I’d add, however, that we should welcome those who have come around late if and only if their fallen eye-scales are attached to action- not simply “this is terrible, Israel must allow food to get through,” but also, we should cut off all aid to Israel until the genocide ends and Israel dismantles its apartheid state.
Otherwise, it’s just Omar El Akkad’s tweet (on October 23, 2023)
“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is and it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will always have been against this.”
Put differently, unless Ritchie Torres votes to sanction Israel, his words are empty.
And he posed for a happy photo with him when he was in Washington a month ago, while dodging the ICC indictment for war crimes. So did 14 other Democrats, including Adam Schiff, Amy Klobuchar and Corey Booker (who tried to hide in the background).
Klobuchar voted for both amendments offered by Senator Sanders to stop sending weapons to Israel that it is using to perpetuate atrocities against Palestinians.
I feel the exact same way about Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla of California. Padilla’s hypocrisy really surprised me. Schiff, not quite as much, even though all of his fundraising emails are about how committed he is to social justice.
Needless to say, I will not be sending either of them any more of my money.
Peter, your heartfelt commentary here is astute as always. And as the denialism dam is breaking, I'm thrilled that you and other formerly voice-in-the-wilderness activists can finally feel less painfully isolated. Give yourself huge, huge credit for persevering in the thankless job of awakening the latecomers.
Thank you for this. You speak some really hard but practical truths, especially about the latecomers being a necessary part of this horror (we hope, pray) becoming globally unacceptable and stopped because they’re the mainstream. 100% agree with the duty to honour those who took the huge risk of calling this out from the outset and becoming pariahs to honour their conscience and humanity. I do wonder though whether the call to look to those who told the truth and have a track record of having a conscience for guidance is wishful thinking (although I wish it wasn’t). Won’t the people in power always listen to the words and views they want to hear, not what is right?
I’d add Owen Jones and Mehdi Hasan to your list of brave journalists who called out the truth from the outset. I’m from the UK and we’ve just got a new political party in the making here headed by Jeremy Corbyn, who is probably the only politician who has honoured his conscience when it wasn’t politically acceptable to do so, from opposing apartheid in South Africa to the illegal war on Iraq to the necessity of liberation for the Palestinians and an end to the genocide. Our current political system no longer serves us and the stance of the two main parties towards the genocide in Palestine have proven how morally bankrupt they are. I hope your comment about looking to those with conscience to lead us and shape policy comes to fruition here.
It is quite possible to have been for two states all along, to oppose "one state" calls for the desruction of Israel (not just its government), to have denounced 7 October as an atrocity and to support "flooding" Gaza with aid, to demand an immediate ceasefire and the release of all remaining hostages. It is also possible to call for all that *and* to recognise the obvious antisemitism evident in may of the "pro-Palestinian" demos. And the people who organised "pro Palestinian" actions on October 8th and (th were clearly *celebrating* the pogrom. I don't think claiming that such people were "right all along" is either correct or gets the peace movement anywhere.
Would you say to a person of color that they never experienced prejudice just because you didn’t witness it or recognize it as such? Because that’s what you’re doing when you tell someone that the prejudice they saw didn’t really happen. It’s really incredibly rude and mean.
I would say that the desperate effort to equate all opposition to the Zionist project in Israel as anti-semitic is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The ADL, AIPAC et al are in the business of ginning up their oppression for financial gain and American bombs.
Jim, you are right--the position you outline is quite possible to hold without inherent contradiction, and I regard it as a more honorable and more moral position than many others that exist on the ground to its right. But part of your comment is still (hopefully unintentionally) talking past Peter and a large critical mass of the crowd he hangs with--anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention for the last decade knows that the people he says were "right all along" are a totally different bloc of people from those celebrating 10/7 or holding signs that say "go back to Poland" or whatever. Peter's crowd feel the same way about actual left-wing antisemitism as Bari Weiss does. But unlike the new Jewish center and center-right, they don't preposterously overdiagnose it. "Go back to Poland" is antisemitic. Celebrating terrorism is beyond antisemitic. "Let Gaza live" or "ceasefire" or are not anti-semitic.
