Judging Israel, Part 2
Judging Israel, Part 2
The standard arguments in Israel's defense do not stack up.
“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
—1 Samuel 15:3, in which God instructs the Israelites on how to handle Amalek, a people which, according to the Torah, attacked them following their exodus from Egypt.
“'Remember what Amalek did to you.' We remember and we fight.”
—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, October 28th, 2023, in a speech to the nation on the eve of Israel’s land invasion of Gaza.
Last time, we looked at the alarming signs that Israel is planning to inflict large-scale crimes against humanity on Gaza. We also introduced the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). Also referred to as the Law of War or International Humanitarian Law, the LOAC is a universal body of rules, norms, and precedents which have taken shape over the past 150 years to make war more humane. No party to any conflict is exempt, including Israel and Hamas.
Although honored in the breach as often as the observance, the LOAC serves as a basic standard to identify transgressions against legality and basic morality. We have seen such violations during the past few weeks both in Hamas’s savage terrorist attacks of October 7th as well as Israel’s brutal response.
Even more worrisome than Israel’s conduct thus far is the eliminationist rhetoric from its ruling establishment. Going by the public statements of its leaders as well as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), it appears to be planning a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing, a genocide, or both.
If the IDF is to do to Gaza what God instructed the Israelites to do to Amalek, as Netanyahu implied in his October 28th speech, we are about to witness a crime against humanity of epic proportions.
Because I have been focusing on Israel’s actions more than Hamas’s, some readers might think I’m applying a double standard. Should we not judge Israel on an equal basis to everyone else? Or perhaps even relax our usual standards given the extraordinary situation Israel confronts?
Let us consider these arguments.
“But shouldn’t Israel get a pass?”
Over the past few weeks, I have seen many commentators try to defend Israel’s conduct due to the exceptional circumstances it supposedly faces. The implication is that Israel should be spared the scrutiny typically applied to others.
Such claims can take any number of forms. For instance:
But Israel faces a threat to its existence! From whom? The Palestinians? The list of actors who can plausibly threaten Israel’s survival, if they were so inclined, begins and ends with the world’s nuclear powers. Hamas, however evil, is not a member of that club. Neither, for that matter, is Iran. Even if they did pose such a threat, it would hardly justify collective punishment, which is barred under international law.
But Hamas’s attacks were barbaric and savage. Indeed, they were. Having established that, I would ask which adjectives would appropriately characterize Israel when it levels entire city blocks or deprives millions of people of food, water, and medicine.
But Hamas struck first! Sorry, but in a conflict spanning more than three-quarters of a century, it makes little sense to speak of one side as Attacker and the other as Responder. And let’s be honest with ourselves: If you want to hold a competition over who’s suffered more at whose hands during this time span, the Israelis or the Palestinians, do you really think it would turn out in Israel’s favor?
But the Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006! Yes, they did. But there has not been another election since, which makes Hamas’s popular mandate about as good as the Nazis’—one election, one time, followed by autocracy. This is not how popular sovereignty works. Either way, it is irrelevant; waging war on an entire people for the actions of its leaders is collective punishment, which, again, is a war crime.
But Egypt could solve this whole problem if it stopped blocking the evacuation routes! Be that as it may, what is preventing Israel from accepting the refugees? Security concerns? Egypt would say the same. Or is it rather that a massive influx of Palestinians would alter the demographic balance of Israel proper? Well, yes, it would. However, depriving others of basic rights so that you yourself might better enjoy them is hardly a morally tenable position.
But Hamas intentionally embeds itself among the civilian population, leaving Israel no choice but to bomb everything. This is not a valid argument, either morally or legally. Using human shields is a war crime. Yet it does not excuse the indiscriminate bombardment of civilian populations and infrastructure—on this, the LOAC is quite clear. I would add that rationalizing war crimes on the grounds that the enemy has made it too difficult to win through legitimate military means is exactly what Hamas does.
“But aren’t you holding Israel to a double standard?”
That is a fair question, and the answer is yes. For all its democratic failings—namely, the denial of citizenship to roughly 40 percent of the population over which it rules in addition to the other Palestinian refugees whose 1948 flight it undoubtedly helped instigate—Israel nonetheless operates on the pretense of being a liberal democracy.
