We are telling the wrong stories in relation to violence in Israel-Palestine. A historical overview can open up a new story; one in which we mourn all deaths together.
Things I’ve read / watched recently:
A video of an excellent Zoom talk organised by the fairly new group – Progressive Jews for Justice in Israel/Palestine. It contains contributions from 4 young British Jewish leaders who critique the response of the community, and in particular Progressive Judaism, to the Gaza war.
A very enjoyable read: Isaac Asimov on Dominationist Ethnonationalism about a furious argument with Elie Wiesel.
This Jewish Currents podcast on secularism, featuring older Jewish secularists furious that the magazine has introduced a Parashat Hashavua (Torah portion of the week) has produced much debate and is well worth listening to. This one on conflicts over politics in synagogues is also great.
I recently read Leon Rosselson’s memoirs, Where are the Elephants? It’s a great read, and well worth engaging with for anyone on the British / Jewish left, especially if you’re interested in political songwriting.
Do get in touch if there are subjects you’d like me to write on in future
(10-15 minutes reading time)
There has been, in the last two months, two different stories, told by two groups of people. The Jewish/Israeli story is ‘October 7th’; a day repeated on loop in the Israeli media. In this narrative the Israeli victims of the day are the only ones remembered, in addition to soldiers who have died since then ‘because of October 7th’. This is then placed in the context of a longer story, of Jewish and Israeli deaths over the last 100 years. In contrast, the Palestinian/Palestinian Solidarity story is ‘the genocide’; an approach which sometimes treats the war in Gaza as if did not arise because of October 7th and was simply a continuation of Israeli attempts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. This is placed in the wider context of Palestinian deaths and expulsion since the Nakba. This narrative inevitably only mourns the dead in Gaza – understandable given how large the death toll there is – and does not consider Israeli victims of Hamas.1 What if we brought these narratives together, as part of a single story? What if we could mourn all of them, and treat them all as mutual victims of war, nationalism and empire?
Jews have tended to to view attacks on Jews in Palestine and later Israel as pogroms, added to the long litanies of Jewish massacres: the crusades, the Chmielnicki massacres, the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 and the pogroms in Ukraine during 1918-1920. The Jews killed in the Palestine riots of 1920, 1921 and 1929 could be easily slotted into this prism, similarly those killed in the war of independence of 1948 and from guerilla attacks in the early years of statehood. The lead-up to the 1967 war was experienced by Jews, particularly in the diaspora, as a likely pogrom, or even 2nd Holocaust, such was the fear that combined pan-Arab armies would overcome Israeli defences and push Jews into the sea. The surprise attack of 1973, in which 2000-3000 Israeli soldiers were killed, fitted particularly well into traditional patterns of Jewish mourning since the war was launched on Yom Kippur, and many Jews first heard news of it while in synagogue, further decreasing any residual separation between Judaism and Israel. There were many lethal attacks on Israeli civilians in the 1970s and 1980s, the 1st intifada from 1987 led to the deaths of around 200 Israelis. The 2nd intifada, from 2001 saw a much higher Israeli death toll: around 1000, of which around 700 were civilians. Those that wanted to remove these deaths from the political context in which they occurred and treat them as pure hate crimes could easily do so. Attacks on Israel, both by conventional Arab military forces and Palestinian militant groups are nothing new, and Israeli deaths, including many civilian casualties, have occurred since the early days of Zionist settlement in Palestine. They have always been mourned by Israelis and treated as evidence of the belligerence of Palestinians and Arabs in general.
In all these incidents, however, there were others who died at the same time, usually in equal or greater number. The Riots of 1920 saw 5 Jews killed, alongside 4 Palestinian Arabs and 7 British personnel. The Jaffa riots of the following year led to the deaths of 47 Jews and 48 Arabs, while the better-known riots of 1929 saw the deaths of 133 Jews and 116 Palestinian Arabs. The rough equivalency of the death toll between the two sides illustrates that the violence was not one-way; while the riots were usually initiated by Palestinian Arabs, Jewish armed groups engaged in reprisals, in some cases aided by the British military police.
