Moral Clarity part 12: Dialogue with a friend

Y: Hey it's been a while since we spoke. What's happening? 

X: I've been so depressed. I haven't wanted to interact. Particularly with my Jewish friends. I mean I can't take the images anymore. The bombed out neighbourhoods in Gaza. The bloodied lifeless bodies of the children. 

Y: I know, it's heartbreaking.

X: And my social media is a horror show of people screaming at each other. Everyone is taking a side. It's like, if you don't take a side, you're on the wrong side. Part of me doesn't want to take a side, and part of me feels guilty for not taking a side. Most of my friends are saying the same thing, that the bombing is genocide. That it can't be justified. I know what you'll say. You'll say that what happened on October 7th was barbaric. You'll say that Israel can't NOT respond. A few of my friends are saying that. But one horrific, unjustifiable action can't excuse weeks and weeks of collective punishment against innocent civilians. It can't justify the thousands upon thousands of people being killed and displaced from their homes. It just can't. 

Y: I won't justify the killing of innocent people ever, Jewish or Palestinian. It was unjustifiable on October 7th and it's unjustifiable today. But frankly, the only people I've ever heard justifying any deaths of civilians, are the Palestinians. They cheered when Israelis died, and they say they are proud to be martyrs for their cause. You can't deny that they subscribe to an ideology that regards innocent lives as expendable, even desirable politically. The Israelis are definitely doing major damage in Gaza, but I believe their intentions are defensive, and their methods demonstrate it. They're doing the best they can to respect international norms of war. They really have no choice. They have to justify their actions to the international community. They tell people to get out of the way before they take action. But Hamas doesn't. They purposely put people in harm's way. It's unconscionable. It's been proven without any doubt that Hamas militants use schools, hospitals and other places where people have sought refuge to shield their operations. 

X: Okay, but knowing that innocent people remain in harm's way, Israel needs to stop the bombing. Whether they say it or not, they are committing a genocide.

Y: That word is being thrown around a lot, and frankly it bothers me. It's inaccurate and being used to elicit an emotional response, as a rallying cry. 'Genocide' was a term coined by a Jewish lawyer in 1944 to describe the systematic murder of Jews by the Nazis. It describes extermination with the intention of eliminating an entire group of people. That it's being used against Israel is a trick of propaganda, to flip the script. It's actually what Hamas wants to do to the Jews and the Jewish state. If Israel was trying to commit a genocide it wouldn't be dropping leaflets before they bomb. It wouldn't allow Palestinian self-governance in Gaza and the West Bank. I could show you in a dozen ways how 'genocide' isn't the word to describe what is happening.

X: Semantics. Okay, then call it mass-murder. That's what it is.

Y: No, it's war, and that's different. Israel is at war with Hamas. During war there are always civilian  victims. The question becomes whether the parties of a conflict care about protecting their citizens or not. Israel clearly does. Hamas clearly does not.   

X: Then there should be a ceasefire.

Y: Hamas can end the conflict tomorrow if they wanted. All they have to do is release the hostages. But they don't want the bombing to stop. They want as much bombing as possible. 

X: So Israel is playing into Hamas's hands.

Y: They don't have much choice. They have to eliminate the terrorists. Hopefully, they do it smartly, and minimize the civilian casualties. And they have to get the hostages back. A unilateral ceasefire would short circuit that process. Israel can not live with a terrorist organization dedicated to its destruction on its border. They tried that for years and it didn't work. You wouldn't live with someone living next door to you who said they wanted to kill you, and took pot-shots at your house every once in a while, would you? That's what has happened since Israel left Gaza in 2006. They spent all that time building a war machine against Israel, and depriving the Palestinians. 

X: You guys who support Israel at any cost talk as if history began on October 7th. Like it started with Hamas. I start the story in 1948.  

Y: I see where you are going here. So the founding of the State of Israel was the first crime? Is that it? 

X: It's the way it was founded. With the intimidation, murder and expulsion of Palestinians. 

Y: What do you know about the founding of the State of Israel? Have you read any books about it? 