A few things: First, yes, it is possible to want this horror to end and want Israelis to be okay. But opposing the existence of the State of Israel does not have to endanger Israelis. A different structure could benefit everyone. Second, I spent a lot of time with the student protestors, including inadvertantally attending an event with some very pro-militancy speakers. No one ever said anything against Jews. The only mention of Jews at any protest I attended was in the context of protesters organizing a Passover seder a the camp. Third, pogroms by definition punch down. An oppressed group cannot pogrom their oppressors; they can only engage in rebellion. The raid was quite violent, but it was not an act of oppression. Based on the clear demands released in context with the raid, there's no reason to believe it was racially motivated.
"Based on the clear demands released in context with the raid, there's no reason to believe it was racially motivated": are you serious? Have you read either version of the Hamas charter? As for "opposing the existance of the state of Israel does not have to endanger Israelis": do you honestly think Israeli Jews would be safe in the region without their own state? That over a century of bitter, often murderous, mutual hostility will simply melt away?
Yes, I think Israelis would be far safer without "their own" state. They were safer before they founded it, and every instance of violence towards them since has been a reaction to them trying to expand or enforce it, including all Hamas charters and actions. If a group of people stole your home and locked you in the basement, if you broke out and stabbed one of them, demanding sovereignty over at least part of your house, it would not be racially motivated, no matter what language you had used to refer to the group 40 years earlier.
There is no middle ground – it is either two states or some sort of Islamic-Arabic revanchist fantasy.
The ‘secular democratic state’ slogan, still raised ocassionally by leftist "one state advocates, works only to smooth the road of people who don’t stop to think about the issue towards vicarious Arab-Islamic chauvinism.
Unless you think the interests of one side should be entirely sacrificed to the other – that is, unless you are either an Arab or an Israeli chauvinist – there is only one acceptable solution.
Each nation should have self-determination in the territory where it is the majority. I understand that to mean, essentially, the 1967 border.
There should be full equality for members of each nationality in the other’s state.
Sure, at the moment this looks a long way off and support for it within Israel has declined in recent years, abd especially after the October 7 atrocities.
But Israeli opinion can change: a 2023 Pew Research survey, while noting a decline in overall Israeli support for two states, also noted:
“73% of Israelis on the political left say a way can be found for two states to coexist, compared with 53% of those in the center and 14% of those on the right.
“Arab Israelis are somewhat more likely than Jewish Israelis to express optimism in the possibility of a peaceful coexistence with an independent Palestinian state (41% vs. 32%).
“There are strong divisions between Jewish groups: 61% of Hiloni Jews say a peaceful coexistence is possible, while just 17% of Masorti Jews and 7% of Haredi/Dati Jews say the same.
Crucially, what is the alternative? One (supposedly) “secular democratic” state?
The central premise of “one-staters” (who still sometimes say their desired outcome is a “secular democratic state”) is that Israel does not have the right to exist.
The outcome of the 1948 war in which Israel won the right to exist, and the coming into being of the Jewish state is the historical ‘error’ at the core of what advocates of the (single) “secular democratic state” base their analysis upon.
The first problem is this: how is this going to be achieved?
What are the chances that the Israelis will agree voluntarily to dismantle their state? Zero!
We can realistically hope to eventually win Israeli agreement or majority agreement, reluctant or otherwise, for a Palestinian state and, as relations between Israel and the surrounding Arab states become ‘normalised’, for full equality for Israeli Arabs in the Jewish state. After ‘two states’ may come federation. But there is absolutely no chance that the Israeli Jews can be persuaded simply to disarm, to dismantle their state and to place themselves at the mercy of their enemies of many decades.
No people in history has ever done anything like that.
As I understand it, the center of mainstream/non-fringey polisci gravity behind the "one democratic state" aspiration would begin with two states, move as quickly as possible toward confederation with EU-style freedom of movement, reciprocal residency and working rights, and perhaps a shared capital. Then, maybe one day, it would evolve towards one state. But really, any sub-variant of the two state solution that ameliorates the issue of non-contiguous areas of land that people care about with good residency rights and freedom of movement addresses most of the moral urgency that causes one-staters to oppose two states. People need to chill out and stop talking past each other.
