“Eh, they just don’t know,” I said about my progressive friends, liking posts about thousands of Israelis murdered, raped, and kidnapped on my social media, while stating, “I’m not anti-semitic, I’m anti-Zionist.” “They don’t really know the nuances to the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They see this as the small guy fighting the big guy, and who doesn’t root for the small guy? So many things to be informed about right now, and this just isn’t one of them.” Progressives hear words like “apartheid” and “colonialism,” know those things are wrong, and don’t dig any deeper to find out whether they are actually true.

The colonialism charge is the strangest to me, since this land is so tied to the Jewish identity that it is mentioned in Jewish prayers every single day, several times. Maybe they don’t realize that the Jewish people are the only ones that meet the U.N. definition of indigeneity, and have for 3000 years when Jews started living on the land. Nobody else has formed a state in Israel. Rather, there has been a non-stop series of colonists, including Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Alexandrians, Romans, the Byzantines, the Crusaders of the Holy Roman Empire, the various Muslim empires such as the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks and Ottomans, and finally the British. Fewer than half of Israelis have grandparents of European/American/Australian origin, partially because many are descendants of the 800,000 Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries in the late 1940s. I’m not sure where this idea of the overwhelmingly “white” Israeli comes from, but I’m tempted to blame Paul Newman’s blue eyes in the Exodus movie. Additionally, colonists by definition start a conflict, while Israel acquired Gaza in 1967 after Egypt moved its tanks to the border and announced its intent to eliminate Israel. It left Gaza in 2005, additional evidence that Israel is certainly not colonizing Gaza. If anything, the Arab states have repeatedly wanted to colonize Israel (and still proclaim their desire), not the other way around.

Apartheid is also a bizarre word to throw around. The word may have weakened in usage somewhat, but in reference to South Africa, it meant anti-miscegenation laws, separate legislatures, ID requirements, etc. None of these things are true in Israel. In contrast, over 25% of the Israeli citizens aren’t Jewish and have equal rights, including serving in the legislature and on the Supreme Court. Israel doesn’t govern Gaza or the West Bank, so any claims about those being apartheid would apply to Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

In Economic Sophisms, Bastiat famously wrote, “If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.” Trade and jobs bring peace, both because of economic interdependence, but also because cooperation brings trust and understanding. Workers from Gaza brought in $2 million per day to their economy. Israeli companies opened factories in Gaza and the West Bank. Countless non-profits were fostering forums for Israelis and Palestinians to talk. Of course, all of this directly contrasts the media’s tendency to make Gaza seem like some kind of open-air prison and was the very reason that Hamas felt the need to attack. The world also seems loathe to include Egypt’s blockade of Gaza. Economic interdependence builds strong relationships, and that would go against their goals.

What will happen to innocent Palestinians in this invasion is painful, especially since Hamas puts weapons near populated civilian centers to inflate the casualties in the headlines. Something like 20% of the rockets end up misfiring and hitting people in Gaza. Hamas has shown repeatedly that they are more interested in inflating deaths in headlines than saving lives and use Palestinians as human shields to get more media sympathy. Already, Hamas has put up roadblocks to bar people from fleeing Gaza to safety. They do this to appeal to those same progressive friends that I mentioned, those who read only the headlines and denounce. For example, when a recent Islamic Jihad misfire hit a hospital, the media ran with the Hamas statement it was Israel without bothering to verify. Meanwhile, the major news outlets have been completely silent as multiple rockets hit Barzilai Hospital, including the children’s and maternity wards.

I really wish that this invasion didn’t have to happen. For the Palestinians and for the Israeli soldiers. But what is the other choice? Israel can’t leave the hostages to suffer, and plenty of videos have emerged confirming how horribly they are being treated. Israel can’t continue to live with rocket attacks. The trust that the negotiating table requires is gone, and I can’t imagine it returning for the foreseeable future. There may be hope if Hamas and other terrorist groups were gone, but there hasn’t been a democratic election in Gaza in over fifteen years, and their removal doesn’t seem likely to happen peacefully.

I don’t know where this goes next. There have been non-stop rocket attacks against Israel for decades. I shudder to think what the United States would do to Mexico if they were firing rockets at Texas, but Israel has been amazingly proportional, not that the world has given them proper credit. If history is a guide, in this conflict the casualties of the Palestinians will be higher than those of the Israelis. People won’t read further than the headlines and assume that Israel is solely responsible for those casualties and judge the side with the most casualties to be the victim.

Which brings me back to, “What next?” Every single peace deal has been rejected. I am aware that Hamas will not support peace, through their own charter, “initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement…there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.” Of course, this is the same organization that sent suicide bombers when Israel tried to implement the Oslo Accords and whose founding document calls for killing all of the Jews, not limited to just those in Israel. 

I (wrongly, in retrospect) supported the unilateral disengagement in Gaza eighteen years ago. Many in my life told me I was naive, “The terrorists will gain a foothold and use Gaza to attack Israel. This is a mistake.” “No,” I replied, “They will see this as a step towards peace. Somebody has to end this cycle. The world will see this and understand that we want peace.” I remember sitting on a bench in Central Square in Cambridge and saying to my friend, “The ordinary Palestinian is just like the ordinary Israeli. They are wondering where the hell their kid’s math homework went and what to make for dinner.” We are the same, I thought then and think now, we all want to be safe and for the fighting to be over. Give peace a chance. I have been a supporter of a Two State Solution since I can remember. For the first time, I’m doubting that. If pulling out of Gaza led to non-stop rocket attacks and now this, what would pulling out of the West Bank do?

My evidence is anecdotal, but I don’t think I’m alone. My American Jewish friends are done avoiding conflicts with progressives who support everyone’s rights…except the Jews. The next few weeks will be filled with horrible battles, but any other option is even worse. There is a moral duty for Americans to follow Biden’s lead and support Israel’s right and duty to defend itself. If people want to call for reforms in Israel’s government while doing that, fine (There might be almost as much to complain about with Israeli policies as there are with American ones.). But Americans also need to support the fight against a genocidal terrorist organization. A big part of this fight is perception, so silence is complicity.

And as I think about this more, I’m not sure ignorance is forgivable for the loud voices of the left supporting Hamas. There is no crime in not being familiar with the nuances of the conflict, but if someone is using their voice to support the side that is kidnapping, raping, and murdering, they better be damn sure they’ve done their research. Supporting Hamas because you support the Palestinians is like supporting the Taliban because you support the Afghanis. Thus, blindly supporting a terrorist organization intent on wiping out millions of Jews, well, that sounds a whole lot like anti-semitism.