Called Out

A bonus mini-post

Sometimes criticism hits home because, deep down, you know it’s true. On Friday, before Shabbat (the Sabbath), someone using the username Glove (I think – I can’t currently find the comment) left a comment on my post from last week saying that I laid out a good case for moving the Palestinians out of Gaza, but that I then backed away from actually saying it outright. And, I knew he (?) was right. Actually, I knew that even when I posted. I had written a more forthright post and then I got scared of the implications of what I was writing and even of getting in trouble with the law (now that it’s clear that the UK has no free speech for criticism of Islam and various other things) and mangled it into something wishy-washy.

I do need to clarify that, when I said I was worried about splitting the Jewish people, I didn’t mean the obvious self-hating Jews, but good, loyal, Zionist Jews, mostly in the diaspora, who are still living on 6 October 2023.

I was actually thinking of two friends in particular. One, by no means a soft liberal, got very angry in a debate on this subject in a Facebook group for Orthodox Jews that we’re both in, saying it was morally obscene to move Gazans, particularly for Jews to do so.

The other is my oldest friend, a non-Orthodox rabbi who signed a letter with dozens of other mostly non-Orthodox British rabbis demanding that the IDF should not enter Rafah on the grounds that there would be a humanitarian catastrophe if they did. The letter angered and saddened me for many reasons (saddened more than angered, really): the naivety; the self-righteousness; the idea that rabbis in another country can judge military strategy and humanitarian need better than the military commanders on the ground; and the idea that I suspect lay behind it, that these rabbis believed that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are more moral than Binyamin Netanyahu and the IDF high command. I don’t think Netanyahu is a moral exemplar, but I do think he wants the best for Israel, albeit mixed with the best for himself. I do think the IDF senior staff want the best for Israel and are moral, despite making some horrific errors in 2023. I think Biden, Harris, Blinken, Schumer, Obama and rest of the Biden administration puppeteers are destined for the ninth circle of Hell for what they did after 7 October and it pains me to see my friend and other Jews siding with them like this.

There was no retraction when the IDF evacuated Rafah in a fortnight and there was no humanitarian catastrophe during operations there.

These people are good people (my friends, not the Biden administration), but they are also naïve and wrong. But I fear there are many like them, particularly in the USA.

Despite all this, I think the most viable way for Israel to bring peace and security to Southern Israel is to move the Palestinians out of Gaza. Hamas probably won’t be removed with them, but the IDF will have a free hand to fight them. I don’t know how it could be done, I don’t know if it will be done, but I don’t see any other viable options. I haven’t heard a single alternative that seems remotely plausible or more moral, either the deprogramming of the Palestinians (which won’t be successful without genuine UN and Arab help and without Fatah being brought in to rule, neither of which, it’s clear, are going to happen) or endless war and death.