We Need To Distinguish Between The People Making The Decisions And The People Living With Them

It’s hard to feel empathy for people who aren’t like us.

Humans, quite logically, are designed to take care of “their own” first, then their community, and lastly, if we feel safe and secure enough, the rest of the world.

So in my article, The One Weird Questions Israel’s Defenders Can’t Answer, I started by telling Ursula LeGuin’s, classic story, The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas.

For those who haven’t read it, the story is set in the idyllic city of Omelas. Everybody is happy, nobody is poor or sickly, there is peace and harmony and love everywhere. In short, Omelas is a paradise

But there’s one small problem.

The full price of Omelas’ prosperity is paid by a single child, locked in a windowless basement. In contrast to the rest of the people in Omelas, this child’s life is nothing but pain and suffering and misery. Not a moment of kindness, not a morsel of joy, not a glimmer of hope that one day they’ll be set free. In short, the basement is a living hell.

The good people of Omelas all know this is happening. But they ignore it, because they’re taught, from an early age, that this child’s suffering is absolutely necessary for their city’s survival. So they push away the empathy they have in every other aspect of their lives and ignore the misery their happiness is literally built upon.

But the story is called, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, because some of the citizens, despite the beauty of their city, despite the comfort and safety it provides, decide that it isn’t worth the cost.

Pluralus didn’t quite see the analogy I was making.

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Pluralus:

I'm a huge fan of empathy (really!) but it can also bleed over into projection pretty easily.

The difference is that true empathy allows us to understand what another person wants. Projection causes us to pretend that they want what we want.

Let me explain.

What most of us would want if we were raised in Gaza, under Islamic rule, going to Hamas-run schools, worshipping at more radically-styled mosques (as they have in Gaza) is the death of the infidels, and to drive them from Mulsim lands.

That's nonsense of course, but radical Islamists believe this with every fibre of their being.

So the idea that Hamas operatives, and maybe even most Gazans, want to "raise their children [with] rights and freedoms" could not be more wrong.

Religious extremism of any kind is about victory and obedience to Allah or whomever, not freedom. Freedom is anathema to true Islamists. (Vs. to regular Muslims who are not extreme and not Islamists and of course simply want to live a good life and worship in peace.)

Hamas doctrine is based off the teachings of Sayyid Qutb, who advocates martyrdom (death) in service of bringing the entire region under Islamic rule.

So THAT is what they want.

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Steve QJ:

“radical Islamists believe this with every fibre of their being.”

Quite funny that you begin by talking about projection and then write this.

How many of the people in Gaza have you spoken to? How much time have you spent, for example, watching the broadcasts of Gazan civilians on social media documenting their daily experiences? It is painfully obvious as I read this that the answer is "almost none" or "none."

Yet you confidently talk about them as if they’re all “radical Islamists.”

You do not need to go to a "Hamas-run school" to hate the people who have kept you in what is effectively a prison for your entire life. I will never understand why people who I know don't have brain damage can't see this obvious point.

If that kid in the basement grew up to hate and even kill the people of Omelas, would you put that down to some kind of education system? Would you assume that somebody had been sneaking into the basement when nobody was looking and telling him or her to hate?

Or would you think, just maybe, it had something to do with the appalling conditions they kept him or her in for their entire life??????

Sure, religious extremism is a problem. And Islam does seem more susceptible to it than other religions. But it's very hard to radicalise people who are free and happy and have something to lose. Maybe try giving the people in Gaza that before assuming they're all crazed genocidal monsters, eh?

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Pluralus:

I think we need to distinguish between the people making the decisions and the people living with them. I would not say "they're [regular residents] all 'radical Islamists'" but would say the decision makers in Gaza are.

My main point is not who's an Islamist. It's the assumption that this is a fight between two rational actors both seeking peace and stability. The reality is that one actor seeks martyrdom and Islamic domination (the leaders of Hamas).

To stop the war it would be great to just have a vote in Gaza. My guess is regular people would vote to release the hostages and push out Hamas in exchange for peace and security.

But there won't be a vote because Hamas runs Gaza and makes all the decisions. If anyone disagrees they can get into trouble there or even be killed.

