how to build a coalition
on the ongoing atrocities in gaza & the west bank, the creepy relationship between netanyahu and hamas, and conspicuous silence around the october 7th massacre
The recitation of facts is numbing and necessary. As Israel’s war against Hamas enters its fourth week, IDF bombs have killed more than 8,000 Palestinians, at least 3,000 of them children. Civilians stand in line for twelve hours for a loaf of bread. Families have gathered in rooms so that they can, at least, die together. And every day, hundreds more are dying. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, right-wing settlers are terrorizing and murdering Palestinian villagers, egged on by Benjamin Netanyahu, whose political nihilism—matched only by that of Hamas—has reached new lows.
How, from the vantage of coalition building, can we, as Americans, help to stop this historic tragedy from deepening? The most straightforward path, as I argued a few weeks ago, is for the U.S. government to begin withholding financial and military support to Israel, or at the very least, for our leaders to make that support contingent on measurable adherence to international law. But in order to assemble a coalition broad enough to make this a reality, we must first address the profound mistrust brewing in progressive circles.
Since Hamas’ brutal massacre on October 7, and the vengeful and wildly disproportionate retaliation that has followed, scores of open letters and statements have been published by groups of artists, academics, foundations, and more. In many of these letters, which argue nobly against the war, and on behalf of Palestinian sovereignty, one thing has been conspicuously absent: any mention of the Israeli civilians tortured, murdered, and mutilated by Hamas. There are many reasons for this omission, some of which I addressed in this piece.
On one level, I am sympathetic to the rage driving that omission. As many letters have stated, the war didn’t begin on October 7th. Violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, tacitly or explicitly encouraged by the IDF, has been nearly constant for some time. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been ongoing for years. There is a jingoistic, pro-Israel refrain emanating from various western powers and institutions, not to mention the unacceptable repression of pro-Palestinian speech across Western Europe. And then there is the chilling effect of punishing those who speak out on behalf of Palestinians. For all of the righteous fury around these injustices, the silence regarding Hamas’ massacre seems to say: “because you have not acknowledged the pain of those who have my sympathy, I will not acknowledge yours.” But is this humane? Or politically expedient?
I know a number of Israeli-American peace activists who have been involved in the fight for Palestinian liberation for decades. These activists are currently struggling to hold three emotional valences: first, the grief, loss, and trauma of the October 7th attack. Second, they are holding their desire for peace, and for Palestinian freedom, which, as my friend Amichai Lau-Lavie recently told NPR’s Ari Shapiro in a heartrending interview, is a lonely position to take in Israel right now. And third, they are holding a deep sense of betrayal by those whom they thought were allies: folks on the Left with whom they’ve fought for Palestinian rights, only to find that when October 7th came, these “allies” had not a word of sympathy to spare.
Why is it, beyond what’s enumerated above, that so many can’t be bothered to acknowledge the grief of bereaved Israelis? There was this piece by Gabriel Winant, who argued that “it is not possible to publicly grieve an Israeli Jewish life lost to violence without tithing ideologically to the IDF,” which, he writes, transforms grief into military capital. There is the argument that all Israelis are settler-colonialists and thus had it coming to them. The list goes on.
But in each of these arguments, an ideological claim is wedged between our hearts and what we see with our eyes. As progressives, we believe that all are equal. This is why we fight against economic inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ablism. But here, a paint-by-numbers rendition of decolonization that misreads Frantz Fanon has landed us in a moment that finds legions of Leftists abandoning that otherwise ineluctable belief in the universal sanctity of all human life. To subscribe to these arguments is to put ideological orthodoxy before basic human decency. It is to stand before bereaved Israelis and tell them that they’ve forfeited their humanity, and thus their right to compassion, by being born into compromised citizenship in a nation whose vexed and problematic origin story is nevertheless linked, inextricably, to Jewish trauma.1
As I wrote a few weeks ago, to acknowledge the brutality of Hamas’ attack does not make one an apologist for Israel’s apartheid state, nor does it dilute one’s support for Palestinian self-determination. In fact, I would argue that to do so makes one’s argument more rhetorically robust: “it is not in spite of Hamas’ attack but because of it that we call for a cease-fire, for an end to the cycle of violence, which, having begun long before October 7th, is, at its root, the result of years of occupation and oppression by the Israeli regime, which increasingly resembles an ethno-fascist apartheid state.”
A word about that cycle of violence: an inconvenient truth for the Left is that Hamas and Netanyahu are strange but real bedfellows. Both Hamas and Netanyahu have sought to prevent a two-state solution, and Netanyahu is on record having voiced support for Hamas: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he said in 2019. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
In fact, this unholy marriage of convenience goes back decades: the birth of Netanyahu’s political career can be traced to 1996, when, in the wake of the assassination of then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish, right-wing fanatic, and a series of Hamas-led suicide bombings intended to undermine the Oslo Accords, Netanyahu—a vocal opponent of Oslo—was elected Prime Minster for the first time. The salient point is that, in a sense, the signatories of the now infamous Harvard letter were right: the Israeli regime was entirely responsible for the events of October 7, not only because of the broader context of occupation and oppression, but also because of Netanyahu’s strategic support for Hamas. Still, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t mourn the Israelis who died on October 7th, many of whom, it might as well be said, were staunch opponents of the right-wing cabal that rules Israel.
