Scott Gurvey's Public Offerings

Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi.

Say their names. Say them out loud. Think of them as individuals, not simply as six hostages, abducted during the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by terrorists from Gaza.

Their bodies were found by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in a tunnel under Rafah, a city in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. They had been executed, shot multiple times at close range, indicating they were executed shortly before the troops arrived. They had been forced to record video propaganda statements before they were killed.

I waited one week. But it didn’t change me. I feel only rage.

In May, the IDF wanted to go into Rafah, believing the roughly one hundred unaccounted for hostages out of the 250 taken last October were being held there. The “international community” went up in arms. President Joe Biden went public, warning Israel that the United States would cut off the shipments of weapons to Israel “if they go into Rafah.” The blood of the six is on his hands.

The Hamas butchers who organized and conducted the October attack purposely hide behind the civilian population. They openly admit they sacrifice their own people to bring condemnation down on Israel.

And that is exactly what has happened, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the target of much of the outrage. Netanyahu has vowed not to make any concessions to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza, A position he is reiterating in response to the critics.

I am not a fan of Netanyahu. But my feelings are a result of his interference with domestic politics in the United States. He has twice acted on behalf of Republicans, and it is clear he prefers to see Donald Trump sent back to the White House in the 2024 election. He took the same position in 2020. I believe a foreign head of state should not interfere in the politics of another country.

Netanyahu’s decisions on Gaza are matters for the Israeli people to decide. Ten of thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been demonstrating against the government’s policy, demanding Netanyahu compromise with Hamas to get the hostages back.

But that strategy leaves Hamas in a position to invade Israel again, slaughter its citizens again, and bring the might of the Israeli army, again, down upon its citizens. This repeating cycle has been going on since 1947, when the United Nations partitioned the land of the British held Palestinian mandate into a Jewish state and a Palestinian Arab state.

I am not going to repeat what I’ve written before. I do wish I could teach the ignorant students protesting once again on the Columbia University campus the history of the Middle East. I was a student at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism in October 1973. I was, fate would have it, taking a course called “Reporting on the United Nations”. The class was taught by the UN reporters for The New York Times and the New York Daily News.

At the start of Yom Kippur, when Jews mark their most solemn religious observance of the year, an Arab coalition led by Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, catching the nation by surprise. I had a front row seat at the meetings of the UN Security Council, and the diplomatic activity conducted at the UN to reach a cease fire.

If you asked me then I would have told you I believed a two-state solution, an independent state for the Palestinian Arabs alongside the state of Israel, was the only solution and should be the goal. Today, fifty years later, I do not see how that is possible. You cannot have an agreement unless both sides agree. The Palestinian Arabs have turned down the offer of an independent state repeatedly over the years. They do not hide their goal. They want all the land. They want to end Israel and create a Palestinian Arab state “from the river to the sea”. For some, having the Jews leave would be sufficient. But for many, it is necessary that the Jewish people be eradicated from the Middle East, and for many, from the world. I don’t know how you negotiate with that.

Let us set the record straight on Gaza. In 2005, Israel forcibly removed all Israeli citizens from Gaza. Not only did it remove its citizens, but it also excavated and removed every single grave and relocated it in Israel. Israel left homes, schools, and fully operational greenhouses to allow the Gazans to have an opportunity to build their economy, hoping they would grow to be part of the international community.

Shortly after the last Israeli citizen and soldier left and closed the gates, leaving Gazans free to decide their own future, the Gazans together with the Gazan police forces destroyed the homes, the schools and raided and destroyed every single greenhouse. Nothing was spared, and many used the water pipes to build rocket launchers and homemade rockets. A few hours after the last Israeli civilian and soldier left Gaza, the Gazans began to fire rockets at Israel. This was the “peace” they offered Israel in return for its withdrawal.

Some months later, terrorists kidnapped Gilad Shalit. Shalit was a 19-year-old Israeli soldier. He was captured by terrorists who tunneled from Gaza into Israel. A year later, with Gilad still held captive, the Gazans held their first “elections”. Hamas and Fatah vied for power, and Hamas massacred many Fatah members and supporters and “won” the elections to take over the rule of Gaza.

In response, Israel applied security measures and checkpoints to ensure that no materials were smuggled into Gaza to manufacture weapons. Isarel did not stop food going in. Israel did not stop water or fuel or medicine. It was a very small list of shipments that had to be checked. Still, Gaza under Hamas managed to smuggle a lot of materials, and they used vast sums of international aid money, not counting the billions Hamas leaders stole for themselves, to build weapons and rockets and tunnels and terror camps.

A lot of propaganda falsely claims Gaza has been under occupation for the last 20 years. That simply isn’t true. The security checks on war material were imposed because Israel’s next-door neighbors were now a psychopathic terrorist group sworn to its destruction. The United Nations agency UNRWA, aided and abated Hamas, helping it smuggle and making it nearly impossible to stop the flow of weapons and explosives. Imagine what would have happened if Israel didn’t even try to check the imports into Gaza? For Gaza’s air and seaports to allow Iran and other Islamist states and bad actors to ship every type of weapon imaginable right next door? What would October 7 have looked like had Gaza been free to import anything?

Yes, Israel imposed some controls. After Hamas took over and ended any chance for peaceful coexistence. Being a citizen of Israel is not a suicide pact. Gaza, with its miles of beaches on the Mediterranean, could have become a tourist haven, the garden spot of the region. Could have been. But Gaza chose not to.

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