How far will people go to defend the indefensible?

I got a taste this week. It rattled me....

This week, I received a comment on FB that reached a new low for me. In the whole effort that some will go to dismiss the real lives of Palestinians and attempt to justify continued killings of innocent people, I experienced something new. Or many not new. I'm still a bit rattled from it, TBH. And I need to process this.

The other day, I shared another post of my exchanges with my friend Yara, a young Palestinian woman who lives in Deir al Balach in Gaza and with whom I have been corresponding for a lot of this war. I also interviewed her for my podcast, Women Ending War, so we could get a sense of what life has been like inside Gaza, something most Israelis are never exposed to. In fact, since In Feb she started reporting not getting food, and since then her family has been subsisting on bits of rice, which are very expensive. She considers herself "lucky" that her family has means to get even that... as opposed to so many others. Over the months, her messages have gotten weaker, more tired, more hopeless. She often has no energy even to chat. And also often has no electricity or wifi. She spent the 12-day war with Iran in darkness and isolation and fear. And also under fire, with no safe room. This and so much more.....I try to share what I can from our conversations, with her permission of course, to try and get a portrait out into the world of what real life is like in Gaza right now.

It feels like the tide of public opinion has shifted towards sympathy with Gazans experiencing starvation as nations and thought leaders around the world are coming out in powerful voices to stop all this. European countries that Israel considered allies are coming up with economic and political sanctions. Israeli soldiers are being arrested or threatened with arrest around the world. Israeli business and academic professionals are being banned and ousted. Lots of people around the world are furious with Israel for being so impervious so morality and reason, and the Israeli government seems willing to throw its own people under the bus in order to stay on this bloody path. They don't seem to care about hostages, IDF soldiers, Israeli business, the Israeli economy, Jews facing antisemitism around the world... None of that. Bibi Netanyahu's govt is the government that will forever be known as the one that eats its own young. AS WELL as, clearly, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, who are facing unprecedented violence and bloodshed. Netanyahu seems not to care. Amazingly, in America, both Republicans and Democrats are voicing strong criticism of Israel, calling Gaza Genocide, threatening economic and military sanctions. Both sides of the aisle, which not that long ago were fighting to prove who was MORE pro-Israel, are now jockeying to see who can better DISTANCE themselves from Israel. Even trump in his typical grossness said, "The famine is real. You can't make this up." (He would know, as he makes up pretty much everything. So this is clearly a moment.)

Yet, that's only half the story.

While that's happening, the pro-Israel advocacy world is also going into overdrive. We're in this head-spinning state where the world seems largely to be gaining in awareness about the awful state of Gazans and hostages and everyone else involved in this war (with a reminder that when Gazans are starving to death, SO ARE THE HOSTAGES....), and at the same time, many in the pro-Israel world seem even more entrenched in their positions.

How does this play out?

In order to observe the work of pro-Israel advocacy, you have to look back a little at how the pro-Israel advocacy world operates. In my book, "In my Jewish State," I do a rhetorical break-down of the lines that Israel advocates have been using for 50 years or more. since Netanyahu was Israel ambassador to the UN if not earlier. From my analysis of social media memes -- as well as having grown up in this world, been trained in Zionist advocacy, and lived in that world for most of my life -- I found that the ideas used to justify Israel’s violence against Palestinians fall into four key themes:

(1) Israelis/Jews are good and do no wrong
(2) Palestinians are bad and completely at fault
(3) Israelis/Jews are the real victims
(4) Everything Israel does is justified

There's more to this, obviously, and I break these four themes down even further. One of the main lines, for example, is that Palestinians are all liars. In my Zionism class in ninth grade in the early 1980s where we idolized Bibi, we were expertly trained in talking back to Palestinian narratives, without ever having met a Palestinian human being or even read a Palestinian memoir or poem. At 14 years old, we Orthodox Jewish day school teenagers were experts at telling Palestinians that we knew better than them who they were, what their family histories were, and what their life experiences were. (Picture for a moment what would happen if someone did that to Jews....yeah....).

This training came to a head for me in around 2008 or 2009 when I started a job writing marketing copy for a so-called "media watchdog" organization. My job was very simple: I was to take articles written by Palestinians or where Palestinians were quoted, and my assignment was to prove they were lying. That was the whole task. After a few weeks of this, I began to question this. If our only way of proving our own worth is by insisting that everyone else is lying, we are doing something very wrong. One day I said in a staff meeting, "Why can't we just let Palestinians share their narrative?" The entire room stared at me in silence, and the next day I was fired. This event became a watershed moment for me in breaking down the indoctrination that I was raised into. All of that "Palestinians are lying" bullshit. All that knee-jerk dehumanization of the other. It's all used to justify the unjustifiable.

And so here we are in this moment, where these two things are happening at the same time. On one hand, the world is starting to see what Israel doesn't want the world to see. The world is seeing this, by the way, despite Israel trying to stop this from happening. Most Israeli media almost never shows Palestinian perspectives or real lives of Palestinians, and the Israeli government aggressively bans journalists from Gaza -- and The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) counted 186 journalists who were killed in Gaza so far. Israel has also started arresting Israeli journalists deemed to "critical" of the war.

