Reading, Watching 10.06.24

Anniversaries

This is a regular feature for paid subscribers wherein I write a little bit about what I’ve been reading and/or watching. Hope you enjoy!

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Tomorrow is October 7th and marks one year of war. Here is what I wrote on October 8th of last year:

I’m sure by now everone has seen the horrible images and reports coming out of Israel and Palestine as the region plunges into full-blown war. I don’t comment much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a few reasons: one, I am not an expert about it, two, one is likely to enrage a good deal of people no matter your views, and three, I have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I’m not a Zionist; I certainly feel no romantic pull to the national project of Israel. Nor does the pragmatic argument that Israel provides a safe homeland for the Jews hold much water for me, since it’s security is always in peril, as we can see now. I believe it’s a state founded on a world-historical crime of the expulsion and massacres of Palestinians in 1948. I believe the occupation is an ongoing crime, the expansion of settlements in the West Bank is outrageous, and the hellish conditions enforced on Gaza are unsupportable. It was once only activists who referred to the regime enforced on the Palestinians as “apartheid,” now it is mainstream, and it is hard to argue with. In addition, the tenor of Israeli politics seems to grow ever more frighteningly anti-democratic and extreme by the day. The current cabinet surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu, a crook who would snuff whatever is left of democracy in Israel out in a second to avoid any repercussions, is a gaggle of low-rent fascists. And despite their tough talk, they’ve been apparently unable to provide basic security. Now, it is likely they will respond with all their hate and fury to cover up the humiliation of the moment, not to mention use it to push for the realization of their most brutal programs. In this moment, I fear that Israel will essentially level the entirety of Gaza and cause its population to flee, in a nightmarish repeat of the worst events of 1948. I also fear another outbreak of communal violence in Israel’s Arab-populated cities, like the one we witnessed in 2021, but far worse.

With that all being said, I believe the existence of Israel and the presence of the Jews there is a fait accompli: the hope that Israel will one day cease to exist seems to me naïve at best and implicitly genocidal at worst. And while I agree with the principle of national self-determination for the Palestinian people, both the ideology and tactics of the groups that currently embody that aspiration are disturbing and unacceptable to me. What would the collapse of an Israeli state and a Hamas victory look like, anyway? Well, to Israelis the evidence now appears clear: it would likely involve gunmen in the streets of Israeli cities, hunting Israeli citizens. Whatever the moral calculus one might employ to justify this—the long-suffering of the Palestinian people and their routine killings at the hands of occupation forces, their lack of other available political and military techniques, and their frustration and despair with their current international isolation—none of that will matter to the Israeli public: they will call for an even more brutal security regime. Besides scuttling Israel’s opening of relations with the Arab world, that is perhaps one of Hamas’s goal here: to provoke Israel to such a terrible response that they will horrify world opinion and thereby isolate themselves.

No matter the various political motivations and strategies involved, the war that will now follow will be extraordinarily bloody and brutal even for the region. If Hezbollah in Lebanon gets involved, and by extension Iran, then God help us all. A lot of comparisons are being made to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, which also caught Israel off-guard and shook its sense of invulnerability. But that was a war between states and their armies with clear military and diplomatic goals: it was not mostly fought among civilians in the population centers. In that war, Sadat’s goal was to force a favorable peace on Israel and the outcome was a deal which lead to Egypt’s recognition of Israel. In the moment, it is difficult to imagine anything productive coming from this. In the long term, my preferred solution would be some kind of federation or binational state. But more than ever this seems like a foolish dream: It can’t be realized with populations that hate each other with this level of intensity. I’ve seen supporters on both sides either celebrating this inauguration of war or braying for retaliation and revenge. Don’t they know what’s about it to take place? Don’t they know they are just howling for more blood? For my part, I just feel a profound sense of hopelessness about the situation.

As the war looks like it is growing, with Israel invading and bombarding Lebanon, Iran launching ballistic missiles at Israel, and Israel promising retaliation, it looks like that sense of hopelessness was justified. Neither Netanyahu or Yahya Sinwar seem in earnest about negotiating a cease fire and have apparently decided this is the big one, come what may. Gaza has been essentially leveled, with 60 percent of its structures damaged or destroyed. Last year, I wrote that we might witness a repeat of 1948 and we can read in recent days that it looks like Netanyahu is seriously considering mass expulsions. Israel, with its greater power to do violence, must be restrained by the international community. It looks like a society that has gone totally mad.

I was never among those who celebrated or justified or even excused the October 7th attacks. Nor do I believe that the horrors of that day justify the Israeli response, which is not driven purely by military logic but rather that of revenge and punishment and has managed to totally eclipse the atrocities of the 7th in its ferocity and scope in the world’s eyes. I want the hostages to be released so as to end one justification for the conflict, but it is difficult to care about their particular fates after the oceans of blood that have been spilled since. In order to excuse the extent of suffering inflicted on Gaza one has to adopt a logic that is at least implicitly and often explicitly genocidal: that holds the Palestinians collectively responsible or treats them as a lower form of life.