The Holocaust occurred before Israel was established in 1948. And that is part of why Israel was established.
Unfortunately, the fact that people were violently displaced when Israel was established and systematically oppressed thereafter created an environment where diabolical Islamic extremists were able to come in and radicalize people who otherwise would not have been radicalized. Alas, October 7, 2023.
Hence, the right approach is to end the genocide, then for Israel and Hamas to engage in a swap where all of the remaining Israeli hostages are released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and then for the systemic oppression of Palestinians by Israel to abruptly end with the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state in the Israeli occupied West Bank with its capital located in East Jerusalem and Hamas simultaneously disarming and dismantling.
The one-state solution would end up in a full-blown civil war between Jews and Palestinians. But I suppose that is better than Israel committing genocide against the Palestinians.
The Holocaust didn't harm Israelis, though. (In fact, the Nazis funded Zionism as a way to get Jews out of Europe.) Israelis have only ever been harmed by non-Israelis when they aggressively asserted their statehood.
On the question of civil war, I would say there has always been one, albeit a very unbalanced one. The cases I know of where apartheid has ended (South Africa, the Southeast US, etc.) interethnic violence has decreased, not increased. It's not unimaginable that it would increase in some way in Israel-Palestine, but I would be very surprised.
You are correct in stating that the Holocaust did not harm Israelis. But the point I was trying to make is that there is less violence toward Jews overall in the world than there was before Israel was established in 1948.
However, that may not be the case for much longer if Israel’s genocide of Palestinians continues. That’s another reason, along with being an unforgivable affront to Jewish values in and of itself, it needs to immediately end.
And I would still prefer the two-state solution to the one-state solution. But, as a last resort, if Israel refuses to dismantle and deconstruct its illegal West Bank settlements, I am willing to go along with the one-state solution because there would be no better option.
An anti-zionist Jewish friend is estranged from family for their stance and trying to gently/strategically incrementally give a family member your book. They mentioned to me that they struggle with the fact that they have to convince the member at all for obvious reasons.
They posited to me how would they themselves feel if it was their family perishing and this was the Jewish holocaust and they heard people having to convince their family members to understand and speak out when folks were dying and being dispossessed in real time.
There was nothing I could offer as an answer.
I have heard your principled perspective on this line of thinking and I share your view as a South African Ismaili living in diaspora, (and I too am angered and frustrated)
However, I knew my articulation of my ethical perspective would not provide comfort.
Perhaps that’s the point we cannot be comforted nor provide comfort at all.
I hope you are not burdening yourself. You were there, you listened; if you can only do that for now, that's where things stand. You are an ally and a part of this (brave) person's chosen family.
I wouldn’t say I’m excessively burdening myself. I choose to struggle with the weight and the truth of the global system and the condition of humanity in which we all live. Also, as a person who was born stateless and then shoved off the land as a baby during Apartheid in South Africa, I feel a deep moral obligation to bear witness to all of this. Grateful for folks in this community who choose to bear witness and struggle too despite the horrors in our past. 🙏🏽
After Rashida Tlaib was censored by her colleagues for having the gall to say both Palestinian and Israel lives matter I had t-shirts made that read "from the river to the sea, Rashida Tlaib speaks to me". I sent off a couple to Representative Tlaib's office with a letter of appreciation. We got a very nice letter back which my daughter read to her 2nd grade class while wearing one of the shirts.
A short time after my children's principal called to say some other anonymous parents objected to the pro-palestine clothing my children wore to school. I told him some of us take ideals such as justice and equality seriously. But he should speak directly to my children, 8 and 10 at the time. So he pulled them out of class to do. And about 10 minutes off them explaining why they are proud anti-zionist Jews he text back to say we're good.
When it comes to u s. support for Israel I fully believe my children will come of age in a radically different world than they were born into. Viva Palestina!
