From the Other Side…
The plight of the Palestinian people & those who have pitted themselves against them, stirs many deep emotions. Whatever your views, we all like to think we have ‘right’ on our side, but how we view the suffering of Gazans and feel about those who inflict this suffering is all a matter of personal perspective. The major stumbling block to building peace in such a tortured region is a total lack of empathy on all sides, & an unwillingness to try to understand the other’s fears and hopes.
‘The two boys must have been about 12, their faces betraying the onset of puberty. Along the Via Dolorosa, a shopping alley in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City Muslim Quarter, the teenagers encountered a woman wearing a headscarf — a young adult. They stopped and spat directly in her face. The woman bravely continued, moving against the relentless stream of teenagers. More insults followed. More spit. Hateful stares. Eventually, she chose to disappear down a side street.’
Luc Bronner, Le Monde, May 27, 2025.
Perspective is all
The events described above by Luc Bronner may, or may not seem perfectly normal or acceptable to you; much would depend on how you view Palestinians, and Muslims more widely, I would think.
But much may also hinge on how you view Israel today; what Israel, the state, means to you politically, perhaps even diplomatically, religiously even if you are Jewish, or a Christian Zionist; how you see its’ place in the Middle East, and the world more widely. And perhaps most pertinently of all, how you feel about its actions, both militarily and politically and morally in respect of history, as well as the current conflict.
If you are Jewish, living in Israel, then your view of such things is probably complicated further by the trauma of recent events; by also by historical memory, whether passed down, or lived and experienced first hand; by your relationship not only with, and to, Judaism, but with the secularisation, militarisation and politicisation of the State of Israel, which in turn may be heavily influenced by your thoughts and ideas on Zionism, what that means to you, to your Israel, and to your God.
If you are Jewish and living in exile (galut), or in the diaspora (golah), then you may see things differently again in light of recent events, your personal history, your politics, your take on Zionism, and your relationship with God.
Whatever your view, I would guess, it no doubt colours how you might see the current ‘troubles’ in Gaza and the OPT — I cannot call it a war, because that would be a total misrepresentation of what I think it is. Unarmed, defenceless women and children not only present absolutely no physical threat, they are just that; defenceless and unarmed. Whereas war is fought between the armed combatants of the various sides involved. What Israel is now doing, and has been doing almost since the beginning of the outbreak of hostilities, is waging war on the whole Palestinian population, committing for the most part, nothing less than cold-blooded, mass murder; in short, they are committing a genocide, a fact that even the most (disgracefully) loyal (and guilt-laden) of Israel’s backers are now finally acknowledging, with calls for sanctions (since I started to write this post the UK has actually sanctioned Israeli Ministers Ben-Gvir and Smotrich for inciting violence against Palestinians) and a reevaluation of Israeli funding growing almost by the day, especially from some its staunchest of backers in Europe.
Indeed, perhaps the most surprising and, for Israel at least, the most worrying turn is that of new German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who said that the current offensive was ‘no longer comprehensible,’ and ‘can no longer be justified as a fight against Hamas terrorism.’
Merz’s new Finance Minister, Lars Klingbeil, announced the new governing coalition (between Merz’s Christian Democrats — or CDU, & the Social Democrats — the SPD) intends to increase political pressure on Israel. “We must also make it clear among friends, given the historical responsibility we bear towards Israel, what is no longer acceptable,” Klingbeil said on May 26, adding that this point has been reached.
Of serious concern to Germany and many other Israeli supporters in Europe, would be the implementation of a long-term military occupation of the Strip, which would appear to be increasingly likely. Maya Sion-Tzidkiyahu, a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Mitvim’s director of the Israel-Europe relations program, said that, “should this scenario unfold, Germany would face serious political and legal challenges in justifying continued arms exports to Israel. In that case,” Sion-Tzidkiyahu continued, “the issue would move beyond rhetorical shifts and enter the realm of concrete policy change.”
