I recorded a second video this week (I promise I won’t make it a habit) because I finally formulated something I’ve been mulling over for a while now. Hope to see many of you on our call for paid subscribers this Thursday at 11 AM EDT with Josh Paul and
Abby, it seems to me we should be able to hold the idea that civilians are the beneficiaries of, and often complicit in, terrible injustice, and also that their lives are precious and they should not be harmed. You mentioned white US settlers in the 19th century but what about today. If Israeli Jewish civilians don't have the right to life because they're living on stolen land, then why do Americans?
Too late, Peter. You and yours have made it clear Israelis are colonizers, apartheid racists, genocidal Nazis, and the rest, and have for decades stumped for people who murdered Israeli civilians with just as much glee and joy as they did on 10/7. To start to stop the boulder in motion now is much too little, much too late. What, you didn't think your fellow travelers meant it when they said "my heroes have always killed colonizers"?
Nice try with the whataboutery, but the topic of discussion is the pro-Palestinian left. Peter is willing to admit about the rot in the heart of the movement. Are you?
No shit I do, I'm not even a part of that moronic and self-defeating coterie. I have a pretty idiosyncratic position on the conflict. You on the other hand engage in temper tantrums to avoid dealing with the fact that the side you root for has a Kahanist national security minister and its own murderous terror gangs.
Fantastic, I'm glad we agree that large portions of the pro-Palestinian left have deeply entrenched beliefs of hatred and dehumanization of Israelis to the point where they are celebrating and cheering the unspeakable atrocities committed by Hamas on 10/7.
As for "the side I root for", I'm not sure what you're referring to. You don't have to be pro-Israel or pro-Israeli government to recognize the hateful face of the pro-Palestinian left. You just have to be intellectually honest.
Not exactly idiot. These Hamas depravities did not occur in the West Bank. No moral equivalence here. I bet you don’t believe that babies were beheaded or maybe just a few.
I can read the alphabet but don't understand the vowels, I interpolate from other Semitic languages. And I know it's most famous from La Familia and company.
Thanks Peter. Perhaps what fits my view best is the belief that no one deserves to be killed, AND that those of us living on colonized land have the responsibility to understand our histories and take action to correct injustices that result from that history.
To the contrary, a revitalized political movement for a Palestinian homeland is more essential now than ever. The problem isn’t Palestinian national liberation, it’s the means and goals in achieving it.
This horrible tragic moment has at least clarified a few thing. Just as it showed a split between an older humane western left and the younger less liberal, more ideological left, it also exposes many who long claimed to have supported a 2SS but in reality had sought to destroy it.
I’m sorry Paul, are you agreeing with me the pro Palestinian national movement does think certain people deserve to be killed? If not, can you say something pertinent to the topic?
Well, Hamas, PIJ, and other militant groups obviously think so and they are part of the Palestinian national liberation movement, so yes, I agree in that sense.
But I read your framing as having the intent to wave the bloody shirt not to humanize their victims—a laudable act that I would join you in doing— but rather to rally the cause of delegitimizing the whole idea of a movement for a Palestinian homeland, which was your exact position before 10/7. That reading strikes me as cynical and opportunistic on your part.
I would disagree with you that that is the goal of the Palestinian national liberation movement. I would argue the goal of the movement is to repeat 10/7 over and over again until all Israelis are dead, expelled, or otherwise oppressed. And the behavior of its members over the past three weeks would back up my argument more than yours. Yes?
I've never really seen a movement for a Palestinian homeland, unless you mean all of Mandatory Palestine. Palestinians correctly believe that all of it is their homeland.
"No one deserves to be killed" is a broad blanket statement we ( as humans who were raised properly) believe or say when we are talking about collateral damage. Not literally - it is rational to suspect and support some planned deaths which can be justified (the execution of a serial killer or child molester rather than wasting "rehab resources" in them for example). May I propose if we all try to find some good in everyone we can make better choices about who gets to lead and who should perhaps follow - (why allow the dummies to be in front to lead us off the cliff) or maybe have them in front to "get it" first ahahaha.
I laugh to keep from crying about all the disgusting ways people try to hurt each other. Pathetic really - imagine for one second the beauty, productivity, influence and power if the Israelis and the Palestinians ever came together? OMG WTF would we all do with all of our newly found free time? Oh that's right we could all go back to "Keeping Up with the Kardashians". I'm only speaking of the "dummies" of course:). Be Well Happy Holidays and May Peace of Mind Not Elude You - take care!
If this is what Palestinian liberation looks like, October 7, then there is something rotten at the core of the heart of that movement. They are modern day Nazis. Anyone who supports Hamas is a Nazi
Abby, as a proud member of the pro-Palestinian left, are you aware that Western supporters of Palestine like yourself have on numerous occasions being filmed pulling down posters with pictures of Israelis being held hostage in Gaza? Do you have any insights into why pro-Palestinian people would do something like that?
Sheer anger at the genocide happening right now in Gaza. It's not strategic, it's not antisemitic, it violates free speech principles--it's motivated by anger.
That makes sense. When Palestinians and their supporters get angry, they take that anger out on innocent Israeli civilians including children. Checks out.
So you moved from "it's a lie" to "who gives a shit". Progress is being made.
I think if I was pro-Palestine, I wouldn't want these people illustrating the ugly and dehumanizing side of my movement. I wouldn't want them showing the world how much pro-Palestine people, not just Hamas, hate Jews, including Jewish children. But hey, that's me. You clearly don't seem to mind.
Exactly, Peter. Your precious pro-Palestinian movement just gave radical Muslims worldwide the green light to slaughter and rape Americans, especially American Jews. Well done. Are you proud of yourself?
We who support freedom and justice for all have not given anyone a green light to take away freedom and commit injustice. It is the US and its allies in Europe that have been giving Israel a green light to oppress Palestinians that has resulted in this mutual tragedy. And, FYI, as horrible as the Hamas invasion of Israel was, it is not continuing. But the genocide of the Palestinians is continuing, and everyone of conscience should be advocating for it to stop. Bring the hostages home and stop the bombing of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. After my Palestine solidarity rally I went across the street to the people with the Israeli flag, shook their hands, and told them of my sorrow for everyone who is suffering. They softened and we had a moment of human connection. "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." Gandhi
Sorry, I’m having trouble hearing your litany of propaganda talking points over the screams of “there is only one solution,” “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” and “gas the Jews.”
By the way, accusing American Jews of being complicit in a nonexistent genocide is further encouraging violence against them. There is blood on your hands too, Lois.
I never said any of those things. Everything i actually said has been verified over and over again by endless news media.You are reading through a filter of your own narrow point of view. And, like Peter Beinart, I am Jewish. Since the US government is using my meager tax dollars to fund Israeli attacks on Palestine, I guess I do have a bit of blood on my hands. but it is not of my own choosing.
Why would it matter that you personally have never chanted “gas the Jews,” when thousands of people in your movement have? You’re not as important as you think you are. Nor is it relevant that you are Jewish, your movement remains anti semitic.
And by the way, endless news media is by no means asserting there is an “ongoing genocide” of Palestinians. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Please name half a dozen people in my "Movement" who has said "Gas the Jews." It is very likely some white supremacists have said that. And, news media are reporting 5,000 Gazans killed by Israeli bombing as of a few days ago. Thousands more warned to flee their homes, which are being destroyed by Israeli bombing. Israel refusing to allow shipments of fuel into Gaza, which means thousands more will die in hospitals without adequate treatment. By international definition this is genocide, as well as ethnic cleansing. The definition of genocide was created by a Jewish attorney following the genocide of Jews in Europe. It applies here,as well. So, what is your source for the "thousands of people" who have chanted ,"Gas the Jews"? And, what, exactly, are you defining as my "Movement"? I warn you, I read, and write, widely. I do not make up my facts. Nobody in their right mind would be ashamed of wanting their fellow human beings to be safe and free. The Israelis will never be safe and free until they stop oppressing the Palestinians. People will always fight back. It is human nature. Unfortunately human beings can get pretty ugly when their backs are up against the wall.
No one would be helped more than the Palestinians if Israel destroys Hamas.
The Palestinian people are also held hostage by Hamas. Most of the $1.5 billion of humanitarian aid sent to Gaza has been used by Hamas and kept away from its citizens. People are intentionally kept hungry to sustain their anger. Water pipes into Gaza have been ripped up and turned into missiles to launch at Israeli citizens. The people are told to not leave their apartment buildings that house missile launchers or cover tunnels when Israel warns them ahead of time to leave - so they can be used as human shields. And this is who you support???
As an American, you’ll have to forgive me if that sounds a lot like how invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein was cynically sold to the public as a matter of benevolence and empowerment to the Iraqi people to spread democracy.
War planners, we later learned, had no such intent or realistic plans to achieve it and the nation was plunged into civil war and regional instability that left a half-million dead.
Paul, do you think Hamas has the Palestinian people it is ruling over's best interest? Polls, while difficult to administer for fear of being caught by Hamas, indicate that the people feel like prisoners.
No, but neither would a long invasion and war tasked to “destroy” Hamas, which is as much of a nebulous ideology of Islamist resistance as it is an organization with a distinct and finite list of members.
What I find especially interesting in this response is that I never mentioned anything about American Jews, or any other kind of Jews. That appears to have come out of Mr. Anonymous' imagination.
No, I saw the videos of the DSA and their fellow far leftists celebrating Hamas’ actions. They speak much louder than Peter’s cringing apologist weaseling.
Sorry kid, the only people who are happy to see human beings killed are Palestine and their sycophants on the far left. No amount of whataboutism will change that. Own it.
Perhaps, but if that’s the case he should have said that at the time, not three and a half weeks and four articles later. Peters silence and moral cowardice then speaks volumes now. He has lost whatever legitimacy he once had on both sides of the fence. And it couldn’t be more deserved.
