Is genocide good for the Jews?

Maybe the best way to fight antisemitism is to convince the world that Jews are not natural born killers, despite the massacres in Gaza.

Thomas Friedman

What do you do when something awful is happening and you can’t do anything about it? I suppose it varies from day to day. You spend one day obsessing about the awfulness and reading every Tweet and article you can about it, and the next day you try to join those who pretend it is not happening or don’t care, or both. Allowing yourself to take such a break from the exigencies of living morally can sometimes be the only way to maintain your sanity.

I’m talking, of course, about the war crimes that Israel is visiting upon the people of Gaza every single day. I’ve written about this many times in this newsletter, and about the heroes who refuse to look away. Will it make a difference that nearly all human rights organizations and experts have concluded Israel is committing atrocities and many of them think genocide is the right word to describe them?

Or what about the fact that, recently, influential writers and other intellectuals like Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan now say that Israel is committing genocide? Will those influential voices change enough minds to make a difference and create a critical mass of citizens opposed to the murders?

On that point, many critics have allowed themselves to be distracted by the fact that Zadie Smith and others previously seemed to think what Israel was doing did not need to be condemned, and attacked them for hypocrisy. But isn’t a good thing that a combination of reality, brutality, social pressure, and other factors have forced her and others to change their minds?

The issues there are subtly and intelligently explored by Annabel Ross in a Substack piece entitled “Better late than never?”

Annabel comments:

“…there’s something I’ve noticed even more than the deafening silence of so many on social media: the sudden spike in denouncements from people who have said fuck all about the genocide for the past 19 months.”

She adds, quoting now at some length:

“I’m definitely guilty of policing people. I don’t think it’s particularly admirable and is probably not the best use of my time, but I have very low tolerance for hypocrisy, or behaving in a way that does not align with your purported values. Yes, I have been keeping tabs on who has and hasn’t spoken up about the genocide. It’s true that some are quiet online but doing the work in the real world, although I suspect this is a pretty small percentage of people. I am less bothered by the silence of those who have always been disengaged politically and have barely been paying attention to what’s happening in Gaza. I don’t understand it and I wish they cared more but when it’s never been in their character to speak up, I don’t expect as much of them. I am more aggrieved by people who are well aware of what has been going on, but are only speaking up now. It’s so late in the game it’s hard to determine whether it comes from a place of genuine concern, or if it has suddenly dawned on them that history may not be kind to those who did not loudly object to this.”

And she concludes:

“If you haven’t spoken up already, now is the time to do so, but you might want to apologise for your cowardice at the same time. Late is better than never, but not by much.”

There’s a lot more in between these passages, and I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

Masha Gessen also put the moral questions well in a New York Times piece last month:

“Even Israel’s massacre in Gaza, which makes Russia’s warfare in Ukraine look restrained, can’t produce new headlines after more than 19 months of indiscriminate bombing and warfare by starvation. It is news when two Israeli Embassy employees are murdered in Washington, D.C. But when entire Palestinian families are killed, or when Palestinian children die of malnutrition, it’s just another day in Gaza. Nor is it news that the U.S. government is indifferent to war crimes committed by its allies.”

So what do you do when the moral case against genocide has failed, and continues to fail to stop the massacres? How do get beyond the fact that few seem to care about the lives of the Palestinians?

If you’re Tom Friedman of the New York Times, you make it about the Jews.

That’s what he did in an opinion piece in the Times yesterday entitled “This Israeli Government Is a Danger to Jews Everywhere.” It’s not the first time Friedman has pursued this theme, as those who read him know, and expressed his view that Netanyahu and the extreme right-wingers running the Israel government are a menace to the Jews. The line of argument is very familiar.

“Israelis, diaspora Jewry and friends of Israel everywhere need to understand that the way Israel is fighting the war in Gaza today is laying the groundwork for a fundamental recasting of how Israel and Jews will be seen the world over.

It won’t be good. Police cars and private security at synagogues and Jewish institutions will increasingly become the norm; Israel, instead of being seen by Jews as a safe haven from antisemitism, will be seen as a new engine generating it; sane Israelis will line up to immigrate to Australia and America rather than beckon their fellow Jews to come Israel’s way. That dystopian future is not here yet, but if you don’t see its outlines gathering, you are deluding yourself.”

In other words, genocide is bad for the Jews. Here’s just a little more:

“But as a Jew who believes in the right of the Jewish people to live in a secure state in their biblical homeland — alongside a secure Palestinian state — I am focused right now on my own tribe. And if my own tribe does not resist this Israeli government’s utter indifference to the number of civilians being killed in Gaza today — as well its attempt to tilt Israel into authoritarianism at home by moving to sack its independent attorney general — Jews everywhere will pay dearly.”

Friedman does mention a few times in the piece, briefly, the horrors being visited upon the Palestinian people. But that is only to bolster his main argument that, again, killing children in Gaza is a bad look for the Jewish people. For his tribe.

As a Jew myself, I have to agree that yes, it is bad PR for “us.” For “our” people. And we Jews will be subject to generations of violence and revenge from the survivors of this modern-day Holocaust, and their offspring too. We will never be safe. It is way too late for that to change.

But hey, what if it turns out that this is the only argument that has the potential to actually work and stop the killing? A lot of folks have commented about Friedman’s past pieces in this vein: “If Israel loses Friedman, it has lost the argument.”

But Israel lost the argument long ago, for those who believe in morality and justice and all that. It has not made any difference. At least not yet.

Do we need to turn to opportunistic arguments now, like the one Friedman is offering? Is it too late for anything else? And if we do that, are we abandoning the moral argument?

I don’t know the answer. If it would stop the killing sooner, perhaps it could be justified. Israeli Jews have been seized by an obsessive, genocidal madness that, yes, has led them to act against their own ultimate self-interest. They will never be safe in what they think is their land. Never. It’s difficult to know what could change that now.

Oh, but what about antisemitism? We hear a lot about it these days. Sure it exists, and it is horrible, but most of the current rhetoric around it is really an attempt to shut people up who oppose the genocide in Gaza. Antisemitism is real, but do you really want to know the best way to fight it in this historical moment?

For Jews everywhere, but especially here in the United States, to shut up about antisemitism for just a while and clearly and unequivocally condemn the killing being done in their name. In other words, stop giving people excuses to hate us. Or valid reasons, for that matter.

Now that would be good for the Jews, and for everyone else.

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