I believe it’s mostly a matter of contingency whether or not one takes the Israeli or Palestinian part in the war: it’s a matter of how one was educated and indoctrinated, what experiences and ideals one encountered first or with more intensity. Many Jews and those sympathetic to them view Israel as the just reward for a long-suffering people; Palestinians and those sympathetic to them view it as an injustice inflicted on a population innocent of Europe’s crimes. Those that who wish to take the side of the oppressed will naturally gravitate to the Palestinian cause today, because they are unquestionably oppressed. But the embattled Yishuv was once considered by many to be the underdog—until they won power for themselves. Are we to expect that victorious Palestinians will be especially generous to their defeated foes after years of suffering at their hands? Wouldn’t it just be one vast October 7th, which we are told by some was actually both moral and good?

The essential moral structure of claims is identical: “We are a long dispossessed and persecuted people, this is our historic land, our religious faith dictates we must possess it, and we have an experience of historical trauma that licenses ruthlessness towards our enemies in our own defense.” Many are inclined to excuse the ferocity of the Israeli response by recourse to the trauma of Jewish experience, but look at the biographies of Palestinian militants and you’ll see the same sorts of stories: witnessing fathers and brothers killed, villages burned, homes taken or destroyed. Both the Palestinian and Zionist projects seek to arm the harmless and humiliated refugee and turn him into a fighter to redeem his honor and dignity. But the “success” of Israel should show us that victory can be no less humiliating and dishonoring to a people than defeat. No solution to the conflict will come from attempting to litigate who has the greater moral worth as a people; that much should now be clear. If you press people who are nationalistic on either side about the suffering of the other side, eventually they get to the point where they snap and say “I don’t care” or “They deserve it.” It’s easier that way.

I feel a great deal of anger or frustration at people who blindly identify with one side and don’t at all try to inhabit the experiences or ideas of the other. But I also frankly feel pity for them. In June, after the salute to Israel parade, the spectators filtered through my neighborhood, families waving little Israeli flags, often with identical T-shirts championing some fraternal organization or another. They didn’t look particularly bloodthirsty or dangerous. They looked stupid. They just looked like everyone else: like sad little people. This cause, this struggle, gives them a sense of righteousness, something to believe in, something to be proud about it. It seems to redeem years of suffering. But it never can; it just dooms us to repeat it. I can understand it, but I don’t admire it, and honestly do look down upon it. And I don’t care who knows that anymore. My sympathy for Israelis and Palestinians, and I do feel intense sympathy at times for both peoples, is frankly tinged with a little contempt or condescension. Or what’s really the same thing: with shame. I feel ashamed. And I think they all should be, too. Anyone should feel ashamed to proudly announce one’s commitment to ongoing murder. People should find a way to transcend this. But they won’t. And that feels me with despair and even hatred. And I’ll say publicly now what I say to friends: I’ve grown to hate the sight of both those flags. It’s tempting to say “A plague o' both your houses!” but they already have the plague. And so soon will all of us.

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I’ll just recommend one thing today: “The View from Besieged Beirut” by Lebanese doctor Joelle M. Abi-Rached:

Growing up in Lebanon, I used to take pride in reciting a memorable quote by Montesquieu that I learned at my Jesuit school, using it as a talismanic shield against sectarianism and religious bigotry: “If I knew of something useful to my nation but ruinous to another, I would not propose it to my prince, because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.”

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This may sound idealistic in an age of fervent nationalism. But for the author of The Spirit of the Laws, a good citizen ought to behave as follows: first, uphold the law of humanity, and then show allegiance to one’s tribe. Our belief in secularism and universalism, perhaps naïve, demands that we uphold such moral principles. Yet today, this very framework of human rights—itself developed in the wake of the terrors of the Shoah—is being buried by the same powers that once claimed to have helped shape it.

Wary of the drones and warplanes flying overhead, nervously looking at our phones for any news update, we discussed the double standards prevalent in European and Western politics. Europe’s guilt over the Shoah, combined with a longstanding and troubling Islamophobia, creates a stark moral blind spot regarding Palestinian suffering. Some officials in wealthy democracies have even suggested that the raison d’être of the International Criminal Court applies only to Africa and “thugs like Putin.” Such thinking echoes the same powerful prejudice that once depicted Africa as the “dark continent”—barbaric, uncivilized, incapable of self-governance or progress. This hypocrisy on display in the West today demonstrates that the lessons of colonialism have not been fully learned.