Last week in this blog, I launched a
broadside against the leadership of Iran and their terrorist beneficiaries,
including Hamas. Now, this week, I
joined the rest of the world in witnessing the latest example of Hamas in
action. That organization encouraged
civilian residents of the Gaza Strip to head toward the Israeli border and
threaten to enter the Jewish State. Not
surprisingly, dozens were killed. Also
not surprisingly, Israel’s swift and lethal response was met with international
outrage and cries that the response was “disproportionate,” since so many
Palestinians died whereas not a single Israeli was even injured.
The leader of Turkey referred to
Israel’s conduct as “genocidal.” And all
over the world, calls have been made for an investigation as to whether Israel
used excessive force. Clearly, Hamas
has won the international PR battle hands down.
In the United States, however, the
reaction has been decidedly mixed. You
have the “left,” which is disgusted with anything remotely associated with
Donald Trump, including Benjamin Netanyahu, and is falling all over itself to
join in the chorus against the IDF’s brutality.
Then you have the “right,” which is accurately reminding people that if
we, the US of A, were threatened at our borders, we’d have killed at least as
many foreigners as Israel did. Perhaps
one of the more articulate statements of outrage on the pro-Israel side came
from New York Times columnist, Bret Stephens, who offered the following
jeremiad against the international community and the way it enables the
Palestinians to refuse to evolve into a force for peace:
“The mystery of Middle East politics is why Palestinians have so long
been exempted from ... ordinary moral judgments. How do so many so-called progressives now find
themselves in objective sympathy with the murderers, misogynists and homophobes
of Hamas? Why don’t they note that, by
Hamas’s own admission, some 50 of the 62 protesters killed on Monday were members of Hamas? Why do they begrudge Israel the
right to defend itself behind the very borders they’ve been clamoring for years
for Israelis to get behind? Why is
nothing expected of Palestinians, and everything forgiven, while everything is
expected of Israelis, and nothing forgiven?
That’s
a question to which one can easily guess the answer. In the meantime, it’s
worth considering the harm Western indulgence has done to Palestinian
aspirations.”
So how do we explain that double
standard? I don’t find it nearly as simple as Stephens
does to come up with the answer.
Anti-Semitism is surely one of the explanations. So is the willingness to patronize people of
color – treating them as if expecting universalist values and rational thought
is too much to ask of their little brains.
But those are hardly the only reasons
why so many people are so tough on Israel.
And here’s a newsflash – Israel bears some of the blame herself. In fact, she bears no small amount of
blame. You could see that point
illustrated all too well on the other side of that country at the same time
that her army was so efficiently dispatching with its enemies on the Gazan
border.
I’m referring to the Israeli analogue of
George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” ceremony. This time, it came courtesy of another
American president, Donald Trump, who honored his campaign promise to move the
American embassy to Jerusalem, despite the fact that American presidents for
decades had decided to wait on that action until we have a final, binding peace
agreement. With the encouragement of the
Netanyahu Administration, Trump not only moved the embassy without a peace
agreement but did so without demanding one damned concession from Israel. It was a gift. A gift to Trump’s Christian conservative base
and to the Israeli right. And it was
purely symbolic, for it did nothing to add to the prosperity or peace of
Israel. Quite the contrary.
Most people who watched television this past
Monday were treated to split screens. On
the one side, they could see the IDF mowing down Palestinians near the Israeli
border. On the other side, they could
see Ivanka, Jared, Bibi and others celebrate the movement of the Embassy as if
it were a Bar Mitzvah. Despite everybody’s
knowledge that the Palestinians would be protesting and deaths were inevitable,
the Israeli leadership wanted to turn the Jerusalem event into a festive
occasion. Pictures speak 1000 words, and
this one could not have pointed to a sharper contrast. Poor and desperate on the one side. Rich and happy on the other. It was as if we were seeing a Hieronymus
Bosch painting entitled “The Have-Nots and the Haves in the Holy Land.”
Clearly, this celebration was
premature. The final status of Jerusalem
has not been established through a peace treaty. Israel has simply come together with its one
large ally – the country that used to be seen as a potential honest broker for
peace – and asserted its claim over Jerusalem.
And I mean ALL of Jerusalem. Why
do I say that? Because for years, the
leaders of Israel have been grabbing prized real estate throughout the eastern
part of pre-48 Palestine. They have
turned the West Bank, the heart of any Palestinian state under the so-called “Two
State Solution,” into a giant chunk of Swiss cheese. They’ve acted, as my Yiddish ancestors would
say, as “chazers” (pigs). In fact, more
and more often, you’ll hear Netanyahu’s supporters say that the Two-State
Solution is dead, thanks to the Palestinians who never really wanted it anyway,
so Israel might as well claim the Settlements.
My friends, I agree with one part of
that last sentence. The Palestinians
haven’t shown much of a desire to have a stable Two-State Solution with one of
those nations being a Jewish State. I
have been happy to honor Bret Stephens’ call and criticize the Palestinians and
their allies for their failure to fight harder for such a solution. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore Israel’s
role in the status quo. Those
Settlements are, purely and simply, obstructions to peace. The more they proliferate, the harder it will
be to create a Palestinian state. And
without a Palestinian state, we will all witness increasingly devastating
violence, suffering and despair, just like we saw on television this past week.
Perhaps the Palestinians are in denial
for thinking that by storming the Israeli borders and constantly demanding a
return to Haifa and the other cities of post-67 Israel, the international
community will eventually boot out the Jewish colonialists and return the
region to Arab control. But the Israelis
are similarly in denial for thinking that by keeping the Palestinians in the
open-air prison known as the Gaza Strip and in ever-decreasing regions of the
West Bank, they will be able to enjoy a peaceful, prosperous and –wait for it –
JEWISH state.
Truly Jewish states require a climate of
universalism, not just particularism. Jewish
states practice love to the stranger, not xenophobia. Jewish states thrive in perpetual peace, not perpetual
war. Jewish states never allow their
leaders to come across looking like Marie Antoinette. And Jewish states never forget that “justice,
justice, you shall pursue,” and that while justice and charity may begin at
home, they cannot end there.
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