A Statement on the Gaza War
C. Gourgey, Ph.D.
Imagine that your neighbor living in the house next to yours hated you and made no secret of it. That he proclaimed your property should rightfully belong to him. That he taught his children you are Godless and a liar and a cheat and worse than scum. That he spent years stockpiling weapons, rockets and rocket launchers and all manner of explosives, for the express purpose of using them to drive you out of your home. That he fired those rockets frequently, doing damage to your house and injuring, sometimes fatally, your family members. And finally, when he could no longer restrain himself, that he invaded your house, raped your wife, and kidnapped your child.
Would you sit back and do nothing?
October 7, 2023 was truly a bizarre moment in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it did not come out of nowhere. Israel faced an adversary that attacked its civilians for decades, showed no willingness to let up, and is an avowed genocidal threat. Yet it is only Israel being demonized and accused of “genocide.” Hamas barely gets a mention from those too willing to embrace the Palestinian cause.
Thus began the latest and most destructive Gaza war. There were four major Gaza wars preceding this one, every one of them ignited by Palestinian violence. The Jews whom Hamas and its supporters (and there were many) attacked on 10/7/2023 were mostly peace activists, Israelis who wanted to make life better for their Gaza neighbors, even taking many of them for hospital care when they were sick. It didn’t matter. They were Jews. And the religion the attackers professed taught them that Jews are less than human. They even quote the Qur’an to prove it, especially its reference to Jews as “descendants of apes and pigs.” They even believed that the slaughter committed on that October 7 was in accordance with God’s will.
In fact, Gaza itself was constructed very deliberately as a war machine for the express purpose of attacking Israeli Jews. Virtually all of Gaza’s imports were diverted into war preparations, including rockets and rocket launchers, explosives, and five hundred miles of tunnels for hiding terrorists and weapons and infiltrating into Israel. Instead of benefiting the lives of Palestinians, all those resources went into plans for killing Jews. That became Gaza’s primary reason for being. Gazan society even recruits its children for this purpose: its educational and religious systems poison these children’s minds from their earliest years, not only against coexistence with Israel but against Jews as people. Children are trained early on to hate Jews and reject compromise. This is documented fact. (See for example the research conducted by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education [IMPACT-SE].)
The news media today are reporting none of this. Instead, all we have been seeing are scenes of devastation in Gaza, and Palestinians suffering the effects of the war. It is no wonder that Israel is now demonized, both in the press and popular opinion. The suffering of the Palestinians is real. I have no wish to minimize it. I want to see it alleviated. I want this conflict to end. Now. But my concern in this article is not how to end the war, but how it is being reported. One-sided condemnation of Israel will not end this war. It will only prolong it. Because Israel, rightly, found this war a fight for its survival. And it is still ongoing. You don’t give in to external pressure when your very existence is at stake.
On “Genocide”
A word should be said about the use of the term “genocide.” Genocide means (or should mean) the deliberate liquidation of an entire ethnic or religious or national group. This is what Hamas attempted on October 7: to kill everyone in sight, old and young, male and female, except for the ones taken hostage. The campaign affected Israel’s southern region, but the intent was not to stop there. Coordinating with Hezbollah in the north and Iran in the east, the original plan was to extend the carnage to the entire country, infiltrating from north and south, then meeting in the middle. Fortunately Hamas acted impulsively, not coordinating efficiently with its partners, or the slaughter and destruction might have been unimaginably worse.
The popular press is not reporting this. It’s the part of the story people don’t think about. People see the devastation in Gaza and are outraged.But what people do not see, because it is underreported, is the devastation by Hezbollah in Israel's north, making that region of the country uninhabitable and displacing tens of thousands of people. There is truly a genocidal movement within the Muslim world aimed at Jews, but it seems no one is paying attention. The slogan “Globalize the intifada” reflects an intention to extend these attacks beyond Israel’s borders to Jews everywhere. What else could that slogan possibly mean? Yet the significance of this is largely being missed.
October 7 proved the lethality of the threat Hamas poses right on Israel’s border. How does one respond to such a threat? Is there a clean way to do it? Not in the real world. No war in history was ever fought cleanly. Mistakes will be made. Excesses will be committed. Israel’s cutting off humanitarian aid to Gaza for three months was inexcusable. Such things should be criticized, and in extreme cases even condemned. But with balance. With full awareness of the context. We should remember that not only did Hamas start this war, it threatened even worse to come as soon as the opportunity should arise. And we should ask what would happen to Israel had it remained passive and accepted the aggression.
In light of this, accusing Israel of “genocide” is a misuse of language. A genocidal campaign does not warn in advance which areas will be attacked, does not try to create safe passages for civilians, and does not displace people away from zones of the most likely maximum danger, as Israel has done. One may disagree with these measures Israel has taken to minimize civilian casualties; one may even vociferously object to them, but they do not constitute genocide. Hamas, as a matter of declared intention, goes after civilians, but is not subject to similar criticism. It is the same with Iran. In its war with Israel, it intentionally fired missiles at civilian targets, while Israel targeted military installations. Another unreported difference between the two sides.
