Stopping the Madness over Israel and Hamas

Can we keep our humanity while all about us are losing theirs?

No issue polarizes so many people as extremely as Palestine and Israel. Even so, we are in uncharted territory today. Never before have we seen so much targeting of Jews, Muslims or Arabs by the respective camps. And this time, it’s not only extremists that are taking part, but many elements that are usually more rational. But rationality is at a premium.

There is a humanizing way to experience all of this, and it isn’t that hard to see. We can look at the massive traumas on each side and empathize with the people who are suffering. As a principle, that’s simple. In practice, it’s harder, for a variety of reasons.

Seeing the people behind the numbers

On the Israeli side, we can look not only at the 1400 or so people who were killed by Hamas on October 7, the more than 5,400 injured and over 220 kidnapped; we can also recognize that in a country as small as Israel, this means that nearly every Israeli, save, perhaps for a few cloistered communities like some ultra-orthodox ones, has been impacted in some personal way by this attack. A quarter of a million Israelis have been displaced from their homes in northern Israel over fear of rocket attacks by Hezbollah. That may seem relatively minor against what is happening in Gaza, and it is; but imagine if you were forced to flee your home for fear of a rocket attack. You’re not likely to feel better about that because someone on the other side is going through something much worse. It’s still traumatizing.

The national and personal trauma in Israel is intense, and it must not be minimized. It doesn’t justify the bloodthirstiness of the response, which, at the outset, was supported by a huge and clear majority of Israelis. In that regard, Americans over, say, 30 years of age should be able to relate. We were no different after 9/11. When I, and fellow members of Jewish Voice for Peace organized a small peace vigil in San Francisco a few days after the September 11 attacks in 2001, we were not exactly greeted with open arms by the passers-by. Nor did we expect to be. But our humanity demanded we try to stand against what we could already see was going to be years of bloodshed that would do nothing to bring back the dead, and would only create more hate, not deter acts of murder. And some Israelis are doing the same.

People can talk about the context of the attack, and it’s important to keep that context in mind. But context is lost on someone whose friend was killed in the attack or whose loved one is being held today in Gaza. It is important that people don’t lose sight of that, because keeping that focus is what maintains our humanity while those around us are so willingly losing theirs.

On the Palestinian side, the numbers are staggering because they just keep growing. That is one thing we can be thankful for about the Israeli side: almost all of the casualty figures are from the attack on October 7. There have been very few since then, although that can change, of course. But Israel has proven once again that it is capable of inflicting far more damage.

Like Israelis, the Palestinians are a relatively small nation. As of November 1, that nation has experienced over 8,800 fatalities in Gaza and more than 120 in the West Bank. Over 25,000 Palestinians have been injured. Additionally, more than 1,000 Palestinian fighters were killed in the October 7 attack, and thousands of Palestinians have been taken prisoner by the Israelis for no reason other than being Palestinian. Most of northern Gaza has been destroyed, and more than 1.2 million people have been internally displaced. Food, water, fuel, and medication are nearly non-existent in Gaza now.

In that small nation, whether you live in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Israel or even outside the Israel-Palestine area, you almost certainly have a friend, relative, or colleague who has been deeply affected, perhaps killed, by Israel’s onslaught in Gaza.

So how do we take these things seriously, and how do we maintain our humanity? It might seem easy to some. Distinguishing between civilians and combatants, perhaps. Distinguishing between Netanyahu’s government and Hamas on one hand and the ordinary Palestinians and Israelis on the other, maybe.

But it’s not so simple. And it becomes even less so when we want to address both the need for safety and the very real anxiety being experienced by people here in the United States who are Jewish, Muslim, Arab, or simply have deep, profound connections to people, friends, and family in Israel and Palestine.

So, a few thoughts…

More than ever, it is critical to separate Jews and Israel

As much as I want to calm this conversation down, I cannot stay silent in the face of ignorance. So here’s a statement that many people are not going to like.

In the October 7 attack, Hamas did not attack anyone because they are Jewish. They were attacked because they are Israeli and that’s not the same thing.

This distinction has been intentionally blurred by Israel and its supporters for decades. But now it serves to enflame violence and cast a pall of terror on Jews everywhere.

The fact is, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was right when he said that the Hamas attack didn’t occur in a vacuum. But while many Israeli and mainstream Jewish leaders are succeeding in convincing people otherwise, that context was not blind hatred of Jews, but 75 years of Palestinian dispossession, 56 years of occupation, and 16 years of a merciless siege of Gaza.