The lives of colonizer people are also precious, I agree, but there is a disanalogy between non-indigenous Americans and Israelis, namely that Israel's ethnic cleansing and genocide is ongoing, whereas the US' is not. Palestinians are currently a subjugated people, in a way that indigenous Americans are not.
It’s very easy to give full rights (which is not what Native Americans have) once you’ve decimated the population to a point they’re insignificant in any electoral way. The reason Palestinians and Israelis have any conflict is exactly because there was no genocide of Palestinians and they are numerically significant. Don’t act like you’re morally superior being in a country that reduced the native population so much what they think and do doesn’t affect anything. You’re the one who needs to deal with an immoral genocide, not Israelis.
Aren't native Americans citizens of the US, with all the rights of citizens? The US defines itself as a state of all its citizens.
What land are you referring to that's being taken away from them? Don't they have access to the general land of the USA? I mean do they have less rights to purchase land than non-native American people?
I'm not an American and don't know the details of this, but I thought that native Americans were formally equal to everyone else, but like black people etc. were facing civil rights violations (such as police brutality). That can be dealt with by civil rights activism. I do know, despite not being American, that they are not subjected to anything in the vicinity of what Palestinians are being subjected to by a fascist state of which they're not even citizens in most cases.
No one would be helped more than the Palestinians if Israel destroys Hamas.
The Palestinian people are also held hostage by Hamas. Most of the $1.5 billion of humanitarian aid sent to Gaza has been used by Hamas and kept away from its citizens. People are intentionally kept hungry to sustain their anger. Water pipes into Gaza have been ripped up and turned into missiles to launch at Israeli citizens. The people are told to not leave their apartment buildings that house missile launchers or cover tunnels when Israel warns them ahead of time to leave - so they can be used as human shields. And this is who you support???
What's to prevent Hamas etc. from winning an election in a binational Israel/Palestine. Whatever that something is, we have to find it and nurture it, because it's the region's only hope.
My intuition is a coalition of secular and moderate Israelis and Palestinians coming together to create a new country. Nothing happens without real collaboration between our peoples.
They don’t. But as a previous poster said, we do have a responsibility to understand our history in the US and to make sincere amends to Native Americans.
And, BTW, thank you for your newsletter and other writings. I look to you to help me try to stay afloat on these issues. I am woefully ignorant, of many things. I have Jewish friends whom I love dearly and they are in terrible pain. And, at the same time, I hate to see anyone suffer.
Did ending apartheid in South Africa mean the white people in South Africa didn't have the right to life? Of course not. Ending apartheid in Israel does not call for people to die. On the contrary, it calls for people to be able to live freely. How is that even remotely threatening a people's life?
I appreciate all that you are saying here. It's an interesting idea I'm trying to get my head around. Of course I don't want anyone including Israeli Jews including zionists to be harmed, but it is hard to consider their pain when I think about the past 75+ years of Palestinian pain and erasure and the world's refusal to see/hear any of that. And yet, it is a strategy you are proposing to ask Hamas to take the higher road (once again) since Israel has gone so low most people, even zionists can't look away. And yet I don't think it will make any difference to the state of Israel and their mission which is clear as day and needs no excuse in their eyes. They are proud of what they do. I have never seen hubris on the level of the state of Israel. This escalation was set to happen even without Hamas's actions which are small in comparison. So it's about optics, what the world sees as it is finally watching. And then maybe if Hamas were to act this way, the world would know for sure who the monsters are and where the "pure evil" lies. Thank you for your brave idea.
Israel has never "gone so low" as what Hamas did on 10/7. But thank you for making it clear Israelis are "the monsters". This kind of dehumanization is exactly what Peter is talking about.
Emma, perhaps I am out-of-line, but can I ask how a person feels any attachment to land occupied by one's great-grandfather? My parents both grew up on small farms and these are homes that were abandoned when small farming went away. The house where my father lived as a child burned down when I was a child and I remember very distinctly that he was moved nearly to tears as we visited but did he wish to rebuild what was reallly not much more than a log cabin? No. While I felt bad for my Dad I literally felt no attachment to the home/property. What I am saying is that I think humans move on. There is no 75 years of pain in my opinion and if I'm hoping you can explain to me how one forms an attachment to a home left in 1948 or 1967?
While I myself have no attachment to any land - I am a Jew of the Diaspora, raised in Philadelphia in lots of chaos and trauma - I can imagine (and you can hear it in my play, available as a podcast available here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/abrahams-daughters-by-emma-goldman-sherman/id1329778196?i=1000462709862 that anyone whose family story is forced migration will have the inherited attachment along with the inherited trauma. I don't think the question is who has an attachment to the land. Clearly many people do. The point is that like the Native Americans, the indigenous people were forced out in great numbers and have been trying to re-establish themselves on the land of Palestine (you may call it Israel, I call it Palestine) for 75+ years now since the Nakba. I have listened to the stories of many Palestinians in person in Gaza, Ramallah, Nablus, and other parts of Palestine, and I was always astounded by their humanity, their ability not to hate, to seek amicable solutions. It is not in my nature to be as kind or compassionate, although it is my task to continue to work toward that kind of compassion. I am sure that if they could move on, they would. But I also ask, if the people we now refer to as Israelis were ever interested in true peace with their neighbors/those inhabiting the land of Palestine when the Brits "gave" the land to the zionists, why didn't they work toward peace? Why didn't they work toward healing from trauma? I have worked for years to heal my trauma(s), and I know that healing is possible. The State of Israel has every possible means at their disposal for healing, and yet they have consistently chosen to create oppression, pain and suffering as a method of insuring their safety - to me, that is what makes no sense. And endangers so many, both Jews and Palestinians alike.
Appreciate your perspective. It baffles me why Jews and Arab Palestinians cannot live in peace but from a historical perspective, I just cannot say I think the Palestinians have been treated terribly and by historical standards they've been treated positively well, although admittedly as 2nd class citizens which is offensive to me. I've never been to the Middle East but have lived in areas where Native Americans lived and were a material portion of the population (northwest MN, Manitoba and NW Ontario). I never felt any hate but there; they went to the same grocery stores, schools, played hockey, etc. but they did live separately too, of their own volition, except those who married outside of the tribe. I knew people who grew up with them and got along well with them but I did not have enough interaction to know them well so I have no real insights other than their situation was not any worse than other working-class people where I lived. My wife who is originally from Puerto Rico but grew up in the Midwest got asked if she was Native American sometimes and it bothered her as she thought there was some sense of being treated differently. I'm a white American male who has a hard time relating to it as treating someone based on the color of their skin just strikes me as oh so silly, but I know it is still exists at least to an extent even in the US.
Jeff, you and your parents weren't indoctrinated since birth to believe that a great injustice was done to you and your nation and everything bad in your life is the fault of the Jews. See things from a Palestinian perspective. It's brainwashing to the point where they can cheer mass murder and the butchering of babies in their cradles.
I don't think I've ever known any Palestinians to cheer mass murder or butchering of babies in their cradles - they are among the most compassionate people I know. I have sat in their homes where they have held the shells of the tear gas they have been forced to breathe with Made in Pittsburgh stamped into the canisters and spoken of peace, peace and more peace, seeing clearly the work of the zionist project as a system and not any individuals, speaking of their own martyrs simultaneously with the same dreams of peace I had until then only attributed to saints. I was the only Jew in the room - they were not always aware I was there. It is only the Israelis I have heard spewing hatred which I attribute to their indoctrination of fear from their history, the frequent trips to Germany to see the concentration camps, the free birthright trips that insist on keeping the history of trauma alive and thriving in the minds of all Jews. This is the only brainwashing I have seen, and I've been watching for a long time. I'm 58. My father started to build settlement homes in the early 70s. I hope they all come down soon. I want the zionist project dismantled river to sea. I am not ashamed to say that it is wrong, morally wrong, and does not deserve to exist the way it does and has for 75+years. And that doesn't mean I want bloodshed. I want new government systems. I want peaceful solutions. I want an end to violence and that includes the violence of starvation and the ghettoizing of the Palestinians. Forever. For a true and lasting peace.
Here's what the Palestinian leaders have refused to do for 75 years, rejecting every opportunity for peace:
1) recognize Israel's right to exist
2) accept having their own country next to Israel
3) acknowledge that the "right of return" of millions of descendants of refugees will be to a new state of Palestine, and not to Israel.
There would have been peace long ago, and still could be, if these 3 basics were met. So why won't the Palestinians? Because their leadership is corrupt. Ever wonder why in this incredible oil-rich part of the world, no Muslim countries few give any aid? Because they know it isn't used to help citizens, it's used for the corrupt leaders and to build weapons.
How awful that you, a Jew who apparently helps people suffering from PTSD, are so blinded that you side with Hamas and the PA who have kept their people in this state for 75 years -- rejecting every opportunity for peace with Israel, launching murderous terror attacks against civilians, and now this butchery on October 7 that even Israeli Arabs are condemning (but not you). No one would be helped more than the Palestinians if Israel destroys Hamas.
The Palestinian people are also held hostage by Hamas. Most of the $1.5 billion of humanitarian aid sent to Gaza has been used by Hamas and kept away from its citizens. People are intentionally kept hungry to sustain their anger. Water pipes into Gaza have been ripped up and turned into missiles to launch at Israeli citizens. The people are told to not leave their apartment buildings that house missile launchers or cover tunnels when Israel warns them ahead of time to leave - so they can be used as human shields. And this is who you support???
Peter, what's your red line? How far do Palestinians have to go before you stop supporting them? Because if celebrating mass murder isn't far enough, I'd really like to know what is.
I'm happy to answer. My red line for Israel is that if the Israeli government ever started intentionally targeting civilians and proudly bragging it, the way Palestine does, and if a majority of the Israeli population actively supported the intentional targeting of civilians, I would stop supporting Israel. Intentional targeting of civilians is a red line for me. Obviously it's not one for Peter and the rest. What's your red line vis Palestine?
