I was stuck at Sydney airport for four hours yesterday so I filled that time speaking to a friend, a young progressive Uyghur Muslim intellectual from Melbourne. We spoke for hours about the current Israel-Palestine conflict and he confronted me about what he perceived to be an intellectual blind spot on my part.
For years now, I’ve been a strident critic of those who adopt a position of neutrality in the face of Chinese Communist Party atrocities and Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine. I am a loud voice against human rights abusers and a thorn in the side of governments that want to place trade above human rights.
But my friend pointed out to me now that the ‘‘moderate’’ position I appeared to be taking on Israel-Palestine - condemning human rights abuses and war crimes committed by both Hamas and the IDF - risked making me a hypocrite, just like those neutrals I attacked for sitting on the fence when it came to CCP atrocities and Russian crimes in Ukraine. He argued that the preponderance of violence taking place was now coming from the Israeli government and he argued that it constituted genocide according to international law.
One of the things I hate most in this world is hypocrisy, so this has prompted me to reflect deeply on my stance. My friend was horrified by the Hamas terror attacks on October 7 and vociferously condemned these appalling crimes against Jewish civilians, so I know he is a genuine and committed humanitarian not motivated by anti-Semitism. We’ve worked side by side for years combatting the Uyghur genocide and the Tibetan genocide, so I regard him as a close friend and highly respect his views.
Personally, I feel torn. I have so many Muslim friends, especially in the Uyghur community. I’ve worked with some of these friends for years, fighting side by side in the trenches when it comes to opposing Chinese Communist Party atrocities. They are victims of genocide themselves and they are hurting right now as they watch footage of Palestinian children being killed and seriously injured in Gaza. I understand their pain and I understand how visceral these horrors must be for them.
I also have many Jewish friends and I know many of them are genuinely terrified right now given the way extremists around the world have openly applauded the horrific Hamas pogrom of October 7. An anti-Israel demonstration in Sydney saw an extremist fringe within the crowd chant ‘‘gas the Jews’’ without facing any pushback from police or fellow demonstrators. I am deeply disturbed by the surge in anti-Semitism we see on social media right now, with Holocaust apologia and denialism obtaining tens of thousands of likes on TikTok and Twitter.
Reading about the Holocaust as a child deeply impacted me and shaped my commitment to fighting genocide. I will never forget meeting Holocaust survivors at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum when I was fifteen, seeing their Auschwitz identification numbers tattooed into their arms. I visited Auschwitz last year and I saw the crematoria where millions of Jews were burned and the brackish dark pond in which the ashes of hundreds of thousands of innocents were scattered.
I am fiercely committed to upholding the promise ‘‘Never Again’’ - this is the promise that initially motivated me to spend years fighting for the Uyghurs. It is why the horrific and monstrous Hamas violence of October 7 so deeply disturbed me. But it is also why I understand Palestinian fears of a second Nakba at the hands of a far-right Israeli government which consistently dehumanises Palestinians, describing them as ‘‘children of darkness.’’
I have reflected deeply on my stance and I will keep trying hard to listen to both Palestinians and Israelis, Muslims and Jews. Fundamentally, all I want is simple - I want a settlement where the national aspirations of both peoples are recognised, with both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis able to live side by side in peace. I want a future where both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis are free from the dread and terror of random bombings and free from the threat of ethnic cleansing. My Uyghur friend wants this too, and we talked about what it would take to achieve such a lasting peace.
I thought the conversation we had was interesting, a genuine dialogue exploring the morality of this century long conflict, so I’ve edited it for grammar and clarity and presented it here in written form. I am protecting his identity as many people have unjustly been targeted for expressing sympathy for the Palestinians.
Dialogue on Israel-Palestine
Chengiz: I can recognise the historical fact that Israel is a response to trauma and genocide. However, I’m not sure where the exception for apartheid and genocide comes from for Israel. I don’t buy into it. There seems to be a dishonest reluctance by people on our side to call what’s happening genocide. Based on the numbers I believe even if we passed 25,000 Palestinian deaths there would still be a reluctance to call it genocide.
