We’re back after a longer-than-expected break for summer and my son’s bar mitzvah. Alas, nothing changed for better anywhere during my absence. But let us not abandon all hope.
Mairav Zonszein, senior Israel analyst of the International Crisis Group, wrote in The Intercept about a “society gripped by despair but at a loss for how to carve a way out.”1 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has abandoned the Israeli hostages in Gaza, but polls indicate that he is viewed as more fit for office than any of his rivals.
Perhaps the most critical reason for Israeli society’s inability to force political change is that it holds the army sacrosanct and relies heavily on the military’s use of force to maintain a semblance of control and stability. It is a society that has over decades of constant conflict with Palestinians become convinced that any compromise or diplomacy makes Israel appear weak and can only lead to defeat, a sentiment that has grown manifold since October 7. Today, not a single Jewish opposition leader in Israel talks about a two-state solution and not a single Jewish Israeli party voted against a recent Knesset resolution opposing Palestinian statehood — showing that even those who vehemently oppose Netanyahu also reject Palestinian self-determination.2
Omer Bartov of Brown University, a historian of genocide and former IDF soldier, wrote a long essay in The Guardian about how his recent trip to Israel left him deeply disturbed. Bartov wrote about two prevailing sentiments after the Oct. 7th attacks by Hamas and Israel’s war on Gaza.
The first is a combination of rage and fear, a desire to re-establish security at any cost and a complete distrust of political solutions, negotiations and reconciliation. The military theorist Carl von Clausewitz noted that war was the extension of politics by other means, and warned that without a defined political objective it would lead to limitless destruction. The sentiment that now prevails in Israel similarly threatens to make war into its own end. In this view, politics is an obstacle to achieving goals rather than a means to limit destruction. This is a view that can only ultimately lead to self-annihilation.
The second reigning sentiment — or rather lack of sentiment — is the flipside of the first. It is the utter inability of Israeli society today to feel any empathy for the population of Gaza. The majority, it seems, do not even want to know what is happening in Gaza, and this desire is reflected in TV coverage. Israeli television news these days usually begins with reports on the funerals of soldiers, invariably described as heroes, fallen in the fighting in Gaza, followed by estimates of how many Hamas fighters were “liquidated.” References to Palestinian civilian deaths are rare and normally presented as part of enemy propaganda or as a cause for unwelcome international pressure. In the face of so much death, this deafening silence now seems like its own form of vengefulness.3
Vengefulness, for anyone and everyone, is a road to nowhere. Nor does it bring solutions. Consider this Canadian Press story detailing how more than “100 synagogues, Jewish organizations and doctors in multiple cities across the country were on high alert Wednesday [Aug. 21] after they received the same threatening email.”4 Rabbi Nisan Andrews of Calgary noted how he was profoundly disappointed. But he said threats against congregations are becoming more common as well as acts of antisemitism.
Just recently, he said he was walking home with members of his congregation on Sabbath when teenagers began yelling at them through their car window and throwing water bottles.
"This is just plain harassment, and it seems that harassment of Jews is becoming a much more widespread phenomenon," he said.5
Meanwhile, Jay Michaelson in The Forward is calling for non-traumatized responses to antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the U.S. It’s a great column that is measured and thoughtful, employing Buddhism’s double arrow.
… my focus is on helping young American Jews feel more confident and resilient. And if that is our objective, we need to help them understand what is happening, not validate and enflame their every sense of unsafety.
To be sure, when I see someone in a keffiyeh shouting that Israel is an apartheid state, I, too, feel angry and afraid. But these emotions don’t have to dictate my thoughts or actions. I step back, reflect, and try to see what’s really going on. Because often, a lot of what’s happening is less a reflection of reality and more an expression of my own inner demons.6
Amen. We’ll be back next week on a regular schedule.
See here: https://theintercept.com/2024/08/13/israel-society-politics-netanyahu-endless-war/
Zonszein again.
Bartov’s writing is here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1
The Canadian Press wrote the story, carried by CP24: https://www.cp24.com/news/multiple-jewish-organizations-hospitals-across-canada-receive-identical-bomb-threats-1.7008871
CP again.
Jay Michaelson is here: https://forward.com/opinion/644499/american-jews-traumatized-responses-to-antisemitism-and-anti-zionism-are-hurting-our-children/