2024-02-09 - The conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza

The murderous rampage by Hamas and its allies in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023 and the subsequent war between the Israeli army (IDF) and militants in Gaza is nothing short of horrifying. But the situation is complicated, and people who haven't spent their lives thinking about this part of the world may find it bewildering, so here are some thoughts and perhaps a bit of a primer on the conflict.

This document is mostly just factual. It is undoubtedly tainted by the biases of the author, however.

No attempt is made to "solve" the problem of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: firstly, because nobody is asking me or would do what I suggest and secondly, becuase I don't think it's amenable to realistic solutions.

I've also avoided discussing protests for or against either side of the conflict that are taking place in the West and across the Muslim world. That's a whole other topic.

What happened on October 7?

Hamas - a widely sanctioned terrorist group and the de-facto government in Gaza, and Islamic Jihad - their closely allied friends - managed a huge and (militarily) successful attack against Israel:

• They shot thousands of rockets into Israel.
• They breached the border with bulldozers, drones and gliders.
• They sent several thousand fighters into Israel.
• They murdered about 1200 people - almost all civilians - and took about 250 hostages.
• The murders included acts of incredible barbarity, such as burning people alive, rapes and decapitations.

• CSIS briefing.
• Wikipedia

How did Hamas manage this?

• In short, the Israeli military and intelligence services were asleep at the wheel.
• Years of military supremacy led to complacency.
• Reports from border guards indicating that such an attack was likely were disregarded, perhaps because they were reported by women (sexist fools in the chain of command).
• Israel has elected increasingly right wing governments in the past decade or two, with the current government being by far the worst ever. These governments encourage and support illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which require ever-increasing military protection because they enrage the Palestinian residents of the region, who sometimes respond violently. This has caused the IDF to move most of its standing forces to the West Bank, effectively ignoring the threat from Gaza.
• The PM in Israel during most of this period, including now, is Benjamin Netanyahu - who is most likely a criminal (there is an ongoing corruption investigation), and who needs support of right wing extremists to govern with a fractious coalition. So he supports the (frankly insane) settlement project in the West Bank.
• Netanyahu is also an anti-establishment politician, like Trump and many others, who has authoritarian tendencies and who has managed to hollow out the talent pool in Israeli government as a result, which also probably weakened military and intelligence leadership.
• While all the stupidity was going on in Israeli leadership circles, Hamas has diverted much of the aid directed to Palestinians generally and to Gaza in particular to making weapons and digging tunnels. Israel should not have underestimated the resolve or capabilities of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

A very short bit of history

Israel is a very old place... Here is a simplified timeline.

• Israel is the original home of the Jewish people -- dating back to biblical times (at least 3000 years).
• Jews were repeatedly displaced from their homeland, first by the Assyrians and later by the Roman empire.
• The local non-Jewish population - who today identify as Palestinians - has been there for at least hundreds of years. While some are Christian, most of them were converted to Islam (peacefully or not) hundreds of years ago or more. Some have deep roots in Israel / Palestine, while others have families that came there during the past 100 years or so.
• The land currently occupied by Israel has not been an independent country since the last time it was under Jewish rule. It was a province of Rome, Persia, the Ottoman Turks, a British Mandate and more, but not an independent country after being "Judea" and before becoming "Israel."
• There are other "native" ethnic groups in Israel too:
  • Bedouin used to be nomadic, typically live in the desert, are Sunni Muslim, nowadays live in towns, and do not identify as Palestinians. They are happily Israeli citizens.
  • Druze live in Northern Israel, Lebanon and Syria, have their own religion (related to but distinct from modern versions of Islam) and are likewise happy to be Israelis.
  • There are also small numbers of Ba'hai and Christians in Israel.
  • Israel is a multi-ethnic state, with 80% Jewish and 20% mostly-Muslim citizens.
  • Most Jews, some Israeli Arabs and many Druze and Bedouin serve in the Israeli military.

What about the claim that the conflict really started 75 years ago?

