The scale of casualties is horrifying. The seemingly gleeful sadism of a thousand murders is unfathomable.
The reality it evokes is tragic. Tragic in the sense of an impending, inevitable catastrophe.
It makes sense that faced with such a traumatic and vicious offensive, the Israeli public not just expects, it needs to see a fierce, decisive, and far-reaching response. Accused of the negligence that made an attack on this scale possible, Israeli leaders are pressed to prove they can and will keep Israel secure.
I heard some comparisons to the trauma of the 9/11 attacks in the US. That in proportion to the size of the countries’ populations, the death toll this October 7 was tenfold. 9/11 was a mass murder of civilians in massive explosions. The murders in Israel took place door to door, one by one, face to face.
I remember after 9/11 seeing President Bush declaring a war on TV. I wanted to see the strongest country in the world show a different kind of resolve: not being provoked to violence by acts of terrorism. I wanted to see Bush grasp the opportunity to declare the US will not be manipulated into a violent conflict. The offensive he spoke about brought to mind the stories I heard in the eighties from Israeli soldiers who made it back from Lebanon, the type of war no one wins. While tragic, understandably, many in the American public, faced with this unprecedented attack on civilians, wanted - needed - to see a crushing show of force.
And thus, Israel is provoked into a war of the kind you can’t win. Even if we meet our objectives for fighting, the outcome will be hard to describe as a victory. We are bound to suffer a heavy loss of lives. We will continue to inflict even more death and suffering on Palestinian families. The hatred that Hamas deepened to rock bottom on October 7, we will further feed and sustain.
Israel fighting back is inevitable. There is no tolerating this kind of vicious and cruel slaughter. Another path of response to these mass in-person atrocities is hard to imagine.
