How They Do It and How it's Done– 'Why So Many Israelis Won't Condemn the Carnage in Gaza'

Out of exhaustion, complicity or alienation, we increasingly defer to the endless spin of our arrogant leaders. We’ve stopped asking ethical questions about our responsibility for the death and despair in Gaza

ed note–It is an overtly Judaic practice that when some sticky situation comes up (such as the black mass/human sacrifice taking place in Gaza) where Jews or Jewish interests are found right smack dab in the middle of it all and where at least the pretenses of intelligent discourse/debate need to take place that–like Moses from Mt. Sinai–some great ‘thinker’ comes forth, talking in deep philosophical tones, posing questions and offering answers but all of which is a sham that leads nowhere and is done merely in the interests of satiating the mood of the moment for some kind of gravitas but which in the end merely cues up the next ball on the pool table to be hit.

For anyone who is honest with themselves and with everyone else, the answer not only to the title-question of this essay but indeed to the ‘JQ’ in general is obvious and has been staring humanity in the face for 5,000 years. Judaism, as laid out clearly within the pages of its holy book, the Torah, is not just unequivocal, but indeed, unambiguous, unmistakable, indisputable, incontrovertible, indubitable, undeniable; clear, clear-cut, plain, plain-spoken, explicit, specific, categorical, straightforward, blunt, candid, emphatic, manifest, etc, etc, etc in its methodology of dealing with non-Jews in the ‘promised land’, to wit–

‘When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are to possess and casts out the many peoples living there, you shall then slaughter them all and utterly destroy them…You shall save nothing alive that breathes…You shall make no agreements with them nor show them any mercy. You shall destroy their altars, break down their images, cut down their groves and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a holy people unto the LORD thy God and He has chosen you to be a special people above all others upon the face of the earth…’–Book of Deuteronomy

There is nothing ‘confusing’ or consternating about why the Israelites of today ‘won’t condemn the carnage in Gaza’. By the terms of the very beating heart of their religion, culture, tradition, and mindset, what is taking place today is exactly what their Israelite ancestors of yesteryear did and for which they are celebrated on various Judaic religious festivals such as Passover, Purim, H-nookah, etc. Today’s Israelites are as constitutionally apt to ‘condemn’ such carnage as fish are to fly or birds are to swim, and one of the methods by which the Israelite leadership keeps those within the cult firmly fixed and fixated on the project at hand–advancing Judaism and Jewish interests–is partially achieved with ridiculous, circular essays such as this which give the pretenses of asking moral and philosophical questions but which in the end are nothing more than hot air and an anesthetic for whatever exists of a Judaic conscience.

Don Futterman for Haaretz

To the victor go the spoils, but also the moral dilemmas. And Monday’s events – the U.S. embassy opening and the bloody day at the Gaza border – should pose painful and profound questions to those Jews and Israelis who still care about the morality of our actions.

When Israelis consider the Gaza protests and confrontations at the border fence, we are dizzy from the political spin, and genuinely confused about what’s going on, and what we are seeing. That makes it almost impossible to ask ethical questions about our own behavior.

Here’s what we see on Israeli news: tens of thousands of Palestinians milling about, burning tires to create a thick, black spiraling smokescreen to obscure the view of our soldiers, including the snipers.

We are repeatedly shown videos of Palestinians in small groups or throngs running at the fence, placing explosives next to the fence, trying to cut the fence with wire cutters, carrying what appear to be explosives, throwing Molotov cocktails, in one case, firing with rifles at Israeli soldiers, or sending burning kites over the fence to try to start fires in the adjacent fields.

Among the Gazans trying to breach the fence we are told there are armed terrorist cells with missions to kidnap soldiers or blow up Israelis, which suggests that live fire is justified.

So we think we know that the protest is violent, coordinated, and meant to lead to a dangerous large-scale incursion into Israel. And we become amateur tacticians, justifiers and apologists, quickly agreeing that the fence must not be breached at any price, as if we know what we’re talking about.

Some of us believe a non-violent protest was organized by unaffiliated Gazans but their efforts were hijacked by Hamas, others believe it was always run by Hamas.

The day after, Nakba Day, when Hamas told Palestinians to stay home or go to funerals, and very few Palestinians came to protest or riot at the fence, it became clear to Israelis that Hamas is running the show and always has been. Unless they haven’t always been, and we are seeing only what we want to see.

We are also told that Hamas needs martyrs, and does not mind getting Palestinians killed, or even wants more dead Palestinians, because this provides effective imagery, and dovetails with the stories we tell ourselves about their use of suicide attackers.

The explanation circulating here for the unexpected calm on Nakba Day is that Hamas gave up on breaking through Israeli lines, and Egypt convinced them that video of 61 martyrs and 1000 wounded was sufficient for its PR purposes. And Gazan hospitals couldn’t handle new casualties – as if they are able to handle the load they have now.

But should we not ask what responsibility we bear for creating conditions in which so many young Gazans are willing to throw their lives away for so little?

We also hear that there are agreed upon ground rules between Hamas and Israel, and Hamas has decided to attempt to change those ground rules, and Israel has decided not to let them. In other words, the protest exercise is a deadly form of jockeying for position, a game initiated by Hamas. If this is true, is it right for us to participate in this game?

Our dismissal of Gazan misery as exclusively the fault of Hamas – if Gazans wanted peace they would not have elected Hamas, or would have overthrown them by now – has become a self-serving mantra, more deeply embedded from one war to the next.

We know that openly opposing Hamas risks death for Gazans, but we lock that information in the closed cabinets of our brains because it makes it harder for us to blame Gazans for the predicament they are in.

If we were utterly indifferent to Palestinian deaths, we tell ourselves, there would be hundreds or thousands of fatalities, and we believe the rules of engagement are being followed, usually. But again, it’s their fault, isn’t it? Or could it be both of our faults?

The sheer volume of events that has overloaded Israel’s news cycle for months has left little headspace for introspection. We have stopped asking ethical questions that might impact policy, such as whether the blockade on Gaza is morally defensible in 2018, or if it ever was. We slough off any responsibility for the misery of Gazans, including the deaths of the last six weeks.

We offer apologetics instead of investigation, treat every incident instrumentally, asking not whether our behavior is right but only of it achieves its ends or can be explained away.

It’s always their fault and there’s never sufficient cause to stop and question ourselves. Those who do are dismissed with contempt as disloyal, or self-flagellating.

We have become expert spinmeisters, on point, always on message, and amateur tacticians.

As we Israelis, out of exhaustion, complicity or alienation, continue to defer to leaders whose arrogance grows as they achieve their short-term goals, we may find that our own moral compasses are spinning too fast and out of control to direct our judgment at all.