THE NEW YORK TIMES On a reporting trip to Gaza Two decades ago, I stopped some high school kids playing soccer and asked them about their lives and their hopes. The conversation turned to this Israel It is terrorismSo I asked them whether they thought it was morally acceptable for a Palestinian to bomb a group of Israeli women.
“It’s okay,” said Motaz Abuleilah, then 15, as I wrote at the time. “They all fight in your army.”
I insisted more. Would it be sensible to detonate a bomb in an Israeli girls’ high school?
More nods. “Okay, okay,” said Ibrahim Abudaya, then 18. “God knows the girls will be fighters.”
How about blowing up the American embassy? “Great!”
I asked: How about blowing up an Israeli children’s school? “No no no.”
They had found their limits and were proud of their compassion. Over the past few days, as I’ve thought about the people I’ve met in Gaza while reporting there over the years, I’ve wondered whether some of those boys — who were kind and friendly to me — have grown up now are becoming terrorists involved in the atrocity in Israel last weekend.
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The Israelis suffered a devastating blow, one of the worst massacres of Jews since the Holocaust, and everyone expects the country to fight back, but the practical question is how far to go: how many dead Gaza children are there for Israel to bear? many? Photo: Abed Khaled/AP
Now Israel may be poised to carry out a ground invasion of Gaza, which I fear would add another humanitarian catastrophe to the one already existing and instead of driving out the extremists, would reinforce the Israeli hate narrative. Hamas and would reinforce the venom that these boys expressed.
According to Jan Egeland, the distinguished secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Israel’s demand that more than a million people leave their homes in northern Gaza when they have nowhere to go could amount to a war crime of forced displacement. There are fears that Israel will treat those unable to flee as fighters to be exterminated.
Israel is tactically superior, but what is the strategy? Who will then rule over the rubble? And how can the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians lead to harmony with Israel afterwards?
However, it is also true that Israel faces a serious dilemma when it has a neighbor run by terrorists and home to teenage soccer players who cheer terrorism. Where does this anger come from, this openness to slaughter even high school girls?
In my reporting from Gaza over the years, I have come to believe that one of the causes is the incitement of Hamas and some other Palestinian groups to create a culture that glorifies the “martyrs” who die by killing Israelis . Unfortunately, in Gaza it is common to talk to children whose dream is not to become firefighters or doctors, but to become suicide bombers.
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This is one reason why sympathy for Hamas is so misplaced in some parts of the left. Hamas fighters are not freedom fighters; They are misogynistic oppressors of their own people who commit atrocities against Israelis that result in counterattacks that kill civilians. Instead of helping Palestinians move forward, Hamas is greatly increasing their suffering.
However, it must also be said that another reason for hatred is the endless deterioration in Gaza resulting from Israel’s regular bombings and economic blockade.
One of the tragedies of the Palestinians is that they have consistently had weak and shortsighted leadership, and Hamas is an example of this. India’s colonial oppression produced Gandhi, South Africa’s unrest produced Mandela, and Palestinian uprisings produced Hamas.
However, one of the reasons for this pathetic leadership may be the suffering and humiliation that can cause desperate and angry people to turn to demagogues.
Gazans voted for Hamas in 2006 but have mixed opinions about it: Most have expressed some support, but 70% said in a July poll that they would like to see Hamas take over of the territory and its armed units to Hamas. Palestinian authority, much more moderate. Even a lowlevel Hamas official took me aside in 2015 and told me how much he hated the group because of its economic incompetence, and 62% of people in Gaza said this summer they wanted the group to continue Stop fire with Israel.
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Why did Hamas break this ceasefire so spectacularly? Perhaps because it knew Israel would respond by inflicting more suffering on Gazans in order to make Hamas more popular. After clashes in 2021 that led to Israeli bombings, polls showed Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians has increased because when people see friends dying, their anger sometimes leads them to stand up for anyone who seems to be fights for them. In my interviews in Gaza, I found that older people are exhausted by the war and sometimes blame Hamas for the bombings, but many young people seem to enjoy the sight of someone fighting back.
Israel seems to believe that it can destroy Hamas with a ground invasion. I am skeptical and suspect that even if Hamas were eliminated as an organization, extremism would increase and new radical groups would emerge. Driven by misery, Hamas is a hydra: when one head is cut off, two more grow back.
The natural target group for moderation in Gaza is the business community, but the Israeli blockade since 2007 has devastated that sector and reduced its influence. Partly because of the blockade, partly because of Hamas’ recalcitrance and incompetence, Gaza has a per capita income of just $1,250, making it poorer than Haiti and in the last week some 6,000 bombs have fallen from the sky, adding to the torment . For the United Nations I argue that more people have died in Gaza than in terrorist attacks in Israel, and I fear that the killing in Gaza is just beginning.
The jingoism of some Americans isn’t helping. “Level the place,” advised Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. This “place” has more than two million people, including about a million children, and I shouldn’t have to remind a senator that you care about sentient beings but not others, you have lost your humanity.
“When you fire rockets into densely populated areas, you kill children, and that’s exactly what the Israeli military did,” Sari Bashi said Human Rights Watch. War crimes must not be punished by further war crimes.
Many Israelis are not ready to listen to this. They suffered a devastating blow, one of the worst massacres of Jews since the 19th century holocaust. Israel’s refrain is fearful: But what do you expect from us?
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It’s fair. Everyone expects Israel to defend itself. The practical question is how far one can go: To put it more bluntly, how many dead Gaza children is too many for Israel?
Before you tackle this impossible question, I want to make sure I don’t give the impression that everyone in Gaza is like these teenagers with poisoned hearts. Another person in Gaza who deeply impressed me was a woman named Sumud AbuAjwa, whose house was damaged by a bomb attack in 2014, whose husband was injured and whose children were starving.
“Do you want Israeli mothers to suffer like you?” I asked.
“Of course not,” she replied. “I hope God doesn’t let anyone taste our suffering.”
AbuAjwa and his sons are probably somewhere in the hell that reigns in the Gaza Strip today. I pray that they and their children are spared and continue to defend peace. But I have my doubts.
*Nicholas Kristof joined The New York Times in 1984 and has been a columnist since 2001. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting on China and the Darfur genocide.