to understand politics you need to understand people (part 2)
stories from Gaza, interviews with Israeli journalists, & my concerns for the American left
pro-choice or anti-choice? pro-gun control or against? pro-Palestine or pro-Israel? the binaries of our political choices leave little room for complexity, but the gray area is increasingly where I find myself. and so I write in the hopes that others, like me, feel comfortable considering the nuances of their own politics. maybe they too will abandon the rigid binaries enforced upon us by political systems.
like folding layers of dough, I am constantly folding complexity into my views, and I worry about where I belong, politically. to add to my list of worries, I worry that the American left could become like the Israeli left, and we see where that has led Israel.
nothing, absolutely nothing, has bent my mind like the issue of Israel-Palestine. I am continually embarassed that it has taken me this long to engage with the subject (beyond superficial engagement in college), but I am finally here. if you, like me, have found yourself a curious newcomer to the topic, possibly drawn in by an interest in colonialism and history, and it has raised questions for you about your own politics, read on as I make meaning from my own feelings.
in part 1 of this series I wrote how the story of India’s Partition has felt, at times, like the history of India without Indians. in my last year of following the news on Israel-Palestine it has felt just that. the telling of a place without a people. decontextualized. and now with the air being squeezed out of Gaza, while we effortlessly breathe ours, it feels impossibly important to humanize those who are suffering and dying. after doing more research, I feel it is also crucial to humanize those who are resisting and have resisted, as well as those in Israel who are traumatized, grieving, alienated, and still believe in Zionism.
if there was ever a time for writing to reshape power, now is it. writers commonly opine on past genocidal wars but how sharp are our pens (and minds and hearts!) now? like a fog light swiveled into the night, what morality is captured in the headlights of our justice?
if you, like me, have found yourself a curious newcomer to the topic and it has raised questions for you about your own politics, read on as I make meaning from my own feelings.
to quote Arundhati Roy, how do we keep the idea of justice at the center of our conversations? I waited to write about the war because I needed to learn more. understand better. is it a war? a retributive genocide? modern colonialism? there were social justice influencers on Instagram who wrote daily about all this, but beginning to describe my own view felt too sudden for me. reactive and brash. and language is fluid and new meaning can easily be ascribed to words, and so I was cautious. cautious at saying “genocide”. unsure when to describe damage as “collateral” or “strategic”. unclear who is a “hostage” or a “political prisoner”. uncertain which authority can be trusted or mistrusted by default. and I am still cautious, not about condemning civilian death, but about who my writing aligns me with. given the vastness of the issue it is difficult to capture what I do and do not condone. who I do or do not support. but perhaps when we are most afraid, and befuddled, we are meant to write.
who are Gazans?
teenage dream
Shaaban al-Dalou wanted to be a doctor. as a child he was able to memorize the entire Quran. The New York Times captured a quote from him:
I’ve never felt anything more terrifying than the thought of the dead being absent. The human mind, with all its brain cells and all of its capacity to absorb and to create, is helpless in the face of this absence.
in third grade I couldn’t sleep at night when I, for no particular reason beyond reading too much Goosebumps, began ruminating on death. but I could always comfort myself knowing that the morning would bring daylight. my mom would wake me up and life would resume.
on Oct 14th, the day before his twentieth birthday, Shaaban was burned alive. a fire broke out after an Israeli strike on Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza. he died in the jaws of a monster I flee in my dreams.
the terror of his death did not go unnoticed. U.S. ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield stated, “I watched in horror as images from Central Gaza poured across my screen. Images of what appeared to be displaced civilians burning alive following an Israeli air strike”.
towards the end, Shaaban spoke less of leaving Gaza and more of leaving this earth.
a funny little family
I listened to this story on scenes of life growing up in Gaza. the author takes us into the playfulness and wit of her family. her mother, a skeptic of poets, and her father, a poet. she and her cousins adopt a golden pigeon and name it ‘Magic’. pressure builds as the men around her argue about Israeli occupation. then one day tanks roll into their street. life, and she, are never the same.
an amusing woman
I also listened to this cheeky story. while attending a post 9/11 “West and East dialogue” conference in Germany, the author, who is an Arab woman, is asked by a Western journalist if a man in her family might kill her. this leads her on a very wry description of all the men she’s related to and which ones might have enough free time to kill her.
