Yesterday, I woke up to the news of Israeli soldiers who have died during the invasion of Gaza. They died protecting Palestinian civilians.
Israeli soldiers had to die because Israel would not simply smash Gaza City and the tunnels underneath using whatever means it has at its disposal. Demolishing Hamas without using troops in close combat would probably result in many more civilian deaths. So Israel has to send soldiers into direct combat in Gaza, and some of them die.1
As of now, the latest soldier to die was named Yuval Silber. Years from now, suppose a young relative of Yuval Silber asks, “Why did he have to die?” The relative will be told that the soldier died in the defense of Israel. But the truth is that he died in defense of Palestinian civilians.
And when the descendants of a Palestinian whose life was saved because he was sent into Gaza, will they be grateful? Instead, they will probably grow up believing that Yuval Silber deserved to die, and so do all Israelis.
Israel believes, probably correctly, that it cannot survive without support from “moderates” in the United States and elsewhere. These moderates will not tolerate Israel indiscriminately smashing Gaza City and the tunnels underneath. Ultimately, Yuval Silber and other Israeli soldiers are dying in order to please these moderates.
These moderates would not want their own children to die in order to save Palestinian civilians. The moderates are what Dara Horn refers to when she writes People Love Dead Jews.
What would I have the moderates do? Instead of lecturing Israel, they could lecture Hamas. “We cannot in any way reward your human shields strategy. Israel must do whatever it has to do to kill you. If that means that your fellow Palestinians are killed in the process, that is on you.”
Instead, moderates make no demands on Hamas. They do not insist that Hamas abandon its posts inside and underneath hospitals. They do not insist that Hamas allow civilians to flee to safe areas. Moderates end up encouraging Hamas to keep using civilians as human shields.
Moderates worry about Israel causing Palestinians and Muslims to become radicalized. They think that providing aid for Palestinians is the answer. For decades, they have done nothing to protest that aid being used to fund rockets, tunnels, and schools that teach children to hate Jews.
Moderates worry about Islamophobia. They are less concerned with the Islamists who preach hatred of Jews and of the West.
Moderates want peace. But the precondition for peace might be a war that crushes the radical Islamists, including those in Iran. It might require the liberal world to take some uncomfortably illiberal steps to incapacitate the anti-liberal forces that have infected the West. Moderates will balk at taking such steps.
As a supporter of Israel, these days my dark thoughts are these: with friends like the moderates, who needs enemies?
In a different way, the United States is also fighting a war for its survival. American universities crossed a red line in the aftermath of Oct. 7. The struggle for campuses is therefore a struggle for America and its values—for an America that is liberal, that supports free speech and human rights, and that protects all of its citizens, regardless of race or creed, from vicious, lawless assault.
Indeed, if the moderates are a lost cause as far as helping Israel is concerned, perhaps they will join in the battle to restore intellectual rigor and merit to American education. I would hope that a liberal moderate could support this project. A moderate might be willing to do something to break up the DEI industry; to reduce the hold that critical theories now have on many academic departments, and to get rid of academic departments that serve no purpose other than to promulgate critical theory; to reform schools of education that only fill the minds of America’s K-12 teachers with anti-Western garbage.
Can I at least ask that of the moderates? If the moderates take up this challenge, then perhaps the deaths of Israeli soldiers in Gaza will not be in vain.
Note: Because this post is on the current thing and hence might generate more comments than I can keep track of, I will limit comments to paid subscribers.
Sadly, I can offer no comfort to the families of the hostages. I do not think that we can rationalize sending soldiers to die in an attempt to save hostages.
The rhetoric around this conflict from you and Freddy are examples of bringing more heat than light to the debate, though obviously each of you comes from a radically different point of view.
So Freddy's position boils down: whenever Israel uses military force to neutralize a threat to its country, its a war crime. Israel should become a secular liberal democracy in which palestinians and jews live in harmony and Israel is no longer a jewish nation state. How that would work and how this won't result in the killing of all the jews is unclear. there's underpants gnome theory to the whole thing.
Your position boils down to: kill them all, if necessary. Drop the bombs. Reduce their cities to rubble. Obliterate hamas takes moral priority over all other moral priorities. If this means a million Palestinian children die, so be it. It's hamas fault for being in a civilian population, so israel has zero moral culpability when waging this war even though most of the people that die are civilians many of them kids. Anyone who has humanitarian concerns about how this war is waged or argue for restraint that increases the risk to israeli soliders lives s obviously an anti-semite that wants all the jews to die.
I wish folks would actually clearly articulate outcomes they are trying to achieve, consequences that will arise from them, and moral lines they wouldn't cross for their side. For example, consider Richard Hanania, whose ethnically Palestinian christian. He's been admirably straight forward about his position and the consequences: Israel should ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Arnold;
I have come to some conclusions about much of historical anti-Semitism and current anti-Semitism; some of the conclusions are not novel to me, some are a bit new.
Let's posit, first, that by identifying Jews as a group, a diverse group is lumped together. Some are more vulnerable than others, they fit into society differently, but they are being treated as a group with a name.
Historically, many of the behaviors attributed as negative to 'Jews' - including the tight-knit rapacious moneylender stereotypes - are actually representative of 'Anywheres' and could have been applied to a number of other high-status groups which were for various reasons more difficult to critique. Some Jews really did embody this type, but many did not. Local 'Somewhere' leaders benefited from a negative focus on Jews by blame-shifting and virtue-signaling, including demagogery.
A new class of Anywheres aligned themselves with 'sophistication' and 'liberal ideals' against the 'Somewheres' and in defense of the Jews/against anti-Semitism. This started in the 1800s and built over time.
Meanwhile, particularly in Israel, Jews who were 'Somewheres' had a 'Somewhere' to attempt to govern, and behaved in ways that are labelled 'conservative' by the Anywheres in a derogatory tone. They attracted the admiration of other Somewheres, leading to the apparent paradox of Israel being strongly supported by American Evangelicals.
The progressives [even or especially the liberal American Jews] cannot abide the American or European Somewheres; they weren't on the same side even immediately post 9/11, when the progressives immediately opposed 'vengeance' [and nationalism, etc]. Progressives would champion the Palestinians as their chosen victim to defend, virtue-signal around, instead of 'Zionists.'
Thoughts? Does this capture the phenomenology and explain some seeming contradictions?