Words Matter: Israeli-Hamas Conflict
As we head into the first days of the new year and gather with friends and family to reflect on the year gone by, we find moments of joy and deep sadness. For some of us, this holiday season felt just a bit heavier given what is going on in the Middle East. There were a few more empty chairs around those dinner tables. There were fewer stories and less reason to be joyous.
Here in the United States, we are struggling to make sense of the violence that escalated, most recently, in October. The violent murder and kidnapping of Israeli citizens attending a music festival initiated the latest round of tensions in a long-simmering conflict. Immediately thereafter a sustained and violent military operation perpetrated by the Israeli Government in Gaza has thus far claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians and decimated substantial parts of the infrastructure in Gaza. In the United States, we witnessed an increase in both antisemitic and anti-Islamic rhetoric and hate-based crimes. Political and educational leaders are carefully parsing their words, trying to scope out the middle ground and not offend people’s sensibilities. Is it terrorism? Is it genocide? What does “from the river to the sea” mean? Is that antisemitic? Is the U.S. complicit in perpetrating war crimes? Is there a pathway to peace? These are the questions. The answers aren’t easy, and they don’t afford us any comfort.
Words matter. There is value in naming things and actions for what they are. The United Nations, in its resolution 1566 in October of 2004 defined terrorism as “criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.” By this definition, it is easy to condemn the violence that Hamas perpetrated on the 7th of October as terrorism. There is no argument or equivocation on that.
What we seem to be having a harder time condemning is the preceding acts of detention and persecution of Palestinian people by the Israeli government. By some estimates, there are upwards of 7,000 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons, many without being charged or afforded any legal recourse. Is that forcible extraction and detention, with the effect of “provoking a state of terror” in the Palestinian people also not an act of terrorism? Is it not terrorism simply because it is sanctioned by the State of Israel? What about the damage to infrastructure and Israeli bombing campaigns that have caused the “death or serious bodily injury” of Palestinians? Is that terrorism of a different order and magnitude? Is the justification that the Israeli military action is retaliatory sufficient to ignore the sheer magnitude of death and destruction? How do we make sense of the mass detention of Palestinian civilians preceding the events of October 7th without justifying or explaining the heinous acts of terrorism that took place?
In its 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide, the United Nations advanced a definition of genocide as a series of acts “committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.” Hamas’s stated goal of eliminating the state of Israel and all consequent criminal acts that follow fall within its definition. The government of Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas is not genocide because the definition explicitly excludes political groups (which Hamas is). But at what point does the stated intent of the Israeli Government become irrelevant when the impact of its campaign is genocidal even if it isn’t, by some definition, a genocide?
We can and should love the Israeli people who have endured one of the worst tragedies in human history. We can and should love the Palestinian people who have been living under apartheid conditions in Gaza and the West Bank. We can and should be critical of Israeli and U.S. policy toward the ongoing war and be critical of Hamas’s terroristic activities. Silencing these critical voices as anti-Semitic or anti-Islamic only limits our ability to engage in meaningful and transformative policy building. The continuation of violence only breeds more hurt and consequently more hate. There is no pathway to prosperity for Israeli people or Palestinian people that doesn’t include the ability of people in Gaza or the West Bank to live with dignity. There is no pathway to peace for Israeli or Palestinian people that doesn’t preserve the safety and security of the Jewish people.
Words matter… perhaps more so for us. For the Israeli and Palestinian people who are missing their family, friends, and loved ones at the dinner table, words matter less. What they are left with is shattered lives drowning in the darkness of despair. The least we owe them is a nuanced consideration of their histories and a commitment to recognize their humanity.