The Israel-Palestine Mailbag

Following a divisive column on Israel and Palestine, I read some feedback

“I don't pretend,” Uri Avnery wrote, “to be objective about Israel.”

Avnery was, like his assessment of the Hebrew language, “not given to understatement.”

At 15, Avnery was a member of Irgun, the paramilitary group deadset on creating an independent Jewish state. This was 1939, and Irgun was using terror to advance its cause: It had no qualms about murdering British administrators of Palestine, Arab civilians, even Jews thought to be collaborators. He was inspired to join the group after the British hanged an Irgun terrorist, guilty of throwing a grenade onto a bus full of Arab civilians.

But this life wasn’t for him. After spending his formative years as a teen terrorist, Avnery picked up and walked out. Armed struggle, particularly against their neighbors, was a bottomless and self-destructive exercise. After serving in the Arab-Israeli War, his nationalism disintegrated. He began to imagine a unified “Semitic front” — of this nascent Israeli state and the indigenous Palestinians. “The struggles themselves must become a unifying process, melting all our differences into one great movement towards national liberation, social reform, and planned regional progress,” he wrote.¹

It was too optimistic a dream at the time. When he published his diaries from the frontline after the war, he listened to young Israeli boys quoting its passages, upset they had missed the cut-and-thrust of war. They wanted to kill Arabs, and felt deprived. ²

He leaned even further into peace: He used the proceeds of his book to buy up a newspaper, Ha’olam Hazeh, which made Israel-Palestinian reconciliation its cause. The Israeli government of the day responded to its pugnacious journalism with a new defamation law, a thinly-veiled bit of censorship. He ran for office to fight back, and won a seat in the Knesset.

Avnery spent the rest of his life strafing between politics, journalism, and activism. Through it, he remained an obsessive proponent of peace — he met with Yasser Arafat long before that was an acceptable proposition in Israel. (The IDF had intended to kill Arafat at that meeting, even if it meant killing Avnery too.) Decades later, he implored his government to negotiate with Hamas to avert more cycles of violence.

“Semitic suicide is the only alternative to Semitic peace,” Avnery wrote in 1968.

Uri Averny: Cease fire — this is not a passive imperative. In order to cease fire, acts of peace must be done. Peace must be waged — actively, imaginatively, incessantly. In the words of the psalmist: “Seek peace and pursue it." The search can be passive — the pursuit cannot.

Avnery died in 2018, a staunch critic of Netanyahu and his shameless opposition to peace until the very end.

This week, on a very conciliatory Bug-eyed and Shameless, I reach into my email inbox and pull out some responses to my column last weekend in the Toronto Star. In criticizing our collective ability to mediate conflict around the Israel-Hamas war, I drew some agreement, some strong objections, and lots of thoughts in between.

So in the name of the discourse, let’s parse through it.

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When I told my editors that I planned on penning a piece wading into the choppy waters of the Israel-Hamas war — but, more particularly, our ability to rationally talk about the conflict here — I elicited some grimaces. When I filed my copy, I was told it was “brave.”

Brave, I understood, was code for: You are going to get a lot of hate mail. Maybe brave really meant stupid.

A tremendous number of my colleagues have certainly internalized that warning, and I don’t blame them. Newsrooms — like countless other workplaces, community organizations, friend groups — tense up at mention of the war. The conflict has polarized so intensely that it has strained the weak magnetic field which normally connects us.

The discourse now usually happens through use of shibboleths: It matters to many whether, or even how, you denounce Hamas. It matters whether you charge genocide, and it will not suffice to reserve judgement. It matters whether you acknowledge the rise in anti-semitic violence, but it can be undercut by recognizing a rise in anti-Arab violence too. It matters what maps you use, which borders you endorse, who you accuse of oppression, how you describe the conflict, when you speak up and when you don’t.

It feels, for many, like a series of impassable traps. And they’re right. Better not to engage at all, they figure.

