Israelis are not Moral Monsters

And those who issue that accusation are moral and intellectual pygmies

Last week Trump proposed a plan for Gaza. It was a wild speech and it was completely unclear what he meant. Was he talking about providing options for Gazans who want to leave, or forcibly relocating even those who want to stay? Was he talking about a temporary relocation or a permanent relocation? Who on earth would make any of this happen, and how?

Let’s put those questions aside for the moment, along with the observation that whatever he was proposing, it’s almost certainly not going to happen. (And anyone who believes that it is going to happen is dangerously deluding themselves.) What I want to focus on is the reactions.

The general reaction outside Israel was one of shock and horror, while the general reaction in Israel was one of surprise and joy. Those who reacted with shock and horror included many religious Jews. And those in Israel who reacted with surprise and joy included many people who are generally very liberal. Legendary human rights activist Natan Sharansky had the following to say:

“Many people see “out of the box thinking” of Trump about changing the future of Gaza by resettling the Gazans, improving their life conditions, and rebuilding Gaza, as something absolutely unrealistic and out of touch with reality of the Middle East.

“With all my doubts and fears, I think this “crazy” idea is much less crazy than the idea of:

“The Oslo Accords – if we bring ruthless dictator Arafat from Tunis to Ramallah and give him enough land, money, and weapons, without a Supreme Court, human rights organizations, and free press, he will defeat Hamas and live with us in peace and security. (In the words of our prime ministers Itzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres)

“Or the idea of the Disengagement – we will leave Gaza, build the fence between us, and with one shot from their side, we will destroy them, and the world will be fully on our side. (I quote Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from our conversations)”

I think that different people can have very different opinions on Trump’s plan, especially given its ambiguity. But what I cannot accept was the blanket insistence by some religious Jews that the plan is collective punishment, and/or is equal to ethnic cleansing, and therefore by definition is not only against international law but also unquestionably utterly immoral, and therefore there’s nothing to even discuss. And what I found absurd was comparing this to Ben Gvir, who had a framed photo of Baruch Goldstein in his living room and is apparently fine with deliberately killing any Arab, as are some of his supporters. And what I found deeply disappointing was that some of these Jews speaking out against Trump - fine people, intellectuals, even some friends of mine - accused the Israelis supporting the plan of being morally depraved. And what I found appalling was statements such as “If you justify this, then you’re also justifying all the ethnic cleansing of Jews that was done around the world - after all, the perpetrators of those persecutions also believed that it was necessary! You’re no better than them!”

I was so horrifed by these responses that on Thursday night I dashed off a post in response on Facebook. My most popular posts on Facebook have generally gotten around a dozen shares. This one has so far been shared nearly four hundred times. Clearly, I was voicing something that many people felt needed voicing. So here it is, in a little more elaboration. And if you disagree with me, then perhaps you should pause, take a step back, and think about whether the enormous number of people from across the spectrum who agree with me might realize something that you don’t.

Let’s summarize the situation in Gaza, and point out what all these people are not taking into consideration.

The Gazans voted Hamas into power. This authoritarian regime launched an attack in which participants deliberately and gleefully raped girls and cut their breasts off, butchered and beheaded people, burned entire families alive, and kidnapped and physically and psychologically tortured men and women of all ages, including the elderly and even babies. They called the relatives and friends of the victims as they were doing it, they livestreamed it and felt no shame. The leadership vowed to do it again and again, and is sworn to the genocide of Israel. And they don’t even care how much damage they suffer in response. They are declaring the last 16 months, with 50,000 dead and Gaza largely destroyed, to be a victory, and are recruiting new followers. They never surrender, no matter what. Their strategy is to maximize civilian casualties even on their own side in order to cause severe political and economic (and ultimately military) damage to Israel. They spent years tightly embedding an entire terrorist infrastructure into civilian towns, including hundreds of miles of tunnels, using civilian aid for military purposes, with nobody stopping them. There is simply no parallel to this anywhere else in the world and at any other time in history. And there is no way to destroy Hamas without causing massive civilian casualties and enormous destruction.

Endless tens of thousands of Gazans cheered Hamas on and assisted it. Surveys show that Hamas has considerable opposition, but also widespread support. Those who oppose Hamas clearly lack any power to overthrow them. And just because they oppose Hamas’ suicidal strategy, this does not mean they are not in favor of more productive ways of destroying Israel. There are some Palestinians in Gaza who would be happy to live alongside Israel in peace, but they seem to be few and far between. The entire culture is built around hating Israel and wanting to genocide the Jews, who they firmly believe stole their land and have no right to exist in Israel (which, incidentally, is also largely true for Palestinian culture in the West Bank). And nobody knows how to change that culture.

There is simply no parallel to this anywhere else in the world, even at any other time in history. But if this did happen to any other country in the world, how do you think that country would respond? What they would do about an enemy that is sworn to do this again and again, with no care about how much harm they themselves suffer in the process, and there being no clear way to change it?