I condemn the Hamas horrors on October 7 but it’s insane that people don’t understand the sources of Hamas and Palestinian militancy. They don’t emanate from a void, they aren’t a manifestation of ‘‘Muslim barbarity’’ or innate savagery - frankly, an extremely racist and Islamaphobic idea. You can’t boil this down to tribal warfare, Muhammad’s purge of Jewish tribes in the 7th century. This isn’t the product of thousands of years of Islamic-Jewish conflict. Hamas and Palestinian militancy are a specific response to specific conditions. By refusing to acknowledge the fact that Israeli occupation fuels Palestinian militancy, this refusal to address the root of the problem actually perpetuates violence against Jews, making these denials themselves anti-Semitic.
Look at Ben-Gurion, look at what he said to Nahum Goldmann before he died:
‘‘If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism: the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out.’’
Personally I find the lack of consistency astounding. And unthinking. And unconscionable in its effects. Both for Israelis and Palestinians. We know for a fact that for many years Netanyahu allowed Qatar to fund Hamas - he wanted to empower the radical fanatics of Hamas against the comparatively moderate Palestinian Authority so as to ensure no Palestinian state could ever come into being. If Hamas is as bad as ISIS, why did Netanyahu allow Qatar to fund Hamas for so many years?
Drew: Firstly, I want to say this: I know that Hamas does not represent all Palestinians - children represent more than half the population of Gaza and they clearly have no say over the actions of Hamas. Hamas is a brutal dictatorship and they purge and kill their opponents. For the record, I oppose the IDF bombing campaign in Gaza right now because it is indiscriminate and the civilian toll is unacceptable and unbearable - it is horrific. I oppose collective punishment and I don’t want a single Palestinian civilian to be harmed.
And I want to say that I reject Islamophobia and all racist claims that this is fundamentally a religious war that stems from thousands of years of Islamic hatred of Jews. I don’t believe this and essentializing things in this way only plays into the hands of the fundamentalists who want religious war. I know Mohammad said that Jews, like Christians, were ‘‘people of the book.’’ I don’t believe Islam is foundationally anti-Semitic, and I think it is wrong that many Christians try to make this point considering the long and lamentable tradition of anti-Semitism within Christianity. I am a Christian and I can recognise that.
And yes, of course, I can understand that Palestinian militancy is a response to abject conditions and I understand that Netanyahu allowed Qatar to fund Hamas for many years as part of a divide-and-rule strategy. That is a fact.
But this does not exonerate or excuse Hamas for the horrors of October 7. This was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust - a racial pogrom targeted against Jews. Hamas fighters massacred hundreds of innocent Jewish civilians at a music festival and Hamas death squads went door to door through kibbutzim executing anybody they could get their hands on. They did this after spending years boasting that they would drive the Jews into the sea. They did this after spending years promoting anti-Semitic hatred and promising to purge Jews from Israel - seven million people. This would constitute a second Holocaust and we see extremists proclaiming this as a model right now.
A serving Pakistani Senator - an Oxford educated man serving in a powerful position in Pakistan - recently posted an image of Hitler to Twitter, saying: ‘‘At least now the world knows why he did what he did.’’ The famous Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi also made a post proclaiming that they would ‘‘do worse than Hitler.’’ She said they would drink the blood and crush the skulls of settlers. And I think this must be understood in the context of many famous leftist voices like Hasan Piker claiming that all Israelis are ‘‘settlers.’’ Hasan even claimed that Israeli babies ‘‘can be settlers.’’ What if a Jew in Israel descends from communities of Jews expelled from the Middle East and North Africa following the establishment of the State of Israel? How can they still be called ‘‘settlers’’ when they have no other home to return to?