Oh, cool, well that's happening. On Oct. 10, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told the press that, in the Gaza airstrikes, “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” President Herzog said there are no innocent civilians in Gaza because “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible." Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant declared on October 9th: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.” In Tel Aviv, someone hung a professionally printed banner reading “Zero Gazans” from a pedestrian bridge. So we're past your red line.
I'm not sure exactly where my red line is on either, but I do know that the mass murder and torture of civilians is well past it. So Israel, Hamas and PIJ have long since crossed the "red line" for me.
You have a strange understanding of intent if you are genuinely looking at Israel’s response and you don’t see that your red line was crossed long ago in this conflict.
As a rule, do you accept the justifications of powerful states at face value? The answer is probably yes, but there is a further complication if so, because Israel’s top leaders have openly said they are not restraining themselves by avoiding civilian deaths. Widely reported in the J Post.
Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm asking him how far the Palestinians and their supporters have to go before he stops supporting them. What his red line is. Maybe you can answer the question. What's your red line for Palestinians?
We don’t stop supporting them. That’s the key. Just like you won’t stop supporting Israel when it commits genocide. But that’s a feature not a bug for you.
How many Jews would Palestinians have to massacre for you to stop supporting them? 1400 isn't enough, obviously, so 2000? 5000? A million? How many, Nathan?
I understand the impulse behind this idea. As an Arab-American, I always understood that the call for a ceasefire has a clear practical consideration - allowing for the release of captives. It’s hard to imagine how captives could be released on a large scale, if the bombs are still dropping. If I was a public figure I would join such a call. Right now, the most immediate consideration before our community is fighting the racism and dehumanization that makes this massacre in Gaza possible, and threatens our lives here in America
You are proving my point about racism, as if this conflict started in 10/7 out of the blue. Gaza is a refugee camp with three quarters of its population made up of refugees ethnically cleansed from southern Israel in 1948, and barred from returning home because they committed the crime of not being Jews. Gaza has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, and has been under ever tightening Israeli blockade since the early 1990’s. But if you ignore all of that, along 5 wars in the last 15 years, then of course, only Jewish victims matter.
We have tried the violent and unjust way of dealing with the Palestinians for decades and, surprise, it hasn’t worked. Clearly moral considerations are irrelevant, particularly when involving Muslim peoples. But it’s sheer stupidity to repeat this same violent path and expect a different outcome. The only way out is to end Israel’s violent apartheid rule of the Palestinians.
Of course I am. If you don't like Hamas massacring babies, you're a racist. Welcome to the pro-Palestinian left.
I have no interest in recapping the entire Arab-Israeli conflict in the space of this comments section. If you think 10/7 is justified because of the Gaza blockade, just say so.
I agree, the only way out is to end Israel's rule of the Palestinians. And the only way to do THAT is for the Palestinians to give up their 70+ year quest to destroy Israel and take over all of Palestine for themselves "from the river to the sea." As long as the Palestinians keep fighting this unwinnable fight, or as you phrased it, repeat the same violent path, they're going to get the same outcome.
The Palestinians needs to give up the fight to destroy Israel and accept its existence. Agreed?
FYI: All of Palestine used to be Palestinian, until the UN "gave" 55 percent to the Zionists who came from Europe. Check out a pre-1948 map. Do you see any Israel there? How would you feel if somebody took over your home, your farm, your village, your neighborhood?
All of Palestine used to be British, and then Ottoman. It was never "Palestinian". It was Arab, yes, after the Arabs colonized it. I've seen a lot of maps. None of them contained an independent Arab state of Palestine.
I have no interest in recapping the entire Arab-Israeli conflict from 1948 to the present. Lois, if you think Palestinians are justified in slaughtering babies in their cradles to take over all of Israel for themselves and themselves alone, just say so.
Peter, when I first subscribed, I briefly reached out to note our long-ago Yale connection. I'd tracked the broad ups and downs of your career since college, and I was optimistic that ALL your prior experience might have engendered a rare blend of insight and humility to help you thread the difficult needle of arguing for Palestinian rights without denying the strains of anti-Semitism in the pro-Palestine left. You wrote back asking what anti-Semitism I was referring to. So I let it drop but adjusted my expectations.
Your plea today is well-articulated. I hope you find receptive listeners among the advocates and activists who follow you. Meanwhile, the pro-Palestine movement's broad reaction to Oct.7 illustrates precisely the anti-Semitism I was referring to.
The comments here paint such a powerful picture. On one side, predictably triumphant claims that 10/7 validates some commenters' anti-Palestinian biases. Nothing surprising there. But on the other side, the comments that lead with an obligatory "of course no one deserves to be murdered" before offering a fascinating array of rationalizations for the belief that Israeli civilians somehow earned kidnappings, rapes and murders.
I see you asking readers to acknowledge that rationalized dehumanization of Israelis suggests all of us living in states with tainted histories - or really anyone living a normal, human, morally compromised existence - deserve whatever suffering someone else might dole out in vengeance. And I see your readers refusing to make the leap. It's a very human refusal. But when you combine it with 2000 years of viral anti-semitic tropes, metaphors and stories, of course there is anti-Semitism woven into the pro-Palestine left. There always has been, it has always been significant (not marginal), and it has always been completely visible to anyone willing to see it. That anti-Semitism has never justified its mirror-image in bigoted anti-Palestinian rhetoric or politics. But today I think we're seeing the fruit of the left's long, gaslighting history of denying there was ANY significant anti-Semitic sentiment in the pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist movement.
You bare your neck again. My heart truly aches for you Peter. You know with near certainty that Hamas would kill you and your family had you been visiting a wrong kibbutz at the wrong moment. You know that Hamas is clear that it wants to kill Jews, like you and like me and like our families. You know the final shock of a similarly naive Daniel Pearl. And yet you want to believe that somehow Hamas does not hate you and me unto death. Yes I agree with you, if they release the hostages many lives will be saved. I pray they do. But you know in your heart of hearts they won't. As do we all. You cannot interpret away, fantasy away, hope away the charter of Hamas. Take them at their word. Respect them for who they really say they are. Trust Hamas is the Hamas they are telling the world they are. They are. When you bare your neck you bare the neck of every Jew in the world. Your intentional ignorance is simply bad faith, and only more death will come from it.
Yes, free the hostages, and free the thousands of Palestinians being held in Israeli jails without trials or even charges. Especially the 600+ children. These people are hostages too
Using language histrionically and inaccurately leads to blood and bone death in the streets. Upticks in world wide Antisemitism, murders and death are what that sort of talk leads to. Just stop that. Honesty would help.
Thanks to decades of work by you and the pro-Palestinian movement, Israelis have been completely dehumanized. They're Nazis, occupiers, settler colonialists, Jewish supremacists, land thieves, apartheid racists, committers of genocide and all the rest. They're not human in the eyes of the pro-Palestinian movement. They're demons. Abby here in this very thread says exactly that.
The time to call for "affirming the humanity" of Israeli Jews would be before Hamas and company butchered 1400+ of them, to the elated cheers of their supporters worldwide. Now, it's too late.
Oh, and if you think Hamas gives the slightest care to the opinions of Western leftists, you're fooling yourself. You're next on their hit list after Israeli Jews.
this is so naive. sometimes, I am amazed that ostensibly well-educated people actually don't read history. Hamas will listen to the American left? really?
Indeed. Hamas is fighting primarily for the Arab street. And it has won that battle already. More Gaza atrocities will only bolster this 'new' phenomenon.
Even to the West Bank where at least you'll be protected by the soldiers mistakenly transferred from the Gaza perimeter to help the settlers take another little piece of land every day
I can't say it better than New Yorker magazine's Johnathan Chait who recently wrote about the progressive left's inability to criticize Hamas. There is growing illiberalism in the far left just as there is on the far right. Failure to criticize those who profess to be the leaders or representatives of an oppressed group have become beyond reproach. Condemnation of Hamas's despicable acts against civilians does not or should not mean Palestinian rights are not important or that they should not be supported, but bad acts should be called out whenever they occur. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/hamas-jews-illiberal-left-progressive-israel-terrorism.html
Chait and you are spinning utter BS. Anyone can condemn Hamas. But they didn’t attack Israel “because they were Jews” or because they were bored. As awful as the massacre was, it was an act of resistance, a fact that reactionary centrists like Chait always want to elide. Don’t like this Left? LEAVE! If you were ever part of it to begin with, which I doubt.
It was not an act of "resistance". It was murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. And they were acts that Hamas knew would cause pain, misery and death to the people that they purport to represent. The Palestinian rights cause has been set back 70 years.
Great, so when all the pro-Palestinian folks say they support the resistance, they're admitting they support mass murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. Good to know. Very, very, good to know.
Omg. An act of resistance. You must think they are noble savages. They are savages (Hamas) clearly but not noble. The genocidal mania that they have is so clear but fools like you call it resistance.
Releasing the hostages is a beautiful idea and while I don't know that I'm right, without it, I fail to see how Israel cannot invade Gaza. The next step, explicitly recognizing Israel's right to exist seems like the only way to start talks. If a material portion of Gaza's population is willing to engage in things like killing women and children, there is no hope for Gazans.
Nathaniel, I think you need to learn how to have a conversation without name-calling. I suspect our actual politics are not that different, but your conversational methods are really not a good look.
You are tending to them. I’m mocking them. Huge difference. They’re not going to see the light if they see what’s happening in Gaza and approve. Welcome to human nature, young human!
I find your naïveté beyond words especially coming from an otherwise very intelligent and sensitive individual. Your worldview is so tinted in rose colors to make John Locke blush in the centuries old grave. If human nature were anything so benign as you would like it or believe it to be, we would hardly need any governments at all.
You apparently know “human nature.” What is that knowledge based on? Reading? Self examination? Regarding the present situation, do Israelis and Palestinians have the same nature or do they somehow have different natures?
