"Fire and Strength"

 The discourse around the Israel-Palestine conflict has become so utterly toxic in this country that it feels far more dangerous now than it did just a few months ago to speak the simplest of truths about it: just to remind people publicly, for instance, that there are human beings and families on both sides of the conflict who are just trying to survive, all of whom have a legitimate right to stay in their present homes without facing persecution and displacement. 

On the one side, we've seen the revival of a particularly virulent extremist branch of the revolutionary Left, which is endorsing Hamas's violence. This is a segment of the Left that had been dormant for several decades, and which many of us might have thought would never emerge again. For all the complaints about the alleged self-righteousness and knee-jerk radicalism of the progressive left during the period now known as the "Great Awokening," after all, few members of social justice movements during that era ever explicitly endorsed violence and terrorism as a means to their favored ends. That all changed, however, precisely in response to one of the worst acts of terrorism committed in modern history. After October 7, the Baader-Meinhof version of the extreme left was suddenly rearing its head again. Apparently, they beheld what Hamas committed on that day, and thought it was good.

The people on university campuses endorsing Hamas's butchering of Israeli citizens, and apparently calling for more massacres, do indeed remind me of the deluded children of the 1960s and '70s who undertook bombings and assassinations in the name of a bogus revolutionary creed. In both Germany and Japan, New Left terrorists in this era rebelled against their parents' generation, whom they accused (rightly) of allowing fascism and militarism to take over their countries. Yet, the sick irony of this revolt against the World War II generation in both countries is that the young people doing this revolting ended up trying to massacre the exact same people that their parents' generation had persecuted: namely, the Jews.

In short, the same New Left radicals who thought they were making the ultimate repudiation of their parents' fascist legacy instead carried it forward. Maybe they tried to kidnap and murder Jewish civilians out of a pseudo-"revolutionary" or "national liberation" creed, instead of an explicitly racist fascist one, but the result was the same: the New Left radicals of the Baader-Meinhof group and the Japanese Red Army linked up with Palestinian terrorists to attack the same Jewish civilians that their Nazi parents and grandparents had sought to massacre to extinction just a few decades earlier. 

Take, for instance, the 1972 Lod Airport attack, which was committed by the Japanese Red Army and a militant Palestinian group and left 26 people dead. Many of the victims of this attack were doubtless recent survivors of the Holocaust. After just barely escaping the Nazi effort to destroy the world's entire Jewish population, then, they lived only to find themselves in the crosshairs of the children and grandchildren of Nazis, barely a generation later, who were now seeking to murder them once again, this time under the influence of a pseudo-"leftist" ideology. 

Such was the perversion of far-left ideology at the time, which was largely still under the thrall of Communist bloc propaganda that sought to cast Soviet Russia as the only true victim of Nazism. After all, the Warsaw Pact countries in this era undertook a series of antisemitic persecutions of their own, under the mantle of "anti-Zionism" (think of the antisemitic purges in Poland during the late '60s, the "Doctor's Plot" in Stalin's Russia the decade before, and the later controversies surrounding the Soviet Union's refusal to permit its Jewish population to escape the country to go to Israel). Thus, acting under the influence of Soviet ideology at the time, leftists could imagine in this era that they were fighting "fascism," when they were actually perpetuating fascism's legacy.

Today's left-wing campus extremists, who are apparently now hosting "teach-ins" describing the October 7 pogrom as a salutary "counteroffensive" that shows the "necessity of revolutionary violence," and who are projecting phrases like "glory to the martyrs" on university walls, are making the same pathetic mistake as the Baader-Meinhof generation did. They think of themselves as the ultimate anti-fascists. Many of them claim to be protesting "genocide." Many of them have marched against the resurgent far-right in this country, with its swastika banners and Hitler salutes. They think of themselves as the true anti-Nazis. Yet, here they are calling for the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the very same people the Nazis tried to destroy.

Such views are not only abhorrent in themselves; they are also a tragic disservice to actual Palestinian people in Gaza, who are trying to survive under relentless bombardment from the IDF, misfired rockets from jihadist groups, and Hamas tactics that knowingly put civilian lives at risk. They make the entire movement to protest the war appear tinged with the same pro-Hamas elements. 

In other words, the vile rhetoric of the extreme left faction on this issue has handed a potent weapon to those who wish to silence any sincere human rights criticism of the Israeli government's actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Because there are so many campus radicals who really do seem to endorse Hamas's terrorism, that is, they have made it possible for the Israeli far-right and its allies in the United States to portray all criticism of Israel's actions as cut from the same cloth. 