That was laid bare when Capital Pride, Ottawa’s Queer festival, put out a statement in solidarity with Palestine — one that recognized the threat of anti-semitism, condemned Hamas, and called for the return of the hostages, but which also invoked a boycott of Israel, used the word “genocide,” and accused Israel of “pinkwashing.” The statement was met with a rash of boycotts from, amongst others, the mayor.

This is perhaps the most crystallized example I’ve seen yet of how broken this discourse is. There are tripwires everywhere. Their position and orientation moves often and suddenly. If you catch your foot on one, you are met with denunciations, objections, and boycotts.

There are plenty out there who relish at the idea of forcing a breakdown of conversation and discourse. Netanyahu has always thrived when his supporters feel entirely alienated from his detractors. Hamas, meanwhile, has cleverly wrapped itself in the trappings of justice and liberation while employing many of the same miserable tactics of every terror faction justifying their own existence. (Dispatch #74)

Beyond that, we have let this conflict become a proxy war for our own divides — woke vs unwoke, liberal vs conservative, young vs old, and so on.

So in keeping with my hectoring of everybody else, I’m going to try to wage peace by engaging with all manner of responses to that column. Here goes.³

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Eva writes:

Yes, by all means, let’s talk about the Israel-Hamas conflict.

What most concerns me, and I believe the majority of our Jewish community and our allies also, is the widespread normalization of baseless accusations against Israel in many forums in Canada, like in trade unions, universities, governments, mainstream media (including the Toronto Star), and of course during the ubiquitous “pro-Palestinian” rallies. […]

Calling Israel’s fight against Hamas an “ongoing genocide” (or even just “genocide”), is perpetrating a malicious falsehood, which incites hatred against Israel, against its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, and against Jews worldwide.

And calling for an “immediate and permanent ceasefire,” without calling for measures to ensure the security of Israel now and in the future, in light of the horrific attack by Hamas and its promise of more like that to come, is in effect calling for (or at least condoning) the elimination of Israel.

So the boycotting of Capital Pride by groups which care about the continued existence of Israel and the free world is perfectly logical and understandable.

In addition to the two agenda items mentioned above, the anti-Israel forums often also include other libellous claims, such as apartheid, colonialism, deliberate starvation and the like. All of these hateful claims can be easily disproven, if there is the will to do it. These are the claims that Honest Reporting and Postmedia are working hard to debunk, and I’m grateful for their work.

This is a good place to start, because I think it really illustrates just how much terminology drives polarization.

It’s not hard to see why. In-group/out-group language has a lot to do with why this debate is often so toxic. I have written in the past about how the invocation of ‘decolonization’ is often misapplied, here. (Dispatch #77) Eva is entirely right: There are those out there who, knowingly or not, are winding themselves into ideological knots, suggesting — often from the comfortable perch of a colonialist state — that Israel must be ‘decolonized.’ But what does that mean? I think plenty activists don’t know. Some argue that it means establishing an Arab ethnostate, with Jewish political power becoming either erased or marginalized. Some say the quiet part of this idea out loud when they shout “go back to Poland.” For sure, I can appreciate why Jews feel targeted by this kind of language.

But that also requires us to assume that these phrases are exclusively malicious, antisemitic, or anti-Israel. And I think we have to reject that premise. To do so, let’s quickly take these terms in turn.

Colonialism, for staters, is probably the easiest to dispatch with, simply because it is the hardest to actually handle. You can see that in duelling articles from history professor Kristen Aliff, who contended in an article that Zionism is “a settler colonial movement that pushed for the establishment, and then support, of a Jewish state. In practice, this has meant the dispossession of land from the Palestinian Arab population.” That assertion earned a response from two other professors, one of law and one of medicine, rejecting that characterization and arguing it would be “more accurate to see Zionism as a form of nationalism – and Zionists as refugees, rather than settlers.”