Online posts with tens of thousands of likes gloated over footage of panicked Israelis heading to airports on October 7, making the racist claim that they were all ‘‘Polish settlers’’ heading home to Brooklyn. If you are a Jew from Tunisia, where are you supposed to go? Crowds of anti-Israeli activists just torched ancient synagogues in Tunisia. We just saw a horrific pogrom take place in Russia as Dagestanis flooded an airport searching for Jews. They ran riot and rifled through people’s passports looking for Jews. Just last week, we saw crowds chant ‘‘gas the Jews’’ in Sydney before lines of police at the Opera House and no one stepped in. Now we see Stars of David painted on the sides of apartment blocks in Berlin and Paris to identify Jews.
Chengiz: Only a vanishingly small, lunatic fringe want to harm Jews, and I absolutely and resolutely condemn them. But they are a tiny fringe and it is wrong and mistaken to focus on them and demand condemnation of a minuscule fringe when the vast majority of the violence right now is being committed by Israel. Since October 8, only two Israeli troops have died, while more than eight thousand Palestinians have been murdered by the IDF bombing campaign. The majority of the dead are civilians and thousands of them are children. Hospitals are collapsing under the strain and Palestinian doctors are forced to carry out surgery without anesthesia on children, on infants. The horror is indescribable and it occurs against a backdrop where Israeli TikTok influencers mock the suffering of the Palestinian children and the Israeli government blockades all supplies of food, water and medicine into Gaza.
The U.N. Genocide Convention provides that ‘‘deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’’ constitutes genocide. This is what the Israeli government is doing to Gaza right now. Blockading food, water and medicine while carrying out one of the most intense bombing campaigns anywhere in the world since World War II against a strip of land that is one of the most densely populated on Earth - how could this be anything other than a calculated attempt by the Israeli government to make it impossible for Palestinians to live in Gaza? The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence is openly proposing plans to expel the entire population of Gaza into Egypt, to be resettled in Greece, Spain, Canada and the Sinai. This is textbook ethnic cleansing.
Drew: This is true and I understand the points you raise. I understand that right now the preponderance of violence is coming from Israel, and I completely oppose the bombing campaign and plans for ethnic cleansing. I have family relations who were expelled from North Cyprus by the Turkish military simply because they were Greek Cypriots. To this day they have not been able to return to their homes. I am therefore always going to be a fierce opponent of ethnic cleansing. And the reports of Palestinian children forced to undergo amputations without anesthesia is unbearable to me. I cannot even imagine the pain and trauma of these children and it makes me want to rip my hair out thinking about it, truly I can’t accept it and never will.
I recognize that Israel has a right to defend itself against the brutal Hamas pogrom of October 7 but the images we see coming out of Gaza right now are not something anybody with a heart can accept. The fact that thousands of Palestinian children have been killed is completely unbearable and unacceptable.
I have seen images of Palestinian babies with their legs blown off and I have seen images of a young Palestinian girl grasping with pain on the floor of a Gaza hospital with her femur sticking out of her leg. These nightmares will haunt me forever and I cannot get them out of my mind. I have seen videos of Palestinian parents wailing with horror because they have just lost their entire family to bombings - every single one of their children killed. I cannot be inured to that as a human being. To refuse to imagine this suffering as your own is a fundamental failure of humanity.
I have to say I was equally shattered by footage released by Hamas showing Jewish civilian Shani Louk paraded in the back of a pick up truck by terrorists - men spitting on her lifeless and twisted body. I was shattered by photographs of elderly Jews executed by Hamas terrorists at a bus stop and I was shattered by imagery from a CT scan that showed two spinal cords wrapped together in a blackened mass: the charred remains of a Jewish mother and her child tied together by Hamas terrorists before being burned alive. I saw footage of a Hamas militant attempting to behead a dead Israeli with a shovel and this horror continues to sit with me and will not go away.
All of these horrors strike out against my heart and strike out against all of humanity. They are not just crimes against one individual but crimes against the world entire. It is impossible to be a human being and not be devastated by the senseless and murderous violence we see right now against civilians.
