"And they have victims, prisoners and crying mothers... Let's build real peace". This was not said by some liberal peacemaker from the safety of London or Washington, but by Yakov Argamani, whose daughter Noa was taken hostage by Hamas at a music festival near Reim on Israel's border with Gaza.
I hope that I will never experience the despair that grips Jakov Argamani. But if I ever find myself in such a terrible place, I hope to have at least a fraction of his humanity and moral clarity.
What makes Argamani's call so striking is not only the depth of his empathy, especially where the desire for revenge would be perfectly understandable, but also the contrast with the many comments over the past week.
Many celebrated the murderous actions of Hamas gunmen. Many, even if they refrained from rejoicing, tried to justify them. You have to put Hamas's actions in context, they argue, to see them as part of the Palestinians' long struggle for their own state and as a product of the repression they suffer.
Yes, Palestinian violence has a historical context, and Palestinians continue to suffer Israeli repression. However, there is no context in which the mass murder of more than 260 partygoers at a rave or a massacre in a kibbutz can come close to justification, let alone cause for joy.
Nor can the barbaric attack by Hamas be understood as an inevitable product of a history of oppression, much less as an aspect of Palestinian resistance. These were the actions of an anti-Semitic, theocratic organization, separated from all moral and political frameworks of traditional liberation movements. As with other jihadist groups, terror has become an end in itself.
To suggest that such a massacre represents the Palestinian struggle is to belittle the Palestinian people and their struggle for freedom and rights, to view them in the same way as those Israeli politicians and Western commentators who speak of "animals" and "savages". There were Palestinian leaders and supporters who were disgusted by the attack. Hamas represents a betrayal of Palestinian hopes as much as a threat to Jews.
Condemning Hamas, its policies and actions, on the other hand, is not the same as supporting Israeli policies. Israel cut off electricity, water, food and medical supplies to Gaza, began massive, indiscriminate bombing and an expected ground invasion. If stories of murders committed by Hamas recall the savagery of the Islamic State, images of the bombing of Gaza recall the destruction of Aleppo in Syria or Bakhmut in Ukraine.
Yet this collective punishment and killing of civilians has been supported by Western leaders, who justify it as Israel's "right to self-defense" against Hamas. But as Daniel Levy, a former adviser to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, asked the BBC host: "Can anyone convince me that the leadership of a country is targeting militants, when they say 'we are cutting off food, electricity, water, all supplies' , to the entire civilian population'?”
The Israeli leaders themselves leave no doubt. "The emphasis is on damage, not accuracy," admitted Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. “Now only one goal: the Nakba!” Likud lawmaker Ariel Kalner tweeted last week. "Nakba to eclipse '48 Nakba" In Arabic, nakba means "catastrophe" and refers to the expulsion and flight of 700.000 Palestinians after the 1948 Palestine War and the establishment of the state of Israel. "Gaza will eventually turn into a tent city," one security official told an Israeli journalist. "There will be no buildings."
Such sentiments are not a mere reaction to the shock of the Hamas massacre. Earlier this year, after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis, settlers rampaged through the town of Huwara, burning houses, shops and cars. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich praised them and requested that the Israeli state "wipe out" the city, instead of leaving that work to ordinary citizens.
Meanwhile, Israel is turning its occupation of the West Bank into annexation. Last year's coalition agreement between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and Smotrich's far-right Religious Zionist Party formally committed the government to a "policy of applying sovereignty to Judea and Samaria." Likud's 1999 political platform already "resolutely rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state." The policy of the Israeli government is practically for a de facto one state, but one in which the majority of Palestinians are denied basic rights.
The irony of Netanyahu's promise to "eradicate" Hamas lies in the fact that politicians like him have long aided the organization's development in an attempt to undermine the Palestinian cause.
"Anyone who wants to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state must support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas," Netanyahu told a 2019 meeting of Knesset members from the Likud party.
From the 1970s onwards, Israel helped develop first the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza and then Hamas, which the Brotherhood created during the intifada of 1987. The aim was to undermine the authority of the secular PLO. "Encouraged by this policy," the Times of Israel noted last week, "Hamas has grown stronger." Those who want to keep the land of Israel for Jews only and those who want to eliminate the Jews from that land are as much in each other's arms as they are in a fight to the death.
As the charge of "false equating" is a scourge of contemporary public debate, and is often used to dismiss arguments lightly, let me make it clear that I am not equating Hamas and Israel. I am pointing out the way in which both sides use the unscrupulous politics of the other to justify what cannot be justified.
All this explains the significance of what Jacob tells Argamana. It is not his call for peace (everyone calls for peace, even when they are killing babies or demolishing apartment blocks), but the depth of his understanding of Israel/Palestine as a common country that can only survive if the rights and dignity of both Jews and Palestinians are respected.
Whether in one state with equal rights, or in two states, "self-determination" can only be self-determination if it refers to all people living between the river and the sea, Palestinians and Jews, in a shared future. No bomb and no massacre can erase that.
(The Guardian; Peščanik.net; translation: M. Jovanović)
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