As the harrowing news broke this past weekend of an attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israeli civilians, variations on one particular phrase found their way, over and over, into statements by politicians and organizations: “Stand With Israel.”
This was particularly salient from liberal and progressive
American Jewish groups that have, over the past year, grown increasingly critical of
the Israeli government, both for its proposed judicial overhaul and for
Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, or at least for the inclusion of far-right
politicians in its governing coalition. The statements this weekend were
overwhelmingly not critical. They expressed straightforward support for
Israel.
This was, for Israel, an unprecedented attack on its civilians. Hamas managed to burst through from Gaza and cross Israel’s border. Hamas militants then proceeded to kill and take captive civilians. Hamas has killed, as of this writing, more than 900 Israelis, including 260 young adults at a music festival. The militants took children hostage.
And I can understand why many of the initial statements did not, for example, also acknowledge how many Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in recent years, or that Israel controls Gaza’s borders, or that 2023 was already the deadliest year on record for Palestinian children in the West Bank, or that members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government encouraged settler violence against Palestinians.
This weekend, issuing statements, people were shocked or mourning or both. Especially for people who are not politicians or public figures or organizers, the phrase “Stand With Israel” is a message of sympathy and support, an extension of empathy for victims. But for those who are politicians and public figures and organizers, the phrase implies a public policy position and statement of intent. It’s an announcement that they mean to stand with Israel. But what does that actually mean?
This war is not primarily about Americans. But so
long as leaders in both American and American Jewish politics are putting out
statements that they stand with Israel, and as the fallout from the attack
continues, as the death toll from both Hamas’ attack and Israeli retaliation
continues to rise, perhaps it is worth unpacking: What does it mean to stand
with Israel?
Netanyahu, who has been charged with fraud, breach of trust, and accepting bribes in three different scandals, agreed to have far-right Itamar Ben-Gvir in his governing coalition, and to place him in the role of national security minister, despite his long history of provocations against Palestinians, which he has continued in his current role. Does standing with Israel mean standing with both men?
Pentagon press secretary Jack Kirby said that now was not the time to review
the Israeli leaders’ intelligence failure but to “support Israel.” But couldn’t
one see the two as interlinked? That it’s necessary to understand how
Netanyahu’s government failed to stop this from happening? Does standing with
Israel include granting its government freedom from its most basic
responsibilities?
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel; everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” There are 2 million people in Gaza. Half of them are children. Does standing with Israel mean standing with the choice to deprive the people living in Gaza, who cannot leave Gaza, of electricity and food?
As I write this, Israel’s response operations have killed at
least 830 people and injured another 4,250. According to Defense for Children
Palestine, that number includes at least 33 children; the Gaza Ministry of
Health put the number of
children killed by the strikes at 91. Are people being called on to stand with
that?
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who was arrested in 2005 on suspicion of organizing violent nationalist activity and is a booster of West Bank settlements and an opponent of Palestinian statehood, said, the evening of the attack, “We have to be cruel now and not consider the captives overmuch.”
"If it turns out that that informs
government policy—if the Israeli government pursues maximum cruelty on
Palestinians at the expense of Israeli hostages’ lives and the tenets of
international law—is supporting such a policy a prerequisite for standing with
Israel? Will Americans, Jewish and not, now say that to stand with Israel is to
support and defend being cruel?
But there was also other commentary coming out of
Israel on the day of Hamas’ attack, other positions with which one can stand.
On Saturday,
Haggai Matar, an Israeli journalist with +972, wrote, while “sitting at home in
Tel Aviv, trying to figure out how to protect my family in a house with no
shelter or safe room,” that Israel has to change course with respect to its
treatment of Palestinians, that “it is not in spite of the horror that we have
to change course—it is exactly because of it.”
The next day, the prominent Israeli outlet Haaretz
published its editorial under the headline “Netanyahu Bears Responsibility for This Israel-Gaza
War.” The editorial read: “The prime minister …
completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel
into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when
appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing
a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”
Ofer Cassif, a member of the Knesset and the leftist
Hadash coalition, said Sunday,
“We condemn and oppose any
assault on innocent civilians. But in contrast to the Israeli government that
means that we oppose any assault on Palestinian civilians as well. We must
analyze those terrible incidents [the attacks] in the right context—and that is
the ongoing occupation.”
Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli veterans
“aimed at raising awareness to the dire consequences of prolonged military
occupation,” told its readers on social media that the IDF was preoccupied with
protecting settlers in the West Bank because “our country decided—decades
ago—that it’s willing to forfeit the security of its citizens in our towns and
cities, in favor of maintaining control over an occupied civilian population of
millions, all for the sake of a settler-messianic agenda.”
