“When violence responds to violence with an increasing madness that makes the simple language of reason impossible, the role of the intellectual cannot be… to excuse one act of violence from a distance and condemn the other… This role is to clarify definitions in order to purify minds and calm intolerance, even when That's against the current trend.
Albert Camus, “Introduction to the Algerian Reports” (1958)
I am not an expert on Middle East politics. But I'm a human being who teaches and writes about politics for a living, and happens to be an American Jew who believes in human rights and cares about the world. Failing to reflect on the current situation, and to share my thoughts, is not an option for me.
The attacks launched by Hamas on October 7 against Israel and Israelis were reprehensible and inhumane. No credible “resistance” or “liberation” movement engages in such brutal tactics, and shows such contempt for human life. Anyone on the left, anyone in the name of “anti-imperialism” or “solidarity” with the wretched of the earth who can applaud such terrorism, let alone justify it, is contemptible.
It is clear that such terrorist attacks require and will be met by an Israeli military response, to defend the Israeli population, to subdue the attacker and to make such attacks impossible, and to satisfy the public expectation that the perpetrators of these violations – in which case, Hamas leaders and militants will be punished.
It is equally clear that any sustained military response faces many tactical and strategic difficulties moral Challenges. The regional situation is explosive, there are Israeli hostages in danger, and there are more than two million Palestinians living in Gaza. Imposing collective punishment on the entire civilian population of Gaza would be tantamount to a crime.
The Israeli and Palestinian peoples have suffered for too long, as their leaders have failed to bring a civil, peaceful, and at least modest, end to a long and violent conflict. I feel for them all, especially for the kids who grow up knowing nothing else.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
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I have never considered Israel to be a “Promised Land” or “the Land of Israel,” but merely a place, a nation-state, not “mine,” whatever connections to some of its people or even its history I may feel. . But for many years I have been promoting the “two-state solution.” I publicly challenged Noam Chomsky when he came to my university to denounce Zionism and Oslo (he turned off my microphone), and I argued with Edward Said when he did the same (he was a gentleman and listened to what I had to say). . I have argued with anti-Zionists who insisted that the solution to all regional problems required “association” with a Palestinian state, and I have nearly lost some friends over these arguments.
However, I have become increasingly disgusted by the way right-wing settlers and reactionary religious fanatics are coddled and empowered by the Israeli political system; Incidentally, the Israeli state has become increasingly anti-liberal; Incidentally, the Israeli public has elected inappropriate leaders, including, all too often, the corrupt and deplorable Bibi Netanyahu. But most of all, I was disgusted by the way the Israeli state treated the issue of a Palestinian state – and indeed the Palestinians themselves – without any serious concern.
I came to see the “Jewish state” – and it is no “a state of all the Jewish people,” even if many Zionists insist on seeing it that way — as an ethno-national democracy that systematically privileges Jews over non-Jewish citizens, and in fact religious Jewish citizens over secular Jewish citizens, thus contradicting modern liberal and cosmopolitan norms. This is true even if it is also true that the State of Israel is closer to liberal democracy than any other country in the region, and grants its Arab citizens more rights than they have in other countries in the region, from Egypt to Syria. To Saudi Arabia to Iran.
Can the “two-state” project be revived? I sincerely doubt it. But regardless, I can no longer defend this, even though I honestly have no idea what the best alternative is.
Some of the special kinship I now feel with the Israeli victims of Hamas terrorism may have an ethnic dimension. But the solidarity I feel is primarily what the Czech philosopher Jan Patocka called “shaky solidarity.” It is about the value of human life, and my abhorrence of the deliberate and terrorist killing of civilians.
I am also concerned about the way the situation is being morally framed by some commentators, and the way in which a certain kind of unconditional support for Israel – which in this context means support for the current Israeli government – is being promoted, as President Biden has loudly and proudly declared ( Although his administration is also, understandably, trying to prevent escalation.) In international affairs, support should not be unconditional. Everyone who is serious about solving problems in play is obligated to think about ways to influence and conditioningAnd the behaviors and outcomes that have the best chance of calming the current war.
Contrary to what many say, what happened last weekend in southern Israel was not a “massacre.” Hamas is not the Tsarist regime; It is a reactionary political-military organization that controls the Gaza Strip, a small, overcrowded and completely dependent enclave inhabited by a poor, helpless and stateless people, an enclave that Human Rights Watch has described as an “open-air prison.” The victims of Hamas' terrorism were not the poor and disenfranchised Jewish minority, which had no state at all; They were citizens of Israel, the self-identified “Jewish state,” a state armed to the teeth, which had long supervised the Palestinian “occupied territories” and used violence extensively to do so, and this was undoubtedly the ideal solution. The most powerful country in the region, despite its recent intelligence failures.
What happened was committed by a movement with clearly anti-Semitic commitments, as the 1988 Hamas charter makes clear. But to repeat over and over again that “this is the largest number of Jews killed since the Holocaust” is to invoke a misleading and inflammatory metaphor. This is because the Gaza Strip is not Nazi Germany, Israel is not the Warsaw Ghetto, and Hamas’ terrorism – cruel, violent and despicable – is not directed towards a Jewish minority, but rather towards the State of Israel and its Jewish majority, a strong state that bears no comparison with the Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide.
This is not to deny that Hamas's recent calls for a broader “jihad” have indeed fueled a wave of anti-Semitism and generated real fear of anti-Semitic attacks in other parts of the world, especially Europe. But this does not make invoking the Holocaust any less misleading.
The 9/11 analogy is equally problematic. Because, in contrast to al-Qaeda's attacks on the United States, the violent threat posed by Hamas was well known, precisely because Israelis were often exposed to it directly in the form of bombings (which prompted the Israeli government to respond publicly with greater force). violence). The entire situation facing Israel is much more dangerous, and the danger more real. But the complex political responsibility is also very real.
While most Americans had never heard of Al Qaeda before 9/11, every Israeli has known for the past quarter-century that just a few miles away there existed a terrorist organization called Hamas that was hostile to Israel's very existence — even as it was in much of the country. Sometimes. A useful pawn to play against the PA. There are no easy answers, and there will undoubtedly be a lot of blood spilled in the coming days. Reasonable voices are extremely rare, and are in constant danger of being drowned out by preachers of total war.
The Israeli military response cannot be prevented. But unless this response is constrained by respect for the lives of civilian non-combatants, it will quickly turn into a moral and political disaster. Indeed, recent developments indicate that it is already moving rapidly in this direction. Respected people and responsible political leaders must do everything in their power to disrupt what can only be a humanitarian catastrophe.
October 10, 2023
A longer version of this text appears here
