THE HAMAS-ISRAEL WAR: WHAT IS JUSTICE? WHERE IS THE ROAD TO PEACE?
Dr. Common Good
Before going any further, I want to make two stipulations. These are important. You must keep them in mind when you continue to read this post, whether you like what I say or not. Because if you do not keep them in mind, you will misinterpret what I am saying. And you should not do that, especially now.
STIPULATION 1: The Hamas attack on Israel and the murder of innocent civilians was brutal, reprehensible, inhuman, appalling, despicable, and every other word that one can conjure for this act that in truth defies words. It was unforgivable, and a stab right in the heart of Jewish historical trauma. There are no two ways about it. At the same time, it is plain wrong to conflate Hamas and the greater Palestinian desire for recognition, self-determination, control over their land, and a state. Hamas is but one actor in the Palestinian setting, whose modus operandi is far too much like that of ISIS and others like it – an all-or-nothing, violent mentality that devalues human life in the service of an absolutist goal of obliterating the other. As columnist Kenan Malik wrote in the Guardian (October 15), “[T]o suggest that such butchery represents the Palestinian struggle is to demean the Palestinian people and their battle for freedom and rights.”
STIPULATION 2: Israel and its people deserve to live in peace, and with security. Anyone, or any group, that denies this cannot fairly be a part of any process that could lead to peace. Equally, the Palestinian people deserve to live in peace, and with security. Anyone, or any group, that denies this cannot fairly be a part of any process that could lead to peace.
NOW, THE BROADER STORY:
These two stipulations made, one has to ask at least two questions: 1) What possible point, other than mindless revenge, is there to the retributive counterattack that is now underway by the Israelis, with the ostensible purpose of eliminating Hamas? 2) Why did this attack, and others before it, happen?
On the first point: Israel will not eliminate Hamas by mass-bombing Gaza and cutting off all water, power and food. It will primarily kill innocent civilians. In fact, as of the time this post is being written, the IDF has already killed almost twice the number of civilians than Hamas did in its attack. No, not by gunpoint (at least not yet), but through indiscriminate bombing. Yes, the Israelis mass-dropped fliers warning civilians to evacuate, but then gave Gaza residents just 24 hours to do so, which by all counts was logistically, and humanly impossible. So what is the point here? How is this possibly justified? Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza”…“There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.” This purportedly was to fight the “human animals” that attacked Israel. The problem here – there are over 2 million people living in Gaza, most of whom are just civilians, trying to make a living and care for families. What Israel is doing is not a solution, it is compounding extreme brutality with more extreme brutality. And ultimately, even if Hamas were eliminated through some brilliant surgical strike strategy, another Hamas, with a different name, will arise, because the essential conditions giving rise to Hamas have not been addressed. It is a serious fault of major news outlets reporting on the current conflict that these conditions are largely being ignored. More broadly, it is a fault of today’s political environment that any expression of support for Palestinian rights, or criticism of Israeli policies, is denounced, and labeled anti-Semitic. Moreover, while barely reported, the Gaza violence has spurred point-blank attacks on unarmed West Bank Palestinians by Jewish settlers, as documented in reporting by the Guardian and video footage circulated by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. This has nothing to do with a goal of eliminating Hamas.
There is also a historical irony in the Israeli attack on Gaza as a whole that is undoubtedly not lost on many Gaza residents; Gaza itself was populated by Palestinians fleeing the initial expulsion of some 700,000 Palestinians (the Nakba) following the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. Likud MP Ariel Kallner even tweeted “Right now, one goal: Nakba!…A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of `48.” What on earth does that have to do with Hamas?
On the second point: The answer here is potentially long, because history is involved, so I will be as brief as possible. To start, we should not be surprised by the attack. After years of ignoring the Palestinian situation under Trump, and little attention paid to it by the Biden Administration — even as an extreme right-wing government took charge in Israel, doubling down on settlements, de facto annexation, repression and ugly rhetoric (e.g., from Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir) – some reaction was bound to happen. In fact, many sources predicted some form of escalation. In an interview on CNN, former Israeli prime minister Ehut Olmer said as much. Even Yigal Carmon of the pro-Israeli Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) warned that there were indications in August that war would break out in September-October.
The historical truth is that this land, divided into multiple states in the years following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and two world wars, was inhabited both by Jews and by the ancestors of the people now called Palestinians for thousands of years. Yet Netanyahu, echoing the hardest right-wing ideologues, has referred to the West Bank as Israel’s Judea and Samaria, completely obliterating the presence of a Palestinian people that deserves a land and country of its own as much as does Israel. And Israeli policies follow – settlements have continued virtually unabated for decades, encroaching on land once owned in one form or another by Palestinians, who farmed, sold their goods at market, went to school, and tried to live a life just like Israelis have tried to do. Where settlements are built, walls are built, the Israeli military follows or looks the other way, and the courts support it — to protect settlements, and to control the movement of Palestinians whose territory is now like Swiss cheese. Reviewing a recent book by Nathan Thrall documenting the destruction of Palestinian homes and villages, David Shulman (Professor Emeritus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) writes that 62 percent of the occupied West Bank is under full Israeli control, with almost 200 settlements and settler outposts. Palestinians have been powerless to stop it, and the U.S. government has rarely exercised its leverage to force the Israelis to even slow down this inexcusable, and illegal, takeover of territory. How can any reasonable observer not expect deep frustration, and multi-generational anger?
Furthermore, I am concerned that the attack will be used, cynically, by the Netanyahu government and its supporters to divert and drown out the growing opposition, in Israel, the United States, and globally, to Israeli policy vis a vis the Palestinians — just as Netanyahu and others cynically endorsed the growth of Hamas in the first place as a means of weakening and dividing Palestinians by weakening the political power of the Palestinian Authority/Fatah.
So one has to ask, amidst the fog of media coverage and unidimensional narratives, where is justice here? Where is a road to peace and security?