But talk is, as they say, cheap! Until these calls are converted into meaningful action on the ground Palestinian children and other innocents will continue to be dismantled and dismembered, and Gaza will remain the world’s biggest human chop-shop, and this despite the fact that the world does have the power to end the slaughter and close this revolting human abattoir for good.
For the moment Palestinians are still not seen, not heard and as such, they are not existing in this world. As Palestinian author, Jennifer Zacharia confirms so poignantly:
‘On April 3, the day my cousin should have celebrated her fifty-fourth birthday, I woke to a video on social media of two human bodies catapulted into the sky above a dark plume of smoke created by the immense force of a U.S.-made missile launched by Israel. The bodies seem to hover in the air for a moment, high above the buildings, before they plummet back to the ground, landing in one of several areas destroyed that day by fire and shrapnel, including a school-turned-shelter where dozens of men, women, and children were killed. For the last twenty months, the Israeli military has dropped 2,000-pound bombs on displaced people taking shelter in homes, schools, hospitals and tents. The fact that novel and shocking modes of killing — and new images of the attendant horrors — are still possible speaks to the depths of Israel’s determination to inflict suffering and death upon the Palestinian people.’
Jennifer’s cousin is slain Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and she agrees with my assessment that to call this a war is a misrepresentation of the facts. It is not a war; it is a genocide with armed scuffles bulked up to give the impression of something much grander and more valid that justifies the genocide.
‘There is sufficient law to end the genocide,’ Noura Erakat pleaded to the UN on the 77th anniversary of the start of the Nakba, ‘to lift the blockade, to end the occupation, and to realize the self determination of the Palestinian people. Had international law ever been enough, Palestinian refugees would be growing their families and their gardens on their original lands rather than be searching for the remaining flesh of their babies beneath the rubble.’
Yes, there is sufficient law, but insufficient action, motivation, and courage to stand up to the United States, its’ lying, immoral and fascist-leaning President, and the fascist Israeli regime it supports.
‘This is not a legal controversy; it is a political one,’ Erakat continued. ‘The United States, among other states, has wrung its hands behind judicial rulings. But this is selective deference to the court.’ As illustrated by the U.S.’s morally bereft, yet shamefully, political stance at actively undermining international law by sanctioning the courts’ justices.
‘In its last days of office, the Biden administration recognized there is a genocide of the Masalit ethnic tribe in Darfur by the Rapid Support Forces. When asked whether they could use the same standards to make that decision to adjudicate Israel’s campaign in Gaza, the US Ambassador at Large for Global Criminal Justice said “it will ultimately be for (ICJ) judges to decide” — with zero irony that they did not have to submit their evidence on Sudan before the ICJ.’
And why is U.S. unable to recognise its own hypocritical duplicity?
Simply because to acknowledge the genocide is to implicate itself in the charge of genocide. There is no opportunity to ‘plead the fifth’ here! The U.S., and the largest part of the Western, post-colonial powers are woefully complicit in this ongoing genocide. There is no escaping it. The law is clear. The facts are undeniable. And yet they remain denied. There is no escaping it then other than by denying the truth, denying the facts, and shouldering the huge weight of guilt by association with the primary protagonist, and in so doing, to continue to push the weight of Western guilt onto the bony, slender shoulders of the starving Palestinians.
And even though, by now this should be unnecessary, I need to say again; this denunciation is not, for one second, to condone the actions of Hamas on October 7, but rather to try and understand them in relation to the history and context in which the attack occurred, both of which have been largely curtailed, distorted or rendered entirely absent in any Israeli or Western narratives that have attempted to explain the events of that day and the bloody aftermath that has followed (see my last two posts here and here for more).
As Jewish, Israeli peace activist, Haggai Mattar, made clear; for both Jews and non-Jews alike, ‘supporting Palestinians’ right to resist their oppression, including through armed struggle, is not the same as justifying the horrors of October 7. In fact, it is the opposite: the right to resist occupation is enshrined in international law, and it is those same legal principles that forbid the targeting of civilians.’
