to my iPhone, I can’t imagine the trauma this has caused.
By all accounts, rigging consumer devices in this way also constitutes a terrorist attack. Israel’s attacks continue to be unacceptable.
The United States
If it wasn’t clear from the rest of the post, I am disappointed in President Biden and the US government as a whole. I was so relieved when Biden announced he would not be seeking re-election this fall, because he had been so vocally resistant to even ceasefire movements before.
I was extremely upset at how the Democrats treated the Uncommited Movement at the Democratic National Convention this year. The DNC had all sorts of speakers (Republicans, cops, Israelis), but refused to give any airtime to even the most watered down speech in support of Gaza.
As the Democratic Party’s nominee, Kamala Harris has not indicated any sort of significant departure for the US from the status quo. A majority of Americans support an arms embargo yet Kamala Harris has not made any of that part of her platform. I don’t follow the polling too closely, but I know that the presidential election is still a tight race. I wish that Kamala Harris would at minimum support an arms embargo to Israel, or otherwise do something to gain support from more potential voters.
Thanks
I want to take this time to thank my friends who have continued to share out information and stories, no matter how bloody, to their timelines. They’ve helped keep me in the loop and aware of these issues in Gaza and elsewhere, and they’ve had the courage to reshare things that I can barely stomach. The first friends that come to mind are Andres, Juan, Svetha and Liza, but I know others have shared invaluable information as well. And to the people I know of, but don’t actually know on Twitter, on Bluesky and elsewhere, thank you too.
I want to end this post with a request. To find ways to help limit Israel’s violence, to support the BDS Movement, the Uncommitted Movement, or anything that aims to de-escalate the situation.
Thanks for reading it this far, I hope that next year I won’t have to make another follow-up post.