• The Arab-Israeli conflict started well before 1948, when the state of Israel was established.
• Pre-1948, there was ongoing conflict between Jews -- some of whom have lived there continuously for thousands of years while others returned (to their ancestral homeland) -- and local Arabs for decades, at least.
• The closest thing the Arab population in the British Mandate of Palestine had to a leader before 1948 was Amin al-Husseini. This nice gentleman had friendly relations with Adolf Hitler (in person) where they discussed how to resolve their mutual "Jewish problems."
• Quite a few Jewish residents ("settlers") were murdered by local Arabs before Israel was established.
• On the other hand, Jewish settlers did not have quite as frequent a habit of murdering their Arab neighbours.
• When the UN established Israel and Palestine in 1948, the Jews accepted the partition of the land into two new countries, but the Arabs did not. The ensuing war is called the War of Independence by Israelis and the Naqba ("catastrophe") by Arabs. It is this war that created Palestinian refugees - where about 700,000 Arabs either fled or were forcibly displaced by the conflict.
• The Arabs in 1948 did not identify themselves as Palestinians - they were Arabs and Muslims and mostly just wanted the Jews gone.
• After the 1948 war, Muslim and Arab countries forcibly displaced their Jews (over 900,000), many of whom (650,000) immigrated to Israel.
• Today, there are about 2 million Arabs (mostly Muslim) in Israel, which is a multi-ethnic state. There are approximately zero Jews remaining in any Arab or indeed majority-Muslim countries. Ethnic cleansing and violence directed at ethnic minorities are absolutely a fact of this conflict, but have been very one sided.
• Coincidentally, the Middle East used to have a fairly large Christian population, but a combination of lower birthrates, violence, emigration and forced conversion have led to the proportion of Christians (rather than Muslims) in Arab countries declining from about 13% 100 years ago to about 5% today. It's not good to be a religious minority in a Muslim country.
• In 2005, Israel left Gaza, so why a continued conflict? Because of Hamas ideology.
• Before October 7, 2023, there was a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and many Gaza residents frequently crossed the border into Israel to work. So much for a ceasefire with terrorist fanatics...

Are Israelis "settlers"?

• In short - no. Jews trace their origins to Israel, which is rich with archaeological records of Judea, both as a country and as a Roman province.
• If you happen to be Christian - recall that Jesus (believe in him or not as you prefer) is a Jewish figure, with Jewish parents, in a majority-Jewish Roman province. Early Christianity was an off-shoot of Judaism, practiced mainly by a subset of Jews with somewhat different religious ideas than their contemporaries.
• This does not imply that Palestinians are not also natives of the country - they just came more recently (and less recently, depending on whose family roots you are looking at!)

Isn't Gaza an "open air prison?"

• Yes and no.
• Israel left Gaza in 2005 in the hopes of a peacable neighbour developing there.
• Hamas took over through a combination of democracy (one election, ever) and violence (killing off their Fatah political opponents after they won) and has ruled since.
• Hamas has a formal charter, which calls for the elimination of Israel and murder of all Jews. Not a great neighbour. It also has a very real history of attacking Israel and Israelis - by infiltrating terrorists into Israeli territory and by firing rockets indiscriminately.
• Israel does blockade Gaza - but only to prevent terrorists coming into Israel and armaments going into Gaza. Egypt does the same thing on their border with Gaza. Non-military goods can and do flow into Gaza through both Israel and Egypt, at least when there isn't an active war going on.
• In short, Gaza has a hard border, which was built by both Egypt and Israel because the people who rule Gaza are very dangerous.

Is Israel practicing genocide in Gaza?

• No.
• If Israel wanted to kill everyone in Gaza, they would just turn off the water and electricity, close the border, and wait. Not hard, and does not involve IDF casualties.
• The population of Gaza in 1948 was under 100,000. In 1967, when Israel conquered it from Egypt, it was about 400,000. Today it's about 2.3 million. That would have to be the world's least effective genocide. You can see a graph of the population growth in Gaza City alone.
• Note that when Israel and Egypt made peace in 1977, Egypt did not want Gaza back.
• Yes, many people in Gaza are losing their lives now. That's the nature of war:
  • It's impossible to know how many are really dead or injured, because figures come from Hamas, who is a terrorist group and has a solid track record of being dishonest.
  • The deaths, which likely do surpass 30,000 (as of April/2024), do include many Hamas fighters -- probably 25% to 50% of the dead are "military."
  • Hamas does recruit children - so if a 16 year old fighter dies, is that a child or a soldier?
  • Hamas does hide behind civilians -- using them as human shields and prevents them from fleeing. If the IDF blows up a building full of active Hamas fighters, and there are civilians inside, is that the fault of Hamas or IDF? Do the dead civilians care?
• Keep in mind that Hamas is basically a death cult. The more people that die -- Israeli and Palestinians alike -- the better. Israel does try to minimize civilian harms, but this is a very difficult task in a war zone.

