Thank you so much for this thoughtful response. I’ve read it several times, and I may have to respond to it in pieces (I’ve actually had to paste it into a word doc to follow along). I may be updating my response in edits. I’m going to be trying to be as respectful as possible in my responses out of appreciation for the depth you’ve offered on this perspective, and I’d like to respond to what I think I see is your questions; firstly I’ll need to respond to some of your answers as a part of that, because I think that’s where some of the cross talk is occurring from, or perhaps confusion from the part of Israelis about how the world, and specifically the US is seeing this. I’m going to have to use metaphors in some locations because I think much of this is about perspective, and one of the metaphors you used I think has utility in this regard.
You brought up 3 points as the primary consensus shared among the Israeli population. I’m going to repeat them here to ensure my understanding of them is characterizing them correctly.
These attacks were personal, not abstract. Israellis are identifying individually, at a personal level with having been attacked. It’s also an extension of local culture that hostages ‘must’ be returned. Layered in this sentiment is the idea that this was a failure of government to defend it’s citizens. Israellis see Hamas as an existential threat to Israel (perhaps them individually, see above) and must be vanquished. Israel’s actions in Gaza are viewed as unfortunate but necessary.
I want to highlight a few additional points of context you offered:
There are two groups of Israelis who do not believe the 1st and 2nd points are contradictory. Each belongs to opposing ends of the political spectrum
the right there are those who think military pressure is the only way to, somehow, secure the release of the hostages
left leaning, and it believes that withdrawing from Gaza for the release of the hostages and building a civilian opposition against Hamas
I think this frames how you see the situation plays out in Israeli society and is useful for informing the discussion.
So to set up the discussion a bit further, it might be helpful for you to understand the context that October 7th sits in from an outside perspective. In the years and months leading up to October 7th (really the 18 months prior), the nature of the Israeli/ Palestinian relationship had been becoming increasingly, and overwhelmingly clearly an apartheid state/ concentration camp type relationship, where Israel seemed to be continuously eroding any pretense of a lasting solution, while regularly worsening conditions for Palestinians on the ground (again, prior to Oct 7). There seemed to be a regular drumbeat where it looked like public sentiment was finally about to roll over on the kind of continuous and unquestioning support for Israel that they had enjoyed from the US since it’s inception. It seemed like there would be calls for Israel to effectively stop maintaining it’s apartheid state relationship with Palestaine, because time and the scale of violence was just not on Israel’s side. The summary for this point is that there was a palpable shift in the conversation that was happening prior to October 7th, where it was becoming increasingly clear that the Israelis were pretty clearly and plainly the oppressors in this relationship.
I think there it’s also worth the context of work the BLM movement did to educate the American left’s perspectives on power and positionality. Through BLM, Americans who were receptive to it, were able to advance their perspective of how the dynamics of power and racism come to play in oppression. There is way too much to unpack here for this discussion, but understand that Americans, especially young Americans and left wing Americans have been basically been studying the dynamics of power that come into play around race and racism for the better half of a decade at this point. Most leftwing Americans probably attended at least some kind of BLM protest during the last 10 years, and many leftwing Americans have at this point directly experienced the kind of state sponsored violence that black people have continuously been saying they experience but most white people just never believed to exist because it hadn’t happened to them personally. That perspective has now shifted.
I think initially the reaction in the US to October 7th was basically shock and disappointment. It really felt like Israel was finally being dragged to the table, and that their meal-ticket of international exceptionalism was finally up, but that October 7th completely reset the clock on that. Likewise, it completely eroded any credibility that Hamas could possibly have had. But the we saw the response happen and it was like “What?” and I’m not talking days and weeks later. Like the moment Israel began it’s bombing campaign, from the outside itt was very clear that they did not give a fuck about Palestinian society what so ever, or even really going after Hamas; that these bombings were of Palestestine and the palsetian people, Hamas or no Hamas be damned.
And that basically seems to have been the way that Israel has continued to this point. The more reporting that comes out, it doesn’t seem like Israel is even bothering trying to recover hostages (I mean how can you engage in a bombing campaign if your goal is to recover hostages?).It’s so clearly about genocide and the elimination of the Palestinian people from the land, that looking from the outside there is no other word for it other than genocide. If this isn’t a genocide, then the word has lost all it’s meaning.
So I want to address the ‘left-right’ spectrum you described and offer context to where I see that fitting in how the broader community might see that. You suggested that broadly the three primary points are held up, but that the left-right axis is about whether to engage in negotiations or to bomb. From the outside, these three points are clearly all centered in an extreme-right framing of the conflict, and you are rotating around another axis orthogonal to the typical framing that the outside world is viewing the conflict through. It’s not clear at all that there is any Palestinian perspective even being peppered into that axis. It would be a ‘purely extreme right’ axis, where the framing is just about tactics.
And so I think it becomes a matter of addressing the three primary points. I think people can understand the first point without much more effort, especially millennial Americans. We lived through 9-11, many of us went to war (myself included), many of us lost family. We survive school shootings and racial violence basically constantly. Very few Americans live lives completely unscathed from a deeply personal impact of extreme violence. So there is sympathy on this first point.
The second point is much more difficult, because it’s not clear what-so-ever that the Israeli government is interested in defeating or making irrelevant Hamas through political means. Israel effectively kaibashed every political approach to peace (before Oct 7th). It just doesn’t seem like they are operating in good faith. Since then it’s been more and more and more egregious settler-colonialism from Israel, only putting into stark contrast (even moreso because of the legacy of genocide and pograms * within * the history of Judaism) the clearly apartheid nature of Israel’s foreign policy positions with Palestine. So it’s like, Israel has shown no good faith as an actor being willing to engage in a peace process? I think the headlines of the day only further emphasize this.
I think the third point highlights the departure most significantly. When seen from the outside, people just don’t care about the history at a certain point and become focused on just this conflict. The whole thing becomes a scoreboard where one side has killed 30,000 women and children, while the other side killed 1000 or so non-combatants. The numbers are so incomparable that it’s barely worth discussing. Obviously Oct. 7th was horrendous, but it in no way justifies what we see coming from Israel. October 7th happened because of a shocking waste of resources and lapse in security from Israel (along with I guess secretly funding Hamas? Again, headlines of the day). Like what’s the point of funding Iron Dome if Bibi is going to let things like this through for political purposes?
And that’s what the crux of this becomes from a taxpaying, leftist (or rightwing, they’re views aren’t that different) perspective. What exactly are we funding Israel for? So they can continue to genocide the Palestinians and make international conflict inevitable in the ME? It seems like that’s all we’re really getting for our money; it’s not like Israel has been a particularly good ally.
So in summary, the idea that what Israel is doing in Gaza is in any way proportional or necessary, or even effective is basically unacceptable to most of the US population in one way or another, be it anti-war/ pro-peace/ or from a purely monetary perspective. What exactly are we getting as US citizens funding this genocide? And it doesn’t seem like much. Mostly just a shittier and shittier “ally” in Israel (although they rarely act like it), and a more volatile situation in the region.
I would also point out that from an outsider perspective, your leftwing to rightwing framing doesn’t appear along a L to R axis. It looks more like a R-R axis argument about soft versus hard power. I’ve been following Israeli media this entire time, and it’s clear to me that most Israeli media outlets are not considering the damage that this has done to the Israeli people’s good graces in the world. The world had real sympathy for the Israeli position on October 8th, but that good will is long gone, and Israel is rapidly becoming a pariah state.
I’m not sure where you personally fall in the perspectives you outlined but I appreciate you enumerati