Don't Worry, I Suspected You Would Dodge My Question

If, on October 6th, 2023, you’d told me that I’d spend much of the next three months thinking and writing about the conflict in the Middle East, I wouldn’t have believed you. 

And if you’d told me that talking about this conflict would be harder, more emotionally charged, and more plagued with absolutism than my many conversations about trans rights or racial reckonings or Will Smith slapping Chris Rock in the face, I’d have told you that you were out of your mind.

But then October 7th happened.

Like many people, I was so horrified by Hamas’ atrocities, so dumbfounded that such hatred and cruelty was even possible, that I just kind of hunkered down for Israel’s response. Yes, it was going to be bloody. Yes, pundits and politicians would say and defend terrible things. But surely, inevitably, there would come a point when the exchange rate of Palestinian life would get too high for ordinary people to bear.

So I bided my time, I wrote about "wokeness" and political activism and why trans people are nothing like black people (y’know, the uncontroversial stuff), and I waited for that point to arrive. 

But after months of incessant bombing, after escalating violence in the West Bank (where Hamas have no control), after increasingly violent rhetoric from the Israeli government went unchallenged, it became clear that for a depressing number of people, that point would never come. 

There was no limit to the number of dead Palestinian women and children that some people would accept as retribution for those dead Israeli women and children. There was no stopping them from conflating ~30,000 Hamas terrorists, around 3000 of whom carried out the attacks, with the 2.3 million innocent people living in Gaza. There was never going to be a point where they were going to, “Enough.”

So in my article, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Genocide, I suggested that 10,000 children blown to pieces, with no clear military objective, is enough. I argued that just as Hamas’ atrocities couldn’t be considered “resistance”, infanticide on this scale couldn’t possibly be described as “self-defence.”

Sadly, Tom didn’t think those kids had had enough.

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Tom:

It stops when the Palestinians renounce violence, rid themselves of Hamas (either by themselves or by assisting Israel in doing so) and agree to stop supporting terrorists and join the society of civilized peoples.

Hamas is solely responsible for the deaths of all the children they are supposed to be looking after. If someone is trying to kill you and when you retaliate, they hold up a child in front of you, should you let them kill you?

I still remember the Palestinians dancing with joy after 9/11. Not much sympathy.

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Steve QJ:

“It stops when the Palestinians renounce violence”

Ah, okay, great. I agree with you. Violence is wrong. So let's say that happens tomorrow. Does Israel have to renounce it's violence too? Does it have to stop stealing Palestinian land and terrorising Palestinians civilians? Does it have to stop killing Palestinians in the West Bank (around 300 since October 7th, even though Hamas has no power in the West Bank and no attacks have been launched from there)?

I'm trying my best not to add to the noise around this issue, but God damn, arguments like these are so grotesquely stupid. I refuse to believe you're morally bankrupt enough to think that if someone in a country commits an atrocity, the injured party has carte blanche to slaughter as many of the innocent people from that country as they like.

And let's flip your question. If someone is trying to kill you, and they hold up a child in front of you, is it cool to just unhesitatingly kill the child? To shoot through them or beat them to death? Please, go ahead and answer this.

If it were your child, or the person you love most in the world, would you shrug your shoulders if the police just blithely killed them in a random hail of bullets that only clipped the criminal? Would you claim that the criminal was "entirely responsibile" for their death?

Because if I was given the choice between shooting an innocent child or risking being shot myself, I honestly don't think I'd shoot the child. I certainly wouldn't shoot 10,000 children. And I certainly wouldn't shoot any children before I tried things like giving back the land I stole from the people who live in that criminal’s country, or relinquishing my control over access to water and electricity and travel to the people who fight on his behalf. 

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Tom:

1947. 1993. 1995. 1998. 2000. 2008. These are when the Palestines were offered their own state and to share the land. They turned it down every time. They don't want peace. People claim the Jews are genocidal while they chant "River to the Sea". Who exactly is advocating genocide? Where do they expect the Jewish people to go? The same place every other Jew went after being chased out of every other Muslim country? The same place the Jews went during the 40s?

Do you hold the person who is forced to protect his life to a higher moral standard than the person shielding himself holding the child? I blame the person holding the innocent child in front of them. If the Palestinians put down their weapons and renounced violence, the war would be over. The world would rush in to help, Israel included. If the Jewish people did the same, it would be a bloodbath. There is only one way Israel can stop Hamas once and for all, and that is to completely crush them. Since Hamas chooses to use its own people as fodder and shields, that is on them, not the group trying to prevent another mass rape and murder of the people they have a moral duty to protect. At least one side acts morally towards its own people, instead of hiding in schools and hospitals. At least one side warns when an attack is imminent and gives time for civilians to get out of the hostile area, instead of gang-raping children and filming it to post on the Internet.

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Steve QJ:

“1947. 1993. 1995. 1998. 2000. 2008. These are when the Palestines were offered their own state and to share the land. They turned it down every time. They don't want peace.”

Seeing people bleat out this talking point without even thinking to consider what the Palestinians were offered makes me so sad for the state of critical thinking.

