I keep hearing the same statements repeated by several opinion makers, politicians, and others who have a bullhorn to use it from Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro to the Israeli Ambassador (among others). You can say from left and right. They are, in many cases, well, untrue (I am reluctant to call them lies), and others are half-truths. (True, there are other voices, but they are quite marginalized.) It is quite a big moral dilemma to start talking about this thing while the bodies are still warm, but the problem is that these falsehoods are being constantly aired nevertheless. I have to stress: this is NOT a pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas post. This post is trying to point out the inaccuracies in the narrative.
So again: I am not trying to argue that Hamas is in any way justified in what they are doing. They are not. Hamas deserves to be wiped out; calling them animals is an affront to animals. But trying to justify the carnage Israel is wreaking is also amoral. It is not either/or. It is not about choosing sides. In this conflict it is not Israel vs Hamas. It is Israel vs Palestinians. By pointing out the issues on "the Israeli" side, it does not mean you agree, support or condone Hamas or any form of violence. It also does not mean that you think that Israel and Hamas are on the same level. Those college students and others who are demonstrating *for* Hamas are either insane, ignorant or antisemites. Either way, they are not the people I want to talk to, because they are frankly not the people I want to be associated with. I can't believe these people are in Harvard, and other prestigious institutions, openly supporting a fucking terrorist organization. Showing the holes in the pro-Israel arguments, arguing for a humane treatment of Palestinians are not the same as taking Hamas' side. Because Hamas is sure as hell not on the Palestinians' side either.
Also, and I can't believe I have to say this, but Israel=/=Jewish people. I am not talking about DA JEWS. I am talking about the actions of a country, the same way people discuss Russia, the US or Iran. So if you think this is antisemitic, well, then, it is also anti-Russian to criticize Russia, and anti-Persian to criticize Iran.
One more thing: I am dealing with the untruths and half-truths from one side only, because I do not think we should be discussing Hamas' and their supporters' ideology. It is vile, and leave it at that. I do not want to discuss Islamic terrorists or Antisemites. There is not much to talk about people chanting "death to the Jews". Let's talk about the side that claims the moral superiority -which, they may have, but again, it is not a big achievement when you compare yourself to a fundamentalist Muslim terror organization. Well done you, I guess?
So, end of disclaimers.
Let's see some of these half-truths.
1. Israel traded land for peace -they left Gaza unilaterally and yet these evil Palestinians are still intent on murdering them.
Well, yes. Israel did pull out of Gaza, yet it controls its borders completely. Effectively transforming Gaza into a gigantic, open air prison. Not sure what kind of land for peace this is supposed to be, but saying that the Palestinians have everything they need to set up a flourishing country of their own is, well, disingenuous, at best. Also, let's not forget the whole issue of Nakba, and how Palestinians ended up where they are and how they are forced to live there. (More on that later.)
2. Israel does not control the Gaza Strip. Yeah, technically Gaza also shares border with Egypt. But that Egyptian crossing is still under Israeli control. Even if it was under Egypt's complete control, it would still just add another country to the list of responsible parties. Guess what. Egypt may have a vested interest in cooperating with Israel...
(I always found it odd that people imagine all Arabs are the same somehow, and they all should feel responsible for any and all Arabs anywhere. This is the argument of "well, Israel may mistreat Palestinians, but so do the Jordanians, who are Arabs". "Or they should have taken in the refugees of Nakba since they are also Arabs". It is a tad racist, to be honest.)
3. Human shields: we keep hearing from these people that Hamas is evil because they are using their own people as human shields. Which is true. What is forgotten, is that Israel does the same. (Are you listening, Sam?) OK, it is not exactly the same, because well, they do not use their own people (that would not work very well), so they use Palestinians. They do not use human shields in the same extent, but forgetting to mention the IDF's atrocities from white phosphorous, torture, and the rest to indiscriminate killing and maiming of civilians is a bit of an omission. (Sam Harris is talking about everyone having done naughty things in the past, but Hamas is doing it right now -well, the past is not so far away as you may like to think, Sam... while there is no moral equivalency, true, let's not pretend their shit does not stink, shall we?)