Accusing Israel of genocide is dangerous. It puts Israel on an even lower moral level than Hamas, which is clearly unacceptable and contrary to fact. Whatever one may think of the IDF, it does not do to Palestinian civilians what Hamas and its allies do to Jewish ones. Not even close. (If you do not know what Hamas fighters did to Israeli civilians on October 7, please see my article “Religious Roots of Islamic Antisemitism” available on this web site.) The “genocide” label applied to Israel - and especially only to Israel, ignoring the actions and intentions of Hamas - is a blood libel used for antisemitic purposes: If Jews are no better than Nazis, then they deserve what the Nazis did to them. This is no exaggeration. This precise sentiment has been voiced in parts of the Muslim world, together with the slogan “Hitler should have finished the job.”
After October 7, 2023 the bitter irony of this misuse of language should be completely clear. The aim of Hamas is not to free the West Bank from occupation. The West Bank is hardly even mentioned. What is mentioned all the time is the “liberation” of “Palestine,” by which Hamas means all of Israel. The aim of Hamas, as proven on that October 7, is the genocide of Israel’s Jewish population. And yet Israel is the one accused of genocide. Words, too, can be used as weapons of war, especially if their meanings are twisted beyond reasonable sense.
We still need to address a new pressing concern: the unilateral and unconditional recognition of a Palestinian state by an increasing number of countries who want the world to think they are acting virtuously.
On the Recognition of a Palestinian State
One would have to be willfully ignorant not to realize what would happen if at this time in history a Palestinian state were established based on unilateral recognition with no conditions placed on Hamas and on Palestinian society. By now it should be clear what the slogan “Free Palestine” means: it is not “free the West Bank,” now occupied by Israel as the result of a defensive war. It means “Free Palestine” as Palestinians understand Palestine, which means all of Israel, which Hamas has explicitly stated belongs to the Palestinians and must be taken by force if necessary. The pro-Palestinian slogan says it all: Free Palestine “from the River to the Sea.” For those who may not be aware (and apparently many are not), this refers to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea - precisely the area in which Israel is situated.
A society that has institutionalized anti-Jewish hatred and is led by a truly genocidal organization, Hamas, backed by a fanatical, antisemitic religious cult, the government of Iran, will without a doubt make of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank what it made of Gaza. It will become another front in the war to eradicate the state of Israel. The West Bank is already full of weapons smuggled by Iran, ready to be used if the area acquires sovereign power. But, one might ask, what about the Palestinian Authority? Hamas would no more allow the Palestinian Authority a share of power in a unified West Bank-Gaza than it did in Gaza alone, when, refusing to share power, it chased out the PA in a violent civil struggle. An independent Palestinian state under current coditions will not bring lasting peace, but another war making the current conflict in Gaza look like a schoolyard brawl.
If any Palestinian state is ever established, it must not be before the Palestinians themselves agree to some basic and necessary principles. These would include agreeing to demilitarization, recognizing Jewish as well as Palestinian sovereign rights, and putting an end to anti-Jewish incitement in the Palestinian educational system. The failure to mention any such concessions in the current bid to recognize a Palestinian state, as well as the refusal to hold Hamas responsible for its actions, constitutes a reward to Hamas for the atrocities it committed on October 7. The message this sends is clear: if you want to gain acceptance in the international community, you can’t go wrong by killing Jews.
The One More Thing Needed
I mentioned earlier that a greater thing is needed, the one thing most noticeably absent in this conflict so far. And that is empathy. We must learn to affirm each other’s humanity. This applies to both sides. The Palestinian educational system must be reformed and completely overhauled, or it will continue to provide fuel for future conflict. Preaching hate in Palestinian mosques must become taboo. On the other side, settler violance against Palestinian civilians must be - and already often is - roundly condemend by Israeli society, and this must be followed by prosecution of the perpetrators. Israelis must also recognize that Palestinians are a real people with legitimate national aspirations.
It may not be possible to satisfy those aspirations now, not as long as Palestinian society continues to pose a lethal threat to Israel, which it still does despite popular impressions. That is the great tragedy of this conflict: it will have no solution until its spiritual roots are addressed and healed, and trying to impose a solution, such as unconditional recognition of a Palestinian state, will only make things worse. It will enable extremists on the Palestinian side to continue their unending quest to destroy Israel. Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas, has stated that if you grieve only the lost children on one side, your moral compass is broken. We need to take her words seriously.
In this war both sides have made mistakes and have committed actions that are unacceptable. But there is no moral equivalence between them. We need to remember how this war began. It was nothing less than an attempt by Hamas and its Palestinian sympathizers - and there are many - to destroy Israel’s Jewish population. And until that is recognized, those efforts will not stop. That is why unconditional recognition of a Palestinian state is a prescription for endless war - just the opposite of what the recognizers say they want.
