Understanding the Human Reality

Last week, the Palestine Solidarity Committee hosted a “die-in” on the Science Center plaza. Held to grieve the Palestinians who perished in Israel’s summer offensive against Hamas, the action generated considerable debate. In an editorial, The Crimson endorsed the protest and treated Israel and Hamas as moral equivalents. For those of us who love the Jewish state, this was a painful article to read. Fatuous in its comparisons, puerile in its notions of ethics, it was an ill-advised piece.

The human toll from Israel’s campaign in the Gaza Strip is undeniable. More than 2,000 Palestinian lives—most of them civilians—were lost. Entire neighborhoods were flattened. Hundreds of thousands in the territory were internally displaced. Access to electricity and clean drinking water was imperiled. These are sobering facts, and they should be acknowledged without qualification. That Assad gasses his own people, that ISIS beheads hostages, that Hamas uses Gazans as human-shields—this does nothing to absolve Israel of its own misdeeds. The Jewish state was founded as a liberal democracy and, at its inception, pledged to observe international law and human rights norms. The failure to adopt best practices feels worse when it comes from Israel—a nation with a prophetic, universal mission—than from Hamas—a terrorist organization that calls for a second Holocaust.

Some Israeli actions elude explanation. Airstrikes destroyed a plant that supplied most of the Strip’s power. Bombs were inadvertently dropped on children at play. On the ground, troops sometimes appeared trigger-happy.

Though wanting, steps the Jewish state took to protect Gazans and provide basic goods were credible. It agreed to a series of humanitarian ceasefires, shipped food and medical supplies into the territory, and usually warned residents before their homes came under attack. In asymmetrical warfare, the most difficult task is to distinguish between civilian and combatant. When the enemy tries to obscure those differences–hiding weapons caches in schools, encouraging civilians to put themselves in harm’s way, planning military operations in private homes–the challenge becomes ever more arduous.

This summer, Israel had no choice but to act. The kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teens by Hamas members, the rocket-fire that rained down on the country–this demanded that something be done. Amos Oz, the father of the Israeli peace movement, summed up the conundrum this way: “What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery?”

While that question is a valid one, it moves us nowhere. Whether Oz intends it or not, his analogy distracts from the reality of power relations between Israeli and Palestinian. The Palestinian is not the Israeli’s neighbor, but instead the Israeli’s detainee, held in an existential–as well as a physical–prison. For almost half-a-century, millions of Palestinians have lived under a military occupation of some form or another. To speak of the Jewish state’s summer campaign alone is to ignore the legacy of structural violence of which this episode makes a part. If Gazans had not been kept immiserated by a seven-year blockade, if the current Israeli government had been willing to make the sacrifices necessary for a just and durable peace, the quandary that Oz raises would have been moot. Hamas is the sort of demon conjured by a liberal society in its witching hour. With enough psychic energy—and political will—it can be vanquished.

Today, both appear lacking. Why, then, not join the PSC on the Science Center plaza?  It is important that such protests happen, and that there is a global movement to boycott, divest from, and place sanctions on the Jewish state. Israelis must be reminded that the status quo will have costs. At the same time, the Jewish national project is redeemable. PSC doesn’t think so. That demonstration was as much about ostracizing Israel as an end in itself as it was about grieving Palestinian deaths and ending the occupation. As with much activism, the group’s event was agit-prop. The names of civilians and combatants were mingled without disclaimer. Buzzwords like “massacre” were used. We shouldn’t expect better from the PSC. But we should expect better from the Harvard community, and especially from University administrators and faculty.

For those who care about Israel, now is not the time to isolate our friends across the sea. It is a time to talk and listen, encourage and understand. Closing one of his speeches on Judaism, the philosopher Martin Buber told a story worth recounting here. Still a child, he encountered this proposition: “Outside the gates of Rome,” it read, “there sits a leprous beggar, waiting. He is the Messiah.” Who, the boy wondered, does the Messiah await? Us.

Daniel J. Solomon ’16, a Crimson editorial executive, is a social studies concentrator in Pforzheimer House.