Beyond the Shibboleths of the Israel-Hamas War

By Stephen Gowans

October 26, 2023

In the context of the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s response to them, the statements: “Israel has a right to defend itself” and “Palestinians have a right to resist” are shibboleths that conceal an unstated suffix: “By any means necessary.”

Those who say “Israel has a right to defend itself” mean to say that Israel has a right to reply to the Hamas attacks in a manner of its own choosing, unrestrained by international humanitarian law, and that it ought to be able to do so free from the censure of outside parties.

They may also mean that Israel has a right to exist as an ethno-religious state, that it has national rights, and that its national rights are superior to those of Palestinians, whose own rights must give way to those of Zionist Jews.

What’s more, lurking within demands to acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself is a threat: fail to do so and live with the ignominy of being branded an anti-Semite.

Likewise, the expression in connection with the October 7 attacks of solidarity with the Palestinian people conveys an implicit message: The Palestinians have a right to conduct their struggle by any means necessary and that the October 7 attacks are therefore just and ought to be free from censure.

In this, the stance of many supporters of the Palestinians parallels the position of many supporters of Israel. 

The parallel shibboleths of both groups reduce the question of jus in bello (is a war conducted justly?) to the question of jus ad bellum (is the reason for the war just?)  Both sides argue implicitly that as their side’s part in the war is just, their side’s conduct of the war must also be just (and that the other side’s is unjust). This, however, is an non sequitur.  Whether a war is just has no bearing on the question of whether it is pursued in a just way. Similarly, whether a war is conducted in a just way tells us nothing about whether it is undertaken for just reasons.

By confusing justice in war with the justness of a war, supporters of the two sides evade tough questions, or recoil in fear from asking them. If we can be accused of anti-Semitism for refusing to concede Israel’s declared right to defend itself, we can also be accused of supporting Israel, or denying the justness of the Palestinian struggle, for criticizing Hamas.

Was Hamas’s decision to undertake a war [1] it hasn’t the slightest hope of winning, and for which Palestinian civilians will bear the brunt, defensible on either strategic or moral grounds? It was obvious that Hamas’s October 7 attack would inevitably elicit a typically disproportionate Israeli reply that would kill many Palestinian civilians, injure many more, destroy homes, schools, healthcare facilities, and other civilian infrastructure, and degrade the conditions of life in Gaza even beyond their already abysmally low level. The pattern of Hamas attacks followed by overwhelming Israel retaliation and significant damage to Palestinian civilians and infrastructure is well established. Hamas had an obligation to ensure that the enormous cost its actions would ultimately visit upon Gazans—who had no say in the matter of their bearing these costs—were likely to be preponderated by the gain.  Did it meet that obligation?

What’s more, does a shared opposition with Hamas to Israel obligate any of us to defend Hamas’s actions no matter what they are? And to what extent do the reasons for our opposition overlap those of Hamas? Being against the same thing doesn’t mean being for the same thing. Various groups are against the oppression of Palestinians, but have very different views about how to bring about oppression’s end, and what the end of oppression looks like. Likewise, the non-Zionist Left may share with Zionists an antipathy to anti-Semitism, but that doesn’t mean they have the same vision of how to achieve a world free from it.

On the Israeli side, how can Israel be a haven for Jews, when the conduct and very nature of it, as an apparatus of Jewish primacy and subordination of Palestinians, promotes Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens?  Marx’s observations about the Indian Revolt of 1857 applies just as strongly to the October 7 Hamas revolt. He said that while the conduct of the Indian rebels was repugnant and unspeakable, it was the reflex, in concentrated form ,of Britain’s own conduct in India. Likewise, the infamous and ineffable conduct of Hamas is the reflex of the Zionists’ own repugnant and unspeakable conduct in Palestine. If Hamas lashes out violently against Jewish residents of Israel, it does so, not because the residents are Jews, but because they accept, tolerate, and defend an ethno-religious hierarchy that subordinates the lives, safety, and wellbeing of Palestinians to that of Jews.

As a matter of reality, and not right, anyone who is complicit in, or accepting of, an injury to others, may become the object of retaliation by the injured party.  Israeli Jews are vulnerable to attack by some Palestinians, not because they’re Jews, but because they participate in a project of Jewish primacy and Palestinian subordination.  

There are important questions that are little examined in these parallel shibboleths.

For example, what is a right, and where does it come from? Is the concept of right simply a way of justifying conduct whose origin lies, not in considerations of justice, but in self-, class-, or national-interest? Is saying Israel has a right to exist no more than saying we should accept Israel’s assertion of Jewish primacy and its subordination of Palestinians? Is saying that Palestinians have a right to resist no more than a demand that we accept, if not celebrate, all Palestinian actions in the name of resistance, even those that are fatuous or infamous?