Notably, David Ben Gurion saw this clearer than any of the people making this argument today:

“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”

Now, for the record, I think they should “accept that” because Israel exists and will continue to exist and co-existence is the best way to avoid future deaths. But Shlomo Ben-Ami, the former Israeli Foreign Minister and a lead member of the Israeli negotiating team, said he would have rejected Camp David too if he were Palestinian. He also notes that it was the new Israeli government who walked away from negotiations after the deal had been agreed in principle.

And as I mention in the article, there has been a resolution before the United Nations for decades that follows international law, lays out the parameters and borders of a two-state solution (Israel has refused to officially define its borders and now seemingly rejects a two-state solution) and enjoys near universal support from member states. Including Palestine. This would involve a return to the 1967 borders and a right to return for Palestinians forced from their homes. Israel have turned this down every time. It seems they don't want to share the land either.

In fact, Netanyahu categorically refused a return to Israel's 1967 borders in 2011, even though all the land it's occupied since then is in contravention of international law.

And yes, Israel's heritage minister was advocating genocide when he claimed nuking Gaza was an option. Israel's defence minister was advocating genocide when he called Gaza's "human animals" and called for water and electricity to be shut off to the civilian population. Netanyahu was advocating genocide when he invoked Amalek in his fight against the Palestinians. In fact, Netanyahu stood on the floor of the general assembly and held up a map of Israel with Palestine completely erased. And this, by the way, was before October 7th.

From the river to the sea indeed.

Yes, we've all heard Netanyahu's wonderfully eloquent quote about Arabs putting down their weapons. And yes, it's largely true. The attacks, and especially the nature of the attacks, by Hamas and other terrorist group are indefensible.

But Netanyahu doesn't mention that the peace brought about by Palestinians laying down there weapons would mean right-wing Israeli settlers continuing to violently steal land in the West Bank and Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians in the process, while Israel refuses to stop it and, often, actively supports it. He doesn't mention that Palestinians would have to accept the daily mistreatment and discrimination they currently experience. He doesn't mention the well documented infringements of human rights in the occupied territories. So sure, if the Palestinians would just quietly accept it as their land is stolen and their rights are ignored, the war would be over!

Lastly. I see you've dodged my question (don't worry, I suspected you would), but I'll still answer yours: I hold every person to a moral standard where they do everything in their power to avoid killing children. Is that clear enough? Hamas deliberately failed to meet that standard. Israel is deliberately failing to meet that standard now.

Of course the person holding a child in front of them is evil. But if that criminal is hiding under a bed in a prison cell brimming with kids, and my solution is to haphazardly throw grenades into the room in the hopes of collapsing the bed on top of him, it's it possible that I'm a teensy bit responsible too? Even if that criminal wants to kill me? Is it possible that calling those kids “human shields” as justification for blowing them up, especially when I’ve blockaded them into that cell, is the most heinous, cowardly bullshit imaginable?

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Gaining a large (-ish) audience is many things.

It’s an honour, of course. The opportunity to hear from so many people, the knowledge that they believe in what you’re trying to do, is a heart-swelling privilege. It’s a responsibility too. Knowing that people have chosen to follow you, never mind to put their hands in their pockets and support you (thank you so much to everybody who does), is an act of trust that I will never take for granted. 

But to be perfectly honest, gaining a large audience is also a headache. 

The human psyche isn’t equipped to absorb the emotions and opinions of tens of thousands of people. Especially when a lot of those people are going to be very angry if you don’t see things as they do. 

But even this has its upside. Because that feedback encourages you to look deeper, which, in turn, increases the probability that you’ll tell your large audience the whole truth. Audience size and the pressure to tell the truth should, at least in an ideal world, grow together. 

Unfortunately, in our increasingly post-truth world, audience size often corresponds to a willingness to tell your audience what they want to hear. To ignore or trivialise any information that they don't like. And that would be a betrayal of the aforementioned trust and support you've given me. 

I’m well aware that some of my readers disagree with me very strongly on this topic. I’ve even lost a few, which I’m genuinely sad about. I’ve been called a Zionist and an antisemite, both far-right and “woke,” but all I really am is pro-peace. 

I’m pro-“Palestinian children getting to grow up instead of being slaughtered for atrocities they had nothing to do with”. I’m pro-“Israeli women living without fear of being raped, killed or abducted by crazed fanatics”. I’m pro-”ending this decades-long cycle of violence in ways that don’t require anybody to be wiped out”. 

The logistics of this are simple to explain, if not easy to execute.

As I said to Tom, there’s been a resolution on the floor of the UN for decades that is in full accordance with international law, requires no more bloodshed, and enjoys near-universal support from member states, including Palestine. And while it’s likely impossible to reason with Hamas (it’s impossible to convince people to stop hating you by bombing them too, by the way), it is possible to change the conditions that radicalise people to fight for them.

If there’s one thing I believed on October 6th and October 7th and will continue to believe for ever, it’s that almost everybody would rather live in peace and dignity than watch as their children are killed.

The problem, it seems, is getting people to agree on how much killing is enough. 

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