Israel's Vanishing Point

Joe Biden met Golda Meir, just before the Yom Kippur war. Back when Israel was invaded by nation-states possessing planes, tanks and bombs. A time when the nation of Israel was in actual peril, facing well-armed opponents who would do to them what the Nazis did a generation prior. Today, the continuing existence of Israel, with its atomic weapons, is settled in the public mind, and it is from this point the mainstream left, especially on college campuses. departs from in its criticism of Israel and its Hamas-Gaza war. A position I would say is less anti-semetic than, for a lack of a better term, post-semetic.

Back in Biden’s younger days, public perception of Israel was more Kirk Douglass Cast a Giant Shadow. A country built by people who, after suffering horrific loses at the hands of Nazis, now grew vegetables out of sand and other such feats of reclamation, while declaring independence and defending an island of secular liberal democracy against a totalitarian sea.

It took a world war for the west to truly understand that the Jewish people needed a defensible nation-state afterwards, because throughout time and across geographies, gentiles always got around to organize the killing and driving them out. The U.S. persecuted native Americans and the U.K did the Irish, but these genocidal attacks were regional affairs lacking a world-wide hatred. The televised Eichmann trial drove this point home in popular perception during the 1960’s. Periodic invasions from neighboring Arab nation-states reinforced awareness of this jeopardy every nightly news broadcast into the 1970s.

Consider, for a moment, if Israel had a more restrained response to October 7.

By the 1980’s, Israel successfully defended its space, and this milestone marked a beginning of a change in public perception. Peace with Egypt. No more traditional nation-state warfare with orders of battle of opposing armies. The ascendance of terrorism in public imagination unfolds with the Palestinian Liberation Organization as a not-quite nation-state, headed by Yasser Arafat. The warfare appeared as more brawling, less brave Agincourt stand. Certainly not unfolding in a news-friendly format. The frame changed, in spite of the rhetoric, to how can two peoples live next to one another rather than concerns Israel’s obliviation. Thoughts were turning to a two-state solution.

So from the 80’s onward, the struggle has been asymmetrical, with Israel having the advantage militarily and economically over the Palestinians. Coming of age on the Left during this time, when South African apartheid was the demon of the day and the Troubles were still ongoing, there were parallels, if you held the continuing existence of Israel as a given. On the evening news, the Intifada was fought with Palestinian rocks against Israeli guns. So, for decades now, those on the left as have only seen a power imbalance that oppresses Palestinians for no reason beyond controlling land, because no one, particularly the young on college campuses, ever see Israel’s continuing existence in peril. The image of scrapping, resilient country struggling for its actual existence is so far in the the world’s rear-view mirror, its image has reached the vanishing point.

Young college leftists today are only marginally aware of Israel as Jewish. I mean, they know it, but simply treat Israel as just another nation-state, and protest as they might to protect the Rohengya against Burma or Weygurs in China. Israel has a higher profile, but the conflict reduces to the same schematic. The left is not anti-Burmese or anti-Chinese as an ethnicity, but are protesting a government, as it does Israel today.

Compound that view with the right-wing ascendance in Israel. How Netanyahu tries to abolish independent courts and works with some very extreme characters in his government. The government just before the current unity cabinet looked much more like Hungary’s Victor Orbon than Golda Meir. Add to that how the MAGA and religious right in the U.S. fetishize Israel, not for any love of Jews, but to kick-start Armageddon for Jesus, and that makes a current Israeli government even more suspect to the Left, using its power to maintain itself in an advantaged position absent any concern for human rights.

Anti-semetism is obviously present in the campus discord and across the left. Determined, organized actors are clearly in the mix to stir up the left on campus and other venues. However, if Israel’s supporters want to address leftist opposition, it would be useful consider the frame through which the left sees the conflict. A Palestinian people, cut loose by the countries around them historically, who have their food and energy taken away, and are bombed in pursuit of Hamas, a group that is a fraction of Gaza’s population who committed violent crimes for its own political reasons, regardless of Palestinian welfare.

Consider, for a moment, if Israel had a more restrained response to October 7. Moved an army to the boarder, dug up the tunnels coming into the country, blew up a few clearly obvious targets, then waited. The world’s attention would have focused on the hostages, like the Chilean miners trapped underground. Instead of acting in all the ways that drive wedges into public opinion, the world’s focus would have rested primarily on Hamas’ crimes in Israel and such hostages as the 4 year old girl who missed her birthday.

Pressure would shift to the Palestinians in Gaza to clean their own house. Arab nations would not feel the need to distance themselves. The world would be more united in Israel’s favor without all dead Palestinian children in hospital rubble. Some will argue that only military pressure is winning the hostages’ release. Unfortunately, a more peaceful, precise and persuasive approach was never an option in Netanyahu’s worldview. One could have had this prisoner swapping without dropping a bomb. But no one will ever know. One cannot undrop a bomb.

If the Holocaust has any lesson, it is that specific people commit specific crimes they must be held to account for. Post-war de-nazification, while imperfect, set aside collective punishment in pursuit those people who were actual cogs in the very real bureaucratic genocidal machine. Today, there are specific individuals who invaded Israel on behalf of Hamas. There are Hamas leaders who orchestrated the attack sitting in Quatar. There are willing collaborators with Hamas in Gaza. This is a countable set of people to pursue over time for their crimes.

But, the Netanyahu government gave up this moral high ground and instead gave Hamas the horror show they scripted to mire Israel in war and occupation while fracturing détente with Arab states. All for the benefit of Iran and Russia, but that is another story…