Many countries would want to simply annihilate the Gazans. Some would go ahead and do it. Even Germany and Japan first had to be fully defeated until the leadership surrendered (which with Japan required nuclear weapons) and then a Marshall Plan which required intense international effort over many years - which the international community here will not support, because most of them agree with Hamas’ objectives!

Israel is faced with this horrible, terrible enemy right on its doorstep. The international community will not help Israel do what needs to be done, and will even condemn Israel for defending itself. No other Arabs - not the PA and not anyone else - are going to fight Hamas, eliminate them and deradicalize Gaza. Nobody knows what to do.

And then Trump, in typical Trump style, breaks norms (as he did in moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which experts said would set the Middle East on fire, but which did nothing of the sort). He presents a vision, however unrealistic, about Gazans moving or being moved elsewhere (particularly into countries that are actually historically and ethnically part of historic Palestine) and leading normal lives, as happens with millions of other refugees who are fortunate enough to escape conflict and be resettled. Is it not completely expected and appropriate that Israelis were thrilled that the leader of the free world is suggesting doing something different, a new way of thinking that might actually be a solution, that might ultimately not only make Israel safe and destroy the horror of Hamas but even make a better life for the Palestinians, that could avoid endless bloodshed on both sides?

Even if the Trump plan means forced population transfer, this is something that under extreme circumstances and with certain qualifications can be justified and has been justified. The global community declared it a war crime in 1949 after it had been endlessly done with terrible results and in horrible ways and for no justification, but conveniently and naturally it was only declared unacceptable after Europe had already managed to stabilize its countries. The partition of India in 1947 involved the forced population transfer of twenty million people - Hindus to India, and Muslims to Pakistan. It involved tremendous suffering, but was designed to avoid an even more devastating civil war. Was it a good idea? The pros and cons can be discussed. But it certainly can’t be condemned outright merely because it involved population transfer. As noted in the paper that I cited previously, Europe accepted the deportation of Sudetenland Germans as being a legitimate extreme measure under extreme circumstances (which were actually vastly less extreme than the circumstances today, since by that point the war was over).

The phrase “ethnic cleansing” only came into usage after all the population transfers of the 1940s, in the 1990s; it layers the notion of racism onto something that in the case of Gaza has nothing at all do with race. As a friend of mine - someone of an extremely liberal and gentle disposition - said, “I can’t speak to legal precedents, but it’s not ethnic cleansing when we’re not removing Arabs or Palestinians from other areas, when the sole rationale has zero to do with ethnicity and entirely to do with an out-of-control, poisonously murderous society literally at our doorstep committed to our destruction even if it kills them.”

Forced population transfers happen all the time, in various ways, often with international approval, whether it’s Israel forcibly removing Jewish communities from Gaza, or Israel pushing Palestinians out of northern Gaza in order to eradicate Hamas. Much of the world wants to force Israel to remove the Jewish population from the West Bank (or even from Israel proper). Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that “the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.” This is with certain qualifications, which may or may not be applicable here; but the point is that there is no legal absolute and certainly no moral absolute. And it’s not collective punishment, because it’s nothing to do with revenge or punitive action.

Yes, forced population transfer involves innocent people suffering terribly, which is why it is something that on principle and in general we should oppose very strongly, but it all depends on the circumstances. War itself is the same; it inevitably involves the suffering of innocent people, which is why in general we are very strongly against it, and we certainly try to minimize the suffering experienced by innocent people, but this doesn’t mean that every act of war which will involve terrible harm to civilians is automatically unjustifiable. Sometimes it’s an unacceptable amount of harm to innocent people, and sometimes it’s acceptable and inevitable and necessary given the circumstances, and sometimes there is legitimate disagreement and debate. Every case needs to be evaluated on its own merits; there is no such thing as saying that collective harm is automatically wrong.

It is deeply offensive and frankly ridiculous to compare Trump’s plan, whatever it is, to the expulsions of Jews (or other nations) over the millennia, which happened for no justifiable reason whatsoever. You might as well say that mass killing is wrong, and therefore people who fought in World War II and bombed Germany were no better than Nazis who killed Jews. I don’t think that Israel or Jews should necessarily be publicly advocating for Trump’s plan, because its details are unclear, and the fact is that most of the world is incapable of realizing that this is not a crime of ethnic cleansing, and it will never happen anyway. But we should not be protesting Trump and we should not be condemning Jews who consider it an acceptable final resort.

Israelis are traumatized. And Israel is in a horrible situation, facing a terrorist entity of a sort which has almost never been seen, while being under enormous international pressure from countries which either hate Israel or which enjoy the luxury not to have to fight existential wars against suicidal enemies. This is an incredibly complicated and difficult situation which nobody knows how to solve. It is not a time to be making blanket statements about laws that were created under very different circumstances and whose application to this situation is unclear at best, and certainly not blanket statements or silly analogies about morality.