Latest Hostage Deaths Could Be A Turning Point

The horrific killing of six Israeli hostages is an awful tragedy, but it could create unprecedented pressure on Netanyahu to stop obstructing a ceasefire.

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[Update: An Israeli court has ordered an end to the general strike discussed in this article. For a brief explanation and analysis, click here.]

On Saturday, Israel announced that it had recovered the bodies of six more hostages who had been killed in Gaza, shortly before they were found. The reaction has been significant and could mark a turning point in the ongoing slaughter that Israel has been engaged in since the brutal attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

There is a lot to sort through, and events are moving quickly.

What happened, what do we know, what is in dispute?

We know for certain that six Israelis who had been kidnapped on October 7 and held hostage ever since were killed, but other details are in dispute.

Israel claims that the six were shot to death. The narrative they are weaving is that Israeli troops in Rafah were closing in on the location and the hostages were killed, at least implying that they might otherwise have been rescued.

This last seems unlikely, given that Israel makes no claim to have killed or apprehended those they believe killed the hostages. If they could escape, given the way things have gone for almost eleven months in Gaza, it seems likely they could have also moved the hostages with them.

Western media, by and large, have accepted Israel’s claim of the hostages having been shot execution-style on its face, an unjustified response, given the amount of falsehood, fabrication, mis- and disinformation that Israel has put out since the start of its onslaught against the people of Gaza.

Hamas claims that the hostages were killed in an Israeli air strike, but they have thus far not been very forceful in this claim, as one might expect. Yet one former American diplomat who worked extensively in the Middle East pointed out in a private email, “There is absolutely no reason to believe the IDF spokesman's evidence-free 'preliminary assessment' that the hostages, who had survived nearly 11 months in the custody of Hamas, were killed by Hamas rather than by IDF bombs or gunfire.”

That’s a fair statement, as far as it goes. Hamas has little to gain right now by killing hostages they still hope to use as leverage to get Israeli troops out of Gaza and to secure the release of some of the many thousands of Palestinian hostages being held by Israel, whose fate rarely merits mention in western media. But that doesn’t mean that whoever was holding those hostages, whether agents of Hamas or some other group, might not have shot them.

Whether the hostages were killed by Israeli fire or by Hamas gunmen, though, ends up making little difference, outside of various propagandistic uses. Whoever delivered the lethal blows, kidnapping and holding hostages are serious war crimes, and the result still traces back to that crime.

But the deaths of at least some, and possibly all, of these hostages could have been avoided if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not been obstructing a ceasefire deal for months, with the full support and partnership of U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. At least three of the hostages were on a list of hostages to be released in the initial stage of a ceasefire. One of those three was Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the American citizen whose parents spoke at the Democratic National Convention last week.

His blood is on Hamas’ hands, but at least as much, it is on the hands of Netanyahu, Biden, Blinken, and the rest of Biden’s gang. And that does include Kamala Harris, whose own response to this event was absolutely appalling.

The American response

Harris did not, in her statement reacting to the hostages’ deaths, choose to reinforce the need for a ceasefire and a deal to get the rest of the hostages out before it’s too late (as it already is for well over 40,000 Palestinians, but we are well past the point where we can even hope that Harris would show the slightest concern about that number swelling).

Instead, Harris called once again for the “elimination” of “the threat of Hamas.” No mention of ceasefire from either her or her boss, although Biden at least did talk about striking “a deal” to free the hostages. For his part, Donald Trump went even lower, politicizing the deaths of the hostages and absurdly stating that it was due to Biden’s and Harris’ “lack of leadership.” The entire two-party field shamed itself quite badly in their response.

The White House has supported Netanyahu as he has obstructed the ceasefire deal Biden himself put on the table, and which Hamas accepted. The Israeli prime minister has consistently refused to agree to the deal, adding one condition after another to ensure that the deal doesn’t resemble the one Biden put forth, and Washington consistently goes along.

That has already put the Biden administration squarely in the rejectionist camp, and in opposition to the massive number of Israelis who are screaming for their prime minister to stop playing these games, getting their loved ones, friends, or fellow citizens killed, in order to maintain his own position of power and pursue one provocation across the Middle East after another.

Now, as Israel girds itself for an unprecedented day of protest on Monday, Biden and Harris are both standing against hundreds of thousands of Israelis begging for an end to this.

Indeed, Biden and Harris are so radical in their position that they stand well to the hawkish right of Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. They are so extreme in this that they are to the right of the man who, quite literally, laid out the plan for genocide in Gaza, who called Palestinians “human animals.”

The Israeli response

Gallant has been battling Netanyahu for months over the Prime Minister’s persistent obstruction of a ceasefire. Last week, the two got into a shouting match, with Gallant telling Netanyahu, "As the prime minister you are authorized to bring to a vote any decision you want — including executing the hostages.”

