"Israel’s oppression of Palestinians is an atrocity. So was Hamas’s massacre of civilians—and anyone who claims to be on the left should say so" -Sasha Abramsky

 

“…I write, today, from a place of horror—about the massacre unleashed against civilians in Israel this past week, and about the morally cretinous bloodlust reaction some who fashion themselves as being on the ‘left’ seem to have experienced in its aftermath, but also in despair at the ghastly collective punishments being unleashed from the air on Gaza residents by Netanyahu’s far-right government and the Israeli military…

“Yes, Israel’s policies are often spectacularly vicious. Yes, Netanyahu’s foul far-right government has taken that viciousness and that bigotry to new levels. Yes, that government, with its pseudo-fascist oratory and its deliberately confrontational no-compromise policies, has pushed the Palestinian population beyond the point of endurance.

“One only has to look at the actions and statements of many current cabinet ministers to see that this is a government that thrives in a petri dish of extremism and fanaticism—as many Israelis were all too aware in the months leading up to the Hamas rampage, which is why the streets of Israel’s major cities have been jam-packed with anti-Netanyahu protesters since the formation of his new government.

“In ‘normal’ times, Netanyahu’s government has embraced the most authoritarian of policies. Now, in a genuine emergency, it will likely push the limits even further. Its leaders have, in the last few days, seemingly decided to raze large parts of Gaza in response to the Hamas outrage.

“Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has, inexcusably, called Palestinians ‘human animals,’ apparently using this dehumanizing language as a rationale for the blitzkrieg ordered against the besieged enclave.

“Days into Israel’s response, the images out of Gaza look like Grozny after the Russians razed the city. If Israel’s leadership goes down a path of collective punishment, as it seems to be doing, people of good conscience must of course denounce this.

“But, in the same way that Israeli assassinations and indiscriminate bombings of civilian populations and infrastructure deserve condemnation, in the same way that efforts to displace the West Bank’s population via the building of new settlements deserve condemnation, so too the extremism, the zealotry, the fanatical vision of Hamas also merit unreserved calumny rather than praise.

“And that, for one particularly morally myopic part of the left in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and in many other Western countries, is apparently a bridge too far…

“One can and should shout from the rooftops about the horrors of Israeli actions in the West Bank and in Gaza. One can and should call out the daily humiliations faced by Palestinian communities kept walled in and economically strangled by Israeli policy. But one can do all these things without then turning around and celebrating the massacre of civilians, of children, by Hamas this past week…” -Sasha Abramsky, The Nation