My knowledge is auto didactic. Having read the founding fathers, Bernard Baylin, John Locke and a few others plus having lived 77 years, having served in Vietnam and well enough about me; what about you?
Human nature is malleable. If it wasn’t we would not survive in nature or society. I can learn and choose not to kill, not to steal from or oppress others, to respect, even love, others. That assertion is not naive. It is a fact. A better life/society just requires commitment, work, and attention to what we do. I see all of that in Peter’s efforts.
Your reply to my reply requires a little more thinking and reading than I have left in my day on the shore near Anzio (due to the time difference). Also it may, I suspect, merit moving this to a more appropriate venue like email or whatsapp. But if you will indulge me, I will respond a little later.
Not sure how to make this a private exchange. I am not in your educational milieu so my comments are definitely limited and not necessarily authoritative. As far as I can tell human nature has not changed in the past 500,000 notwithstanding the advances in science and medicine. How much and how it reacts to environment and basic DNA is anyone’s guess. If memory serves me correctly, Madison in Federalists 10 echoing John Locke from 1680 made the point that we needed the Constitution precisely to blunt the worst tendencies in human nature. Nothing that I have seen or experienced in my lifetime gives me the slightest hint that any of their suppositions have changed to any degree. Human nature and human mind is as malleable today as it was the day we walked out of the cave and just as ready to follow the most glib piped piper be him a Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot or the latest Mullah or, well you take your pick. And that is regardless of one’s intellect and education.
My grandfather was the first person approached by Henry Bernstein of the UJA in 1947 to donate money to bring Jewish victims of the Holocaust to Palestine. He donated $50,000, which was one quarter of his net worth and many times more than his annual gift of $3000. In his autobiography, he wrote that he wanted to become a millionaire, so he could give more money to Israel. And he did. He and my father gave millions to Israeli institutions over the next five decades. But they would be turning in their graves if they could see how the right wing Israeli government treats the Palestinians. The oppressed has become the oppressor. The David has become the Goliath.
For the last 20 years since I’ve educated myself on the modern history of Israel and Palestine, I have stood with the Palestinians every time Israel responds disproportionately to Hamas lobbing ineffectual rockets into Israel, where they can be intercepted by the Iron Dome and where Israelis can seek safety in underground bunkers. I have always viewed these actions as resistance to occupation and the siege.
When I first heard about the attacks on October 7, my reaction was that this is no different from the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto who resisted violently. But then I realized that no, the civilians that were killed were innocent women, children, babies and the elderly, not combatants like the Nazis killed in the ghetto uprising. And I vociferously condemned Hamas as violent terrorists, even though I know that their political wing has done good things for the people in Gaza.
For the last two weeks, I have been learning more and more about how Netanyahu supported and even funded Hamas, through Qatar, how he pushed the election in 2006 to divide the Palestinians and to prevent them getting a state. After hearing he ignored the warning from Egypt, the training exercises out in the open and sent 80% of the security forces from Gaza to the West Bank, I even entertained thoughts that maybe Netanyahu wanted this to happen, so he could flatten Gaza once and for all, so he could finish the ethnic cleansing. Even now, we read articles that they are planning to resettle the Gazans in Egypt and take back Gaza for Israel.
But I also know that Hamas clearly knew that Israel was going to respond like this, that many thousands of their people would be killed and injured. And I truly believe that they did this on purpose to prevent the Abraham accords, unite Arab response against Israel and cause a wider Middle East War. And by not implementing a ceasefire, Netanyahu and his US funders are playing right along with this.
Your plea is based on premises that are not true. One, I don’t think Hamas cares a whit about what American progressives think. They care about their own power and perhaps secondarily about Palestinian liberation. Two, I don’t base my actions on what progressive anti-Zionist Jews think of me. Of course, what Hamas did was horrible. I have said so. But having read two articles now in the NYT and the LA Times about how progressive Jews feel betrayed by the left, I don’t think we can condemn Hamas vociferously enough for them. Like conservative Zionists, they see any defense of Palestine, like simple discussions of root causes, as a betrayal. I got into a back and forth email with someone from a statewide Jewish Justice organization urging him to get the organization to make a statement calling for a ceasefire. And it devolved into him repeating typical AIPAC talking points about Hamas barbarism, Hamas war crimes, Hamas rejecting a two-state solution, and questioning whether Israel should let bygones be bygones, as if killing thousands of civilians, half of them under 18, would not create a new generation of Hamas, even if Israel killed every current member.
I see what you are saying about a joint statement. But you acknowledged the political realities of some organizations being able to do that. I am not in the leadership of Jewish Voice for Peace, and I didn’t like their failure to condemn what Hamas did in their initial statement. But I believe that the phrase Never Again applies to all Holocausts not just ones where Jews are killed. So I align with If Not Now who keeps their demands very simple. I think a ceasefire is the only thing we should be asking for. Personally, I would go further. I would ask that the US not fund Israel until they stop slaughtering civilians. But Israel and the US will do neither of these things, because the leaders of both countries benefit from war.
As for the hostages, we learned from the 83 year old hostage who shook hands with her captor and explained it by saying they were treated well and all their needs were met, the civilians taken by Hamas are being treated far better than the Palestinian civilians being bombed by Israel right now.
Thank you Lauren for putting my thoughts and emotions into such a logical and deliberate order. My disgust with America's response to the immediate situation is outrage. The U.S. approach to achieving peace is always to send in more arms. As a Vietnam war veteran I have never been so ashamed. As an American Jew it is my first obligation to appeal to MY government to stop the ongoing massacre in Gaza. Not to pour gas on the fire. Cease fire Now!
Lauren, you are Righteous among the Righteous. Une Juste parmi les Justes. Humanity before tribe. You voice is insightful and accurate and a particularly articulate one among the 20 million worldwide. The other 7 billion of humanity must applaud you.
“ Professor” you are acting like a WOKE stoog and a morally bankrupt crony of the Palestinian Authority. You opining that only the left cares for Palestinians is wrong and illustrates your ignorance and partisan biases. By the way who are you to tell the Palestinians what to think and how to express their political opinions and goals? Typical leftist condescension and pandering-NO YOU DONT HAVE TO THINK OR PROTECT THEM GOR THEMSELVES!! It’s you who needs the help…your neurosis and lack of balance is repugnant.
Abby, it seems to me we should be able to hold the idea that civilians are the beneficiaries of, and often complicit in, terrible injustice, and also that their lives are precious and they should not be harmed. You mentioned white US settlers in the 19th century but what about today. If Israeli Jewish civilians don't have the right to life because they're living on stolen land, then why do Americans?
Too late, Peter. You and yours have made it clear Israelis are colonizers, apartheid racists, genocidal Nazis, and the rest, and have for decades stumped for people who murdered Israeli civilians with just as much glee and joy as they did on 10/7. To start to stop the boulder in motion now is much too little, much too late. What, you didn't think your fellow travelers meant it when they said "my heroes have always killed colonizers"?
And your fellow travelers are out there yelling Mut li-Aravim and pulling off West Bank shooting attacks.
See? I can do meaningless guilt by association snipes too!
Nice try with the whataboutery, but the topic of discussion is the pro-Palestinian left. Peter is willing to admit about the rot in the heart of the movement. Are you?
^drooling genocidaire wants total support for Israel and will troll the comments until that happens.
Quiet, Nathan. The adults are talking.
No shit I do, I'm not even a part of that moronic and self-defeating coterie. I have a pretty idiosyncratic position on the conflict. You on the other hand engage in temper tantrums to avoid dealing with the fact that the side you root for has a Kahanist national security minister and its own murderous terror gangs.
Fantastic, I'm glad we agree that large portions of the pro-Palestinian left have deeply entrenched beliefs of hatred and dehumanization of Israelis to the point where they are celebrating and cheering the unspeakable atrocities committed by Hamas on 10/7.
As for "the side I root for", I'm not sure what you're referring to. You don't have to be pro-Israel or pro-Israeli government to recognize the hateful face of the pro-Palestinian left. You just have to be intellectually honest.
Not exactly idiot. These Hamas depravities did not occur in the West Bank. No moral equivalence here. I bet you don’t believe that babies were beheaded or maybe just a few.
Nope. More IDF disinfo
You eat the dead, what more proof so you need you pro Hamas ghoul?
Maybe we'd have an answer if the IDF hadn't pointedly refused to investigate?
I can read the alphabet but don't understand the vowels, I interpolate from other Semitic languages. And I know it's most famous from La Familia and company.
Yes yes Peter is complicit in many ways in the delegitimization of Israel. Is he an idiot? Or evil?
No that’s you, fascist freakshow
You make me laugh.
Thanks Peter. Perhaps what fits my view best is the belief that no one deserves to be killed, AND that those of us living on colonized land have the responsibility to understand our histories and take action to correct injustices that result from that history.
If you believe no one deserves to be killed, will you disavow the pro Palestinian national movement which definitely does not believe that?
To the contrary, a revitalized political movement for a Palestinian homeland is more essential now than ever. The problem isn’t Palestinian national liberation, it’s the means and goals in achieving it.
This horrible tragic moment has at least clarified a few thing. Just as it showed a split between an older humane western left and the younger less liberal, more ideological left, it also exposes many who long claimed to have supported a 2SS but in reality had sought to destroy it.
I’m sorry Paul, are you agreeing with me the pro Palestinian national movement does think certain people deserve to be killed? If not, can you say something pertinent to the topic?
Well, Hamas, PIJ, and other militant groups obviously think so and they are part of the Palestinian national liberation movement, so yes, I agree in that sense.
But I read your framing as having the intent to wave the bloody shirt not to humanize their victims—a laudable act that I would join you in doing— but rather to rally the cause of delegitimizing the whole idea of a movement for a Palestinian homeland, which was your exact position before 10/7. That reading strikes me as cynical and opportunistic on your part.