Let’s be clear, attacking Israeli civilians because they’re Israeli is no more acceptable than attacking Jews for being Jewish. Accepting the reality of what happened October 7—where the dead, injured and, yes, the kidnapped, were not all Jews—in no way mitigates, much less justifies, Hamas’ criminal and bloody actions. But understanding what happened and why, grappling with the context in which it took place without ever remotely justifying it is important if we want to stop the suffering, stop the killing, and make sure that Israelis and Palestinians can all live with the rights that all humans are entitled to. First and foremost among these is the right to live, to not be wantonly murdered.

We can and must agree that attacking people because of who they are is intolerable. But understanding this attack for what it was—an unacceptable and thoroughly illegal and immoral attack on civilians by a militant group who sees themselves as representing a colonized, dispossessed, and despairing people—allows for a future that holds both accountability and restorative justice for all that can pave the way to a better future. Otherwise, all we do is what Israel is doing now: mount one atrocity atop another creating new generations of angry, traumatized people, some of whom will see no better path than to lash out as violently as they can against the cause of their trauma. That is a group of people whose ranks have swelled this month thanks to both Israel and Hamas. Nothing good comes of that for anyone.

We must also recognize which of our own sensitivities we can expect others to mitigate and which we can’t. earlier this week, I listened for a while to Jewish students at Columbia University talk about what they are experiencing now. Some of it was heart-rending and was clearly about antisemitism. That includes holding Jews responsible for Israel’s actions; assuming a person’s politics based on their Jewish identity; and, certainly, threats, intimidation, and violence.

But then, the young woman who was speaking also said that she felt threatened when she saw that her Zionist views are not welcome in all spaces. Zionism is a political view. Just as a pro-choice person is unlikely to feel welcome in a group of right-wing evangelical Christians or a socialist is unlikely to be welcome in the College Republican Club, a Zionist is not going to be welcome in many anti-racist spaces, because, like it or not, Political Zionism is and has always been based on elevating the rights of Jews over those of Palestinians.

And let me be clear: regardless of how much Israel is making you furious, it is never acceptable to threaten, intimidate, or employ violence against anyone for their political views. And, yes, that includes even the most noxious views. Even if one holds truly abhorrent views, such as white nationalism, that is not, in and of itself, a justification for threatening or violent acts. If those views are, themselves, used to threaten or are acted on in a violent way, that’s obviously a different story. But simply holding a political view, regardless of what it is, cannot justify discrimination, much less threats or violence. It is one thing to say that you don’t welcome Zionists into your anti-racist space, and quite another to make someone fear for their safety because they are Zionist.

On the other hand, supporters of Israel have to start recognizing that, whether or not they think Israeli policies are justified, Israel is committing war crimes every day, and that was before October 7. That is going to mean being shunned by people who have a problem with those actions. Just like a Jewish group is very likely to be unwelcoming to someone explicitly supporting Hamas.

Attacking people for their identity is never acceptable

The issues here go way beyond college campuses. We have seen a well-publicized Islamophobic murder of a Muslim child Wadea Al-Fayoume, in Illinois. In another case, a Muslim woman—pediatrician Dr. Talat Jehan Khan, in Texas—was also stabbed to death, though it is as yet unclear what the motive was. When the president of a synagogue in Detroit, Samantha Woll, was murdered in her home, authorities were quick to state that they did not believe it be a hate crime. The quickness of their declaration, though, spoke volumes, and many still question whether that was true or not. Police claim to have several “persons of interest” they are pursuing, so whether this was an antisemitic attack or not may well come to light soon.

In any case, reports of Islamophobic and antisemitic hate attacks have soared since October 7. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reports 774 complaints between October 7 and October 24, while also noting a report from 2021 that indicates that 85% of Muslims who experience hate crimes do not report them (unsurprising, as people of color, which most Muslims are, tend to mistrust police for very good reasons, and Muslims doubly so).  

Meanwhile antisemitic incidents have also greatly increased, although many sources of statistics on antisemitism rely on the Anti-Defamation League, whose distortion of those figures by including support for Palestinian rights or criticism of Israel makes tracking a precise number impossible. Still, ADL claims a 388% rise in antisemitic incidents, which doesn’t sound hard to believe based on how many stories have come out from Jewish communities and individuals all around the country. And, since ADL is comparing it to their own numbers and both sets would falsely include criticism of Israel, it seems like the actual number should be close to that level of increase.

This is where the fight has to be joined in a serious way. But it can only happen if we agree to value all lives equally, and to recognizes equally the heinousness of both Islamophobia and antisemitism. Too often, we see one side or the other complain that the other is getting “too much attention” or, worse, looking for reasons to justify or minimize one bigotry or the other. And, too often we see various bodies focusing on only one of the two and downplaying the other.

