The two-year anniversary of October 7: on the cusp of peace?
The horrific and sickening events of the October 7 invasion of Israel have led to so many unforeseen things: the worldwide increase in expressions of Jew-hatred – a hatred that I submit was already there but more concealed rather than overt; the decimation of many of Israel’s enemies, including those that initially had seemed strongest; and now a possible peace plan unlike any other peace plan that had previously been proposed in the region.
That’s a lot in two years. It’s hard to assimilate all the changes and impossible to predict the future. But I think the following is an interesting discussion of the situation as it stands today, and what the future might hold. You can watch a little of it or a lot.
It’s a basically optimistic take. Are they correct? Who knows? Can the two seemingly contradictory goals of the war be met: bringing the hostages home and the end of Hamas? And if so, what might replace Hamas?
No one has replied yet?
Depression, maybe? Doubt?
Yes, and then some.
God bless Israel.
For Hamas to surrender is irrelevant. Their fighters and the bankrolls are still around.
The attacks will continue either looking as ad hoc, or under a different name.
The command structure, such as survive, will retire or go underground (both fig and lit) and the war will go on.
The bright spot is that there will be fewer or no places to store or manufacture rockets for the first couple of years.
The Koran demands Jews be killed. In addition, much of the west agrees that Israel must ne destroyed.
It’s been said a war is not over until the enemy is convinced, down to its soul, that it has lost. Germany was not convinced following WWI.
What will convince Islam? Nuke Mecca?
Well, there are few podcasts I’m willing to listen to for 57 minutes. John Podhoretz, as editor of Commentary since 2009 leading a confab, is not among them.
JPod was a big Never-Trumper and never said anything positive about Trump until the successful bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
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Trump bombed Iran. He can say Shylock 100 times a day forever as far as I’m concerned.
https://x.com/jpodhoretz/status/1941185424174821558
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Though that is still a pretty stupid, bigoted comment.
The outbreak of overt Jew-hating immediately following the Oct. 7 atrocities did surprise me. Sick, sick, sick. On the Israeli response: They were bombarded from Gaza for nearly twenty years, with multiple terror attacks within Israel in addition to the rockets. Following the atrocities of Oct. 7, apparently the intelligentsia thought they might be entitled to kill 1200 or so terrorists, maybe double or triple that number to avenge the atrocities, and then quit. No. Enough was enough far before Oct. 7. Denying this little nation the right to destroy this implacable enemy is unbelievable bigotry. And they aren’t killing them all in Gaza, not at all, although they have the firepower to do so, probably.
neo: “… Jew-hatred – a hatred that I submit was already there but more concealed rather than overt ….”
Some of it was there, but some of it was “drummed up,” very rapidly. And, rapidly intensified, from talking to action, and networked, and an ecosystem sprang up.
I’ve been unfocused.
huxley:
You might be surprised if you listen to it. And he hasn’t been a NeverTrumper for quite some time, earlier than that.
neo:
No disrespect, but I need a better sell than that.
This morning I finished Camus’s The Stranger in French. I read slowly and for the past few days I’ve been sitting on death’s row under the shadow of the guillotine, confronting how precious the moments of one’s life are and accepting that it will all be over sooner or later no matter what.
huxley:
Podhoretz’s Commentary podcasts were suggested to me by YouTube a couple of months ago, and I idly clicked on one. I had zero expectations, but it turned out to be pretty good. Since then I’ve probably watched ten or so, and they’ve all been pretty good. And if you don’t like Podhoretz, he’s only one of four people on the podcasts, usually (and including this one).
In addition, their Israel stuff has been quite good, and the above video is about Israel.
Podhoretz began to be less anti-Trump around the time of Trump’s 2024 victory, when he gave him some props here – although he still really didn’t like him:
Podhoretz also wrote criticisms of the lawfare against Trump prior to that. For example, Google’s AI says this:
I’ll believe it when I see it.
The term ‘overzealous prosecutor’ is one which should be abandoned. There may be overzealous prosecutors, but the real problems arise from deceitful and abusive prosecutors.
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Letitia James isn’t a prosecutor. She was for ten years a bottom-of-the-barrel attorney who worked as a public defender and legal aid lawyer. She hasn’t practiced law since 1999 and her license is long lapsed. She’s a vicious politician who has deceitful and abusive prosecutors reporting to her and doing her bidding. Please note, the man she defeated in 2018 was a (black) BigLaw partner who had other things to do with his life than preside over the attorney-general’s office. Given a choice between someone who would have to make a real sacrifice to take the position and Letitia James, New York’s electorate chose Letitia James and returned her to office four years later.
Irving Kristol died in 2009. His widow was 93 years of age when Trump came down the escalator; she was an academic historian who had never been one to comment on topical matters; her son has been a prominent opinion journalist, her daughter not.
