What Can I Say About Gaza and Israel?

Seeking the stories beyond the headlines

I’ve resisted addressing arguably the biggest news event of our times because I wondered whether I had anything to say. Or more specifically, anything to add to the fervid discourse that has no shortage of people talking, yelling, fighting, and, tragically, dying. 

My mother, my most unabashed supporter, has encouraged (sometimes pleaded with) me to avoid this subject. She argues (persuasively) that there is a world full of worthy and undercovered topics I can address here. Leave this one to others. 

After all, nothing I write will have a material effect on anything. And I am likely to anger or disappoint many of you. 

But the act of writing for me is often about trying to give shape and purpose to the disparate thoughts rattling in my consciousness. And whether I ended up publishing it or not, I felt I had to go through this exercise when it came to what is happening in Gaza and Israel. 

Now that you’re reading this, it’s because I guess I felt I should share it. 

I have no shortage of thoughts. Many are discordant with each other, or at least feel that way. As for my emotions, they range from sadness to anger, frustration to disbelief. Can I knit all of this into a thread of coherent thought?

I have asked myself whether my avoidance of the issue in this newsletter until now was driven by fear or pragmatism (or if the first excuses the latter). I know that friends and family who read my work disagree, sometimes sharply, on what is happening there. And I suspect that reflects the broader community of subscribers here. 

I tend to be deeply suspicious of people who speak in certainties. And yet I hope most of us would at least agree that what is happening now is certainly an absolute tragedy. The level of pain, suffering, and death of the Israelis in the pogrom of October 7 and the Palestinians in what has followed is too horrific to fully contemplate.

I have found myself often wondering about terrifying what-ifs. 

What if my family was living at Kibbutz Kfar Aza when it was overrun by marauding murderers? What if my family was living in an apartment building in Gaza City with Israeli warplanes dropping bombs from overhead? I think, as a father, what it would be like to look at my kids with helplessness as we faced possible death. 

What if I had a loved one who was a hostage? What if my children were injured and sick and there wasn’t a functioning hospital? What if they didn’t have enough to eat? What is it like to constantly live in terror?

In the discourse that has become distressingly binary — are you pro-Palestinian, or are you pro-Israel? — I find myself desperate for nuance and contextualization. I understand why many believe that trying to navigate some in-between ground is a cop-out, that you can only be on one side or the other. But I feel caught in the middle despite the forces pushing even many people I know towards opposite poles. I wonder how far apart people really are? Don’t most people want some form of peace?

I first went to Israel with a youth group the summer after my sophomore year of high school. We toured the country for several weeks learning about history and culture with all the social dynamics and hijinks that could be expected when a busload of 16-year-olds spends all that time away from their parents. I have a lot of wonderful memories but what sticks with me most was how sunny it was, especially for a kid used to summers in San Francisco. It was a sunny time of life as well, one of promise and hope for what was yet to come. 

I have been back to Israel twice since then, both times for work. 

In the spring of 2002 (I remember it was during Passover) I was an associate producer on the CBS News magazine program “60 Minutes II.” It was a time of crisis — the second intifada. Israeli tanks had just moved into the West Bank and Yasser Arafat was under siege at his compound in Ramallah after a long string of deadly Palestinian terrorist attacks, including one a few days earlier in Netanya that killed 30 civilians and injured 140 more. 

I remember getting the call from the producer I was working with, Michael Rosenbaum, who had previously served as CBS News’ Tel Aviv bureau chief. “Pack your bags quickly,” he said. “We’re flying out tomorrow.” The correspondent on the piece would be Bob Simon, who had covered the region for over 20 years. On the overnight flight to Tel Aviv, Michael and I discussed possible angles for the story we were going to report. Mostly he talked and I listened. There was a lot of news going on, but Michael explained that for a news magazine like “60 Minutes,” we needed something beyond what was in the headlines. 

Bob was already in Israel and I remember meeting at a sushi restaurant in Tel Aviv. I sat nervously at the table, afraid of suicide bombers. But Bob, who had covered Vietnam and had been taken prisoner by Saddam Hussein in the first Iraq war, was distinctly nonplussed. That seemed to be the spirit of most of the Israelis I saw.

Ultimately Bob and Michael decided to do a story on the rising popularity in Israel of what was known as “transfer.” This was the idea that Palestinians should be moved out of the West Bank and Gaza. Bob talked to people on many sides of the issue — right-wing Israeli politicians, Israeli critics, and Palestinians. The piece was full of provocative points of view and lots of historical context. I remember returning to the States thinking that the crisis would only deepen. I don’t remember Israel being sunny on that trip.

