Who’s next?

The pronouncements to recognize Palestine statehood coming from French President Macron and United Kingdom Prime Minister seem entirely inconsistent with the primary aim they pitched as the outcome: the two-state solution to the Israeli Palestinian Conflict. That their positions have drawn endorsements from Canada, praise from Australia, Portugal, and hints of approval from Germany invite the kind of parody composed by the late Tom Lehrer: ‘Who’s Next’? Apparently, the answer is Slovenia. The country announced it would neither purchase nor sell weapons to Israel despite the absence of even a trace of past or current military transactions between the two countries.

The assumption that imposing strictures on the country waging war against Hamas, the movement determined to eradicate the idea of two states for two peoples, defies logic. That these official statements are blessed by Hamas leaders and denounced by Israel’s government is all that is needed to know about what such linguistic political bromides can deliver. Adding, almost as an afterthought, a call for the release of hostages and an expectation that Hamas will have no role in the future governing of Gaza only thickens the level of deception and faulty reasoning that actually fit neatly into a template distilled from the pattern laid down in earlier Israeli-Gaza wars–from 2008-09 to 2012, 2014, 2021: past clashes stopped by international mediation because of the high numbers of Palestinian casualties.

The statements are thus necessarily tangled in performative contradictions filled with dangers for Israel but comprising multiple channels for Hamas to claim victory. Calling for a ceasefire to be finalized in no less than a month presumably to ensure the distribution of sufficient food and medicine to Gazans or long-time allies of the Jewish state will recognize a Palestine state hands Hamas and its allies tangible incentives not to negotiate. They can wait for the deeds of countries, once backing Israel, to align with their words, which would most likely damage the robust economic and cultural ties the country has forged with the European Union.

The scale of October 7 savagery cast the Middle East Conflict from its conventional territorial orbit into an apocalyptic realm with the words ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’. Hamas’ carnage aimed not at echoing the past injustices of 1948 but rather at showcasing how to undo them by destroying the legitimacy of a Jewish state, if not actually deleting the country’s borders and name from the map. Becoming a viral trend, the slogan is promiscuously chanted at demonstrations as it marches through institutions across cities and towns in Europe and America. ‘Globalizing the intifada,’ as much a fashion statement as a social movement, is now curated as the essential marker and experience of progressive identity and of cleansing the world of injustice whatever its manifestation.

The more Israel has won in its deeds on the battlefield, the more it has lost in the words expressed to describe what is actually happening in Gaza.

Still, Israel had no choice but to respond to the brutal October 7 assaults with a declaration of war in accordance with the UN Charter [Article 51] recognizing the right of states to self-defense. It deployed its army to destroy the military forces of the terrorists and to dismantle their political institutions. Quickly forced to fight on land, sea, and air on seven fronts against Hamas’ allies, this–Israel’s longest war–was soon turned into an historic moment by a government promising its military action would transform the region and secure a dramatically different future for the Jewish state. But not only are the views expressed by ministers about the war’s aims and country’s future dramatically different from one another, they are also quite divergent from the perspectives widely shared by Israel’s citizens. The more the Prime Minister reiterates the purpose of the fighting the deeper the crisis of faith between the government and its people. These declared aims have also magnified concerns, if not objections, coming from military leaders and security experts.

Israel may have its finger on the trigger but Hamas has its hands all over the pulse of global vibes—endlessly managing images. The starvation narrative which is less a coherent depiction of the war than a word that could easily have emerged from a prompt in ChatGPT should have been anticipated by Israel. Not for the first time does a view of Israeli actions against Hamas comport safely with both the interests of the terrorist movement and with progressive pieties. For the Palestinians wherever they are located have been fetishized as the Platonic ideal of innocent victims.

There is a hard but not an entirely novel lesson here for Israel.

Everything that has happened since the October 7 tragedy has shown that Israelis—whatever their ancestry, ethnicity, religion, or religious practice—are determined to preserve the state as their primary locus of belonging and as the necessary predicate of progress. And it is worth rethinking how that state was founded.

Zionism’s greatest success—the establishment of a state in 1948—came not from the imaginative potency of its messianic myths but rather from its capacity to set priorities and to adhere to a timetable that had international resonance and produced significant global support. No one said it better than Natan Alterman in his poem —על אם הדרך- [At the Crossroad. 1947 was a crossroad for Zionism, and at that juncture, Zionist leaders had to calculate not only what needed to be done but also, and perhaps more importantly, what could be done. The same might be said of Israel today, and not only for Israel.