Thanks. We have to keep the pressure on our elected officials. It's not enough to sign a letter of protest to Rubio and Witkoff, although it's good to have those names on record, including Schumer, Schiff, and Padilla, who now must answer for voting against reducing arms sales to Israel. Lots of people are looking for ways to address the deliberate starvation in Gaza-they need to be given the tools (jvp, afsc powerhours) to call and write their representatives.
I agree completely. I just stopped sending money to Schiff and Padilla over this very issue. And there is another Senator who is not so well-known who has refused to halt any offensive weapons transfers to Israel.
That would be Senator Gary Peters of Michigan. Even his Michigander colleague, Elissa Slotkin, at least refused to cast a vote on Senator Sanders’s two amendments last week because she couldn’t bring herself to cross the AIPAC genocide rally. And he represents the state with the largest number of Muslim American voters.
Peter, you are right as usual, and there are a lot of parallels to the anti Vietnam War movement. Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon was one of only two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin war resolution in 1964, which gave LBJ free rein to wage the war. Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas held hearings in 1966 which really exposed how misguided the war was.
Congressman Pete McCloskey of California, a Republican, was very opposed to the war and actually challenged Nixon in the 1972 presidential primary. John Kerry headed up the Vietnam Veterans against the War, and testified before Congress in 1971, only to be “swift boated” by the morally corrupt Bush campaign in 2004.
All of the above were condemned at the time, but proven right.
While a few are acknowledging the tortured life of those starving in Gaza, and some will admit 63K civilians have died, most of whom are women and children and many of those who survive are amputees or are orphans, no one talks about the toxic air Palestinians breath as they roam around the rubble. One lesson learned from 9/11 is cancer killed many years later. The genocide will continue. That's why I can't understand why bombing continues, now in Gaza City. Food withheld, hospitals destroyed, universities pummeled, religious institutions eliminated… what's left? Certainly children are not being educated. Why is more devastation needed?
This is such an important approach. Time and time again the same world view that has brought us disaster after disaster are still allowed to lead. Thank you Peter.
The day after October 7th, it was shocking that no grace was given by pro-Palestinian activists to the absolutely devastated Jews worldwide. They couldn’t be bothered to wait for any facts to come out or to offer comfort to their Jewish friends and neighbors. They didn’t care about the grief and fear and worry that Jews everywhere were feeling. It wasn’t appropriate for them to drown out those voices who were suffering. I believe that Netanyahu has prosecuted the war on Gaza poorly and cruelly. I believe it should’ve ended long ago and I NEVER thought it was acceptable to impose a siege to withhold food, water, and health care on Gaza at all. And I wish Biden had at least held Israel accountable to US law regarding the use of weapons we supplied. But I certainly won’t lionize those people who insisted that Israel should take that attack in stride as though it was deserved or somehow a win for freedom. Nope.
Because we saw the crimes of October 7th as the inevitability result of 74 years of Israel's increasing cruelty and belligerence to Palestinians. Because we saw October 7th as predictable as slave revolts and Native American uprising. Because we saw the attack on the Israel military as just as the Warsaw uprising. And we still do.
Long live the intifada until the Jewish supremist state of Israel is no more
If the realization that they had been deceived and lacking in courage around Iraq had truly been absorbed by the MSM (that’s especially NYT) they might have looked more closely at the role of Israel specifically Netanyahu in promoting that war. Even now the completely uncritical coverage of his machinations eg assassinating the negotiators, continues. That dam can’t break until the Left makes more significant power gains and changes the frame of legitimacy that has been used since 2001.
Agree 100%.
I’d add, however, that we should welcome those who have come around late if and only if their fallen eye-scales are attached to action- not simply “this is terrible, Israel must allow food to get through,” but also, we should cut off all aid to Israel until the genocide ends and Israel dismantles its apartheid state.
Otherwise, it’s just Omar El Akkad’s tweet (on October 23, 2023)
“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is and it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will always have been against this.”
Put differently, unless Ritchie Torres votes to sanction Israel, his words are empty.
We have 17+ Dem senators, who have yet to change their minds/ hearts.
Including both New York State senators... where are they?
