WHEN HUMANITY SUPERSEDES POLITICS: THE UNFOLDING HORRORS IN ISRAEL

The violation of foundational humanity is at times so shocking that no political rationale can justify it. Yet humanity requires that in the end political solutions must be sought and found.

The savage massacre of more than 1200 Israeli civilians, including children and infants, and the kidnapping of 150 more by Hamas operatives, is an act of barbarism for which politics can provide no excuse. Homo homini lupis est. “Man is a wolf to man.” Anyone conversant with the history and facts of genocide or who reads Amnesty International torture reports will have doubts extolling the benignity of the human species. But decapitating babies manifests a descent into depravity and evil that is hard to fathom. No political grievance can serve as a warranted excuse. Hamas was intent on creating a spectacle of gore.

To be sure, the fifty-six-year occupation of Palestinian territory by Israel is cruel, humiliating, and corrupting of Israeli society. Gaza is often referred to as “an open-air prison,” and the analogy is apt-two million people densely compressed into an area of less than 150 square miles, impoverished and devoid of resources. Entry and exit are controlled by Israel and Egypt. The Israeli-Palestinian issue is highly complex, and both the Palestinians and Israel would have been better served had the Oslo agreements been brought to a successful conclusion. That opportunity seems to have faded from the political horizon.

As a Jew, I staunchly defend Israel's right to exist. It is beyond question and I am suspicious of the ulterior justifications of those who think otherwise. Antisemitism has hardly disappeared. The massacre of 1,200 Israelis is the largest murder of Jews since the Holocaust. It was not an act of war as much as a pogrom. Relatives of mine were walked into Hitler's gas chambers, and my own father was himself a witness to pogroms as a child. Current events cannot be a matter of indifference to me. They deeply resonate.

At the same time, as a defender of human rights, I believe that all peoples have a right to self-determination and to live in freedom and dignity, Palestinians as well as Jews. As a leftist, I nevertheless depart from elements of the left who view Israel as nothing but a neo-colonialist presence and outpost of American imperialistic interests in the heart of the Arab world where it doesn't belong. Such thinking is reductionist and simplistic. I have, frankly, grown tired of the cliches proffered by some, in the name of progressivism, that mask the realities of highly complex situations.

Despite political realities, human beings and political leaders are always confronted with a choice, and Hamas chose the barbaric slaughter of more than a thousand defenseless Israelis in order to push forward its objectives. The wholesale murder of innocents is shocking and deserves universal condemnation. Hamas's goals and methods issue from its long-standing ideological commitment to destroy the Jewish state. Hamas exists for little beyond destroying Jews and obliterating Israel. It appropriates foreign aid given for humanitarian purposes to constructing missiles aimed at Israel and building a warren of underground tunnels.

Hamas is a terrorist organization and essentially a non-state actor posturing itself as a legitimate governmental entity. It is autocratic, theocratic, and profoundly corrupt. It fires its missiles into Israel time and again, knowing that it will bring certain retaliation and further death to the people it claims to represent. I have long believed that if Gaza had enlightened leadership, it would sue for peace with Israel and look to Singapore as a model of economic development. But I also admit that this is a pipe dream that will not be realized anytime within current reckoning. Israel is by far the greater power, but corrupt Palestinian leadership is a major cause of the ongoing cycle of misery and violence. Over the past decades, the possibility for statehood was presented to the Palestinians, not unqualified to be sure, but continuously rejected by their leadership.

The agony visited upon Israel in this paroxysm of barbarity is unprecedented. The Israeli character, though displaying an outward bravado, still maintains an inner insecurity wrought by the Holocaust. Though achieving a formal peace with an increasing number of its Arab neighbors, it lives under the looming threat of Hezbollah, armed with 100,000 missiles just over its northern border, and within striking distance of Iranian missiles with its expansionist designs, its support of terrorism, and its commitment to Israel's total destruction. Those readily critical of Israel's employment of military force from the safety of their American homes might feel differently if they lived under the looming threat of Hezbollah's missiles within a few miles of their cities and Iran within striking distance and committed to Israel's annihilation.

Israel's army, together with its vaunted intelligence services, has served as its major defense against surrounding threats. It was the gross failure of Israel's intelligence apparatus that has left Israel in a state of shock and feelings of unprecedented vulnerability.

The nature of the attack was unique. Whereas Israel was notoriously unprepared for the 1973 Yom Kippur War, it was a conventional war between armies. The Hamas massacre left people unprepared and defenseless. It was up close, with murderers entering homes, slaughtering more than two hundred people at a music concert, and carrying off scores of innocent people to be held as hostages.