I returned in 2011 under very different circumstances. The Arab Spring had begun the prior year and the Middle East was roiled in violence and turmoil, but Israel and the West Bank were relatively calm. I was working with Dan Rather by this point on his weekly cable news magazine “Dan Rather Reports.” My friend and colleague, the great reporter Andrew Glazer, had been looking into a little-known program supported by the United States government to train Palestinian security forces. Israel was coordinating behind the scenes. 

We went to Israel and the West Bank. We stayed in Ramallah, not far from where Israeli tanks had surrounded Arafat nine years earlier. The city was now booming economically. The markets were crowded and construction was everywhere. We met a retired U.S. Army colonel, PJ Dermer, who had served in the region for years. He showed us the fruits of a precarious peace and cautioned that this was not sustainable without continued progress toward a two-state solution. We observed the Palestinian security forces, talked to the reform-minded Palestinian Prime Minister at the time, Salam Fayyad, and talked to Israel's then-Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor. All of them echoed Dermer’s cautious optimism from their viewpoints. All also spoke of the necessity for keeping progress going. 

Dermer took us to Hebron and explained why the West Bank town symbolized the deep fissures that remained and could shatter the hopeful story we were seeing. There, Israeli settlers live in a walled-off neighborhood surrounded by Palestinians. A main market street had been closed permanently (it remains closed to this day) to create a security corridor around the settlements. Palestinian shops had been shuttered and forcibly relocated. It reminded me a bit of what had happened to American cities where highway construction and redlining tore apart minority neighborhoods. 

We met settlers who said they had a right to this land. They pointed to a horrific massacre in Hebron of nearly 70 Jews in 1929 by their Arab neighbors after false rumors had been spread that Jews were going to seize the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The settlers said this was well before Israel was founded and that they were just trying to reestablish a Jewish community in a place that had had one for centuries. 

The stories of “before” shape the topography of the present, especially in the Middle East with its deep, contentious, and interwoven history. But the strident absolutism of the settlers left me shaken. They didn’t sound like people keen on compromise of any sort which the others we had talked to insisted was essential for peace. I was also shaken by the harassment of our news crew by Israeli security forces on several occasions. Including a near strip-search before an interview in Israel itself. 

We all must confront the uncomfortable truth that we live in a world that is a byproduct of thousands of years of tragedies and injustices.

But the question is, what do we do now? We can’t go back to undo previous wrongs. But we can try to make adjustments and amends. There is no obvious path we can all agree to follow to balance these ideas going forward. 

Where do we draw boundaries? How do we learn from the past, contend with the present, and build for the future? 

When I watch the news today, I can’t help but think back to the fragile hope I heard back in 2011 and all that has been squandered in the intervening years. There is plenty of blame to go around. The Palestinian Authority, which nominally governs the West Bank, has been plagued by corruption and small-mindedness. Israel has ramped up settler construction under right-wing governments that barely give lip service to Palestinian rights and needs, let alone their self-governance. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza, is a brutal terrorist group that has used a pipeline of funding to dig tunnels and stock weapons and not build hope. The Arab states, Iran and its backing of terrorist groups, the United States, and other allies in the West, all have played roles in the mess we are in today. 

I see complexity everywhere and yet I hear the most strident and extremist voices getting the most attention. The news is drawn to conflict and eschews nuance. Our social-media-driven bubbles echo bombast and provide fertile ground for conspiracy theories to proliferate. 

There are plenty of words and concepts being thrown about — history, freedom, genocide, rights, Zionism, peace, blame — but we can’t agree on what they mean. This benefits those who thrive on using confusion, fear, and ultimately violence to drive people apart. There are certainly people on all sides who define winning for themselves as others losing — losing land, losing rights, losing security, and even losing life itself. 

There is a narrative that this war is dividing the United States and there is certainly ample evidence to make that rhetorical case. But the way our discourse is covered amplifies anger and hopelessness. And this ends up helping those who want to use polarization to fuel their cynical political ends. 

To be sure, there has been a rise in antisemitism. And this must be vigorously combated. Some of the statements from those in the campus protests are vile. But I know many who sympathize with the protesters. They are primarily moved not by hate, but by a yearning for peace and life.

In any mass movement, there will always be extreme voices. But to focus only on those is not to contend with the brutal truth on the ground in Gaza and the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Even if you think that this war is necessary, you cannot absolve yourself of the cost. 

And when it comes to fomenting antisemitism, let’s not forget that it is the Republican candidate for president who has shown an affinity for white supremacy and met with avowed antisemites. 

