The Jewish Power Blog: Looking Back – Two Years

Exactly two years ago Hamas attacked Israel, leading to the war in Gaza (and beyond), which may or may not be winding down now. A few weeks later, I sent a letter to friends and family, in response to questions about my experience at that time. A few months after that I realized that my ambition to write a book about Jewish power and powerlessness was not going to be realized, so I started this blog to put my ideas out there. Today I looked back at what I wrote then, and had the feeling that all my two years of blog posts have really been just an expansion of that original letter. So, for the record and in honor of this sad two year milestone, here it is:

I do not believe that Zionism is immoral. Nor do I believe that one who defines themselves as a Zionist is required thereby to support all the decisions and policies of the current – or any – Israeli government. That is, I believe that the Jewish people have the right of national self-determination in some part of the area historically associated with Jewish sovereignty in ancient times. However, I believe that that self-determination is only moral if it does not prevent the people who define themselves as Palestinians from exerting their right to self-determination, in the same region.

I believe that Israel can only be a democratic and Jewish state, with a significant minority of  Palestinians, if there is a parallel and equal democratic and Palestinian state adjacent to Israel, so that each nation can fulfill its right of self-determination and each state can offer a cultural center and identity for its “diaspora” living in the adjacent state. This is “the two-state solution.” I don’t think there is a viable alternative. I believe that a Zionist must be sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, and supportive of the two state solution.

This idea has been floating around for a century, and was formally institutionalized by the UN Partition Resolution of 1947. However, the Palestinian leadership (supported by Arab states all around) rejected partition, leading to the 1948 war, which ended in de facto partition but no Palestinian state, as the portions allotted to the Palestinians came under Jordanian and Egyptian rule. Israel pursued a policy of trying to encourage as many Palestinians as possible to leave its territory, and for almost twenty years ruled those who remained in Israel under a military governorship. (Today, there are about a million Palestinians who are full citizens of Israel.) Then in 1967, responding to Egypt’s closing of the passage to Israel’s port of Eilat, Israel struck Egypt and Syria and then Jordan, and ended up conquering Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.  At the time there were those who thought that this would finally resolve Israel’s place in the region, as in return for returning the conquered lands, peace could be agreed to with Israel negotiating from strength.

Meanwhile, the victory of 1967 led to a kind of euphoric pride accompanied by a rise in the messianic belief that Israel was divinely destined to rule the “greater land of Israel.” Peace was not to be bought at the cost of control of the whole Holy Land.  Israel must complete the conquest that Joshua failed to finish. This trend has only strengthened in the years since, to a powerful force in public discourse and government power.

Unlike Herzl’s vision that a Jewish polity would bring peace and prosperity to its Palestinian minority, Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza have brought political oppression and economic depression to the Palestinians, and led to repeated attempts at rebellion, often violent, from throwing rocks to throwing bombs; thousands of Palestinian political prisoners sit in Israeli prisons.

Israel began supporting Hamas in the 1980s as a religious alternative power base to the secular nationalist PLO, hoping to encourage a focus on social welfare and culture, instead of liberation politics. Later, as the messianic voice got louder in Israeli politics, Israel discreetly supported Hamas for its rejectionist position regarding territorial compromise, in order to undermine any attempt to get Israel to negotiate peace with the Palestinian Authority ruling the West Bank. Occasional minor wars with Hamas served this goal well, and lulled Israel’s leadership into thinking that we could go on like this forever.

I wish I knew enough to be able to suggest what Israel should do now – what is the “right thing?”. How to attain release of the hostages, how to prevent Hamas from continuing to rule Gaza (with an iron hand), how to minimize harm to the miserable residents of Gaza, how to keep Israel’s citizens safe; how to prepare the ground for a livable future for Gazans and Israelis. And how to do all of the above at the same time. There is no painless, easy way out. Meanwhile, for all my anger at my government and sympathy for the Palestinians, pep rallies for Hamas in western campuses and capitals after the horrors of Oct. 7 are, to me, nauseating.

Part of the depression that affects me and many of my neighbors now is the sense of powerlessness, of having been painted into a corner by our own government, against our values, and not knowing how to get out of it. On the other hand, ironically, perhaps this war will ultimately force Israel to change its conception and actually pursue a two state solution, strengthening instead of consistently weakening the forces open to such a solution. Still, alas, messianic movements have great psychological power, and don’t lend themselves to rational conversation.

One more thing. There has been a lot of talk about Hamas as the new Nazis. People are showing the photos of the horrors of Oct. 7 to strengthen Israel’s “case” in the world, just as in the past, every European diplomat arriving in Israel was taken straight from the airport to Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. Indeed, yesterday Israel’s UN ambassador came to work wearing a yellow star. Victims, of course, always occupy the high moral ground. Alas, however, it seems that no one ever wins the sweepstakes of competitive victimhood.

But the Holocaust (and the pogroms in Russia and Iraq etc.) took place when the Jews were a powerless dispersed minority. They were victims, not free to resist or counterattack, helpless. Since 1948 Israel has been a sovereign state with a powerful army. As Zionism promised, the Jewish nation has returned to history. But if we – the Jews – have returned to history, with power, that means we are not helpless. The Jewish state can make decisions, act on them, and face the consequences. Israel chose, over the past half century, certain policies, certain conceptions, certain courses of action. It could have chosen others. Israel cannot claim to be merely the helpless victim of eternal antisemitism. The vaunted Jewish return to history implies power, and power implies responsibility. Israel’s diplomats freaked out when the secretary general of the UN said that “the Hamas attack did not take place in a vacuum.” But, horrific as it was, it did not, to any objective observer who has been awake for the past half century, take place in a vacuum. It seems to me that to see the Oct. 7 attack as Kishinev 1903 redux – it’s always only antisemites all the way down – is an anti-Zionist position, that denies the significance of Jewish power and responsibility.