Israel, Gaza and the tense debate over the war and its victims

By: Mark Mazower, historian / The Financial Times
Translated by: Agron Shala / Telegrafi.com

Earlier this week, the Middle East was still struggling to come to terms with Donald Trump's vision of Gaza as a "Mediterranean Florida," while police in Jerusalem raided and destroyed a prominent Palestinian bookstore, Educational Bookshop, with the implausible claim that its owners were disrupting public order. Diplomats from several countries gathered in the courtroom for the hearing in a show of solidarity with the arrested men, while patrons flocked to the bookstore.

Such public support was encouraging. However, the blatant abuse of police power demonstrated the government's sense of impunity: in Israel, these days, compassion for Palestinians is scarce.

The question of who deserves compassion and where it has disappeared is the subject of the last three books reviewed here. In Israel, a widespread public indifference to Arab suffering, evident long before the existential shock of the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023, was surely a precondition for the collective destruction of Gaza and the extraordinary scale of the Palestinian death toll.

Gideon Levy and David Grossman shed light on this issue in their books, giving different answers to the question of what really changed that day. Meanwhile, in America, where the Jewish community is increasingly divided along generational and other lines, “stand with Israel” remains the strongest and most politically influential call in Washington.

Read also:

By Gideon Levy:
- Children are children, whether in Israel or Gaza: They never deserve to die
- The chosen people?!

By David Grossman:
- Israel is falling into the abyss
- Israel is in a nightmare: Who will we be when we rise from the ashes?

From Mark Mazower:
- The crisis of faith in Israel and Zionism

Meanwhile, Peter Beinart raises the question of why support for Israel seems to many to preclude acceptance of the extent of Palestinian suffering. The concern that Jewish nationalism could cause moral damage to Judaism itself is a debate that dates back to the beginnings of Zionism, but has rarely been more troubling to some Jews than it is now.

The Book of Levi, The Gaza Murder [The Killing of Gaza], is a selection of reports by the journalist Haaretzwho – for more than 40 years – has documented the diminishing prospects for peace in the Middle East. More than events, his main concern is moral sentiment – ​​above all, Israeli disregard for Palestinian suffering.

Observing the construction of another security barrier around Gaza in 2018, Levy writes that it represents an attempt to erase “what no one wants to see … a giant concentration camp for the people there.” On the Israeli side, near where cement trucks queue, he visits a camping area. “There are tables, a playground, picnic areas,” writes a local guide in Google Maps"Beautiful view of the Gaza Strip."

The barrier itself proved ineffective. A few days after October 7, Levy went to the town of Sderot, near northeastern Gaza, which he describes as “the most terrifying place” he has ever visited; in Kibbutz Be’eri he smelled “the stench of death.” He understands the emotional turmoil caused throughout Israel by a massacre unprecedented in its history, but he fears what is to come, and his prognosis is grim. The Palestinians in Gaza have “decided that they are willing to pay any price for a moment of freedom. Is there any hope in that? No. Will Israel learn its lessons? No.”

The Gaza Murder shows how dreams of collective revenge, once present only in the Israeli far right, have now become mainstream, thanks also to the media – with a few exceptions – which now act as a nationalist fanfare. On Israeli television, only one side suffers; after the barbaric atrocities of Hamas, anything is permitted.

This is, of course, a well-known phenomenon. Israel is not the only country to have lapsed into blind nationalism during war, nor the only one to have resorted to mass murder in moments of existential crisis. But what about the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), whose officers are developing a penchant for what Levy calls “infantile humiliation” and whose soldiers take selfies in underwear taken as war booty? To his surprise, Levy can find no instances of conscious refusal. In the hills of the West Bank, armed settlers roam “more ferociously than ever,” intimidating or driving villagers off their lands.

Levy is dismayed by the mentality these actions reflect. What has Israel gained from this war, he asks, other than “joy at the misfortune of Gaza”? Hamas has not been destroyed. Aside from the US, Israel is more isolated internationally than ever. Is there a fundamental difference between the left and the right when it comes to the occupation? Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, can be blamed for the discontent, but Levy wonders whether his opponents would have acted differently.

