Narrative and Reality 3

We live in narrative and in reality. Increasingly, I’m not sure where one begins and the other ends.

In Bret Stephens’ article, “Why Israel Won the War,” Palestinians are represented by Yahya Sinwar, the assassinated leader of Hamas and architect of Oct 7.

Sinwar became a brutal man who was willing to do inhumane things to Israeli Jews and even to his own people, if they colluded with Israel. David Remnick of The New Yorker did a profile of Sinwar last year, entitled Notes From Underground. If you are curious about radicalization, Remnick’s article is worth your time. Sinwar did not have to become a brutal man.

The only mention of the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza occurs when Stephens notes: “For all this [Israel’s successes], there’s been a heavy price. A shattered Gaza, with many thousands of civilian deaths and terrible suffering for those trapped in the crossfire.”

Many defenders of Israel either explicitly or implicitly equate all Palestinians of Gaza with the actions and ideology of Hamas. In this way, all Palestinians become guilty, culpable for the massacre carried out by Hamas and other Palestinian militants. I want to believe that this is not Stephens’ intent, but it is the effect.

Orly Noy, on the other hand, is able to see the full humanity of the Palestinians of Gaza. She is haunted by the reality of their humanity. But Noy is unique amongst her Jewish Israeli neighbors, most of whom are not troubled by the suffering of Palestinians. They are, in fact, the ones inflicting violence upon Palestinian men, women, and children.

What Israel is doing in Gaza City is not the tragic byproduct of chaotic events on the ground, but a well-calculated act of annihilation, executed in cold blood by “the people’s army” — that is, the fathers, sons, brothers, and neighbors of us Israelis.

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Who are these obedient souls who keep this system running? How can a society so deeply fractured — between the religious and the secular, settlers and liberals, kibbutzniks and urbanites, veteran immigrants and new arrivals — unite only in its willingness to slaughter Palestinians without a moment’s hesitation?

In Noy’s piece, Israeli Jews are not primarily the victims of violence, they are the perpetrators of violence. Sadly, this is where Noy’s analysis and Stephens’ analysis agree: Israel has proven, through overwhelming violence and cruelty, that it is a nation to be feared. The problem for Noy is that, she, an Israeli Jew, is also afraid of Israel.

Israel is unleashing a holocaust in Gaza, and it cannot be dismissed as the will of the country’s current fascist leaders alone. This horror runs deeper than Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich. What we are witnessing is the final stage in the nazification of Israeli society.

The urgent task now is to bring this holocaust to an end. But stopping it is only the first step. If Israeli society is ever to return to the fold of humanity, it must undergo a deep process of denazification.

Noy recognizes that Israelis have lost touch with their humanity. The will of Israeli society is to make Palestinians suffer, and this cannot be ignored.

Denazification must also include the recognition that what was cannot remain. It will not be enough to simply replace the current government. We must abandon the myth of Israel’s “Jewish and democratic” character — a paradox whose iron grip helped pave the way to the catastrophe we are now immersed in.

This deception must end with the clear recognition that only two paths remain: either a Jewish, messianic, genocidal state, or a truly democratic state for all its citizens.

The Gaza holocaust was made possible by the embrace of the ethno-supremacist logic inherent to Zionism. Therefore it must be said clearly: Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end.

The power of Noy’s analysis is its simplicity. Zionism has always been unjust due to its “ethno-supremacist logic.” It is not surprising that a state founded upon the logic that some people deserve more rights than other people would become genocidal. Zionism must end. A truly democratic state for all, Palestinians and Israelis, is possible, just, and urgent.

There is only one basis upon which justice and peace can be created, and that is equality. Rashid Khalidi outlines this clearly in his 2020 book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.