Israel Renews Gaza Attack in Collapse of Cease-Fire

400 Reported Dead, Including Children — Netanyahu Cites Hostage Impasse

Author

Matt Davis
March 19, 2025

For those of you who are new here, I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”

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Because I totally wouldn’t do that in your situation but hey. Some people are a lot nicer than I am! Like you, maybe? No? Okay, cool! No worries! Forget I mentioned it!

This morning’s paper carries a photograph of Palestinians on Tuesday with a “victim” — who looks a lot like a dead child — of the Israeli airstrikes.

Oh, God. Today’s front page article is about Israeli forces launching deadly aerial attacks across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, ending a temporary cease-fire with Hamas that began in January, and “raising the prospect of a return to all-out war.”

I have friends on both sides of this conflict. My good friend and also, client/boss/client/boss hybrid, Jewish-Albeit-Secular-And-Atheist Matt (we club together, the Matts, even the ones of different religions and ethnicities and faiths) recently wrote an incredible piece about the situation that about covers my position and also, defends me a bit from having to “pick a side,” here. I’m going to lift it wholesale from his excellent newsletter and then recommend that you go over there and subscribe to it, so that I don’t have to do the heavy lifting. I’ll be doing that momentarily, don’t worry, when it comes to telling you about a lot of dead kids. First, here’s Matt:

First, let me address the most important issue, the one you’ve been dying to ask me ever since Trying! launched in November: Matt, where do you stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? 

I’m glad you asked!

It depends. On you.

Are you pro-Israel? Then I will gladly lecture you on the decades of injustices and outright violence that Israel has inflicted on Palestinians, all the way up to October 7 and then afterwards, with actions that amount to war crimes. How can you expect a people to suffer at your hands for years and then not fight back with everything they have?

Wait, are you pro-Palestinian? Then I will acknowledge Israel’s awfulness over the past decades but then argue that the country must continue to exist—that if we are going to use ancient blood ties and irrational religious beliefs to justify land claims, then the Israelis, all 9.3 million of them, get to stay put .

Oh, you’re a Jewish student on campus and feel threatened by the protests or by a professor’s rhetoric? Grow up. You’re Jewish—you’re never going to be safe. Everyone hates us. Get used to it.

Sorry, you’re a pro-Palestinian protestor? You need to watch your language, and make it very clear, all the damn time, that you’re attacking Israeli policies and actions, and not just out to get rid of Jews. Cuz honestly, I see a lot of sloppiness on that front.

“More than 400 people, including children, were killed in the strikes, Gaza’s health ministry said. Those numbers did not distinguish between civilians and combatants — but the relentless Israeli bombardment produced one of the war’s deadliest single-day tolls.”

When it comes to side-picking, it turns out I am confidently 100% against killing children as a negotiation tactic in a supposed peace process. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blames the strikes on Hamas’s failure to release the remaining captives seized in the Oct. 7, 2023 assault on Israel, and the bodies of the hostages who have died. Of the 59 remaining in Gaza, fewer than half are believed to be alive.

But: Netanyahu is gambling here on dwindling political support in Israel. Families of the hostages are outraged, and so are former hostages themselves:

In Israel, relatives of the hostages said the renewed Israeli attacks had heightened their fears that the remaining captives might never return alive. They accused Mr. Netanyahu and his government of abandoning the hostages, and some gathered in rallies demanding an immediate deal with Hamas to secure their freedom.

“Military action endangers hostages’ lives and directly harms them,” Alexander Troufanov, a hostage freed during the recent truce, told a crowd in Tel Aviv. “But this morning, I was horrified to find that decision makers choose not to listen.”

The hostages in Gaza “are going through hell because of the decision to return to fighting,” he added.

So, why do it? Well, the White House said Israel had “consulted with” Donald Trump’s administration before launching the attacks, which means there is also blood on our hands here in America.

I’m telling myself “that’s a strong string of words, there, you just wrote, Matt, isn’t it? Maybe you should calm those down a bit?” And ordinarily I would. But I’m not going to.

Fortunately I’m a U.S. Citizen and can’t be arrested for writing them. One wonders, in an increasingly totalitarian state, whether one’s speech might be scrutinized for such phrases and whether one might end up on a list of some kind for writing them. Honestly. Which says a lot about the importance and value of our reading the newspaper here together, and committing to upholding facts and news literacy in American democracy. Don’t you think? No matter how paranoid (and I don’t think it’s terribly paranoid).

Right-wing hawks in Washington are quoted in the article saying Hamas “chose” the airstrikes by refusing to release the remaining hostages. The problem, of course, is that civilians are dying. Kids. Many Gazan civilians had returned to their homes during the cease-fire and suffered horrifically as a result:

Images from the territory showed people using flashlights to search through the rubble of flattened buildings, bodies lined up in bags and distraught families fleeing with their belongings packed on trucks.

It’s the kids dying that gets me, every single time. I think about our kid. It’s hard for me to even write that sentence. Here’s another. When I look at these little wrapped-up dead kids in sheets in the image below, I start shaking with rage. That’s usually when I get a strong impulse to go to the pub and have a drink, if I’m honest. Because I am an alcoholic and I find that horrifically traumatic things like this are best stuffed down and numbed in order to continue.

F___.

Here’s a paragraph that will also rip your guts out.

UNICEF said that among those killed were 130 children, the largest single-day child death toll in the past year in Gaza. The airstrikes hit shelters where they were sleeping with their families, UNICEF said.

I would follow that up with a walk across the street and the phrase, “make mine a large one” if it weren’t for the fact that I’m of considerably more use to you and the world, sober. But I haven’t felt worse reading the newspaper in some time, certainly not in every edition of this since February 6. And we’ve seen some stuff together, haven’t we? Eh?

What is unfathomable to me about killing 130 children at this phase in the peace process is that there was a viable plan for peace unfolding.

Before the airstrikes began, Israel and Hamas had been “trying to reach an agreement on the second phase of the truce,” reports the story. During the second phase, “Israeli forces were to fully withdraw from Gaza and Hamas was to release the surviving hostages.”

The main reason for the resumption in bombardment, it seems, is politics, and for Mr. Netanyahu to maintain a narrow majority in the Israeli parliament thanks to the support of the far-right Jewish Power party, which rejoined him in the wake of the attacks.

“Critics of Mr. Netanyahu have argued that the prime minister has avoided a viable agreement with Hamas to end the war and free more hostages in order to preserve his political coalition, which includes far-right supporters of long-term Israeli rule in Gaza.”

Meanwhile, rather than peace, it appears Israel, supported by the Trump administration, has decided to pursue a parking lot strategy in Gaza. You’ll remember from early February that Trump told reporters he planned for the U.S. to “take over” Gaza, and we wondered if he was bluffing. It seems in fact he’d prefer to just see the territory and its children bombed into annihilation because he and his allies lacked a little patience at the negotiating table. Meanwhile you may be asking yourself:

The closing quote from Hamas hardly bodes positively for everyone taking a deep breath and calming down on both sides, either.

“War and destruction will not bring the enemy what they failed to get through negotiations,” Izzat al-Rishq, a Hamas official, said.

And here’s another image to really cheer you up.

There’s a thing called the “serenity prayer” that alcoholics like me sometimes say to calm ourselves down. I’ll leave you with it.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Not helping, really. I might try repeating it a few hundred times and get back to you.

Rather than avoid reading the newspaper, the intensity of emotion that sometimes comes with reading the newspaper is an important and necessary part of living in a free society. I appreciate you letting me read it so that you don’t have to. I’m also grateful for your company as I do, because it is definitely not easy sometimes.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and child.