The Gaza war has uncovered a great divide in how Israel is perceived. The decades-long Palestinian delegitimization campaign against Israel is yielding its poisonous fruit. Totalitarians who only see Israel through the Palestinian lens as “occupier” consider it automatically guilty. Everything else Palestinians do or don’t do, Israelis do or don’t do, pales by comparison. Alternatively, democrats who see Israel as an imperfect democracy – as all democracies are, because they’re human creations – find room to criticize but also to defend.
In Gaza, Israel’s enemy, Hamas, is a sexist, homophobic, totalitarian Islamist organization that holds its own people hostage, oppresses and kills dissidents, deliberately uses women and children as human shields, and just as deliberately targets Israeli civilians. In 2005, the late Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon simplified whatever complications there are regarding Israeli policy by withdrawing completely from Gaza – not even keeping a presence in the Philadelphia security corridor. Israel no longer occupies the strip. Nevertheless, Hamas has gained traction by continuing to call Israel an “occupier” and has used that to justify its rain of rockets and warren of attack-tunnels.
The situation is exacerbated by the heartbreaking reality of Israel being forced to bomb civilian areas – because that’s where the terrorists hide their rockets – and invade homes – because that’s where the terrorists dig the tunnel entrances. The totalitarians, who swallow the Palestinian line and see Israel as an evil occupier, see the brutal pictures as proof of Israeli brutality. No explanations, no history lessons, no details mitigate their rage. Their fury against Israel’s perceived crimes is so great that even some progressives who would normally reject Hamas’ sexism, homophobia and general illiberalism see Israel as the greater criminal. Their need to reject Israel completely is so great that when someone points out that Israel respects gay rights, these totalitarian leftists cry “pinkwashing.” And when someone independently decides to support Israel, they accuse the evil Zionists of “brainwashing.”
Beyond the continuing complexity of Israel’s decades-long presence in the West Bank, two other factors have given this totalitarian repudiation of Israel traction. First, the toxic combination of post-1960s, far-left identity politics and anti-western, anti-white and anti-power guilt-mongering fits the Palestinian narrative into a broader story. Some – note my careful language, not all – progressives have joined this unholy alliance with anti-progressive, illiberal Islamists, because identity politics divides the world into victims and victimizers, and Israel, having been cast as a white, western, powerful Goliath, appears to be the ultimate victimizer. Inconvenient facts – that there are dark-skinned Israelis and light-skinned Palestinians, that Israel is both western and Middle Eastern, and that Israel has powerful assets, but also powerful foes – are ignored to serve the larger story, which has become a broadly accepted prejudice.
And speaking of bigotry, the X-factor here – which focuses on Israel disproportionately, when U.S. forces caused more deaths in Iraq and more people die daily in Syria – is anti-Semitism. The world’s obsession with the Jew, the distaste for the collective Jew, meaning Israel, has become clear again, with many protesters and bigots not even trying to mask their Jew-hatred behind rhetoric of anti-Zionism or human rights.
Against these totalitarian forces, democrats must not waver. Viewing Israel as an imperfect democracy carves out room for someone to criticize Israel’s West Bank policies, to hate Israel’s settlements, and yet fight Hamas’ Gaza totalitarians. Democrats can see distinctions; totalitarians cannot.
It’s easy to despair, fearing the whole world is against us, as the mass media’s pornographic war images and body count dominate. But look at Israel – still thriving, still giving millions a fabulous life, even while mourning the suffering on both sides. Note the broad-based coalition – from left to right, anti-occupation secularists to religious settlers – fighting together to defend Israel. We can see nuance, we can build coalitions, and even if we get the occasional media black eye or appear unpopular in academia, ultimately we will win (as we did this summer in Gaza).