A case in point happened shortly after October 7. There was a rapid deluge of awful statements on the attack from campus radicals, followed by a swift public reaction. All kinds of people who expressed truthful good faith concerns during this time about Israel's conduct of the war were then swept up in the backlash. I am reminded for instance of the resignation of Paddy Cosgrave from the leadership of Web Summit in October. Cosgrave was pushed out for a comment he made on October 13 suggesting that Israel was likely committing "war crimes" in Gaza. The statement was entirely consistent with the facts already known at that point and should not have been controversial. By this point in the conflict, after all, the IDF was almost certainly conducting at least some disproportionate attacks that harmed civilians, and it had been demonstrated that it was using white phosphorous in populated areas. 

Of course, Hamas committed even more atrocious war crimes first. They must take some if not most of the blame for the death toll in Gaza since October 7, both because they provoked Israel's response and because they operate in ways that knowingly endanger civilian lives. I would be in complete sympathy with Sen. John Fetterman's comments, then, when he tells leftist protesters in the streets and on college campuses that they ought to be protesting Hamas-- if only I could believe that what he means by this is that we should be protesting Hamas's war crimes in addition to IDF war crimes. But instead, he seems to be saying that we should protest one instead of the other. 

But war crimes are wrong regardless of who commits them; and this is all Cosgrave actually said. He acknowledged in later comments that Hamas had committed atrocities as well. He even endorsed Israel's right to self-defense. He just said that such justified self-defense must not take the form of targeting civilians. This is nothing more than a restatement of a basic principle of international law, and ought to have been entirely uncontroversial. Under the international laws of war, or humanitarian law, after all, the obligation not to commit war crimes is binding and non-reciprocal. In other words, even though Hamas committed egregious and blatant war crimes, and is still committing them today, this creates no right in any other armed party to use them as well. 

This is all Cosgrave was saying. It should have been clear to people that such comments bear no resemblance whatsoever to the pro-Hamas fulminations of some campus radicals that have been rightly condemned. 

What seems to be happening here is that we are unable to have a reasoned and compassionate debate on this, because the extremes on both sides are saying such utterly disgusting things that they eclipse all more moderate viewpoints. On the one side, we have right-wing politicians calling for the mass murder of Gazan civilians (like one Republican representative in Congress who called for turning the densely-populated enclave of Gaza into a "parking lot"); on the other, we have campus radicals calling by implication (every time they endorse Hamas's attack) for the mass murder of Israeli Jews. 

It therefore becomes possible to tar one side or the other with the words of its worst members, and thereby discredit that entire side of the debate. The extremists on both sides thereby contribute to the defeat of any concrete potential gains for their own cause (which they probably welcome, since the last thing they want is to see this conflict negotiated to a compromise through a deliberative process, as opposed to gaining a total victory for their own side, achieved through blood). 

Some moderates, unfortunately, abet this dynamic as well, because it is easier to simply pick a side, denounce the other based on the words of its worst, most extreme proponents, and thereby avoid the hard work of thought and nuance. As Matthew Arnold describes this dynamic of political polarization in his Culture and Anarchy, in the context of discussing the debate over the disestablishment of the Irish Church: "[W]hat if, on testing it, the truth appears to be, that the statesmen and reasonable people of both parties wished for much the same thing[?]" He suggests that one might then expect the reasonable middle to form a majority that could resolve the issue in the best interests of both parties. But what happens all too often instead, he writes, is that each side prefers to sabotage the deal by appealing to the "prejudices" of their "respective extremes." 

This truly seems to be what is happening here. A case in point is the Israel aid package currently tied up in Congress. I would think most people, if asked, could get behind the idea that it is important for the United States to demonstrate support for its longstanding ally Israel in the wake of the October 7 atrocities. Most people could also agree that Israel has the right to defend itself from Hamas's relentless attacks and to try to recover the many innocent people whom Hamas took captive. Some aid is warranted. On the other hand, I would think most people could also agree, if asked, that U.S. taxpayer funds and weapons should not be going to support the appalling butchery of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, many thousands of whom have already perished from IDF bombs, including countless children.

The reasoned middle would therefore seem to be to offer the aid, but with stringent human rights conditions attached. And this is indeed what some progressive senators, including Bernie Sanders, have proposed. But Congress does not often present politicians with the chance to take a nuanced stand of this sort. More often, it leaves them with a binary choice: vote yea or nay on the bill. The present debate over the aid package will thus come down to a simple vote for either aid with no conditions attached, or no aid at all. And since people are therefore forced to choose between two bad outcomes, it becomes easier and more appealing to drown out the cognitive dissonance by simply pretending that one of the two choices is infinitely superior to the other. 