There are centuries of history wrapped up in this question and to pretend like either answer is simple or obvious is, I think, disingenuous. What we can say, though, is that even if we consider Israel a settler-colonial state, that doesn’t make it immediately illegitimate — certainly, Canada and America are more problematic colonial states. The Jewish peoples’ claim to the region, coupled with their status as post-WWII refugees, makes this ‘settler colonial’ label complicated, and render useless most of this ‘decolonization’ language. Above all, though, we should accept that the back-and-forth on this question is evidence that you can use the term without being a bad faith actor.

I think there’s an even easier case to be made that the other terms are apt, if sometimes misapplied. The fact is that those who live under the Palestinian Authority are functionally subjects of Israel, yet are expressly locked out of enjoying many of those same rights: That, by definition, is apartheid. Israelis are quick to point out, rightly, that Arab Israelis make up about 20% of Israel’s population and enjoy the same rights as their fellow citizens. So they contend that these restrictions are not ethnic or racial in nature. True, but Arab-Israeli political parties have frequently been banned (and, in fairness, un-banned), Arabs in East Jerusalem are a political netherworld, and Israel has moved to weaken Arab-Israel citizenship rights. Benjamin Pogrund, a citizen of Israel born in South Africa, wrote starkly last year: “In Israel, I am now witnessing the apartheid with which I grew up.” You can certainly argue with this accusation, but it is not inherently anti-semitic or anti-Israel. (Nor was calling South Africa an apartheid state anti-Afrikaner or anti-British. It was a political position on state policy.)

On the question of genocide: It is a charge that has been made at the International Court of Justice, and it led the court to order that “Israel must immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Israel has ignored that order, and opted instead to attack the credibility of the ICJ. There is credible evidence that this war could amount to genocide, although it will require a determination from the ICJ. I, too, am leery at the idea of alleging such a crime without a determination from the court — but it is untrue that there is no evidence for such a claim. (Dispatch #82)

All of these words, and the selective history and ideology which underpin them, can be weaponized unfairly, cheaply, and with hate. They can also be forceful descriptors meant to criticize the acts of a state, and in particular a government that has proved itself to be, as Pogrund writes: “At the mercy of fascists and racists…who cannot, and will not, stop.”

This isn’t to say that we have to accept those terms, or the accusations underpinning them. But they cannot be verboten. They are serious charges worthy of serious debate — debate that takes place in the pages of Israeli newspapers and journals, but which are apparently grounds for boycott here. We’ll get to more of why that is in a minute.

Stephanie writes:

I have a few issues with today's column. As someone who goes to the Pro-Palestinian rallies every week, I am biased on this issue but would like to think I am objective. […]

You rightly point out that the media can play an important role in mediating the polarization. One way to do this is to ensure that the public are aware of the full history of the conflict and the international laws that should govern it. I consider myself a reasonably well informed person but I have learned a lot by asking questions about some of the things I have seen and heard at the rallies. One of the regular chants is 'Resistance is justified when people are occupied'. I was uncomfortable with this chant at the beginning, thinking it was justifying the murders of Israeli civilians on October 7th. What I didn't know at first is that international law allows armed resistance for occupied people. The media have glorified resistance in Ukraine yet vilify it in Palestine. Let me be clear: I am talking about attacks on legitimate military targets as justified not the murder of civilians whether they are Israeli or Palestinian. Support for the human rights of Palestinians does not mean support for Hamas' war crimes.

As an extension of the case I make above, there are concepts in this discourse that — when unpacked, and handled while assuming good intentions from well-meaning people on the other side — are more complicated and nuanced than some would have you believe.

But there are also places where this unpacking turns into justification of the unjustifiable.

Stephanie is, of course, right that there is a fundamental justice that permits an oppressed people to resist, including by the use of violence. But it is not, exactly, codified international law — defining where such a ‘right to resist’ should begin and end is, unsurprisingly, incredibly difficult.

The United Nations has recognized “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.” Protocol I of the Geneva Convention echoes that sentiment and builds on it.

