Interesting read. It seems plausible to me, that overly justifying oneself most often leads not to understanding but to further condemnation, as happend with many victims of cancel culture.
“We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody’s examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to.”
My goodness. That is clarity. I wish more of us in the West could put ourselves in the shoes of Israelis and see this truth. Israel has nothing to apologise for. However, I know that your humanity is the best of you, and that is, fundamentally, why you did not raze Gaza to the ground on 8th October. You cannot turn yourself into the nation that could have done that, because you are a truly moral people, surrounded by murderous fanatics and immoral criminals. That is your curse, to be better than your enemies. I do not ask it of you, but I believe you ask it of yourselves.
Let’s be clear. Hasbara = relentless state-sponsored propaganda.
I know of no rational human who denies the nightmare of what happened on 10/7 and fails to condemn it. And almost all of us would be pleased if Hamas somehow magically just disappeared.
But way too many people, including the entire Hasbara machine, refuse to accept that 10/7 didn’t happen in a vacuum and examine Israeli culpability in creating and sustaining Gaza as what has long been defined as an open air prison, full of stateless refugees whose ancestors were forcibly driven from the land just across the border into Israel. Palestine was never “a land without people for people without land”, which was a foundational basis for Israel.
It is often said that Hamas is the elected government of Gaza. That is as far off base as saying that the thugs who who dominate the exercise yard in a big prison are the democratically elected leaders of the prison population. Do the people of Gaza like Hama better than they like an entity that yesterday killed 9 of the 10 children of a Gazan female physician? Probably yes, but the vast majority of people in Gaza would like both of those entities to disappear from their lives.
Sadly, what Israel has done over the past couple of years has insured the existence of a population of two million people who have all witnessed their closest family members and friends being blown into pieces in the most violent ways possible. The Gaza Holocaust will no more be forgotten by them and the international community than the European Holocaust. One doesn’t have to look far online to find numerous videos of Israelis, including rabbinical scholars, who come right out and say that all of the children in Gaza must be killed lest they grow up and remember what has happened there.
The inconvenient truth is that the extreme right wing now controls all political momentum in Israel. We have all known that the two state solution has been dead for 30 years and it’s now obvious that Israel will push for a single state extending from the river to the sea (remember when we were told that references to that phrase were genocidal?). Sadly for Israel’s prospects as a “Jewish state” this single state will effectively make that impossible since it will have as many citizens who are not Jewish as Jews. The rationalization that extreme ethnic preferences, apartheid and, eventually, ethnic cleansing are “OK because God said so” won’t hold much water where rational humans are concerned.
We are all primarily focused on the nightmare of endlessly seeing what happens when American made 2000 pound bombs are dropped from completely undefeated airspace onto a civilian population. But the ongoing nightmare in West Bank, which itself involves a substantial death count for the indigenous people (as well as the recent whitewashed murderers of our fellow Americans Shireen Abu Aklah and Aysenur Eygi), all outside of Israel porters, deserves immense attention, because this is where the inevitability of the one state outcome is being most clearly telegraphed.
Meanwhile here is the reality in the ground in the West Bank. The racist idiocy shown in this video was led by a clearly racist Member of the Knesset, Tzippy Scott. Where is the Hasbara on this?
“Fact-filled”, love that you think the self-assured bullshit you spew is “fact” while any contrary viewpoint is propaganda ricocheting around an echo chamber. Apologists for Islamist terrorists like you always deny the “Palestinians” any agency and encourage their narrative that they’re always the victims, even when they commit horrendous genocidal atrocities.
Few things: Gaza was supposed to be a nascent “Palestinian” state, from which Israel entirely withdrew in the early 2000s. And what did the Palestinians do? Create a progressive and modern state where all faiths and women and gay people could live together harmoniously? Did they advance peace initiatives - including to try and resolve the West Bank issue - or did they, instead, elect a genocidal, fascistic terrorist group and corrupt their own infrastructure and begin to indiscriminately bomb Israel? Which is a war crime btw… which ofc you know. Given the relentless aggression of the gazans then Israel and Egypt had little option but to control the borders.
Ham ass has no interest in protecting its own people, and the more civilians die - a feature of all modern war ofc you know - the more useful idiots get sucked in to their propaganda. What Israel is trying to do is “disappear” ham ass but - as you also know - having embedded themselves in the civilian population and civilian infrastructure presents logistical problems of warfare.
I’m not Israeli but my Jewish/israeli friend help me understand that Israelis were - en masse - protesting the egregiously right-wing coalition and corrupt and self-serving PM. But then what happened? Ham ass committed their genocidal atrocity. Uniting the country against them. Had the protests been allowed to come to fruition BN and co would probably not still be in power and the situation for both Israelis and Palestinians would be very different to how it is now.
