The war in Gaza has pushed me away from people I used to consider my allies. The speed and extent of this reaction surprises me. Held up against this, my other disagreements with progressives (primarily on economics and identity politics) feel quite tame. I harbor a deep reluctance to attend pro-Palestinian protests or discuss the issue with certain friends—a reluctance that is new to me. This is particularly strange because I continue to believe that Israel bears most of the responsibility for the conflict, that Israeli settlers’ conduct in the West Bank should horrify all of us, and that the IDF’s actions in Gaza amount, at minimum, to war crimes.
Three things underlie my alienation. First, I think Hamas is bad—very bad—and should be criticized. Second, I understand Israeli Jews’ unwillingness to share a state with people who are bent on killing them. And third, I strongly reject efforts to import sectarian fault lines from Israel/Palestine to the United States.
Hamas Is Bad
Hamas is bad. They embrace a religiously fundamentalist, ethnonationalist ideology. As October 7 showed, vicious and brutal violence against innocent people is not, for them, a moral negative. Pursuing their ideology ranks as more important than protecting Gazans or working for improvements in their living conditions. That is why Hamas hoards fuel while hospitals lose power and patients die. That is why Hamas hides behinds civilians and sees their deaths as a useful political tool. That is why Hamas suppresses dissent, refuses to hold elections, and generally strips the Palestinian people of political and civil rights. That is why they attacked Israel in the first place despite knowing it would lead to massive retaliation and tens of thousands of dead Gazans. Hamas, because of its singular focus on killing Israeli Jews and establishing a religiously fundamentalist ethno-state, bears plenty of responsibility for the Gazans’ plight.
Yet I see little to no criticism of Hamas from progressives. In some cases, I see outright support. Protesters in New York carry banners proclaiming, “HONOR THE MARTYRS.” In Los Angeles, when the Museum of Tolerance screened footage from Hamas’s October 7 attack, protesters arrived to disrupt the event. To be clear, the Museum did not condone Israel’s response to the attack; it only screened footage of Hamas’s massacre. That people felt compelled to protest signals reprehensible political beliefs. Certain professors, nominally on the left, expressed excitement at the murder of civilians. The Associated Press has covered for Hamas, even when its soldiers stormed into AP offices making threats. My college’s daily newspaper (a publication with a strong progressive lean) refused to acknowledge that Hamas raped and beheaded Israelis on October 7. Progressive Twitter is a cesspool.
I have no desire to stand next to people who will not condemn violently authoritarian political parties, regardless of what evil they oppose. The oppression of Gaza, as bad as it is, does not give Hamas license to act without concern for moral decency, nor does it absolve them of accountability for their actions. (Also important here: as noted, Hamas substantially contributes to the oppression of Gaza.) While I am sure that many at the recent protests do condemn Hamas, plenty do not, and that is enough to make me hesitate to join them.
The One-State Dream Is Dead
The American left has a preferred frame for the political situation in Gaza. In that frame, Gaza is properly part of the same country as Israel, and its isolation and lack of political rights constitutes apartheid. The solution is to integrate the two places into one secular country, where everyone will have a voice and a vote and the right to travel, regardless of their background. This is a nice idea. In the abstract, I support it. Israel is an ethno-state intent on maintaining its Jewish identity. As mentioned above with respect to Hamas, I think ethnonationalism is bad. I would much prefer a tolerant, secular, liberal democracy.
The problem is that many Gazans want to kill Israeli Jews, and if Gaza is unified with Israel, they will do so, and keep doing so, until thousands and thousands and thousands of Israeli Jews are dead. Then they will keep killing. (If Israeli settlers’ actions in the West Bank are anything to go off of, there will be plenty of killing in the other direction too.) Anyone who does not believe this has shut their eyes to what happened on October 7. It is true that this murderous hatred springs from Israel’s actions towards Gaza, but as far as finding a solution goes, that truth is irrelevant. You cannot ask Israeli Jews to share a country with people who will rape and behead them, no matter the historical reasons for the situation. Advocating for an “end to apartheid,” as opposed to, say, a two- or three-state solution, is advocating for a bloodbath.
American Jews Are Not Proxies for Israel
Progressive discourse in the last few years has moved away from moral frameworks that understand good and evil in terms of abstract moral principles and towards moral frameworks that understand good and evil in terms of which groups are oppressed and which groups are oppressors. That is: to know if something is good, it is increasingly important to know the identity of the person doing it. I do not want to overstate the case: no one thinks that good and evil are defined purely in these terms. No one even thinks—or very few people think—that the characteristics of the actor matter more than the action itself. But identity is more relevant than it used to be, and abstract moral principles, correspondingly, are less relevant.
This is part of why some self-labeled progressives refuse to criticize, or will even praise, Hamas. But there is another effect at play: an impulse to see politics as a struggle between morally good identity groups and morally bad ones. The boundaries of these groups often extend far past whatever conflict is at hand. Hence the export of the Black Lives Matter movement to Sweden, a country with a tiny Black population and virtually none of America’s sordid history with respect to race. Or, more to the point, opinion pieces identifying the Palestinian plight with that of Black Americans. On the fifth anniversary of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, Senator Sanders tweeted in remembrance of the victims, which spawned a distressingly large number of replies denouncing the sentiment on the grounds that it was insensitive to Palestinians. Near my apartment there is a billboard urging Jews to embrace their cultural identity, clearly part of a campaign by people worried that American Jews are assimilating too much. I think this is silly and counterproductive. (The melting pot is good, actually!) But it has nothing to do with Israel—yet someone spray painted over it with a message about Palestinian suffering.
We should not import sectarian fault lines from the Middle East into our own lives. Jews outside of Israel are not proxies for Israel and do not bear responsibility for its actions. By the same token, simply because something touches on the Jewish diaspora—the Pittsburgh pogrom, a sign urging people to eat less bacon—does not mean it speaks to Israeli crimes in Palestine. I do not want to share space with people who disagree, and many of these people have embedded themselves in the cause of Palestinian liberation.
Where Does This Leave Me?
I am left in a strange limbo. I recognize that Israel fomented the conditions that produced this bloody hell. I condemn Netanyahu’s rhetoric and policies, and the Israeli voters who repeatedly elect him. I believe the continued expansion of settlements into the West Bank, and the violence accompanying this expansion, is evil. I see American military aid to Israel as worse than useless, and as encouraging and enabling its government’s worst impulses. I cannot look at the blockade of Gaza without seeing the awful conditions of material deprivation and economic stultification. (Egypt deserves some blame for that too.) I read reports of IDF attacks on Gaza and the staggering civilian toll, and I am horrified. I seriously doubt, moreover, that all this bloodshed will accomplish anything, that Israel can defeat Hamas, and that even if it does, the politics of Gaza will not reproduce the same terrible government.
At the same time, I am beyond reluctant to join hands with people who will not condemn Hamas, or who reject all skepticism of a one-state solution as Israeli apologia. I will not ally myself with people who think the problem is not Israel, but Jews. Until those people stop going to the protests, I am not sure I can justify showing up.