But, whatever their true motives, by simply waving their "Free Palestine" and "From the Rivers to the Sea" signs, so soon after the October 7 massacre of 1,400 Israeli civilians, and without providing any additional context, many invite an inference of bad faith. They sound—whether intentionally or otherwise—like they are calling for the ethnic cleansing or genocide of Israeli Jews. And if this is not in fact what many of them will say they mean, if pressed to clarify—they seldom act proactively to disavow such a meaning. They seem to feel no moral obligation to distance themselves from any such calls for ethnic cleansing, treating the risk of this happening as so remote a danger as to be negligible.
The New York Times today quoted one student protester who is perhaps representative. When asked why she was at the rally, she said something to the effect that, while it is "important to recognize that Jewish people suffered persecution in the past, this doesn't give Israel the right to persecute Muslims in the present." Such a statement would probably win wide assent on the progressive left in the current climate. Yet, it is also jaw-droppingly bizarre if anyone stopped to think about it. After all, what does this student mean by "in the past." In the past? Has everyone already forgotten what this whole war is about? Have people already moved on from the Hamas pogrom just one month ago that left 1,400 people dead?
What is the mass murder of 1,400 Jews, by a group that calls openly for their expulsion and elimination from Israel, if it is not present-day persecution? Moreover, how can anyone on the left still regard Israeli fears for their own security as hyperbolic, or deny the risk of a genocide against Israeli Jews if Hamas got the upper hand? Didn't we just see the validity of these fears and the reality of this danger illustrated in the most horrific possible way, before the world's eyes? Aren't there still hundreds of Israeli hostages even now in Hamas captivity? What else could people need to see before they believed that Israeli Jews do in fact face an existential peril from the extremists arrayed against them?
It does not surprise or alarm me, to be sure, that people are protesting the actions of the Israeli government. All the criticisms of Netanyahu for facilitating the expansion of unlawful settlements in the West Bank and fanning the flames of ultra-nationalism; all the concerns that IDF airstrikes are butchering civilians in flagrant disregard for the rules of proportionality—these certainly are justified. What is appalling and strange to me is that people are protesting these things without any acknowledgement of the Hamas atrocities on the other side—the ones that precipitated this fighting in Gaza to begin with, after years of relative stability, and which pose the very real threat that the IDF is seeking to counter (not to mention the many atrocities Hamas commits against Palestinians in Gaza as well—including placing them in harm's way through basing military operations near or within civilian infrastructure).
How can the marchers not see what I and so many other people thought was so obvious—the flagrant persecution and mass murder of Israeli Jews on October 7? It's not that all these protesters on the streets are truly oblivious of these attacks. Many of them would condemn Hamas's actions if pressed. But I think they view the Hamas attack as perhaps a tactical excess in an otherwise justified armed struggle—rather than a manifestation of medieval antisemitism by a group that was founded to exterminate Jews. Yet, this of course is precisely what Hamas is: an avowedly genocidal organization. The left should view it no differently than they would any other far-right nationalist group that favors ethnic and religious supremacy.
Perhaps the fundamental misconception stems from how the left has framed the entire Israel-Palestine conflict. Many have embraced a simplistic narrative that sees Zionism as a form of European colonialism, and that therefore regards Israeli Jews as standing in perhaps an analogous position to French colonists in Algeria. The only debate in this section of the left therefore becomes one of tactics, rather than goals. The more humane might say, as some did with regard to Algeria, that terrorism targeting civilians is never justified (recall Camus's protest during that conflict—that one of the people killed in those bombs could have been his mother), but they probably would have agreed on the same goal of independence.
What people on the left have lost sight of—or never knew—is that this analogy is deeply flawed. Jewish emigration to Palestine was happening long before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948; nearly as many Jews were expelled from surrounding Arab states at the time of this founding as Palestinians were expelled from Israel; and Israeli Jews fought an at times brutal campaign against British colonial authorities to force them to leave the Palestinian Mandate. The creation of the Israel-Palestine conflict was therefore much more like the partition of India and Pakistan than it was like French Algeria. Israel, we can say, is a product more of decolonization than of colonization.
Here's what I mean by that comparison: take India and Pakistan first. Here were two countries that could have been established as one nation at the time the British left. Instead, communal violence and religious persecution broke out between members of the two largest religious groups, leading to partition between the two nations. This immediately prompted a mass exodus of Hindus from the newly-created Muslim-majority state and of Muslims from the newly-created Hindu-majority state. Now, do you see how something very similar happened at Israel's creation? The British left; a new state was formed; ethnic and religious violence forced Arabs out of Israel and Jews out of the surrounding Arab states.
