A reader writes an impassioned condemnation to my statement, to which I’ll reply in parts. First, a technicality:
It seems your friend Haviva, however, leans in that direction. Reading his words …
According to the author biography, the author is female. Here’s her Wikipedia page for more information.
… most significantly, it does not matter whether some Palestinians or some Gazans in the form of Hamas or any other organized group or as individuals have committed some sort of crime, say, terrorism. Between October 7 and this past week, Israel has destroyed 70% of every structure in the entirety of the Gaza strip — a home to over 2 million people. Most of the officially dead are women and children. The number of “missing” people vastly outnumbers the official dead count.
Which leads back to an old philosophical conundrum of mine: when your moral/philosophical system leads to unintentional suicide, i.e., when following your moral dictates, which should guide and even govern your self-defense activities, leads to the destruction of your society, then what is the worth of your moral system?
It’s not hard to see that the actions of Hamas are intentionally genocidal, from their chants, echoed by American students, to their rocket attacks, the despicable October 7th incident, and the use of the civilian population of Gaza as a shield.
That last, used efficiently, is part of what leads to my conundrum. Terrorists who survive their terrorism are, in general, recidivists; enough recidivism and one has, in reality, a victorious army that has pushed the Israelis into the sea. If Israel’s moral dictates, either internally derived or imposed externally, endanger Israel’s population, then why should they be retained?
Do you for one second believe that 70% of those 2 million people deserve to die? Do you for one second believe that most of the “officially” dead of 33,000+ who were women and children deserved to die? Does the 75 years of non-stop harassment and killing of Palestinians by Zionists, starting with exiling over 700,000 of them and confiscating their property have no bearing on the situation? Do the egregious statements by some of those members of the Netanyahu cabal and members of the IDF wherein they literally state their intention to wipe out all Palestinians and/or all of Gaza have no meaning?
I am not omniscient, but I will note Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, and undoubtedly many other organizations have issued similar statements concerning Israel, and I have no doubts that, much like Israel hard-liners, they are working on activities designed to expel the Israelis and destroy Israel.
Insofar as the movement of Jewish Israelis to Israel since the end of World War II goes, I’m once again puzzled as to what was to be done. Irrationally hated by many Europeans and Soviets, they were returned by the substantial assistance, as I understand it, of the Western powers. And I’ve seen claims, 30+ years ago, that they displaced nobody, that it was all empty, which seems unlikely in retrospect. Surely it was occupied, and surely that was unjust? Except then we get into historical claims, but as you say below, all the history matters not.
No, the truth is, the power structure in Israel — not all Israelis, not all Jews — but those in control and directing the continued attacks — are literally engaged in crimes against humanity, engaged in attempted genocide of Gazans.
And for that, there can be no excuse. There is no excuse. They are in the wrong. There need be no further discussion on who did what to whom in history to do the right thing right now.
And, for me, resolution of conflict always requires understanding, if not validation or acceptance, of the motivations of the participants. For example, using the reasoning in the previous section, the actions of Hamas in using the civilian population as a shield leaves Israel with two options: Ignore such gross crimes against humanity as the October 7th kidnapping, or ignore the human shield.
And, yes, the actions of Prime Minister Netanyahu are so questionable that he’s been indicted – but terrorist actions took place back when Likud’s political adversary, the Labor Party, was strong enough to be in control of the government. This serves to suggest that Hamas, its progenitors, and its context are not primarily reactions to Israeli actions, but to Israel’s existence.
And that leads back to the above conundrum. The Western moral tenet concerning genocide, as important and admirable a recognition as it may be, can be seen leading to Israel ceasing to exist; or, worse, to the elimination of all non-Israelis in Gaza, as adherence to moral tenets that lead to self-destruction rarely survives with those threatened by that destruction. And if Gaza is threatened with complete destruction, will we see Jordan or Iran or Saudi Arabia step in?
Haviva Ner-David’s “both sides are culpable” is unhelpful in this context.
I could not disagree more.
The friend who pointed me at Ner-David’s article writes:
SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] explicitly supports Hamas. So eff them. And it seems to me that the right thing to do is to release the hostages and agree to a cease fire. YMMV.
History did not start in 1948. Israel isn’t going anywhere. The idea that the international border can be erased and the Jews expelled is both ludicrous and criminal.
The Palestinians aren’t going anywhere either. They cannot be expelled, wished away, or all killed.
Given that, there needs to be a legal and political solution. Which there could be. But Hamas et al need to get over the idea they can disappear Israel, Iran needs to stop funding them, Qatar needs to stop protecting them, and Netanyahu AND THE DAMN AMERICAN CHRISTIANS WHO PROP HIM UP need to get back inside the borders and stop making things worse. And of course, a lot of people need to stop using words they don’t understand. Like genocide.
I don’t know if a political solution would work or not, there are too many folks running around thinking their actions are blessed by a bloodthirsty Divine.
But I’ve thought for decades that Americans are a bunch of bloody drama queens, from Manifest Destiny ideologies to the End Times cults that have flourished throughout our history, despite their manifest failure. Only recently, though, have I thought to attach the adjective arrogant to them. Our overwhelming need to be certain and right in an uncertain world echos throughout our culture, most certainly in our poor communications skills. My Hah hah is painfully ironic, I assure my reader. While there is value in the debate in which two sides put forth clashing ideas with great certitude, I fear most of us, now given the platform of the Web, do not understand that we should separate our self-worth and emotional well-being from the acceptance of those ideas.
And that leads off to anthropological landscapes of social prestige and power structures unrelated to the subject of this post, and so I shall omit them.
Incidentally, while researching my responses, I ran across this NBC News report from last month:
Support for Hamas as a political party has fallen to 34% among Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, a 12-point drop from December 2023, according to a poll released Wednesday by a leading Palestinian research institute.
While the war is eroding Palestinians’ view of Hamas as the governing body in Gaza, relative support remains high for the militant group’s role in the war. Seventy percent of Palestinians said they were “satisfied” with Hamas’ war performance, as compared to that of other Palestinian entities, like its political rival Fatah, whose deeply unpopular leader, Mahmoud Abbas, governs the West Bank. Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the war with Israel, which has so far killed more than 31,000 people in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health ministry. …
Support for “armed struggle” dropped by 17 points, from 63% to 46%, driven largely by Palestinians in Gaza, and Gazan support for a diplomatic two-state solution has jumped by 27 points — to 62%.
It’s interesting, but I’m not certain how to approach it, given the volatility of the numbers.