But in order to stand against both antisemitism and Islamophobia as one, we also have to be willing to value all lives in Israel and Gaza equally as well. Unity against hate here cannot endure unless it is matched by unity against the killing of innocents in Israel and Palestine. That means a ceasefire now, it means sending a clear message to Israel and to Hamas, to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other militant groups as well as to Israeli settlers, that we condemn ALL attacks on civilians. And above all, it means that we must affirm in every action, and every statement that there can be no end to hate and violence until every single Palestinian enjoys the same civil, human, personal, political, and national rights as every single Israeli.

There is no other viable way forward

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Confusing the right to resist

Some are arguing that the Hamas attack on October 7 was an expression of the Palestinian right to resist. Let’s be very clear. The right to resist an occupation or, in Gaza’s case, a siege is very real, and it absolutely includes armed resistance. It may well be that, in the legitimate exercise of that right, innocents could be hurt or even killed as a side effect. International law requires guerillas, like regular armies, to do all they can to avoid harm to civilians.

But what Hamas did on October 7 was not an example of the exercise of the right to resist, not by a long shot. Israel has not released full information on those killed in the attack, but they have said that 312 of them were soldiers. Those soldiers were legitimate targets of armed resistance. That shouldn’t just be dismissed, however. While international law permits the killing of combatants, our humanity should demand that we treat every death, soldier, fighter, civilian, whoever, as a tragedy. Whether the killing was legal or not, a family lost a loved one, people lost a friend. Too often, we look for reasons to make killing and violence OK. It should be a tool of desperate last resort, regardless of the legality of the target. And in every case, it is a tragedy.

Appallingly, more than a few protesters have praised the attackers, using an image of a fighter gliding in as symbol of resistance. Palestinians, suffering under the yoke of occupation, dispossession and routine, daily violence, may look to such symbols to inspire, to give some hope. At the very least, they make them feel that Palestinians are fighting back. It’s understandable, even if it can’t be condoned.

But seeing that in protests in the United States is flat-out unacceptable. Palestinian rights advocates cite international law all the time. I don’t think international humanitarian law is either all that well crafted or a useful tool for liberation as there is no real enforcement mechanism besides the same old “might makes right” standard that allows for penalties only when it suits the United States. But if you want to hold Israel accountable to it, you have to hold all parties accountable to it and hold them to those standards.

More to the point, I see no good for oppressed people, in Palestine or anywhere else, coming out of a standard that allows for attacking civilians. If that’s the world we live in, that’s the playing field that colonizers and oppressors fare best on. We should be fighting with all our might to change that.

And this extends to the ill-advised open letter from Harvard students as well as some speakers at protests that raised so much controversy for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). In academia, anti-colonialism is a major force in many disciplines, and this is to be celebrated. But the Harvard students’ letter was, to be kind, clumsily written.

They are not wrong to say that the root cause of all of the violence in Israel and Palestine is Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinian people. But that doesn’t mean that Palestinians have no agency at all. Hamas’ attack was an action not covered by the right to resist, and it was a brutal, bloody act. To imply, as the Harvard students’ letter did, that Hamas bears no blame for this because they were resisting occupation and siege is just wrong. It’s wrong in terms of international law and it’s wrong ethically. The same can be said for those among the DSA that were praising the attack. It’s unacceptable, and all real progressives should be calling it out.

Confusing self-defense

Israel has the right to defend itself.

It’s a virtual rite of passage in Washington to be able to utter that phrase whenever Israel uses force against the Palestinians. But it is also a badly abused phrase.

Of course, Israel has the right to defend itself and the obligation to protect its citizens. However, one thing that gets left out of this equation all the time is that Israel is equally obligated to maintain the safety and well-being of the people under its occupation, and yes, that includes Gaza, which, despite Ariel Sharon’s decision to remove the settlements and soldiers from inside Gaza, is still legally under occupation due to Israel’s control of almost all of its borders as well as its coastline and airspace.

As I explained back in July, and as legal scholar Noura Erakat explained in greater detail, Israel can and must protect its citizens but it doesn’t have the right to use overwhelming military force against a people under its occupation to do so, as it would with an enemy state. You can look up the reasoning behind this, but that’s what the law says.

Even if you want to quibble with the law, there is no sense in which the right to self-defense can possibly mean the right to revenge. The right of self-defense, even if it applied to Gaza, would not include the right to destroy half the territory. And it certainly does not exempt Israel from the laws of war which bar targeting civilians and collective punishment, both of which Israel has made no secret at all of doing in this round.

That also provides a certain context for what Palestinian and other Arab Americans feel when they see signs of support for Israel. We can all see the signs on synagogues and Jewish community centers reading “We Stand With Israel.” For Palestinians right now that means support for a military campaign that features untold devastation. Even in better times it means support of apartheid.