Because the death toll is quite unbalanced between the sides, you know. All we hear is that they "warn civilians before strikes" as if this was a great gesture. Sure. "We will drop a dummy bomb on your house before destroying it. Also, do try to escape somewhere safe in this little overpopulated pocket we closed off from the world. Good luck from the most moral army of the world. Also: all civilian causalities are regrettable. But it is totally Hamas' fault, not ours." (Seriously, though. Sam Harris keeps repeating that the civilian causalities are Hamas' fault, while ignoring the fact that a massive number of people have been dying for years without Hamas launching a terror attack on Israel. They all pretend as if the dying only started since Hamas' attack.)
4. Palestinians are horrible people, they do not hold the same values as we do unlike the Israelis (OK, not word by word, but it is the sentiment expressed). Well, yes. "They" do not hold the same values. It is quite strange to see statements like this in the mainstream. This "clash of the civilizations" was only accepted before in Far Right circles but whatever.
So yeah. There are certain cultural differences. But you know what? They mean jackshit when it comes to international law. They still deserve the same basic human rights -not being occupied, and not being pushed out of their lands, not having their olive trees destroyed, not being harassed, denied food, water, medicine or their very lives. This is essentially a tribalistic argument: they are not like us. And it works. Nobody gives a damn about dead Palestinians. Israel is merely retaliating. We are so sad, but it is unavoidable. Well, Hamas is also "merely" retaliating from their point of view. Everyone here is only hitting back, you know. But getting back to the original point: if this argument is valid, then consider this. Native Americans, Africans, Indians, etc. etc. were quite lacking in Enlightenment values -so I guess colonialism was justified, right? (And also slavery was cool, too. Stupid savages, they got it so much better in the plantations. Not to mention those wife-burners, cannibals and human sacrifice addicts.) Well done, again?
5. There would be peace if only the Palestinians were partners. Well, this is a difficult one. And a complex one.
First of all, there is an enormous power difference: Israel is an occupying power, the Palestinians are the occupied ones. You cannot assign the same amount of responsibility for these parties in the failure of the peace process. You know the whole Uncle Ben stuff about great power and great responsibility -that works here, too. Even if the Palestinian leadership was completely honest and open to a just peace (they are not), they could not achieve anything unless Israel says so. Israel holds all the power, Israel holds the most responsibility. Just suggesting equivalence in this -which Sam Harris, and the rest seem to be doing- is simply idiotic. (Or demagoguery. Which is the same thing, really.) Harris -and others- seems to apply the whole Jihadist mindset spread all over in the Middle East (and now in Western countries...) on Palestine, ignoring the very issue of occupation. This is a useful tactics because they can ignore the occupation itself this way. Now we just deal with a bunch of fanatics, nothing else.
Also. You can't ignore history. Despite of the whole "people without land, land without people" thing Palestine was populated before Zionists started to immigrate. I mentioned the Nakba, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the lands -these historical events are still quite important. You can't just ignore everything, pick and arbitrary starting point and say that "well, they have Gaza since 2005, so they should shut up". The history of Palestine and Israel is messy and complex and tragic. For all involved. And for the Palestinians it has been ongoing for almost a century now. (This is the point about hitting back I made above.)
There is also the issue of Israel's sincerity about the peace process. Everyone keeps bringing up Hamas as an evil, nihilistic, terror organization which is not partner in peace.
And they are right.
However. You know how Hamas came to be the power it is now? I will tell you a nasty little secret (which is not even a secret): with Israel's help. They did that because they wanted to destroy the PLO. The PLO was everything Hamas was not: was a secular organization, it had no grand ideas about jihads and other Islamic wet-dreams - it was a potential and credible partner for the peace process (albeit a very corrupt one, true). You could sit down and compromise with them. But we can't have that now, can we, if we want to keep expanding, right? Looking at history, the only time someone was serious about having peace from the Israeli side got shot to death by one of his own. So maybe with the PLO they could have reached a viable solution -maybe not. We cannot know now, but what we DO know is that they never got the chance.
