If I don’t clickbait the title people don’t click.
With the recent events happening in Gaza, I decided to first tackle this line of argument in my essay Zionism is antisemitism, and Palestine.
People were quick to say “yes Israel is bad, but Hamas…” (kidnapped 200 people, killed 1000, take your pick).
When you’re saying this, you’re actually saying that one israeli is worth 7 Palestinians. Read that again if you need to; it’s an ethnosupremacist position.
What is the logical conclusion of this argument? What is it supposed to achieve except convey empty platitudes and declaring to the world that you just don’t care enough to have any valuable input?
It’s fine not to care. I’m not your dad, I’m not going to try and change you.
But don’t declare it publicly. Don’t proudly say “well actually both sides are bad”. You don’t look smarter or wiser than anyone else who is taking a clear stance. You’re not taking the “middle ground”. Everyone who has taken sides and is trying to be productive about this (and not just the Gaza genocide, but really any situation where you can apply “both sides”) really doesn’t have time for this holier-than-thou bullshit.
Gaza “kidnapped” 200 settlers and that’s a war crime apparently. It’s not really, but whatever. Let’s say it is. Israel has killed 7000+ Palestinians in retaliation, now likely more than 10k as they cut off communications in Gaza last night.
Both sidesers: what’s your solution to this. If you say anything other than “I should not get involved” then you don’t actually believe both sides are bad and you are picking a side. It’s time you realize where you stand.
Thanks for writing out your thinking on this explicitly, and for inviting discussion in that way.
Public support in Israel for Israeli military operations is typically very high (70% or more, often even above 80%). The only sense in which those supporting massively disproportionate violence and indiscriminate killing of civilians are a minority is in terms of rhetorical style— not the substance of supporting the actual operations that kill people.
Moreover, many of the Israelis on TV ‘frothing at the mouth’ are current or former government officials. To characterize them as a ‘tiny minority’ is extremely misleading about their role in effecting this violence.
I’d question the nature of that support. I’m sure nearly every Israeli wants the military to step up their game in protecting them, however support for the recent bombings and ground assaults is significantly lower.
Absolutely, I rewrote that last statement a couple of times trying to find a good middle ground, but there are many in Israeli leadership roles behaving that way. It’s hard to say whether they genuinely feel that way themselves or if they’re just encouraging it for their own benefit - Netanyahu is probably the latter, in my opinion, but there have definitely been a few on TV that have clearly drunk the kool aid.
I still think that, over the entire population of Israel, people who think that way are in the minority. Most people in any nation just want peace and prosperity for themselves, rather than the destruction of others to expand political borders.
Well, a large supermajority of Israelis support continuing the current campaign, which is inarguably characterized by indiscriminate carpet bombing of Gaza, ‘until Hamas is completely eliminated’. This is a clear statement of support not just for the bombing which has so far taken place, but a claim that it must continue (indefinitely— until reaching a goal that is arguably impossible).
Are you familiar with the concept of strategic depth? Given Israel’s limited size and accessible terrain, its geography profoundly lacks this feature. This means Israel’s defensive capabilities have a virtual ceiling, and the ability to make strategic retreats against an invasion is very limited.
For this reason, Israel has a long history of preferring offensive action over defensive action. And indeed, a large plurality of those polled by IVP, as reported on in the article cited above, have come out and said that Israel’s biggest mistake leading up to October 7 was failing to carry out more offensive operations in Gaza prior to the attack.
Calls for Israel to ‘step up its military game’ are intimately tied to offensive action in Israel, and the pretense that they could conceivably relate only to defensive measures for ‘protection’ or ‘safety’ is unsustainable under any historical scrutiny.
Why such interest in the rhetoric when there is a growing pile of civilian corpses behind it? Who cares what is in Netanyahu’s heart when the evident fact is that his finger is pulling the trigger?
The demand for peace without justice is a demand to normalize violence. Are you familiar with the concept of ‘normalization’ in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, or in the BDS movement? If you aren’t, regardless of the outcome of this discussion, I urge you to take the time to review and at least consider this recent lecture on the concept. Peace is indeed vital for all human beings, but how peace is demanded is equally vital.
And yet Israel, a country in which conscription is mandatory for both sexes, military training typically begins at age 14, a large supermajority of the population serves in the military, and whose military and intelligence agencies are rooted in paramilitaries that antedate the formal state by decades, has been engaged continuously in exactly such a project of forceful expulsion for more than a hundred years, without pause.
If this history is unfamiliar to you, or Palestinian displacement has been presented to you primarily as very recent or unintentional, you may find some deeper engagement with the topic enlightening, if challenging (and you may not agree with all the analysis you read, of course).
There are a large number of books, including books by Jewish Israeli scholars, currently available for free on this topic.
If you’re interested in diving deeper, outside the context of this argument, please let me know. If you have preferences for audiobooks, videos, or other formats, I can help you find something that works for you.
I’m also willing to do a ‘reading exchange’ with you if you’re open to that— I’ll read one related book of your choosing if, after you give me a sense of what texts most interest you, you agree to read one book I recommend, and we can discuss both books together.
I understand that the latter is a big time commitment, so no big deal if you can’t do it.
I think the source of this is Israeli government polling figures, which are even less trustworthy right now.
It’s worthwhile to understand the motive behind pulling the trigger. I don’t think Netanyahu is striking Gaza out of vengeance for 7 October, I think he wanted something like that to happen to give him the excuse to unleash war. We can still only speculate on his true motives, but I believe understanding them is key to stopping it and preventing it in future.
You have made many good points, though, in particular framing things closer to how those living in the region see them, and I thank you for the extra reading/listening material. Suffice it to say, it is a deeply rooted issue with a complicated history, it’s hard to cover every facet of it all. I appreciate the offer for sharing more things to read, but for now I’ll stick with the links you and @Shinhoshi@lemmygrad.ml provided (still haven’t got all the way through that Hamas statement, but I’m hanging on to the tab).
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
A bit optimistic. Do you think they would dismantle their own state over a desire for peace? This existence of the Israeli state is violence, it’s the opposite of peace. If people support that violence, they do not support peace. And if they are settling on Palestinian land, that is an act of war. The arbitrary desires of random people are superfluous.
Various cowardly historians have tirelessly tried to frame other genocides in a similar way, always seeking to excuse the atrocities because the historical figures involved, and the population at large didn’t always express intense desire to commit genocide. But it is superfluous, it’s a red herring, because they routinely hired people with a history of atrocity and reaped the benifits as if they expected them.