Why bother delving into history?
Times of Israel, August 12, 2014
It is extremely difficult, these days, to be a
politically moderate Israeli. As I publish and post my views on the
Gaza war in newspapers and social networks, the amount of hate messages I
receive, from both right and left, pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians,
is astounding.
For
more than ten years I have been writing and speaking on
European-Israeli dialogue, often in the context of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am by now experienced in distinguishing
between criticism of Israeli policies (which I often accept), sympathy
for innocent victims of the conflict (which I strongly share), and
stark, ignorant, generalizing “Anti-Israelismus” which easily lapses
into full-fledged anti-Semitism.
The current war in Gaza has let all the demons
out of their bottles once again. Peace-loving Israelis – and there are
many of us – are caught between scylla and charybdis. Let me show you
how this is acting out online, in my Twitter and Facebook accounts, and
in comments to my articles.
As hostilities broke out I wrote that I grieve
for all innocent Gazan victims of this conflict, especially the
children, without any excuses, “buts”, or symmetries. Many people took
my point at face value. Others, Arabs and Europeans, told me that my
tears are crocodile tears and that Jews are performing genocide against
Palestinians.
Jews. Not Israelis. The millions of Jews
living outside Israel are as “uninvolved” as Gazan civilians, but they
are currently accused, threatened and physically attacked for being
Jews, hence guilty by association. An American or a Syrian can walk
safely in the streets of Paris, Rome, and Berlin despite the killing of
many civilians by the US army in Iraq or by Assad’s troops in Syria. A
Jew wearing a kippa can no longer do that. If this is not anti-Semitism,
what is?
Genocide. Not a bad, dirty war. Not a standoff
between a regular army defending its civil population and a terrorist
militia shooting from amidst a massive, poor and unprotected urban hub.
Make no mistake: the Israeli army certainly
used excessive force and killed hundreds of innocents while trying to
target militants and missiles, but Hamas made sure that its militants
and missiles are placed right in the midst of its civilians. Those
hapless civilians have no bomb shelters (the Gaza aid money went
elsewhere, and construction materials were used to build attack
tunnels), and they are often forced by Hamas to stay put when pre-warned
by the Israeli army to move out.
These are the facts. Dirty war indeed. Even
just wars – and I strongly believe that Israel had a casus belli for
responding to the barrage of Hamas rockets launched on Israel in the
last month – can become dirty wars. Jus ad bellum does not ensure jus in bello. But Genocide – no.
This couplet, “Jews” and “Genocide,” is
becoming ever more popular these days in the hate-speech of certain
Arabs and certain Europeans, who are eager to undo the Holocaust memory
(mistaken by many of them for an invented Israeli alibi for aggression),
and turn the Jews into mass killers. I would like to think that no
German accepts this excuse for dimming and eradicating the real
Holocaust, but I know that some Germans do.
Did anyone in Gaza, I wonder, ever get away
with opposing assaults on innocent Israelis? Go unpunished for
expressing sorrow for the dozens of Israeli children slaughtered by
Palestinian suicide bombers in the last ten years? No need to wonder:
the answer is no. Any Gazan opposing the Hamas war against Israelis, or
merely questioning the wisdom of this war in view of the unfolding Gaza
calamity, is punished as a traitor. Hamas silences its own people by
execution.
Being moderate, as Aristotle already noted, does not mean being in the exact middle. Reality is never symmetrical.
For one thing, Hamas is far worse, as a
government, than any Israeli government has ever been. The militants of
Hamas and Islamic jihad in Gaza are far more brutal, on the ground, than
the Israeli army. They surround their fighters with children, store
their arsenal in schools and hospitals, including UNRWA institutions,
and threaten or kick out any journalists who dare report it. They
deliberately aim their rockets at Israeli kindergartens and clinics. If
they had Israel’s air force and artillery power, the ensuing massacre of
Israelis would dwarf anything we see in Gaza today. When I write these
truths, some commentators brand it as Israeli propaganda. But I’d make a
lousy propagandist. As a critical member of civil society, I never
accept the official reports of my government and army wholesale, but
truths are truths whatever their source.
