Maintaining moral perspective on Israel and Palestine
Tensions between Israel and Palestine have erupted anew, reaching perhaps their most dangerous escalation yet. Things kicked off when Hamas, the leading political authority in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, slaughtered some 260 people at a music festival in Israel. Since then, all the world’s eyes have been on the region as reports of war crimes and atrocities on both sides — some exaggerated or made up, but far too many true — filter out daily. Political leaders, pundits, and ordinary people have responded to the horror with vengeful, even genocidal rhetoric.
Discussing the situation is difficult. Emotions are high, and the sheer scale of violence makes level-headedness feel almost inappropriate. Disinformation and propaganda make it hard to know the truth even for those who seek it out and there are numerous misunderstandings about the region’s politics and history in general. Add organized religion to the mix and all the bigotries, atrocities, and accusations that entails, and it’s not hard to imagine things quickly going off the rails.
Still, it’s more important now than ever to not get carried away — though the powers that be are already well on their way to doing horrific, irreversible, history-staining crimes.
Responding to terrorism with war crimes
Many have referred to the massacre as Israel’s 9/11. The analogy is apt not just for the horror of the act itself but for the reaction its leaders have had. Both Israel and the US were allegedly warned about the attack in advance. In both cases, leaders refused to acknowledge how any of their own wrongdoings may have incited terror, and in both cases they seized the opportunity escalate their own violence in brutal revenge.
No doubt, the Hamas-led massacre was heinous. Nova music festival attendees did nothing to deserve being butchered. The Palestinian people have real grievances with the State of Israel, but those innocent people were not responsible for generations of abuse.
By the same token, the 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza were not responsible for Hamas’s actions. Despite that, retaliation against the entirety of Gaza has been swift and gigantic. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant used violent, dehumanizing language when he ordered, “… a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” Gallant’s siege has been condemned as a war crime, hundreds of Gazans are being killed by Israeli bombing daily, and a ground invasion is underway.
To be outraged by the violence in only one direction is simply morally inconsistent. We must never allow ourselves to think responding to terrorism with war crimes is justifiable — yet, far too often, we do. We afford grace to leaders like Gallant and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just as we did for George Bush after 9/11. “Proper” leaders wage war honorably with bombs. Shooting civilians in a murderous rampage is rightly viewed as savage terrorism. Killing them with bombs while they’re asleep at home is somehow dignified, civilized — or, at worst, unfortunate but necessary collateral damage.
A brief history of Israel/Palestine
Disturbingly, this contempt and inhumanity is how Israel has treated Palestinians all along. The Palestinian people, in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, have suffered for generations under one of the most brutally oppressive apartheid regimes the planet has ever seen.
The history of the region, of course, goes back millennia. Jews were persecuted throughout Europe for centuries, with “the Jewish question” being debated in the 1700s in Britain and early Zionists like Theodor Herzl arguing for the creation of a Jewish state as early as 1896. Following the atrocities of World War II, large numbers of displaced Jews and holocaust survivors were looking for a place to call home. Governments including the U.S. and U.S.S.R. struck up a deal to carve up Palestine — then under British control — into Arab and Jewish sections, displacing some 700,000 Palestinians and giving birth to the State of Israel in 1948.
From the beginning, the region was fraught with turmoil, and even times of peace were uneasy with resentments always simmering. Wars broke out with neighbors like Egypt and Jordan while territorial control waxed and waned. Overall, however, Israel grew considerably, eventually dwindling Palestine down to only two occupied territories: Gaza, now a small, 25-mile-long strip bordering the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt, and the West Bank, now a fragmented cluster of Palestinian villages.
In the 1970s, Israel also became a close military ally of the US. Adjusted for inflation, the American government has given Israel some $260 billion in aid, the vast majority of it military. Israel is the largest annual recipient of US military aid, and the package grows with almost every presidency. In addition, the US looks the other way on Israel’s myriad human rights violations and shields it from international scrutiny, vetoing some 53 United Nations resolutions over the years that condemned Israel for its illegal settlements, repression of dissent, and treatment of Palestinians.
Today, Israel exists as something of a fascist ethnostate. It demolishes Palestinian homes and villages, sometimes using as justification laws that allegedly only apply to Arabs. Netanyahu’s government suppresses dissent and labels dissenters “terrorists.” Gazans live in what’s described as an “open-air prison,” with their mobility severely restricted by both Israel and Egypt. Israel denies Palestinians citizenship and deprives them of basic economic and social rights. Even prior to this outbreak of war, Israeli forces had killed some 10,000 Palestinians over the last 20 years, including more than 2,000 children, according to the Jerusalem-based nonprofit B’Tselem.
