Jewish Voices

 This Balloon Juice post that starts with a brilliant piece of satire by Alexandra Petri ends with an excerpt by Julia Ioffe, who fled Russia for Israel and now work in the US. Ioffe is typical of what we might call Jewish liberals who can, with real clarity, see that Israel absolutely has to defend itself, but that the way it defends itself makes groups like Hamas possible. For non-Jews, this line seems increasingly difficult to walk. There is a Manichean impulse to either support Israel and especially Netanyahu completely and explicitly or to laud the horrific terrorist attacks launched last week. 

I can understand why Palestinians are rallying to condemn Israel's response. There is not, however, a lot of perspective offered by Palestinians in the West about how Hamas is absolutely awful. There is even less among allies, a motley collection of leftist groups, who take perhaps the most maximalist positions. That was the point of Petri's piece, targeting those who seemingly find a way to excuse the killing of children. The week long argument over whether Israeli children were beheaded or simply had their heads shot of is one of the most appalling things I have witnessed. Such arguments have tended to reinforce the impulse among Israel's defenders - Jews and not - to dehumanize their Palestinian opponents.

So, it's with some surprise that the most measured voices are coming from Jews with some experience with actually living in Israel. Most of them are politically liberal and can see and understand the repressive nature of Netanyahu's policies towards both Gaza and the West Bank. The settlement movement - an alliance between Netanyahu and the far right elements of Israeli politics - is the clearest example of the Israeli right's abandonment of the "two state solution". It has always been Netanyahu's plan to marginalize reasonable Palestinian voices; he wants Hamas to have power in Gaza. 

The ability to support Israel's security and criticize Netanyahu and agree that Hamas must be dealt with in a harsh and punitive manner and hope that this can be accomplished without killing Palestinian children is a complicated thing to believe. What's more, it is a level of nuance and sophistication in thinking and talking that it totally impossible on social media. I theme I saw on Twitter last night was "Thank God this website didn't exist on 9/11." Which is true, but 9/11 unleashed the same sort of Manichean thinking in the United States: Axis of Evil; With Us Or Against Us; Freedom Fries. 

Bush's evangelical insistence on easy extremes led to terrible policy outcomes like the Iraq War. Jewish voices have been at the forefront of rejecting that sort of thinking. Will anyone listen?