The 90s American rapper, Tupac Shakur, got many things wrong. But he was particularly insightful in his best song, Changes:
“And still I see no changes, can’t a brother get a little peace?
It’s war on the streets and the war in the Middle East
Instead of war on poverty
They got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.”
Here we are, thirty years later, with enduring conflict between the Israeli Government and the Palestinian leadership, currently Hamas in Gaza.
This week, though, there has — thank goodness — been a breakthrough, in large part due to the unconventional diplomacy of the US President. A ceasefire is in place. Israel will withdraw its troops from large parts of Gaza. More aid trucks are being allowed in. Hamas is returning all hostages, dead and alive. Let us hope and pray this progress holds — to end the intense, unimaginable suffering of both the Israeli hostages and their families, and the Palestinian people. This is what matters most of all.
In recent years, the obsessive condemnation of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in Gaza by activists in Western countries, typically students or the elderly with too much time on their hands, has been quite striking. Palestinian flags have been flying outside the upmarket Saturday market of Saffron Walden almost every week, as if the Waitrose-shopping, middle-classes need teaching a lesson or rousing into radicalism. Odd and pointless. There were no frequent and large protests about other recent brutal Middle Eastern conflicts by these so-called progressive activists: about the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen, ISIS’s rampage in Iraq and Syria, or Assad’s brutality against his own people in Syria, where countless civilians have died. Strange that.
Not that the Israeli Government should escape condemnation. Its actions in Gaza have been wholly disproportionate and, I fear, counterproductive, engendering a new generation of Islamists who want Jews gone from the Middle East. It fell for the trap set by Hamas, eager to disrupt the normalisation of relations between Israel and other Arab states through the Abraham Accords. The blocking of aid has been unacceptable. Israel, a Western democracy, has fallen short of the standards of its allies, leading to ostracisation. Yes, it is neighboured by and at war with a terrorist regime, but as it is part of the Western alliance, it should in conflict be judged by and maintain higher standards than its enemies.
The initial military invasion of Gaza, in response to the horrific attacks on October 7th 2023, was understandable and reasonable. It was just, in the sense that the objective was to recover all the hostages. But the intensification of military attacks across different areas of Gaza, leading to far too many Palestinian civilians being displaced or killed, palpably was not achieving its objectives. It then became an unjust war. Frankly, a deal with Hamas could and should have been struck much earlier, when Biden was US President.
But the IDF was not committing genocide, which is the deliberate murder of a whole ethnicity of people. In fact, the accusation was especially hurtful towards the Jewish people, approximately six million of whom were barbarically slaughtered by the Nazis only a lifetime ago in the worst genocide ever committed. If Israel were committing genocide, why did it consistently warn Palestinian civilians before striking certain locations? Why has it now agreed to withdraw, if its genocidal intention is so far from being achieved? And why are an estimated 21% of Israeli citizens Palestinian?
In contrast, since 2005, no Jews have lived in Gaza. Those who want genocide are Hamas, which has been clear since its founding document in 1988, updated in 2017, that it wants the elimination of Israel and Jews from it. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of rocket attacks have been launched at Israeli civilians by Hamas each year; the damage has been limited, and coverage of it therefore quiet, because of Israel’s missile shields, most famously the Iron Dome.
A two-state solution is the only just end to this ongoing conflict. But Hamas does not want it. And the Israeli Government no longer believes it to be credible. Admittedly, the Palestinian people have been offered statehood by the Israelis before, most famously through the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, which would have given the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) authority over Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Hamas is the primary cause of the suffering in the region, especially since the atrocities of October 7th 2023. Indeed, even now, as Israel slowly withdraws, it is conducting public executions of fellow Palestinians whom it regard as collaborators with the Israeli Government. Until Hamas is disarmed and removed as the governing force in Gaza, Palestinians and Israelis both will never be fully safe in their homes.
When discussing all these nuances around the decades-long Israeli-Palestine conflict, including criticising Israel’s recent military actions and failure to stop the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, I have found many pro-Palestinian activists completely lacking nuance. They are completely condemnatory of Israel as occupiers — despite Israel having no governmental or military presence in Gaza between 2005 and 2023 — and unwilling to criticise the Palestinians, who voted for Hamas to rule Gaza back in 2005, but admittedly have had no elections since. They cry colonisation, despite the historical evidence suggesting that the Jews settled in the area way before any Arabs did. There is no scepticism whatsoever of the stories, statistics and images from the Gazan authorities, despite them being produced by a terrorist group.
Well, I wish these progressives would have spent a night in both Tel Aviv and Gaza City before the current conflict. Then they would have seen with their own eyes who the real enemy to decency, diversity and democracy is.
Ryan Shorthouse is the Executive Chair of Bright Blue. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Bright Blue. [Image credits: Lachcim Kejarko]
