"Israel’s existence is all that protects the Jewish people from the next holocaust, from complete genocide. If Israel doesn’t exist, we don’t exist."
This seems to me to be flawed thinking which leads to sub optimal decsion making. Israel and Jews are not the same thing, and even the phrase "the next holocaust" creates the framework that then justifies the behavior which perpetrates the rise in anti-Semitism we have seen since the October 7th massacre.
There was another way to respond, one that would have saved ives and moved Israel closer towards what should be its goals; providing a Jewish homeland while remaining true to the basic truths and tenets of what Judaism is about at its core.
Sadly, and as the author correctly states, the Israeli government is woefully not up to this task, and after the policy decisions which led to October 7th, has thus far responded in all the wrong ways as well.
I can be anti-Israeli government without being anti-Israel, and I can certainly be either of those without being anti-Semitic.
I very much appreciated your essay, but have to agree with most of Jake’s comment above.
I think the very foundation of the flawed thinking to which he refers is the conflation of ‘Jewish people’ with Israel as a state, which of course behaves like other states, and often in ways that are very bad, sometimes deadly, for many people (first and foremost: a state serving as an occupying power that created and now maintains a system of apartheid). Israel the state, and plainly most of its Jewish citizens, would like the world to believe these two things are one and the same, but we should not be so confused. Founding the state as a homeland for Jewish people does not give that state or its citizens the right to then justifiably claim *all* land (the very explicitly plan of the Netanyahu regime and ideology of its racist right wing base) that historically was the homeland for Palestinians as well as their own, whether for reasons of ‘security’ (scare marks intended, as there can never ever be true security as an occupier) or faith (with a distorted history).
And about ‘from the river to the sea’ as calling for the genocide of Israelis… There can be no doubt that the phrase has been used sometimes as a call for one ‘Palestine’, a resistance to Israeli occupation, and yes, sometimes Israel itself. But we have to recognise it is now being used here in the States as a call for supporting the Palestinians in Gaza, who are now being subjected to what could reasonably be seen as a genocidal strategy (a perspective from an Israeli Holocaust scholar: uhttps://thepalestineproject.medium.com/yes-it-is-genocide-634a07ea27d4), with 35,000 dead with many thousands more likely to follow, whether by military violence or starvation. This horrible toll of death and destruction is what is driving so many into the streets to protest (no surprise here: many people just find it impossible to remain silent when thousands of children are being slaughtered). The ‘river to the sea’ call is really an effort to express support, in a few words, for all Palestinians, and to oppose the horror.
Finally, it is interesting to me that the original Likud party platform, from 1977, uses almost exactly the same ‘river to the sea’ language, only there demanding a greater Israel and thus the destruction of all Palestinian hope for sovereignty, their dream of a homeland of their own. It stated that ‘between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty’.
"Israel’s existence is all that protects the Jewish people from the next holocaust, from complete genocide. If Israel doesn’t exist, we don’t exist."
This seems to me to be flawed thinking which leads to sub optimal decsion making. Israel and Jews are not the same thing, and even the phrase "the next holocaust" creates the framework that then justifies the behavior which perpetrates the rise in anti-Semitism we have seen since the October 7th massacre.
There was another way to respond, one that would have saved ives and moved Israel closer towards what should be its goals; providing a Jewish homeland while remaining true to the basic truths and tenets of what Judaism is about at its core.
Sadly, and as the author correctly states, the Israeli government is woefully not up to this task, and after the policy decisions which led to October 7th, has thus far responded in all the wrong ways as well.
I can be anti-Israeli government without being anti-Israel, and I can certainly be either of those without being anti-Semitic.
Jake Schrader
I very much appreciated your essay, but have to agree with most of Jake’s comment above.
I think the very foundation of the flawed thinking to which he refers is the conflation of ‘Jewish people’ with Israel as a state, which of course behaves like other states, and often in ways that are very bad, sometimes deadly, for many people (first and foremost: a state serving as an occupying power that created and now maintains a system of apartheid). Israel the state, and plainly most of its Jewish citizens, would like the world to believe these two things are one and the same, but we should not be so confused. Founding the state as a homeland for Jewish people does not give that state or its citizens the right to then justifiably claim *all* land (the very explicitly plan of the Netanyahu regime and ideology of its racist right wing base) that historically was the homeland for Palestinians as well as their own, whether for reasons of ‘security’ (scare marks intended, as there can never ever be true security as an occupier) or faith (with a distorted history).
And about ‘from the river to the sea’ as calling for the genocide of Israelis… There can be no doubt that the phrase has been used sometimes as a call for one ‘Palestine’, a resistance to Israeli occupation, and yes, sometimes Israel itself. But we have to recognise it is now being used here in the States as a call for supporting the Palestinians in Gaza, who are now being subjected to what could reasonably be seen as a genocidal strategy (a perspective from an Israeli Holocaust scholar: uhttps://thepalestineproject.medium.com/yes-it-is-genocide-634a07ea27d4), with 35,000 dead with many thousands more likely to follow, whether by military violence or starvation. This horrible toll of death and destruction is what is driving so many into the streets to protest (no surprise here: many people just find it impossible to remain silent when thousands of children are being slaughtered). The ‘river to the sea’ call is really an effort to express support, in a few words, for all Palestinians, and to oppose the horror.
Finally, it is interesting to me that the original Likud party platform, from 1977, uses almost exactly the same ‘river to the sea’ language, only there demanding a greater Israel and thus the destruction of all Palestinian hope for sovereignty, their dream of a homeland of their own. It stated that ‘between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty’.
When I looked up "erudite" in the dictionary your picture was there. Thanks for this well-rounded discussion of the conflict.