As for racist idiocy, if the ramblings of biblical-era lunatics offends you (I offer no defence of the lunatic fringe of settlers, who are obviously part of the problem) but then you’ll be really offended by what ham ass and Hezbollah and Iran and most quotidian discourse in the Arab world says about Jewish people, right? Right?
Israel’s response has gone way beyond self-defense and no amount of Hasbara can overcome the unspeakable horror imposed on the Palestinian people. We can debate all the many roads that led to this hell. But before that happens, the bombings and forced starvation must stop.
Self-defence means the capitulation of Gaza and the return of the hostages; that hasn't been achieved yet; therefore, the bombing and supposed "forced starvation" must continue!
Then you will be fighting until the end of time and becoming more of a pariah than you are. And if you think this is good for the Jews, you are deluding yourself. This is horrible for us. And ditto if you think Netanyahu is fighting to avenge Oct 7. He’s doing what Trump did…holding on to office to avoid prison. Doing unto others what was done unto us isn’t justice. It’s out and out evil.
Nope. Just an American Jew who sees Israel committing crimes against humanity, the consequences of which can lead to nothing by more blood lust, anti-semitism and death.
There are many non Jewish supporters of Israel for reasons that transcend religion and ethnicity: the fact of Israel’s aggressive ownership of its citizens is among the top reasons that endured Israel to others. Be proud of that but don’t confuse this with Smotritch’s naive obtuseness. No you do not need to destroy Gaza. Military industries are transnational eg the F35. Public opinion in those nation states matter. Hasbara matters. It’s not a question of morality but practicality.
Very well written and well thought out. I think this is a historical trent which the Zionist thinkers saw and understood. I wonder what you think about my recent article outlining how western dichotomies erase Jewish existence.
Interesting read. It seems plausible to me, that overly justifying oneself most often leads not to understanding but to further condemnation, as happend with many victims of cancel culture.
“We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody’s examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to.”
--Zev Jabotinsky
Beautiful quote!
Hasbara is also knowing when to keep your mouth shut.
Agree 100%
Brilliant as usual, Yonatan.
Brilliant.
We need another 40 years of wandering in a desert, to be re-made as a people.
My goodness. That is clarity. I wish more of us in the West could put ourselves in the shoes of Israelis and see this truth. Israel has nothing to apologise for. However, I know that your humanity is the best of you, and that is, fundamentally, why you did not raze Gaza to the ground on 8th October. You cannot turn yourself into the nation that could have done that, because you are a truly moral people, surrounded by murderous fanatics and immoral criminals. That is your curse, to be better than your enemies. I do not ask it of you, but I believe you ask it of yourselves.
Yonatan, great piece. Do you have a version in Hebrew that I can share?
Thank you! Yes I do, I have published it on my Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CSwke2Cyw/
Thank-you, Yonatan. This is excellent!
Thank you, Maryallene! I really appreciate your support!
Hebrew Version:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CSwke2Cyw/
Let’s be clear. Hasbara = relentless state-sponsored propaganda.
I know of no rational human who denies the nightmare of what happened on 10/7 and fails to condemn it. And almost all of us would be pleased if Hamas somehow magically just disappeared.
But way too many people, including the entire Hasbara machine, refuse to accept that 10/7 didn’t happen in a vacuum and examine Israeli culpability in creating and sustaining Gaza as what has long been defined as an open air prison, full of stateless refugees whose ancestors were forcibly driven from the land just across the border into Israel. Palestine was never “a land without people for people without land”, which was a foundational basis for Israel.
It is often said that Hamas is the elected government of Gaza. That is as far off base as saying that the thugs who who dominate the exercise yard in a big prison are the democratically elected leaders of the prison population. Do the people of Gaza like Hama better than they like an entity that yesterday killed 9 of the 10 children of a Gazan female physician? Probably yes, but the vast majority of people in Gaza would like both of those entities to disappear from their lives.
Sadly, what Israel has done over the past couple of years has insured the existence of a population of two million people who have all witnessed their closest family members and friends being blown into pieces in the most violent ways possible. The Gaza Holocaust will no more be forgotten by them and the international community than the European Holocaust. One doesn’t have to look far online to find numerous videos of Israelis, including rabbinical scholars, who come right out and say that all of the children in Gaza must be killed lest they grow up and remember what has happened there.
The inconvenient truth is that the extreme right wing now controls all political momentum in Israel. We have all known that the two state solution has been dead for 30 years and it’s now obvious that Israel will push for a single state extending from the river to the sea (remember when we were told that references to that phrase were genocidal?). Sadly for Israel’s prospects as a “Jewish state” this single state will effectively make that impossible since it will have as many citizens who are not Jewish as Jews. The rationalization that extreme ethnic preferences, apartheid and, eventually, ethnic cleansing are “OK because God said so” won’t hold much water where rational humans are concerned.