The much larger uprising that occurred between 1936 and 1939 saw the death of around 500 Jews, 262 British security forces, and around 5000 Palestinian Arabs, as the British brutally put down the revolt. For all its equivocations between the two sides, this was the moment where the British army used all its might against Palestinian Arabs.
The primary violence of the immediate post WW2 years was perpetrated by Jews: by militant Zionist groups like the Irgun against British and Arab targets, mostly in Palestine but in London too, most infamously the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 which killed 91 people, amongst them 41 Arabs, 28 British citizens and 17 Jews. The War of Independence began as a conflict between the two communities within Palestine, following the UN vote for the partition plan in November 1947. There followed a range of violent attacks from both sides, leading to a rough equivalence in fatalities, around 900 on each side.
The wider regional war which followed in May 1948 was far bloodier, causing the deaths of thousands of Jews and Palestinians, as well as thousands of troops from the Arab state armies. The causes of the war remain contested to this day, but it was Palestinians who were the primary victims: around 750,000 were either forced out by Zionist forces or fled as refugees, and were never permitted to return, creating the Nakba and birthing a Palestinian refugee population which now numbers some 5.9 million according to UNWRA.
In 1967, Israel was by far the stronger side, reflected in the comparative death toll: 15-20,000 Egyptian soldiers, against under 1000 Israeli troops. Israel was in a weaker position in 1973 and lost 2500-2800 troops but the Arab armies lost still more, between 8000 and 18,000. The first intifada was most fatal for Palestinians, around 2000 were killed, against around 200 Israelis, commensurate with the fact that the primary Palestinian tactic was rock throwing, against the full force of a Western-backed army. And while Israel was rightly outraged by the 700 Israeli civilians killed in terrorist attacks in the 2nd intifada, it occurred alongside the death of around 3000 Palestinians, most of whom were civilians. Much more recently, and relevant to today’s events, 223 Palestinians, including 46 children, were killed in the Great Return March protest at the Gaza border fence in 2018-19.
Taking the conflict since 1947, around 10,000 Israelis have been killed alongside around 50,000 Palestinians, most of the latter during the current Gaza war (only when the war ends that we have full clarity on those numbers). Understandably, it is primarily Israeli deaths which are mourned by Israelis and diaspora Jews, but overall Palestinians have suffered tenfold more casualties, before we even consider the issue of those injured and made refugees in the last 76 years, which have disproportionately been Palestinians.
It is in this context that we need to understand October 7th. 766 Israeli civilians were killed and 373 soldiers too, very high for a single day but not unprecedented over the course of the conflict. The language of ‘since the Holocaust’ is designed to imply a connection to the Holocaust; suggesting that they died in a way somehow similar to Jews killed in the Holocaust. This is deeply misleading – Jews in the Holocaust were persecuted and murdered by powerful modern states, today Israeli Jews hold power in their own state, which seeks to protect them (although it arguably does so very badly).
Furthermore, we need to connect the Israeli dead with Palestinians in Gaza who have been killed, 37,658 according to updated figures from the Ministry of Health in Gaza. There was no delay between the October 7th attacks and the war on Gaza – it began with airstrikes on October 7th, and it was only a matter of days until the death toll on both sides was roughly equal. Many Jews in Britain have complained that there was insufficient focus on the Israeli victims of October 7th, leaving no time to mourn them; this complaint is understandable, but it occurred because Israel started bombing Gaza immediately. As soon as most people heard the news there were already hundreds dead on both sides. All the people who were killed in Israel and in Gaza (not forgetting the 500 Palestinians killed in the West Bank in the last 8 months) are quite literally victims of the same war. We need to name them, picture them and mourn them all.