But this right to resist is not unlimited and unshackled from the rules of war otherwise. Ukraine is a prime example: They have engaged the Russian military and targeted military infrastructure, not blown up shopping malls or rained missiles down on homes. In their recent invasion into Kursk, the Ukrainian Armed Forces explicitly avoided targeting civilians and provided obligatory humanitarian assistance. Journalists have been allowed into occupied Kursk to interview those civilians. Ukraine has, certainly, killed Russian civilians: But so long as they take all reasonable measures to minimize civilian casualties, we can say they are generally respecting the laws of armed conflict and should enjoy the full protection of this right to resist.

Contrast that with Hamas: They have, from their very inception, targeted Israeli civilians. They have deployed suicide bombers and launched indiscriminate rocket attacks. They have used schools and hospitals as staging grounds and rocket launch facilities. They have used rape as a weapon of war. They have executed hostages for propaganda and political benefit. This is illegal under international law, morally objectionable, it could be grounds for genocide, and it is actively harming opportunities for peace. As we saw with the explosion at the al-Ahli hospital, it also jeopardizes the lives of Palestinians. (Dispatch #75)

We can, and should, criticize Israel and Netanyahu in particular for putting obstacles for peace. But we must condemn Hamas even more forcefully — they are not freedom fighters, but terrorists.

Stephanie notes this in her email, and I think most people who attend these rallies are also affording a benefit of the doubt to those chanting the slogan. But I think it is an enormous stretch to ask Jews and Israelis to interpret “resistance is justice” with earnest intent. The same goes for calls for “Intifada.” You can, yes, engage in all kinds of historical discourse about why such calls can be legitimate — but in the current context, it requires a substantial conversation and feels needlessly provocative. So it is probably best not chanted, particularly not in Jewish neighborhoods in North America. At a certain point, we have to accept that protests’ persistence in using these chants and slogans is either ignorant to the fear they elicit, or actively meant to be intimidating.

Like the above, this kind of commentary shouldn’t be forbidden: But it should be really strongly discouraged.

Mark writes:

Your colleagues need to realize that although they feel their stories are balanced, Honest Reporting was created because, we as Jews, feel that the reporting is in fact, biased and often antisemitic: And therefore should be called out. They are a pro-Israel interest group, but based on what you write, that sounds like a bad thing? They are just calling out what we, as Jews, continually feel as a threat to our existence.

This is the dog whistle that concerns every single Jew around the world. We know our history. We have been able to survive for millennia through worst atrocities, however, we have been able to survive because of our knowledge of our history (not many other civilizations can say the same). So, when Jews speak out and are concerned, this is the canary in the coal mine and everyone should be deeply concerned.

So, listen, this is a tricky point to make, but I’m going to try it anyway.

Yes, we should listen to Jews when they say they feel unsafe or uncomfortable — just like we should listen to any/every other minority group which routinely faces harassment, dehumanizing language, and violence. We should listen and understand, instead of leaping to minimize. And I accept that activists and journalists who are quick to listen to and appreciate harm inflicted on, say, Queer people meet Jews with more skepticism. That, I think, is dead wrong, and often relies nebulous concepts of privilege that don’t lead us anywhere good.

All that said, questions about hate speech and harm must bring us to the question: What do we do about it? I think we are quick to arrive at the wrong answer.

Western democracy is built on the idea that we can mediate disagreement, dispute, and outright conflict through our institutions. It’s not hard to see that, in this instance, both sides believe institutions have failed — to adequately advance the plight of the Palestinian people and, separately, to keep Canadian Jews safe.

Certainly, when people feel like their institutions are unwilling or unable to mediate effectively, they either try to fix the mechanism from the inside, the outside, or they create a rival institution.

HonestReporting is an attempt to pillory the media from the outside into rectifying its perceived anti-Israel bias, just as outlets like The Intercept were founded to compete with the mainstream press out of a belief that the corporate establishment is too pro-Israel (amongst other things.) Private security firms devoted to protecting Jewish students on campus, driven by a widespread belief that campus administrators and police are insufficiently worried about Jewish students, are another prime example.

