Beyond Binaries

An essay response to the Israel-Hamas War and the humanitarian crisis, 2nd December 2023

The ‘task’ of the Holocaust has come back into the foreground with blistering clarity since the October 7th attacks – and if the foundation of this task is to honour the pledge ‘never again’, surely this pledge must be extended to all humanity. To embody it in our own time is to grasp that it is not exclusive to the Jewish people; to transfer the trauma of one population onto another is no victory. It is a cruel irony that a state supposedly created as a refuge should come to echo one of the most brutal totalitarian regimes in history. To acknowledge this is not to draw a comparison but to recognise the chasm between what Israel represented, never more so than after the Holocaust, and its reality. Palestine was not ‘a land without a people’; the ‘homeland’ was already inhabited.

As I heard Netanyahu call Palestinians ‘human animals’, I felt an old terror grab me by the back of my neck – there is no escaping the fact that his use of language reflects the rhetoric that has been used to galvanise the persecution and expulsion of Jews for millennia. A language which can also be traced through numerous examples of the colonizer towards the colonized across the globe. In order for the settler to justify barbarity, the indigenous population must be framed as subhuman, even bestial. Since the Holocaust, the go-to framing device is Nazi Germany and Israeli ministers have hardly been sparing in their use of this invocation to tap into the deepest collective trauma of Jews both in Israel and in the diaspora, not to mention the collective guilt of their Western allies. Playing the Hitler card guarantees a visceral response. And yet, the reality is that six weeks later Palestinians are being buried in mass graves. Scratch the surface, Netanyahu, and we are all animals, which this moment proves.

My lens is clouded by biography and the limits of knowledge; my hope is to open a conversation where there is space for reflection away from the virulence playing out across our digital public squares. A space where it is understood that criticism of Israeli policy must not be confused with anti-Semitism. That no stance can claim to be representative of any population, however much official bodies claim otherwise. The instant gratification of a hot take gives us a side to champion – no thinking required. Any internal conflict created by the understanding that roles can be reversed, that the abused can be brutalised into abuser, dissolves. It is possible for individuals to carry more than one archetype, for collectives to follow more than one archetypal narrative, even simultaneously. And this means sacrificing the belonging that comes with the mentality of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. The most radical position is to refuse this mentality – and I feel it is vital to do so if we are to approach ‘an understanding that is larger than just ourselves’ and, indeed, our so-called tribes. We can both unequivocally condemn the attacks carried out by the militant faction of Hamas and the inhumanity of the Israeli retaliation, to challenge the insistence that we divide the world into victims and perpetrators. An insistence encouraged by the infantile (and, I would add, deeply irresponsible) rhetoric of good and evil.

Initially, it seemed the October 7th attacks and the relentless assault that followed were only new in their gruesome extremity. The cycles of assault and retaliation have been the fabric of their reality since 1948 (1882 is arguably a more accurate starting point) the roots of collective trauma stretch back much further. But Netenyahu’s promise of ‘do or die’, to which the West continued to respond with only the faintest whispers of restraint, makes points of comparison seem naïve. Meanwhile asserting that the attacks ‘didn’t happen in a vacuum’ causes outrage and Jews who stand in solidarity with Palestine are smeared with accusations of anti-Semitism. The hypocrisy of presenting the memory of the Holocaust as a legitimising narrative for revenge cannot be overstated: it is a flagrant abuse of that memory and a failure to meet the task bound within our inheritance.

***

Some personal context: the Holocaust was ‘my first knowledge.’ [1] My mother’s father arrived in this country with a false Polish passport and the equivalent of five quid in his pocket. His mother and sister’s names are in Yad Vashem; his father died in hiding. My father’s grandparents set out from Grodna on a ship supposedly bound for New York only to find themselves in Glasgow. They were escaping the pogroms – you can guess which story took precedence. I was introduced to the hierarchy of suffering early on. In the days following the October 7th attacks, I received well-intentioned messages asking if my family was safe. The tone was one of genuine concern, the words heartfelt, but the assumptions behind them reveal the binary thinking symptomatic of a much wider phenomenon that has become so deeply entrenched we no longer question it (Biden’s careless use of ‘teams’ may have seemed benign, but it is precisely this blithe usage, which reinforces these binaries.) Surely, the messages implied, that as someone of Jewish heritage, the terror inflicted on the Israeli population would wound me more deeply than terror inflicted on the Palestinian population; that for me, the former must represent ‘us’; the latter ‘them’. Perhaps these assumptions are understandable – I have spent close to a decade attempting to articulate the experience of intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust, the legacy of inherited memory, and the often visceral presence of the past. If so, wouldn’t I not only view the attacks as a persecution of the Jewish People, but seek retribution at any cost?

I do not – and I am not alone: demonstrators from Jewish Voices for Peace gathered on Capitol Hill on 19th October calling for a ceasefire. Here in the UK, Jews for Justice for Palestine marched under the demand Stop the War on 21st and 28th October. November saw the largest rally, which included supporters and signatories from JfJfP. I am not minimising the fear many Jews have felt – there has been a deeply worrying spike in anti-Semitism. But why has Jewish support for Palestine been given only a fleeting glance by the media while the threat of anti-Semitism is highlighted and calls for freedom are misconstrued as inciting hatred. Considering that the most vocal opponent to the march was Suella Braverman – chants of ‘you’re not English anymore’ from the far right notwithstanding – it’s fair to assume that there are graver antagonists to the sanctity of remembrance than those calling for a ceasefire. IIsn’t the call for peace the very essence of what Armistice Day signifies and inherent in the pledge Never Again?

