Center Rhetoric

I thought for a long time about what to write for this blog, or whether to write it at all.  The war so consuming and upsetting that taking the effort to then dive in and dissect it is an act of masochism.  In this charged moment, there are also consequences to expressing any viewpoint.  Jon Stewart put it the best.  I also have been reading a lot of pro-Palestinian news sources, and I empathize deeply.  It is easy for any viewpoint to seem ridiculous when faced with enough of the other side’s logic.  But I’m an American living in Tel Aviv during a war against Gaza, and I feel it’s my imperative to say something.  The best I can offer is a crystallization of my private thoughts, and that’s what you’ll find recorded below.

In the last week I’ve been glued to the news and stressed like every other person in Israel, but I don’t want to harp on the exhaustion of war, the rocket threats, even the fact that I have several close friends over in Gaza.  If you read the news, you’ll know that the Gazans are suffering by far the worst in this conflict, and to pretend that Israelis suffer in a like manner would be disrespectful, whatever the cause.  What has struck me and stressed me the keenest in all this, and what I do want to focus on, is the international response.  It’s as if the world has gone Dracula.  Analysis and comprehension aren’t sexy enough, and people want blood.  This is nothing new I suppose, but I don’t believe I was ever close enough to a conflict to realize it as starkly as in this war.

I began on my current train of thought by wondering why outside of Israel there have been mass riots, protests, anti-Semitic attacks, and declarations for Jews to apologize for the actions of Israel.  Is this related to the true crimes of Israel, to any sort of reality?  To me, the answer is obvious, and requires just a short read of the week’s headlines.  

ISIS, the supposed new ‘caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria, murdered 270 Iraqis just three days ago, in addition to forcing out on pain of death one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, executing people in supposed shariah trials, sexually harassing women and forcing them to stay in their homes, and generally pillaging the countryside.  They have certainly killed more than Israel during this latest conflict, and on no better grounds; they have terrorized some millions as well.  I hate to even compare Israel to ISIS, but I do it only to emphasize that no matter one’s politics, one cannot reasonably argue that Israel is being any more immoral than them.  Yet Israel gets worldwide protests, and ISIS doesn’t.

The rest of the news in past days is no prettier.  A few hundred people were killed last week in Syria, adding mere dribbles to the ~130,000 reportedly killed since the start of the 3-year civil war.  This includes >15000 children.  Where are the protests against the various armed groups (including ISIS and the Syrian government and others) who are causing these murders?  In Ukraine, a plane was shot out of the sky, killing 290, at the alleged fault of Russian separatists.  Where are the protestors there?

I think it’s clear, then, that level of atrocity in Gaza is not the reason for mass worldwide protests against Israelis and Jews.  What, then, is?

We all view the world through a fisheye, putting disproportionate value on our own life and our kin.  However, we are also capable of activating a logical mind, which makes better decisions when faced with complicated or ambiguous data.  This duality is often adaptive, but fails when we deal with issues with many human, emotional, and material factors, such as the war between Israel and Gaza.  In fact, the distractibility of our logical side can be and is exploited by the media, because emotional triggers draw greater impact than facts.  Worse even is that when we try to do cold accounting, we usually look at facts that support our predetermined beliefs, and we can be truly convinced that we are being totally objective when in fact we are not.  Most people feel they are fairly objective; practically nobody is.  I believe this illusion of objectivity is a major culprit for people's self righteous condemnation of Israel.

It is the fisheye that produces some of our most beautiful sentiments, but also that fuels Anti-Semitism and racism.  You cannot fire up rioters with cold statistics; you can, though, with graphic images of dead children, because they remind you of your children.  The media loves this trick.  In fact, I have no idea how to fight against this -- more measured and nuanced media won’t do it, because people will only read what is exciting, and will put the careful analysts out of business.  Especially with the dominance today of social media, there is a race to the bottom, with the most sensational items also garnering the most impact.  In general, when confronted by a morally ambiguous landscape, it is easier to latch onto a single person’s clear narrative than to decipher some complicated data.  Of course, to any one Gazan or Israeli whose family members were threatened or killed in the conflict, the narrative is as distorted as their own fisheye.  Empathizing with a sufferer’s story is an easy way to make a moral call, but it is often far too simplistic. 

Aside from that, there’s an attractive narrative to the pro-Palestinian cause, kind of a David vs. Goliath story.  The third world underdogs are being overpowered by the Zionist Western Puppets.  Particularly for Arabs and Muslims who feel disenfranchised by their unwelcoming European homes, or by their own corrupt leaders in the Middle East, this symbolic war between their culture and the Zionist entity appeals deeply to the fisheye’s victim mentality, and allows transference of the shame of a person’s own daily indignities into hate towards an enemy.  If you are a Middle Eastern Arab, hating ISIS or your own Arab government can have consequences that are confusing or even dangerous; hating Israel has none, and in fact puts you in line with most of your countrymen.  