Hostages

• Hamas and its friends took about 250 Israelis and other nationals hostage on October 7.
• About 100 were freed during a ceasefire in November, 2023.
• About 150 hostages remain, but probably about 1/3 of them are already dead.
• Israel holds several thousand Palestinians prisoner. These include many militants (accused or actual), but some are held pending charges because they threw stones at soldiers or are suspected of other, similarly minor offenses, or just for criminal matters having nothing to do with the conflict, since the only law available to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank only is military courts.
• It's hard to equate the two sets of "hostages" -- those held by Hamas were a random sample of people taken from Southern Israeli communities during a murderous rampage, while those held by Israel include many convicted murderers and known members of a terrorist organization.
• In previous hostage exchanges (years ago), Israel freed people who went on to ... organize and participate in the October 7 massacre, so Israel is understandably reluctant to release murderers so that they might kill again...
• In contrast, hostages held by Hamas are as young as ... 1 year old. And as old as 80+. Not current or suspected fighters - though a few military members are in the group too.
• The prognosis for hostages held by Hamas is poor. Even those who may eventually be freed will probably wind up needing life-long mental health supports.

When did Arabs start identifying as Palestinians?

• Roughly in the 1960s.
• Originally, this identity was more about who they were not -- not Jewish Israelis, and also not Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese or Egyptians, all of whom are likewise Arab and mostly Muslim.
• The Palestinian Liberation Organization started out as a terror organization intent on murdering Jews in some vague hope of causing Israel to "go away." "Liberation" in the name means violent reversal of the outcome of the war in 1948.
• Note that after they lost the 1948 war, Jordan and Egypt occupied the bits of territory that were supposed to become a Palestinian state. Nobody complained about that at the time, though it would not have been wise to do so, as both of these are dictatorships with a habit of executing dissidents.
• The PLO was founded in 1964. This is an interesting date, because Israel and its Arab neighbours had a big war in 1967 (3 years later...) in which it reunified Jerusalem and conquered/occupied the West Bank, the Golan Heights (part of Syria) and the Sinai desert, which abuts the Gaza strip. It was as a consequence of the 1967 war that Israel wound up administering the population that now identifies as Palestinian.
• In short, the Palestinians started having a national identity while most of them were living in under the rule of neighbouring Arab countries. Interestingly, those countries refused to grant them citizenship, preferring the long-term refugee status of this population as a political tool.

What do most Palestinians today want?

• A state of their own, obviously.
• But ... most Palestinians will tell you that they want the state to occupy the entire territory "from the river to the sea" -- meaning between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean.
• A "two state" solution and "peace with Israel" are not popular ideas in the West Bank or Gaza.
• Interestingly, many Palestinians do not believe that Jews are indigenous to Israel. They think that the rich archaeological record is a lie. This weird belief is likely due to a combination of propaganda in Palestinian media and an intentionally dishonest curriculum in schools.
• This explicitly means that the Jewish Israeli population should disappear. How? There are only two options - forcibly remove them or kill them.
• If we take the generous interpretation, then where would they go? "Back to where they came from" of course - which for most Israelis is more than one place, since most Israelis were born in Israel and can trace their roots back to multiple "origin" countries. The largest number of immigrants to Israel came from Arab countries, which certainly won't "take back" the descendents of the people they forcibly ejected. Never mind that most Arab countries are intensely unpleasant and unsafe places for non-Arab, non-Muslims to live, so why would Israelis agree to move there?
• In short, the most popular Palestinian aspiration is for ethnic cleansing, despite overwhelming military superiority of their adversary. They will not get their wish.

What do most Israelis today want?