For evidence of this conceit, look no further than the anti-government protests which swept the country earlier this year. In response to Netanyahu’s authoritarian power-grab, Israelis came out into the streets in numbers unprecedented since the country’s founding. The message they conveyed was unmistakable: “This is not who we are.” (Never mind that, for millions of disenfranchised Palestinians, this is precisely what Israel is.)
The idea of Israel as a liberal democracy is baked into its national identity. The same cannot be said of the Palestinians—at least not yet. Perhaps it would be—only they have not had an opportunity to find out. It is difficult to form a collective identity on the basis of shared democratic norms unless the nation has actually had the experience of democratic sovereignty. But lacking a state of their own, this is a privilege they have thus far been denied. It is true that they have voted in elections for an autonomous authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Still, they have never done so as a sovereign nation with an independent state.
In sum, I do think it is fair to hold Israel to a higher standard—the very one it has set for itself. By any stretch, it is failing to live up to it.
Don’t like double standards? Fine, let’s go with that.
Perhaps you still disagree. Perhaps you think we should stop treating Israel like it is special and instead judge it by the same standards to which we hold everyone else. That’s a perfectly reasonable argument. Only when we apply it, it makes Israel’s egregious conduct all the more apparent.
Take the issue of statehood. Israelis have their own state. The millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza do not. As such, they are denied the same right to national self-determination Israelis have long enjoyed.
There are two and only two morally defensible ways to correct this imbalance: Extend equal citizenship to all the Palestinians or give them a state. Either/or. Pick one. If Israelis should be treated like everybody else, then everyone else—including the Palestinians—should get to be treated like Israelis, with all the privileges it entails.
Since 1948, only one Israeli government—that of Ariel Sharon, of all people, from 2003 to 2006—has officially endorsed the concept of an independent Palestinian state. No government before or since has done the same. Informal offers were made during the peace process, to be sure. But even the Palestinian side accepted the reality that any state would be limited to the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a capital in a shared Jerusalem. A state on these terms would amount to a mere 22 percent of Mandatory Palestine, leaving Israel with the remaining 78 percent.
Every round of negotiations that followed—and the Israeli side only began to take seriously the idea of a separate Palestinian state at Camp David in 2000—were essentially disputes within the parameters above. The last time Israel made anything resembling a serious offer in this regard was in 2008.
Needless to say, none of these talks managed to solve any of the major issues, including but not limited to Palestinian statehood. I will not partake in the interminable squabble over which side deserves more of the blame for this. You might think the answer is straightforward. I can assure you it is not. I will only note that the basic premise of the now-defunct peace process—22 percent of the land for Palestinians and 78 percent for Israel—would hardly satisfy anyone’s idea of equality. And that’s before we get to the right of return for the refugees who fled Palestine in 1948, an issue Israel has mostly refused to even consider.
Nor am I prone to indulge such utopian fantasies as a single multinational state with equal rights for all. I fully understand that an independent state on 22 percent of the land is probably the most Palestinians can hope for. I also believe that a state established on that basis would be better than the status quo. But justice it is not, and equality it ain’t.
Maybe you feel that, before winning statehood, the Palestinians need first to demonstrate that they can govern themselves responsibly. Or perhaps you’re of the opinion that they don’t deserve a state at all. If so, I would remind you of another national movement which once heard these very same arguments from the British and a host of neighboring powers. I would also remind you that the movement in question did not take it very well—so much so that it fought a war of liberation complete with terrorist bombings, massacres of civilians, and ethnic cleansing.
In the end, this national movement prevailed. It went on to found the State of Israel.
Holding Israelis to the same standards as everyone else not only has implications for Palestinian statehood; it also informs how we should evaluate Israel’s current military campaign.
As discussed in Part 1, both Israel and Hamas are bound by the LOAC. As you might expect, Hamas violated the LOAC when it carried out its terrorist attack on October 7th. Since then, Israel has almost certainly done so too.
In particular, Israel is collectively punishing the people of Gaza for Hamas’s atrocities. It is doing so, moreover, by the admission of its own leaders. If borne out by an independent inquiry, it would qualify as a war crime under the LOAC.
The thing is, if you oppose collective punishment in one case, you must oppose it in all. Do you think it is justified when Israel collectively punishes Palestinians because they voted for Hamas in an election back in 2006? Yes? So do you also believe it is justified when Hamas collectively punishes Israelis because they elected a government which enables pogroms by Israeli settlers in the West Bank?