In light of the mounting humanitarian disaster, I completely oppose the Israeli blockade of food, medicine, water and fuel and I resolutely oppose any attempt to ethnically cleanse Gaza and expel the entire population into the Sinai. I recognise these brutal policies are being carried out by a government that includes open extremists like Ben Gvir, a man who was banned from serving in the IDF because he was so politically extreme. He has long been affiliated with the same Kahanist fanatics responsible for the assassination of Rabin in order to destroy the Oslo Accords and any chance of peace. For many years he infamously kept a portrait of Baruch Goldstein on the wall of his home - the terrorist responsible for the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in Hebron.
Cengiz: Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinian civilians, including six children. He opened fire on eight hundred Muslim worshippers at a mosque during Ramadan. Ben Gvir is Israeli Minister for National Security in the Netanyahu government and he honors the memory of a terrorist who slaughtered Palestinian children in cold blood.
Drew: Yes, it is unbearable. The equivalent would be a fascist Australian government minister keeping a portrait of the Christchurch killer Brenton Tarrant in his home. I would resolutely oppose any such Australian government and regard it as fascist, so I must regard Netanyahu and this government including extremists like Ben Gvir as fascist. This government is completely illegitimate, I can’t support it.
Cengiz: But what you fail to see is that this catastrophe did not simply begin on October 7, and it is not simply the product of Netanyahu and ideological fanatics in his government. The Israeli state was founded on the dispossession of some 750,000 Palestinians from their land during the Nakba. This violent apartheid project has been racist from the very start. And this is why I go further, and say that not only is this Netanyahu government illegitimate - the entire state of Israel is illegitimate, and the state itself should be dismantled in favor of a just solution for all.
Drew: Listen, to say that the state of Israel is illegitimate - you must have a just proposal for what would happen to the seven million Jews who live in Israel following the dismantling of the state. The October 7 Hamas pogrom clearly demonstrates that they would not be safe - these millions would be at risk of a second Holocaust. Hamas militants murdered more than one thousand Jewish civilians on October 7 and the massacre was only put down when the Israeli Defence Force intervened and killed the Hamas attackers. Had the IDF not existed, had the state of Israel not existed, what would have happened? The state was not present for the residents of the kibbutzim that were attacked. For a number of hours, the state of Israel simply ceased to exist in the communities bordering Gaza. The result was an indiscriminate massacre of Jewish civilians.
Chengiz: I obviously condemn all massacres, whether the massacre targets Jewish civilians or Palestinian civilians, I resolutely condemn it. I want to say though: It seems to me that you prioritize and exceptionalise Jewish suffering by continually pointing to the horrific violence of October 7 but not lending equal weight to the Palestinian victims of IDF bombing in recent weeks. Eight thousand have been killed already - this death toll is already far higher than October 7. What will it take to stop the violence? Twenty thousand dead? Thirty thousand dead? Anti-Semitism is horrific, it is wrong, it is a scourge on humanity, but so is Islamophobia and so is anti-Palestinian racism. You don’t seem anywhere near as troubled by Israeli settlers who murder Palestinians with their hands, including children. For some reason they’re not on the same level as Hamas, but they’ve been doing it for far longer. For Western publics, the Israeli government and the IDF which support them are also not on the same level as Hamas.
Using horrific white phosphorus munitions on densely packed civilian areas is not enough. Making use of torture is not enough. The murder of many times as many civilians and children is not enough. As far as I’m concerned, Israel and its successive governments, and probably most of its people: they support genocide. They are openly fine with genocide and they don’t even live in a dictatorship. They live in a pluralistic democracy. It’s really clear that Holocaust guilt is being allowed to drive genocide of Palestinians and that’s a road I won’t go down. Anti-Semitism is not worse than anti-Palestinian racism. One is currently leading to a genocide as we speak, one is not. If you elevate antisemitism above other murderous genocidal racism, I can’t agree with you. And I say this to you because I respect you and I respect what you have done for the Uyghurs. I simply want to tell you the truth - this is how many of your Muslim friends feel. Most of Gaza does not support Hamas and the overwhelming majority just want to have a normal decent life with dignity. They don’t want to harm Jews. What can they do, why must they die for the crime of having been born Palestinian in Gaza under the Hamas dictatorship?