The origins of Israel are certainly troubled, therefore—just as the origins of India and Pakistan are. It can even be said that the state of Israel had its roots in colonialism. But then, so too did India and Pakistan. Indeed, by this measure, almost every modern nation in the entire Global South had its origins in colonialism. All of these new states that emerged during the era of decolonization—around the same time Israel was established—were formed through the withdrawal of European authorities who left behind often arbitrary national boundaries. And very many of these countries soon experienced the same sort of ethnic violence and persecution that Israel and Palestine did as these boundaries were negotiated and redrawn between groups.
Of course, one key difference is that India and Pakistan both became genuinely independent states, whereas Palestinians today still do not have their state, or any state in which they enjoy full political rights (at least not those living in the West Bank, as opposed to Israel proper). This is a problem, to be sure. And if it is all we mean by "Free Palestine," then I am on board, since I support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank (the challenge at this point though, notoriously, is what then to do about the far-right Israeli settlers in the West Bank who do not wish to leave, and whom the current Israeli government is not willing to antagonize).
But if we then add the phrase "From the Rivers to the Sea," it sounds like instead of merely calling for an independent Palestinian state on analogy to Pakistan, we are instead saying that, by "Free Palestine," we mean something more like what the left might have meant by "Free Algeria" once upon a time—namely, that Palestinians should be in full control of the entire region covered by Israel and Palestine. And in that case, what is supposed to happen to Israeli Jews, who are framed merely as European colonists according to this analogy? The left is often eerily silent on this question. But Hamas is explicit on it: genocide. And the first generation of Palestinian leadership was equally clear: mass expulsion, under threat of extermination.
To be sure, Israel's human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied territories must be condemned—just as the far-right Hindu nationalist Indian government's human rights violations against its Muslim minority must be condemned. But this does not mean I would therefore get behind a campaign to "Free Palestine" by taking over all of Israel any more than I would endorse a Pakistani reconquista of India, or vice versa. I don't want one or the other side to "win" the conflict; I just want them to live in their respective states and protect the rights equally of all their citizens—or find a way to share their political institutions without putting anyone at risk of expulsion.
What I'm saying is that, in each of these conflicts that followed decolonization, the human rights violations went both ways—and are still going both ways today. We therefore must be vigilant about and condemn Israeli violence and persecution of Palestinians in the occupied territories. But we also have to recognize that, from the moment of the founding of Israel to the present, there have also been ongoing human rights violations, or credible threats of violations, committed against Israeli Jews. The surrounding Arab states launched multiple wars against them in an apparent attempt to wipe them out of existence. There were brutal terrorist campaigns across decades aiming to kill Israeli civilians based solely on their religion and nationality. They have faced an endless barrage of rockets aimed indiscriminately at civilian targets. And this was all before the October 7 massacre.
Strangely, though, the left only seems to see one side of this equation. They regard Palestinian concerns about threats to their human rights as valid, but treat Israeli ones as de minimus. Maybe I even viewed the conflict that way too, until recently—after all, for many years Israel enjoyed such a clear defensive advantage through the success of the Iron Dome system that it seemed to many unrealistic that Hamas could pose a serious threat. But, whatever we thought before, October 7 should have changed all that. Surely, it is undeniable now that Israel really does face an existential threat. The left needs to speak out against this threat as loudly as they do against Israeli war crimes.
Many on the left will say: but we do oppose Hamas's violence. It's just that right now we're protesting Israel's excessive retaliation to that violence. But why, then, do they regard the second as more urgent than the first? Why don't they see these two dangers as at least equally matched, and therefore both in need of protesting?
It comes back to this underlying mistaken belief: that Israel is fundamentally a settler-colonial state—therefore resistance to it in all forms is basically justified, even if they disagree on humanitarian grounds with some of the tactics that the supposed "anti-colonial resistance" may use. This is instead of seeing Israel for what it really is: namely, as yet another troubled product of the period of decolonization, marked like so many other states in the Global South that were formed around the same time by a history of ethnic and religious persecution on multiple sides (except with the added complication in Israel's case of the ongoing occupation of the 1967-acquired West Bank thrown in, which is a separate issue from the status of Israel within its 1948 borders).