But we have to understand that this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. HonestReporting fires off near-daily missives criticizing the media, often on spurious grounds. They recently called on their supporters to pepper the Journal de Montreal with complaints after columnist Yasmine Abdelfadel criticized Benjamin Netanyahu. They accused her of “sanitizing the terrorism of Hamas.” They called for a similar deluge of complaints to the CBC because one of their journalists published “four back-to-back portrayals of Palestinian suffering” without blaming Hamas. If your raison d’être is calling out anti-Israel bias, suddenly everything starts to look like anti-Israel bias.

That’s not to say the media is always right or good. There are plenty of lazy, bad reporters out there, and certainly there are columnists who come up with a conclusion first and squish in the facts to make them fit. Our social media age means those bad examples tend to get shared more widely than good reporting or analysis.

But I do think we have a habit of whipping ourselves into frenzy. The very things created to improve our institutions and collective dialog are now actively contributing to the decline of it.

To my mind, if we want to rectify the rise in antisemitism, we would do well to build trust in the media and politics, not destroy it. Criticize and boycott where necessary, but not necessarily.

Fran writes:

You claim that Capital Pride's statement was "clearly striving for nuance". In my opinion, your statement exhibits a very superficial understanding of what is going on — it would be laughable if the situation were not so tragic and destructive.

While Israel was condemned for its ongoing despicable actions, Hamas was condemned only for its brutality on one day - October 7th - and not its ongoing efforts, that have led to so much suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians, both before and since Oct. 7th.

I think this is a classic example of what I describe above. If the Capital Pride statement clearly condemned Hamas for all of its actions for the past decade, would that have satisfied people? Or would they have taken another issue with another part of the statement? I suspect the latter.

In my interviews for the column, I kept hearing from Capital Pride’s critics that of course there is a way to express solidarity with Palestine that isn’t offensive or worthy of boycott. When I tried to suss out what, exactly, such a statement would look like, I didn’t have much luck. Because, unfortunately, the sentiment itself is the problem.

Dubi writes:

Here's where I think the problem lies: when Capital Pride put out their statement, nuanced and careful as it was, it was "in solidarity with Palestine". But it was not in solidarity with Israel. There are two peoples here, one held hostage by an extremist terrorist organization, and the other led by an extremist government. There is no "good side". If you take one side over the other, you take the most extremist of views, one that completely rejects the right of the other side to even exist, because those are the two actors in this conflict. But in between these two extremes are the majorities of both peoples, who do not espouse these views. When you make the choice either solidarity with Palestine or solidarity with Israel, you're forcing them to pick an extreme. Solidarity should be with those of both peoples who are seeking peace.

I've often wondered what would happen if I go to one of those protests or rallies — on either side — carrying both a Palestinian and an Israeli flag, reflecting my belief that both people deserve to be sovereign in their homeland. Would either side accept me, or would both curse me and try to rip away the "wrong" flag?

Our culture mocks and despises centrist views, treats them as cowardly and dishonest. I don't think that is true. So long as people define themselves by solidarity with one side and not the other, we will be doomed to polarization, because we leave no room for a middle. And that, I think, is the answer to the questions you raised.

I think Dubi raises some good points here, though I come at it at a slightly different angle.

I don’t think centrism is a bad thing — it is not, as the left often charges, cowardice or indecision. But I don’t think it’s a more moral position, either. It is just another spot on the spectrum, its adherents just as capable of horrible misdeeds as anyone else. We can thank lots of centrists for the War on Terror.

I don’t think that picking a ‘side’ constitutes siding with extremes. I think identifying with a position to the exclusion of all others, and defining yourself diametrically in opposition to an arbitrary point on the ‘other’ side is, if not extremism, at least toxic polarization. This is actually why I take issue with the labels of ‘pro-Palestinian’ and ‘pro-Israel’ — I use them occasionally, begrudgingly. A sane political identity ought to be pro-Palestinian, pro-Israel, anti-war, anti-Hamas. But, like I’ve argued, we are distrustful of that kind of complexity, often mistaking nuance for indifference or compromise.