I believe this same set of reasons underlie much of the Western response to Israel/Palestine, versus its underwhelming response for other atrocities such as the war in Syria.  In Syria, it is Arab vs. Arab (making it confusing for Westerners to begin with), and it is not easy to determine who the ‘good’ guys are, no matter how you define ‘good.’  If you are to protest, who do you protest against?  A Western aggressor is also easier to blame than an Arab aggressor in the Middle East, for to a Western observer, he is more understandable.  But people forget that a David vs. Goliath narrative is only a narrative, and that the true situation in Israel/Palestine is not a narrative but a collection of facts, equally as nuanced and complicated as any other. 

I guess that what I've described so far is a somewhat standard explanation for why people get so riled up by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  But I personally feel that there is another, more hidden explanation, at least among the demographic of young, Western, educated audiences that I know well.  To these folks, there is something alluring, almost even erotic, about the Palestinian cause.  I noticed this first in college, when I attended many lectures, talks, and gatherings related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Aside from thoughtful centrists and curious onlookers, there were extremists on both sides who attended these events.  I was equally struck by pro-Israeli bigots who didn’t recognize the humanity of Palestinians, and by the pro-Palestinian zealots whose life missions seemed to be the destruction of Israel.  But the two types of extremists had different vibes.  There was something sexy and enigmatic about the pro-Palestinians.  These were not white-bread Americans, like the politico types who manned the ranks of the pro-Israeli contingent.  They were hip, and the pro-Israelis were square.  The pro-Palestinians hung out in cool dens, secret haunts, the most hipster places, mixing with internationals.  They were edgy, perhaps dangerous.  They had a spark in their eyes.  Their carelessly slung Keffiyehs, eclectic, thrift shop outfits, whispered Arabic greetings, marked them with a style, a class, a whiff of exoticism.  Simply put, it was cooler to support Palestine.  You felt that these kids hung out in that underground bar that doesn't even have a sign over the door.  I believe that the same forces are at play nowadays in social media.  Everyone wants to be in the in crowd, and young, empowered, beautiful Palestinians activate something indescribable for young Westerners who are in search of a cause.

Well, these are my observations, anyway.  Israeli friends of mine I’ve spoken to about it disagree.  But I wonder if American or especially European friends of mine would also see this allure.  There must be a reason for disproportionate outcry against Israel, there must be.  Blaming it on anti-Semitism is too simplistic for me; I see anti-Semitism as a symptom, not a cause.

My final thought is this.  If we are to be honest and to try and be truly objective, then how much value should we attribute a human life, a maiming, or an attempt at a human life, in judging one atrocity versus another?  How, for example, can we judge unsuccessful attempts of Hamas to kill Israeli civilians versus the accidental killings of Palestinian civilians in attempts to root out Hamas operatives and infrastructure by Israel?  (Even if you believe that Israel kills Palestinian civilians on purpose, which I think is not true, then you can still do an accounting).  As we know, it is much more attractive to support a nation that is suffering than a nation that has taken major pains and measures and thus prevents the death of its people.  But this logic would imply that Israel should merely have avoided using its sirens and Iron Dome, thus allowing Hamas rockets to kill its citizens, in order to gain the moral justification it needed to fight back.  This is obviously absurd.  With barely any Israeli injuries or deaths due to Hamas attacks, can Israel then morally justify a massive ground invasion, killing hundreds and injuring thousands?  Obviously the question is charged, but my point is that it’s not trivial in either direction.  People should think a bit before they condemn.

I have not even gotten into the much, much more complicated issue of who intended what, who actually wants peace and who wants just to inflict pain and death, what happened in the past, and how we can move forward to a better future.  All I wanted to do in this post is explore why it is that there is so much virulent anti-Israel, and even worse, anti-Semitic, sentiment around the world right now.  This is a war that is not morally simple, and there are plenty of other horrible things going on that people could protest.  It saddens me to see this outpouring of ill-informed hatred, just as it saddens me to see the suffering of Gazans themselves.  That being said, my own fisheye lens comes into play every time we have sirens in Tel Aviv or I feel my building shake from Iron Dome interceptions.  Living in Israel, it is not hard to understand why rational, ordinary people eventually say enough already, and just want whatever it takes to have quiet, if not peace.  

But alas, I fear that lines of thought such as mine are too boring to compete with all the rhetoric.  This blog will be forgotten with the next image of a bleeding child, if anyone even bothers to read it at all.

Related Posts:

The Map of Fear (maps here, from this war)

Precipitous war

Beyond Rockets (maps here, from the last war)

Fajr Fajr, burning bright