Seeing Things Clearly: How projecting past persecution onto Palestinians only perpetuates the war…
We need to see what is really happening in all its precision… Only then can we see what specific political responses are necessary. Instead, a substitution occurs, Nazis are substituted for Hamas, the Holocaust for acts of political violence. Israelis, alongside many of us, are looking at one thing and seeing another. In psychoanalysis this is called transference – the transfer of past feelings on to a new person or persons. Politically this is extremely dangerous and prevents the conflict from being solved or even alleviated.
by Joseph Finlay, Torat Albion
I want to address an underlying issue that I think has led many Israelis and diaspora Jews to support the war. I think it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding or misdiagnosis of the conflict, one that is rooted in historical trauma.
A primary argument frequently made by supporters of the war is that Israel has no choice, that it is faced, in Hamas and Hizbullah, with genocidal enemies who plan to kill not just every Israeli but every Jew. We, they say, are compelled to destroy them before they destroy us. We have no choice. You can see why this argument is so popular; if there if is no choice then there is no debate. If your military enemy is the epitome of evil, who aims to destroy you entirely, then there can be absolutely no compromise with them and there is no argument. To support this position Hamas has been described as genocidal, and October 7th an attempt to simply kill as many Jews as possible. But this analysis misunderstands October 7th and the Palestinian struggle more generally. And this misunderstanding did not begin with October 7th – it is one that goes back decades and is probably constitutive of Israeli society. The primary subject of the misunderstanding is Palestinian violence. Such violence may often be brutal, unethical and tactically unwise. But it is not genocidal. It does not aim to kill all Israelis, still less all Jews.
To return to the October 7th attacks; It is clear from statements and interviews that Hamas leaders understood Al-Aqsa Flood primarily as a hostage-taking operation, and as a response to the siege of Gaza, the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and attempts to change the status quo at the Al Aqsa mosque. Having seen the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal result in the freeing of around 1000 Palestinian prisoners, there was a belief in Hamas that if they were able to capture a much larger number of hostages, they would be able to free far more Palestinian prisoners, perhaps all of them, including high profile Fatah figures like Marwan Barghouti. It (wrongly) believed Israel would do almost anything to get its hostages back. Hamas also thought that a huge attack would be able to force an end to the long blockade of Gaza, and put Palestine back on the international agenda, after the ‘Abraham accords’ had pushed it far below the headlines. For sure, some harboured grandiose fantasies about conquest and restoring Palestine to its pre-1948 state, complete with all Palestinian refugees returning home. But most were more realistic – Hamas may be many objectionable things, but it is not irrational or blind to what it can credibly achieve.
On the day itself, Hamas’ actions were initially consistent with this aim, they used huge force to take control of the Erez border crossing, killing many soldiers in the process, and used explosives to blow up the Gazan fence in many locations. They were more successful than they had imagined, which led to many more militants, including those from other factions and unaffiliated individuals, entering Israel. This unexpected success led to a diverse set of responses. Some sought to carry out the plan, entering settlements and taking as many hostages as possible. In many such cases the attempt to take hostages en masse was carried out with extreme brutality, such as attacking or setting fire to safe rooms to force people out of them.
In other cases, militants went rogue, killing many civilians rather than trying to take them hostage. This happened in particular at the Nova festival, the site of the largest civilian death toll, and an event which Hamas leaders apparently did not expect or prepare for. Many militants there did not follow the plan of the leadership and shot large numbers of Israelis. It is also the case that some Israelis were killed by the IDF as part of the ‘Hannibal doctrine’ – to prevent Israelis being taken hostage at all costs, even their death. This is tricky territory because it is the subject of some misinformation and conspiracy theories, and we don’t yet have a full picture, but it is clear that at least some Israelis killed on October 7th died in this way, and more due to crossfire between militants and the IDF.
All of that is to say that October 7th wasn’t a genocidal massacre or a pogrom. It was a cruel and brutal attack, but one that aimed to take hostages and exchange them for Palestinian prisoners. The 815 Israeli civilians killed that day were killed either during attempts to take them hostage; because of militants not following their leaders’ plan and shooting them; or due to battles between the Israeli army and the militants. We can and should condemn Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad for their actions; killing civilians is a war crime, as is taking civilians hostage. Had they restricted their action to purely military targets and taking military hostages the situation would have been very different, and Israel would have received far less support for its subsequent war in Gaza.
My point is that we can strongly condemn October 7th without misunderstanding it. Killing civilians and taking civilians hostage was immoral and wildly irresponsible. Hamas treated Israeli and Palestinian life (and those of internationals killed on that day) as expendable, worth sacrificing in the cause of greater political goals. But it was not a massacre, or a continuation of the Holocaust. It was an act of political violence, one that its perpetrators clearly saw in anti-colonial terms, in the tradition of independence struggles from Ireland to Algeria to India. To see it as genocidal, as an attempt to simply kill as many Jews as possible, is not only wrong but also profoundly dangerous, as it paints any solution short of ‘totally destroying Hamas’ as a surrender to monsters….
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/erasing-palestine-in-the-name-of-jewish-trauma/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Chris Hedges: The Gaza Riviera
Gaza and the End of Western Fantasy
Israel’s Assassination of Memory
“Write my name on my leg, Mama”
‘The Children Haunt Me at Night’: The Protest That’s Forcing Israelis to Face Kids Killed in Gaza
After the truth-shower 