We are all primarily focused on the nightmare of endlessly seeing what happens when American made 2000 pound bombs are dropped from completely undefeated airspace onto a civilian population. But the ongoing nightmare in West Bank, which itself involves a substantial death count for the indigenous people (as well as the recent whitewashed murderers of our fellow Americans Shireen Abu Aklah and Aysenur Eygi), all outside of Israel porters, deserves immense attention, because this is where the inevitability of the one state outcome is being most clearly telegraphed.
Meanwhile here is the reality in the ground in the West Bank. The racist idiocy shown in this video was led by a clearly racist Member of the Knesset, Tzippy Scott. Where is the Hasbara on this?
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTj9mxjc9/
What a total load of bollocks.
Thank you for the fact filled response. Now you can return to the echo chamber.
“Fact-filled”, love that you think the self-assured bullshit you spew is “fact” while any contrary viewpoint is propaganda ricocheting around an echo chamber. Apologists for Islamist terrorists like you always deny the “Palestinians” any agency and encourage their narrative that they’re always the victims, even when they commit horrendous genocidal atrocities.
Few things: Gaza was supposed to be a nascent “Palestinian” state, from which Israel entirely withdrew in the early 2000s. And what did the Palestinians do? Create a progressive and modern state where all faiths and women and gay people could live together harmoniously? Did they advance peace initiatives - including to try and resolve the West Bank issue - or did they, instead, elect a genocidal, fascistic terrorist group and corrupt their own infrastructure and begin to indiscriminately bomb Israel? Which is a war crime btw… which ofc you know. Given the relentless aggression of the gazans then Israel and Egypt had little option but to control the borders.
Ham ass has no interest in protecting its own people, and the more civilians die - a feature of all modern war ofc you know - the more useful idiots get sucked in to their propaganda. What Israel is trying to do is “disappear” ham ass but - as you also know - having embedded themselves in the civilian population and civilian infrastructure presents logistical problems of warfare.
I’m not Israeli but my Jewish/israeli friend help me understand that Israelis were - en masse - protesting the egregiously right-wing coalition and corrupt and self-serving PM. But then what happened? Ham ass committed their genocidal atrocity. Uniting the country against them. Had the protests been allowed to come to fruition BN and co would probably not still be in power and the situation for both Israelis and Palestinians would be very different to how it is now.
As for racist idiocy, if the ramblings of biblical-era lunatics offends you (I offer no defence of the lunatic fringe of settlers, who are obviously part of the problem) but then you’ll be really offended by what ham ass and Hezbollah and Iran and most quotidian discourse in the Arab world says about Jewish people, right? Right?
Israel’s response has gone way beyond self-defense and no amount of Hasbara can overcome the unspeakable horror imposed on the Palestinian people. We can debate all the many roads that led to this hell. But before that happens, the bombings and forced starvation must stop.
Self-defence means the capitulation of Gaza and the return of the hostages; that hasn't been achieved yet; therefore, the bombing and supposed "forced starvation" must continue!
Then you will be fighting until the end of time and becoming more of a pariah than you are. And if you think this is good for the Jews, you are deluding yourself. This is horrible for us. And ditto if you think Netanyahu is fighting to avenge Oct 7. He’s doing what Trump did…holding on to office to avoid prison. Doing unto others what was done unto us isn’t justice. It’s out and out evil.
I see now; you are from the Shtetl of Kaplan.
You would rather spread lies about your own country than let the Likud Shtetl rule over you.
That's really deplorable.
I suggest trying to get out of the Shtetl.
And I suggest trying to get out of the murderous path you are on. That’s deplorable.
Typical western fool wrapped in her keffiyeh.
Nope. Just an American Jew who sees Israel committing crimes against humanity, the consequences of which can lead to nothing by more blood lust, anti-semitism and death.
Whatever you are you happen to be wrong. We are here, and are focused on completing the mission.
If you were serious, self defense means doing to Hamas what they intend to do to you. You don’t have the stomach for it, and now it’s too late.
This should be more about the moral collapse of Isreal, as the world sees it, corrupt politicians and the influence of West Bank settlers and zealots.
There are many non Jewish supporters of Israel for reasons that transcend religion and ethnicity: the fact of Israel’s aggressive ownership of its citizens is among the top reasons that endured Israel to others. Be proud of that but don’t confuse this with Smotritch’s naive obtuseness. No you do not need to destroy Gaza. Military industries are transnational eg the F35. Public opinion in those nation states matter. Hasbara matters. It’s not a question of morality but practicality.
You do realize they were both Christians who are members of an Episcopal church, right? There were also peace activists.
— edit: were members
Did I write that they were Jews?
You didn’t write that, I assumed that. Internet & all.
Ah I see. Enjoy reading the essay!
Very well written and well thought out. I think this is a historical trent which the Zionist thinkers saw and understood. I wonder what you think about my recent article outlining how western dichotomies erase Jewish existence.
https://open.substack.com/pub/dandanprager/p/the-last-blind-spot-of-the-west-the?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1z5qzb