Within days of the October 7th attacks, the BBC had to make an awkward apology for conflating Hamas with Palestine – by the same token, it is profoundly harmful to equate the call for justice for Palestinians with anti-Semitism. The fallacy that Zionism is synonymous with Jewish identity has been propagated and cemented in Western Media, shielding Israel from being held accountable. For a helpful commentary on the issue of conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and how the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition has thwarted constructive dialogue, I recommend the statement on the Jews for Justice for Palestine website [2]. It’s also worth noting that there is evidence to suggest early supporters of Zionism in Britain had anti-Semitic and imperialistic motives. A superficial understanding allows their intentions to appear very noble; dig a little deeper and it is more a case of killing two birds with one stone. [3] The Zionist project was met with deep anxiety from both secular and religious Jews in late 19th century Europe, fearing it would increase anti-Semitism rather than solve ‘the Jewish problem’ and make assimilation more challenging.

The October 7th attacks were described as unprovoked; they were irrefutably barbaric, but even a cursory glance back over the long history of the conflict unravels the suggestion that they were unprovoked.[4] This is not to deny the horror of them, the trauma inflicted, or the psychic wounds they split open – to trivialise the attacks is equally dangerous and, as Naomi Klein has pointed out[5],  only inflames militant Zionism – but to recognise this horror will not be eradicated by the collective punishment of the Palestinians. To deny the Holocaust is viewed as criminal and treated as such; to acknowledge the Nakba[6] in Israel is prohibited. The Israeli ambassador would not even allow that there is a humanitarian crisis.

At the time of writing, the seven day pause in the onslaught has been broken and Israel’s campaign continues. After a week of desperately needed aid and relief, the celebration of the release of Palestinian prisoners, and the reunion of hostages with their families, the question remains: what now? Israel’s former minister of the Interior appears to make to no distinction between Hamas and the civilian population, claiming there needs to be ‘denazification’, that Palestinian children are radicalised at a young age. We might want to ask her about the hatred that is bred in Israeli children towards Palestinians, the most glaring example being the video of the ‘friendship song’ shared by Kan news. The song, in which Israeli children sing of Gaza ‘In another year there will be nothing there’ and ‘we will annihilate everyone.’ Intentions have been voiced in language that is scarcely less subtle by former IDF Major General, Giora Eiland, who, rather than lamenting the spread of disease, welcomes the probability that ‘severe epidemics will bring our victory closer.’ We have decades of evidence that there is no military solution. The talk of Israel’s right to defend itself and the necessity of protecting innocent civilians in the same breath was clearly oblivious to the reality on the ground: the two are mutually exclusive. Biden asked Netanyahu how he saw this ending. How do revenge tragedies end?

While we mark Holocaust Memorial Day and work to counter Holocaust denial, as we must, little attention is given to Al Nakba – or ‘the catastrophe’ – the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland. The myth of ‘a land without a people and a people without a land’[7] conveniently rubs the people of Palestine off the map, allowing the West to maintain its wilful blindness to Israel’s record of criminality. Education on the Holocaust is essential, but education of its aftermath is selective. It bypasses the Palestinian experience – and to ignore it is another form of expulsion.

That this terror and grief will ricochet through successive generations is inevitable; how we respond personally and collectively is vital. Eva Hoffman describes the generation, which comes after the calamity as the ‘hinge’ generation; this calamity has been on-going for over seven decades – for the Palestinian population there is no ‘hinge’ generation. As we become at once more atomised and more globalised, our common humanity rests of the capacity to go beyond personal and collective narratives and hear other voices, however painfully they conflict with our own well preserved ideologies. Surely, as inheritors of the legacy of the Holocaust, we should be the first to advocate for this.

***

One of the most hopeful attempts towards mutual understanding in recent years came from a beautiful initiative, the East West Divan Orchestra founded by Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim, which brought together musicians from Israel, Palestine, and other Arab nations. ‘The art of playing music’, writes Barenboim, in Everything is Connected, ‘is the art of simultaneous playing and listening […] this dialogical quality inherent in music was our main reason for founding the orchestra…our intention was to start a dialogue…to find common ground between estranged peoples’ [8]. I believe that if more initiatives like this could be cultivated in times of (relative) peace there could be hope for the next generation. The orchestra is a template for multiple artistic intercultural collectives, interfaith conversations, collaborations across borders. The interdependence and mutual acknowledgement this can foster translates into a simple, yet potent message: the space given to each voice to flourish and each life to thrive allows rather than threatens others to flourish and thrive. It is a way of saying your narrative is not only as valid as mine, but is part of mine.

References

[1] Eva Hoffman, After Such Knowledge (Vintage, 2005)

[2] Jfjfp.com. (2016). Jews for Justice for Palestine [online] Available at: https://jfjfp.com/free_speech/jjp-policy-statement-definitions-of-antisemitism/

[3] Illan Pappe, Ten Myths about Israel, Oneworld Publications, 2007

[4] Amnesty International. (2022). Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity. [online] Available at: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/

[5] Klein, N. (2023). In Gaza and Israel, side with the child over the gun. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/why-are-some-of-the-left-celebrating-the-killings-of-israeli-jews

[6] Jazeera, A. (2017). The Nakba did not start or end in 1948. [online] Al Jazeera. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/5/23/the-nakba-did-not-start-or-end-in-1948

[7] For a thorough analysis of how this myth has taken root and continues to go unchallenged both in the media and the Israeli education system, see Ilan Pappe’s Ten Myths About Israel, Oneworld Publications, 2007

[8] Daniel Barenboim, Everything Is Connected, W&N, 2009