Denouncing Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, is not the same as denying Israel’s right to exist; it is okay, though not always easy, to be both be both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian at the same time; the complexities, manifold complications and issues of holding such views aside for just a moment. Neither view necessarily equates to antisemitism, and the conflation of ones views with such an outlandishly provocative accusation helps no one at all, least of all those engaged in the identification of those who are actually antisemitic.
And the world and its mother seem intent on pushing people down one tube or another in respect of this dreadful dilemma; you are either one thing or another. The facts and their relation to international law it seems are no longer relevant to the discussion at hand; all nuance has been drowned out by a tsunami of differing political messages, magnified and sensationalised by much of the media, that can only ever see things in black and white, as pro- or against, as friend or as enemy, a largely authoritarian turn following the dictum of Carl Schmitt, that I discussed in my last post.
Ammiel Alcalay, writing in MEEye a couple of weeks back told us how Western media narratives always fall flat where Gaza is concerned. ‘Terms like “settler-colonialism”, “apartheid”, “ethnic cleansing” and even “genocide” all seem woefully inadequate to convey the litany of unprecedented cruelties that Israel, as the tip of the US imperial spear, continues to carry out with impunity on a daily basis.’
‘If we don’t even have adequate terms to describe the reality in Gaza,’ Alcalay laments, ‘how can we hope to engage in any meaningful struggle for change — particularly in the US, with its mind-numbing media saturation and immoveable political duopoly?’
But facts do not change sides or hold political views. They are not nuanced or racist or even neutral. They just are. And as such, they are undeniable, even as they become denied. As much Trump and many others would push the validity of so-called ‘alternative facts,’ this is just a smokescreen designed to disguise lies and non-facts as something more than they actually are.
Indeed, so blatantly obvious is Israel’s descent into a ‘litany of unprecedented cruelties’ following Hamas’ brutal attack that even former Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert has said, ‘enough is enough.’
He wrote in a piece in Haaretz on 27th May, that, ‘the government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success. Never since its establishment has the State of Israel waged such a war. The criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history in this area, too.’
Hear, hear!
‘The purpose of this (Israeli military) campaign is the destruction of the Palestinian people for the sake of achieving long-term Israeli security,’ said Noura Erakat to a packed UN, ‘what I call “Nakba Peace,” a violent oxymoron that predicates Jewish-Israeli safety on the elimination of Palestinians. In pursuit of its territorial ambitions to achieve unchecked Zionist settler sovereignty, Israel has removed Palestinians for 77 years and counting; it has imposed a permanent military occupation on the West Bank and Gaza for 58 years and counting; and it has besieged 2.3 million Palestinians for 17 years and counting. What we have been witnessing for the past 585 days is the cruellest and most violent episode of the ongoing Nakba.’
These are facts. And they are undeniable.
Damningly, Olmert continued, saying that, ‘recent operations in Gaza have nothing to do with legitimate war goals. The government sends our soldiers — and the military obeys — to wander around Gaza City, Jabalya and Khan Yunis neighborhoods in an illegitimate military operation. This is now a private political war. Its immediate result is the transformation of Gaza into a humanitarian disaster area.’
That last point perhaps emphasised most recently in the chaos that erupted when the highly suspect, joint Israeli-U.S. venture, the, so-called ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF),’ lost control of the situation, opening fire on the starving residents on the first day of aid distribution and killing at least three Palestinians, as literally thousands of malnourished men, women and children tried to access much needed food and water after Israel’s wholly illegal, woefully immoral and totally heartless blockade of all aid for the last three months, was, at least in part, lifted.
Another 10 were shot and killed during the following week as they tried to access food, and then on Sunday June 1 at least 20 more were murdered, and 100 injured as troops opened fire, and on Monday 2 June, at least 27 more were killed as tanks and drones targeted the crowds. And this as independent investigations exposed Israeli lies and denials about these ‘flour massacres,’ one dreadful lie at a time. As Gideon Levy explained: ‘an investigation by Haaretz …determined, based on video footage, eyewitness testimony and changes to the army’s version of events, that the IDF is responsible for the shootings that killed dozens, as well as an investigation by CNN, refuted these lies, one by one. We are left, then, with blood, flour and lies. We cannot remain silent about them.’