Drew: As you know, I condemn the ongoing bombing campaign and I recognise the overwhelming suffering of innocent Palestinian civillians in Gaza. These are war crimes by the IDF. I want to say though: just as we acknowledge that Palestinian militancy is a response to conditions on the ground, we must understand that Israeli militancy is also a response to centuries of anti-Semitic persecution. I think there needs to be recognition that one of the reasons the Zionists have been so militant from the start is the fact that the Jews have historically been one of the most persecuted groups on the face of the planet. The Holocaust was a European crime and I agree it’s wrong for Europe to export its guilt to the Middle East. But it’s also clear that the 1940s generation of Zionists were completely and understandably forged by their experience of the Holocaust.
The Nakba was a horrific crime - the forcible expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. Ben-Gurion and the first generation of Israeli leaders sincerely believed the invading Arab armies of 1948 would have expelled and murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews. They had just lived through the Holocaust and the weight of this world-historical disaster haunted them. This is not to excuse the Nakba in any way. I’m simply noting that the prospective nightmare of a second Holocaust continues to weigh on the minds and hearts of all Israeli Jews. And this cannot be dismissed as idle paranoia when generations of terrorists have remained ideologically committed to a second Holocaust, ideologically committed not to co-existence but to driving the Jews into the sea.
Clearly, this foundational trauma - the Holocaust and the Nakba - continues to reverberate down through history. Yuval Noah Harari recently said: ‘‘The same people can be victims and perpetrators at the same time. In most conflicts the blame for crimes and atrocities is not predominant on one side but somewhere in between. This is quite banal, but still people find it hard to accept this.’’ And I think this is the tragic truth.
Israeli Jews have massacred and ethnically cleansed Palestinians from their homes, as in horrors like the massacre of Deir Yassin when fascist Lehi and Irgun militants brutally massacred more than one hundred Palestinians in their homes. Equally, there were also horrors like the Kfar Etzion massacre, when Palestinian militants murdered hundreds of Jewish villagers while shouting ‘’Deir Yassin!’’
Sadly, there are extremist elements within the anti-Israel protest movement which frankly completely reject any prospect of a two state solution and call for expulsions of Jews. We see very clearly an increasing level of violent anti-Semitism right now, and we must condemn it because it is not in any way conducive to justice. The message should be: Hamas does not represent Muslims and does not represent Islam. They breached numerous Islamic laws by killing innocents. It’s disturbing to me that anybody could see this openly genocidal pogrom as an emancipatory political act, a ‘‘jail break by the oppressed’’ as some leftist activists called it on Twitter. Posts describing it as ‘‘decolonisation in practice’’ went viral with hundreds of thousands of likes.
How can we say this was liberation - the slaughter of innocent civilians? Many of them were peace activists - these kibbutzim were in many cases the last holdouts for the Israeli left, they hated the Netanyahu government, the extremists like Ben Gvir. And the Hamas terrorists went door to door and executed entire families anyway. People who desperately wanted peace. And this is confirmed by the fact that so many of the families of the slaughtered innocents have clashed with the Netanyahu government in recent weeks and gone to the world media to say that they don’t want the Israeli government to carry out an indiscriminate bombing campaign in Gaza in the name of their fallen loved ones. This was the Israeli peace camp and it is like Hamas targeted the Israeli peace camp deliberately so as to bring on a nihilistic and apocalyptic war.
These fanatics clearly don’t care about the lives of Palestinian civilians. A Hamas leader speaking from the luxury of a five star hotel in Doha recently told a Saudi newsreader that all nations must suffer for their liberation and he compared their fight to the Soviets losing thirty million people against the Nazis. He spoke about this in a positive sense. Thirty million people! How can there be such intoxication with death?