Both NYS senators actively support the genocide and will vote to keep funding it until they are out of the Senate.
As will my Congressman, Dan Goldman. Why no one is primarying them (esp. Goldman, who is far more vulnerable) is a mystery for the ages.
Schumer made an anti-Netanyahu speech on the Senate floor - when? A year ago? Since then - a peep? I don't believe so.
And he posed for a happy photo with him when he was in Washington a month ago, while dodging the ICC indictment for war crimes. So did 14 other Democrats, including Adam Schiff, Amy Klobuchar and Corey Booker (who tried to hide in the background).
Yes.. at least Amy Klobuchar supported the Senate resolutions... Booker didn't and Schiff didn't...
Klobuchar voted for both amendments offered by Senator Sanders to stop sending weapons to Israel that it is using to perpetuate atrocities against Palestinians.
Adam,
I feel the exact same way about Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla of California. Padilla’s hypocrisy really surprised me. Schiff, not quite as much, even though all of his fundraising emails are about how committed he is to social justice.
Needless to say, I will not be sending either of them any more of my money.
Complete
Both Colorado senators over here as well.
Hickenlooper has a primary challenger. Vote for her!
Thank you Peter, so very right. And the students who’ve been vilified, abducted et al, we should honor their early insight with thanks and respect.
Peter, your heartfelt commentary here is astute as always. And as the denialism dam is breaking, I'm thrilled that you and other formerly voice-in-the-wilderness activists can finally feel less painfully isolated. Give yourself huge, huge credit for persevering in the thankless job of awakening the latecomers.
Yes yes yes!!! 🙌🏽💯🫶🏽❤️🇵🇸🕊
Thank you for this. You speak some really hard but practical truths, especially about the latecomers being a necessary part of this horror (we hope, pray) becoming globally unacceptable and stopped because they’re the mainstream. 100% agree with the duty to honour those who took the huge risk of calling this out from the outset and becoming pariahs to honour their conscience and humanity. I do wonder though whether the call to look to those who told the truth and have a track record of having a conscience for guidance is wishful thinking (although I wish it wasn’t). Won’t the people in power always listen to the words and views they want to hear, not what is right?
I’d add Owen Jones and Mehdi Hasan to your list of brave journalists who called out the truth from the outset. I’m from the UK and we’ve just got a new political party in the making here headed by Jeremy Corbyn, who is probably the only politician who has honoured his conscience when it wasn’t politically acceptable to do so, from opposing apartheid in South Africa to the illegal war on Iraq to the necessity of liberation for the Palestinians and an end to the genocide. Our current political system no longer serves us and the stance of the two main parties towards the genocide in Palestine have proven how morally bankrupt they are. I hope your comment about looking to those with conscience to lead us and shape policy comes to fruition here.
It is quite possible to have been for two states all along, to oppose "one state" calls for the desruction of Israel (not just its government), to have denounced 7 October as an atrocity and to support "flooding" Gaza with aid, to demand an immediate ceasefire and the release of all remaining hostages. It is also possible to call for all that *and* to recognise the obvious antisemitism evident in may of the "pro-Palestinian" demos. And the people who organised "pro Palestinian" actions on October 8th and (th were clearly *celebrating* the pogrom. I don't think claiming that such people were "right all along" is either correct or gets the peace movement anywhere.
You see anti-semitism where you are told to see it.....but sure
Would you say to a person of color that they never experienced prejudice just because you didn’t witness it or recognize it as such? Because that’s what you’re doing when you tell someone that the prejudice they saw didn’t really happen. It’s really incredibly rude and mean.
I would say that the desperate effort to equate all opposition to the Zionist project in Israel as anti-semitic is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The ADL, AIPAC et al are in the business of ginning up their oppression for financial gain and American bombs.
sadly determined to misunderstand
Jim, you are right--the position you outline is quite possible to hold without inherent contradiction, and I regard it as a more honorable and more moral position than many others that exist on the ground to its right. But part of your comment is still (hopefully unintentionally) talking past Peter and a large critical mass of the crowd he hangs with--anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention for the last decade knows that the people he says were "right all along" are a totally different bloc of people from those celebrating 10/7 or holding signs that say "go back to Poland" or whatever. Peter's crowd feel the same way about actual left-wing antisemitism as Bari Weiss does. But unlike the new Jewish center and center-right, they don't preposterously overdiagnose it. "Go back to Poland" is antisemitic. Celebrating terrorism is beyond antisemitic. "Let Gaza live" or "ceasefire" or are not anti-semitic.