• Israeli views are much more diverse than Palestinian views, it seems.
• The overwhelming majority of Israelis want to live in peace with their neighbours.
• Secular, white collar Jews tend to want a two state solution.
• Religious and lower income Jews tend to want a "greater Israel" where the West Bank is officially annexed into Israel (historical Judea included this territory).
• There are extremists in the Israeli population who want Palestinians to be displaced. This is a fringe view.
• There are not really any Israelis advocating for mass murder of Arabs or Palestinians.
• There are, however, extremists among the Jewish settlers in the West Bank who practice violence against their Palestinian neighbours, up to and including murder, in the hopes of motivating these communities to relocate. The Israeli army and judiciary has done a very poor job of controlling these crazies.
• Most Israelis are quite fond of their democracy. This includes Arab Israelis, Druze and Bedouin.
• Most Jewish Israelis are very fond of the Jewish character of their country.
• Some Israelis (a minority, probably) does not want to annex the West Bank because then they would have to choose - either remain a democracy, but no longer be majority-Jewish, or remain a Jewish state, but only by creating a second-class type of citizen and therefore stop being a real democracy.
• Since Israel has offered some sort of settlement to the Palestinians on multiple occasions, and been rebuffed each time, very few Israelis still believe that a two state solution is feasible. This includes people who would prefer such a solution - they just (mostly) don't believe it's achievable.
• The fact that Israel left Gaza in 2005 and it was promptly turned into the violent fiefdom of a gang of religious fanatics (Hamas) does not inspire confidence amongst Israelis that "leaving" the West Bank would lead to anything other than another Gaza nightmare.

Is peace achievable?

• In short, probably not.
• Two opponents would have to come to the negotiating table to work out an agreement -- and today there are zero willing parties.
• The Palestinian aspiration is ethnic cleansing. They don't use that language - instead saying things like "it's our land" and "we want to return to our land" but what they really mean is to remove the Jewish population.
• The Israeli/Jewish aspiration is peace, but with major internal divisions and with many in the population wanting to annex the West Bank.
• Neither side currently has strong, positive leadership. Israel may replace its (rotten) current leadership, but the Palestinian leadership is sclerotic and corrupt and their main and quite popular alternative is Hamas - violent, religious fanatics.

What does any of this have to do with the wider regional conflicts?

• The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is really a side show in the Middle East.
• The main conflict is between Shia Muslims (led by Iran) and Sunni Muslims (led by Saudi Arabia).
• Civil conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen between Sunni and Shia factions have claimed millions of lives.
• The Sunni/Shia dispute is hundreds of years old and won't go away anytime soon.
• The one thing Sunni and Shia extremists all can agree on is that they hate Jews (and to a lesser extent Christians) slightly more than each-other.
• The idea that a person who was once Muslim may convert to another religion is offensive to Muslims (and punishable by death). The same applies to countries - if it was once Muslim, it should never be governed by people of another faith, or else (violence)! This is one of the reasons that Muslims hate the idea of Israel - that land was previously governed by Ottoman Turks, who were Muslim.
• So Israel has multiple problems - Hezbollah has rotted the Lebanese state from within and poses a grave military threat to Israel's North. Houthi militants occupy much of Yemen and threaten shipping in the Red Sea, ostensibly in support of their Hamas buddies, but in reality just to gain credibility domestically. Iran supports many armed groups in the region, and uses its hatred of Israel to build support. Hating Israel and the Jews is the Middle East's version of virtue signaling.

What will happen to Gaza?

• Tens of thousands of casualties, hundreds of thousands of injured and permanent military occupation.
• Total destruction of the civilian infrastructure due to heavy combat and the need to destroy Hamas military tunnels.
• Two million + internally displaced refugees living in tent cities.
• Israel "broke it" so will have to "own it" going forward - which they really do not want to do.
• Recall that Israel abandoned Gaza and left the Palestinians there to govern themselves in 2005 (not much of an occupation!). By 2007 Hamas had won a local election, murdered all of their political opponents and has been governing ever since.
• Polls conducted just before the October 7 massacre show that Hamas and its ideas enjoy strong popular support.
• UNRWA, which is the UN agency that provides aid, runs schools, hospitals and more in Gaza and elsewhere employs locals, many of which are either themselves Hamas members or have close family ties to Hamas. Is this any surprise, given that young Palestinians are raised on a diet of antisemitism, hatred for Israel and glorification of religious martyrdom?
• The "solution" in Gaza and perhaps the West Bank too is to get rid of the notion of inter-generational refugee status, reform local governance, clean up education to focus on positive values rather than hatred, and try again for peace in a generation or two. The reality is that no party is willing to get bogged down in such a project.

What's up with UNRWA?

