hankyoreh

Palestinians search the remains of a destroyed house in southern Gaza for survivors on Oct. 19 following Israeli airstrikes. (AFP/Yonhap)

The Hamas attack on Israel should be condemned unconditionally, without any “buts” or “ifs.” What should nonetheless urgently be done is to locate this attack in its historical context – such a contextualization in no way justifies it, it just clarifies why and how it came to this.

To get an idea of the despair of ordinary West Bank Palestinians, suffice it to remember the suicidal individual attacks on the streets of (mostly) Jerusalem a decade or so ago: An ordinary Palestinian would approach a Jew, pull out a knife and stab (usually) him, knowing well that s/he will be instantly killed by other people around her. There was no message in these “terrorist” acts, no shouting of “Free Palestine!”; there was no large organization behind them (even Israeli authorities didn’t claim this), no large political project, just pure despair.

Things took a turn for the worse with the new Netanyahu government. Anti-Palestinian violence is no longer even formally condemned by the state. The fate of Ben-Gvir is the clearest indicator of this shift. Before entering politics, Ben-Gvir was known to have a portrait in his living room of Israeli American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron, in what became known as the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. He entered politics by joining the youth movement of the Kach and Kahane Chai party, which was designated as a terrorist organization and outlawed by the Israeli government itself. When he came of age for conscription into the Israel Defense Forces at 18, he was barred from service due to his extreme-right political background. And such a person condemned by Israel itself as a racist and terrorist is now the minister who should safeguard the rule of law. The state of Israel, which likes to present itself as the only democracy in the Middle East, has now de facto morphed into a theocratic state.

Exaggeration? Here is the first of the official “basic principles” of Israel’s 37th government: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan and Judea and Samaria.” How can one after such a “principle” appear to reproach Palestinians for refusing to negotiate with Israel? Does this “principle” not exclude any serious negotiations, does it not leave for Palestinians only violent resistance?

The Hamas attack should be read against the background of the great conflict that divided Israel in the last months. Commenting on the measures proposed by the Netanyahu government, Yuval Harari put it brutally: “This Is definitely a coup. Israel is on its way to becoming a dictatorship.” Israel was split between nationalist fundamentalists trying to abolish the remaining features of the legal state power, and the civil society members aware of this threat but still afraid to propose a pact with non-anti-Semitic Palestinians. The situation was approaching civil war among Jewish Israelis themselves, with signs of the decay of legal order. With the Hamas attack, the crisis is (temporarily, at least) over, and the spirit of national unity prevails. The opposition immediately proposed to form an emergency government of national unity, or, as the opposition leader Yair Lapid said: “I won’t concern myself with the question of who is to blame and why we were surprised. We will face our enemy in unity.”

There are other similar gestures: reservists who had erstwhile abstained from service in opposition to the legal reform and the curtailment of the doctrine of the separation of powers have now re-enlisted. In a classic political move, an inner split is overcome when both sides are united against an external enemy. How to break out of this damned vicious cycle?

Israel should fight Hamas, but it should also use this situation to offer a hand to Palestinians ready to negotiate, since what lurks in the background of the war is the unresolved Palestinian question. And there definitely are non-anti-Semitic Palestinians.

All Israelis are not fanatic nationalists, all Palestinians are not anti-Semites (in the same way that all Russians are not pro-Putin). Perhaps, the first thing to do is to clearly recognize the massive despair and confusion that can give birth to occasional acts of evil. And the next step is to see the weird similarity between the Palestinians to whom the only place they ever knew as their homeland is denied and the Jews themselves — this homology holds even for the term “terrorism”: in the years of the Jewish struggle against the British military in Palestine, the very term “terrorist” had a positive connotation in the late 1940s.

Beneath all the polemics about “who is more of a terrorist” lies as a heavy dark cloud the mass of Palestinian Arabs who have been for decades kept in limbo. Who are they, which is the land they live in? Occupied territory, West Bank, Judea and Samaria, or the state of Palestine which is currently recognized by 139 of the 193 United Nations member states. It is a member of the International Olympic Committee, as well as UNESCO, UNCTAD and the International Criminal Court. Following a failed attempt in 2011 to secure full United Nations member state status, the United Nations General Assembly voted in 2012 to recognize Palestine as a non-member observer state.

Israel (which controls their territory) treats them as temporary settlers, as an obstacle to the reestablishment of the “normal” state with Jews as the only true natives. Even many atheist Israelis argue that, although god doesn’t exist, it gave them the land of Israel for their exclusive use. They are strictly treated as a problem, the state of Israel never offered them any hope, positively outlining their role in the state they live in.

Hamas and Israeli hard-liners are thus the two sides of the same coin: The true choice is not between them but between hard-line fundamentalists and those open to co-existence on both sides. Here, again, one should oppose the double blackmail: If one is pro-Palestinian, one is eo ipso anti-Semitic, and if one is against anti-Semitism, one must eo ipso be pro-Israel. The solution is not a compromise, a “right measure” between the two extremes — one should rather go to the end in both directions, in the defense of Palestinian rights as well as in fighting anti-Semitism.

Utopian as this may sound, the two fights are two moments of the same fight, especially today when anti-Semitic Zionists flourish — people who are covertly anti-Semitic but support Israel’s expansion, from Breivik to US religious fundamentalists. So yes, I unconditionally support Israel’s right to defend itself against such terrorist attacks, but I at the same time unconditionally sympathize with the desperate and more and more hopeless destiny of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Those who think there is a “contradiction” in this stance of mine are the ones who effectively pose a threat to our dignity and freedom.

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