I have a lot of sympathy for people who find it hard or uncomfortable to talk about Israel’s Gaza war. It can feel wrong to judge the actions of a nation at war when one is oneself in a position of safety.
Especially in our country’s case, there’s always the problem of hypocrisy to contend with. Even as most Americans have been appalled at the bloodshed and suffering in Gaza, we are also queasily aware that we—or at least, our government—would probably respond in the same way or worse to acts of terrorism. After 9/11, the U.S. government sent captives to secret prisons, introduced a torture program, and invaded at least two countries—one of which did not even have a colorable link to the attacks.
So—the question can always be posed—who are we to judge? (To which I respond—for one thing—we should judge because we are in part judging ourselves—it is our own tax dollars funding the bombing and starvation of Gaza. But more on that later.)
We also can’t ignore—much as we might like to—the real problem of antisemitism that surrounds this issue.
Of course, it’s absurd and unjust to conflate all criticism of Israel with antisemitism. But I also can’t quite agree with those on the Left who dismiss this potential link as a non-issue.
We recently witnessed two attacks on U.S. soil against Jewish citizens—in as many weeks—by people claiming to invoke the Palestinian cause. One of the attacks resulted in the death of two young people on the cusp of building a life together. The other caused severe injuries, after a man lobbed a homemade Molotov cocktail at peaceful demonstrators, while shouting “Free Palestine!”
It seems to me—in such a context—that people speaking for the human rights of Palestinians need to be just as vocal and consistent in condemning antisemitism. One can’t say that one is more of a pressing issue than the other.
This is all the more true now that senior members of the Trump administration are increasingly deploying antisemitic dog-whistles borrowed from Neo-Nazi ideology.
At one recent appearance before a friendly far-right audience, Vice President J.D. Vance criticized the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) by name—a group founded to combat antisemitism—for the sin of impugning the Americanness of white supremacist groups. According to Vance, this is the biggest problem with linking American identity to the ideas contained in the Declaration of Independence—it would mean that Neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups would not be seen as fully “American.”
Seriously, this was Vance’s message—you can read about it here.
With the Vice President of the United States publicly siding with Neo-Nazi groups over antisemitism watchdogs and the Declaration of Independence—it’s all the more incumbent on the Left to adhere to its historic role as the voice against antisemitism (and, of course, against any other form of racial ideology).
But that also doesn’t mean we have no obligation to speak up for the human rights of Palestinian people. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be forced into false choices—or to be taken in by disingenuous bids to silence criticism of Israel by making unfair charges of antisemitism.
Since taking office, of course, the Trump administration has resorted to unsubstantiated accusations of antisemitism as an all-purpose device. It’s the perfect multitool for a MAGA administration; they can use it simultaneously to: 1) deflect attention from their own officials’ blatant antisemitism (see above); 2) drive a wedge between different traditionally Democratic constituencies; 3) jail noncitizens for engaging in First Amendment–protected activities (like writing op-eds and attending protests); and 4) punish civil society institutions—like universities—that they regard as dangerous alternative centers of power outside their direct control.
We don’t need to spend a lot of time wondering whether Trump’s motive in all of this is really a sincere desire to stop antisemitism. Trump’s own Vice President just made his opinion on the subject clear. Tucker Carlson—a key propagandist for the MAGA ideology—has promoted Holocaust denial material on his show. (Carlson—notably—has also diverged from standard Republican orthodoxy in recent years on the issues of Israel and Iran—I wonder why? Do we think it’s because he just cares that much about the human rights of Palestinians?) Elon Musk—back when he was still in Trump’s good graces—promoted Carlson’s Holocaust revisionist content as well as other antisemitic memes. And Trump’s FTC has engaged in a month’s-long battle to throttle the liberal watchdog organization Media Matters—merely because they criticized Musk for allowing antisemitic Neo-Nazi content on his website, which in turn spooked would-be advertisers.
These are not guys who are sincerely trying to combat antisemitism.
So just as the Left needs to do a better job of speaking out clearly against antisemitism in its own ranks—we also shouldn’t be intimidated by bogus attempts to conflate justified criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
Last month, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz—which often operates as a voice of conscience in the country—published a horrifying report, claiming that Israeli soldiers had deliberately opened fire on unarmed Palestinian civilians as they approached aid distribution sites. Netanyahu (“in his limitless cynicism,” as Michelle Goldberg put it) immediately tarred Haaretz’s report as a form of antisemitic “blood libel.”
Yet, the Israeli government has provided no coherent alternative explanation for why hundreds of Palestinian civilians keep dying in near-daily mass-shooting incidents at the government’s aid distribution centers. The UN reports that more than 800 people have been killed while trying to access food—more than 600 of them while in the immediate vicinity of the Israeli government’s aid distribution convoys.
Nor has the Israeli government been able to explain why the population of Gaza appears to be starving to death—unless it is due to Israel’s own ongoing restrictions on humanitarian aid.
The New York Times published front-page coverage this week of the skeletal features of malnourished Palestinian children. Netanyahu’s government says that Hamas is responsible for engineering their suffering, in a bid for international sympathy. And it’s not that I don't think Hamas is capable of such a thing (they’ve shown they are capable of all manner of atrocities—including against their own civilian population.) But how exactly are they supposedly generating this hunger? By blocking aid? The Times reports this morning—in a follow-up piece—that senior Israeli military officials have disclaimed any evidence that Hamas routinely interfered with UN aid distribution—undercutting Netanyahu’s claims.