• The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) is a strange animal. While the UN High Commissioner for Refugees provides support to refugees world-wide, there is a separate, parallel agency called UNRWA just for Palestinian refugees.
• The UNRWA and UNHCR agencies are distinct in large part because the mandate of the UNHCR is mainly to resettle refugees, and there was much objection to such resettlement of Palestinians by Arab countries.
• The "back story" of Palestinian refugees is that Arabs in Israel and neighbouring countries (including the army of Iraq and "volunteers" from Saudi Arabia and Yemen - none of which border Israel) launched a war against the newly created country of Israel in 1948, rather than accepting the UN partition plan for Israel and Palestine. Their aim was explicitly and loudly proclaimed to eradicate Israel (just to be clear, this means to murder its citizens). The Arabs lost this (and all subsequent) war(s) with Israel, and after the war, about 700,000 Palestinians either fled or were expelled (some of both happened). Basically, the Palestinians and their friends tried to do something horrible, lost, and paid a heavy price for it. People should remember this.
• It is very important to note that Palestinians were not displaced from Israel until (along with their friends) initiated armed conflict and attempted to murder their Israeli/Jewish neighbours.
• In every other conflict in the world, refugees are those people who were displaced. Their children become citizens of the countries where the refugees wind up. The sole exception to this, and one of the causes of the never-ending Israeli/Palestinian conflict, is that the UN, through UNRWA, assigns refugee status to descendents of Palestinian refugees, not just the original displaced peoples. This makes the problem just get worse with each passing generation, as Palestinians have large families.
• UNRWA operates in the West Bank, in Gaza, and in neighbouring countries where Palestinians wound up, such as Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Most UNRWA staff are Palestinians. Especially in Gaza, which is not the nicest place in the world, almost all UNRWA workers are Palestinians.
• UNRWA runs schools, hospitals and distributes food to Palestinians, mostly in Gaza but also elsewhere. Since Gaza's population almost entirely relies on international aid, UNRWA is a critical part of this economy.
• UNRWA is mostly funded through donations from the international community - primarily Western democracies and most prominently the United States. Arab countries contribute a relatively small part of UNRWA's funding, despite their vocal support for Palestinians.
• Given that UNRWA staff are almost entirely Palestinian locals, and given that Hamas is a popular "resistance movement" (terrorist gang), especially in Gaza, it is not surprising that many UNRWA staff (a) participated in the October 7 massacre, (b) are personally Hamas members or (c) have close family or friends who are Hamas members. To expect otherwise would be naive.
• Israeli intelligence services and now the IDF which is active in Gaza estimate that 12 UNRWA staff were personally involved in the October 7 massacre, about 1200 UNRWA staff are Hamas members and as many as 10% of UNRWA staff are closely connected through family members to Hamas. Moreover, they have found Hamas weapons and tunnels under UNRWA offices, a Hamas data centre right under the UNRWA Gaza headquarters, at least one UNRWA teacher tasked with holding hostages from the October 7 rampage and more.
• Over the past 10 or more years, interested parties have flagged UNRWA educational "curriculum" that incites hatred and glorifies terrorism. Standard educational materials in UNRWA-run schools includes math problems regarding how many martyrs are required to kill how many Jews and other hateful material.
• In short, UNRWA acts as a labour pool, resource supplier and youth indoctrination system for Hamas. It also, simultaneously, provides aid to needy Palestinians. It is very much a "dual-role" organization and is probably so thoroughly entangled with Hamas that it cannot realistically be reformed.

Stolen land and illegal settlements

• A common refrain of Palestinians and their supporters is that Israel is "stolen land" and should be returned to them.
• This is (mostly) a fallacy.
• Before 1948, Jews in Israel purchased whatever land they built on.
• After the war of 1948, Palestinians either fled or were forced out of their villages in some areas, creating about 700,000 refugees. This land was subsequently taken over by the Israeli state and developed. Basically this land was lost in war, not "stolen." Recall who started the war...
• Today, there are instances of Jewish extremists in the West Bank who build illegal settlements (illegal under Israeli law!) on Palestinian land. This is a somewhat frequent but not large (in terms of land area) phenomenon and should ideally be resolved through the Israeli legal system, as these people are violating Israeli law.
• It is also true that the Israeli army often defends these illegal outposts and lower-level courts are not keen to assist Palestinians whose land was taken or who are harassed by these settlers.
• Addressing illegal settlements and violent settlers is absolutely a problem that Israel should address and is failing to resolve.
• The popular belief amongst Palestinians that all of Israel is stolen land, on the other hand, is a nonsensical one and one of the multiple barriers to a peaceful settlement.

