Israel’s enemies and their enemies: a discussion of a confrontation between Israel and Hamas during the 1967 Gaza-Niqa War
I gave a lecture about politics and social justice at the University of California at San Diego. A young black woman approached my table and whispered a question about the terrible things happening in Gaza, as I was signing books.
The next person in line was an older Jewish woman who implored me to “do whatever you can” to change people’s opinions because “everybody hates us now,” noting that Jewish people had always stood up for civil rights.
Both women are not spokeswomen for their entire communities. But even so, those brief conversations were a small example of how the war between Israel and Hamas has strained perceptions and relationships in this country among key groups in the progressive coalition and how so many feel as if they’re obligated to declare where they stand.
The pain and shock of Israeli people since Hamas took control of Gaza have been felt across the country. Anger and a desire for vengeance are some of the languages used by the country’s leaders, which critics in Israel say often crosses the line into anti-Semitic language.
He believes that one can be a critic of the Israeli government without being anti-Zionist, because he supports Palestinian identity and Palestinian nationalism.
In the dispute over definitions, both sides of the issue see themselves as being in a position of moral superiority, but on the other side are viewed as standing for brutality and hatred.
People in the debates on Zionism often don’t seem to be very specific about which form they are for or against. Was it political Zionism? What about cultural Zionism? Religious Zionism? Some combination of them? Does it matter?
In the interview, the journalist and scholar said that he believes that all nations should be respected and honored and that we should not harm Israel. He also believes the question is flawed because, in his view, it “presumes that every other state’s right to exist has been affirmed but Israel’s.”
But Greenblatt and Hill do agree on a narrower point: that there is discrimination against Arabs in Israel. Greenblatt said there was definitely discrimination there.
The human rights group said that Palestine is treated as an inferior racial group in Israel, and that the Palestinians are deprived of their rights regardless of where they live.
I emerge from these discussions feeling a sense of whiplash, aware that the dispute is playing out with antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in this country surging and fear rippling through Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities.
smart people seem to want to do the right thing and can’t find a common understanding of certain issues, but still have recriminations.
The idea of a nuclear strike on Gaza was raised last week by another right-wing minister, Amichay Eliyahu, who told a Hebrew radio station that there was no such thing as noncombatants in Gaza. Mr Netanyahu suspended Mr. Eliyahu because his comments were disconnected from reality.
Mr. Netanyahu says that the Israeli military is trying to prevent harm to civilians. Despite the claims by the Gaza health ministry of more than 11,000 deaths, those claims are being met with skepticism in the United States.
The language Mr. Netanyahu uses with audiences in Israel is alsolied by reassurances. In a speech delivered in Hebrew, he referred to Amalek as Israel was starting its ground invasion. While some Jewish scholars argue that the scripture’s message is metaphoric not literal, his words resonated widely, as video of his speech was shared on social media, often by critics.
“These are not just one-off statements, made in the heat of the moment,” said Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer and author of “The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine and the Legal Battle for Human Rights.”
Yehuda Shaul has collected over 300 statements since October 7th that he considers to be the potential to inciting unlawful behavior. His list includes Eyal Golan, an Israeli pop singer, and Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Mr. Netanyahu.
Ms. Netanyahu said during a radio interview that she didn’t call them humans because they would be offensive to animals.
“It’s time for Nakba 2,” Mr. Magal wrote on X on Oct. 7, a reference to the mass displacement and flight of Palestinians before and after Israel’s creation in 1948, which Palestinians refer to as the “nakba,” or “catastrophe.”
In the West Bank last week, several academics and officials cited Mr. Eliyahu’s remark about dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza as evidence of Israel’s intention to clear the enclave of all Palestinians — a campaign they call a latter-day nakba.
The rise in incendiary statements comes against a backdrop of rising violence in the West Bank. Since Oct. 7, according to the United Nations, Israeli soldiers have killed 150 Palestinians, including 44 children, in clashes. The United Nations says that Jewish settlers, who are armed and informally allied with the military, have killed eight people.
Eran Halperin, a professor of psychology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, argued that the use of inflammatory language by Israeli leaders is not surprising and even understandable as a result of the brutality of the Hamas attacks.
For the first time since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, he said, Israel’s survival hangs in the balance. The country is facing the prospect of a multi-front conflict against Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as a potential uprising in the West Bank.
What Israel can do about Israel, but how many Palestinians do they need? Anti–Israel propaganda, anti-Semitism, and a warning about Hamas in Gaza
“People in this situation look for very, very clear answers,” Professor Halperin said. You do not have the mental luxury of complexity. You want to see a world of good guys and bad guys.”
Prof Halperin said that by casting the threat posed by Hamas in stark terms, the government can ask people to makesacrifices for the war effort.
Ultranationalist and far right politicians were testing the boundaries of acceptable speech before Oct. 7 when the proliferation of such language by Israelis opened a debate. Itamar Ben-Gvir, a right-wing settler who went from fringe figure to minister of national security in Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet, has a long history of making incendiary remarks about Palestinians. He said in a recent interview that he would like to kill anyone who supports Hamas.
A lot of education is required in order to turn the wheel back. An old Jewish proverb states that a hundred wise men will struggle a long time to take out a stone that one stupid person dropped into the well.
The defense minister said two days later that the Israeli military would destroy Hamas in Gaza.
Inflammatory language has been used by retired generals, celebrities, and journalists, according to experts who track statements. Calls for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased” or “destroyed” had been mentioned about 18,000 times since Oct. 7 in Hebrew posts on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, said FakeReporter, an Israeli group that monitors disinformation and hate speech. 16 times in a single month and half before war were the mentions of the phrases.
The cumulative effect, experts say, has been to normalize public discussion of ideas that would have been considered off limits before Oct. 7: talk of “erasing” the people of Gaza, ethnic cleansing, and the nuclear annihilation of the territory.
iary statements are not limited to Israel. On October 24th, a senior leader of Hamas said that the group would wipe Israel out as a country, and that he had done gruesome things against Israeli civilians. “We are not ashamed to say it with full force,” he said. We will teach Israel a lesson again and again.
A Land for All: Israel’s Dream of a Two-State Solution to the Palestine-Israel War and Palestine’s Future Concerning Human Rights
To make a confederation work both sides would need to accept conditions like the free movement of Israelis and Palestinians, settlement of refugee claims, and authority of common institutions to deal with issues like human rights. Palestinians living in Israel would vote in Palestinian elections; Israelis living in a future Palestine would vote in Israel.
The answer, Ms. Pundak said, was neither a single state nor a simple division into two. It would be two separate states, which would be in a shared homeland. Her model is the European Union, which, as she noted, was composed of countries, like France and Germany, which had been at war with each other not so long before the bloc began to come together.
The viability of a peace deal is based on the principle of dividing Israelis and Palestinians, according to two women. With nearly two million Palestinians living as citizens in Israel and more than 500,000 settlers carving up the West Bank, they said the two peoples were irrevocably intertwined, each clinging to a vision of a homeland on land claimed by both.
The two-state solution would divide Israel into two separate states: one for Israelis and the other for Palestinians. The dispute about allocating land to the Palestinians is one of the many problems that has caused previous attempts to strike a deal to fall apart.
But, Ms. Pundak said, “It’s crucial to have those conversations right now, as they affect immediately what happens in Gaza. The more civilians we kill in Gaza, the harder it’s going to be to get anywhere.” She is the Israeli chief executive of an organization, A Land for All, which has Israeli and Palestinian members.