I would disagree with you that that is the goal of the Palestinian national liberation movement. I would argue the goal of the movement is to repeat 10/7 over and over again until all Israelis are dead, expelled, or otherwise oppressed. And the behavior of its members over the past three weeks would back up my argument more than yours. Yes?
I've never really seen a movement for a Palestinian homeland, unless you mean all of Mandatory Palestine. Palestinians correctly believe that all of it is their homeland.
I mean it as an umbrella term for all political aspirations for a future state of Palestine.
If you'll disavor the Israeli govermnet which also doesn't believe it.
Sounds great. You go first.
“You go first. I’m five.”
HI!
"No one deserves to be killed" is a broad blanket statement we ( as humans who were raised properly) believe or say when we are talking about collateral damage. Not literally - it is rational to suspect and support some planned deaths which can be justified (the execution of a serial killer or child molester rather than wasting "rehab resources" in them for example). May I propose if we all try to find some good in everyone we can make better choices about who gets to lead and who should perhaps follow - (why allow the dummies to be in front to lead us off the cliff) or maybe have them in front to "get it" first ahahaha.
I laugh to keep from crying about all the disgusting ways people try to hurt each other. Pathetic really - imagine for one second the beauty, productivity, influence and power if the Israelis and the Palestinians ever came together? OMG WTF would we all do with all of our newly found free time? Oh that's right we could all go back to "Keeping Up with the Kardashians". I'm only speaking of the "dummies" of course:). Be Well Happy Holidays and May Peace of Mind Not Elude You - take care!
If this is what Palestinian liberation looks like, October 7, then there is something rotten at the core of the heart of that movement. They are modern day Nazis. Anyone who supports Hamas is a Nazi
Abby, as a proud member of the pro-Palestinian left, are you aware that Western supporters of Palestine like yourself have on numerous occasions being filmed pulling down posters with pictures of Israelis being held hostage in Gaza? Do you have any insights into why pro-Palestinian people would do something like that?
Sheer anger at the genocide happening right now in Gaza. It's not strategic, it's not antisemitic, it violates free speech principles--it's motivated by anger.
That makes sense. When Palestinians and their supporters get angry, they take that anger out on innocent Israeli civilians including children. Checks out.
^Israeli propaganda, what does it look like? What a MAGA kook!
This is a right-wing lie
Nathan, anything to say about the video evidence of people pulling down posters? An apology, perhaps?
Who gives a shit? Posters in American cities aren’t help, they’re noise. Probably right-wing provocateurs like you.
So you moved from "it's a lie" to "who gives a shit". Progress is being made.
I think if I was pro-Palestine, I wouldn't want these people illustrating the ugly and dehumanizing side of my movement. I wouldn't want them showing the world how much pro-Palestine people, not just Hamas, hate Jews, including Jewish children. But hey, that's me. You clearly don't seem to mind.
Too much video evidence of it to dispute, I'm afraid.
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/videos-of-people-tearing-down-posters-of-kidnapped-israelis-spark-outrage-in-south-florida/3138521/
Exactly, Peter. Your precious pro-Palestinian movement just gave radical Muslims worldwide the green light to slaughter and rape Americans, especially American Jews. Well done. Are you proud of yourself?
We who support freedom and justice for all have not given anyone a green light to take away freedom and commit injustice. It is the US and its allies in Europe that have been giving Israel a green light to oppress Palestinians that has resulted in this mutual tragedy. And, FYI, as horrible as the Hamas invasion of Israel was, it is not continuing. But the genocide of the Palestinians is continuing, and everyone of conscience should be advocating for it to stop. Bring the hostages home and stop the bombing of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. After my Palestine solidarity rally I went across the street to the people with the Israeli flag, shook their hands, and told them of my sorrow for everyone who is suffering. They softened and we had a moment of human connection. "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." Gandhi
Sorry, I’m having trouble hearing your litany of propaganda talking points over the screams of “there is only one solution,” “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” and “gas the Jews.”
By the way, accusing American Jews of being complicit in a nonexistent genocide is further encouraging violence against them. There is blood on your hands too, Lois.
I never said any of those things. Everything i actually said has been verified over and over again by endless news media.You are reading through a filter of your own narrow point of view. And, like Peter Beinart, I am Jewish. Since the US government is using my meager tax dollars to fund Israeli attacks on Palestine, I guess I do have a bit of blood on my hands. but it is not of my own choosing.
Why would it matter that you personally have never chanted “gas the Jews,” when thousands of people in your movement have? You’re not as important as you think you are. Nor is it relevant that you are Jewish, your movement remains anti semitic.
And by the way, endless news media is by no means asserting there is an “ongoing genocide” of Palestinians. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Please name half a dozen people in my "Movement" who has said "Gas the Jews." It is very likely some white supremacists have said that. And, news media are reporting 5,000 Gazans killed by Israeli bombing as of a few days ago. Thousands more warned to flee their homes, which are being destroyed by Israeli bombing. Israel refusing to allow shipments of fuel into Gaza, which means thousands more will die in hospitals without adequate treatment. By international definition this is genocide, as well as ethnic cleansing. The definition of genocide was created by a Jewish attorney following the genocide of Jews in Europe. It applies here,as well. So, what is your source for the "thousands of people" who have chanted ,"Gas the Jews"? And, what, exactly, are you defining as my "Movement"? I warn you, I read, and write, widely. I do not make up my facts. Nobody in their right mind would be ashamed of wanting their fellow human beings to be safe and free. The Israelis will never be safe and free until they stop oppressing the Palestinians. People will always fight back. It is human nature. Unfortunately human beings can get pretty ugly when their backs are up against the wall.
No one would be helped more than the Palestinians if Israel destroys Hamas.
The Palestinian people are also held hostage by Hamas. Most of the $1.5 billion of humanitarian aid sent to Gaza has been used by Hamas and kept away from its citizens. People are intentionally kept hungry to sustain their anger. Water pipes into Gaza have been ripped up and turned into missiles to launch at Israeli citizens. The people are told to not leave their apartment buildings that house missile launchers or cover tunnels when Israel warns them ahead of time to leave - so they can be used as human shields. And this is who you support???
As an American, you’ll have to forgive me if that sounds a lot like how invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein was cynically sold to the public as a matter of benevolence and empowerment to the Iraqi people to spread democracy.
War planners, we later learned, had no such intent or realistic plans to achieve it and the nation was plunged into civil war and regional instability that left a half-million dead.
One suspects Gazas fate will be similar.
Paul, do you think Hamas has the Palestinian people it is ruling over's best interest? Polls, while difficult to administer for fear of being caught by Hamas, indicate that the people feel like prisoners.
No, but neither would a long invasion and war tasked to “destroy” Hamas, which is as much of a nebulous ideology of Islamist resistance as it is an organization with a distinct and finite list of members.
What I find especially interesting in this response is that I never mentioned anything about American Jews, or any other kind of Jews. That appears to have come out of Mr. Anonymous' imagination.
‘We who support freedom and Justice’. Ha ha ha.
Agree with this 100%.
Grow up! The Occupation is doing that.
How?
JFC get a grip on reality for once
You must have been listening to a different video.
No, I saw the videos of the DSA and their fellow far leftists celebrating Hamas’ actions. They speak much louder than Peter’s cringing apologist weaseling.
You saw videos? Wow! I bet you’re loving the videos now I’d Gaza being leveled, MAGA ghoul
Sorry kid, the only people who are happy to see human beings killed are Palestine and their sycophants on the far left. No amount of whataboutism will change that. Own it.
I’ll own that you’re a Nazi, how about that?
I saw them, too. I think he's asking for others to stand up and say it's not ok.
Perhaps, but if that’s the case he should have said that at the time, not three and a half weeks and four articles later. Peters silence and moral cowardice then speaks volumes now. He has lost whatever legitimacy he once had on both sides of the fence. And it couldn’t be more deserved.
^MAGA idiocy
The lives of colonizer people are also precious, I agree, but there is a disanalogy between non-indigenous Americans and Israelis, namely that Israel's ethnic cleansing and genocide is ongoing, whereas the US' is not. Palestinians are currently a subjugated people, in a way that indigenous Americans are not.
Indigenous Americans are absolutely an ongoing subjugated people.
Not in any legal or formal sense AFAIK.
They are certainly not subjected to anything like the conditions Palestinians are.
Btw I consider your comment obstructionist, even if it's driven by genuine concern for native Americans (which it may not be).
It’s very easy to give full rights (which is not what Native Americans have) once you’ve decimated the population to a point they’re insignificant in any electoral way. The reason Palestinians and Israelis have any conflict is exactly because there was no genocide of Palestinians and they are numerically significant. Don’t act like you’re morally superior being in a country that reduced the native population so much what they think and do doesn’t affect anything. You’re the one who needs to deal with an immoral genocide, not Israelis.
It’s not
Aren't native Americans citizens of the US, with all the rights of citizens? The US defines itself as a state of all its citizens.
What land are you referring to that's being taken away from them? Don't they have access to the general land of the USA? I mean do they have less rights to purchase land than non-native American people?
I'm not an American and don't know the details of this, but I thought that native Americans were formally equal to everyone else, but like black people etc. were facing civil rights violations (such as police brutality). That can be dealt with by civil rights activism. I do know, despite not being American, that they are not subjected to anything in the vicinity of what Palestinians are being subjected to by a fascist state of which they're not even citizens in most cases.
Native Americans are equal under the law, but live under the tyranny of a non-Native American majority.
"Israel's ethnic cleansing and genocide is ongoing"? So civilians are to answer for the actions of their government?
Now do Gaza
Hamas is being targeted for their war crimes, not civilians. That’s Gaza
Indeed. One incremental step at a time, the Nakba moves relentlessy forward.
In your Nazi dreams
Blah blah blah
No one would be helped more than the Palestinians if Israel destroys Hamas.
