There are really only two kinds of Mideast policymakers at this point: those who believe that Oct. 7 was just another day in the “cycle of violence” and those who understand the impact the attacks had on the people and governments not just in the region but in America and the West as well.
Those in the latter category are fit to make policy regarding America’s stance toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. Those in the former category, unfortunately, are often the ones in position to screw everything up without even trying, like the investor in an episode of Silicon Valley who deletes massive amounts of his team’s data by accidentally resting a bottle of tequila on the delete key of his laptop.
Which brings us to Josh Paul, a former Booz Allen Hamilton and State Department official whose career largely consisted of making sure everyone has powerful weapons. Except one group of people, of course. In October, Paul resigned as director of the office overseeing U.S. arms transfers because President Biden refused to end his support for Israel’s counteroffensive after Hamas invaded the Jewish state, murdered 1,200 people, and took hundreds more hostage.
The hero’s treatment he received was certainly odd; State Department officials who oppose Israel’s self-defense are a dime a dozen. But now that he has submitted testimony in support of those suing Biden for not stopping Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza, it’s easier to understand the cultish aspect of his beatification. You wouldn’t find it odd, for example, watching Scientologists applaud each other.
More important, however, is what Paul’s publicity tour has exposed about the dearth of wisdom in government agencies when it comes to Israel.
Paul’s “genocide” brief, as well as his belief that Israel’s supposed crimes are tantamount to the Rwandan and Sudanese genocides, are attention-getting—as they are clearly designed to be. But it can be more helpful to look at the statement Paul made when he was asked about the actual conflict over which he resigned.
In an interview with the Qatar-aligned site Middle East Eye, Paul said: “Before we talk about the seventh of October, I think it’s important to talk about the sixth of October.” What followed was a remarkable exercise in selective interpretation with the goal of minimizing the horrors of Oct. 7.
On Oct. 6, Paul said, settlers rioted in the flashpoint West Bank town of Huwara, and an IDF soldier shot and killed a Palestinian man hurling a cinderblock at an Israeli car. Paul incorrectly states that the settlers killed the man (there does not appear to be any record of a settler firing a weapon during the riot), but he is otherwise correct that the behavior of the settlers was atrocious.
It is an odd place to start the timeline, though. On Oct. 5, the day before, gunmen (later claimed as members by Hamas) shot at Israeli motorists near Tulkarm. IDF troops shot the Hamas terrorists, and five Israeli soldiers were wounded in pursuit. “Hamas and another armed faction, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said they had inflicted Israeli casualties in gun and bomb ambushes in a separate clash within Tulkarm,” Reuters reported. It now appears that Hamas was drawing attention away from Gaza as it was preparing to launch its unprecedented assault. That same day, a pregnant Israeli woman, her husband, and young child were shot at by Palestinians in Huwara but escaped unharmed.
There’s no reason to begin on Oct. 5, either. On Feb. 26, two Israelis were shot and killed in their car in Huwara. That night, a massive settler reprisal tore Huwara apart, killing one, injuring more than a hundred, and setting fire to dozens of homes and cars. That was followed by another murder of an Israeli the following day. Shootings at Israeli motorists in and around Huwara continued throughout the year. This is why there have been plans to build a bypass road in the area, a longer but safer detour around Huwara—which Josh Paul dismisses as “a highway around it for settlers.”
Paul also says that Oct. 6 was significant because that was the day the Washington Post reported that Israel was, in Paul’s framing, “cutting off the supply of donkeys to Gaza.” Paul apparently didn’t read beyond the headline, because the Post reported clearly what had actually happened: Israeli animal-rights activists had employed a strategy of buying up the donkey market to make the animals unaffordable for many Gazans because they believed Palestinians were mistreating the donkeys. They also pressured the Israeli government to slow the donkey-transfer process to ensure precautions were being taken. A lawyer with a “donkey rescue group” sniffed to the Post, “I’m sorry for the people in Gaza, but they can breed all the donkeys they need if they take care of the ones they have.”
After mangling the donkey story he didn’t read, Paul said that Oct. 7 “was an atrocity, was a lot of atrocity; Oct. 6 was an atrocity too.”
I think at this point everyone can applaud Paul for resigning in protest from the State Department. Whatever his reasons, it’s clear he should not be in a position of power regarding American foreign policy.