Could the Palestinians go anywhere else?

• Assuming they wanted to (and many Gaza residents will at this point) -- not really, or at least not at scale...
• Descendents of Palestinians are already a large part of the population in Jordan, which does not want more. In 1970/71, there was an armed insurrection in Jordan by Palestinians who tried to overthrow the Jordanian kingdom and where PLO fighters were ultimately defeated and exiled to Lebanon.
• Palestinians were also ejected from Lebanon to Tunisia, as a consequence of the Israel/Lebanon war in 1982. The same PLO fighters who were earlier ejected from Jordan actively participated in the Lebanese civil war.
• Palestinians have also been ejected from Kuwait (they supported Saddam Hussein's invasion).
• This is a pretty heavily radicalized population at this point, especially in Gaza, with Hamas controlling their media and UNRWA pushing radicalized education to their kids. This profile makes them unpopular with the leadership in neighbouring countries, who often decry the plight of the Palestinians in public but privately don't want Palestinians coming to their countries.
• Recall that some Palestinians celebrated in the streets after the 9/11 attacks in NYC and on the Pentagon.
• Egypt already has security problems in the Sinai desert (adjacent to Gaza) and doesn't want more "troublemakers."
• The Houthi rebels in Yemen seem to be very fond of the Palestinians ... but they live in a very poor desert country, so who would want to go there?
• Iran likes to support Hamas and its friends in their violent adventures but the Iranian mullahs (religious fanatic dictator's club) actually despise the Palestinians because they are Sunni Arabs (Iranians are Shia Persians).
• Israel certainly doesn't want these people coming across its borders.

Where did all the money go?

• The international community have funneled billions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority and through it, to Hamas in Gaza.
• Much of this money was used to build / buy weapons and to dig tunnels where Hamas fighters - but not civilian Gazans - can hide out from Israeli bombardment whenever the conflict flares up.
• Hamas leadership, and PA leadership (formerly PLO) are actually ... billionaires. They have siphoned off huge amounts of cash to personal accounts.
• Hamas leadership lives in Qater and Turkey, in fancy hotels... They don't put their persons at risk of IDF capture by living in Gaza - that would be crazy!
• The founder of the PLO - Yasser Arafat - siphoned off billions and his rich wife and daughter live in Malta.
• The misery of Palestinians is a great fund-raising gimmick, and skimming most or all of the funds is apparently easy.
• Leaders like this are not incented to find solutions...

People with insightful opinions

If you want to learn more about this conflict and prefer a video format, there are a few interesting people to look up:

• Fareed Zakaria is my favourite "talking head" TV personality -- he is incredibly smart and insightful - on this and any other "geopolitical" topic.
• Corey Gil Shuster is an interesting Canadian/Israeli. He has this "Ask Project" where he travels around both Israel and the West Bank asking random people questions posed by his audience. You get a real, unvarnished sense of the range of views on both sides of the conflict.
• Traveling Israel is the YouTube channel of a (currently unemployed, I assume) travel guide in Israel. He's well traveled, smart, articulate and gives the Israeli perspective with an amusing accent.
• Hillel Neuer is a man on a mission - to take down bias against Israel at the UN. His arguments and evidence are devastating, but it does get monotonous after a while.
• An interesting lecture about what is missing from the Palestinian narrative about their national identity. This is a fascinating, long and valuable piece - looks like the lecturer is an Israeli academic and the class are a bunch of young people visiting Israel, but the content is good - and surprisingly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. 1 hour, 43 minutes, though!
• The Hamas Chief and the Israeli Who Saved His Life an interesting article about the Hamas chief. A fanatic, smart, implacable guy who really just needs to die ASAP.
• Bill Clinton was caught responding to a pro-Palestinian activist at a campaign talk intended to support Kamala Harris. He basically gives a history lesson of the last major attempt at peace between Israel and the Palestinians and how the Palestinians basically derailed it. Excellent "insider" information.

Note that the above links are mostly pro-Israeli. If you know of an articulate, credible and smart pro-Palestinian personality on YouTube, let me know and I'll add them here. I tend to get one side more than the other because of where I'm from and what the social media algorithms push at me, is all.

Note also that most of Fareed's stuff is on CNN, not YouTube. I record his weekly show on my PVR...

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