Seeking Moral Clarity
Terry H. Schwadron
Jan. 2, 2024
There are welcome hints of a breakthrough towards another ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, with suggestions floating for release of a substantial number of hostages. Of course, we will believe it only when it happens, but we grab at these whispers in hopes of seeking some sanity.
Almost three months into this war, it remains difficult to find either morally sound humanistic positions not based on birth alliances or even to find hope for practical tactics towards stopping an endless cycle of hate — or even the ripples of hate that are upsetting even thousands of miles from the conflict.
Meanwhile, we watch as missiles and bombs still launch in both directions and, in the United States, we continue to sustain street protests that ignore the obvious debasement of others and threaten violence against those who disagree. Three months of shouted slogans have done nothing toward either providing assurances of safety to Israelis and Jews nor fed or housed most of Gaza’s ever-fleeing civilians. What felt true on Oct. 7 in many cases has evolved with the manner of retribution.
Whatever foundering talk there is of formalizing a Palestinian state to provide a dignity that might acknowledge those slogans seems divorced from any responsibility of such a state to live in harmony with Israel. Likewise, even the weekend remarks from Israeli politicians to withdraw some troops to prepare for redeployment later, and insistence on occupying Gaza into the indefinite future hardly spell stability.
Yes, it is morally and historically repugnant that Jews are held to a standard of warfare that eludes Russians, Turks, Serbs, and that public calls to eliminate Israel are deemed as acceptable. And yes, it is morally reprehensible that Israelis insistent on a style of retaliation that has flattened Gaza and left a half-million in danger of starving to death in an open prison where bombs drop daily.
Revisiting Oct. 7
Confirmation of a strategy dependent on rapes and torture against women targeted by Hamas, as confirmed in an investigation by The New York Times are stomach-turning.
Absorbing the horror anew, it is hard to understand why anyone, regardless of political outlook or ethnic tie would want to stand in protests in which people shout pro-Hamas slogans without considering what Hamas has done and promises to do again. The sheer animal brutality reflected in what The Times found to be a widespread pattern reliance on sexual debasement and physical mutilation makes it abhorrent to believe that even underlying pressures of living under occupation by Israeli forces could possibly justify the killings, kidnaps, and sheer terror of Oct. 7.
As circumstances would have it, that story played near coverage of yet more Israeli attacks on civilian areas in pursuit of Hamas militants. As has become too routine, an Israeli airstrike had killed 18 in a bombing run that hit a Gaza hospital, and dozens injured or dead in additional targeting of urban refugee camps inside the Palestinian strip.
The continuing journalistic reports also establish that Israeli officials were asleep at the switch when they needed to respond and that there was official acceptance of shuffling billions of dollars to Hamas to keep it separate from the West Bank. The reports raise serious questions of how Hamas could have been training and scheming without the help of Iranian militias and out of sight of Israeli intelligence.
Nevertheless, it is clear that there are no safe havens in Gaza, and that the devastation is denying Gazan civilians of homes, food, and medical care. How could one stand in protest of “pro-Israel” rallies without regard to the consequences we are witnessing in the continuing retaliation? Why are we not seeking Palestinians turn on Hamas even as we see Israelis turning on their own government?
Throughout history, we’ve seen that how war itself is conducted has had to adopt rules reflecting morality, that attacks on civilians, for example, are considered out of bounds, as are weapons that kill indiscriminately. Yet it happens, likely without a lot of re-consideration of whether the original goals justify the means.
Isn’t it possible to simultaneously support hostage returns, cease-fires, humanitarian aid, and justice for brutality? Isn’t it possible to refine what our seemingly endless protests seek? If ceasefires are simply chances to re-arm and re-dig tunnels, they hardly seem ceasefire periods.
Parsing the Questions
Worse, if possible, is the separable, one-sidedness of calls of victimhood and “genocide,” the central idea in claims by both sides. Thousands of miles away, these calls are echoing as hurtful and are leading to increased daily tensions, if not actual violence against individuals and institutions in the mistaken belief that all Jews or all Palestinians accept the same truths.
Both sides have victims. Even those of us born Jews or Palestinian should be able to see that our relatives are not the sole victims. We’ve lived with these tensions for decades, especially if we are of Holocaust families.
Somewhere, there are still 130 hostages from multiple nations being kept hostage without any seeming relation to the numbers of bombs and missiles still falling.
Shouting “From the River to the Sea” as a genocidal call for elimination of all Jews and the state of Israel simply is as wrong as it is ineffective; watching Israel systematically level Gaza and starve its entire captive population is as genocidal as “retaliatory.”
Hamas leaders, whether from tunnel-headquarters built beneath hospitals, mosques, and schools or safely abroad in a protected Qatar, say they will do it all again tomorrow — regardless of calls for statehood status, regardless of alliances with the West Bank, with Hezbollah, or Iran.
How is a two-state solution to work when one state vows to wipe out the other, or when Israel shows that it will roll militarily over one state or seven in retaliation.
And for their part, in the name of security Israeli leaders already are rejecting any solution that does not leave them in virtual occupation of Gaza into an unending future. Meanwhile, even amid the shooting and bombing in Gaza, there are continuing military-backed efforts to seize more Palestinian lands and property in the West Bank — clearly provoking yet more of whatever has ailed the current situation.
Violence done in the name of a Zionism to provide someplace in the world where a Jewish homeland is welcome remains violence. Zionism need not and should not mean justifying the extremism of land grabs under military protection.
You’d think that protests would focus on getting hostages home, on stopping war, and on feeding people, not on picking flawed ancestral moralities. You’d think that humanitarian concern for ceasefires need not spew hate at the same time.
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