What cause is being defended when we say we’re showing solidarity with the Palestinian people? Palestinians are not a monolith; Hamas does not equal the Palestinian people. For which Palestinians and which Palestinian cause are we expressing support? Hamas represents only one of many, conflicting, Palestinian visions. Are we expressing support for the creation of an ethnic Palestinian state (one of Palestinian primacy and Jewish subordination) alongside an ethnic Jewish state? Does the ethnic supremacy of one state balance the ethnic supremacy of another, making ethnic supremacy somehow acceptable? Or are we supporting a single liberal democratic state, in which all people are equal and none have primacy and none are subordinate? Is an Islamic state from the river to the sea, where Islam has primacy and Jews are expelled, our vision?

The best way for Israelis to defend themselves is by working out a modus vivende with Palestinians, in good faith, rather than continuing to subject Palestinians to infamous and ineffable injuries with the inevitable consequence of infamous and ineffable responses such as the one that materialized on October 7.

But the reality is that Israel doesn’t have to work out a modus vivende with Palestinians and so doesn’t. It is far stronger than its Palestinian opponents, largely because it has the unqualified support of the United States and other members of the G7 and can readily limit whatever dangers Palestinian recalcitrance presents. There is little reason for Israel to make concessions. Demosthenes observed that “all men have their rights conceded to them in the proportion to the power at their disposal.” Palestinians have little power at their disposal, and so their rights are not conceded to them. In a similar vein, Thucydides noted that “Right is in question only between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Israel, far stronger than the Palestinians, does what it can and the Palestinians, far weaker than Israel, suffer what they must.

In 1973, Louis Eaks interviewed the historian Arnold Toynbee on the Palestinian question [2]. Eaks began by outlining what, at the time, now largely forgotten, was the dominant Palestinian goal, “a unitary and democratic state” in all of historic Palestine. Eaks observed that this would offer, “both for the Jewish settlers in Palestine and for the Palestinians, safeguards for their existence in Palestine and for their civil rights.” He lamented, however, that “there doesn’t seem to be any kind of debate about the merits of the Palestinian plan.”

Toynbee opined that the plan “has two merits. It would produce the greatest possible amount of justice, with the least possible amount of suffering for everybody. Nobody would be turned out of his home.” Then Toynbee turned to what he saw as the plan’s weakness. It is “recognized to be politically impracticable. I don’t think that the Israelis would ever agree voluntarily, and I don’t think that America would be willing to compel them to agree to this. Therefore, I don’t think it is possible to carry out this plan.”

Eaks objected. “You say that it is a plan which is now almost impossible to achieve, but the United Nations solution [of cutting the Palestinian baby into two ethnic national states, one Jewish and one Arab] seems equally impossible to achieve, and particularly that aspect which the Palestinians must consider to be the most crucial paragraph, which concerns the right of the refugees to return.”

Eaks, of course, was right. A half century later, the two-state formula remains as much an unrealizable fantasy as it was in 1973, indeed as much as it was in 1947, when it was first proposed as the UN Partition Plan. It has been rejected in deeds and in some cases words by all parties involved ever since.

Eaks continued: “Do you think it is wise in the long run to compromise with Zionism, which is based very much on racial discrimination? Do you not see any future threat to the East if one accepts this kind of racialist state.”

 “Yes,” conceded Toynbee, “I think a racialist state is as bad and as dangerous in the Middle East as it is in southern Africa.”

Eaks wasn’t finished. “It seems to me,” he continued, pressing the point, “that no one who says that apartheid is wrong would say that South Africa is here to stay, and that therefore the African states should accept it and recognize it. Yet many people who say that Zionism is evil and wrong, claim that Israel is here to stay and that we must accept it. Why is there this contradiction between the attitudes towards Zionism and towards apartheid?”

There are three points in the Eaks-Toynbee exchange that are worth highlighting. The first is that what was once recognized as the just solution to the Palestinian question, and was favored by the Palestinian resistance itself, was damned to oblivion by (a) the argument that it was politically unworkable and (b) the accompanying fiction that a two-state arrangement was a pragmatic, if a less morally acceptable, alternative. What the two-state proposal has turned out to be is a false promise, which no one intends to keep, whose purpose is to pacify the Palestinians while a regime of Jewish primacy slowly engulfs that remainder of Palestinian territory that Israel has not already taken by force. It is a false sop thrown to Palestinians while the Zionist project is pursued to completion, much beloved by the Machiavels who pay lip service to it and the simpletons who accept it.

The second point is that of the four major proposals for the resolution of the Palestinian question, only one addresses the concerns of all parties to the conflict, with the exception of the demands of religious fanatics [3], and therefore only one has any realistic chance of success.

The four major proposals are:

1. A nation of Jews. Jewish primacy and Palestinian subordination or expulsion.
2. A nation of Palestinians. Palestinian primacy and Jewish subordination or expulsion.
3. A nation of Jews side by side with a nation of Palestinians. Jewish primacy and Palestinian subordination on at least three-quarters of historic Palestine and Palestinian primacy and Jewish subordination or expulsion on the remaining one-quarter.
4. A nation of all its citizens (not a nation of Jews or a nation of Palestinians.) A liberal democratic state in all of historic Palestine, with equality for all regardless of ethnicity, religion, or nation, and the guarantee of minority rights.