Amen! Beautifully stated, Jim.
A few things: First, yes, it is possible to want this horror to end and want Israelis to be okay. But opposing the existence of the State of Israel does not have to endanger Israelis. A different structure could benefit everyone. Second, I spent a lot of time with the student protestors, including inadvertantally attending an event with some very pro-militancy speakers. No one ever said anything against Jews. The only mention of Jews at any protest I attended was in the context of protesters organizing a Passover seder a the camp. Third, pogroms by definition punch down. An oppressed group cannot pogrom their oppressors; they can only engage in rebellion. The raid was quite violent, but it was not an act of oppression. Based on the clear demands released in context with the raid, there's no reason to believe it was racially motivated.
"Based on the clear demands released in context with the raid, there's no reason to believe it was racially motivated": are you serious? Have you read either version of the Hamas charter? As for "opposing the existance of the state of Israel does not have to endanger Israelis": do you honestly think Israeli Jews would be safe in the region without their own state? That over a century of bitter, often murderous, mutual hostility will simply melt away?
Yes, I think Israelis would be far safer without "their own" state. They were safer before they founded it, and every instance of violence towards them since has been a reaction to them trying to expand or enforce it, including all Hamas charters and actions. If a group of people stole your home and locked you in the basement, if you broke out and stabbed one of them, demanding sovereignty over at least part of your house, it would not be racially motivated, no matter what language you had used to refer to the group 40 years earlier.
There is no middle ground – it is either two states or some sort of Islamic-Arabic revanchist fantasy.
The ‘secular democratic state’ slogan, still raised ocassionally by leftist "one state advocates, works only to smooth the road of people who don’t stop to think about the issue towards vicarious Arab-Islamic chauvinism.
Unless you think the interests of one side should be entirely sacrificed to the other – that is, unless you are either an Arab or an Israeli chauvinist – there is only one acceptable solution.
Each nation should have self-determination in the territory where it is the majority. I understand that to mean, essentially, the 1967 border.
There should be full equality for members of each nationality in the other’s state.
Sure, at the moment this looks a long way off and support for it within Israel has declined in recent years, abd especially after the October 7 atrocities.
But Israeli opinion can change: a 2023 Pew Research survey, while noting a decline in overall Israeli support for two states, also noted:
“73% of Israelis on the political left say a way can be found for two states to coexist, compared with 53% of those in the center and 14% of those on the right.
“Arab Israelis are somewhat more likely than Jewish Israelis to express optimism in the possibility of a peaceful coexistence with an independent Palestinian state (41% vs. 32%).
“There are strong divisions between Jewish groups: 61% of Hiloni Jews say a peaceful coexistence is possible, while just 17% of Masorti Jews and 7% of Haredi/Dati Jews say the same.
Crucially, what is the alternative? One (supposedly) “secular democratic” state?
The central premise of “one-staters” (who still sometimes say their desired outcome is a “secular democratic state”) is that Israel does not have the right to exist.
The outcome of the 1948 war in which Israel won the right to exist, and the coming into being of the Jewish state is the historical ‘error’ at the core of what advocates of the (single) “secular democratic state” base their analysis upon.
The first problem is this: how is this going to be achieved?
What are the chances that the Israelis will agree voluntarily to dismantle their state? Zero!
We can realistically hope to eventually win Israeli agreement or majority agreement, reluctant or otherwise, for a Palestinian state and, as relations between Israel and the surrounding Arab states become ‘normalised’, for full equality for Israeli Arabs in the Jewish state. After ‘two states’ may come federation. But there is absolutely no chance that the Israeli Jews can be persuaded simply to disarm, to dismantle their state and to place themselves at the mercy of their enemies of many decades.