The heart that thinks [The Thinking Heart], a collection of essays and speeches by the novelist David Grossman, helps illuminate the kind of moral conscience that Levy questions. A prominent member of the left, Grossman has criticized the evils of the occupation and also opposed the Netanyahu government’s plans for judicial reform. He warns that Israel is an “illusory democracy,” which could easily become an “illusion of democracy.”

Worried about the corrosive effect of what Israelis euphemistically call “the situation,” Grossman sees the country as mired in a “total denial of reality.” Can an “occupying democracy” really exist? he asks. Thus, for the soul of the country, he positions himself on one side of the bitter struggle among Israeli Jews, a battle that divides those who remain committed to the idea of ​​peace from those who believe only in force—the old secular left versus a reborn religious nationalist right.

And yet, October 7 seems to change everything for Grossman. He writes that under the shock of that day, in the face of the obvious weakness of the state and the army, life suddenly became “more fragile and uncertain.” It turns out that “not only is Israel still far from being a home in the full sense of the word, it doesn’t even know how to be a true fortress.”

Israelis have become aware, he says, that they may not survive the “next war” without outside help. He predicts a rise in hatred on both sides and an Israel that will become “much more right-wing, more militant and more racist.” Perhaps the country will eventually be able to enjoy a “full, final and sustainable existence”; for now, there is the moral bankruptcy of its leadership and the unquenchable hostility of its neighbors.

Grossman may worry about what his country is doing – both to others and to itself – but he also sees Israel as a victim. He writes that while the occupation is a crime, what Hamas did is an even greater crime – a framing of events that turns the comparison into justification. Grossman has participated in anti-government demonstrations and has called for the return of hostages. However, beyond demanding a ceasefire, these protests have said little – directly – about the suffering of Palestinians or directly confronted what has happened in Gaza, as Levy would have liked.

Books Being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza [Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza] by Peter Beinart, is primarily about American Jews. Beinart is touched by the mental and rhetorical ways of avoiding that allow many of his friends to reconcile their deep emotional attachment to Israel with the rising ethno-nationalism of its right-wing leadership and the violence of its policies.

He tries to understand how what he calls “the way of not seeing” has created a “permission not to feel anything” – which easily turned into open criticism of anyone who expressed concern about what the Palestinians were experiencing in Gaza. Beinart knows, from personal experience, that disagreeing with a “stand with Israel” line can bring hateful messages and verbal attacks. However, he tries to convince his fellow Jews that they must do more to acknowledge the plight of the Palestinians.

As he rightly points out, American Jews are a heterogeneous population, in terms of views, and cannot be reduced to the positions of the major American Jewish organizations (such as the American Jewish Committee or the Anti-Defamation League) that claim to speak on their behalf. As self-appointed guardians of the faith, these organizations not only support Israel, but also try to stifle debate by accusing anyone who speaks out for Palestinian rights of anti-Semitism. Accusations of anti-Semitism have thus become a way of avoiding reality.

This, Beinart notes, does not make Israel much safer, but it has undermined free speech and helped to embroil Jewish issues in America’s increasingly bitter culture wars. “Jews are never responsible for anti-Semitism,” he writes. “Yet we are responsible for combating it wisely. And equating Israel with Judaism does exactly the opposite.”

As a devout Jew, Beinart sees the destruction in Gaza as a moment of truth for Judaism itself. How long, he asks, can Jews continue to see themselves as “the perpetual virtuous victims of history” when faced with the horrors that “a Jewish state has committed, with the support of many Jews around the world”?

He makes a compelling argument, but will anyone listen? While the Palestinians face the threat of their entire existence in Gaza, Israel seems to be becoming more hardened, more inward-looking, and more isolated. As Jews around the world increasingly identify with the state of Israel and its actions, some will rejoice, while others will mourn the old values ​​and faith that once existed. /Telegraph/