With regard to all such states, we should not be advocating for one "side" or the other to "win" the conflict. We shouldn't be "pro-Palestine" or "pro-Israel" any more than we should be "pro-India" or "pro-Pakistan." We should just be calling on all parties to respect the human rights of everyone within the orbit of their effective power. This means that Israel needs to end the occupation of the West Bank—difficult as that might be given the settlements—or else extend full citizenship and political rights to the Palestinians living there. But it also means that Hamas needs to either renounce its ideology and disarm and disband voluntarily, or be removed from power and deprived of the ability to ever target civilians again. We should therefore be marching as much for the removal of Hamas from power as we are in protest of Israeli war crimes.
Some of the protesters might retort that, even if they support the removal of Hamas from power in principle, there is no need to march for that because the U.S. is already supporting Israel's efforts in this regard; therefore, we should focus on protesting the war crimes on the other side that the U.S. is facilitating. But within this argument, it seems, I detect yet another trace of this same flawed idea we keep encountering in other forms: namely, the belief that Israel invariably has the upper hand, that it has all the power, that it is the "colonizer" and therefore can never be oppressed.
But, yet again, I would have thought that October 7 had changed some of that analysis. It certainly altered my view on the matter. I can no longer maintain that Israeli security is so impregnable as not to need reinforcing. And if I am therefore charged with inconsistency, I am tempted to retort; "when the facts change, I change my mind..." etc.
I also have to question: why do we think that U.S. support for the human rights of Israeli Jews is so secure that we don't need to worry about reinforcing this either? Have people not noticed that there is actually an awful lot of antisemitism in this country, manifesting itself at both extremes of the political spectrum? Have they not noticed that there is a growing contingent of far-right American politicians and pundits (Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Vivek Ramaswamy, etc.) who would like to eliminate or reduce U.S. support for Israel on so-called "America First" grounds (an antisemitic dog-whistle if ever there was one, given the political origins of that phrase)?
And, more fundamentally: why are people on the left not more worried about the possibility of blindly marching their way into backing (perhaps unintentionally) a second Holocaust? Many on the left seem very anxious, after all, not to repeat the evils of European colonialism, and rightly so. What I can't figure out, though, is why they are not at least equally if not more anxious to avoid repeating the evils of the Nazi-orchestrated genocide of the Jews.
Maybe they imagine that because they are on the "left," they are therefore immune to fascism and antisemitism. Yet, the supposedly leftist regimes in the Eastern Bloc during the Soviet era persecuted and expelled Jews at various times (think of Stalin during the so-called Doctor's Plot, the later controversies around exit visas for Soviet Jews, and the antisemitic purges in Communist Poland in the late '60s), and the Soviet Union also supported the Arab-majority countries in fighting their wars against Israel—wars that seemed to aim pretty explicitly at the mass expulsion if not outright murder of Israeli Jews, all within just a few decades of the Holocaust.
Maybe people think it's been so long since the Holocaust by this point that it's far-fetched to imagine it could come again? Maybe they think, like the student protester quoted in the New York Times, that anti-Jewish persecution was something that only happened "in the past"? Yet—didn't we just witness a pogrom against Jews in Israel a few weeks ago? Has everyone already forgotten? Isn't that what this whole war is about? And if a pogrom can happen again, who are we to say the Holocaust cannot happen again?
On this point, I quoted last week T.S. Eliot's apt question from a poem: "Do you need to be told that whatever has been, can still be?" And I found, even more aptly, the same insight in Saul Bellow's 1970 novel, Mr. Sammler's Planet, which I read this weekend. Bellow's protagonist is a Jewish refugee and Holocaust survivor who fought as an anti-fascist partisan in the forests of Poland during World War II, and later served as a correspondent during the 1967 Six Day War in Israel. "Like many people who had seen the world collapse once," Bellow writes—channeling Eliot's point— "Mr. Sammler entertained the possibility it might collapse twice."
And later in the novel, explaining his reasons for traveling to Israel during the Six Day War, he gives an example of what it can mean for the world to collapse twice: "for the second time in twenty-five years," Bellow writes, "the same people were threatened by extermination."
Why does the left find it so hard to contemplate that the same people who faced extermination twice in twenty-five years might be well justified in fearing it yet again today? Why do they discount the possibility that the worst could come twice? Perhaps because they have not yet seen the world collapse. But, as Bellow says, those who have, can never doubt that it might fall apart again. They do not need to be told, that whatever has been, can still be again.
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