The cool comfort with which Israel kills Palestinians in their own homes, children included, is matched by its ability to crumble Gaza’s tall buildings into dust in a matter of seconds. Such “impressive” feats by claimants of kinship to Holocaust victims may, in history’s eyes, send Israel perilously close to the category of those who sided with the Holocaust.
This was the reaction of, among others, the Indian poet and teacher, Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee, whose article in The Wire may be found here:
https://thewire.in/world/zionists-in-israel-have-hollowed-out-their-ties-with-their-own-history
Bhattacharjee reminds us that in 2018 a band of young Israelis actually danced chanting for the erasure of the names of Palestinians killed by Israeli warplanes. Extinction was not enough. The victims’ memory must also die.
India’s courageous thinker, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, makes a different but connected point in his piece in the Indian Express:
Acknowledging the reality of Hamas’s missiles falling on populated areas in Israel (a strategy both heartless and mindless), Mehta points out that “a plague on all your houses” reaction to the horrific conflict “whitewashes the fact that there is a monumental injustice to the Palestinians at the heart of the problem”.
More and more of the Palestinians’ land is being grabbed. They must retreat into steadily shrinking spaces of their own country. And they must never ask for full independence even of a minimized Palestine. Or for equal rights in a single state of Jews and Arabs.
The demand that Palestinians should accept an inferior status and not ask for liberty or equality is the injustice at the heart of the problem. Mehta is not wrong to call it monumental.
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has reiterated America’s unquestioning support for Israel. However, dissent from this long-standing U.S. policy seems to be stronger and more direct than before. Current columns of the New York Times testify to the change, and statements from some prominent Democrats underline it.
The New York Times points out that “even Senator Robert Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee known for his staunch support of Israel, offered a rare rebuke on [May 15], condemning recent strikes that killed Palestinian civilians and destroyed media offices”.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the increasingly influential Congresswoman from one of New York’s districts, probably spoke for many Americans when, quietly yet firmly, she said in the House of Representatives:
“The president and many other figures this week stated that Israel has a right to defend itself, and this is a sentiment that’s echoed across this body. But do Palestinians have a right to survive? Do we believe that? And if so, we have a responsibility to that.”
American views about Palestine and Israel are interwoven with the internal politics of the United States. It appears that American Jews, a large majority of whom vote Democrat, are modifying their strongly pro-Israel leanings. A recent Pew Research Center survey has found that while two-thirds of American Jews 65 and older described themselves as emotionally attached to Israel, that was true for only 48 percent of Jewish adults under 30.
What’s happening in Israel/Palestine is part of a global story. Finding it “shocking and saddening that racist mobs that attack Palestinians on the streets of Jerusalem now have representation in the Knesset,” Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont who lost to Biden the right to be Trump’s Democratic challenger, reminds us that “These dangerous trends are not unique to Israel. Around the world, in Europe, in Asia, in South America and here in the United States, we have seen the rise of similar authoritarian nationalist movements.”
Sanders is correct. In country after country, the voice of domination says: “Many may live in my nation, but only the pure and rightful group must rule. Others may be tolerated provided they bend their backs and lower their heads.”
Appealing to some, this voice competes with another voice that tells us: “Whatever their birth or belief, their colour or creed, the dignity of every human being is precious.”
We’re all involved in this clash between supremacy and humanity, and history records the choices we make. As it has done in every reenactment of such a clash, including during the Holocaust.