And Dianne writes:

I suspect you will get a completely different response if your critiques are clearly grounded in support for Israel's right to exist, and to defend itself, and if you carefully avoid long-standing antisemitic tropes. Perhaps acknowledge that it's the only multi party democracy in the Middle East, that all wars are dreadful, and that this war was triggered by a murderous invasion by those pledged to drive all Jews out of their ancestral homeland. That leaves lots and lots of room to lament the toll on Palestinians, to ask why individual tactical decisions have been made and to criticize specific aspects of the war, and the Netanyahu government generally.

I think this is both an eminently reasonable position but also an incorrect one.

One thing that I think trips us up on this file so often is that we expect both intellectual consistency and moral purity from all participants.

I’ve grown fond of the comparison to anti-Vietnam War protesters chanting “Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh” and “kill the pigs” as they marched on the Democratic National Convention in ‘68. They were right about the war. But they were wrong to venerate the brutal Vietnamese revolutionary or glorify cop-killing. But looking back at the panic that surrounded these chants, it all looks absurd now. (Podcast #3)

You’ve probably noticed a rise in these protest ‘streeters’ — popularized by The Daily Show (and, for Canadians: Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans) now increasingly common from all manner of Tiktokers and Youtubers. It involves a faux-reporter walking up to people at a protest or rally and asking leading questions to expose the inherent hypocrisy and incoherence in these random peoples’ political positions. It is, yes, funny. It also leaves us feeling undeservedly smug. We are all big balls of contradictions, some of us moreso than others. Being entirely right about everything cannot be a prerequisite for political activism. And pointing to the presence of political illiteracy on the other side cannot be grounds to claim “we win!”

I am totally fine drawing the line, here, when it comes to anti-semitic conspiracy theories and tropes: Espousing that garbage should be disqualifying. But there are other positions, maybe even bad ones, that shouldn’t be disqualifying. Rather than declaring that you won’t engage with anyone who hasn’t vocally endorsed Israel’s right to exist, wouldn’t you be better off convincing someone that Israel deserves such a right?

Having witnessed exactly that argument play out at protests, I suspect the divide is not as wide as one may think.

Benjamin writes:

Israel is not "portraying" itself as an LGBTQ haven in the middle east, it genuinely IS one.

Reframing Israeli (and by extension Jewish) progressivism as a tool of oppression and control is a tactic borrowed from the American alt-right (see: The Great Replacement Theory).

Paranoid accusations of Jewish subterfuge play into old-timey antisemitic tropes, which should be denounced when detected. Your article did not touch on this.

Benjamin is referencing a passage from the Capital Pride statement, here, and an oft-repeated talking point from Queer activists critical of Israel. And he’s right: On that fundamental question — is Israel a progressive haven for Queer people? — the answer is simply: Yes.

Ok, so why are critics so adamant that Israel is guilty of ‘pinkwashing’?

Certainly, Israel uses its own liberalism as a shield against its management of Gaza, hectoring Queer people not to be critical of Israeli policies because Hamas is murderously homophobic. But it can do that because both things are true. Israel is one of the most tolerant places in the world for Queer people, whilst being openly gay in Gaza is incredibly dangerous.

The correct response to that defence of Israel is, I think, “so what?” Israel’s treatment of sexual and gender minorities does not make its blockade of Gaza, nevermind its war, more just or valid.

But progressives go further, insisting that Israel can’t possibly share their values because of its actions in Palestine. Colonizers can’t be pro-LGBTQ, Israel is a colonizer, therefore Israel must not be pro-LGBTQ. Israel is, in other words, no true Scotsman.

Our increasing need to distance ourselves from our ideological opposites means denying common-ground, even when it’s clear as day. Queer Israelis have been some of the most militant in protesting Netanyahu, and now they feel ostracized and marginalized by Queer people elsewhere.