No people in history has ever done anything like that.
As I understand it, the center of mainstream/non-fringey polisci gravity behind the "one democratic state" aspiration would begin with two states, move as quickly as possible toward confederation with EU-style freedom of movement, reciprocal residency and working rights, and perhaps a shared capital. Then, maybe one day, it would evolve towards one state. But really, any sub-variant of the two state solution that ameliorates the issue of non-contiguous areas of land that people care about with good residency rights and freedom of movement addresses most of the moral urgency that causes one-staters to oppose two states. People need to chill out and stop talking past each other.
Beautifully stated.
Alice,
The Holocaust occurred before Israel was established in 1948. And that is part of why Israel was established.
Unfortunately, the fact that people were violently displaced when Israel was established and systematically oppressed thereafter created an environment where diabolical Islamic extremists were able to come in and radicalize people who otherwise would not have been radicalized. Alas, October 7, 2023.
Hence, the right approach is to end the genocide, then for Israel and Hamas to engage in a swap where all of the remaining Israeli hostages are released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and then for the systemic oppression of Palestinians by Israel to abruptly end with the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state in the Israeli occupied West Bank with its capital located in East Jerusalem and Hamas simultaneously disarming and dismantling.
The one-state solution would end up in a full-blown civil war between Jews and Palestinians. But I suppose that is better than Israel committing genocide against the Palestinians.
The Holocaust didn't harm Israelis, though. (In fact, the Nazis funded Zionism as a way to get Jews out of Europe.) Israelis have only ever been harmed by non-Israelis when they aggressively asserted their statehood.
On the question of civil war, I would say there has always been one, albeit a very unbalanced one. The cases I know of where apartheid has ended (South Africa, the Southeast US, etc.) interethnic violence has decreased, not increased. It's not unimaginable that it would increase in some way in Israel-Palestine, but I would be very surprised.
Alice,
You are correct in stating that the Holocaust did not harm Israelis. But the point I was trying to make is that there is less violence toward Jews overall in the world than there was before Israel was established in 1948.
However, that may not be the case for much longer if Israel’s genocide of Palestinians continues. That’s another reason, along with being an unforgivable affront to Jewish values in and of itself, it needs to immediately end.
And I would still prefer the two-state solution to the one-state solution. But, as a last resort, if Israel refuses to dismantle and deconstruct its illegal West Bank settlements, I am willing to go along with the one-state solution because there would be no better option.
Concur!
An anti-zionist Jewish friend is estranged from family for their stance and trying to gently/strategically incrementally give a family member your book. They mentioned to me that they struggle with the fact that they have to convince the member at all for obvious reasons.
They posited to me how would they themselves feel if it was their family perishing and this was the Jewish holocaust and they heard people having to convince their family members to understand and speak out when folks were dying and being dispossessed in real time.
There was nothing I could offer as an answer.
I have heard your principled perspective on this line of thinking and I share your view as a South African Ismaili living in diaspora, (and I too am angered and frustrated)
However, I knew my articulation of my ethical perspective would not provide comfort.
Perhaps that’s the point we cannot be comforted nor provide comfort at all.
I hope you are not burdening yourself. You were there, you listened; if you can only do that for now, that's where things stand. You are an ally and a part of this (brave) person's chosen family.
I wouldn’t say I’m excessively burdening myself. I choose to struggle with the weight and the truth of the global system and the condition of humanity in which we all live. Also, as a person who was born stateless and then shoved off the land as a baby during Apartheid in South Africa, I feel a deep moral obligation to bear witness to all of this. Grateful for folks in this community who choose to bear witness and struggle too despite the horrors in our past. 🙏🏽
After Rashida Tlaib was censored by her colleagues for having the gall to say both Palestinian and Israel lives matter I had t-shirts made that read "from the river to the sea, Rashida Tlaib speaks to me". I sent off a couple to Representative Tlaib's office with a letter of appreciation. We got a very nice letter back which my daughter read to her 2nd grade class while wearing one of the shirts.