If you want to know what Palestinians without constraints and conditions will do with a new Palestinian state, look at what they did with Gaza, turning it into a base of aggression against Israel. I still maintain that the root of this conflict is Islamic antisemitism, the motivation for the Palestinian rejection of peaceful coexistence over and over again, including the UN partition that would have given Palestinians a bigger state of their own than they can now hope to achieve. Blaming Israel exclusively or even primarily for this fiasco is a gross distortion of reality and a misrepresentation of history, and in my experience those who do so are unaware of much of that history.
The Wider Context
So far we have focused mainly on Hamas, the visible perpetrator of the October 7 atrocities. But it would be a mistake to stop there. Currently the real force behind the effort to destroy Israel is the Islamic Republic of Iran, and no less than Hamas it is guided by religious motives. Hamas is just one member of Iran’s network of proxies. There are many others, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, all actively supported by Iran. For more detail please see my article “What the Progressive Left Doesn’t Understand About Gaza,” also on this web site.
This network has a name. It is called the “Axis of Resistance,” meaning resistance to Israel’s existence, since it considers every inch of the State of Israel to be “occupied territory.” Until now, this network of proxies allowed Iran to fight Israel from behind the scenes, its role masked by the focus on Hamas. It was neutralized to some extent by Israel’s response to October 7, but is now trying to reconstitute itself. One-sided condemnation of Israel for the shape this war has taken completely ignores this dimension, presenting a distorted picture to the world that only exacerbates the conflict and can never contribute toward peace.
Antizionism and Antisemitism
The repeated accusation Jews face, that they are trying to deflect criticism of Israel by calling it antisemitism, has become such an automatic reaction that it now serves as a way of delegitimizing any mention of antisemitism even when it does exist. The antisemitic motives of the Iranian axis are clear, yet to mention this may bring objections of “Those Jews are always talking about antsemitism.” But without mentioning antisemitism this conflict cannot be understood.
First and foremost, it should be emphasized that criticizing Israeli policy is not antisemitic. Israel can and should be subject to the same kinds of criticisms as other countries, no more, no less. But that is not antizionism. Zionism is simply support of the existence of the Jewish state. Antizionism is the idea that Israel shouldn’t even exist. And that view is indeed antisemitic. It means throwing Israel's Jewish population to the mercy of a hostile Muslim majority with no means of defending itself. And where antizionism becomes dominant, anti-Jewish attacks are almost sure to follow.
Last year's campus demonstrations were indeed antisemitic in this and other ways. Not only could one hear calls for Israel's destruction, Jewish students who had nothing to do with Israel were also harassed and their movements restricted. And whenever the Israeli-Palestinian conflict flares up in the news, attacks on synagogues and Jewish businesses usually follow. The claim that antizionism has nothing to do with antisemitism is hollow and false.
Iran is in fact more invested in destroying Israel than in helping Palestinians. If that were not so, Iran would be pushing for Israel to make some accommodation with the Palestinians to allow them a state of their own. But neither Iran nor its proxies talk about a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Their interest is not a Palestinian state alongside but instead of Israel. Since they consider all of Israel to be illegally occupied, “end the occupation” does not mean establish a Palestinian state. It means end Israel and the sooner the better.
And so we see what antizionism leads to. Based on the insistence that Israel's existence as a Jewish state is illegitimate, it supports the elimination of that state, by force if necessary. And if we want to talk about genocide, the desire to eliminate the Israeli national identity, by force if necessary, is genocidal. The way that desire has been implemented by Palestinian extremists and by the theocracy in Iran is genocidal. The countless, repeated attacks against Israeli civilians since Israel's founding is genocidal. If anyone thinks Israel's efforts to defend itself are unacceptable, they need to suggest a better way. And that does not mean a way that makes it easier for those committed to antizionism to realize their intentions.
In Conclusion: A Challenge to Israel’s Critics
In any discussion of this type, I consider one basic assumption indispensable: Both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are legitimate national identities, and both have rights including the right to self-determination. An ideal solution would honor the rights of both, provided that each accept the existence of the other. So I would pose this question to Israel's critics: If your enemy demonstrated over and over again, through word and action, that it did not accept your right to exist, would you remain passive until it destroyed you? If not, then how would you fight an enemy whose fighters insist on hiding in the midst of civilian populations? Whether or not you agree with the decisions Israel has made, can you at least appreciate the moral dilemma that it faces? Or will you respond only with catchy slogans that play well in news bites but shed no light on the conflict?
That is all I am really asking for. Not agreement necessarily. Only some evidence that one really has studied this conflict and respects its complexities.
With God’s help true peace activists will arise, people on both sides reaching out to each other with respect for the other’s humanity and legitimate aspirations. There are already groups of people doing exactly this. Unfortunately, you are unlikely to hear of them in campus demonstrations or on the evening news. Perhaps we can lend them our support, in spite of the human tendency to prefer dwelling on blame and resentment rather than constructive cooperation. These people do exist. They just need more attention.