Writing About War as Bombs Fall

When the Gaza war started three years ago, I took to the keyboard. In those dark times, writing was my only sanctuary amid the mayhem. I had written extensively about war in my career as a scholar and a journalist, but nothing prepared me for this war. The words that came to mind felt jaded, even inadequate for what was unfolding in front of our eyes. I wasn’t alone. Veteran colleagues at Al Jazeera, battle-hardened reporters who had walked through the ruins of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, the Balkans, and Ukraine, confessed that they had never seen such merciless devastation.

On October 7, the day Hamas launched its bloody offensive against Israel in an attempt to shatter the status quo, I wrote that Hamas’s shocking attack should have surprised no one. Not after Israel’s decades-long military occupation, repression, and siege, and endless years of contempt, humiliation, and dismissiveness of basic Palestinian rights. In those early days, stating the obvious—that “the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum”—was construed as controversial, even condemned as blood libel. But context is indispensable; without context, there can be no real understanding. And explanation must not be confused with justification for the killing of civilians, regardless of whether the victims are tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, or hundreds of Israeli civilians.

On October 12, five days into the war, I warned that Israel was “manufacturing the case for genocide.” My warning was aimed at those who granted the Netanyahu government unconditional support, and echoed its dangerous analogies to the Nazis, the Holocaust, ISIS, Al Qaeda, and 9/11—those who might, wittingly or unwittingly, pave the path for the crime of crimes. A warning, not a prediction. The notion that Israel might add genocide to a long history of dispossession, occupation, and domination of the Palestinians was too outrageous to stomach. That such an act would be supported by most Israelis, justified by most Western allies, and tolerated by its neighbors was too consequential to contemplate.

My cautionary writing continued unabated during that ill-fated October, especially as I followed the Hebrew Israeli media. Aside from government ministers threatening to starve, destroy, or to empty Gaza of its inhabitants, Israeli journalists, former generals, and even celebrities competed to see who could scream the loudest: Punish them! Kill them all! Nuke them! But for me one particular statement captured the national frenzy more than any other. In a response to a fellow Arab MK, Meirav Ben-Ari of the “centrist” Yesh Atid party, a mother of two, rejected any symmetry between Israeli and Palestinian child victims, telling the Knesset 10 days into the war, “What symmetry! The children in Gaza, the children in Gaza have brought it upon themselves.”

The children in Gaza have brought it upon themselves.

Writing became even more critical as a campaign of deception paved the way for the military offensive. The Israeli government launched a well-orchestrated offensive of disinformation and hyperbole that would make the illegal permissible in the war on Gaza. For example, Netanyahu invoked images of Israeli babies burned alive and men beheaded, allegations he resurrected last week at the United Nations, and that have been echoed repeatedly by American officials, including President Biden, long after they were debunked by Israeli news outlets.

As I also warned two days into the war, Netanyahu was trying to drag the United States into a war with Iran—a decades-long fantasy. On October 7, President Isaac Herzog was quick to accuse Tehran of masterminding Hamas’s “unprovoked, heinous attack,” claiming that it was “supported and directed by their proxy commanders in Iran.” A week later, I warned again against the dangers of the United States’ getting involved in yet another open-ended war. Netanyahu played the same tired tunes that had led to the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, under the guise of defending “civilization against barbarism.”

As winter turned to spring, the roar of the war drowned out all other sounds. Netanyahu rejected all ceasefire proposals and refused to commit to the day-after vision proposed by the Biden administration. By the summer, bombing of Gaza had led to more children’s deaths than could be counted, and to entire families perishing under the rubble of their homes, including colleagues and their loved ones. Palestinians killed in bombings and air strikes had reached over 60,000, according to conservative estimates.

Writing suddenly felt like a futile exercise, like playing the violin in the back of an ambulance racing through a disaster zone.

A year passed and I had not written a word, as apathy replaced empathy. The traffickers of shocking Palestinian images and the marketers of deceptive Israeli clichés had taken over the public debate, especially on social media, as the unrelenting live streaming of war on our screens normalized the horror. As the enormity of the tragedy began to sink in, the days stretched on, and the nights seemed endless.

