Things that even the best Israelis get wrong, Part 1

My latest op-ed in Arutz 7 Israel National News.

This is the first of a few fatal errors even the best of Israelis make. More to come.

The BBC recently interviewed Brigadier General (Res.) Amir Avivi of the IDF, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement of the government’s intention to take over Gaza City. General Avivi is probably the most admired military officer in the IDF, and he well deserves every ounce of that admiration.

One of General Avivi’s answers to the BBC, however, highlights an especially stubborn Israeli weakness: the impulse to show that Jews are good people, no matter the cost. Consider this exchange:

BBC: If the Palestinian civilian population isn't willing to leave and is still there, isn't there a huge risk to their life and safety?

Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi: Well, the basic idea says, let's really encourage the Gazans to move to the humanitarian zone. Israel created the humanitarian zone pretty much from the beginning of the war in the Al-Mawasi area and some of the areas of the central camps. Israel is now really enhancing dramatically the amount of humanitarian aid and locations where they can get humanitarian aid from four areas of distribution to 16 areas of distbution, also building field hospitals and so on. So on one hand, Israel is really looking at how to safeguard and really bring the best humanitarian aid in the humanitarian zone where Israel encourages the Gazans to go to out of the war zone.

Now consider the exchange that should have taken place instead:

BBC: If the Palestinian civilian population isn't willing to leave and is still there, isn't there a huge risk to their life and safety?

Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi: Obviously.

No explanations, no defensive responses, just one word.

Many of Israel’s staunchest supporters might rightly wonder: Why does Israel feel the need to take responsibility for absolutely anything that leads to harm to Palestinian Arabs, regardless of whose action or inaction led to the harm? One cannot even blame the BBC for asking such a preposterous question, because they are the UK’s equivalent of Haaretz, and it is to be expected that they would pounce on any sign of Israeli weakness.

So the best General in Israel, one that so many correctly look up to for leadership, slips right into apologising for Palestinian Arabs being harmed despite the many, many things Israel does to avoid such harm. How much more could we do? Well, “Palestinians” are still being harmed, is going to be the reaction to anything we say. Obviously, they will retort, you’re not doing enough. And this in a war that the Gazans started. Let that sink in.

We instinctively take responsibility for the enemy’s well-being in an aggressive war that the enemy launched against us.

But is that not the whole point of Israel naively insisting on splitting the Gazans into two types: Hamas, on the one hand, and “innocent Palestinian civilians” on the other? Gazan "civilians" are an endless source of Hamas terrorists, while those who can't fight, feed, spy for, run errands for, and shield the killers, stash weapons in their children's bedrooms, offer their homes as tunnel entrances, hand out sweets when Jews are killed and enrol their children in "summer camps" to learn the fine tradition of Jew-killing. By contriving such a non-existent split, the Jews secured an opportunity to try to show, once again for the gazillionth time, that Jews are good people.

The rationale: If we can remain “good people” despite “the worst massacre since the Holocaust”, then, surely, the world will be convinced that we are good people and all this anti-Semitism will stop. Surely.

By actually winning the war, retaking Gaza and expelling every single Gazan from it, we tarnish our pristine image in a virulently anti-Semitic world. Huh? Keep in mind also that each time Prime Minister Netanyahu says, “We don’t want to take back Gaza,” he acknowledges that giving up Gaza was the right thing to do.

Now ask yourself, do we deserve to win such a war? Would God not be entitled to say, “Sorry, Jews, you’re on your own”?

General Avivi must realise that had Israel done absolutely nothing about saving “the Palestinian civilian population”, the psychological attacks on Israel would have been exactly the same. (Over)feeding the Gazans and not feeding them at all both lead to accusations of starving the Gazans. Since the outcome in both cases is exactly the same, then the sensible thing to do is to do what benefits us.

Anti-Semitism and psychological warfare against Israel have nothing whatsoever to do with how good or bad Jews are. Thinking that they do also underlies the curious notion that “Never again” can be assured by Jews being good to everybody, more determinately so than before, failing to see that by harbouring such a notion, the Jews take responsibility for the Holocaust.

The Holocaust did not happen because we did not show the world enough that we are good people, that is an inane excuse for evil, suggesting that it is impossible for Jews to conceive of intrinsically bad people, such as a people whose very identity is predicated on the extermination of all Jews. "You must not 'meet halfway' those who do not want to meet you," Ze’ev Jabotinsky warned the Jews over a hundred years ago. Who listened?

Instead of wasting time showing a Jew-hating world what wonderful people the Jews are, a fool’s errand if ever there was one, how about Israel just fighting the war to win, plain and simple? If nothing else, Israel would come out of such a war with many more soldiers still alive, most of them ready and able to fight and save their country in the next war. Soldiers die not only because the enemy kills them, but also because the deluded presume to tell them how to fight.

Picture credit:

IDF