The Hard Bigotry of Hyerbolic Expectations
Israel and its Enemies
-Note to Christians: I realise that the modern governments of the State of Israel have adopted blasphemous laws concerning such issues as Sodomy. I realise that their culture, like so many ‘western’ cultures is decadent and Godless. I realise that the governments of the State of Israel as a nation and the Jewish people as a whole have rejected their Messiah and are in rebellion against God. Granted.
The claim has been made that the modern State of Israel began with ‘the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians’. The problem I wish to point out with this claim is not that its facts are false, but that the philosophy needed to make this false claim can easily be stated as ‘hard bigotry’. Or, as I put it in the title, “The Hard Bigotry of Hyberbolic Expectations’.
What are ‘Hyperbolic Expectations’? They are expectations that differ wildly from the norm, in either direction. And in this case we see them differing in both directions. The Palestinians and their arab allies are being held to a far, far lower standard than we hold ‘normal’ people to; and the Jews are being held to a far, far higher standard. (Including by themselves, which is a large part of the problem.)
Let us make no mistake. If the acts we are seeing today were to be carried out by any persecuted group against their persecutors (native American’s against the Americans, for example? Pretty much anybody against the Russians?) the world would practically unanimously repudiate the perpetrators, and not bat an eye at the military reprisals.
Barbarism
I wasn’t paying too much attention to the news on Saturday, so by the time I signed on to one of my news sites there were already a dozen or so reports piled up. One of them concerned a dead Jewish woman being paraded naked through the streets of an Arab town by jeering captors on the back of a pickup. Dozens of other reports came in, deliberate targeting of civilians, posting executions on the victim’s own social media, rapes, the butchery of old people, women, children, and babies in a nursery. This, in a word, is barbarism. It is not the act of a civilized people, it is an act of barbarism.
If the Swiss were to take military action against the Italians, and were to bring back some Italian female soldiers, and were to prarade one of them down the streets of Geneva naked, with a jeering crowd looking on… we would rightly call that barbarism. If a set of US bankrobbers were to take hostages during a failed bankrobbery, and were to parade some of their dead bodies naked in front of the cameras while holding others prisoner, we would call that barbarism.
It would not matter what injustices had existed between the two people, and for how long, if one side took such acts, we would call it barabrism… not ‘a reaction to…’ or ‘a justified reaction to…’.
Nazi sympathisers
Yes, I remember the Nazi sympathisers who, after World War II, had their head shaved and were paraded down the street. Prostitutes who, perhaps even out of desperation, had made their living selling their bodies to the German invaders. They were, at least, paraded alive and, I believe, dressed and, I hope, not after being gang raped.
Even taking that as a wrong, two wrongs don’t make a right, and one wrong does not excuse a thousand.
Right-Wing Anti-Semitism
There are, among the right wing (which is a tricky thing to define anyway. I don’t think the British Conservative party is at all conservative, and Israel has its strongest support in the United States among extreme right wing social conservatives) those who are anti-semitic. A few of them have been so in this conflict. And a few others have been far too silent. But on the whole the right wing has been pro-Israel in this conflict.
And right wing anti-semitism is pretty openly a form of jealousy: “We hate those bloodsucking rich Jews who own all of Hollywood and pretty much everything else!”
Virulent Left-wing and moderate Anti-Semitism
The hard bigotry that I am discussing here is almost, but not completely, unique to the moderate (plague on both houses) and left-wing commentators and public. It consists of two simultaneous bigotries:
1) Holding Palestinians and others to a lower standard of morality. A man who propositions a woman in a New York elevator is basically guilty of rape. The Muslim who uses his sister to lure a Christian woman into his bedroom, rapes her, and says she is now his wife and thus a Muslim, well, that is his culture, I guess.
One feature of this bigotry is to treat the person, indeed the entire culture, as if they had no agency. As if ‘because’ this or that had happened in their past, then they must react or act this way in the present. The poor or downtrodden or uneducated must rape and plunder because… they are poor or downtrodden. Saying, for example, that ‘Israel is to blame for the rape of its women’ is to say that the soldier who raped her has no agency. It is to say, in effect, that the isn’t human.
2) On the flip side they hold the Israeli’s to a higher standard of morality. They must not only turn the other cheek (NB: that Scriptural phrase has nothing at all to do with this kind of conflict) but they must keep turning it even as the head it is sitting on gets cut off.
And they are assumed to have infinite agency. When they bomb their enemies, they are infinitely capable of making sure that their bombs only land on combatants, preferably in uniform holding weapons. It is to say, in effect, that the Israeli government has the power of God.
No Justification, No Parallel
There is a real sense in which we must hold both sides to the same standard. But we have to make sure it is the same standard. For example:
If someone enters a child’s bedroom, grabs them by the hair, and decapitates them: that is barbarism. It must be condemned whoever does it.
However… that is not the same thing as dropping a bomb, or shooting bullets, toward what is or you think is a military headquarters and having that bomb, or those bullets, kill the same child. They may both be bad things, but they are not the same thing.
If someone kills a woman, even a female soldier, removes her clothes, and parades her through town, that is barbarism. It must be condemned whoever does it.
However… that is not the same thing as an army clean up crew, finding a naked body in the rubble of a building, carrying it outside and putting it in a clean up truck, where they cover it and put it next to other bodies.
If someone rapes a woman, whether captured in battle or as a civilian, that is barbarism, and their own army should shoot them for it.
However, that is not the same as a security guard searching someone coming through a checkpoint.
The other day a right-wing anti-semite on my FB page posted a picture of the King David Hotel. This is an extremely well-known incident with a complex history. Including a warning to the people at the hotel. In that operation many civilians were killed.
Regardless of your view of the morality of the attack, however, it is simply and dramatically not the same thing as sending armed men against a bunch of civilians at a party, kidnapping, killing, and raping them, and sending the whole thing out on video. The deliberate destruction of documents being held in a government headquarters via a bomb may or may not be a legitimate means of warfare. However the deliberate, targeted, rape, kidnapping and murder of mere civilians is barbarism.
Reaction
Now let us look at the reaction. It is well known that the greatest critic of Israeli actions are… other Israelis. Israel has a democracy that is so divided it is barely functional. The King David attack was condemned by Jewish leaders around the world.
Whereas the rape of women and beheading of babies was cheered around the world. That is barbarism. It is not legitimate political differences, it is barbarism.
I don’t like to use the word ‘anti-semitism’. It is too broad, and too subject to misinterpretation. It may very well represent something real, the facts certainly point that way, but the word doesn’t seem to be helpful. But certainly in the current case there is an irrationality to many of the reactions, from the left and right, that are difficult to explain outside of some kind of underlying presupposition, one that treats the Jews in a different way than anyone else.
The history of the modern state of Israel may be a complex thing. Indeed the history of Judaism may be a complex thing. But the rape of a woman is not. It is a barbaric thing. And anyone who does not condemn it is a barbarian.
Note, again, to Christians. We can disagree, theologically, on the proper way for Christians to view the modern state of Israel, and the Jewish people worldwide. But in any political and military conflict we are required to speak honestly, and give righteous judgement. God does not condone rape. And He does not condone a false balance.
Von - Appreciate the eloquently thoughtful and thorough treatment of this momentous issue.
Way to totally leave out the context that many Palestinian families still have the keys to their homes stolen by Israelis Jews, and those same Jews kept Palestinians prisoner in Gaza for multiple generations. How would your mental health hold up under those conditions? Would you give your evil captors a kiss on the cheek if you managed to escape?