Don't forget that it's not exactly Israel keeping people in bad conditions in Gaza. In fact, in 2005 Israel left Gaza completely (they even dug up the cemeteries and moved the bodies out of Gaza, back to Israel proper). So the conditions were reasonably good for a year or two (not perfect) then Hamas took over in 2007.

And all through this period Egypt (who used to run Gaza until 1967) also maintains a border and decides what aid and freedom of movement to provide.

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Steve QJ:

“I think we need to distinguish between the people making the decisions and the people living with them.”

God, wouldn't that be nice!

Wouldn't it be nice if Israel were willing to distinguish between the ~3000 terrorists who attack on Oct 7th and the ~40,000 Palestininans they've killed, the 100,000+ they're crippled, and the ~2 million they’ve made homeless?

Wouldn't it be nice if, in every conversation I have on this issue, I didn't have to repeatedly remind people that the Palestinian people are not Hamas, they are not "Radical Islamists," they are innocent people living with the decisions that Hamas made.

And god, I wish I could remove the word “perfect” from every Zionist's vocabulary on this issue. I even made a reference to this in the article. Would you be satisfied if I said that Hamas' conduct on October 7th wasn't “perfect”? Or if I argued that their original charter's stated intention to kill all Jews isn't “perfect”?

Conditions in Gaza were appalling. Here's Ariel Sharon, prime minister during the Gaza withdrawal, describing the conditions:

“We cannot hold on to Gaza forever. More than a million Palestinians live there and double their number with each generation. They live in uniquely crowded conditions in refugee camps, in poverty and despair, in hotbeds of rising hatred with no hope on the horizon.”

See how much more honest this is than “not perfect”?

Israel imposed the blockade in 2007, shortly after Hamas won the election. But conditions were still terrible in Gaza before that.

Israel removed 8,000 settlers from Gaza during the disengagement (for almost entirely self-serving reasons) and moved over 15,000 settlers into the West Bank the same year. The Palestinians continued fighting because Gaza wasn’t some kind of wonderful gift from which they could build a state, it was an overcrowded refugee camp that was thrown at them to halt the peace process and justify the continued theft of the West Bank.

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I suspect the final paragraph of my response to Pluralus will have raised a few eyebrows, so let’s address that first.

In a 2004 interview with Haaretz, Dov Weisglass, senior adviser to then-president Ariel Sharon, explained the thinking behind the Gaza disengagement plan:

The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.

The Gaza withdrawal was not an act of altruism.

But let’s address something else too; Hamas are not children living meekly in a basement. Hamas are terrorists who chose to kill civilians who had nothing to do with the Palestinians’ plight and who had no power to change it.

My, and I think millions of other people’s, objection to this war has never been Israel killing terrorists. It has always been the collectivisation (and thereby, collective punishment) of everybody in Gaza.

And the writing was on the wall for this incredibly early on.

On the 9th of October 2023, the Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, advocated cutting off electricity, wood, water and fuel to all 2 million people in Gaza, describing them as “human animals.”

On October 28th, Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech in which he counselled the Israeli people to “remember what Amalek has done to you.” Amalek, for those not up on their Old Testament, is a biblical city that God commanded Saul to “totally destroy”:

Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

On November 5th, the Israeli Heritage Minister, Amichai Eliyahu, claimed that nuking Gaza and its 2 million inhabitants “was an option.”

Footage posted in December showed IDF soldiers facing and singing that their slogan was “there are no uninvolved civilians” in Gaza.

And here we are, a year later, and 95 Israeli hostages are still languishing in Gaza, over 41,000 Palestinians are dead, over 16,000 of them children, Hamas is still in power, and Israel isolates itself further from the international community with each passing day (not to mention the potentially existential war Netanyahu is dragging it into).

There are many ways to view the cost of all the above.

Empathy for the Palestinians is one way, and has come to be known as the “pro-Palestinian” view. Concern for the remaining hostages and the Israelis “living with Netanyahu’s decisions” is another. Self-interest over the potential World War that Netanyahu is dragging us into is a third (also known as sanity).

Because no matter where you stand, no matter what you want, no matter whether your priority is Israel or Palestine or just humanity, there is no way Israel’s current course of action is worth the cost.

It’s long past time to walk away.

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