The terrifying place we now find ourselves: Calls for ethnic cleansing
To place Hamas’s rampage, and the ensuing violence and hostage-taking, in this historical context is not to excuse or justify it. However, the context is necessary to understand why it happened. The kind of violence and abuse the Palestinians have been subjected to for generations radicalizes people and makes citizens of the offending country, and the entire world, less safe.
After the Nova festival attack, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz: “Behind all this lies Israeli arrogance; the idea that we can do whatever we like, that we’ll never pay the price and be punished for it… it’s impossible to imprison 2 million people forever without paying a cruel price… Israel hasn’t stopped punishing Gaza since 1948, not for a moment… We haven’t learned a thing.”
Not only have we not learned a thing, Netanyahu’s government — with the support of President Biden and the US government — appears ready to commit full-on genocide in Gaza.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog blamed all Gazans for the Hamas massacre, saying, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible… It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved… They could have fought against that evil regime.” By the same logic, every US citizen bears responsibility for US crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere. Every Israeli is responsible for the displacement and subjugation of Palestinians.
Netanyahu ordered the evacuation of some 1.1 million Gazans, nearly half the strip’s population, despite them having nowhere to go and being given only 24 hours’ notice. Then, Israel bombed the evacuation route, killing as many as 70 people, including women and children. A full-scale invasion of Gaza is imminent, and virtually everyone there has been declared an enemy terrorist. Already, more than 2,200 Gazans have been killed, including 700 children, and the number grows by the hundreds every day. Meanwhile Hamas has killed some 1300 Israelis and taken another 150 hostages. Some hostages have reportedly been killed by Israeli bombs. What’s happening in Gaza is heartbreaking and horrifying — and as Netanyahu has already threatened, “this is only the beginning.”
Defenders of Israeli policy often claim the nation, as the only Western ally and Jewish state in the Middle East, is beset on all sides by enemies. There may be some truth to that. But to truly understand the power differential between Israel and Palestine, simply look at what’s happening: a complete siege, shutting off power, ordering over a million people to evacuate. Hamas doesn’t have the power to do that to Israel. Only Israel has the power to do it to Gaza.
All this context is lost in mainstream American media and political discussions. President Biden flippantly says, “Israel has a right to defend itself” — as if every action it takes, every bomb it drops, apartment it levels, child it maims, and human being it terrorizes is purely self-defense. On top of that, warmongers in Washington are now calling for war with Iran over its support of Hamas, which could spark World War III.
Squeezing out every last hope for justice
Solving the problems in Israel and the Middle East, ending war, and allowing for the dignity, peace and security of everyone — these are all lofty goals that feel depressingly unachievable in moments like this. The need of the greedy and the powerful to expand their territory and subjugate others with as much violence as it takes feels insurmountable.
But even in these ugliest and darkest moments, there are things we can do. We can choose to see the humanity in one another. We can seek out voices on the ground like Plestia Alaqad, who is reporting from besieged Gaza despite a lack of energy and internet. We can refuse to be bullied by warmongers and dehumanizers into cosigning their genocidal worldview. We can protest, educate ourselves and each other, put the squeeze of public pressure on leaders, and if necessary or able, put our bodies on the line.
We must break free of the American corporate, political, and media narrative that says nations can retaliate to terrorism with any murderous war crime they want. We must stop tolerating or justifying abuses of the powerful against the weak.
Terrorism isn’t about justice. It’s a violent means to a political end. Hamas’s crime was heinous, but the correct response is not even larger-scale atrocities. Governments can undertake police actions to find those responsible. They can inspire, support, and encourage the people of Gaza to overthrow Hamas. Best of all, Israel could lift their boot from Palestinians’ necks, begin treating them like human beings, and alleviate the desperate situation that foments extremism in the first place.
Whether it’s Hamas with machineguns or Netanyahu with F-15s, mass-scale murder should always repulse us and animate our passion for justice. What Netanyahu and the Israeli government is leading us toward — with the salivating support of American politicians, media, and the military-industrial complex — butts right up to genocide. No one with any morality can be comfortable watching it, but we must be brave enough to not look away.