I don’t think most people fall into simplistic categories. There is no substantial movement in the United States government that questions whether Israel has a right to exist. Meanwhile, most who protest the war are driven by the unconscionable loss of life. They may not understand all of the history or the nuance, but they understand that the mass deaths in Gaza should not continue. And that there must be a plan for when the war eventually ends. 

Many of the people who know the region best, like The New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, see only one path that is morally just, sustainable, and rooted in the realities of the present. There has to be two states. Israel must feel secure. Palestinians must have the chance to control their own destiny. The Arab states must find a way to build this stability. The brutality of Hamas is obviously a barrier but so too is Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. 

I am neither a military strategist nor a diplomat. I do not know how Israel should have best responded to the horrors of October 7. But I know that a lot of experts in this area, including ones serving in the current administration, think that what is taking place is very much the wrong approach. Even by the far-too-limited metric of Israeli security. 

But I fear it’s much deeper than that. We must look at the human toll, and here it is obvious that Israel is on a path that cannot continue. I think about all the innocent people who have died, have had their families torn apart, and live in a constant state of dislocation. 

And it’s not just Gaza. What is happening in the West Bank with settler violence, land grabbing, and intimidation is destroying — by design — any hopes for peace. It is the manifestation of what dismayed me when I went to Hebron more than a decade ago. And it is isolating Israel, even from its closest friends. This week The New York Times Magazine published an incredibly in-depth and chilling look at decades of settler violence in the West Bank under the headline “The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel.” It is a necessary, infuriating, and heartbreaking read about a coordinated movement of Jewish terror that has been treated with acceptance and impunity by Israeli authorities. It is reminiscent of the Jim Crow South. Also this week, three moderate Democratic senators issued a letter to the Biden administration calling on it to enforce sanctions put in place on West Bank settlers. “There is no excuse for extremist settler violence, which ultimately erodes efforts to preserve a political horizon and promote a negotiated, two state solution,” they wrote. 

All of this is both subtext and context for what is happening in Gaza and the lack of clear Israeli objectives. I have been a reporter long enough to see that rushing to war without a plan for peace can lead to escalating tragedy. My formative years as a journalist were around 9/11 and its aftermath. Now look at where Afghanistan and Iraq are today, even as we still can’t pack a normal-sized tube of toothpaste in our carry-ons. 

I remember traveling with Dan Rather and my producer friend Michael Rosenbaum to Baghdad in April 2003 a few days after it fell to U.S. soldiers. Remarkably it was about a year to the day since Mike and I had traveled to Israel. I would spend another Passover in a war zone. 

There was a feeling that the main fighting of the conflict was almost over. Iraqi forces had dissipated. Saddam was on the run. But as we started interviewing military commanders about the state of the conflict, it became clear there was no plan for what to do next to secure the peace. None of us knew at the time that most of the fighting and the death would be in the future, abetted by instability and the power vacuums that the U.S. military, despite its overwhelming firepower and technological advantages, was completely unprepared to overcome. 

I can’t help but reflect on the echoes now for Israel. And the tragedy of the Palestinians. I think of all the Afghans and Iraqis who died. I think of the fortune spent in prosecuting a war. And to what end? That question should haunt political and military leaders in both the United States and now Israel. The price of hubris is high. 

In recent days, remarkable fissures within the Israeli government began emerging in public about what should be done in Gaza. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a retired general and member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, issued a stinging criticism of the prime minister and his ultra right-wing allies who want to keep political control of Gaza and even possibly have it resettled by Israelis. 

Gallant said that would be a disaster:

“The end of the military campaign must come together with political action. The ‘day after Hamas’ will only be achieved with Palestinian entities taking control of Gaza, accompanied by international actors, establishing a governing alternative to Hamas’s rule.” 

Gallant then issued a direct ultimatum: 

“I call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a decision and declare that Israel will not establish civilian control over the Gaza Strip, that Israel will not establish military governance in the Gaza Strip, and that a governing alternative to Hamas in the Gaza Strip will be raised immediately.” 

I find myself thinking a lot about my trips to Israel, as a child and as a reporter. I think about the journalists I traveled with who had covered the country for decades. They had come of age in the aftermath of the Holocaust and had seen Israel establish itself and evolve. They saw the region, and the world, change. They saw wars and the unlikely peace between Israel and Egypt. They covered moments of hope and despair. I remember the long conversations I had with Michael Rosenbaum and Bob Simon about the Middle East. Both are gone now — the first to brain cancer, the second to a car accident. They had shared a deep antipathy for simplistic narratives and the sloganeers who trafficked in them. 

I wonder what they would make of the crisis today. I wonder what story they would feel isn’t being told. I wonder if they would be optimistic about the future. \