I do not write this blog as a Jew; “as a Jew”—for that matter, as an X”—is presumptuous because it implies that all other Jews (or X’s) think or write similarly. They do not. As they say, two Jews, three opinions. So I am just one Jew speaking for myself only; any resemblance of my opinions to the opinions of other Jews is entirely accidental.
I cannot convey the breadth, depth, and intensity of my feelings about the outrageous conduct of the state of Israel in its military campaign in Gaza. Everything which it has done there since October 2023 has violated and desecrated everything which I believe worthy about Judaism and which I believe inspires Jews to righteousness: first and foremost, the value of human life. Still, Judaism has not failed itself any more than Christianity and Islam have failed themselves for the lapses of their followers, and Jews have failed in this conflict as Christians and Muslims have failed in conflicts. Jews will have to answer for this genocide as Christians have had to answer for the Holocaust. But, in this blog, I present as dispassionate an analysis of the conflict in the context of its time and places—Israel, West Bank, Gaza, and America—as I can. I could vent, but venting would serve no useful purpose. I hope that this blog can.
Jews are the Chosen People. That phrase has struck many non-Jews as implying the moral or religious superiority of Jews, then characterized by non-Jews as a proud and stiff-necked people. Non-Jews have the right to their opinions, but that right does not mean that their opinions are right. In this case, they are wrong because ignorant. When God selected the Hebrew nation to be his people, he obliged them, as followers of his law, to be a light to the other nations, a moral example of righteous living. God granted that the other nations could be righteous according to the seven Noahide laws, namely, six against blasphemy, idolatry, murder, sexual immorality, theft, and eating a limb from a living animal; and one for establishing a system of courts of justice. (One of these laws puzzles me, but I shall keep my opinion to myself.) By obeying these laws, anyone of any faith would be redeemed after death and have a place in the afterlife.
Being the Chosen People implies no superiority; it imposes upon the Jewish people a moral burden to live righteously in their collective life as a nation. Today, the Jewish people constitute a nation far-flung, with its major populations no longer in Europe (thanks to the Nazis and other European antisemites who facilitated the Holocaust), but in the United States and Israel. Created by the United Nations in 1947 and established by victory in war against Arab states in 1948, Israel intended to be a Jewish democratic state and hoped to live in peace with its neighbors. Arab intransigence made peaceful co-existence impossible. But the arguments and the conflicts about who has what rights in the land previously known as Palestine and in the city of Jerusalem remain unresolvable. Both sides should be blamed for this unending state of hostile relations.
Until October 2023, Israel and its Arab opponents had fought wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, with various incursions, skirmishes, uprisings, and terrorist attacks in between and since. Over time, Jews in Israel and America became increasingly doubtful that peace between Jews in Israel and Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, with or without a Palestinian state, was possible. Facing an implacable foe, Jews slowly moved to support a government which responded more aggressively and callously to provocations. The Israel Defense Force, which had long operated with restraint in its combat operations, became increasingly aggressive at the direction of the Netanyahu government. After the Hamas attack, Netanyahu had many reasons, both political, to erase his policy failures enabling the Hamas attack, and personal, to avoid prosecution, to intensify the war. The Hamas attack which brutally killed about 1200 civilians and captured about 250 more as hostages aroused Israelis to seek both vengeance and the release of hostages. Netanyahu adopted a war policy which has evolved to total, unconditional surrender or total extermination of Hamas, scorched earth of Gaza, and ethnic cleansing or genocide of Gazans. Current results: more than 63,000 Gazans dead, more than 150,000 injured, more than 20,000 children orphaned, and the population of about 2,000,000 exhausted by constant relocations, hungry to the point of famine, suffering from or liable to disease, and fearful of further death and destruction. The disproportion between the atrocities of the original Hamas attack and the obscenities of Israel’s war of retaliation make the latter nothing less than a war crime and a crime against humanity. Whatever its past claims to sympathy for its plight at its founding and its struggle against Arab opposition for decades and to respect for restraint in responding to that opposition for decades, Israel no longer deserves either sympathy or respect for the monster it has become. Israel is not a light of righteous living to the nations; it is a state of darkness visible.