Let’s keep in mind that Gallant himself is an extremely hawkish figure. He is a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, but unlike Netanyahu, he was a soldier for most of his career, rising to the rank of Major General. During that career, he was accused of, and surely committed, war crimes on numerous occasions. This man is no dove.

But, as a soldier, Gallant wants to see a strategy for Israel’s military operations. He sees Netanyahu escalating the fighting in Gaza and the entire region without a plan and recognizes the danger there. He understands that the elimination of Hamas that Netanyahu thinks of and which both Biden and Harris have voiced support for is a completely impossible goal.

But the Israeli response to the killing of the six hostages goes much farther than Gallant. For weeks, Israelis have been demonstrating against Netanyahu because they, too, understand that he has consistently blocked a ceasefire, and they want it to stop. They want the hostages returned, they want to rebuild in the southern areas which were damaged or destroyed on October 7 and the northern areas that have been evacuated and damaged by rockets from Hezbollah. They want to take a break from worrying about the imminent threat of Iranian retaliation. Support for Israel’s devastation of Gaza remains very high, but opposition to the cost it is exacting on Israelis has grown considerably.

This incident seems to have caused a sharpening of opposition to the Netanyahu government and enraged Israelis who want a ceasefire. At least 700,000 people came out to call for a ceasefire across Israel, a remarkable number in a country of only 9.4 million people. The national trade union, the Histadrut has called a general strike for Monday to call for a ceasefire. That will bring the country to an effective economic standstill.

Will this change things?

The general strike represents by far the most potential pressure that Netanyahu has faced to end this genocidal onslaught.

The Histadrut represents about a quarter of Israel’s workforce. But it is seen as a leading institution by many workers, and the call that was put out was not only for its members. In terms of the potential impact, a great deal depends on how much of the rest of the workforce heeds the Histadrut call. Already, according to Axios, “Many of the country's largest private sector companies announced they will join the strike.” The Times of Israel reports that the Israel Business Forum, which represents workers from Israel’s 200 biggest private sector companies, has also agreed to join in the strike.

On top of its own effects, a general strike magnifies the economic stresses Israel is already experiencing. Israel’s economic growth outlook has been cut at least in half, and that’s an optimistic projection at this point. Its credit rating has been downgraded despite the guarantees it routinely gets from the United States. Tourism, imports, and shipping have been severely impacted, as have many small businesses. Airlines have suspended flights to and from Israel for months, extending into 2025.

If the Histadrut intends only a one-day shutdown, it is unlikely to affect Netanyahu’s thinking. The economy won’t suffer real damage in one day. Crucially, it would be a mass demonstration by sectors of Israeli society who already do not support Netanyahu and his far-right partners, so he can more easily ignore them.

But if the Histadrut is prepared to really press for change with a longer strike, and if the IBF and the rest of the private sector supports it, that could prove too much for Netanyahu to resist. At that point, wealthier and more conservative sectors in Israel would start panicking and support for Netanyahu could well splinter. But sustaining that pressure long enough would put a great strain on a lot of Israeli citizens.

The wild card here is, as it so often is for Israel, the United States. A general strike by the Histadrut that sent the kind of shockwaves through Israel could be enough to really shake Joe Biden up. He may not care about Palestinians at all, but Israelis are a different matter. And, as much as he has supported Netanyahu, it is Israel, not its prime minister, that moves him.

If Netanyahu’s obstruction was visibly tearing Israeli society apart at its roots—which is a very possible outcome of an extended general strike—Biden may feel compelled to take the kinds of steps he has refused to take until now. There is already support from a key Democratic sector—the American Federation of Teachers, which has endorsed the Histadrut’s call for a general strike.

Biden will still be extremely reluctant to stop the flow of weapons to Israel. But he might call out Netanyahu’s obstruction, which, in these circumstances would significantly increase the pressure on Netanyahu. And if that fails, he might take stronger action, maybe even move toward threatening weapons for a time. Because if a general strike goes on for long enough to create turmoil in Israel, a lot of the pro-Israel community in the Democratic party will call on Biden to act. It would, after all, be clearly and unambiguously acting in support of masses of Israelis, not Palestinians.

The need for a change

It is also very possible that none of that will happen, that the general strike turns out to be more symbolic than effective.

But if that is the case, we in the United States will have watched the President and the Vice President and Democratic nominee add opposition to a mass movement of Israelis who want to see Netanyahu pressured to accept the ceasefire deal he has been obstructing for months to their disgraceful support for the genocide of the Palestinian people, a genocide that has already resulted in at least 40,000 deaths (and surely far more), of whom at least 17,000 have been children.

On the day those six Israeli hostages were killed, Israel killed 47 Palestinians. Those deaths were not noted in the western media, because Palestinian lives are deemed worthless. It is an obscenity and one that has been promoted by both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, as well as Donald Trump.

As I noted earlier today, “Every innocent life that is violently snuffed out, regardless of ethnicity, is a tragedy of untold proportions. Yet for the American administration only the Israeli lives matter in the slightest.”

That will continue as long as we let it.

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