Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has been killed by Israeli forces in Southern Gaza. This will change things, to be sure…but exactly how it will change things is anyone’s guess.
Democratic Senator Chris Coons, member of the U.S. Foreign Relations committee, called Sinwar a “blood thirsty terrorist … who had blood on his hands.” GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said, “Sinwar’s life was the embodiment of evil and marked by hatred for all that is good in the world.”
Okay, that was predictable. Bad guy down. But it still begs the question: what happens now? What will be the stance taken by new Hamas leadership and how will Israel respond? Benjamin Netanyahu pledges to continue the war, while there are forces in Israel and the United States protesting its continuance.
Vice President Harris said today “This moment gives us an opportunity to end the war in Gaza,” and that “justice has been served.” She added that “the suffering must end” and it’s “time for the day after to begin without Hamas in power.”
Regardless what Hamas thinks, or Netanyahu thinks, or Harris thinks, or Trump thinks, it’s incumbent upon all of us to ask ourselves what we think. In an age of so much obfuscation by both politicians as well as media, prepackaged ideas handed down to us from on high is like overly processed food: good for them maybe, but not for us.
The only way to develop a serious opinion on where things should go from here is if we are willing to look at how we got here. While the Biden administration claims they’ve been “working tirelessly” to end the horrific conflict in Gaza over the last year, no President since Clinton – Democrat or Republican – has been working anywhere close to tirelessly enough over the last 24 years to prevent all this from happening in the first place.
None of this horror comes out of nowhere.
There was a time when the United States saw itself as an “honest broker” in the Middle East – Carter, Reagan and Clinton deserve credit for trying – but unfortunately we surrendered that position decades ago. The “U.S.-is-Israel’s-strategic-ally” policies of George Bush, as well as the “Yeah-we-know-what’s-right-but-we’re-not-willing-to- put-the-needed-pressure-behind-it-to-make-it-happen” policies so typical of Barack Obama, were equally wrong-minded; the former only increased tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, while the latter did nothing to diminish them. Trump’s Abraham Accords, celebrated by his supporters as a big win in the Middle East, essentially ignored the plight of the Palestinians and helped exacerbate their anger. Trump’s “Middle East advisor” son-in-law Jared Kushner made the inimitable comment that “the Palestinian problem is a real estate dispute.” You might get that filter living in Florida, but you certainly wouldn’t get it living in the Middle East.
And all of them knew. Bush knew. Obama knew. Trump knew. Biden knew. All of them on some level knew. The situation between Israelis and Palestinians was a pressure cooker bound to blow, and anyone who thought that any military power – Israeli or otherwise – could keep the lid on all that pressure forever was either incredibly naive, deeply unsophisticated about the ticking time bomb created by that much underlying hatred, or crass enough to think it didn’t matter. Whether the lid blew on October 7 last year, or it happened at another time, the situation as it was was not tenable and could not last forever.
The United States was complicit in what has happened, not so much through what we did as through what we did not do. We did not insist on justice. Carter, Reagan and Clinton at least tried. Every President since then has done little more than kick the can down the road, emboldening Israel’s right wing and the coldhearted policies of Benjamin Netanyahu.
That road has taken us to where we are today.
I am a Jew, as committed to the existence of Israel as is anyone. Israel has a right to exist and it has a right to defend itself. But what it did not have the right to do is make the occupation of the West Bank a permanent fixture. And what it did not have the right to do is to build and expand the settlements. Benjamin Netanyahu in cahoots with America’s neocons made the deadly decision to make a clean break from any effort at a two-state solution, and pretty much all of Bibi’s policies since have bolstered systemic injustices inflicted on the Palestinian people.
Yes, efforts have been made. Yes, Israel did try this. Yes, Israel did try that. Yes, Israel retreated from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas could have turned Gaza into Dubai on the Mediterranean. There are a million complications and no, this situation is not black and white. Lies and propaganda have polluted the conversation. The Jews are not European colonizers oppressing an indigenous people; one cursory read of the Bible and you see past that one. Both peoples are indigenous to the region and both peoples have a right to be there.
But we have fundamentally strayed – both the United States and Israel – from a dedication to equal rights for all that should be core to the policies of both nations. If America’s creed is that “all men are created equal,” then that doesn’t just mean Americans. Only by returning to our own core values can the United States be an honest broker in the Middle East. We must be dedicated to peace and justice for all.
That is not only a core value of the United States; it is a core value of the Jewish state as well. But nations, like individuals, stray from their core values all the time. As Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, put it, “The conflict between ourselves and the Palestinians is not a conflict of justice against injustice, but a conflict between two equal rights.” We need to get back to that and we need to get back to it quickly.
In the meantime, Sinwar’s death does not end the larger problem on our hands. And everyone knows who lurks in the shadows. It isn’t Hamas, or Hezbollah, or the Houthis who are running this show. Iran is running the show, and everybody knows it.
So let’s cut to the chase. There are so many fires now burning in so many places – from Gaza to Lebanon to Yemen – that lines like “We must avoid a regional war!” are beginning to sound quite lame. We are already in a small regional war. And if we keep up the war mongering guiding our actions at present, things can only get hotter. The biggest danger is what happens if Iran decides to go all in.
Neither Trump nor Harris have expressed any deeper understanding of the dynamics of the Middle East conflict, both playing to their bases – in her case, multiple ones – in order to win on November 5th. When it comes to this issue, I pray for them both. For whoever wins the election will need it. We don’t just need a better policy in the Middle East; we need a miracle.
As the great Persian poet Rumi said, “Out beyond all ideas of good and bad, right and wrong, there is a field. I’ll meet your there.” And A Course in Miracles says that God doesn’t give us victory in battle; He lifts us above the battlefield. That is what the United States should stand for: the Light in the presence of which this darkness would never have been allowed to fester. The Light of justice, not mere geopolitical calculations. There have been Israeli, Palestinian, and American heroes who worked so hard – some of them at the cost of their lives – to bring peace to the Middle East. The tears that we are crying today are the tears for so many dashed dreams.
From what I have seen, the offer of Jordan’s Foreign Minister for a consortium of Arab nations to guarantee Israel’s security in exchange for a commitment to a two- state solution seems the most promising idea at the moment. But I also understand that the trauma inflicted on both peoples at this point creates little room for such bold and transformative change.
We need more than a strategy; we need an inner light to illumine the minds of our decision-makers. And that will be the miracle here. As my father used to say, “Jews don’t believe in miracles, but we rely upon them.” And miracles occur only in the presence of love. About one thing I am very clear: God did not just create us equal; He loves us equally. To understand that, to really understand it, is itself the Answer.
When enough of us do, the sea will part.
