What is happening in Palestine (Israel, West Bank, Gaza) is a moral catastrophe, for Israel and its enablers.
Eighteen months ago, shortly after the Hamas terror attack of October 7th, 2023 I wrote to the Israeli Ambassador to Canada (on December 21st, 2023), to express outrage at the Israeli response to the terrorism. The following 18 months only sharpen my outrage. And now we have Israeli attacks on Iran, which create a separate needless humanitarian disaster.
As I said in my letter and as continues to be the case, “I unreservedly condemn the actions of Hamas, before October 7th, on October 7th, and since. I am not writing to Hamas, because I have never had any sympathy for their strategy and tactics (also catastrophic) and my country’s government is not at moral risk for any support of Hamas.
But nothing justifies the Israeli response, which is certainly immoral.”
It is also repulsive and almost certainly illegal. There is a prima facie case that what has been done by Israeli political and military leaders, and some settlers, constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity. It would be right to submit the cases to appropriate international tribunals to determine the outcome of such charges. But Israel does not accede to the rule of international law. (And neither does the U.S.A.)
Nevertheless, a person’s moral convictions – and a nation’s moral convictions – are revealed in response to great stress.
In December of 2023 I allowed the possibility that the Israeli response was mindless – driven by fear and fury. The alternative that was then in my mind has proven to be the real source of Israel’s ferocious energy.
Isreal is engaged in ethnic cleansing and salting the land of Gaza to prevent Palestinians from ever returning. In pursuit of ethnic cleansing, the Government of Israel will engage in genocide if necessary, but not necessarily genocide.
Once again, I need to express my revulsion at what Israel is doing.
What is happening now is a moral, strategic, military, political, humanitarian, geo-political and domestic catastrophe for the Government of Israel, the I.D.F. and those citizens of Israel who support the action. In some cases, often in the West Bank, Israeli settlers are compounding the catastrophe with vigilante mob initiatives.
Support for the Government of Israel and the I.D.F. constitutes a moral failure of catastrophic proportions for many other governments, certainly including the Governments of Canada and of the United States of America.
More than most countries, Israel depends upon international assistance, which in turn depends upon support, or at least acquiescence, by citizens in donor countries. In many countries, public opinion has turned strongly against Israel, with vehemence. The unfortunate reality is that, in many countries, political leaders lag well behind their population in acknowledging the moral turpitude of the Government of Israel and the I.D.F. In the short term, the political lag in some countries extends the duration and magnitude of the catastrophe. At some point in the future international political support will abruptly shift in response to enduring citizen anger, and Israelis will profess to be surprised and disappointed by a sea-change that can already be seen approaching that country as a tsunami.
Those of us who uttered and believed the statement “Never again” are appalled that something very similar is, indeed, happening again. And, it is being perpetuated by the children and grandchildren of the first victims. Neither Israel nor Hamas has the right to seek living room at the expense of another people, and neither Israel nor Hamas has the right to demonize an entire people and community and act so cruelly in the aftermath of the demonization.
Just as much as Israel has lost the moral high ground, so too have the governments that voice and provide support for the Government of Israel. The tide has already started to go out for military and domestic aid to Israel from other countries. Initially the change will be slow and difficult to spot, but the pace will hasten and the extent will grow. This tide is not going to turn in favour of Israel again, not in a year or five years. Citizen support for Israel is being lost, forever, and political support lags but follows inexorably, particularly as young voters move into decision-making political positions in many countries. In countries around the world. Eventually, the loss of political support will result in the loss of military and domestic support. Israel will be isolated and bereft.
Action and inaction by the Government of Israel, over many years, renders the 2-state solution not-viable. The continuation of an apartheid regime is not viable for Israel either. I speculate that, if Israel does not succeed with its ethnic cleansing project, within my lifetime I will see Israel, including Palestine emerge, wounded and exhausted, as a secular democracy and a single nation in which Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians and others will commingle as citizens and re-learn to live together. The eventual existence of a strong democracy in the region will be a welcome development.
(For anyone attracted to the Biblical story, we may then see a countryside in which Jews live, once again, with their non-Jewish neighbours, do business with them, socialize with them, and inter-marry with them. We all need to remember that King David’s great-grandmother was not Jewish: she was a Moabite – one of the others who inhabited the land.)
In the meantime, many nations, including Canada, have promoted the idea that the international community has a “responsibility to protect” the citizens of failed states and of states frozen in endless conflict. These nations, including Canada, have a responsibility to protect Israelis and Palestinians. Israel does not face an existential crisis. Palestinians do.
It is abhorrent that Jewish people (individually and in community) and Jewish institutions are being targeted and vilified (and worse) by ignorant and angry people (and sometimes by hateful people) who wrongly generalize and then direct (mis-direct) their anger from the Government of Israel and the I.D.F. to individual Jews and Jewish social institutions. It is equally abhorrent that some actors attempt to characterize an anti-Netanyahu or anti-government, or anti-I.D.F. sentiment as being anti-Jewish.
There are individual Jews and collectives of Jewish people, in Israel and around the world, who have been thoughtful and courageous in affirming humanity in the face of horror. At the moment, these people are more representative of Judaism than is the Government of Israel, the I.D.F., or the vigilante settlers.
Citizens in countries around the world need to speak to their politicians, with character and courage. We need to say to Israel (Israel’s Embassy in Canada), and to the Government of Canada (Hon. Anita Anand, Minister of Global Affairs)…
No More!
Thanks for this important and persuasive statement, David. Your position is supported by the International Court of Justice and the vast majority of the UN general Assembly. There are two prominent Jewish historians, Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim, whose books document the history of Israel and demonstrate that decimation of the Palestinian population was the aim of Israeli nationalists in the Nakba of 1948.