The Palestinian people are also held hostage by Hamas. Most of the $1.5 billion of humanitarian aid sent to Gaza has been used by Hamas and kept away from its citizens. People are intentionally kept hungry to sustain their anger. Water pipes into Gaza have been ripped up and turned into missiles to launch at Israeli citizens. The people are told to not leave their apartment buildings that house missile launchers or cover tunnels when Israel warns them ahead of time to leave - so they can be used as human shields. And this is who you support???
Peter, in your emotional distress, you are focusing on fragments of the mosaic, not the big picture.
What's to prevent Hamas etc. from winning an election in a binational Israel/Palestine. Whatever that something is, we have to find it and nurture it, because it's the region's only hope.
My intuition is a coalition of secular and moderate Israelis and Palestinians coming together to create a new country. Nothing happens without real collaboration between our peoples.
What stolen land did Hamas invade on October 7? Wtf Peter? You’re sick. Morally mentally I’ll.
Stolen land? Wtf.
They don’t. But as a previous poster said, we do have a responsibility to understand our history in the US and to make sincere amends to Native Americans.
And, BTW, thank you for your newsletter and other writings. I look to you to help me try to stay afloat on these issues. I am woefully ignorant, of many things. I have Jewish friends whom I love dearly and they are in terrible pain. And, at the same time, I hate to see anyone suffer.
Did ending apartheid in South Africa mean the white people in South Africa didn't have the right to life? Of course not. Ending apartheid in Israel does not call for people to die. On the contrary, it calls for people to be able to live freely. How is that even remotely threatening a people's life?
I appreciate all that you are saying here. It's an interesting idea I'm trying to get my head around. Of course I don't want anyone including Israeli Jews including zionists to be harmed, but it is hard to consider their pain when I think about the past 75+ years of Palestinian pain and erasure and the world's refusal to see/hear any of that. And yet, it is a strategy you are proposing to ask Hamas to take the higher road (once again) since Israel has gone so low most people, even zionists can't look away. And yet I don't think it will make any difference to the state of Israel and their mission which is clear as day and needs no excuse in their eyes. They are proud of what they do. I have never seen hubris on the level of the state of Israel. This escalation was set to happen even without Hamas's actions which are small in comparison. So it's about optics, what the world sees as it is finally watching. And then maybe if Hamas were to act this way, the world would know for sure who the monsters are and where the "pure evil" lies. Thank you for your brave idea.
Israel has never "gone so low" as what Hamas did on 10/7. But thank you for making it clear Israelis are "the monsters". This kind of dehumanization is exactly what Peter is talking about.
Are you joking, you posturing clown? Israel massacres Palestinians all the time, even during peaceful protests
Israeli soldiers have gang raped children? Got a link?
Here you go https://www.haaretz.com/2003-10-29/ty-article/i-saw-fit-to-remove-her-from-the-world/0000017f-db62-d856-a37f-ffe2fa5b0000
Anything more recent than 1949?
No response then? Didn't think so.
Emma, perhaps I am out-of-line, but can I ask how a person feels any attachment to land occupied by one's great-grandfather? My parents both grew up on small farms and these are homes that were abandoned when small farming went away. The house where my father lived as a child burned down when I was a child and I remember very distinctly that he was moved nearly to tears as we visited but did he wish to rebuild what was reallly not much more than a log cabin? No. While I felt bad for my Dad I literally felt no attachment to the home/property. What I am saying is that I think humans move on. There is no 75 years of pain in my opinion and if I'm hoping you can explain to me how one forms an attachment to a home left in 1948 or 1967?
While I myself have no attachment to any land - I am a Jew of the Diaspora, raised in Philadelphia in lots of chaos and trauma - I can imagine (and you can hear it in my play, available as a podcast available here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/abrahams-daughters-by-emma-goldman-sherman/id1329778196?i=1000462709862 that anyone whose family story is forced migration will have the inherited attachment along with the inherited trauma. I don't think the question is who has an attachment to the land. Clearly many people do. The point is that like the Native Americans, the indigenous people were forced out in great numbers and have been trying to re-establish themselves on the land of Palestine (you may call it Israel, I call it Palestine) for 75+ years now since the Nakba. I have listened to the stories of many Palestinians in person in Gaza, Ramallah, Nablus, and other parts of Palestine, and I was always astounded by their humanity, their ability not to hate, to seek amicable solutions. It is not in my nature to be as kind or compassionate, although it is my task to continue to work toward that kind of compassion. I am sure that if they could move on, they would. But I also ask, if the people we now refer to as Israelis were ever interested in true peace with their neighbors/those inhabiting the land of Palestine when the Brits "gave" the land to the zionists, why didn't they work toward peace? Why didn't they work toward healing from trauma? I have worked for years to heal my trauma(s), and I know that healing is possible. The State of Israel has every possible means at their disposal for healing, and yet they have consistently chosen to create oppression, pain and suffering as a method of insuring their safety - to me, that is what makes no sense. And endangers so many, both Jews and Palestinians alike.
Appreciate your perspective. It baffles me why Jews and Arab Palestinians cannot live in peace but from a historical perspective, I just cannot say I think the Palestinians have been treated terribly and by historical standards they've been treated positively well, although admittedly as 2nd class citizens which is offensive to me. I've never been to the Middle East but have lived in areas where Native Americans lived and were a material portion of the population (northwest MN, Manitoba and NW Ontario). I never felt any hate but there; they went to the same grocery stores, schools, played hockey, etc. but they did live separately too, of their own volition, except those who married outside of the tribe. I knew people who grew up with them and got along well with them but I did not have enough interaction to know them well so I have no real insights other than their situation was not any worse than other working-class people where I lived. My wife who is originally from Puerto Rico but grew up in the Midwest got asked if she was Native American sometimes and it bothered her as she thought there was some sense of being treated differently. I'm a white American male who has a hard time relating to it as treating someone based on the color of their skin just strikes me as oh so silly, but I know it is still exists at least to an extent even in the US.
Jeff, you and your parents weren't indoctrinated since birth to believe that a great injustice was done to you and your nation and everything bad in your life is the fault of the Jews. See things from a Palestinian perspective. It's brainwashing to the point where they can cheer mass murder and the butchering of babies in their cradles.
I don't think I've ever known any Palestinians to cheer mass murder or butchering of babies in their cradles - they are among the most compassionate people I know. I have sat in their homes where they have held the shells of the tear gas they have been forced to breathe with Made in Pittsburgh stamped into the canisters and spoken of peace, peace and more peace, seeing clearly the work of the zionist project as a system and not any individuals, speaking of their own martyrs simultaneously with the same dreams of peace I had until then only attributed to saints. I was the only Jew in the room - they were not always aware I was there. It is only the Israelis I have heard spewing hatred which I attribute to their indoctrination of fear from their history, the frequent trips to Germany to see the concentration camps, the free birthright trips that insist on keeping the history of trauma alive and thriving in the minds of all Jews. This is the only brainwashing I have seen, and I've been watching for a long time. I'm 58. My father started to build settlement homes in the early 70s. I hope they all come down soon. I want the zionist project dismantled river to sea. I am not ashamed to say that it is wrong, morally wrong, and does not deserve to exist the way it does and has for 75+years. And that doesn't mean I want bloodshed. I want new government systems. I want peaceful solutions. I want an end to violence and that includes the violence of starvation and the ghettoizing of the Palestinians. Forever. For a true and lasting peace.
You've never known any Palestinians to cheer mass murder? Then you haven't been paying attention to the news much recently, have you?
Are you a chatbot spewing lies from Israel? Because you’re really good at it. Great AI!
I've been reading your nonsensecal replies. You're either a dolt, or a propaganda tool for Hamas.
Here's what the Palestinian leaders have refused to do for 75 years, rejecting every opportunity for peace:
1) recognize Israel's right to exist
2) accept having their own country next to Israel
3) acknowledge that the "right of return" of millions of descendants of refugees will be to a new state of Palestine, and not to Israel.
There would have been peace long ago, and still could be, if these 3 basics were met. So why won't the Palestinians? Because their leadership is corrupt. Ever wonder why in this incredible oil-rich part of the world, no Muslim countries few give any aid? Because they know it isn't used to help citizens, it's used for the corrupt leaders and to build weapons.
And this is who you support?
Rejecting every opportunity for peace by having their land stolen and their people massacred? You’re on the side of the oppressor, my dude.
This is a horrible comment.
That's more horrible than your comments about how slaughtering children is "morally gray"? I don't think so.
How awful that you, a Jew who apparently helps people suffering from PTSD, are so blinded that you side with Hamas and the PA who have kept their people in this state for 75 years -- rejecting every opportunity for peace with Israel, launching murderous terror attacks against civilians, and now this butchery on October 7 that even Israeli Arabs are condemning (but not you). No one would be helped more than the Palestinians if Israel destroys Hamas.
The Palestinian people are also held hostage by Hamas. Most of the $1.5 billion of humanitarian aid sent to Gaza has been used by Hamas and kept away from its citizens. People are intentionally kept hungry to sustain their anger. Water pipes into Gaza have been ripped up and turned into missiles to launch at Israeli citizens. The people are told to not leave their apartment buildings that house missile launchers or cover tunnels when Israel warns them ahead of time to leave - so they can be used as human shields. And this is who you support???
^lying for Israel. What a hobby!
you're an idiot -- with nothing useful to say. go away.
Nor have you anything useful to say except “blame the victim.” What a waste of an intellect
Celebrating massacre and kidnapping makes you a real intellectual, you dumb ghoul.
Aren’t you special.
that's a good idea. i'll try
Peter, what's your red line? How far do Palestinians have to go before you stop supporting them? Because if celebrating mass murder isn't far enough, I'd really like to know what is.
Same question for you vis Israel.
I'm happy to answer. My red line for Israel is that if the Israeli government ever started intentionally targeting civilians and proudly bragging it, the way Palestine does, and if a majority of the Israeli population actively supported the intentional targeting of civilians, I would stop supporting Israel. Intentional targeting of civilians is a red line for me. Obviously it's not one for Peter and the rest. What's your red line vis Palestine?
