"This War Did Not Start a Month Ago!"

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2023

Let's go way, way back: This morning's New York Times features a "guest essay" by Dalia Hatuqa. The essay carries a headline whose accuracy can't be denied:

This War Did Not Start a Month Ago

This War Did Not Start a Month Ago, the headline says. But when exactly did the war start? 

Commenters to this essay make one point abundantly clear. This war can have started wherever you want this war to have started, depending on the advantage you may want to gain for one of its principal sides.

Hatuqa is a widely published and highly respected journalist. The identity line of her essay describes here in this manner:

Ms. Hatuqa is an independent journalist who specializes in Palestinian-Israeli affairs. She wrote from Ramallah, West Bank.

Hatuqa wrote from the West Bank. As best we can tell, that's where she principally lives. 

Hatuqa isn't writing from a neutral site on the dark side of Neptune. Her general frame of reference might seem to be fairly clear in this early part of her essay:

HATUQA (11/18/23): To many inside and outside this war, the brutality of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks was unthinkable, as have been the scale and ferocity of Israel’s reprisal. But Palestinians have been subject to a steady stream of unfathomable violence—as well as the creeping annexation of their land by Israel and Israeli settlers—for generations.

If people are going to understand this latest conflict and see a path forward for everyone, we need to be more honest, nuanced and comprehensive about the recent decades of history in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, particularly the impact of occupation and violence on the Palestinians. This story is measured in decades, not weeks; it is not one war, but a continuum of destruction, revenge and trauma.

The highlighted statement is certainly true! If we want to understand this latest conflict and see a path forward for everyone, "we need to be more honest, nuanced and comprehensive about the recent decades of history in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank."

That much is certainly true. It's also true that Hatuqa is placing her emphasis on the violence which has been experienced by Palestinians. Obviously, readers are free to dispute her assessments. Some did so in comments. 

We may return to Hatuqa's column next week as we look at some of the conversations we've watched on blue tribe cable since October 7. For today, we thought we'd offer this suggestion:

The much longer and much larger war of which this war is only a part may be found in Hatuqa's own life story.

Dalia Hatuqa is a widely respected, widely published international journalist. Way back when, she offered a version of "my story" for the Times Literary Supplement, a London publication. 

Here's part of the story she tells:

My father was born in Rihaniyeh in the Upper Galilee, one of two villages settled by Circassians, the indigenous people of the North Caucasus who met a cruel fate at the hand of tsarist Russia in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Around 1 million Circassians were killed and 1.5 million others expelled, making my ancestors "one of the first stateless peoples in modern history," according to Walter Richmond in The Circassian Genocide (2013).

In 1864 my great-grandfather, Zakaria, and his brother, Kol, fled their home in what is now the Black Sea resort of Sochi—then the Circassian capital—and eventually ended up in a small Palestinian village called Rihaniyeh. Growing up, I never learned the Northwest Caucasian dialect of our Abzakh tribe, but my siblings and I were taught about our homeland by my father. Of course we learned that we were Palestinians, but we also learned about Circassia, about how the twelve stars on our green flag represented the Circassian tribes, and how our people tenaciously resisted the imperial Russian army's takeover of the Caucasus region for a hundred years.

Approximately 90 per cent of the Circassian population now lives outside modern-day Russia...

Have you ever heard of Circassia itself, let alone of the Circassian genocide? For those who want an overview of the latter, the leading authority on the topic offers this thumbnail account:

Circassian genocide

The Circassian genocide, or Tsitsekun, was the Russian Empire's systematic mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and expulsion of 95–97% of the Circassian population, resulting in 1 to 1.5 million deaths during the final stages of Russo-Circassian War. The peoples planned for extermination were mainly the Muslim Circassians, but other Muslim peoples of the Caucasus were also affected. Killing methods used by Russian forces during the genocide included impaling and tearing the bellies of pregnant women as means of intimidation of the Circassian population. Russian generals such as Grigory Zass described the Circassians as "subhuman filth", and glorified the mass murder of Circassian civilians, justified their use in scientific experiments, and allowed their soldiers to rape women.

During the Russo-Circassian War, the Russian Empire employed a genocidal strategy of massacring Circassian civilians. Only a small percentage who accepted Russification and resettlement within the Russian Empire were completely spared. The remaining Circassian population who refused were variously dispersed or killed en masse. Circassian villages would be located and burnt, systematically starved, or their entire population massacred. Leo Tolstoy reported that Russian soldiers would attack village houses at night. William Palgrave, a British diplomat who witnessed the events, adds that "their only crime was not being Russian." In 1864, "A Petition from Circassian leaders to Her Majesty Queen Victoria" was signed by the Circassians requesting humanitarian aid from the British Empire. In the same year, mass deportation was launched against the surviving population before the end of the war in 1864 and it was mostly completed by 1867. Some died from epidemics or starvation among the crowds of deportees and were reportedly eaten by dogs after their death. Others died when the ships underway sank during storms.

There's much more information at the link we've provided.

According to Hatuqa's account of her family history, her great-grandfather fled the scene of this genocide and ended up in a small Palestinian village. Her father was born in that same village. She and her siblings grew up knowing that they were Palestinian, but also that they were part of the Circassian people.

Hatuqa's essay in the Times focuses on Israel, Gaza and the West Bank over the past several dozen years. It includes the kinds of information and claims you may not see discussed on blue or red cable shows. 

As a general matter, American onlookers aren't asked to make assessments about the fairness of presentations like Hatuqa's. Quite often, we've never heard about the kinds of conduct Hatuqa describes in "the recent decades of history in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank," and we've certainly never seen such claims debated in respectful fashion by well-informed interlocutors.

Hatuqa's essay focuses on Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Her family history is part of a much larger, wider story. It's also a partial history of our war-inclined species.

Human history didn't start a month ago, or even in 1948. Certain patterns emerge again and again. Sensible people will try to remember this:

There's no perfect way to describe the events of any particular episode. 

There's no such thing as perfect assessment. Fair assessment is itself very, very hard.