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On "Free Palestine" [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-10

Originally published here: writesinister.substack.com/…

I’m Jewish. I believe in Israel’s right to exist.

These two sentences will be enough for some on the left to dismiss anything else I have to say without reading any further.

But I really wish you would read further, because I think we can find areas of agreement, or at least understanding.

As enticement, here are several sentences the left will like.

I believe Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza. I believe Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of Hamas should be tried by the ICC. I believe Israel has a responsibility to help the Palestinians rebuild Gaza into a sustainable and prosperous territory and integrate it into a future Palestinian state. I’m horrified and appalled by T***’s call to expel Palestinians from Gaza and turn the territory into a huge resort. That’s ethnic cleansing, pure and simple.

I believe Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians that live within its borders may well meet the international definition of apartheid.

Now, let’s break things down a little bit.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a brutal and vicious attack against Israel. It killed scores of innocent civilians at a music festival. It kidnapped hundreds of men, women, and children and took them back to Gaza to be brutalized and kept in captivity for over 500 days and counting.

Not all of the hostages are home.

Why did Hamas attack Israel?

A lot of reasons.

But I want to focus on Hamas’s strategic intent with the October 7th attack.

Hamas knows Netanyahu. They know that he’s a brutal militarist whose answer for almost any affront is a gun or a bomb. They knew, for a fact, that their attack would lead to a strategic overreaction by Netanyahu, and that they could exploit this overreaction for international sympathy.

And Netanyahu obliged. He initiated a brutal bombing campaign, killing scores of civilian men, women, and children in Gaza, in his attempt to “wipe out” Hamas. He launched an actual ground invasion, further escalating the conflict. At each turn, Netanyahu did something to make Israel look worse on the international stage, and Hamas exploited the brutality to build an international propaganda army that sought not to end the war, but to end Israel.

This is the key point. Hamas knew what they were unleashing on October 7, and they knew the cost of poking Netanyahu. They were willing to let thousands of their own people die at Israel’s hands just to win a global propaganda war and turn the world against Israel.

And so “Free Palestine” caught fire. College activists bought keffiyeh and Palestinian flags and shouted “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free!” Words like “genocide” and “settler colonialism” flew across the Internet without any real depth or understanding. And just as Hamas intended, the world rallied not just to end the war, but to end Israel.

Leftist Jews like me have been left reeling, confused, and frightened by this sudden radical shift against Israel, and by the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any space for those of us who want to end the war, bring the hostages home, and see Netanyahu and the leaders of Hamas brought to justice – but who also still defend Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.

Instead, we’re confronted with social media profile pictures featuring a map of Israel with the whole territory labeled as Palestine.

That’s just not helpful, and it makes Jews like me feel like we’re not welcome in progressive spaces anymore.

And sometimes we aren’t welcome in progressive spaces. Just recently, a Cincinnati rabbi was disinvited from a rally against Nazis because he identifies as a Zionist. How darkly ironic is that? And many other stories like that have been told since October 7.

There’s a sensible, progressive middle ground here. It might not seem like it right now, because the heat is so intense, but if we douse some of the fire and just talk to one another, maybe we can find it.

The answer to Israel-Palestine is a two-state solution. It always has been, no matter how far away or impossible it seems. And we can argue all day and night about years of negotiations that have failed to achieve a two-state solution. I can point out that Israel offered the Palestinians over 95% of what they wanted at Camp David, and Arafat walked away. Pro-Palestinian groups can point to the Nakba, and the shameful forced relocation of Palestinians in 1948. And then, while agreeing that Israel needs to do some serious reckoning about the Nakba, I can come back and point out that Arab countries kicked out Jews at the same time.

These arguments aren’t helpful right now.

What we need right now is a dousing of the fire. We need to sit down and talk. Take off the keffiyeh, stop shouting about the river and the sea, and really try to understand what we’re all up against here. I know that I have a lot of stuff to learn, and that my views are also shaped by my experience growing up in Zionist spaces that taught me to defend Israel at all costs, that minimized the pain of the Palestinian people, that didn’t even teach me the word “Nakba.”

Nobody is neutral. Nobody is objective. We all have blind spots.

The point is this. By falling into Hamas’s trap, by advocating not just for an end to the war, but an end to Israel, the modern left is making Jews feel unsafe and unwelcome, even if we agree on 99% of everything we believe.

I want to make it clear, again, where I stand.

Hamas started this war by committing a brutal act of terrorism against Israel. In its response to Hamas’s attack, Israel committed horrific war crimes in Gaza. Israel has committed injustices against the Palestinian people for decades. Israel needs to reckon with its laws promoting Jewish supremacy at the expense of its non-Jewish residents.

Palestinians need their own state, free, equal, and democratic, to live alongside Israel in peace. Netanyahu and the leaders of Hamas need to be held to account for the atrocities they have committed. The rest of the hostages need to come home.

There’s a lot more. A lot more. And I know we won’t agree on everything, and there are some of you on the left who will keep shouting “From the river to the sea” and wearing keffiyeh like you’re signing up to be a Hamas footsoldier. But did you even consider what would happen if you got your wish, if Hamas rolled into Tel Aviv and declared a Palestinian state in place of Israel? Do you not understand the horrors that would await the Jews, the LGBTQIA+ people, the women, if Hamas planted a Palestinian flag over Haifa? Leftists shouldn’t be on the same side as an Islamist theocratic terrorist group that thinks the Taliban have a few good ideas.

Look, I know this is all really, really hard. I just need you all to know that there are Jews like me who want change, who want accountability, and who want justice for the Palestinian people, but we can’t work with you if you don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist, if you disinvite us from leftist spaces, and generally make us feel unwelcome and unsafe in places where we mostly agree on everything.

We all want peace. Let’s work together to find it.

Oseh shalom bimromav,

hu yaaseh shalom aleinu,

v’al kol Yisrael, v’al kol yoshvei teiveil,

v’imru. Amen.

May the One who makes peace in the high heavens

make peace for us, for all Israel, and for all who inhabit the earth. Amen.

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