While I don’t think accepting certain precepts should be a requirement for engagement, acknowledging them is sure a good way to build bridges. In this Haaretz feature, it’s heartbreaking to listen to Queer Jews try and reason with their friends from outside Israel. As one activist told the paper: "I told friends, 'I can understand that you're supporting Gaza, I understand that you're opposing occupation, I get that you're supporting Palestinians. I have no problem with that. But how can you express support for an organization that throws LGBTQ people from the roof?' and they'd say to me, 'it's not about us, it's about them,' which doesn't make sense to me at all."

There’s nothing gained by erasing Israel’s own messy, complicated, often radical Queer community.

Bill writes:

Jews in Canada, whatever their individual positions on the war, have no status or standing as representatives of the government of Israel, and have no role in its decision making. Why people think it’s OK to target them is not a legitimate or justifiable way to protest the current hostilities triggered by Hamas’ October 7 brutal attack. It is pure antisemitism.

I also wonder why there is such intense interest in the Gaza conflict. There are current wars and conflicts being waged in Africa of much larger scale creating deaths and refugees that dwarf what is happening in Gaza - Congo and Sudan to name two.

Perhaps the reason there is no outcry about these ongoing atrocities is because there are no Jews to blame.

The first part is, yes, spot on. While pro-Palestinian protesters have justified their regular rallies as targeting Israel — and, indeed, often take place outside Israeli consulates and embassies, or synagogues where real estate agencies have pitched condo projects in Gaza — they have also particularly visited Jewish neighborhoods. It is unacceptable that Jewish people in North America are being picketed by activists, as though they have any sway over Netanyahu’s war plans. It is, I think, one of the big reasons why Jews in North America feel so under siege. If the pro-Palestinian camp were interested in dialling down the temperature, while still keeping up the pressure, they would do well to find some new places to protest.

But on that second part: I find this line of argument incredibly infuriating. Yes, the ongoing atrocities in Congo and Sudan get too little attention. But nobody here is siding with the war criminals responsible for the bloodshed. Western governments have been clear in their opposition to the continued fighting, and have implemented a raft of policies to try and stop the killing — including arms embargoes and sanctions. Certainly, we aren’t doing enough, but the West can only do so much in countries where they have increasingly little sway.

Israel, by contrast, continues to receive major U.S. weapons shipments. It has major advocacy groups aggressively defending its’ government’s positions.

I don't think this kind of whataboutism ever helps the conversation.

Rima writes:

The pro-Israel organizations, like CIJA, B’nai Brith, and Simon Wiesenthal, all work hard to minimize the many Jewish voices that are either deeply conflicted but afraid to speak out, or the very vocal opposition of IJV and the other organizations like Not in My Name, Jews Say No to Genocide, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Jewish Faculty Network, etc — who include, importantly, a growing cohort of young Jews.

This conversation needs to start with the goal of lasting peace for Israeli Jews and the region’s Palestinians — and that is the realization that with 7 million Israeli Jews and 7 million Palestinians, the ONLY thing that will work is when both peoples can live safe, fulfilling, self-determined lives. They need mediators to get there. Violence only begets trauma, which begets more violence. If we keep our eyes on that goal as the end-game, not the futile exercise of trying to excuse violence as a means to an end, maybe we can make some progress.

Absolutely. To build on this: Pro-Palestinian groups would do well to take some cues from progressive Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab-Israelis. They understand well the promise of reconciliation and the pitfalls of polarization. While some Western activists may delude themselves into the naive idea that Israel can just be peacefully, bloodlessly ‘decolonized,’ and that justice can be delivered through loose ideology, progressive Jews intimately understand the long, slow, difficult slog towards winning over partisans to peace. Those who prefer simple solutions and catchy slogans have convinced themselves they are above convincing people. That's a shame.

Israelis who support the war, meanwhile, are not monsters. They are not vile racists and warmongers. (Or, at least, no more than elsewhere.) They have real fears, valid concerns, and they trust the political leaders who say this war is just and necessary. The best way to not just stop this war, but to prevent future wars, is to convince them that peace is in their long-term best interests.

