What Now?

So here we are, with a ceasefire agreement that some are even calling "peace," and Trump, our new bestie, is even saying it's forever; the living hostages have finally returned home, and the fallen are arriving slowly too, to be buried in loving hands and broken hearts. Seemingly, the end of days. And yet, the feeling of distress doesn't cease; the feeling, beyond the immense relief over the hostages' return, continues to be a mix of horror and defensiveness – at least for those willing to look at the big picture – and that sense of "this can’t go on" keeps coloring our reality. Tom Zandman gives words to this hard feeling.

Ayala Shalev, Editor, That’s About Us

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What Now?

Tom Zandman

In June 2024, when the news poured in about the rescue operation for Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv, I remember my first thought was: How I hate that unbearable leftist voice that’s living inside my head.

Four human beings who went through hell on October 7, were kidnapped and held in subhuman conditions for eight months of terror, rescued and brought home safely – and the bastard won't stop yammering: Catch. Catch. There's a catch here. Don't forget that the IDF massacred hundreds of innocent people to save them. Catch. People just like them, who had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and to be Palestinians.

You want to rejoice, but that traitorous leftist voice won't let you, it simply prevents you from suppressing. The heart is in a trap.

So what now?

All the living hostages are home, as well as the fallen whose locations are known, or most of them. The destruction of Gaza has been halted in its most violent and brutal display (not without the IDF killing a few dozen civilians in the moment before the last one, the last moment, and even the one after that), food and medicine are starting to enter the Strip.

And that voice in my head won't stop yammering: The catch. The catch. Don't forget the catch.

Which is unbearable, because if you want the truth – We're in a good moment, rare to the point of pain. A moment where, for a change, the collective suffering that's been burying this place under it has stopped piling up, and has even been significantly alleviated. This isn't the kind of thing that happens here, and for this alone I'm willing to say thanks to Donald Trump, the narcissistic, destructive fascist who's ravaging the US and the entire world order. Just for that, I tell the mangy leftist in my head to shut up, and to go screw himself with his Catch. The living hostages are home, the Palestinians in Gaza are no longer subject to annihilation. No catch, okay?

That's today. Today is better than yesterday, and that's reason enough to shut up for a moment.

The catch, of course, is tomorrow.

This euphoria that's settling over us now is suffocating. A kind of enveloping, sweet, perfumed hug that whispers “everything's fine”, and blurs the reality outside.

The Catch is the smear and incitement campaign against the hostages and their families, which isn't going to subside. On the contrary. The narrative being pumped here is the standard populist paradox: Israel simultaneously achieved a brilliant victory (thanks to Bibi), and also suffered a humiliating defeat (the fault of the hostages, and mainly their families). The hostages' Via Dolorosa has ended its physical phase and will transition to the media phase.

The Catch is in the victory image that the protest movements and the opposition are also trying to sell. I'm not belittling for a moment the significance of the civil struggle that took place here (for the hostages and against the government within Israel; for Gaza and against its destruction outside it). But we need to face the facts: We stumbled, purely by chance, onto the right side of Arab money, American corruption, and their intersection: Trump's malignant and impulsive narcissism. To draw conclusions from this about the power of citizens against the regime, the possibilities open to us, and the way forward from here? That's a dangerous illusion. We're living in a global dystopia that happened to produce a positive side effect. Again: Not to belittle the struggle; yes to recognize reality.

Drawing: Gabi Kave-Tcherikover

The Catch is the death-eating regime and its enablers, which aren't going anywhere. The path to blue-and-white fascism is straight and paved under the auspices of two years of a war of annihilation, and that train has left the station and is barreling forward confidently with all its beloved drivers and passengers, from Mordechai David to David Zini. And in general, all the talk about "Will there be elections?" and "Will they be free?" blurs the more dangerous question: "Can Netanyahu win only in unfree elections?"

The Catch is that the answer is no. He can just win, because he's good at it and because, as usual, there's not a clear enough ideological alternative facing him. There's no better proof for this grim truth than the momentary renewed vitality of the word "peace", which suddenly burst into the Israeli mainstream discourse. Not due to any peace aspirations of the Israeli public or its leaders, but straight from the peak of the fascist far-right in the US, and into the satisfied and cynical bear hug of the fleeing war criminal from Balfour. Just like with integrating Ra'am into the coalition, the entire Jewish political system waited for Netanyahu's approval to say "peace”, and it's paying and will pay the price.

And no, Yair Golan, "civil separation with increased Israeli security responsibility" is not "peace”. I have no idea who’s the communications advisor that engineered this terminological terror attack for you, and why anyone here thinks it can be sold, but please fire him.

(On the illusion in the word "peace" itself when talking about a struggle whose goal is "justice", another time).

The Catch is in the West Bank, which has been and remains the ball that the Israeli public continuously refuses to set its eyes on; but the eyes of the Jewish jihad in the government and beyond haven't moved from it for a moment; that is tumbling in free fall from one deliberate escalation kick to a spontaneous escalation kick, until the explosion. Maybe that explosion will be "the next October 7," maybe not, but we can know for sure that a response in the style of Gaza's annihilation is already loaded and just waiting for an excuse for the trigger to be pulled.

The Catch is in Syria, with the most deranged, absurd, and unspoken occupation of territory in Israel's history. I don't know what al-Sharaa's opinion is or where he's heading with his relations with Israel, but I know where Israel is heading. The Catch is in Lebanon, where Israel has seized the south of the country and is bombing every attempt to rebuild the destroyed villages. The Catch is in Iran. I have no idea what the Catch in Iran is, but I'm sure Netanyahu is already working on it. The initiated escalation in any one of these four fronts, or all of them together, will come.

And of course, the Catch is in Gaza. And of course, those trapped in it above all are the Gazans. The Strip's future is shrouded in fog, and its hellish present isn't going anywhere. The dry details are known to all regarding the deaths, injuries, destruction of buildings and infrastructure, dismantling of society, hunger, diseases, and a whole host of apocalyptic plagues. Hamas's renewed entrenchment as a sovereign is also grim news.

It's important to remember just this: Israel will do everything in its power to solidify this as a new status quo, in the best case scenario, and to return to active annihilation in the worst case. We'll see a lot of efforts to prevent the entry of international forces (or to prevent their establishment in the first place), to disrupt and suffocate the entry of supplies and the creation of conditions for reconstruction, and above all, to delay and avoid withdrawing from even a millimeter of territory as much as possible.

We'll see the killing of armed men and civilians under a variety of pretexts ("activity observed," "suspicious movement," "preventing buildup," pick your poison), the arming of militias and clans, random disruptions in humanitarian aid as collective punishment for this or that foolishness, manipulations with lists of released prisoners, and so on.

Gaza's Holocaust is here to stay. As of this moment, Israel is successfully evading responsibility for its crimes, but their echoes will return and strike us from a variety of unexpected directions in the coming years, and even more so in the coming decades. The world has changed as a result of this war.

This is the Catch. This is the "what now."

And the "now"? As mentioned, better than yesterday. The darkest chapter in this place's history has ended.

Inside my head, the annoying leftist voice adds that this is the darkest chapter – so far. I tell it to shut up.

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Tom Zandman is a Jaffa-based activist, a campaigner with the "MeHazkim" organization, and one of the founders of the Democrats' Peace Headquarters.