Liberal Zionist writers need to go further in their critiques if they wish to safeguard their future reputations
There has been, everyone seems to agree, a significant shift in the last few weeks. Lots of people, particularly diaspora Jews, who had not spoken out against the war until now have finally done so. As I have written before, this is to be welcomed. Better late than never. But some of those coming round, particularly those with large public platforms, have done so in a way that is so limited, so enclosed by caveats and hasbara talking points that it is unclear how much value their damascene conversion actually has. The suspicion is that they are more interested in protecting the reputations – and future proofing them – than stopping the war. We don’t need them to become anti-Zionists. But we do need them to support a clear position – that Israel is doing terrible things in Gaza, and all peaceful methods need to be employed to pressure it into stopping doing them.
Jonathan Freedland was first out of the stable door. A longstanding Liberal Zionist columnist, he has refused to take the step into non-Zionism that his old friend Peter Beinart has. Unlike the hasbara truthers, Freedland views the same news footage as everyone else in Britain and can see that it is essentially accurate. He understands the need to make some kind of moral critique of Israel’s actions but seeks to limit the scope of that as far as he can. Freedland’s piece was entitled ‘A biblical hatred is engulfing both sides in the Gaza conflict – and blinding them to reason’. The word ‘biblical’ here is fascinating – I presume he means it to imply a terrible plague-like situation that strikes indiscriminately rather than an attempt, as in the book of Joshua, by the Israelites to wipe out the indigenous population of the land.
Next was Masorti’s senior rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg (albeit writing ‘in a personal capacity’), who has something of a reputation for being a communal moral barometer, though it would be more accurate to see him as someone devoted to the fruitless task of trying to hold his diverse community together, whatever the moral cost. Wittenberg also wanted to speak out, but, at the same time, to not speak out. His piece was headlined ‘I love our homeland, but we can’t condone the starvation of civilians’, as if it was necessary to state the former in order to say the latter.
Finally came the Conservative peer and Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein. His critique was so limited that the reader had to wade through multiple paragraphs of pro-Israeli talking points before they reached it. In a piece headlined ‘What do I feel about Gaza? Distress and Despair’ he too, hoped to gain some credit from history for speaking out, whilst covering his back by doing so in the most limited way possible. Finklestein expressed resentment that people frequently ask him how he feels about Gaza, implying that the question came as a result of antisemitism rather than, say, the fact that he has written hawkishly about Israel’s war on Gaza multiple times over the last year and a half.
What approaches do these writers use to make a moral critique while at the same time not making one? One favoured tactic is to talk in the future conditional tense – if Israel was to do x in the future that would be unacceptable. Wittenberg writes: ‘If adequate humanitarian aid does not enter Gaza, this will not just be a human tragedy but deeply damaging for Israel’s international moral standing as a democratic state, formed in the furnace of persecution.’ Similarly, Finklestein says: ‘When this war began, I said with confidence that Israeli forces would never target children, if it pursues a policy of destroying Gaza, rather than destroying Hamas, then the distinction between targeting children and children dying as collateral damage disappears’. But these things have clearly already happened and are continuing to happen. No aid whatsoever entered Gaza for three months, and it has only recently been resumed in a very limited and dangerous way. Finklestein adds that claims of genocide and war crimes will be justified ‘if Israel’s war of defence turns into a war to drive Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza’. Any vaguely dispassionate observer can see that Israel has a policy of destroying Gaza and seeking to make it wholly unliveable – a recent +972 investigation confirmed as much – and has been trying to force Palestinians to leave the West Bank and Gaza for years. In falsely portraying these already existing phenomena as future possibilities these writers seek to give Israel ‘one more chance’ and postpone the moment when they would have to fully withdraw their support for the Israeli state.
The second tactic these writers utilise is the one popularly known as ‘bothsidesism’. It’s even there in Freedland’s title – the ‘biblical hatred’ that is ‘engulfing both sides in the Gaza conflict’. This approach ‘balances’ criticism of Israel with critiques of Hamas and Egypt, or whoever else can be blamed, plausibly or not. Jonathan Wittenberg described Gaza as ‘a catastrophe for innocent Palestinian people caught between the contemptuous nihilism of Hamas and Israel’s attacks.’ Are Hamas mass bombing the Palestinians? Have they destroyed almost all of Gaza’s hospitals and condemned the population to starve? This attempt at spreading the blame is entirely specious. Wittenberg goes on: ‘Israel has every reason to insist that supplies will not be stolen by Hamas, as they often have been. Israel has equally good reason to seek the complete removal of Hamas from Gaza.’ The first point is at the very least months out of date; for almost three months no aid entered Gaza, there was nothing for Hamas to steal. If Hamas did indeed steal aid prior to this, it would hardly be on a moral par with starving a civilian population or creating a politicised aid distribution in which many Palestinians get killed in the process of collecting the aid. The second point directly echoes Netanyahu’s rhetoric – and makes an end to the war impossible. Hamas have been massively weakened, with most of their pre-October 7th leadership killed, and they do not pose an ongoing threat to Israel. But the demand that Hamas should be completely removed or destroyed is a recipe for ongoing ethnic cleansing, since while there are Palestinians left in Gaza, at least some of them will resist the IDF under the banner of Hamas. Wittenberg also claims that the ‘withholding of basic food and medicine’ has been carried out ‘not just by…Israel but by Egypt and especially by Hamas itself.’ This is nonsense. Egypt was partly culpable for maintaining the siege in the past, but a year ago, in May 2024, Israel took control of the Philadelphi corridor, thus controlling all entrances to Gaza by land and sea. Given that Hamas’ tunnel network has been destroyed or rendered inoperable, the only way goods or people can enter or exit Gaza is with Israel’s consent. For the last year at least, the situation is wholly Israel’s responsibility. Pretending otherwise is just an excuse not to do anything, to avoid calling for meaningful diplomatic measures to be taken against Israel.