This prompts even the moderates to appeal to the "prejudices" of their respective extremes, as Arnold describes it. If you want to salve your conscience for voting for more U.S. aid money that will ultimately be used, at least in part, to drop bombs on Palestinian children, then you can do so by pointing to the worst enemies of aid to Israel, and saying at least you are sticking it to them. At least you are sticking it to the campus fanatics who admire Hamas and embrace their medieval creed out of a sheer love of nihilistic violence. At least you are sticking it to the alt-right creeps like Vivek Ramaswamy who are trying to steer the Republican coalition away from supporting Israel out of sinister "America First" (or worse) motives. 

Alternatively, you can vote no on the aid package, and then have to live with the fact that you've aligned yourself with the campus fanatics and the Lindberghian Vivek Ramaswamy creeps--and meanwhile have made it harder for Israel to defend itself in the wake of the worst terrorist attack in its history, as it wages a justified struggle against an Islamist radical group that wants to murder Jews. If you want to salve your conscience for that, you can characterize the other side as made up entirely of the Lindsey Grahams of the world, who talk about "flattening" Gaza, or the representatives who talk about turning Gaza into a barren "parking lot," and who thereby seem to endorse the forced removal and mass killing of Palestinian civilians. 

Thus, it becomes in everyone's short-term interest to characterize each side as made up exclusively of its own worst elements--of reducing it to its extremes. (A case in point was a recent Wall Street Journal editorial. After several weeks in which the WSJ editorial board issued wholly justified and timely denunciations of the pro-Hamas extreme left, they then published an equally harsh denunciation of Senate Democrats who are trying to attach human rights conditions to Israel aid--even though this is a very different position from that of the campus radicals, and it is being pushed by people like Sanders who are under fire from their own left flank for being too much in favor of Israel aid!). It is easier and more comforting to blow up the possibility of any reasoned compromise by casting one side or the other as acting in bad faith. Then one can embrace one's own lopsided and flawed position without even a flicker of conscience, though either bad choice in the binary described above may result in more innocent lives lost in Israel and Palestine in the years ahead. 

And of course, the extremely high stakes of the conflict on both sides--the utter catastrophe that would ensue if one or the other extremes in this conflict prevailed--itself work to make such a compromise impossible--even though compromise is the one thing that can actually avert such a catastrophe! If the Israeli far-right and its supporters in the U.S. Congress win out, then an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the forced appropriation and annexation of the Occupied Territories, and other atrocities might well be the result. "How can you stand idly by and speak of 'reason' and 'compromise'," people ask, "when one side of this conflict is mass murdering Palestinian civilians?"

And so too, if Hamas and its deluded New Left allies prevailed in this conflict, then a genocide of Israeli Jews would almost certainly follow. "How can you stand idly by and speak of 'reason' and 'compromise,'" one might ask, "when one side of this conflict wants to kill Israeli Jews just for existing and for living where they do?" 

This is essentially the same criticism that was lobbed at Matthew Arnold, and which he wrote Culture and Anarchy to respond to. How can you insist on the passive pleasures of reason, people demanded of him, when there are so many crying abuses in our society? Plainly, what is needed now is not more discussion, but action. In the place of the "sweetness and light" Arnold called for, his critics urged that society needed more "fire and strength." Yet, looking around at the state of English society at the time, Arnold asked if anyone could seriously maintain that it suffered from a dearth of activity, and an excess of thought. Was not the opposite the case? Could they really say there was too much thinking going around, and not enough doing?

So too, when I survey the present state of the Israel-Palestine debate in this country, I have to side with Arnold. I cannot say that we need more "fire and strength" to be injected into this argument. There is already far too much of it going around. We are inundated by rhetoric and self-righteousness and posturing on all sides. What we actually stand in need of, therefore, is more deliberation. As Arnold puts it, we need "free play of consciousness" far more than we need still more "strictness of conscience." 

There is a very great deal of "strictness of conscience" going around right now about this war--denunciations of "genocide" on both sides, e.g.; a pillorying of people who say just slightly the wrong thing at the wrong moment that can only be characterized as a form of "cancel culture." If this "conscience" is not shaped and controlled by "consciousness," as Arnold reminds us, then it becomes a false guide. We need more of Arnold's irenic approach to differences of thought, at present, than we need still more of his critics' preferred approach of "fire and strength"--at least when it comes to this conflict. 

For this is one of those conflicts in the world where both extremes really do have the power to commit unspeakable atrocities (as has been demonstrated time and again in recent decades), if they are left to fulfill the maximalist versions of their demands. There are sections of the Israeli far-right that really would like to annex all of the remaining Palestinian territory and drive Palestinian villagers off their land in the West Bank. There really are sections of the Palestinian movement, as has been thrust upon our awareness in recent months, that want to kill or forcibly expel all Israeli Jews. 

If either extreme were to win here, and the reasoned middle lose, then the "strictness of conscience" and "fire and strength" that was supposed to prevent genocide might instead, perversely, become the basis of it.