Finally, a temporary, three-phase ceasefire began in January 2025. It proved short-lived: On March 18, 2025, Israel resumed bombing. As the war roared back into our lives, I decided, after a yearlong hiatus, to start writing again. What I lack in talent as a writer, I make up for in resolve. And I wasn’t going to let the bombs have the last word. So I threw myself into writing a book, well aware of the potential imprudence of such an endeavor. Writing about war, while it rages on, while facts remain uncertain, and passions run high, risks mistaking familiarity for foresight, while missing the greater meaning of events. But for me the urge was too great and the need for clear-eyed historical and strategic perspective too urgent. Especially since my focus was primarily on the first 12 days of the war. It took no more than 12 days, from Netanyahu’s October 7 war speech to Biden’s October 19 Oval Office address, to expose the anatomy of Israel’s war, its intent, and its trajectory.

I hoped to be wrong. But Israel’s two-year war has unfortunately proved me right. We all have a moral responsibility toward the tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian victims, and the millions of civilians who continue to suffer under Israeli control, to speak, to write against the genocide. Fortunately, more and more Americans are willing to accept such responsibility. I may be right about the war, but I was wrong about its ramifications. Those 12 fateful days did more than shake the Middle East. They shook America, and the world.

If you had told me in 2023 that a young Muslim American immigrant from Uganda would be elected mayor of New York after accusing Israel of genocide, I would have said, stop talking. If you had told me he would also threaten to arrest the Israeli prime minister for war crimes upon his arrival in the city, and still crush him in the US polls, including among American Jews, I would have said, stop talking.

But the polls have spoken.

As the war dragged on in 2025, two in five American Jews polled said Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, while three in five said it has committed war crimes. In 2026, 60 percent of American adults hold an unfavorable view of Israel. And across both parties, majorities of adults under 50 now view Israel negatively: 84 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans. This September, Americans’ support for Palestine eclipsed their support for Israel, 38 percent to 35 percent. A first.

The political consequences are already visible in Washington. AIPAC, long regarded as one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the country, has become toxic in many circles. And as former vice president Kamala Harris campaigns in Michigan alongside Abdul El-Sayed, who called the war in Gaza genocide, this may be the new norm, at least for the Democrats.

Across the Atlantic, the numbers are even more startling. Large majorities in Western Europe oppose Israel, with similar sentiment across much of Asia and Latin America, according to Pew. And unlike in the United States, where public opinion has shifted dramatically while policy has barely budged, much of Europe is now changing course.

In a passionate speech to the UN, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the diplomacy over Gaza as a “shameful spectacle.” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned Israel’s war in Gaza from the UN podium. And in a speech to the Labour Party this week, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband acknowledged that the war’s critics “were right” and called for a “reset” of Britain’s Israel policy. He condemned Israel’s “illegal occupation of Palestine” and said the October 7 attack “cannot justify the suffering the Netanyahu government has inflicted in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Meanwhile, Britain, France, and Canada recognized the State of Palestine last year and have since announced new measures to protect the two-state solution, including restrictions on imports from Israeli settlements and measures targeting entities facilitating settlement expansion. Some 20 countries have recognized Palestine since 2023, bringing the total to 159 of the 193 UN member states. If it weren’t for the United States, the UN General Assembly may have already frozen Israel’s membership, as it did in the case of South Africa in 1974.

I have been among the skeptics. While writing expansively about the rise of “people power,” I also assumed that people eventually move on, distracted by another crisis, a change of Israeli government, or a change in Israeli policy. I argued, too, that the policy shifts were largely symbolic and painfully slow; that more than a few governments around the world, including Western and Arab governments, continued to trade with Israel, with some even upgrading military cooperation after the Gaza war.

But something bigger is happening.

The United States, Europe, and other traditional allies are fed up with Netanyahu, and tired of Israel itself, and ashamed of being associated with it. Most will want to decouple their strategic interests and their Middle East policies from Israel’s.

The popular pressure is greater than ever, and is growing by the day.

With the exception of one or two leaders, many now prefer to keep their cooperation with Israel out of sight. Vice President JD Vance was right to warn Israel that the US is its last remaining friend. More accurately, Washington is. For now.

There is no mistaking the signs. A gathering storm is building.