Since Hamas is, fortunately, too weak,
civilian suffering is asymmetrical too. Gaza is a disaster area. Israel
is partially responsible. Saying this, with the crucial addition that
Hamas is far more blameworthy, will remain true regardless of denials on
either side. If Hamas and Hezbollah had the firepower and knowhow that
Israel today has, I would not be writing these words. I’d be dead. Some
“pro-Palestinians” would not mind that, for sure.
Let me be crystal-clear: I am pro-Gaza, wishing it peace, freedom and prosperity. I am anti-Hamas, wishing it to go to hell.
Both Israel and Hamas have failed miserably,
so far, in two of their declared missions: Hamas failed in its attempt
to kill Israeli children, while Israel failed in its attempt not to kill
Gazan children. This, too, is part of the asymmetry of our present
situation.
But what about the imprisonment of Gazans in
their sad, crowded, battered strip of land? Years ago, I published an
article in a German newspaper using the metaphor of the neighbor who
sits on his balcony, his baby on his lap, shooting into your children’s
bedroom. Would you shoot back at him? Yes, you would. My father, Amos
Oz, has recently borrowed my metaphor (our family allows such
borrowings) to describe the current round of violence.
My own article was intercepted, misquoted and
attacked by Israel-bashers. How can I relate to the Gazans as
“neighbors” when they are in fact Israel’s prisoners? Typically, the
hate-responses ignored the rest of my article, which clearly said that
this “neighborhood” situation is far from equal. Misreadings and
misquotations are an integral part of anti-Israeliness and anti-Semitism
these days. Historical facts are conveniently forgotten. Nuances are
not part of the game.
Let me insist: History and nuances are
crucial. Gaza’s 1,800,000 residents include many refugees of the 1948
war and their descendants. That war was started by Arabs, who rejected
the UN resolution to divide the land into a Jewish state and a
Palestinian state. Israel won. Palestinians fled, and some were driven
out. For many years, Egypt ruled Gaza and did not allow its refugees to
leave or to rebuild their lives. Since 1967 Israel and Egypt share the
responsibility for this bad situation. But Israel pulled out of Gaza in
2006, only to see Hamas taking power and putting southern Israel under a
barrage of rockets. Why not negotiate peace? Because Hamas wants Israel
demolished and all Jews killed; its Charter says so explicitly. Also,
to be fair, because Israeli governments and the Israeli public have
grown more hawkish, abandoning hope to reach an agreement even with the
relatively moderate Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
But why bother delving into history? Today’s
anti-Semites who masquerade as “anti-Israel” are not interested in
history. They want the Holocaust to disappear, and the Jews to be guilty
and remain guilty. This is a “new anti-Semitism” indeed, for it targets
Israel as its big, bad, mega-Jew. But it is also a timeless, ageless
anti-Semitism, because it is meta-historical, powered by psychology
rather than facts.
Religion, I’m afraid, often plays an
irrational role in this story. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has
never been about Judaism and Islam, but about territory and sovereignty.
Today, fanatic Islamists have highjacked the Palestinian cause, while
extremist orthodox Jews insist on settling every part of the biblical
Israel at the expense of compromise. Some radical Christians are
entering the fray too, unhelpfully theologizing their unconditional
support for one side or the other.
Which is why moderate atheists like myself
needs all the support we can get from moderate Muslims, Christians, and
observant Jews. The dividing line in the current battle is not between
the three religions, nor is it between the religious and the
irreligious. It runs – this time it’s my turn to borrow a phrase from my
father – between all fanatics and all moderates.
So why bother to raise a moderate voice, look
closely at the tragedy of both sides (including the incomparable tragedy
in Gaza’s ruined streets), and invoke historical facts, relevant
truths, complexities and nuances?
Because I do not believe that most Europeans,
or even most Arabs, are willing to be fed by lies and watered by hatred.
Because as a scholar of the Enlightenment and
a political liberal I believe that rational dialog, twinned with human
compassion, is bound to win. Because as a humanist Israeli Jew, and a
Zionist believer in the two-state solution, I expect that hope will win.