I was struck by the dark satire of both writers. and to paraphrase them, this is what oppressed populations do. there is a humor that exists among them. an inventiveness of language.
one friend writes to another who has left Gaza for California
two friends. brothers. Ghassan Kanafani writes to his childhood friend Mustafa, who lives in Sacramento. Ghassan writes that his whole he life he thought he wanted to leave Gaza and now he finally has a chance to come to America. to green, lovely California. away from the “defeat and displacement” of Gaza. away from “a generation brought up to think a happy life was a kind of social deviation.” and then he tells his friend a story. about how he, Ghassan, went to visit his 13-year-old niece Nadia in the hospital. seeing her laying sickly in bed, he wanted to cheer her up, so he tells her he has brought her a brand new pair of red trousers. Nadia then gestures to her leg which has been amputated from the thigh down. she has no use for trousers.
Ghassan writes to Mustafa that he’s not leaving Gaza. “I won’t come to you. but you, return to us. come back to learn from Nadia’s leg, amputated from the top of the thigh, what life is. and what existence is worth. come back my friend. we are all waiting for you”.
connecting the people to a plan
two conversations I recommend for tying these human stories to the politics of Palestine are Building the Palestinian State with Salam Fayyad, which touches on the unsexy, under-reported work of creating a functioning government amid turmoil, and ‘This is How Hamas Is Seeing This’, where journalist Tareq Baconi provides context on Hamas. to further understand Hamas I also recommend this piece of investigative journalism where Hamas officials are interviewed post-Oct 7th.
the researcher and feminist in me could not read a positive framing of Hamas without also reading about the ghastly sexual violence that took place on Oct 7th.
I was at a party last weekend where a friend, with all the confidence in the world, stated ‘the main point to understand is that Hamas and Hezbollah are the arm of Iran”. I am repeatedly reminded that, what at times feels like a religious or ethnic struggle, or even two contending national struggles, also exists within the context of geopolitics.
what do I not understand about Israelis?
the people versus the state
in the same breathe that Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield condemned the killing of Gaza’s civilians, she spoke of Hersh Goldberg-Polin — a hostage recently executed by Hamas and malnourished at the time of death.
naturally, what I do not understand about Israelis, Zionism, and the Jewish diaspora could fill volumes. but what I am looking for in news reporting is clarifying insight into what led to the Oct 7th attack. how did Israel come under the rule of a right-wing party? what made it possible for Prime Minister Netanyahu to win in 1996, lose, and then win again and remain in power from 2009-2021 and 2022 until today?
what happens to a country governed by right-wing politics for more than a decade?
what are everyday Israelis thinking about? feeling? what are their thoughts on what is happening in Gaza? what is life like on the inside? as Ari Shavit, an Israeli journalist, says, we must make distinctions between “the government, the prime minister, the people, and the Israeli project”.
a lot of my learning is, for now, coming from The Ezra Klein show so let me share bits from the episodes I have listened to.
What Israelis Fear the World Does Not Understand
I am under no impression that this issue is not complex, a sentiment I have seen arise on the American left. I do not believe that because the Israeli point-of-view is over-represented, it has no place in the present conversation. also, are the Jewish people, especially those who fled Europe as refugees, not an oppressed group?
what is complex, for me, is knowing how much power (i.e. attention, air time, or recognition) to give which point-of-view, and I fear a lack of curiosity about the proverbial other side leads to the condition we Americans find ourselves in.
in the conversation between Ezra Klein and Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, they discuss the Israeli psyche. Halevi argues that Israeli Jews seek to be taken seriously by their Palestinian counterparts as indigenous, with equal attachment to the land. but accepting Israeli Jews as indigenous is accepting Zionism as valid. this exists, in some parts, in tension with the Palestinian belief in their ‘right of return’.
more than a year into Israeli bombs and drone strikes on Palestinian civilians, it is difficult to hold the idea that Israeli Jews feel unbearably vulnerable, yet this is exactly what Halevi says. “we will not survive as a people without the state of Israel” he says, solemnly. zoom out and look at the context of the Middle East. “the consequence [of an end to Israel] will be the effective destruction of the Jewish people”. assuming good-faith of Halevi and the sentiment he represents, what else could one conclude but that what we see unfolding are two desperate, fearful peoples reacting violently to one another?
the Israeli left collapsed after the second intifada, Halevi reminds us, and Oct 7th was worse than any of the intifadas. what happens to a country governed by right-wing politics for more than a decade?
what makes this issue complex, for me, is knowing how much power (i.e. attention, airtime, or recognition) to give which point-of-view?