However, Israel the state only imperfectly represents Israel the people, or Israeli Jews. A large majority initially supported the Netanyahu government’s response to the Hamas attack, but it has slowly shrunk. Meanwhile, a large and growing minority is turning against it, as recent street protests indicate. However, even if Israeli Jews succeed in pressuring their government to cease and desist from combat operations and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Gazan population, they cannot at this late date redeem their government’s conduct of the war. (I note that Gazans, who now suffer grievously, then cheered the Hamas attack; they have suffered disproportionately, but they are not entirely innocent.)
Moreover, although neither Israel the state nor Israel the people represent American Jews, their sympathies and antipathies about the conflict in Gaza have paralleled those of Israeli Jews. As Israeli Jews have been divided, so American Jews have been divided. Yet no one has accused Israeli Jews who protest their government’s conduct of the war, demand an end to hostilities, or insist on humanitarian assistance to Gazans of being antisemitic, but prominent American politicians accuse American Jews who similarly protest, demand, and insist of being antisemitic. And, in Israel and America, some number of Jews want justice for Palestinians in the creation of state for them in the West Bank and Gaza; there is nothing antisemitic about such a position, however unpopular or seemingly unrealistic it has become. Which is not to say that some American non-Jews are not antisemitic in their sympathies for Palestinians and Gazans, and in their political expressions and actions. Which of those cross the line into illegal conduct must be decided on a case-by-case basis, but there is nothing inherently illegal about a pro-Palestinian position or necessarily antisemitic about it if it does not imply or insist on the elimination of all Jews in the state of Israel. The First Amendment protects that position, and Jews, if they know what is good for them, should support that protection though disagreeing with the position. (For a definition of antisemitism better than the widely adopted definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, see my blog “Antisemitism: A Better Definition and Its Importance.” New Mexico has officially adopted it in an apparent political gesture.)
American Jews confront criticism that Israel is a colonialist and increasingly imperialistic undertaking prompted and justified by Zionism. There is half-truth to this criticism, but much depends on the meaning of the terms and the nuances of history. One non-truth is that the influx of Jews into a land in which Jews have always lived has colonized it; instead, they just added to those already there. (By contrast, Europeans who came to and settled in North America were colonialist and imperialist.) It is enough to say that the meanings have changed with altered historical circumstances. For twenty years, Israel was content within its pre-Six-Day-War (1967) boundaries and was neither colonialist nor imperialist nor regarded as such; its success then and six years later demonstrated its power, and its power gradually corrupted Israel by enlarging its definition of Zion, or the homeland, to include, to some at a minimum, the lands of Judea and Samaria in the West Bank. Israel’s encouragement of and support for settlements in this area are acts of incremental imperialism without justification under international law.
Israel can disarm this criticism and partly redeem itself by complying with international law, removing all settlements and other encroachments outside its original boundaries in the West Bank, and assisting the rebuilding of Gaza for its inhabitants. The sacrifices and difficulties of these efforts would be punishment for Israel’s abuses of Palestinians. These efforts would also be a self-correction, an example to all nations, of a state and its people with the integrity and courage to return to, after having departed from, the traditional mission of this Chosen People.
However, I do not believe that any Israeli government, despite the desires of many Jews, Israeli and American, can autonomously take such steps and renounce power and land any more than most other governments can. (The notable exception is America, which did not occupy Cuba in 1898 and which returned rule to the Philippines in 1946.) Which means that Israel will continue ethnic erasure and incremental imperialism, slowly squeezing the Palestinians in, then out of, the West Bank and Gaza. Only the intervention of European and Arabian governments can squeeze Israel back by carefully implementing a concerted policy of boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) to reverse Israel’s policies and practices, but not to eliminate the state. (An example of such an effective BDS effort is the ending of apartheid in South Africa.)
Still, I hope that Israeli Jews will surprise the world as they did in routing the Arab armies in Israel’s first quarter century. The end of hostilities is likely to lead to the fall of Netanyahu and his government, and the diminished influence of ultra-conservative Orthodox Jews. Its successor will have to deal with the international opprobrium of its barbaric war in Gaza and its brutal occupation of the West Bank. It might have to deal with a punishing BDS regime (focused on its weapons industries) hurting its economy. The response might be a war-weary Israeli citizenry withdrawing support for the settlements and approving accommodations of equally war-weary Palestinians in an adjacent state, with international control of Jerusalem and willing assistance by the three major religions in administering their holy sites. If so, Israel’s light might not yet burn brightly for the nations of the world, but it might begin to burn brightly for itself.
