The Gates Of Gaza Critical Voices From Israel On October 7 And The War With Hamas

Following the horrific attack on October 7, support for a devastating military retaliation and resolution has taken center stage. Nevertheless, within Israel, numerous critical voices cast doubt on the sustainability of such approaches. They champion the principles of morality, legality, and common sense as the true keys to a lasting solution. This book focuses on these voices which are critical of Israeli government policies. They are deeply grieving and affected by the October 7 attack, while also able to hold both Palestinian and Israeli pain and aspirations not as mutually exclusive, but as an impetus for creating a better and more equitable future for all who inhabit the land. It chronicles the reactions of intellectuals and scholars to unfolding events. All the pieces in this volume were written within a few days to a few months of October 7 and comprise an archive of a particular discourse taking shape in Israel at this historical juncture. The book is dedicated to the memory of Vivian Silver, who devoted her life to waging peace through valiant activism, and was murdered in her home on October 7. The editor’s royalties will go to support an annual lecture in her memory on the themes of peace and democracy. With contributions by Shaul Arieli, Eva Illouz, Idan Landau, Yaniv Ronen, Yofi Tirosh, Assaf David, Ameer Fakhoury, Ghadir Hani, Eran Tzidkiyahu, Orit Kamir, Orly Noy, Noam Shuster-Eliassi, Jessica Ausinheiler, Meirav Jones, Tal Correm, Anwar Mhajne, David Kretzmer, Omer Bartov, Rawia Aburabia, Hannah Safran, Tanya Zion-Waldoks, Galit Cohen-Kedem, Avi Shilon, Hagar Kotef, Merav Amir, Ali Al-Awar, and Nicholas Kristof.

The gripping true story of how leading Israeli journalist Amir Tibon, along with his wife and their two young children, were rescued from Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7, 2023 by Tibon's own father--an incredible tale of survival that also reveals the deep tensions and systemic failures that led to Hamas's attacks that day. On the morning of Saturday, October 7, Amir Tibon and his wife were awakened by mortar rounds exploding near their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a progressive Israeli settlement along the Gaza border. Soon, they were holding their two young daughters in the family's reinforced safe room, urging their children not to cry while they listened to the gunfire from Hamas attackers outside their windows. With his cell phone battery running low, Amir texted his father: "They're here." Some 45 miles to the north, on the shores of Tel Aviv, Amir's parents saw the news at the same time that they received Amir's note. Still dripping from an early-morning swim, they jumped in their car and raced toward Nahal Oz, armed only with a pistol--but intent on saving their family at all costs. In The Gates of Gaza, Amir Tibon tells his family's harrowing story in full for the first time, describing their terrifying ordeal--and the bravery that ultimately led to their rescue--alongside the histories of the place they call home and the systems of power that have kept them and their neighbors in Gaza in harm's way for decades, with no end in sight. This dynamic of purposeful hostility between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors will need to be fundamentally dismantled, he shows, if the region is to have any hope of peace. With deep sensitivity and drawing on Israeli and Palestinian sources as well as original interviews with the police officers and soldiers who fought alongside his parents on 10/7, Tibon offers an unsparing but ultimately hopeful view of this seemingly intractable conflict and its global reverberations.

The secret alliance between Israel, Britain and France to destroy Nasser's rule in Egypt was a pivotal event in the history of the modern Middle East. The Suez crisis brought about both a humiliation for the old imperial powers and a remarkable victory for Israel. Mordechai Bar-On was General Moshe Dayan's personal assistant during the Suez campaign and has drawn on both his own diary and many years of research to produce a gripping, definitive account of the Israeli side to the war. The Gates of Gaza describes the fears, suspicions and agonizing debates that resulted in Ben-Gurion's decision to enter the clandestine pact with France and Britain, the military victory in the Sinai, and the subsequent withdrawal in the face of pressure from the United Nations. What was at the time a frustrating conflict for Israel should now be seen, in Dr Bar-On's view, as a crucial event in securing the new nation's position in the Middle East and providing a breathing space before the great Arab challenge of 1967.

This report was researched and written by Bill Van Esveld--Acknowledgments.