A short time after my children's principal called to say some other anonymous parents objected to the pro-palestine clothing my children wore to school. I told him some of us take ideals such as justice and equality seriously. But he should speak directly to my children, 8 and 10 at the time. So he pulled them out of class to do. And about 10 minutes off them explaining why they are proud anti-zionist Jews he text back to say we're good.
When it comes to u s. support for Israel I fully believe my children will come of age in a radically different world than they were born into. Viva Palestina!
Thanks. We have to keep the pressure on our elected officials. It's not enough to sign a letter of protest to Rubio and Witkoff, although it's good to have those names on record, including Schumer, Schiff, and Padilla, who now must answer for voting against reducing arms sales to Israel. Lots of people are looking for ways to address the deliberate starvation in Gaza-they need to be given the tools (jvp, afsc powerhours) to call and write their representatives.
Paci,
I agree completely. I just stopped sending money to Schiff and Padilla over this very issue. And there is another Senator who is not so well-known who has refused to halt any offensive weapons transfers to Israel.
That would be Senator Gary Peters of Michigan. Even his Michigander colleague, Elissa Slotkin, at least refused to cast a vote on Senator Sanders’s two amendments last week because she couldn’t bring herself to cross the AIPAC genocide rally. And he represents the state with the largest number of Muslim American voters.
Peter, you are right as usual, and there are a lot of parallels to the anti Vietnam War movement. Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon was one of only two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin war resolution in 1964, which gave LBJ free rein to wage the war. Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas held hearings in 1966 which really exposed how misguided the war was.
Congressman Pete McCloskey of California, a Republican, was very opposed to the war and actually challenged Nixon in the 1972 presidential primary. John Kerry headed up the Vietnam Veterans against the War, and testified before Congress in 1971, only to be “swift boated” by the morally corrupt Bush campaign in 2004.
All of the above were condemned at the time, but proven right.
Thank you to Peter for this wonderful post. Brilliant and thoughtful as always.
Amen!!
While a few are acknowledging the tortured life of those starving in Gaza, and some will admit 63K civilians have died, most of whom are women and children and many of those who survive are amputees or are orphans, no one talks about the toxic air Palestinians breath as they roam around the rubble. One lesson learned from 9/11 is cancer killed many years later. The genocide will continue. That's why I can't understand why bombing continues, now in Gaza City. Food withheld, hospitals destroyed, universities pummeled, religious institutions eliminated… what's left? Certainly children are not being educated. Why is more devastation needed?
Very good and wise monologue.
This is such an important approach. Time and time again the same world view that has brought us disaster after disaster are still allowed to lead. Thank you Peter.
The day after October 7th, it was shocking that no grace was given by pro-Palestinian activists to the absolutely devastated Jews worldwide. They couldn’t be bothered to wait for any facts to come out or to offer comfort to their Jewish friends and neighbors. They didn’t care about the grief and fear and worry that Jews everywhere were feeling. It wasn’t appropriate for them to drown out those voices who were suffering. I believe that Netanyahu has prosecuted the war on Gaza poorly and cruelly. I believe it should’ve ended long ago and I NEVER thought it was acceptable to impose a siege to withhold food, water, and health care on Gaza at all. And I wish Biden had at least held Israel accountable to US law regarding the use of weapons we supplied. But I certainly won’t lionize those people who insisted that Israel should take that attack in stride as though it was deserved or somehow a win for freedom. Nope.
Because we saw the crimes of October 7th as the inevitability result of 74 years of Israel's increasing cruelty and belligerence to Palestinians. Because we saw October 7th as predictable as slave revolts and Native American uprising. Because we saw the attack on the Israel military as just as the Warsaw uprising. And we still do.
Long live the intifada until the Jewish supremist state of Israel is no more
If the realization that they had been deceived and lacking in courage around Iraq had truly been absorbed by the MSM (that’s especially NYT) they might have looked more closely at the role of Israel specifically Netanyahu in promoting that war. Even now the completely uncritical coverage of his machinations eg assassinating the negotiators, continues. That dam can’t break until the Left makes more significant power gains and changes the frame of legitimacy that has been used since 2001.