Freedland uses a more sophisticated version of the ‘both sides’ argument – but it is bothsidesism nonetheless. This version is based on antisemitism – on the one hand Israel is acting immorally but on the other antisemites are attacking Jews around the world. The suggestion is that critics of Israel need to constantly mind their language, to avoid falling into antisemitic tropes, which anti-Israel rhetoric is frequently in danger of doing. Freedland even applies this critique to Yair Golan, the leader of the Zionist Left party The Democrats, who said that ‘a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations’. The Kahanists jumped on the second clause and duplicitously claimed that Golan was invoking the medieval blood libel that Jews murdered children for religious purposes. This was obvious nonsense – there is no evidence medieval Jews ever killed any children while the Israeli state has killed tens of thousands – and it is astonishing that Freedland regurgitates this Netanyahuist talking point. And if such an attack can be made against a former IDF general who behaved heroically on October 7th then it can be made against anyone.
More substantially, Freedland writes about the shooting of the two diplomats in Washington DC, and subsequently there has been added to this the attack on Jewish marchers in support of the hostages in Boulder, Colorado. ‘Some seized on the killings in Washington to downplay the killings in Gaza; others did the reverse’ wrote Freedland, writing about two opposing groups ‘who are gripped…from seeing anything other than their own side’. To be clear, these are horrific attacks that should be condemned and that set back the cause of Palestinian freedom. I am not convinced that they were antisemitic – rather they were violent anti-Israel actions, or anti-Israel’s war on Gaza. They were acts of political violence, and are best understood as part of that tradition, rather than as part of the history of antisemitism. But even if you don’t accept this analysis, it should be clear that these attacks are now being used to justify a continuation of the war. Antisemitism is treated as a singular phenomenon, a global force that threatens Jews everywhere (this in itself is a conspiracy theory). In this understanding, the same unified antisemitism targeted Jews on October 7th, burst forth on university campuses and then led to the attacks in DC and Boulder. Since antisemitism, according to this view, cannot be explained through rationality, and is not affected by what Jews do, the only response is to use force to crush it. Therefore, Israel must complete its war and fully destroy Hamas, since they are the most prominent representatives of the worldwide violent antisemitic movement. This creates a feedback loop; the war leads to violence against Jews which then justifies the continuation of the war.
The alternative perspective is to understand that these attacks, while wrong, have resulted from Israel’s assault on Gaza. They would not have occurred without it, and the victims of such assaults are victims of the war. Were Israel to end the war, such attacks would be less likely, and both supporters of Israel and Jews around the world (the two categories are not always synonymous) would be safer. In the meantime, Jewish institutions would be safer if they publicly distanced themselves from Israel, flew no flags from their buildings, did not have public displays about the hostages (without mention of Palestinians), did not issue statements connecting themselves to Israel and did not host political or diplomatic events in their buildings. This suggestion will no doubt be controversial and be depicted as a form of victim-blaming. But such attitudes echo the ‘global antisemitism conspiracy’ theory outlined above, treating antisemitism (if indeed these attacks are antisemitic) as impervious to events. Such a view represents an idealist perspective; in contrast a materialist conception would consider how antisemitic attitudes and actions are created by physical events and actors, even if understood through a distorted lens. Attacks on Israelis, Zionists or Jews around the world are unacceptable. But they still have a material cause; the behaviour of the Israeli state in general and its conduct during the last 18 months in particular.
What is needed – and what these writers are desperate to avoid – is a recognition of the clarity of what is happening. Israel, and Israel alone, is doing terrible things in Gaza and all non-violent pressure needs to be brought to force it to stop doing them. It’s not even about naming it genocide – even though the number of observers using this term is increasing daily. The argument over the term genocide is identical to ones over the terms ethnic cleansing and apartheid – does one accept that Israel is the perpetrator and that it will not stop its oppressive practices without a great deal of external pressure? Defenders of Israel have long relied on the argument that ‘it’s complicated’, deliberately giving the impression that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a minefield of competing claims which is best avoided. But it’s not complicated. It’s extremely simple.
Israel’s Gaza war is not against Hamas. It’s against Palestine – and it’s designed to prevent it from ever existing. Yes, the current conflict was triggered by October 7th, but this ceased to be a war of self-defence once Israel regained control of all its territory in the days after Hamas’ initial attack. It then became a war of revenge, conquest and ethnic cleansing. The Kahanist right reckons it finally has the opportunity to do what it has always dreamed of – to rid the land of Palestinians altogether, preferably through induced migration, but also through mass bombing and starvation.
Liberal Zionists need to accept the current reality and act accordingly. A recent letter organised by Yachad thanked the British government for the steps they have taken thus far, but did not make any further demands. It was far better than the articles discussed above, but the authors need to go further. They need to call, without caveats, for a total end to British military co-operation with Israel including an end to use of its Cyprus military bases, a total end to arms sales, including F35 parts, and the closure of Israeli companies’ arms factories in Britain. They need to call for a range of travel bans on all senior Israel ministers and generals, trade sanctions and support for strong resolutions at the UN Security Council. These moves would genuinely make a difference. Britain has been massively complicit in Israel’s destruction of Gaza. Full withdrawal of its support could end the war. But the British government will be nervous to take these steps. They will want the support, or at least non-opposition, of Liberal Zionists and Jews in Britain. Traditionally pro-Israel writers like Freedland, Wittenberg and Finklestein have begun to speak out, but they need to go a lot further if they want to save their future reputations. What they, and others like them say next is highly significant. There is a lot riding on this.