The View from the Israeli Right
as Klein puts it, there is no left, left in Israel. there also appears to be no consensus view of reality. for example, just as some Pro-Palestinian people deny Hamas committed civilian brutalities on Oct 7th, Pro-Israelis deny settler violence (I see a case study waiting to be written on how the mere existence of unchecked mis/disinfo delegitimizes the veracity of real information on the internet).
according to Klein’s guest and political analyst Amit Segal, the concerns of the Israeli left shifted decade by decade:
in the 50s, 60s, and 70s they were for socialism and social justice.
in the 80s and 90s their focus was on bilateral agreements with Palestinians.
today, those who still believe in a two-state solution are considered center left, but post-Oct 7th many Israelis have lost hope in the idea.
it has been a long road to Netanyahu and, from what I can tell, everyone is to blame:
the left, whose job was no small task, and yet did not deliver on a two-state solution.
moderates, who’s political apathy and self-interest allowed the right to gain momentum.
the United States, which failed to broker peace.
I feel this issue is so similar to the U.S. where, between 2008-2016, Democrats failed to deliver a blend of policies and ideology that appealed to the working class and prevented a pro-working class candidate to rise. so here we are again. it is absurd yes, but it is not undeserved. to quote Shavit, Netanyahu is not only the sin, but he is the punishment.
ultimately, it seems to me what we need to understand most is the Israeli people’s need to feel safe in a broader geo-political context. according to Segal and Shavit, the country is far from done with war and will, in fact, gear up for more war against “the Iranian octopus, the Houthis, and terror threats from Jordan”.
to quote Shavit, Netanyahu is not only the sin, but he is the punishment.
Watching the Protests from Israel
listening to this conversation between Ezra Klein and Ari Shavit I couldn’t help but feel vindicated in my original thinking. Shavit passionately tells Klein:
this conflict is about history, identity, soul, feelings, humiliation, anger, and fear. it is about feelings… part of the failure of previous peace processes was they had economic dimension, strategic dimension. they never dealt with the deeper identity issues. you have to deal with them.
each event marks moments of trauma and fear for both peoples. Shavit implores that the October 7th “grief of Israelis needs to be taken seriously”. he goes on to explain the fundamental contradictions Israelis have been holding up until Oct 7th, a paradox that only heightened:
Zionism on one hand was a national liberation movement. on the other hand it was a colonialist enterprise. it intended to save the lives of one people by the dispossession of another. in its first 50 years Zionism strived to be democratic, progressive, and enlightened. with great sophistication Zionism handled the contradiction at its core.
he and Michael Walzer, a political theorist at Princeton, insist there is a stark difference between justified criticism of Israel and vicious criticism — in other words, that which questions the legitimacy of Israel. obvious as this statement sounds, as Israelis they oppose anti-Israelism and reject the notion that Israel is a settler-colonial state.
we ran away from white europe. we were not sent by white Europe… [besides] there is a larger context here… you have a Chinese-Russian-Iranian axis attacking what we believe in… this is the most intimidating Jewish moment in our lifetime, the most painful Palestinian moments in our lifetime, and one of the most dangerous global moments in our lifetime.
according to Shavit many leftist Israelis have shifted away from the two-state solution. but then what is to happen to the Palestinian people? Shavit has no answers.
at the vanishing point
I am fascinated by someone like Shavit who is both a self-proclaimed left-wing journalist and a defender of Zionism. who believes that “[Jews] are a universal tribe… with a universal vision and universal commitment… in recent decades Israel has gone into tribalism while diaspora Jews went into the universal. I think we should meet at this universal tribalism… universal values are at the core of our existence”.
Israel is, in their eyes, an extraordinary achievement and their only means of survival as a Jewish people. it seems to me that to believe in Israel is to believe in the safety of the Jewish people, and to attack the idea of Israel neglects the Jewish right to safety. if it’s anti-semitic to criticize Israel and it’s genocidal to not, where does that place me? who decides?