The arrest warrants in The Hague fell in the week that Israelis used to mark with special celebrations, that of November 29 (kaf tet benovember as it’s known in Hebrew). Only those with poor memories (most of the population) could be dismissive about that piece of paper recording the UN vote on the partition of Palestine in 1947. The Jewish state might have arisen without it, but it would not have been allowed to join the family of nations, to set up embassies, to wave flags, and to present passports.
Not only were the warrants issued close to November 29, but on November 14, 2024, the UN General Assembly affirmed "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination." Besides Israel, only five countries opposed the resolution: Argentina, Micronesia, Nauru, Paraguay, and the US. Did I mention Nauru?
In itself, the support for the right to self-determination of the Palestinians does not necessarily contradict Israel’s right to exist. Ultimately, that was the substance of the decision in 1947. The UN then determined that the Land of Israel should be divided into a Jewish state and an Arab state. One could view the new resolution as validating the earlier one. But we know that it was not proposed, or accepted, in order to validate. Its sponsors want to deny all validity.
This planet bears a great deal of malice and suffering. But half the human race was smitten with schadenfreude at the sight of Israel’s humiliation in The Hague. Did some pathological narrative let Israel be born, only so that one day it would be possible to deprive its lungs of air?
"I am a Zionist"
The answer is no, that was not the intention 77 years ago. Jan Masaryk, foreign minister of Czechoslovakia, declared at the time: "To make a Jewish state, this is one of the greatest political ideas of our times. It is such a great thing that people lack the imagination to understand it. Even many Jews. But for me, not. I believe in it. I am a Zionist."
A nation that owes its existence to an international act of recognition and grace (and of course to the courage of its founders and defenders) has to learn to listen to the outside world. Even when it is a clear victim of double standards, it has a duty to try to understand: yes, to try to understand even its critics.
"To understand," not in the sense of to agree or to abase oneself. "To understand" in the sense that aware people are interested in feelings and motives, the better to gauge responses and outcomes. That is the point of putting on other people’s shoes. First and foremost, it serves the putters on.
I am daring to touch a sensitive nerve here, and I hope that no-one will misunderstand my intentions. Israel’s television Channel 12 opened its news edition on the night of November 22 by screening the pictures of the 22 children murdered on October 7, 2023. Rightly. Their pictures should open every edition. But the speech that news anchor Danny Kushmaro made condemning the "evil, foolish, and ignorant world" did nothing to further understanding.
Hamas’s murderous aggression cannot be wiped from the memory, whatever the circumstances. In the end, the mass killing of Gaza Strip residents is a mirror image of what Hamas planned to do on the other side of the border. Had their intentions been fulfilled, a lot more than 44,000 Israelis would be sprawled dead in the streets and fields. Hamas should be dragged to the International Criminal Court not just for what it perpetrated, but for its declared genocidal intentions, which it did not manage to carry out.
But there is no avoiding pointing out that 22 dead children have been the daily crop in the Gaza Strip since October 8, 2023. Channel 12, like Israel’s other television channels, has for a year or more diligently concealed the sufferings of the Gaza Strip from its viewers. It’s understandable why it did so a year ago. It is not understandable why it continues the concealment, to the detriment of knowledge and understanding.
Through the smoke and ruins
Of course, in the era of social media, everyone is free to fish for information. No-one applies censorship or locks gates. But Israelis primarily rely on their own media. In the absence of factual reporting and visual impressions, most Israelis have a limited concept of the extent of the death and destruction. In the end, even according to the metrics of nationalist academic Ronen Shoval, half the dead Palestinians did not belong to Hamas.
That is exactly what at least part of the outside world is reacting to. The other part seeks Israel’s destruction, and there’s little point in dialogue with it. But the non-malicious part, chiefly in the Western democracies, examines Israel reactively. It looks at the pictures coming from the Gaza Strip, and responds. It doesn’t bear ill will towards Israel, but it is deeply disappointed by its conduct.
I hear such expressions of disappointment from American acquaintances, not Jewish, who used to be fond of Israel, visited it, and lauded it. Their disappointment produces sweeping generalizations not just about the Israeli government, but about the Israeli people as such.
Do we understand the size of the breach, beyond the radical campuses, beyond the streets of Amsterdam? It’s a breach taking place in the hearts of erstwhile friends, or at least of neutral observers. Through the smoke and the ruins, they have difficulty in making out the features of Israel.
Israel’s national security depends of course on dismantling Hamas, on defeating Hezbollah, and on neutralizing Iran and its proxies. But in part, Israel’s national security justifies an attempt to understand the depth of its decline in international public opinion.
On Friday the other week, National Public Radio in the US broadcast a long report about attacks by Jewish hooligans on Palestinians’ olive groves on the West Bank. My friends were taken aback. What’s happened to you, they asked, what have you become?
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 1, 2024.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.