"Gaza is among the most densely populated places in the world. Two-thirds of its inhabitants are refugees, and more than half the population is under eighteen years of age. Since Israel occupied Gaza in 1967, it has systematically de-developed the economy. After Hamas won democratic elections in 2006, Israel intensified its blockade of Gaza, and after Hamas consolidated its control of the territory in 2007, Israel tightened its illegal siege another notch. In the meantime, Israel has launched no less than eight military operations against Gaza--culminating in Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014--that left behind over three million tons of rubble. Recent UN reports predict that Gaza will be unlivable by 2020. Norman G. Finkelstein presents a meticulously researched and devastating inquest into Israel's actions of the last decade. He argues that although Israel justified its blockade and violent assaults in the name of self-defense, in fact these actions were cynical exercises of brutal power against an essentially defenseless civilian population. Based on hundreds of human rights reports, the book scrutinizes multifarious violations of international law Israel committed both during its operations and in the course of its decade-long siege of Gaza. It is a monument to Gaza's martyrs and a scorching accusation against their tormentors"--Provided by publisher.

The December 2023 issuance of a Declaration of Conscience and Concern of Global Intellectuals to Stop Gaza Genocide to leading civil society activists and former governmental and UN officials throughout the world recorded 127 invited signatories and over 1500 endorsers. On this basis, the Declaration's originators, Ahmet Davutoglu and Richard Falk, invited a select number of signatories to an emergency conference in London to lend their authority to a further expression of the international community's deepest concerns in light of the continuation of the genocidal assault on the peoples of Gaza. This book brings together the most valuable of the presentations delivered by conference participants. It provides a coherent perspective on the extreme human catastrophe that was exposed as it unfolded in real time, arousing intense responses of outrage from the peoples of the world, which failed to alter the shameless and shocking levels of active complicity on the part of several leading Western liberal democracies. The latter constituted a cynical embrace of moral hypocrisy and double standards, paralyzing the UN and ignoring the most flagrant violations of international law on Israel's part. The book assesses the Israeli response to the Hamas attack of October 7 from the perspective of international law and morality, as well as providing informed accounts of the inability of the UN to implement the demands of a permanent and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. It also provides accounts of the implementation of forced evacuation, induced starvation and disease, efforts calculated to destroy the civilian population in whole or in part, Israel's defiance of the UN, the ICJ Interim Order, and international humanitarian law in the course of transparent violations of the Genocide Convention. At a time when neither governments nor international institutions are demonstrating either the will or the capability to act in accord with the rule of law or the popular will of the majority of the peoples of the world who have demonstrated against the genocide in their millions, these substantial essays give an overview of the extraordinary damage wrought and what can and should be done to protect Palestinian rights and construct a future that empowers Palestinians to give content to their right of self-determination rather than victimized by yet another effort to impose a solution from without or enable Israel to control the day after developments when the violence stops.

On July 8, 2014, Israel launched air strikes on Hamas-controlled Gaza, followed by a ground invasion. The ensuing fifty-one days of war left more than 2,200 people dead, the vast majority of whom were Palestinian civilians, including over 500 children. During the assault, at least 10,000 homes were destroyed and, according to the United Nations, nearly 300,000 Palestinians were displaced. Max Blumenthal was in Gaza and throughout Israel-Palestine during what he argues was an entirely avoidable catastrophe. In this explosive work of intimate reportage, Blumenthal reveals the harrowing conditions and cynical deceptions that led to the ruinous war -- and tells the human stories. Blumenthal brings the battles in Gaza to life, detailing the ferocious clashes that took place when Israel's military invaded the besieged strip. He radically shifts the discussion around a number of highly contentious issues: the use of civilians as human shields by Israeli forces, the arbitrary targeting of Palestinian civilians, and the radicalization of Israeli public officials and top military personnel. Amid the rubble of Gaza's border regions, Blumenthal recorded the testimonies from scores of residents, documenting potential war crimes committed by the Israeli armed forces while carefully examining the military doctrine that led to them. More than a chronicle of war and devastation, The 51 Day War is an urgent warning that the aftermath of the conflict has made another military assault on Gaza almost inevitable. And while the people of Gaza will once again prove their resilience, the world can no longer just stand aside and watch.