On Monday,
B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, put out a statement condemning not only Hamas’
attack, but also the killing of Palestinian civilians. Standing Together, which
describes itself as “the largest grassroots Jewish-Arab Movement in
Israel-Palestine,” offered, in a post on
X, “We must not buy into the illusion that security can be achieved through
military action. There is no future here—for any of us—without ending the
occupation and guaranteeing independence, freedom, and security for both
nations.”
It takes real moral courage to do that. To hold your country to account while it is reeling. These outlets, organizations, and individuals showed that courage and called on their government to take accountability and, first and foremost, consider the inherent dignity of all human life. That’s a step Hamas rejects and refused, but as horrific as the attacks were, it is a step some Israelis are still pressing their government to take.
Perhaps, having made their initial statements, liberal and
progressive American politicians, individuals, and groups, Jewish and not, that
have declared their intent to stand with Israel can also announce that they
mean to stand with those trying to make Israel stand taller.
No Lessons Learned by Dr. James J. Zogby, President American Arab Institute
ReplyDeleteIt has been horrifying to watch this most recent iteration of wanton violence in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. But it should not have been unexpected. What can also now be expected is that the horrific murders carried out by Hamas on day one will be more than matched by Israel as it proceeds to use its massive military power to massacre thousands of captive Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip.
What is also par for the course is that the US, instead of playing the role of the adult in the room, has once again reduced itself to being a cheerleader and coat-holder for one side, enabling and supporting Israel’s escalation of violence. In this regard, it was shocking to note that the State Department deleted two of its initial statements calling for restraint and protection of civilians, changing them to statements offering Israel our full support.
It’s distressing to see this nightmare unfolding precisely because we’ve been down this same road so many times before and, by now, should know exactly where it leads. It takes us back to where we began.
After the dust has settled and the tears have dried, other than having thousands of dead to mourn and bury, we’ll be right back to where we were when it started. The one change will be that hardliners on all sides will have gained support - with no lessons learned - thus sowing the seeds for another round of violence, at some indeterminate point in the future.
The lessons we should have learned are many. To begin with: just as violence will not end the occupation, neither will violence end the resistance to the occupation. Suicide bombers or Hamas rockets didn’t bring peace, they only hardened Israeli attitudes against Palestinians and peace. And Israel’s violent occupation, massive retaliations, its strangulation of Gaza, and its brutal repression of the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem hasn’t squashed the Palestinian will to be free. It has only fueled more resistance.
Occupation and oppression are cruel and inhumane - and the consequences of occupation can not be ignored. As a corollary of this, efforts by the US and Israeli leaders, going back to Shimon Peres, to build a New Middle East while failing to resolve the injustices of the Old Middle East are doomed. Herein lies a critical failure of this and past US Administrations.
Instead of seeing the possibility that the Abrahamic Accords could provide the US leverage to alter Israel’s behavior, the administration ignored the extremist policies and practices of the Netanyahu government by offering it more unearned benefits, further imperiling the prospects for Palestinian rights and regional peace. While the Israelis doubled down on apartheid, expanded settlements increasing the de facto annexation of the West Bank, conducted nightly undercover raids into Palestinian cities, allowed settlers to conduct violent raids into Palestinian areas, and accelerated provocative assaults into Jerusalem’s holiest sites - the US either acquiesced or made do with expressions of “concern.”
At the same time, we rewarded Israel with admission into the US Visa Waiver Program - despite Israel’s failure to meet the program’s statutory requirements - and issued frequent pronouncements of “unwavering, unbreakable, unshakable” support.
The results of this US failure are clear. Hardliners in Israel have been emboldened to behave like a spoiled child knowing that there are no restraints on their behaviors. They therefore act with impunity. Meanwhile, Palestinians believing that there is no recognition of their humanity or their rights to freedom and security have come to feel like the abused child. They therefore feel no hesitation to strike out wildly to make their point.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom line is that it was, to be sure, unpredictable that Hamas would engineer a surprise invasion of Israel, accompanied by the killing of hundreds of innocents and taking hundreds more hostage. But Israel should have known, and was warned, that the Palestinian pressure cooker was bound to explode. At the same time, Hamas should have known that Israel would respond with massive force that would result in the devastation of Gaza and the killing of thousands of innocent Palestinians. And they should have known that the US would do nothing to restrain Israel’s massive and deadly assaults.
While all parties share some degree of blame, I mainly fault successive US administrations for failing to play its self-proclaimed role of the promoter of human rights and peace. It has abdicated its responsibility diminishing itself to become Israel’s partner in the oppression of Palestinians. For shame.