I have no idea what to believe at this point.
On the one hand, I'll stand with the Jewish community through any disingenuous approbation from people who stay silent in the face of every uncomplicated genocide everywhere but regarding the complicated actions of the world's only haven for Jews, and I no longer trust any friend who asks Israel to cease fire. You're asking Jews to just die willingly. So long as they don't call Israel a genocidal state publicly, I can stay friends with the hundreds who believe it, but not without resenting the hell out of them.
But I can't pretend there isn't an authoritarian curtain gone round the Jewish community long before October 7th, a curtain of steel that might lift only so slightly whenever Netanyahu goes. There is no pretending the modern Israel is not Netanyahu, and there is no pretending Israel wasn't deserving of blistering censure long before all this. The moment they ceased to be the state that pursued peace in this conflict, they began an agonizing moral slide that's gone on my entire adult life. Israel is as deserving of criticism as any other Western country that willingly welcomes right wing authoritarianism into its government, not much more, but around Israel's long authoritarian slide from Sharon to Smotrich, the Jewish community's formed a protective wall of incendiary rage. It's a pustule that needs a biopsy, and until we accept that it's a boil in need of the most painful lancing, the only chance to rid the region of radical Islamic parties is to so decimate Gaza and southern Lebanon that it would be a genocide indeed. Our long term choice is this: become again the side that pursues peace in the face of an enemy who demands war, or become the genocidal people our so called friends think we already are with offensives far worse than what's coming for Rafah.
I woke up October 7th and on that day said farewell to every chance the world will become anything I love. I was terrified of a bad outcome for the world before October 7th, but I wasn't certain of it. I've said it a hundred times, but Israel lives on the world's most dangerous fault line, and the seismic eruptions spread.
So now, I just can't see anything but the strange death of the liberal world in my time. After the biggest liberal gains since the 60s, this liberal rule of law is thoroughly decimated by right wing radicals, who are only enabled by a left's insistence on pushing reforms that are not even good, let alone practical. It seems to be an endemic feature of any historic period when liberals rack up victories: rather than celebrate, the people we most expect to celebrate want to smash it up, and an ever more resentful right wing is all too willing to help them.
On the one hand, anybody who hasn't ditched liberalism for leftism realizes there's no future for Israel without severely damaging Hamas. So far, the deaths are nearly 100% on Hamas, not Israel. The whole point of what Hamas did was to throw their own people into death and get willfully naive leftists to blame Israel for it. It's not antisemitic to criticize Israel, it's not antisemitic to think Israel went too far, but it's sure as hell antisemitic to expect us to turn the other cheek, and it's antisemitic to insist on ceasing fire the moment this all began. You expect Jews to die with no fight. What other group would you expect that of?
On the other hand, if Israel goes into southern Gaza, if they do not let aid in, it will be far from 100%. It's thoroughly out of touch with reality to expect you can get rid of Hamas. Until now, no matter how bloody, it's been self-defense. But an incursion into Rafah is simply vengeance. It's not genocide, but it's democide. And even if you get rid of Hamas, you've created a power vacuum where an organization as bloody or more than Hamas will rise. The best possible option is to not go into Rafah, let the aid come in, and make Palestinians so fear a repeat of these months that they would sooner rise up against Hamas than let them do it again. It's worked in Lebanon against Hezbollah for 18 years, it will likely work in Gaza. Not only does Israel not need to go into southern Gaza, going in will probably have the exact opposite of the desired result.
We have to face facts: some of hostages are not coming home without a colossally unfair prisoner exchange. It's just the name of the game. Let Hamas declare victory. 85% of Palestinians will realize at this point that any claim of victory is a thorough lie, including Hamas.
This is Israel: it's only a matter of months until they develop technology to monitor the tunnels.
In the meantime, I don't trust dozens of progressives for whom I have enormous affection. Many of them don't feel safe around people whom they think would not look out for their best interests, and now, I sure as shit don't feel safe around them. I'm no saint, but our friendship makes me feel dirty. The problems of Jews don't count for them. They excuse themselves by claiming you can separate Jews from Israel, and yet they don't. They hold the Jewish community responsible for its support of Israel. They say there is a conspiracy to support Israeli interests which they barely distinguish from the Jewish community. But they do exactly the same with the issues they care about.
On the other hand, Israel is going full speed ahead into a colossal, vengeful mistake. It was not a mistake to go into northern Gaza, but they've decimated the whole thing, pushed the entire population southward. It's enough. They're starting to make the Palestinian population starve to death, and now mean to push a million and a half people back into the north where they must starve amid the ruins. No words exist for a country that would do this except a state so dominated by military thinking that it's indistinguishable from an authoritarian dictatorship, and no word exists for people who'd willingly follow them except authoritarians.
How do you forgive a whole world that turns to evil?
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