According to many, Hamas carried out its attacks on October 7th fervently hoping that Israel would overreact, so as to sabotage the ongoing talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And, as is well known, Hamas embeds its military positions in civilian targets; it knew that its attacks would result in the deaths of thousands of Palestinians. In this sense, Netanyahu and Hamas share two things: a deep political nihilism, and responsibility for the deaths of those killed not only in Israel on October 7th, but also in Gaza—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
In its refusal to acknowledge that the fight for Palestinian liberation, on the one hand, and the goals of Hamas, on the other, are, if not diametrically opposed, then at the very least in serious conflict with one another, these corners of the Left present an airbrushed worldview that damages its political credibility in the eyes of anyone who has thought seriously about these issues. Put simply, Palestinians need to be liberated not only from oppression by Israel, but also from Hamas. How can this happen?
The fearsome coalition that must be assembled in order to change U.S. policy toward Israel will, almost certainly, contain a good number of American Jews. Thankfully, there has in recent years been something of a sea-change in the attitudes of American Jews toward the Middle East. Nearly forty percent of Jews under forty believe that Israel is an apartheid state, and majorities of all ages no longer support unconditional aid to Israel. But even amidst this shift away from reflexive Zionism, there are reasons that Jews are wary of Left movements that do not acknowledge the largest massacre of their people since the Holocaust.
The basic question, for me, is this: do you want to be in coalition with people who are selective about whose lives they care about? Will you accept that it is implied that they stand against the targeting of civilians, even as some have expressed enthusiasm for Hamas’ massacre, or worse? Me, personally? Yes, I can get beyond the silence, because the stakes are too high. Whatever will stop the bombs in Gaza is good enough for me. But I think a lot of folks, Jews in particular, are rightfully on high alert. (As are Muslims in this country, with a spate of horrific hate crimes in the last few weeks targeting Muslim Americans.)
Thus, I hope that it is understandable why Israeli-American peace activists, and American Jews more broadly—not to mention non-Jewish folks who don’t speak the language of the academy and think it’s weird and inhumane to ignore atrocities wherever and to whomever they occur—would feel unsettled or betrayed by letters and statements that fail to pay even a modicum of lip service to the events of October 7, which, again, involved the torture, murder, and mutilation of some 1,400 Israelis.2
None of this—the callousness of the Left, the creepy/weird relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas, or Hamas’ political nihilism that places its interests ahead of those of Palestinians—changes the fact that Israel is an apartheid state3, that it is an occupier, that it is governed by right-wing goons whose only concern is for their own political survival, rather than what is best for Israelis. Neither does it change the fact that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza must end, along with the brutal attacks in the West Bank carried out by virulently fanatical right-wing settlers against Palestinian villagers. Nor does it change the fact that Palestinians must, finally, have access to peace, freedom, and prosperity: in short, to sovereignty and universal human rights.
While there has in recent weeks been a palpable resurgence of antisemitism around the world, I attribute the silence regarding October 7th less to antisemitism than to the reductive, binary groupthink that is symptomatic of our digital culture. The internet has taught us that we are rewarded not for compassion, but for anger; for binaries, and not complexity. But if we are finally to achieve peace in the Middle East, we will do so through an adherence to an ethic of love, which requires an acknowledgement of each other’s pain.
I am inspired by those like Rula Daood, the Palestinian co-director of Standing Together, who, even in this darkest of moments, insist on a course that centers our shared humanity. For others in the region who’ve been directly impacted by recent and ongoing atrocities, such empathy may be beyond reach. But for those who enjoy the relative privilege of sitting at our desks in the United States, digitally adding our names to open letters, perhaps a more compassionate approach—one that invites more people into a coalition for Palestinian liberation by acknowledging the unconditional sanctity of human life—is possible.
Make a donation to Standing Together.
Tonight, in Seattle, is the premiere of Elevator Songs, which I will be performing alongside Roomful of Teeth. On Sunday, at a free event in conjunction with the Portland Book Festival, I’ll be in conversation with the great poet Matthew Zapruder. (I’ll sing a few tunes as well.)
For more on the misreading of Fanon, read Adam Shatz’ excellent article here, which is basically a radical left take that is nevertheless critical of the decolonizers unwillingness to exercise basic human decency toward the victims of October 7. I would also recommend this essay, a somewhat more moderate but nevertheless edifying piece on the ways in which standard decolonization narratives do not apply to Israel/Palestine, even as the author acknowledges the profound injustices in the region.
It’s worth reading David Remnick’s recent dispatch from Israel, which paints a complex picture of the ambient grief in Israel, while giving ample space to the devastation in Gaza.
Nathan Thrall’s excellent essay, The Separate Regimes Delusion, is required reading on this subject.
Thank you. Both this and your last post have been morally clear-eyed perspectives on a complex situation. As for the coalition, sign me up!
This.