In the wake of the Hamas led offensive in the occupied regions of southern Palestine the world has once again decided that “Israel has a right to defend itself”. We pretend that Israeli civilians being attacked is an “unprecedented terror attack” because we want to have some excuse to ignore decades of Israeli aggression and violent oppression of Palestinians in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The insistence that nothing prior to this attack can be considered when talking about Israel is a calculated attempt to hide the full context of what led to this escalation, how Hamas even came to be, and why Israel is now seeing the consequences of its actions on a scale Netanyahu always wanted.
Christians who support Israel are the same sorts of people who
love to quote verses about “you reap what you sow” when people they hate are suffering
any given anguish. Many are using those verse right now as Palestinian families
are exterminated by Israeli airstrikes. Yet for decades the Israeli state has understood
that it would eventually have to deal with “blowback”, consequences, for its crimes
against the Palestinians. That is why Tel Aviv has kept an eye on Iran and Lebanon.
Because the Jewish ethno-state knows that its violent oppression of Palestinians
would make it enemies among its neighbors. Leaders like Netanyahu however didn’t
just know that consequences were coming, they have engineered among Palestinians
the harvest they wanted all along. For Netanyahu the existence of groups like Hamas
has always been politically profitable. Having a boogeyman to scapegoat whenever
necessary is what all authoritarians want. And now that we know that Egypt warned
Tel Aviv well in advance of this weekend, it is clear that Netanyahu saw the consequences
coming. It was an excuse for the total war he wanted to launch. War being historically
how Netanyahu has solidified his hold on the government in Israel. How Netanyahu
has gained support among Israelis who believed their government all along when they
were told they would never suffer the consequences for the occupation and apartheid
policies. While Netanyahu appears to have allowed the consequences to come home
to the Israelis, it cannot be ignored that the Israelis themselves went along with
their government for decades under the promise that they would be shielded from
accountability. What Israel saw when the ghetto walls of Gaza were breached was
an uprising of people who have been denied their rights, their humanity and their
homeland. As violent as this has been, this is the harvest that Israel made possible.
The harvest sprouted from the seeds Israel alone spread across Palestine.
As a Jew, I am reminded of the conversations I was able to have
with survivors of the Holocaust in Croatia. Partisans who used extreme violence
to fight back against the Nazis and Ustaša alike. People who had participated in
the reprisals that took place before Tito ended the resulting communal violence
in Yugoslavia. Of the three of them, none seemed truly remorseful for taking revenge.
At no point did I blame them for that hardness either. Having listened to what the
Ustaša did to them, I was in no place to judge what they wanted to do in return.
The Croatian fascists had planted a harvest that they believed they would never
have to reap. That eventually the Jews, the Serbs, the Roma would be gone. That
under the guidance of their Nazi counterparts, Croatia was going to be Catholic
only. But each family member they murdered in the forests and mountains, each family
member they sent to camps was a seed their fascist sins planted in the hearts of
those who remained. Once sprouted, somebody had to pay. An exchange was to be made.
And this part of the Holocaust, the part that came after the fascists were defeated,
isn’t isolated to the stories I listened to. In Germany the survivors also put forth
revenge actions. Be it poisoning SS inmates under American guard or planning to
poison German water supplies, the price of the crimes committed against them carried
over even after the war had ended. Many would illegally immigrate to Palestine.
And many of those would use the crimes European states committed against them as
reason enough to force Palestinians to pay the price.
Only in the comfort of privileged distance do we find it convenient
to say that killing citizens of an occupying force, which Israel is, is morally
unjustified. It has not been our families murdered by Israeli occupation. It has
not been our brothers abducted by the Israeli occupation forces, and it has not
been our sisters who have endured sexual assault and victimization by Israeli soldiers
and settlers. We get to watch Gaza burn while pretending that each new death in
this Israeli carpet-bombing campaign isn’t a new seed being planted for a future
harvest of bloody revenge. By ignoring the over 80 years of violence perpetrated
against the Palestinians we get to “stand with Israel” in feigned outrage over mislabeled
“terrorism”. Only when we have decided to ignore Netanyahu’s fascism, Israel’s original
sins and the longstanding blockade of Gaza can we get atop our soapbox and shout
about how violence is never the answer.
Until Palestinian suffering is recognized, until Israel faces
true consequences for its crimes, the Western world will have to get comfortable
playing the role of hypocrites. That is unless we somehow decide to start telling
our governments to withdraw support for Israel and end financial backing of its
murderous campaign against Palestinians. Let Israel face the horror of what occupation
looks like. Force Netanyahu to come outright with his desired crimes against humanity
so he and the rest of Israel’s leadership can be tried like the Nazis at Nuremberg.
But given the Democrats’ current response, appeasement of the genocidal government
in Israel, the status quo, seems more likely.