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Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter were significantly younger than the Kristols though both were in 2015 were publishing little. Also, their son-in-law is a prominent public figure in the United States, their youngest daughter in Israel. There middle daughter as for 30 years worked primarily in the PR business but does have a history in topical commentary. I do not know that Midge Decter wrote about DJT in her last years, but her husband did and made it clear he was not hostile, His son-in-law Elliot Abrams took a job in the 1st Trump administration. Ruth Blum is a chum of Carolyn Glick and an antagonist of Israel’s peacenik lobby as well as a critic of both Jimmy Carter and BO. John Podhoretz was at odds with his relatives. (So was Jonah Goldberg, whose mother favored DJT).
There is a documentary about the Supernova Festival attacks on YouTube. Survivors filmed the festival then the carnage. Some video from Hamas is included.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WTAzbmQ02SA&pp=ygUTU3VwZXJub3ZhIGZlc3RpdmFsIA%3D%3D
A father gives the recordings from his children and he went to try to save them.
huxley,
One should avoid public proclamations for at least 7 days after reading, “The Stranger.” It takes more than awhile to get a spark of hope after ingesting that. 🙂
huxley and neo,
I listen to Ricochet’s, GLoP podcast with Rob Long, Jonah Goldberg and Jon Podhoretz. They make an amusing threesome, although Jonah has been much less merry over the past, several years. He cannot view DJT with anything less than disgust.
Rob Long tries to be a bit fairer in his treatment of DJT, but he is typically negative and derisive.
Jon Podhoretz, on the other hand, was a supporter of DJT long before the bombing of Iran, and willingly and openly took and takes much flak from his cohorts for his views. (In other words, neo’s right, huxley’s wrong.)
I heard Podhoretz speak in NY in November of 2024. He was downright enthusiastic about Trump and what the election, just a few days before, meant to Israel.
Damn them, damn them.
neo, Rufus, Mike Plaiss:
I enjoyed the GLoP podcasts before TDS. I only tuned in intermittently after TDS set in. If JPod got better, quicker than I noticed, more power to him.
Though I wouldn’t mind a few receipts.
JPod’s Shylock remark still strikes me as stupid and bigoted. (Did Trump ever mention Shylock in the same breath as Jews?)
Rufus:
Thanks for getting “The Stranger” reference!
I’m now wondering what my Catholic high school thought in assigning it in our senior year.
I missed the whole point of the book then. I’m not sure my teacher got it either.
But existentialism was super cool in those days and great prep for getting into the Good Schools, which many of my classmates managed.
Hamas is a leopard who will never change its spots. I suspect that the spots will all have to be removed by force.
I would like to know more about the clashes between armed clans and Hamas. That could be promising in some ways, but is probably just pressure to obtain food or other resources that Hamas might otherwise steal. Probably not a basis for any real political realignment vis a vis Israel. The balance of power may be shifting enough to create a “government of clans” form of “republic” I suppose, but I will defer to our Israeli commenters who are on/near that ground.
Again, I’m hoping for agreement but Hamas seems likely to FAFO.
Trump has made it clear that he won’t be rope-a-doped and no doubt Netanyahu has his plans.
@ eeyore mood – Is that documentary the same as this one?
https://nypost.com/2025/08/13/entertainment/tiff-cuts-oct-7-doc-because-hamas-didnt-give-footage-permission/
While searching for the TIFF story, I came across the contemporary report of the massacre by Al Jazeera. I was surprised they even published a post at all, much less one that contained a fairly accurate account.
Other than calling the Hamas cowards “fighters” of course.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/10/what-to-know-about-deadly-hamas-attack-on-the-israeli-music-festival
https://www.jns.org/what-have-we-learned-since-oct-7/
Caroline Glick replies to NYT’s Bret Stephens: “What Have We Learned Since Oct. 7th?”
Great article sdferr. Thanks for posting.
Crazy that I’d completely forgotten the whole “judicial reform” issue that had the left in such a tizzy.
For my part Mike, to see the problem of judicial supremacy in Israeli politics remain to this day unresolved (and practically for now unresolvable) in the face of an actual existential war is to teeter on the edge of despair for political good as such or as possibility. It’s kind of fucking grim, or induces in me an over-contemptuous view of human nature, to speak from the heart. I only hope this feeling or inclination is simply a horrible mistake I make.
Because of Oct 7 and the subsequent Israeli response, Canada, the UK, France and Australia have recently joined those nations supporting a Palestinian state.
I will chalk that up as a win for Hamas.
Whatever “peace” treaty is arranged, it will be only a matter of time before any new Palestinian state becomes the property of Hamas and we will all witness, yet again, Hamas terrorists attacks upon Israel.
And as is the norm, the “world community” will blame Israel for this.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
John Tyler:
Those countries have supported a Palestinian state for many many decades. Ye olde 2-state solution. They just came out more formally for it. Only the US and a couple of Eastern European countries, as well as some Pacific Island countries, have opposed Palestinian statehood, and that’s been the case for a long time (the British and the rest have been abstaining until recently, but that has the effect of support). The war didn’t change anything except making them more bold in their support of Palestinian statehood. Their motive is both leftist sympathy with the supposed oppressed, some element of anti-Semitism, but most importantly playing to their large Moslem populace.