And this, following yet another traumatic week when Israel defied and defiled international law once again, daring the world to stop them, by announcing 22 new settlement projects in what can only be seen as flagrant snub to the ICJ who declared the West Bank occupation illegal and demanded the, settlements be dismantled. A week when Israeli officials also refused entry to an Arab peace delegation to the West Bank in a move that Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, said was an act of Israeli ‘extremism,’ and an outright ‘rejection of peace.’
The workings of the criminally dubious GHF, founded in secret, but with the alleged aim of reducing the risk of Hamas getting their hands on the bulk of any distributed aid, were hammered out in a series of ‘private meetings of like-minded officials, military officers and business people with close ties to the Israeli government’ in late 2023. With unknown sources of funding, no experience whatsoever in aid distribution, and dubious aims, the positioning of the four aid stations inside Israeli military compounds in the south of the besieged enclave has led to the widespread notion that this enforced ‘humanitarian’ journey will only serve to facilitate the desired displacement and ethnic cleansing of the northern part of Gaza and further the aims of Israel and the U.S. in taking over the region.
In fact so clouded in mystery are in the inner workings of the organisation that the former head resigned a few days ago saying that the group would unable ‘to uphold the core humanitarian principles of “neutrality, impartiality and independence.”’ This may be, in large part, because ‘the project is an Israeli brainchild, first proposed by Israeli officials in the earliest weeks of the war, according to Israeli officials…’
This then gives credence to the idea that the sidelining of the UN and UNRWA, both of whom have been long-term and harsh critics of Israeli policy and apartheid in respect of Gaza and the West Bank, was part of the Israeli plan from the get go, and the subsequent measures of ‘distrust’ the Israelis peddled, including their discredited, and disproved accusations of widespread Hamas involvement in UNRWA and the events of October 7, had been fabricated premeditatedly to facilitate just this eventuality.
However, to be clear, ‘settler-colonialism,’ ‘apartheid,’ ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and yes, even ‘genocide,’ as Alacaly so eloquently put them, are nothing new in the Israeli mass imagination or the government’s toolkit.
Plans to annex and settle the Strip go back long before October 7; long before any of the unsubstantiated accusations were made against UNWRA. In fact, a cursory perusal of government archives going back to the 1960’s and 70’s show that the extremist ideas of Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and others, are nothing new at all.
‘The present aspiration of the far right to “encourage emigration” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip,’ Ofer Aderet explains, ‘only echoes ideas and proposals that came up for discussion in the past — by prime ministers, ministers and leaders in left-wing governments, who were among the country’s founding fathers.’
In fact, the minutes of cabinet meetings show that such discussions went right to the very top table of the Israeli political hierarchy. Aderet tells us that:
‘In 1971 Golda Meir also took an interest in the issue (of how to evict the Palestinians). “There’s a matter of thinning out the camps. There’s no argument about the principle,” she said. (Moshe) Dayan described how the residents would be evicted from their homes — some of them suspected of terror against Jews or local Arabs, and some owners of homes that have to be demolished for a different reason: “We give them 48 hours to leave. We tell them, for example, you’re moving to El Arish or to another place, we’ll drive you … first you give them an option of moving voluntarily. You remove the furniture from the house. If the person doesn’t come to arrange his affairs — we bring a bulldozer to demolish the house. If there are people in the house, we evict them from the house. Since we give him 48 hours …There’s no critical moment here when they come and say we’ll load you and your furniture on the truck, but you give him an opportunity to do so voluntarily.”’
Okay, so perhaps a somewhat softer approach was taken back then than we see in Gaza today, but the end result is, or would be, the same; Israel has always intended to illegally annex and settle the Gaza Strip just as they have done with the West Bank, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. Just as they seem to now be doing in parts of Syria and south Lebanon. And all under the umbrella of impunity provided by the imperialist U.S. empire and the post-colonial powers of Europe.