And it is not just in the past. Bibi himself had a quite fruitful relationship with Hamas even in recent times. So yes. Israel does have a raging, nihilistic terror organization on its doorstep, but Israeli politics carries quite a lot of blame for that. This part is somehow always forgotten. They did have a Palestinian organization they could have worked with. They chose to destroy it because they never were serious about having peace. And I suspect the civilian causalities on the Israeli side are also perfect for these people, because the dead bodies of Israeli families absolutely make the peace process impossible.
As a side note... this situation is a parallel of what happened in the Middle East in general: Western powers supported Islamic movements to annoy the Soviets and to destroy any secular alternatives, and then came the surprised Pikachu face when these fanatics turned against the West. Who would have thought?
6. Palestinians keep voting Hamas into power, it is their fault. Well, technically true, but... you know what you would do when after a century of being subjected to a brutal occupation (seriously, watch this documentary; I'll wait) with the occasional massacres sprinkled in, and finally there comes an organization that promises that they would fight for you (or at least hurt your oppressors)? And even ignoring this... What else can they do? Who else can they vote for? All other alternatives were systematically destroyed (see above), so where exactly would this Palestinian Gandhi come from? The first serious contender would get some serious lead poisoning with compliments from Hamas -they would not tolerate anyone to threaten their hold on Gaza. So how? They were put there with a considerable support from Israel, and now the people in Gaza are stuck with them. It is quite unfair to put the blame on them for this, as if this was a democratic system where Hamas can simply just be voted out, and some peace loving party voted in, and then everyone in Israel and Gaza would just sing Kumbaya together. (Even if this hypothetical Gandhi emerged, I doubt Israel would be a honest partner in peace judging by their past actions.)
7. Palestinians hate Jews, so there will be no peace possible. Again, true (and not). Palestine was always home to a Jewish minority which was fine living there even while pogroms raged in Europe. Also, as described in point 5, after a century of being cleansed of their homes (although there are arguments that Palestinians do not even exist, only Arafat made them up), forced into open-air prisons and the rest, you can kind of understand the blind hatred. Not condone it, but you can understand it. And these arguments normally leave out the other side: hatred is not foreign for the other side, either. So let's not pretend this virulent hatred is only on one side, shall we? That would be... demagoguery.
8. We are fighting a nihilistic, Islamic fundamentalism, which loves death and would kill us had the roles have been reversed. (Again, I refer to Sam Harris here.) Well, this point has been covered above in parts, so to sum it up. Yes. NOW we do. But the Palestinian plight, and the Palestinian resistance (which materialized in terrorism) predates Islamic fundamentalist organizations, such as ISIS, Al Quaeda, Hamas or others by decades. In fact they were committing acts of terror in response to acts of terror committed by Jewish terror organizations in the '30s... It used to be a secular form of terrorism - it was political violence, not an Islamic one. It does not make it better, it does not excuse it, but it important to point at the difference between the two. The political violence changed into a religious one in present days. I suspect, not at least because it was apparent for all parties that there is no political solution for the Palestinians. Again. Nasty piece of demagoguery by people who should know better.
So there you are. If there are more of these, please let me know and I will add them to the list.
In closing.
I understand this conflict is a difficult one. People like to pick sides, and there are no clearly good and bad sides here (there are few of those cases, though, but let's forget that). Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab sentiments, and also Antisemitism also play a large role why this conflict cannot be discussed in a rational way. Add to this mix the shadow of the Holocaust, the difficulties Jewish people faced over their history, what Israel means to them, the geopolitics of the Middle East, Islamic fundamentalism, and you end up with a perfect shitshow where nobody can divorce themselves from their favorite ideology. Meanwhile innocents die.