Didn’t think so.
As Tim Wise, an antiracist author and educator, explains:
If your argument is, members of group A committed war crimes against members of group B, therefore group B should be allowed to do whatever it wants to group A, you're not only defending the very types of inhumanity you claim to oppose, your history education has failed you.
The choice of whether to destroy Gaza and ethnically-cleanse its population, as top Israeli officials have openly pledged to do, is not “difficult.” Nor is it “gut-wrenching.” It is not a choice at all. It is a war crime. It is also inhumane and morally repugnant.
The Law of Armed Conflict does not contain a special exception for you, personally. You may think it is feckless in practice and does not prevent warring parties from committing crimes against humanity. If that is your belief, I invite you to explain it to Russian president Vladimir Putin, who can barely travel outside his own country for fear of being arrested and sent to The Hague.
Deterrence aside, the LOAC serves an additional purpose. As Jack Crosbie of Rolling Stone explains:
What the rules give us—citizens of America or Israel or any party aligned with them— is the means to demand that the acts being committed in our names are recognized for what they are: Evil.
Dehumanizing Palestinians
Israel and its supporters frequently decry the use of double standards, demanding that it be judged on an equal basis to others. Only they tend not to follow their own advice. Many of their arguments rest on an unspoken presumption: That Palestinians have less value than Jews. It is a dehumanizing impulse which can lead to dangerous results.
Bari Weiss, an outspoken pro-Israel pundit, offers the quintessential example. In May 2021, when a typically idiotic series of mutual provocations culminated in yet another Israeli bombardment of Gaza, she rushed to Israel’s defense. Commenting on reports that one of the airstrikes had killed dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, she called it an “unspeakable tragedy.” But she went on to dismiss it as “one of the unavoidable burdens of political power, of Zionism’s dream turned into the reality of self-determination.”
Would Weiss ever treat the deaths of Israeli children by Palestinians in so cavalier a manner? Would she brush them aside as the unfortunate but necessary victims of Palestine’s “dream turned into the reality of self-determination?” Would she chalk it up to the “complicated truth about a tiny country surrounded by enemies making hard decisions about how to protect its citizens?” to quote her own characterization of Israel?
I think we know the answer to that.
If Israelis are fully human, a statement with which Weiss would obviously concur, what, in her view, would that make the Palestinians?
This same dehumanizing tendency is evident across the pro-Israel space. Consider the implicit value-judgments in the following statements, all of which are commonly heard in discussions of the issue:
“They had their chance at a state in 2000-2001 and said no.”
“They shouldn’t get statehood until they can demonstrate that they won’t pose a threat to Israel.”
“If they want to live in their own state, they can just move to any one of the Arab countries.”
“They deserve what they’re getting because they didn’t rise up and overthrow their terrorist leaders.”
“It’s okay for Israel to bomb Gaza indiscriminately because Hamas uses human shields.”
“Palestinians are surely suffering, but what else is Israel supposed to do?”
Sentiments like these cannot be expressed without assigning a lesser value to the lives of Palestinians; it requires their dehumanization. To see why, ask yourself whether those who indulge such rationalizations would do the same if the shoe were on the other foot. Would they agree that Israeli statehood is contingent upon good behavior? That Israelis deserve to be punished because they keep Netanyahu’s extremist government in power? That Hamas is free to bomb the Cameri Theater or Tel Aviv Museum of Art since they happen to be adjacent to HaKirya, the main IDF headquarters, and thus qualify as “human shields?” Would they throw up their hands at the sight of dead Israeli children and argue that their lives must be sacrificed on the altar of Palestinian security?
Obviously not. Yet many advance these ideas routinely—so long as the victims are Palestinians and not Israelis. But the minute we acknowledge that every human life matters equally—which, let’s face it, is the bare-minimum requirement of any legitimate political worldview—statements like the ones above are revealed as abhorrent and absurd.
What Hamas did was evil. What Israel is doing in response—and especially what it appears to be planning—is likewise evil. This is true whether we hold Israel to the high standards it sets for itself or the same standards with which every other party to war must adhere.
By all indications, Gaza is about to become the site of one of the worst crimes against humanity since the Holocaust. The warning lights could not be flashing brighter. If it does happen, nobody will be able to profess that they didn’t see it coming. No one will be able to say, “if I knew then what I know now.” That excuse simply won’t work anymore.