My criticism of Israel has become sharper and sadder

In a letter to the Age on October 9, 2023, I wrote:

“The attack on Israel by Hamas compressed into the explosion of a few hours, is the outcome of the rage and experience of violence that Palestinians have felt since at least the Nakba of 1948. They have never given up their dream of returning home.

“For Israeli Jews and Jews abroad, the attack raises the spectre of centuries of attacks, pogroms and genocide, a spectre that blinds them to the decades-long injustice caused by their country to Palestinians. Two tragic histories and sets of aspirations clash in one treasured land.”

The views I have formed about Israel’s direction have been further confirmed by Israel’s disproportionate response to Hamas terror: now genocidal behaviour appears justifiable in the name of self-preservation.

Netanyahu is prepared to sacrifice those hostages still alive for his own political survival. And now, six more have been murdered.

My criticism of Israel has become sharper, and sadder.  For speaking out against the violence of the Israeli state and being critical of extremism by elements in the pro-Palestine camp, I have been subjected to horrible public and private abuse by both sides.

I am cut off from some family. Locally, the inability of either side to engage with the other is tragic. Closedown culture affects both sides.

Far too many in the Jewish community have remained silent over the assault on Gaza and now Israel is at war in the north and in the West Bank. The state is on the road to an authoritarian, anti-democratic, ethno-religious state. This nightmare is what the world judges.  Sadly, there are Jews who support what is going on.

The mainstream Australian abhorrence at Israel’s actions is not an outbreak of classic antisemitism, nor are all slogans and stickers invariably antisemitic. People’s response is moral revulsion. Of course, there are exceptions, and local Nazis try to manipulate the situation.

But it is all too easy to cry wolf over generalised antisemitism.  The language coming from peak bodies has at times been too loose when responding to widespread repulsion at Israel’s actions.

What of supporters of Palestine? The widespread failure to condemn the Hamas massacre and lack of solidarity with the activist Jewish left has been extraordinarily disappointing.

There is little understanding of how the tragic circumstances of Jews in the 19^th and 20^th century have scarred Jews. The retreat into simplistic anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist ideology, and misdirected invective and protest, has been destructive to the social fabric.

Sadly, some Jews have fallen into this way of thinking and acting with their peculiar form of anti-Zionism, which rejects building common ground with half of the Jewish population of the planet – Israeli Jews.

Jews and Palestinians and supporters of a lasting peaceful solution need “all hands on deck” to push for positive change and y compromise. The emergence of joint progressive action in Israel by groups such as Standing Together offers something positive, and a vision for local solidarity across differences.