Eretz Yisrael it seems, knows no bounds. Now, the legalities aside for a moment, since we all know that the U.S. allows Israel complete freedom to do and behave as it wishes, surrendering any pretence, as they do, to liberal or universalist principles in favour of ‘might makes right’ and the Bully’s Creed; but what are the consequences for the worldwide Jewry, and in this I include Jews in Israel, and those in the diaspora, (or in exile, as you wish), but also for Israel itself, and for the religion of the Jews [whether one calls that the Jewish religion or Judaism is, for the sake of this discussion, neither here nor there — for more on this see Boyarin (1)]?
And perhaps most pertinently, and most poignantly for many Jews, what does all this utterly immoral, utterly wanton, death and destruction mean for the day of redemption, which, as foretold in the Torah, would see the whole congregation of Israel reassembling in the (undivided) land of Israel, in so doing freeing itself from the subjugation of other powers and becoming as a blessing for all nations, since the redemption of the people of Israel will mean the redemption of the all the peoples of the world, ‘for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah. 11:9).’
Thus, the messianic dream in ‘its pristine purity,’ has been cherished and held dear for a hundred generations or more. But where now does it fit given the grim daily reality in the Holy Land?
Because, at the end of the day…
‘Only a part of the Jewish people has gathered together into a Jewish state, and only in certain areas of the country. Only some of the returnees observe the precepts of the Torah. Political and military strife has not vanished from the land. Peace is elusive and morally compromised. Universal redemption seems even more remote than before. In short, the concrete fulfilment wrought by Zionism remains elusive and contingent, stopping well short of the absolute terms of the classical vision. As the rabbis said, the End of Days continues to ‘tarry’’ (2)
And so it is…
And even I was about to publish this, we see further proof of Israeli aggressive intent and desire to push its claims for legitimacy and so-called security, through military means. The widespread Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear, military and civilian sites that occurred on Friday, June 13, renders any attempt at empathy for Israeli fears and worries almost null and void. The Netanyahu regime is obsessed with war and the need to conquer and flex its military might, but to what end? I cannot but agree with Samer Jaber, that this overly aggressive misadventure will not end well for Israel. Such actions are risking the future of the Jewish people and the State of Israel itself, though I know that even as I, and many others, write these words, they will be scorned, ignored and trampled in favour of ‘might makes right.’
And it saddens me to write such things, that a people so wronged historically, can now themselves be the bringer of mass death, destruction, and war on an unprecedented, unwarranted scale in the Middle East.
‘The Holocaust started with words. Hateful words that were yelled in the park, spat on the street, and roared in the classroom. These words alienated, belittled, and shocked; but worse, these words gave birth to the horrific massacre of six million Jews.’
The opening words of Gideon Taylor, President of the Jewish Material Claims Conference and a Holocaust survivor made during a conference in NYC in April 2021 on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Politics, violence & Zionism
Hannah Arendt (3) said that a state only uses violence when it has lost its political power. Politics and violence remain, however, as two distinct forms of power relations and domination.
‘Violence is a form of power based on unilateral imposition by physical force and coercion,’ Lev Luis Grinberg, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, tells us (4). ‘Political power is based on symbolic recognition, consent and legitimacy. Usually domination combines elements of both forms of power: no unilateral rule can subsist only by coercion, and no legitimate regime is completely free of some level of coercion. However, when a regime has lost its legitimacy rulers tend to escalate violent coercion.’
This bears repeating, especially given who is speaking.
No unilateral rule can subsist only by coercion…only when a regime has lost its legitimacy does it escalate violent coercion.
In the very same essay Arendt also wrote that ‘the technical development of the implements of violence has now reached such the point where no political goal could conceivably correspond to their destructive potential or justify their actual use in armed conflict.’