They build tunnels for their own fighters but refuse to dig shelters for Palestinian civilians. It is like they want as many innocents to die as possible for their own recruitment. And this is the trap for Israel. Hamas knew the Netanyahu government was an extremist government and they carried out the hideous October 7 massacre of Jewish civilians knowing it would provoke horrific revenge strikes. They want Israel to invade Gaza and carry out war crimes and completely lose all humanity. It reminds me of Osama Bin Laden and September 11 - Al Qaeda wanted to lay a trap for America, to provoke immense retaliation so as to fan the flames of the apocalyptic civilisational struggle Bin Laden dreamed of. Bin Laden wanted America to invade Iraq and bleed out in the Middle East, fighting insurgencies for decades. This was the dream of the fundamentalists and the terror recruiters.
Israel must de-escalate, for its own sake. They should not fall into the trap laid by Hamas. It will be a disaster for all of humanity. But I don’t have all the answers. I recognise the fact that no country on Earth could sit there and do nothing after the October 7 atrocities. There must be a way for Israel to exercise its legitimate right to defend itself by targeting the Hamas leadership without laying waste to refugee camps and the homes of hundreds of thousands of innocents.
Chengiz: The de-escalation must come from Israel. Israel, as the major power, has the responsibility to move towards a just solution. They have to make reparations for the Nakba, their foundational sin. This is the context behind all the violence. You can’t drive people out of their homes and treat them like shit and strip them of all hope for decades and expect no radicalisation to take place. Where does the animus come from? I promise you, for the vast majority of Palestinians, this is not a religious struggle. This is simply a question of justice - they want the right to return to the lands from which they were expelled.
Imagine as an Australian, living under occupation, forced from your home, your family and loved ones killed by bombings. Would you not take up arms to resist? The Palestinians in Gaza tried peaceful protests in 2018 and 2019 with the Great March of Return and thousands were shot by Israeli snipers. So what options do they have? They are pushed up against a wall and given no quarter. I say this not to justify the Hamas horrors of October 7 - I am simply pointing out the fact that Israeli policy is almost seemingly designed to radicalize and turn people towards extremism and it has been this way for decades.
Drew: Of course, I agree with you that Israel must de-escalate. The path to a lasting peace is to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and end the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Give the Palestinians a state. But there must be de-escalation from both sides. How can Jews in Israel live in safety if a Palestinian state led by Hamas continued to launch raids, bombings and terror attacks?
Israel must prove to the Palestinians and the wider world that extremists like Ben Gvir and Smotrich will not define the future of any political settlement. They must prove to the world that they will not continue to squeeze the Palestinians with endless land grabs in the West Bank.
But the Palestinians must equally convince both Israeli Jews and the wider world that a democratic one-state solution or two-state solution would not result in the genocide and purge of Jews as Hamas openly desires. Hamas seemingly did all it could with the October 7 attack to play on the deepest traumas in Israeli memory about pogroms and genocide. This was not an accident - they deliberately carried out a pogrom against Jews so as to reopen these old wounds. And anti-Israeli activists exhibited great glee sharing footage of panicked Israelis heading to airports. These people clearly do not believe in co-existence.
Chengiz: I take your point but a two state solution should not depend upon the good graces of the Israeli government. Israel gets no say whether Palestine is allowed to exist - self determination is a fundamental right in international law. Do the Tibetans and the Uyghurs need Chinese permission to seek their freedom? You would never argue that. The right to self-determination is the cornerstone of the UN Charter. Palestinians should not be required to convince Israelis of their basic humanity, just as Jews throughout history should not have been forced to convince their oppressors of their humanity. They each deserve the irreducible minimum of human rights. Countries should unilaterally recognise Palestine and sanction the Israelis to stop the settlements and recognise a Palestinian state.
Drew: On the question of self-determination, of course I agree with you morally. I believe in the right to self-determination and I believe a two-state solution should not depend on Israel and men like Ben Gvir. But I’m talking about the reality of how to achieve a lasting political settlement. The only way there can be lasting peace is a proper settlement like the end of apartheid in South Africa. Mandela’s genius was to convince the apartheid regime and the wider world that there would not be retaliatory violence. He stood there and shook the hands of the men who imprisoned him for decades. Morally, should he have been forced to shake the hands of his oppressors so that they would recognise his innate humanity? Of course not, this should never apply to anyone. I agree with you that placing the onus on the victim is morally unfair. But politics is the art of the possible and we need to find a path to a lasting settlement and this requires negotiations and compromise.