Nick writes:

An idea for a future article: corporate policing of employees who say or do the wrong thing, all under the excuse that it could reflect badly on the company. This idea is out of control, questionable to begin with, contributes to the stifling of online and offline debate

Yes.

Donald writes:

I enjoyed your recent column. Don’t know if you ever heard of Uri Avnery. He was a soldier in their 1948 war and spent the rest of his life in various occupations and writing about the truth of what was going on. Google him and try to find some of his old columns. They are excellent.

On the current war, as a Senior, senior citizen I no longer believe Israel, especially with its current government, wants a ceasefire. I think they want to utterly destroy the inhabitants of Gaza and it’s infastructure. When you kill more than 40,000 in exchange for the 1200 citizens you lost its no longer a question of defending yourself.

I have to thank Donald because I hadn't heard of Uri Averny before his email.

On that second part: One thing I feel is so often lost in the melee is that the most effective criticism of Israel is not of the state but of its government. Indeed, criticism of Israel’s war effort within the Knesset — and by the families of the hostages, by pro-peace groups, by Arab-Israelis, by Haaretz, and so on — is intense, and it is focused intently on Netanyahu and his war cabinet. Understanding the degree to which Netanyahu’s predecessors tried, to varying degrees, to secure lasting peace is always worth grappling with, as it undermines the idea that the state itself is some sort of monolithic force. (Dispatch #78)

It is clear than Netanyahu doesn't want a ceasefire, and we should want to support and amplify voices in Israel most capable of replacing him with someone who does.

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I know it seems quaint, maybe even naive, to suggest that we all just need to come together and have a good ol’ fashioned debate about this stuff. But, sorry, we do. That is literally the premise of our system of governance and our society.

The most dogmatic of the ‘pro-Palestinians’ will say: The time for debate is over. The marketplace of ideas has failed. Activism and grassroots organizing is the only way.

The ardent ‘pro-Israelis’ will say: The rhetoric and vitriol has gotten so intense that we cannot have a dialog, discourse, or debate. We cannot extend the benefit of the doubt.

To both sides I say: How's that working out for you? Might it be time to try a different approach?

I think my position on the whole conflict has become, at least somewhat, clear: The war was a catastrophic mistake from the beginning, waged by a leader who sees political salvation through destruction and strife. (Dispatch #76) Palestine needs to be given the tools to free itself from Hamas, and that won’t be easy. (Dispatch #101) But the harassment, intimidation, and violence against Jews in the West is no minor or imagined problem.

Even though many disagreed with the column, it was actually heartening to receive so many emails from all across spectrum. Even most those who seemed keen to support the boycott were, at least via email, interested in seriously engaging. (I regret not being able to respond individually, nor being able to include every email in this dispatch.)

I would never suggest that mine is the only moral or right position, and I don’t pretend it’s without contradiction. If you forced me to boil down my thoughts on the matter into a single chant, slogan, or tweet: It’s quite possible I would get denounced as a war apologist or an Israel-hater. Maybe both.

But I have to believe that arguing about this is useful and cathartic for all of us. Rather than boycotts and cancellations, we should strive for the awkward, frustrating, emotional, offensive, difficult work of waging peace.

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I hope this dispatch was a useful crunching-through of some tough issues. You, I have to imagine, didn't agree with all of it. If so, I'm keen to hear your thoughts — so comment below and keep the ball rolling.

For the Canadians, I’ve got a column in the Star previewing next Monday’s byelection. For everyone, I’ve got a piece in WIRED about a Japanese robotics company that is integral to the Israeli defense industrial complex, showcasing how tricky international arms control has become.

I will continue apologizing for the slow pace of dispatches. With fall coming at us fast, I'm hoping to not only get into the routine of weekly newsletters again, but to make up for some of the lulls.

1. Israel Without Zionists, Uri Avnery

2. 1948: A Soldier’s Tale, Uri Avnery

3. I am only using the first name of those who wrote in, and I have edited for identifying information, length, clarity, spelling, grammar, and novelty.