Criticism vs hate

I began my week with hate mail telling me all of us Jewish Israelis are religious fanatics, maniacs guilty of horrible massacres, and we should all die – hopefully in an imminent Iranian attack. My liberal tendencies kick in. I want to answer: But haven’t you read in my blog that I oppose the killing and suffering of innocent Gazan civilians? My sarcasm kicks in as well. I think of snarky answers like: Thank you so much for your astute and nuanced analysis of the situation. Still, I believe you may have missed one or two critical issues…

Ultimately, I realized there is no point in engaging this person or validating their viewpoint in any way. For the record, I have, in the past, insisted on my personal right to exist and on the legitimacy of my county, as well as insisting on the rights of Palestinians to independent self-rule.

I believe you may have missed one or two critical issues…

It’s not the first such piece of abhorrent mail or hateful comment on posts I’ve received, nor is it even the most virulent. I don’t feel personally threatened by someone in the US somewhere venting their ire. It’s part and parcel of modern, anonymous communication in which we’ve forgotten the human being at the receiving end. I should just forget about it. And yet, I must admit I am disturbed by this sort of blanket antisemitism.

I am disturbed, in part, because the image of Israeli Jews in the international media has an ugly grain of truth, even when it is one-sided and twisted. I’m disturbed because I know my hater is not a one-off mentally ill individual.

They – I’ll use the vague pronoun to denote those “antisemites” out there who control a popular narrative – have cast Bibi as a kind of Rasputin, a crazed fanatic whispering in Trump’s ear, egging him on to attack Iran. While Bibi clearly badly wants this war, and wants it to escalate, they have no idea that by insinuating that Bibi has this kind of power, they are only burnishing his image here at home.

Otherwise, we would see him as a puppet of his wife (who managed to coerce the head of the Shabak to extend long-term protection to her and her sons, and who is in the news, once again, for alleged abuse of her staff) and her boor of a scion, Yair. They would see him as a weak leader, beholden to religious and messianic interests, who is so afraid of what an independent commission on the debacle of Oct. 7, 2023 would uncover that he has gone out of his way to pull a switch and create an eviscerated, powerless commission beholden to him and his party. They would see that the ultraorthodox and messianic, ultra-right-wing parties, drunk on power and graft, have been increasing their demands with every Knesset session, while Bibi gives in to their blackmail again and again.

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Betsalel Smotrich are now names known around the world. Five years ago, they led parties that had been, for most of their existence, outlawed for their racist platforms, and even then had barely enough support to pass the threshold for gaining Knesset seats. The two discovered that joining together would give them some leverage, as would an aggressive campaign aimed at young people. But it was Bibi who unleashed their true potential by promising to include them in the government coalition in return for their support. These are people who opposed deals to return hostages, who lead the campaigns for scorched-earth tactics, withholding humanitarian aid to Gazans and annexing new territory.

Now these two are the ugly face of Israel. They are the face of ethnic cleansing, Jewish settlement, violence against Palestinians. In letting them into power, Bibi exposed many of our dirty little secrets. He allowed what we thought of as irritating boils to fester until they became too rank to ignore.

The older I get, the more I understand that we all collude

The mayor of New York has announced he would like to arrest Bibi if he comes to the city to attend the UN general session. And, while I wish he were able to carry through on his threat, I fear his pronouncement has opened the door another few centimeters (that 0.39 inches to you Americans) to the kind of antisemitic drivel I saw this morning in my inbox. Bibi may, indeed, be a war criminal. (Ok… I’m pretty sure if arrested and tried, he would have a hard time sliming out of every one of the accusations.) But I believe Mamdani may have missed one or two crucial points…

At risk of sounding Ecclesiastical, I would like to say that the older I get, the more I understand that we all collude. We all live in imperfect states, with imperfect leaders, and atrocities can be committed in our names more easily than you think, no matter how vigilant we believe ourselves to be. The match that lit the current fires was the sight – not imagined, but real – of our own people slaughtered in cold bold, kidnapped and held in medieval torture conditions. That is in no way an excuse for the atrocities committed by our side, but please, do not confuse Hamas with some kind of romantic notion of freedom fighters.

We have all, Hamas and Israel, colluded in the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. The US and Iran have colluded, too, using us as proxies, arming us to the tonsils and down our throats, keeping us on long leashes, working deals with wealthy oil states using us and Gaza as bait. It’s all so much more complicated than one side right, the other wrong. We have all, to use a favorite word of our pundits, “miscalculated,” and we need to get a grip on the ways we have all been wrong before we can start to set things right.

Right now, when we once again teeter between escalation and détente, between rumors Hamas has agreed to loosen their death-grip on their weapons and power and the IDF’s rush to create as much havoc as possible before a ceasefire is once again enforced – I want to point out the obvious: Hatred – directed against an entire population – will only get us closer to the next round of bloodshed.

It is so easy, isn’t it, to see a threat where previously you just saw a bunch of people?

So, Mr. Hater: I agree we need to end the suffering and slaughter in Gaza this instant, though I don’t believe the answer is a different kind of genocide. I believe those directly responsible should be tried and pay for their crimes. I believe we need to stop waiting for the US and Saudi Arabia to save us from ourselves, to take up the challenge of returning to the liberal, democratic state we once aspired to be, to encouraging Palestinians to do the same.

But please, do not condemn an entire country to your hatred and wishes for our destruction. I take personal offense, but I also take offense in the name of the innocent people who are targeted due to your partial truths and the need to see things in black and white. If you really care about the rights of Gazans, how about supporting a peace plan that takes away Hamas weapons, brings in a new interim government and forces Israel to withdraw? Those are, more or less, the terms of the next stage of the Gaza-Israel ceasefire, and, while far from perfect, they just might work. You might also support a government in Gaza that is focused on its citizen’s welfare, building a working economy and forgoing plans to destroy Israel. In this case, it will be the crucial details that will make or break us all – that will lead us to peaceful relations or new rounds of aggression.

Quite honestly, your hatred feeds our own extremism. I don’t want to believe “they” are all a bunch of antisemites; but even a dyed-in-the-wool leftist like me is finding that our “theys” have a point. It is so easy, isn’t it, to see a threat where previously you just saw a bunch of people?