The tragedy we face is that this violence is the result of more than a century of cumulative radicalisation on both sides. Right now, I am reading a history of the conflict by Ian Black: ‘‘Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel.’’ The first massacres on both sides took place in the 1920s! One hundred years of warfare. Every few years, one side will carry out absolutely egregious crimes against humanity and the other side will respond in kind with revenge killings and every time this happens the peace camps in both communities get squeezed.
Now we are at a point where Hamas has just carried out the worst anti-Jewish pogrom seen in world history since the 1940s and Israel is responding with tremendous disproportionate violence that may bring about a second Nakba and destroy peace for another one hundred years. Netanyahu has obviously been trying to block a Palestinian state for years and has tried to make the peace process impossible. But Hamas has also worked to make the peace process impossible. Hamas deliberately carried out the October 7 atrocities to confirm all the worst fears of Jews in Israel that people want to exterminate them.
Obviously, right now, with blood raging, it will be impossible for both Palestinians and Israelis to sit down and make a full accounting of the atrocities committed throughout history by both sides. But I also think this is the only path to a full and lasting peace: acknowledging that grievances on both sides are deeply felt and legitimate and a response to enormous historical trauma. Peace is impossible without mutual recognition.
I absolutely can see the fact that Israeli violence has been disproportionate since the Nakba in 1948 as they have arguably been the dominant military power. But this does not mean that recurrent waves of brutal terror attacks on Israeli civilians accompanied by decades of genocidal rhetoric by Palestinian and Arab leaders have not had a brutal radicalizing effect themselves, especially when considering the fact that so many Israelis descend from the survivors of the Holocaust.
Chengiz: We agree on the fundamental principle that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve the chance to live in dignity, free from persecution, terror and discrimination. We agree that the only path forward is a future where all those living between the River and the Sea have equality, dignity and freedom.
In terms of a future peace plan, I agree with the famous barrister Geoffrey Robertson KC that if European Jews were going to be given a state in 1948 it should have been in Europe, it should have been in Germany. But I see your point that millions of Jews already live in Israel and millions descend from communities expelled from the Middle East and North Africa by racist regimes. Now the only reasonable path forward is to reckon with this history together and live together. And this requires a just peace. Perpetrators of war crimes on both sides must be brought to justice and somehow we must reckon with the history together. Killing people doesn’t lead to accountability and justice and it will never be the solution.
Drew: We agree here on the necessity of mutual recognition.
Monsters in this maelstrom do exist, and they are the leaders on both sides who have consistently worked for decades to foreclose any possibility of peace, consistently opting only for further radicalisation, terror, massacre and violence. This war has already gone on for more than one hundred years and it will go on for another century unless both Palestinians and Israelis find it within themselves to recognise the humanity in each other. Both Palestinians and Israelis have a right to exist and both communities have valid national claims. This recognition must be the foundation stone for a lasting peace.
There are Palestinian and Israeli children born today who will live to bury their own children and grandchildren unless both communities can somehow find a way to stop this endless cycle of genocidal violence and revenge killing. For the sake of humanity, we must find a way.
Chengiz: We agree on that.
Would suggest you check out Richard Medhurst on Rokfin.
As Norman Finkelstein said, we witnessed a 'slave revolt' on the 7th. It was not unexpected, because violent rage is a product of decades of decimation, apartheid and extraordinary worldwide apathy to governmental criminality. Any violence against non combatants is against Islam and I thank you Drew for your informed approach on the religion.
Widespread Multinational and multifaith coordinated efforts of advocacy and non violent protest, from the streets to the screens. And maybe pressure from global economic collusion of middle nations, or civillian economic collusion. There is no intent for discussion or negotiation on the side of the settlers, who hold the cards, arms and friends in high places. We need to move swiftly.