The only coherent explanation that has emerged of the starvation in Gaza is the obvious one: Israel’s ongoing restrictions on aid flows.
Netanyahu’s government purportedly ended their months-long outright blockade of humanitarian supplies in May. I, like most of the world, assumed (or at least hoped) that the humanitarian situation in the enclave would then rapidly improve.
But aid organizations say that ongoing restrictions on aid—and the Israeli government’s insistence on channeling aid flows through their own much-criticized distribution system—even as more than 600 people have been shot to death in recent months while trying to obtain food at these centers—mean in practice that little food and medicine are flowing.
Just days ago, more than 100 international aid organizations—including such well-known names as Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam International—alleged in a joint statement:
Just outside Gaza, in warehouses – and even within Gaza itself – tonnes of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sit untouched, with humanitarian organizations blocked from accessing or delivering them. The Government of Israel’s restrictions, delays and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation and death.
That’s part of the unique horror of this situation. It’s not just that children are starving. It’s not just that the world is waking up to images of emaciated 18 month-olds with jagged vertebrae visible through their back. It’s that the milk and food to feed them is all available, and ready to be delivered. It just needs to be given to them.
I’m reminded of what the poet Hugh MacDiarmid once wrote about Franco’s siege of Republican cities during the Spanish Civil War:
... one segment of humanity
Was passing through inhuman agonies of hunger and fear
While decent people the world over were prevented
From keeping that thinning stream of food flowing
To maintain life and proclaim
The continuity of simple human charity.
I understand all the reasons why it’s uncomfortable to talk about this. I get why—for many people of good will—this is the one human rights issue they would least like to discuss. It’s the definition of a fraught topic—implicating antisemitism, terrorism, Islamophobia, the Holocaust, racism, and colonialism all in one.
It makes all the sense in the world why—for many people—they would rather talk about anything else—any other issue in the world; and why a cone of silence would descend around Gaza and Gaza alone.
But—as Martin Luther King Jr. once put it, in the speech where he finally spoke out against the Vietnam War—there comes “a time to break silence.” We have to overcome our reluctance to speak out about this issue. Why? Because innocent people are suffering without justification. And while it may be hard to hold that truth alongside the truths that October 7 was also a horrific atrocity and that Israeli civilian hostages are still suffering under captivity and that antisemitic violence is still a real problem on both the Right and the Left—no one ever promised us it would be easy to hold the multiple truths of this world in our minds at once. But we still have to do it. Or at least make the attempt.
Early in the Gaza War, there was still some rational debate to be had about whether Israel’s response to October 7 was within the bounds of proportionality and international law. That debate is finished now.
Netanyahu’s government—of course—claims otherwise. They still invoke the name of the civilian hostages, whom Hamas abducted from their homes at gunpoint and has continued to hold captive in torturous conditions. But the hostages’ families have mostly spent the past year or more calling for a ceasefire deal with Hamas—because it’s the only hope they have for seeing their loved ones again.
Netanyahu invokes the name of “military necessity” for his increasingly brutal war—but his own military officials are meanwhile questioning its rationale and undermining his preferred narrative.
It appears increasingly that even the IDF and the hostages’s families don’t want this war—any more than the people of Gaza do. The only people who do seem to want it are Netanyahu (who fears criminal prosecution and accountability for oversight failures leading to October 7, if he ever leaves office), and the far-right members of his coalition—many of whom have openly embraced the rhetoric of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
In one of his autobiographical writings, Arthur Koestler once observed that, when he was still a member of the Communist Party, he leapt at the chance to condemn any atrocity inflicted by any government other than the Soviet Union. For him—he wrote—it was a chance to divert all the moral energy that he couldn’t use to protest the actions of the USSR into an acceptable alternate channel. As a good Party member, there was one state whose crimes were simply off-limits. But as Stalin continued to commit more and more crimes—this created a bottleneck of moral energies that demanded an outlet. So he talked all the more vehemently about the crimes of imperialism, the crimes of the Ottoman Empire—anything other than the crimes of Stalin.
I’ve occasionally felt that there is a similar psychological motive at play in my desire to talk about wars other than the one in Gaza. I wrote about Ukraine. I wrote about Yemen. I wrote about South Sudan. I realize now that my desire—however humane in intent—also had an element of psychological displacement behind it.
The images I was seeing—that we were all seeing—of the devastation in Gaza; the dead corpses of children; the collapsed apartment buildings where innumerable civilians resided—were creating a kind of backlog of moral outrage. It had to go somewhere. But I had a mental block against channeling it toward the one pair of governments that most deserved to be criticized for it: that is—the government of Israel—and the government of the United States (since our own tax dollars continue to go to fund, equip, and sponsor these atrocities).
There comes a moment when enough pressure has amassed behind the wall that the dam must break. It eventually broke for Koestler; he had to condemn Stalin’s regime and leave the Communist Party. And the photos of the starving children in the New York Times broke the dam for me. The mental barrier has collapsed, and the waters have flooded in. It’s time to break silence.