(Hebr.: Next year in Gaza?)
Allow me one thought about Gaza. Please correct me, if I am crazy.
I have this weird, sad hope, that the international antisemitism could help Israel and Zahal in Gaza.
To explain this hope, I want to summarize my impression of the antisemites in Europe, then refer to the revisionist Jabotinsky and apply his pragmatic approach to the recent military efforts of the Zahal and its opposition by (german) protests.
The protesters in Europe or America, the UN, all those antizionists, antisemites, they don’t help the people in Gaza, and most of them don’t even want to help. Some of them do actually want to help Hamas, and others may be forgetting about the attacks in October, like you said. Or they simply hate Israel, the jew among the nations.
I couldn’t seem to find an approach, as I feel that I have failed badly so far. The support for Israel in some cases comes from a bad place. Germany’s „raison d’être“ is an insulting lie, and the arguments of the few protests in solidarity ressemble those of foreign minister: „israel is following international law“ – who waits for the tides to turn, in order to condem Israel with the very same argument. I fear that the agitation against antizionism has created a bunch of left wing suckers on government money and no enlightement of Pourquoi Israel at all.
let’s do another revision of zionism
The revisionist zionists are largely ignored in the radical left. It is an annoying task to argue with antizionists, and so it seems easier to ignore their arguments against zionism as a martial movement. The argument pro Israel has become mostly historical and moralist. In Germany, this argument has become popular, and so there is a battlefield on which the antizionist propagandists and fact checkers are at home – creating ideals and rescuing the world from a distance.
I don’t see the point of arguing historically, e.g. bringing up some Mufti or the antizionist warfare of the first half of the 1900s as an excuse. Instead, revision should point out, that the Nakhba might have been required. People who say Nakhba, would you still chose to remain with a tribe and be expelled instead of helping the creation of this emergency society of the jews: an endangered people that needs this macchiavellian coup in order to live long enough to see the communism, the rebuildinig of the temple, a future? The creation of the beautiful democracy, that the state of Israel has become, was optional from the pragmatic point of view of survival. Yet, it tells a lot about the society; it is worth fighting for it!
Revisionist zionism was – among other reasons – layed out as a reaction to the diverse propositions of more approachable targets for mass migration. Today, I would suggest a pragmatic approach for diaspora, as well. Israel exists, and its resilience should not only be a fallback plan for jews everywhere, but an example. Create many Israels, make the antisemites everywhere realise, that jews are not going to surrender! And pragmatism would help the people of Gaza, too.
objective antisemitism
In 1940, Vladimir Jabotinski, the famous revisionist, argued that the polish people had reasons to hate jews: polish jews were often unassimilated, more literate, more educated and had the better jobs than their polish neighbors. And they were a large minority in some polish cities. So the envy was understandable. Jabotinski called that an „objective Antisemitism“. After their deportation, he argued, there will be no way back, because the polish would fight them just because of their fear of joblosses etc.
subjective antisemitism
Germans on the other hand did not have those reasons. They had a long tradition of antijudaism, not different from any christian culture. As their speciality they developped antisemitism as a science.[edit: and those theories about jewish finances, psychoanalysis, media, manipulation, conspiracy or even jewish physics are still viral, but this is not supposed to treat theories of antisemitism.] Jabotinski called this „subjective antisemitism“. He did not anticipate the bureaucratically thorough and industrial efforts of extermination, nor the secondary antisemitism after the Shoah. But he saw clearly that the germans would not welcome back any jew, even if they would have been needed economically.
The antisemitic war front
People in Gaza (in all their misery and despair) might realize that the „international solidarity with the palestinian people“ are not willing to make peace with Israel, even if the people in Gaza might objectively accept it. Hamas, Jihad and PLO are clearly following the tradition of subjective antisemitism, denying peace at any possibility.
„Professionell palestinians“ in europe fit the description of hating jews more than necessary. All of them hate Israel from afar. They don’t want to and don’t have to live in the levante. They found not only refuge but homes, careers and social acceptance more than any ottoman empire or khalifate ever offered for the fishers, herders and farmers that lived in palestine until a hundred years ago.
Iranian „axis of resistance“ is explicitly fighting Israel no matter what.
That leaves the colorful international coalition of antisemites in the metropoles. I’ll talk about the academic part of them. Many hide their hate( sometimes before themselves), and many can be mocked via „pinkwashing“; their high postmodern ideals are openly discredited by their allied soup kitchen chef of Hamas, who diametrically rule by antimodern ideals – and I won’t get into how and why postmodernity is an antimodern movement in its own.
When debating the conflict, they make a point about many different „rights“ of palestinians: human rights of course, international rights and a lot of ideal rights, which they made up or recycled from the soviet-arab alliance in the mid 1900s. I don’t want to get into the detail of the conflict, where you can fight each other with the facts, whether or not the Human rights watch, UNRWA or Israel could do more for the rights of palestinians. Instead I want to point out the idealism of the international rights that are brought forward, which are reflected by the genocide argument. Any map without Palestine on it, any argument, that palestine is no nation, is met by louder cries than the situation on the eastbank of the dnipro: not one person has to die in order to define a genocide, but the culture, language, history might be rewritten. They are so hung up on identities, that they don’t distinguish the brutal nature of national identity. Palestinians, in itself, is an identity to fight Israel, the two state solution that they propose is the armament of a nation that want to replace another.
Is it possible that there are objective antisemites in Gaza today?
Maybe the gaza people will realize that this international support cannot accept a better life for people in Gaza, it only wants a state able of warfare. As I read, Zahal gives free passage for people with white flags. They have to continue this way, showing a path forward to peace with Israel. „Go south, vote with your feet against Hamas“. Peace can’t be done with this holy bunch of haters. Israel has won the wars, it won’t leave, and peace is a way forward. Just do it. Even Bibi has proposed a palestinian state years ago – an administration with no military. Capitulation.
This is their option: stop helping Hamas and Jihad, and search for an understanding. It may be fair to say, that this option is difficult to acknowledge, but I find it hard to ignore: Israel is stronger, the „military“ (and economic) hopes of the „palestinian cause“ in Gaza rest solely on international intervention, and this intervention seems unlikely. Whoever considers peace and life as more important than this struggle with no end, must consider the option of surrender first of all.
Their objective antisemitism which is cemented into the transgenerational „right to return“, is a strong argument against Israel. It fuels the coalition with those antisemites who don’t care, who destroys Israel and why. Simultaneously it is no realist hope for those who are made refugees after four generations, nor is it an actual problem. It’s the prolongation of their creation as a „national identity“ with no other goal but to take the place of the jews. The hope here is, that it has become a fantasy for subjective antisemites, who hate the jews more than necessary, and a breaking point for any pragmatic in Gaza.
Capitulation as an empowerment
I have a metaphor about alcoholism again. When I capitulated, I admitted that I am powerless. I can’t fight anymore. Fighting the need to drink every day is impossible. It is stronger, it will always win. So I capitulated, I stopped fighting, I did what was asked, I went through rehab. This moment of complete loss of control allowed me to take control again, to start on a new path.
Literature: „Die jüdische Kriegsfront“ by Vladimir Jabotinski, Freiburg – Germany 2021 ( VO, 1940: „the jewish war front“)