When some of us in London held a memorial to Palestinian deaths of an earlier round of violence, the Kaddish for Gaza in 2018, we were widely condemned in the Jewish community, because of a questionable claim that all the dead were members of Hamas (suddenly the claim of a single Hamas leader was treated as gospel). This was a precursor to our current situation – those who step out of line and try to remember the victims of both sides are disciplined, treated as if they are aiding the enemy. In the UK today we have seen Jewish/Israeli vigils exclusively about the hostages and October 7th victims, and Palestine Solidarity Campaign Rallies exclusively about the Palestinian victims of the war. We need to insist, against the critics, that we can mourn everyone. The group Combatants for Peace, founded by former fighters on both sides, have done just this, mourning Palestinian and Israel deaths together, holding an annual ‘Joint Israel-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony’ on Israel’s Yom Hazikaron, and, for the last five years a ‘Joint Nakba Remembrance Ceremony’ on Palestinian Nakba day’. We need much more of this – if it can happen in Israel/Palestine it should be possible in the diaspora too.
None of this is radical; it’s basic universalist humanitarianism, which some will see as liberal bothsidesism. But I fear it has become radical; many Palestinians fear that mourning Israeli victims of Hamas will be used to justify the war on Gaza, many Israelis feel that mourning Palestinian victims of Israel will be used to justify Hamas. There are various technologies of dehumanisation used; a certain fringe of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement has depicted all Israelis (including Israeli victims) as ‘settlers’ and has suggested that they were thus fair targets for anti-colonial resistance (I’m not contesting the relevance of settler colonialism to the history of Zionism). In the Israeli case, the linguistic technique used to desensitise the population to Palestinian deaths has been to attribute everything to ‘Hamas’. The numbers killed are said to be exaggerated by Hamas; those killed are portrayed as being members of Hamas, and thus had it coming. But ‘Hamas’ is used incredibly broadly, to include low-level politicians, civil servants and ordinary members, all of whom have been subject to targeted bombings. Given the fact that Hamas has been the de facto government of Gaza since 2007, there are many such people, most of whom had no knowledge of the October 7th attacks and were not complicit in them. In addition, many thousands of unconnected civilians have been knowingly killed in the process of bombing the former figures in their homes. It is the vague designation of thousands of civilians as being ‘Hamas’ that has led to the enormous death toll. Like describing all Israeli as settlers, this is language that shuts down our natural empathy towards all victims and can turn decent people into ethical monsters. I’m not saying that there is an equal power balance in this conflict, or ignoring the systematic denial of Palestinian rights. But I am saying that all lives are of equal value.
Neither the news nor history offer simple narratives – there is a deep sea of facts, too numerous to comprehend. To make sense of things we create narratives: x belongs with y, z is a separate phenomenon. Jews have tended to group together Jewish deaths, wherever and whenever they occur, adding them to a story of Jewish persecution and pogroms that seems to stretch into eternity. This story has a logical conclusion; we must be strong, fight back against our enemies, kill them first if necessary. But using this narrative is a choice. There are other, more convincing stories we could tell out of the raw facts. I’m suggesting that it makes more sense to consider Jewish Israeli deaths as part of the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, locating them alongside Palestinian victims of that conflict. I think the deaths from October 7th and from the subsequent war make this move even more necessary. The conclusion from such a narrative would be wholly different: we need a political solution to the conflict, one that recognises that both communities are there to stay and need to live under conditions of equality. If Israelis who have been killed are victims of a political conflict, then they have a shared experience with Palestinian victims of that same conflict.
The question of who we mourn is always political, but it is also narrative, a matter of which stories we associate ourselves with. Exclusively mourning those on our side leads to a continuation of ethnic conflict; viewing all who have died as victims of nationalism, war and empire can lead to a different kind of future.
My children are drowning in the sea, and you would sing before me? says the Midrash, when angels rejoice at the death of the Egyptians in the Exodus story.
They were all my sons, says Joe Keller in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. I guess they were.
The use of quotation marks in this paragraph is not designed to cast doubt on the veracity of these events, rather to indicate that they have become all-encompassing meta-narratives.