X: I know about 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes. 

Y: That's true. Mostly as a result of Israel's War of Independence, and the year of hostilities leading up to it. War always has the effect of displacing people. It didn't have to be that way. Before Israel was forced to fight for its independence, there was a UN partition plan for two states, one Jewish and one Palestinian. That was the first time the Palestinians and the other Arab nations around it had a chance to create a Palestinian state, but they rejected the idea. They decided to try to destroy Israel instead. That was only the first time. Israel has offered other two-state deals, over and over again, and the Palestinians rejected them all. They want all the land for themselves and have never accepted Israel no matter what the proposed configuration was. Every time the surrounding Arab countries attacked Israel, in 1967 and then again in 1973, they lost land, and the position of the Palestinians got worse and worse. That's not Israel's fault. 

X: Why do the Jews think they deserve a country anyway? I mean what other religious group in the world has a country of its own? There are plenty of countries where Jewish people live in peace and security. They don't need Palestine. They should give it back.

Y: No one 'deserves a country'. And by the way, I'm not sure where you get the idea that Israel is a religious state. It's a multi-ethnic democracy. There are around two million Arab-Israelis. Arabs have served in the government. Israel was not founded by a religious movement. Actually just the opposite. The modern Zionist movement was comprised of mostly western European Jews who were not religious at all, some were anti-religious socialists and communists. Fun fact, in Israel's Declaration of Independence there is one word missing that appears in the very first paragraph of the US Declaration of Independence: God. Yes, there are a lot of places today where Jewish people live in relative safety, but history shows that this is the exception not the rule. As a minority in every place they have lived, Jews have been defenseless and vulnerable to persecution. Sometimes the persecution came in sporadic flare-ups, at other times it was officially sanctioned. Rulers scapegoated their Jewish minority to deflect blame for their own incompetence and corruption. History is littered with such episodes, from the Spanish Inquisition to the pogroms of Western and Eastern Europe, to the Holocaust. If this new crisis has shown us anything, it's how unsafe Jewish communities around the world still are. From attacks on Jewish institutions in Montreal and Toronto, to an Israeli airplane being surrounded on the tarmac by an angry violent mob in Dagestan, Russia. Israel's existence is our only guarantee of protection. My question to you is why single Jews out? Why should Jews be the only ethnic group that shouldn't live in peace in its ancestral homeland?

X: I'm not singling out the Jews. I don't blame Jews in general for what's happening. I blame the Jews who support Zionism. Not all Jews are Zionists. You have to agree that many Jews are speaking out against Israel too. So please don't accuse me of being anti-Semitic. 

Y: Okay, I guess you were equally outraged when a hundred thousand innocent Arab civilians were killed by Assad in Syria? Or the hundreds of thousands that have been killed in other wars being fought around the world? I guess you were protesting those wars in the street too? Sorry, I don't mean to sound sarcastic. But Israel is always treated differently. There are undoubtedly many reasons for it, but one is certainly just good old fashioned anti-Semitism. We've known each other for a long time and I would never accuse you of being anti-Semitic. But you've got to ask yourself why this conflict matters to you in a way that others don't. It probably has something to do with the explosive and ongoing media attention. But when you say stuff like, 'why do the Jews deserve a country', frankly, it sounds anti-Semitic. Like there are some groups of people who merit a country and others who don't. I won't question the Palestinian desire for self-governance. And I don't think anyone should question the Jewish desire. By the same token, our right to defend our country should not be questioned, and when it is, it sounds as if you're saying only Jews should be defenseless.  

X: I gotta go. I really appreciate that you've taken the time to engage with me respectfully. What you've said doesn't make me feel any better about what's going on, but you've definitely given me lots of food for thought. 

Y: Trust me, I don't feel great about it either. You'd have to be a stone not to be affected by all the suffering. Hopefully we can agree on one thing. It's not a simple issue. Complicated problems are hard to process, and shouldn't be reduced to slogans or emotional responses, based on who you think is the bigger victim. That kind of thinking is impulsive, and doesn't do justice to a complex, difficult situation.