The rampage was well-planned and well-timed. It comes at a time when the Palestinian cause is fading from international concern. The Arab states, which never had great love for the Palestinians but used their support as a thorn in Israel's side, have increasingly normalized their relations with Israel. Arguably, the most immediate stimulus for the Hamas attack was the warming relations between Israel and the Saudis, which could plausibly result in a peace treaty. Such an alliance would be a counterweight to Iran, which is Hamas's major sponsor, including the source of its missiles used to attack Israel. The Israeli response to Hamas's assault no doubt will stall, if not put an end to, the budding Saudi-Israeli alliance.

This is also a moment when violence has been heating up in the West Bank. Israel's settlement of the West Bank has aggressively increased, and Israel's extreme right-wing government is moving closer toward annexation. America had turned its attention away from the Middle East, and, no doubt, the Gazans conclude that Israel, which has become politically divided against itself as the Netanyahu administration has made moves to curtail the authority of the judiciary, is diverted and at a weak point.

The occupation, which has greatly fallen off of the global agenda, has arguably rendered a sense of complacency among Israelis. The Hamas massacre, and its boundless and shameless cruelty, is a flagrant demonstration that the Palestinians are still present and won't be ignored.

With 150 of their citizens, as well as Americans, held hostage, Israel is in an agonizing position. The captives will either be held as bargaining chips or will be summarily executed. Israel has mobilized 360,000 reservists, a huge number for a nation of nine million. Netanyahu has pledged a long war, and the total destruction of Hamas is the likely objective. Israel is most likely gearing up for a ground invasion of Gaza. It has already begun wholesale bombardment and hundreds have died. Given Gaza's densely populated, thickly urbanized character, one can only speculate at the strategies Israel will employ to meet their goals, defend itself against future attacks, and restore security.

Israel has a right to defend itself, yet there must be limits. It is reported that Israel, which along with Egypt controls access to Gaza, as well as its utilities, has cut off the influx of food, water, and fuel to the enclave. A presumption is that this is a pressure tactic in an effort to get Hamas to release the hostages. For the moment, Israel, for the most part, has the world's sympathies, a status it has seldom experienced. This could be lost if Israel is perceived to have shifted the humanitarian equation and ends up punishing innocent civilians. Basic services need to be resupplied, and I predict they will be. Israel has issued an evacuation order for Gazans to leave the northern end of their territory and move toward the southern end of the Gaza Strip. It is uncertain how this will mitigate the humanitarian disaster sure to unfold; assuredly there will be great collateral damage issuing from an Israeli invasion and many innocent people will die.

Hamas is by no means universally supported by the Gazans. Hamas is a terrorist organization, but not all Gazans are terrorists. The horror of war always brings the death of innocents. In the pursuit to destroy Hamas in the service of its self-defense, Israel needs to strive to ensure that the harm done to others is kept at a minimum. Given the nature of the Gazan theater, this constraint appears especially difficult, complicated by the hostage situation.

It is the nature of hatred, violence, and war that they blind the perpetrator to the humanity of the other. While I am pacifistically oriented, I am not an absolute pacifist. War is a horror, but its tragedy can be justified on the basis of collective self-defense. But the employment of war needs to have specific goals and ends, and needs, as mentioned, to be minimal. Great care needs to be taken to avoid the death and injury of non-combatants. Israel has claimed this commitment, as it always does, but it will no doubt be breached and many innocent Gazans will be killed in Israel's objective to utterly destroy Hamas.

One hopes for a resolution to the ostensibly intractable conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Negotians can bring peace, as was the case with the Camp David Accords which created a treaty between Israel and Egypt which makes up nearly half the Arab world. The Good Friday Accords ended the “troubles” in Northern Ireland. But negotiations can only succeed when the proper conditions are in place and at the right time. When it comes to Israel-Palestine, lamentably this is not the time.

Israel will do what it feels it must, and the coming invasion will be long, difficult, painful, and deadly. It is hard to see a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a normal, peaceful Middle East emerging. This reality lies beyond a remote, unseen, horizon. But if Israel succeeds in its military campaign, it will be safer, and I believe the Gazan people will be better off. If a more accommodating and enlightened leadership follows, perhaps it will make peace with the Palestinian Authority, and Israel will have a partner in negotiations it has claimed to lack. Perhaps the emerging emergency government Israel has constituted to govern the war will gain traction and Israel will retreat from its right-wing advance. Perhaps then the two-state solution can be revived.

There are many “ifs” in this fragile hope. But I believe the future is open, and what lies ahead is unknown. Out of World War II, a more stable, rule-based world order emerged. Sometimes the worst of circumstances gives rise to something better. History is like this. 

 We cannot see it now. But if we keep a firm conviction as to the humanity of all people in the forefront of our minds, the long-standing enmities that have characterized that troubled region of the world may yield a new reality of peace and mutual co-existence.