I do not want to wade into what is a hugely complex issue, fraught with emotion and tension; I doubt the Internet or a gaming message board is going to result in anything moving the needle for anyone on this. I do think though that it is useful to see if recontextualizing these issues a bit could at least give everyone something different to think about, or a different way to think about what we already are pondering.
Much of the discussion about what is going on now mimics discussions you could have read (albeit in other formats/media of course) about anti-colonial struggles in the post-WWII era. Substitute “France” for “Israel” and the “FLN” for “Hamas,” say, and then look at what we are saying about both sides. No, the analogy is not exact–never is–but it’s close enough to be worth considering.
I am guessing that the vast majority of people on this board would condemn colonialism, and looking backwards towards the decolonization era would not be supporting French, Dutch, Portuguese, British, Belgian, or other nations’ efforts to retain control of their African, Asian, or other colonies. It’s also much easier to accept the methods of the FLN, the Viet Minh, or whomever from a remove of many decades. Yet I feel a nagging sense that if we were having this discussion about one of those conflicts, back in the day, many of us would be making the same arguments in favor of the colonizers as we are making in favor of the Israelis today, and condemning the anti-colonial groups for terrorism and war crimes while largely tolerating the reactions of the European powers.
This is not to say I think there is an exact corollary, with Israel being a stand-in for, say, the Portuguese in Mozambique or the white government in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. The situation is far more complex than those type of things, and the position of Israel in world history is rather unique IMO. It is to say, though, or at least to suggest, that the question we should be asking, ultimately, is whether the Palestinian situation is equivalent to that of the indigenous peoples in colonized lands of the past, and whether the state of Israel occupies a position equivalent to that of the Europeans who did that colonizing.
If it is, we have a problem, because what Hamas and others are doing is arguably equivalent to what anti-colonial movements did in the past, actions that resulted in independence and international recognition, and which are today largely viewed as messy, and regretful, but necessary.
If we decide that Israel’s actions vis a vis the Palestinians are in a different category entirely, and that the Palestinians do not have the same standing as it were as something like the FLN had, we also have a problem, because any framing of the situation this way runs the risk of dismissing what most of the world has agreed are the legitimate aims of the Palestinians, and risks legitimizing what most of the world has gone on record as being unacceptable behavior on the part of Israel.
In the anti-colonial era, the Cold War shaped a lot of Western thinking; support for freedom movements was often totally undercut by fears that these movements, which were often Marxist at least in theory, were shills for the USSR. Never mind of course that the West drove most of them into the communists’ arms through refusal to support decolonization in order to bribe European countries into NATO and the like.
Today, the admittedly unique position of Israel in the historical memory of the West, and in the lived experience of American Jews in particular, also shapes how we view things. I just wonder if it is that much different than how we wound up supporting colonizers over independence movements in the past. On some level it feels different, but then again, I grew up in a culture idolizing and idealizing Israel. And like most people, the idea of attacking civilians and the sort of political violence perpetrated by groups like Hamas disgusts me. I am also, however, disgusted by what I’ve seen, both in the news and during my brief visit to Israel a while back, of the way Israel treats Palestinians. It’s easy to justify the checkpoints, the walls, the armed monitoring and patrols, and all of that when you limit yourself to one point of view. Watching Israeli soldiers at those checkpoints, navigating around those walls, interacting with “settlers,” and visiting refugee camps in Jordan, among other things, gives you a vastly different perspective.
tl;dr, I have no answer, only the sense that this is all like some really bad version of a Shakespeare tragedy, minus the good soliloquys but with the endgame where everyone dies.