The number of dead in Gaza already rivals the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion. The number of children killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7 is already greater than the total for all conflicts in the world for any single year since 2019. That is a stunning and sickening fact.

I get that many Jews, and others as well, want to show solidarity with Israel. But if we hope Palestinians and their supporters would think twice about glorifying a Hamas fighter, should Israel’s supporters perhaps stop to consider what they are saying to their Palestinian and Arab neighbors?

Stop the crackdown on support for Palestinians and the erasure of hostages and prisoners

People are losing jobs, offers, and academic positions in their universities because they are sporting Palestinian flags—not Hamas flags, Palestinian ones. Others are being harassed, even assaulted. They are suffering those losses for signing petitions calling for ceasefires. This is intolerable. It would be just as intolerable if people were suffering such penalties for saying they support Israel’s “right to exist,” a right that doesn’t exist and that no state has. (See my book with Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The limits of Progressive Politics for an in-depth explanation of this point).

That has to stop. In Europe, the situation is even worse, as people are being arrested for rallying for Palestinian lives. That is not a place the United States should go.

There is also the controversy about people ripping down flyers that show Israelis being held captive in Gaza.

Let’s be clear. The taking of hostages is a crime under international law, and it’s just wrong. Every hostage being held by Hamas should be freed unconditionally. But there are other points to be made here.

One is that the hostages are being used cynically as a means of supporting Israel’s actions, and that is bizarre. Israel’s bombing may well have already killed some of the hostages. Israel doesn’t know where most of them are, and has been bombing all of Gaza for three weeks completely indiscriminately. Chances are indeed very high that at least a few of the hostages have been killed.

But that, frankly, doesn’t seem to both Netanyahu and his cabinet. From day one, they have shown little concern for them. This has not gone unnoticed in Israel, though it mostly has in the United States.

But these are not the only kidnap victims.

Israel has long practiced its own form of kidnapping, stealing into Palestinian towns, villages, and cities in the West Bank and arresting Palestinians, often children, and holding them without charge or trial, sometimes for months or even years, in “administrative detention.” Those Palestinians are not allowed to see their families or even their lawyers in many cases and some have been tortured.

The ranks of those Palestinian prisoners have grown since October 7, including thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza, in Israel because they had employment there, who have also been put in prison for no reason other than being Palestinian.

Palestinians often ask, where are the posters for these people?

They too should be freed unconditionally. Since neither side is likely to do that, many, including many of the Israeli kidnap victims’ families, have called for releasing all Palestinian political prisoners in exchange for all the hostages in Gaza. Seems reasonable, but Israel will not hear of it.

It is wrong to tear down the posters of Israelis being held in Gaza. It is an attempt to erase those Israelis and it should be opposed by any ethical standard. But so should the erasure of Palestinian prisoners. All should lifted up, and all should be freed.

As you can see, treating all Israelis and Palestinians with the dignity, human rights, and humanity that they all deserve is a straightforward idea, but one that faces a more twisted path to becoming reality. Nonetheless, that’s how we get out of this morass, that’s how we stop the bloodshed, that’s how we stand against antisemitism and Islamophobia in our own society.

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Recent Writings and Appearances

How US Democrats are fueling a brutal Israeli revenge on Gaza

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-war-gaza-us-democrats-fuelling-brutal-revenge

Looking at the Democratic failure to treat Palestinian lives as worthwhile.

Interview on Background Briefing with Ian Masters

https://soundcloud.com/user-830442635

Interview from October 10

Interview: Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael

https://parallaxviews.podbean.com/e/mplitnick/

Long-form interview from October 11

The Biden administration has given a full green light to Israel’s war crimes

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/the-biden-administration-has-given-a-full-green-light-to-israels-war-crimes/

Detailing the culpability of Joe Biden

Biden’s Mideast policy implodes

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/bidens-mideast-policy-implodes/

How the Gaza campaign has utterly demolished Biden’s regional policy.

Plan to force Palestinians to Sinai yet another Biden disaster

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/plan-to-force-palestinians-to-sinai-yet-another-biden-disaster/

Reacting to Biden’s failed attempt to facilitate relocation of Gazans to the Sinai.

Biden has no endgame in Gaza

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/biden-has-no-endgame-in-gaza/

Biden has no strategy or vision for how to deal with Palestine now.

Also, follow me on Twitter @MJPlitnick, on Bluesky @mjplitnick.bsky.social, Threads @mjplitnick, or Mastodon @MitchellPlitnick@journa.host for my latest hot takes, comments, and news updates.