Arendt makes plain she was referring to the potential for nuclear violence that has been steadily developed since the end of WWII and the onset of the Cold War. ‘Warfare,’ she wrote, ‘from time immemorial, the final merciless arbiter in international disputes, has lost much of its effectiveness and nearly all its glamour,’ an observation that is mirrored in Ran Baratz critical analysis of the Israeli military and the deterioration of its capability following the turn to a post-modern military; a turn that arguably arose out of the political necessity to recognise the fact of mutually assured destruction in the event of nuclear conflict.
But surely, the situation in Gaza, and if things continue, in the West Bank soon enough, are at a similar point where continued violence becomes, as Merz observed — ‘no longer comprehensible’ — and any political goals surely cannot justify the continued use of the destructive potential of modern weapons against a largely undefended, unarmed, civilian population?
The forgotten, ignored, or neglected condition of legitimate Palestinian resistance is that it was, and is still ‘waged against a military regime in a claim for independence rather than for inclusion within the borders of the Israeli state and equal rights like in South Africa (4).’
So, without losing sight of the immense suffering of the Palestinians the last year and a half, it is important that we make an effort to understand the very fears of Jews, both in Israel and elsewhere, and how those fears are manifest not just in the reality of Israel today, what it means, what it is, and what its’ actions entail for all Jews, but also in respect of each Jew’s understanding, acceptance, or rejection of the Zionist ideology, as they see it, and what it means to them and their future.
Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute, for example, puts it this way in his honest assessment of the Zionist project and its place in Israel today, in his thought provoking article, ‘Liberal Zionism and the Troubled Committed (5)’:
‘To be a Jew is to be troubled, to view one’s life, and one’s society, through an aspirational lens, always striving to be more. I’m troubled because this project is an ongoing process that requires constant revision. I’m troubled by the enduring gap between ideals and reality.’
Hartman calls himself a ‘troubled committed Zionist;’ he writes that he is both, ‘unconditionally committed to Israel’s survival and deeply honored to be part of a generation of Jews who are building the homeland of the Jewish people. I view Israel as one of the most exciting projects in Jewish history: to build our own country in accordance with the highest Jewish and liberal democratic values. To be a committed Zionist is to be invested in shaping the outcome of this project.’
And yet, shortly after he made aliyah (the spiritual journey of returning to the land of Israel) in 1971, he says knew something wasn’t right. ‘There was
a gap,’ he wrote, ‘between Israel as it was and Israel as I believed it should be.’ The enduring gap between the ideals he believed Israel should stand for, and the reality on the ground (5).
And arguably, what changed the reality on the ground for Israel, the state, was the Six-Day War in 1967, which, despite its stunning military success, has left an enduring legacy of occupation, brutality, and the steady erosion of the liberal democratic values that Hartman, and many others believe, Israel should stand for.
The permanent nature of the impermanent occupation is what, says Rabbi Shaul Magid, today defines Israel as an illiberal project that stands in stark contrast to the steadfast commitment to liberal views of many Zionists (6), especially in America, and more especially perhaps, prior to October 7.
Magid says an Israeli friend of his told him once that, ‘the two-state solution remains alive mostly to make liberal Zionists in America feel good about themselves. Few in Israel, Jew or Palestinian, really believe it anymore.’
In other words, Magid explains using Hartman’s classification, that the commitment to the two-state solution allows liberal Zionists to remain ‘troubled,’ yet still ‘committed’ to Israel.
Hartman explains (5) that ‘I’m troubled because Israel, however
committed to peace, is no longer resolute in pursuing it. I’m troubled because our power has afforded us the ability to maintain the current political status quo while desensitizing us to the moral abuses it conceals and legitimizes. I’m troubled because we can — and must — do better, but many of us are no longer trying.’
Whilst both Magid and Hartman were writing shortly before the October 7 attacks, one can imagine that their concern and consternation at the shocking events of that day, and Israel’s immoral embrace of right-wing extremism bordering on outright fascism, and the undeniable facts of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the quickening pace of ethnic cleansing in the OPT must have only added to their troubles.