On the other hand, while the world is seeing dead and wounded and starving and displaced Gazans -- and even some Israeli media is starting to cover this, too -- many pro-Israel advocates continue to remain entrenched. Pro-Israel advocacy is still continuing to promote the same lines as always, despite the undeniable realities on the ground. So much dehumanization, so much justification, so much continued self-victimhood ("Remember Oct 7!" As if that's still a justification. Or "Remember the hostages!" as if starving 2.2 million gazans has done ANYTHING to help the hostages. It hasn't, at all. it only starves the hostages....). All this is same-old-same-old. Same kinds of lines that I heard when I was 14 years old. Some details have changed, but the rhetorical twisting remains.

Amid all this insanity, I got this new comment yesterday. I don't know why I was so taken by it, but I was. When I shared the latest update from my friend Yara who is sitting starving to death in Deir Al Balach, someone on my page followed up their rant -- the typical "It's not israel's fault, it's Hamas' fault," etc etc, all blame and no taking of responsibility -- this commenter then wrote the following words:

"...if this Yara person even exists and is even in Gaza."

This was just... well... a new low in the complete dehumanization of the other. In the entire, "Palestinians are all lying" thing. This commenter was so unwilling to even consider Yara's real experience, despite months of my sharing her words and messages and voice, that they had to create a whole lie that Yara doesn't exist. Complete erasure. Complete and utter erasure of a human being and everyone else she lives with.

How low can people go?

This comment really upset me. It just felt like too much for me. I don't know why. I mean, I put up with a lot. I get called all kinds of names when I stand holding my sign. A few days ago someone stopped traffic in order to yell out of his car, "NAZI!". Like, I'm a nazi for daring to say we need to get out of Gaza and end this war. That also rattled me a little, but I was fine after a minute or two. But this thing, telling Yara she doesn't exist -- and Yara is on my FB page btw, and sees all of this -- this thing was just a whole new low. The latest expression of the obnoxious, toxic, rhetorical tactic where people tell Palestinians that we know better than them what their lives are. I can't stomach that. I just can't.

And again, I ask myself, what would happen if someone non-Jewish said to us, "Jews don't exist," or, "Let me explain Jewish history to you," or "Antisemitism doesn't exist." Jews flip out at things like this. And yet here we are doing that to others. I can't... I'm just.... idk, I can't even.

I think that this dynamic in which people confronted with facts that potentially undermine their entire worldview choose to double down instead of take an honest look and have an honest conversation -- what some would call "confirmation bias" although it's so much more than that -- this dynamic has gone into overdrive since 2016. We have all witnessed this entire trump world not giving a fuck about anything trump does -- not sexual assault, not calling for the killing of his VP or members of Congress, not cheating elections or cheating the system to win, not sending legal immigrants to random countries where they face disappearance or death, not endless lying -- none of that seems to move any of his supporters to question their loyalty to him.

To those of us observing this from the outside, it is beyond mind-boggling. And I would say that it has brought many of us to question our faith in humanity. Truly. For those people who value honesty, care, compassion, generosity, it is exhausting to try to live in this world right now. It's so hard to wrap your head around this thing. This whole thing about people faced with the unjustifiable who would rather double down in the rhetoric and embrace hate and inhumanity and the dehumanization and mass death of others, they would rather do all that then dare to think that perhaps they are wrong.

I AM DEFINITELY NOT WRONG AND I WILL EXPLAIN IT TO YOU. I KNOW YOUR LIFE BETTER THAN YOU DO. IF YOU EVEN EXIST THAT IS.

IDK, It's so hard. So hard to deal with this.

So I think that what we are witnessing right now with Israel supporters is very similar. Facing these very real horrors of what israel has done in Gaza and being completely unwilling or unable to look at it truthfully. Doubling down on the dehumanization, on the whole, "Palestinians are lying" thing. That's what we're seeing. And it's hard. Very hard.

I am starting to really think that this stance -- imperviousness to fact, reason, and morality -- is part of the defining culture of Israeliness and Zionism. I was so inculcated into this that it feels like just the way things are and always have been in some corners of the jewish world. But I'm feeling like it's an indoctrination that helps us avoid facing real things. Not just Gaza, but perhaps also facing more, if you continue to scratch the surface: facing settler violence, facing IDF violations of international law, facing realities that yes there IS an occupation and it IS illegal and awful and we ARE doing it, and perhaps even facing some very uncomfortable truths about our own history in this land vis a vis palestinians, taking a look at what nakba means, taking a look at our own actions, the Jewish people, all along. All of it.

We are so trained to step into this rhetorical debate mode and take out our tools of verbal manipulation that we don't even realize what we're really doing. We're using words that were poured into our minds in order to justify the unjustifiable.

How much longer will this go on? Is there anything that can break this open? All of it? The imperviousness to all of it?

I don't know. I'm just observing. And it's hard.

I realize that saying "It's hard" referring to talking sounds a bit ridiculous when people are dying all around us. But I feel very strongly that the rhetoric plays a strong role in enabling all the bloodshed. So that's part of the fight right now. We have do break down the rhetoric in order to allow space for humanity. And it's hard. Not as hard as starving or living in tunnels.... etc... etc, but still hard. But that's part of the work.

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