Oh, cool, well that's happening. On Oct. 10, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told the press that, in the Gaza airstrikes, “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” President Herzog said there are no innocent civilians in Gaza because “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible." Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant declared on October 9th: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.” In Tel Aviv, someone hung a professionally printed banner reading “Zero Gazans” from a pedestrian bridge. So we're past your red line.
If you're interested in my thoughts, I laid them out here yesterday: https://theracket.news/p/out-of-zionism
It's not happening, but we can discuss that further once you answer my question. Can you quote the relevant section, please?
I'm not sure exactly where my red line is on either, but I do know that the mass murder and torture of civilians is well past it. So Israel, Hamas and PIJ have long since crossed the "red line" for me.
You have a strange understanding of intent if you are genuinely looking at Israel’s response and you don’t see that your red line was crossed long ago in this conflict.
I recognize Israel's intent is to destroy Hamas, not kill civilians.
As a rule, do you accept the justifications of powerful states at face value? The answer is probably yes, but there is a further complication if so, because Israel’s top leaders have openly said they are not restraining themselves by avoiding civilian deaths. Widely reported in the J Post.
He supports Palestinian human rights, not mass murder you cretin.
Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm asking him how far the Palestinians and their supporters have to go before he stops supporting them. What his red line is. Maybe you can answer the question. What's your red line for Palestinians?
can you differentiate the Palestinians from Hamas?
Yes, you can, the same way you can differentiate the Israeli people from the Israeli government.
We don’t stop supporting them. That’s the key. Just like you won’t stop supporting Israel when it commits genocide. But that’s a feature not a bug for you.
How many Jews would Palestinians have to massacre for you to stop supporting them? 1400 isn't enough, obviously, so 2000? 5000? A million? How many, Nathan?
Nope he led the way to mass murder.
I understand the impulse behind this idea. As an Arab-American, I always understood that the call for a ceasefire has a clear practical consideration - allowing for the release of captives. It’s hard to imagine how captives could be released on a large scale, if the bombs are still dropping. If I was a public figure I would join such a call. Right now, the most immediate consideration before our community is fighting the racism and dehumanization that makes this massacre in Gaza possible, and threatens our lives here in America
Most people don't like Hamas slaughtering entire villages full of innocent people. That's not racism, that's pretty basic morality.
You are proving my point about racism, as if this conflict started in 10/7 out of the blue. Gaza is a refugee camp with three quarters of its population made up of refugees ethnically cleansed from southern Israel in 1948, and barred from returning home because they committed the crime of not being Jews. Gaza has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, and has been under ever tightening Israeli blockade since the early 1990’s. But if you ignore all of that, along 5 wars in the last 15 years, then of course, only Jewish victims matter.
We have tried the violent and unjust way of dealing with the Palestinians for decades and, surprise, it hasn’t worked. Clearly moral considerations are irrelevant, particularly when involving Muslim peoples. But it’s sheer stupidity to repeat this same violent path and expect a different outcome. The only way out is to end Israel’s violent apartheid rule of the Palestinians.
Of course I am. If you don't like Hamas massacring babies, you're a racist. Welcome to the pro-Palestinian left.
I have no interest in recapping the entire Arab-Israeli conflict in the space of this comments section. If you think 10/7 is justified because of the Gaza blockade, just say so.
I agree, the only way out is to end Israel's rule of the Palestinians. And the only way to do THAT is for the Palestinians to give up their 70+ year quest to destroy Israel and take over all of Palestine for themselves "from the river to the sea." As long as the Palestinians keep fighting this unwinnable fight, or as you phrased it, repeat the same violent path, they're going to get the same outcome.
The Palestinians needs to give up the fight to destroy Israel and accept its existence. Agreed?
FYI: All of Palestine used to be Palestinian, until the UN "gave" 55 percent to the Zionists who came from Europe. Check out a pre-1948 map. Do you see any Israel there? How would you feel if somebody took over your home, your farm, your village, your neighborhood?
All of Palestine used to be British, and then Ottoman. It was never "Palestinian". It was Arab, yes, after the Arabs colonized it. I've seen a lot of maps. None of them contained an independent Arab state of Palestine.
I have no interest in recapping the entire Arab-Israeli conflict from 1948 to the present. Lois, if you think Palestinians are justified in slaughtering babies in their cradles to take over all of Israel for themselves and themselves alone, just say so.
Here we go with the “Palestinians aren’t a people” idiocy
Hey lois, what's the difference between a cow and the Nakba?
We don’t like Israel bombing entire neighborhoods, either. But you do!
Peter, when I first subscribed, I briefly reached out to note our long-ago Yale connection. I'd tracked the broad ups and downs of your career since college, and I was optimistic that ALL your prior experience might have engendered a rare blend of insight and humility to help you thread the difficult needle of arguing for Palestinian rights without denying the strains of anti-Semitism in the pro-Palestine left. You wrote back asking what anti-Semitism I was referring to. So I let it drop but adjusted my expectations.
Your plea today is well-articulated. I hope you find receptive listeners among the advocates and activists who follow you. Meanwhile, the pro-Palestine movement's broad reaction to Oct.7 illustrates precisely the anti-Semitism I was referring to.
The comments here paint such a powerful picture. On one side, predictably triumphant claims that 10/7 validates some commenters' anti-Palestinian biases. Nothing surprising there. But on the other side, the comments that lead with an obligatory "of course no one deserves to be murdered" before offering a fascinating array of rationalizations for the belief that Israeli civilians somehow earned kidnappings, rapes and murders.
I see you asking readers to acknowledge that rationalized dehumanization of Israelis suggests all of us living in states with tainted histories - or really anyone living a normal, human, morally compromised existence - deserve whatever suffering someone else might dole out in vengeance. And I see your readers refusing to make the leap. It's a very human refusal. But when you combine it with 2000 years of viral anti-semitic tropes, metaphors and stories, of course there is anti-Semitism woven into the pro-Palestine left. There always has been, it has always been significant (not marginal), and it has always been completely visible to anyone willing to see it. That anti-Semitism has never justified its mirror-image in bigoted anti-Palestinian rhetoric or politics. But today I think we're seeing the fruit of the left's long, gaslighting history of denying there was ANY significant anti-Semitic sentiment in the pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist movement.
😴😴😴😴😴
You bare your neck again. My heart truly aches for you Peter. You know with near certainty that Hamas would kill you and your family had you been visiting a wrong kibbutz at the wrong moment. You know that Hamas is clear that it wants to kill Jews, like you and like me and like our families. You know the final shock of a similarly naive Daniel Pearl. And yet you want to believe that somehow Hamas does not hate you and me unto death. Yes I agree with you, if they release the hostages many lives will be saved. I pray they do. But you know in your heart of hearts they won't. As do we all. You cannot interpret away, fantasy away, hope away the charter of Hamas. Take them at their word. Respect them for who they really say they are. Trust Hamas is the Hamas they are telling the world they are. They are. When you bare your neck you bare the neck of every Jew in the world. Your intentional ignorance is simply bad faith, and only more death will come from it.
Yes of course. He’s utterly deluded. It’s scary actually
Yes, free the hostages, and free the thousands of Palestinians being held in Israeli jails without trials or even charges. Especially the 600+ children. These people are hostages too
Using language histrionically and inaccurately leads to blood and bone death in the streets. Upticks in world wide Antisemitism, murders and death are what that sort of talk leads to. Just stop that. Honesty would help.
JFC stop the trolling
It's too late, Peter. It's much too late.
Thanks to decades of work by you and the pro-Palestinian movement, Israelis have been completely dehumanized. They're Nazis, occupiers, settler colonialists, Jewish supremacists, land thieves, apartheid racists, committers of genocide and all the rest. They're not human in the eyes of the pro-Palestinian movement. They're demons. Abby here in this very thread says exactly that.
The time to call for "affirming the humanity" of Israeli Jews would be before Hamas and company butchered 1400+ of them, to the elated cheers of their supporters worldwide. Now, it's too late.
Oh, and if you think Hamas gives the slightest care to the opinions of Western leftists, you're fooling yourself. You're next on their hit list after Israeli Jews.
He and others paved the way for the dehumanization of Israel and Israelis. He has blood on his hands.
“Everybody I don’t like has blood on their hands. WAAAH!”
Peter does.
You’re such a screaming Mimi
LOL!
Sure. Whatever. Make yourself happy hating Jews and Israel. It suits you.
Thank you for acknowledging that you’ve got no arguments besides “anyone who disagrees with me is an antisemite, including Jews!”
this is so naive. sometimes, I am amazed that ostensibly well-educated people actually don't read history. Hamas will listen to the American left? really?
Indeed. Hamas is fighting primarily for the Arab street. And it has won that battle already. More Gaza atrocities will only bolster this 'new' phenomenon.
the hubris for american "left" pro palestinians to think that they are anything but a tool for terrorists...
how about a trip to gaza..
You’d love to go there yourself, I bet, to clean house
Even to the West Bank where at least you'll be protected by the soldiers mistakenly transferred from the Gaza perimeter to help the settlers take another little piece of land every day
I really admire the work you do and this resonates with me. Thank you.
I can't say it better than New Yorker magazine's Johnathan Chait who recently wrote about the progressive left's inability to criticize Hamas. There is growing illiberalism in the far left just as there is on the far right. Failure to criticize those who profess to be the leaders or representatives of an oppressed group have become beyond reproach. Condemnation of Hamas's despicable acts against civilians does not or should not mean Palestinian rights are not important or that they should not be supported, but bad acts should be called out whenever they occur. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/hamas-jews-illiberal-left-progressive-israel-terrorism.html
Chait and you are spinning utter BS. Anyone can condemn Hamas. But they didn’t attack Israel “because they were Jews” or because they were bored. As awful as the massacre was, it was an act of resistance, a fact that reactionary centrists like Chait always want to elide. Don’t like this Left? LEAVE! If you were ever part of it to begin with, which I doubt.