And whilst those fears are real, I think there is a tendency to conflate all Israelis as Zionists and all Zionists as supporting Palestinian destruction and expulsion, in much the same way as many conflate all Muslims as would-be, or potential terrorists, and all who speak out against the genocide, regardless of background, religion or nationality, as being supportive of Hamas and antisemitic to boot.
Gross misperceptions such as these, largely arising out of ignorance, and/or racism (including antisemitism), are not only misleading and often as not, far off the mark, but they are also damaging to whatever cause, or side you may happen to have sympathy with.
As Haggai Mattar, pointed out in +972 mag, ‘…it is important to remember that Zionism means vastly different things to different people, and plenty of those who subscribe to that label would say they are committed to justice and liberation for Palestinians…’
But, in the same vein, it is also important not to overlook the fears many Jews live with on a daily basis even as we might condemn the violence of either, or both sides in this ongoing conflict. As Mattar rightly says:
‘It is true that the worst of this (October 7) violence has been immediately followed by Israel’s total obliteration of Gaza and killing of over 43,000 (at the time of his writing) Palestinians and 3,000 Lebanese. It is also true that October 7 was preceded by countless nonviolent initiatives for Palestinian liberation that were quashed by Israel and its allies — from diplomacy to BDS to the Great Return March — and occurred at a time when the Palestinian cause seemed to be facing a dead end. But this doesn’t make the fears of Israeli Jews any less real.’
The fact that many Jews, both within Israel, and in the diaspora, including many who would also consider themselves to be Zionists, can recognise that Palestinians have been consistently denied their basic rights by the Israeli state over many decades now, does not necessarily reflect any ‘disregard for the future of Jews’ in Israel.
‘Moreover, supporters of Israel regularly wield allegations of antisemitism as a cudgel against pro-Palestine activists in order to silence legitimate and essential criticism of Israeli policies, Zionism, the occupation, and the army’s myriad war crimes.
Passion, for all its pluses, can also cloud our ability to see the arguments of any differing sides or opinions. Such is the situation today provoked by the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians; the emotions stirred are deep, well-founded on all sides, and strongly supported that even such basic issues as ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ ‘moral’ or ‘immoral,’ are difficult, if not impossible, to untangle completely.
Indeed, John Paul Lederach, peace negotiator and author (7), says that ‘transcending violence is forged by the capacity to generate, mobilize, and build the moral imagination.’ This, he states, requires ‘the capacity to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships that includes our enemies; the ability to sustain a paradoxical curiosity that embraces complexity without reliance on dualistic polarity; the fundamental belief in the pursuit of a the creative act; and the acceptance of the inherent risk of stepping into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the far and too familiar landscape of violence.’
But none of this can be achieved without first recognising, accepting, and then at least trying to understand the historical and root causes of any opposing viewpoints, and the deep-rooted fears and challenges that the combatants of all sides hold close and live with on a daily basis.
And this requires just as much, if not more courage, than standing up to your enemy, with gun in hand. Peace between warring factions is not easy, and like any relationship, personal, business, political, or other, it requires work from all sides to maintain.
The relation between the various Zionist ideals to Israel, what it means and what it is, is a hugely complex, intricate web that non-Jews, myself included, I would suggest often struggle to comprehend. Thus, in the next few posts after this I will seek to separate the main threads of both Jewish and non-Jewish (including Christian) Zionist history, thought and ideology in order that we might better comprehend the various threads of the current situation in respect of Zionism, and how it relates to the situation in Israel and Palestine.
Thanks for reading.
- The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto; Daniel Boyarin, 2023.
- Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism; Aviezer Ravitzky, 1996. Translated by Michael Swirsky and Jonathan Chipman.
- On Violence; Hannah Arendt, 1969. Republished 2023.
- Resistance, politics and violence: The catch of the Palestinian struggle; Lev Luis Grinberg, Current Sociology 61(2) 206–225, 2012.
- Liberal Zionism and the Troubled Committed; Donniel Hartman, Sources Journal, 2021.
- The Necessity of Exile: Essays From A Distance; Shaul Magid, 2023.
- The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace; John Paul Lederach, 2010.