It was not an act of "resistance". It was murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. And they were acts that Hamas knew would cause pain, misery and death to the people that they purport to represent. The Palestinian rights cause has been set back 70 years.
Resistance can take violent forms.
Your other remark is victim-blaming.
Great, so when all the pro-Palestinian folks say they support the resistance, they're admitting they support mass murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. Good to know. Very, very, good to know.
Hur durr
It was *Hamas’s* form of resistance. Don’t like it? Don’t colonize their land, imperialist.
Omg. An act of resistance. You must think they are noble savages. They are savages (Hamas) clearly but not noble. The genocidal mania that they have is so clear but fools like you call it resistance.
“OMG!” I think you’re a savage, and speaking of genocide, better get hopping. Apparently there are still Gazans left, soldaten!
Releasing the hostages is a beautiful idea and while I don't know that I'm right, without it, I fail to see how Israel cannot invade Gaza. The next step, explicitly recognizing Israel's right to exist seems like the only way to start talks. If a material portion of Gaza's population is willing to engage in things like killing women and children, there is no hope for Gazans.
JFC and read a book on the history of the region, genocidaire
Nathaniel, I think you need to learn how to have a conversation without name-calling. I suspect our actual politics are not that different, but your conversational methods are really not a good look.
He's not intellectually capable of doing anything other than name-calling.
And you’re not capable of doing anything other than Wehrmacht cosplay
Thanks for proving my point. If you actually didn't like Nazis, you'd be anti-Hamas instead of shilling for them.
I don’t like Nazis and I don’t like you. Far too many similarities. “Never again! Ok, maybe just this once.”
Calisson: there’s a genocide going on now. One that most of the commenters here are celebrating and encouraging. “Never again unless we do it!”
Right. So if you call people obnoxious names it's going to help them see the light?
You are tending to them. I’m mocking them. Huge difference. They’re not going to see the light if they see what’s happening in Gaza and approve. Welcome to human nature, young human!
Young human? Haha, you got that wrong! Anyway, I don't think your mocking adds anything constructive to the discussion. But you do you.
I find your naïveté beyond words especially coming from an otherwise very intelligent and sensitive individual. Your worldview is so tinted in rose colors to make John Locke blush in the centuries old grave. If human nature were anything so benign as you would like it or believe it to be, we would hardly need any governments at all.
You apparently know “human nature.” What is that knowledge based on? Reading? Self examination? Regarding the present situation, do Israelis and Palestinians have the same nature or do they somehow have different natures?
My knowledge is auto didactic. Having read the founding fathers, Bernard Baylin, John Locke and a few others plus having lived 77 years, having served in Vietnam and well enough about me; what about you?
Also 77 here.
Check this out - https://www.comw.org/socbio899.html
Human nature is malleable. If it wasn’t we would not survive in nature or society. I can learn and choose not to kill, not to steal from or oppress others, to respect, even love, others. That assertion is not naive. It is a fact. A better life/society just requires commitment, work, and attention to what we do. I see all of that in Peter’s efforts.
Your reply to my reply requires a little more thinking and reading than I have left in my day on the shore near Anzio (due to the time difference). Also it may, I suspect, merit moving this to a more appropriate venue like email or whatsapp. But if you will indulge me, I will respond a little later.
You are welcome. I am pleased you wish to engage in these important matters.
Not sure how to make this a private exchange. I am not in your educational milieu so my comments are definitely limited and not necessarily authoritative. As far as I can tell human nature has not changed in the past 500,000 notwithstanding the advances in science and medicine. How much and how it reacts to environment and basic DNA is anyone’s guess. If memory serves me correctly, Madison in Federalists 10 echoing John Locke from 1680 made the point that we needed the Constitution precisely to blunt the worst tendencies in human nature. Nothing that I have seen or experienced in my lifetime gives me the slightest hint that any of their suppositions have changed to any degree. Human nature and human mind is as malleable today as it was the day we walked out of the cave and just as ready to follow the most glib piped piper be him a Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot or the latest Mullah or, well you take your pick. And that is regardless of one’s intellect and education.
It takes a real anti semitic ignoramus to call a Jew a storm trooper…rot in hell you imbecile…oh wait that’s an insult to imbeciles 😡
These people are first imbeciles. Then Nazis. I mean only the anti Zionists here. They are rape apologists. Beheading apologists.
And you’re a bombing apologist. So we’re all alike
If the jackboot fits...
I understand the drive towards anger during these trying times. Especially when instigated. Wishing you peace and deescelation.
Maybe stop acting like a stormtrooper?
Ffs. Your side is the Nazi side.
No, I’m the one opposing genocide, you’re the one in favor. So welcome to your new jackboots and horsewhip, brownshirt!
Your moral obtuseness is laughable.
I’d rather be morally obtuse than a proponent of terror bombing.
My grandfather was the first person approached by Henry Bernstein of the UJA in 1947 to donate money to bring Jewish victims of the Holocaust to Palestine. He donated $50,000, which was one quarter of his net worth and many times more than his annual gift of $3000. In his autobiography, he wrote that he wanted to become a millionaire, so he could give more money to Israel. And he did. He and my father gave millions to Israeli institutions over the next five decades. But they would be turning in their graves if they could see how the right wing Israeli government treats the Palestinians. The oppressed has become the oppressor. The David has become the Goliath.
For the last 20 years since I’ve educated myself on the modern history of Israel and Palestine, I have stood with the Palestinians every time Israel responds disproportionately to Hamas lobbing ineffectual rockets into Israel, where they can be intercepted by the Iron Dome and where Israelis can seek safety in underground bunkers. I have always viewed these actions as resistance to occupation and the siege.
When I first heard about the attacks on October 7, my reaction was that this is no different from the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto who resisted violently. But then I realized that no, the civilians that were killed were innocent women, children, babies and the elderly, not combatants like the Nazis killed in the ghetto uprising. And I vociferously condemned Hamas as violent terrorists, even though I know that their political wing has done good things for the people in Gaza.
For the last two weeks, I have been learning more and more about how Netanyahu supported and even funded Hamas, through Qatar, how he pushed the election in 2006 to divide the Palestinians and to prevent them getting a state. After hearing he ignored the warning from Egypt, the training exercises out in the open and sent 80% of the security forces from Gaza to the West Bank, I even entertained thoughts that maybe Netanyahu wanted this to happen, so he could flatten Gaza once and for all, so he could finish the ethnic cleansing. Even now, we read articles that they are planning to resettle the Gazans in Egypt and take back Gaza for Israel.
But I also know that Hamas clearly knew that Israel was going to respond like this, that many thousands of their people would be killed and injured. And I truly believe that they did this on purpose to prevent the Abraham accords, unite Arab response against Israel and cause a wider Middle East War. And by not implementing a ceasefire, Netanyahu and his US funders are playing right along with this.
Your plea is based on premises that are not true. One, I don’t think Hamas cares a whit about what American progressives think. They care about their own power and perhaps secondarily about Palestinian liberation. Two, I don’t base my actions on what progressive anti-Zionist Jews think of me. Of course, what Hamas did was horrible. I have said so. But having read two articles now in the NYT and the LA Times about how progressive Jews feel betrayed by the left, I don’t think we can condemn Hamas vociferously enough for them. Like conservative Zionists, they see any defense of Palestine, like simple discussions of root causes, as a betrayal. I got into a back and forth email with someone from a statewide Jewish Justice organization urging him to get the organization to make a statement calling for a ceasefire. And it devolved into him repeating typical AIPAC talking points about Hamas barbarism, Hamas war crimes, Hamas rejecting a two-state solution, and questioning whether Israel should let bygones be bygones, as if killing thousands of civilians, half of them under 18, would not create a new generation of Hamas, even if Israel killed every current member.
I see what you are saying about a joint statement. But you acknowledged the political realities of some organizations being able to do that. I am not in the leadership of Jewish Voice for Peace, and I didn’t like their failure to condemn what Hamas did in their initial statement. But I believe that the phrase Never Again applies to all Holocausts not just ones where Jews are killed. So I align with If Not Now who keeps their demands very simple. I think a ceasefire is the only thing we should be asking for. Personally, I would go further. I would ask that the US not fund Israel until they stop slaughtering civilians. But Israel and the US will do neither of these things, because the leaders of both countries benefit from war.
As for the hostages, we learned from the 83 year old hostage who shook hands with her captor and explained it by saying they were treated well and all their needs were met, the civilians taken by Hamas are being treated far better than the Palestinian civilians being bombed by Israel right now.
Thank you Lauren for putting my thoughts and emotions into such a logical and deliberate order. My disgust with America's response to the immediate situation is outrage. The U.S. approach to achieving peace is always to send in more arms. As a Vietnam war veteran I have never been so ashamed. As an American Jew it is my first obligation to appeal to MY government to stop the ongoing massacre in Gaza. Not to pour gas on the fire. Cease fire Now!
Lauren, you are Righteous among the Righteous. Une Juste parmi les Justes. Humanity before tribe. You voice is insightful and accurate and a particularly articulate one among the 20 million worldwide. The other 7 billion of humanity must applaud you.
Lauren, I agree 100% with everything you wrote.
Oh god Peter you are such a fool.
Speaking of, look in the mirror, clown show
100% this is the same argument put forward as WEF buffoon Zionist and eugenics promoter Yoel Noah Harari
“ Professor” you are acting like a WOKE stoog and a morally bankrupt crony of the Palestinian Authority. You opining that only the left cares for Palestinians is wrong and illustrates your ignorance and partisan biases. By the way who are you to tell the Palestinians what to think and how to express their political opinions and goals? Typical leftist condescension and pandering-NO YOU DONT HAVE TO THINK OR PROTECT THEM GOR THEMSELVES!! It’s you who needs the help…your neurosis and lack of balance is repugnant.
^IDF stormtrooper