Proposal one ignores the Palestinians and proposal two ignores the concern of Jews that credible and sound safeguards exist to protect them from the recrudescence of violence and persecution that has historically plagued their community in Europe (the motive foundation of Israel and the Zionist project.) Proposal three is blatantly unfair to the Palestinians, and therefore has little chance of resolving Palestinian antagonism and Israel’s oppressive response to it.

Proposal three is often accompanied by the demand for the return of Palestinian refugees to the territory from which they or their ancestors fled or were driven and were not allowed by Israel to return. The return of refugees would create a Palestinian majority in Israel, that is, an Arab majority in a Jewish state. The paradox of a Jewish state with an Arab majority would have to be addressed in one of two ways: The Arab majority would be denied suffrage, to maintain the Jewish character of the state; or the returned Arab refugees would be granted suffrage, in which case the state would no longer be Jewish but a state of all its citizens (proposal four). There would, therefore, exist a liberal democratic state on the bulk of historical Palestinian territory, and a small ethnic Arab Palestinian state on the remaining territory. Were Arabs denied suffrage, their antagonism would continue and nothing would be resolved. Alternatively, suffrage for returned Arab refugees would make option three more or less the same as option four. It’s not clear why anyone would propose option three together with the return of the refugees since this would either result in the intensification of conflict if the Arab majority was denied suffrage or it would mean a democratic state if the majority was granted suffrage. Since proposal three has no hope of securing civic harmony unless it evolves into a democratic state by the granting of suffrage to returned refugees, why not simply promote proposal four as the more elegant and certain solution?

Proposal four, a nation of all its citizens, addresses the aspirations of all people, both Jews and Arabs, settlers and indigenous, for freedom from ethnic, national, and religious oppression, persecution, and inequality. It would lead to a significant improvement in the lives of Arabs and guarantees for Jews of equality and freedom from persecution. Because this proposal addresses the concerns of both sides, and the others favor one side over the other, it has the greatest probability of success. That doesn’t mean its success is guaranteed, only that its chance of success is greater than that of its rival proposals. The idea that a two-state arrangement is the only realistic proposal is a myth.

The two-state formula depends on demographic engineering. The goal is to provide political rights only within territory in which the favored ethnic group comprises a majority. If one ethnic group can, through its superior numbers, outvote all others, the favored ethnic group has political primacy, despite the presence of democratic institutions. Various manoeuvres must therefore be undertaken to secure a majority for the favored ethnic group if its primacy is to flourish within a democratic framework.  Ensuring that a rump Arab state, covering, at best, one-quarter of historic Palestine, contains a majority of Arabs, presents no obstacle, since Palestinians (residing in historic Palestine or outside as refugees) preponderate Jewish residents. While Israel controls all of historic Palestine, and, in its annexation of the Golan Heights, a part of Syria, Jews are not a majority in all the territory it controls. So, through a sleight of hand, it arbitrarily declares only those parts of historic Palestine in which Jews constitute a majority to be Israel. It can thus be at once a democratic and a Jewish majority state. But were democratic institutions to be extended to all the territory Israel controls—Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights—Arabs would comprise a slight majority.  But if Palestinian refugees and their descendants were allowed to return to the territories from which they were expelled, Arabs would comprise a firm majority. Would they use their majority against the Jewish community? Not in a liberal democracy. The liberal part of liberal democracy, means that minority rights are guaranteed against the tyranny of the majority. It can be rejoined that Israel’s own liberal democracy has failed in many ways to protect the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who comprise a minority population; that protections against the tyranny of the majority are fine and well until the majority dissolves them. Yet it would be going to too far to describe Israel, an ethno-state, as a liberal democracy. The majority’s encroaching on the rights of minorities, despite minority protections, appears to be more a phenomenon of a de facto ethnic state masquerading as a liberal democracy than a nation of all its citizens.  Israel, it has been pointed out sardonically, is a liberal democratic state for Jews, and a Jewish state for its Arab citizens. Proposal four seeks to avoid this weakness by making a unitary state covering all of historic Palestine as a civic, as opposed to ethnic, nation, that is, a state of all its citizens, not a liberal democracy for Jews and a Jewish state for the rest alongside a rump-Arab state, as the two-state formula envisages.

Earlier, it was noted that inasmuch as the motive foundation of Israel and the Zionist project is to protect Jews from anti-Semitism, that any proposed alternative to the project must establish credible and sound protections for Jews against the recrudescence of violence and persecution that have historically plagued their community, if the proposal is to be acceptable to them. This must be realized, not only in the establishment of a liberal democratic state in all of historic Palestine, with guaranteed minority rights, but also in the advance of liberal democratic values and minority protections throughout the world. Jews must feel safe and comfortable everywhere. The reality that more Jews choose to live outside Israel than within, and mainly in liberal democratic societies, is testament to the power of liberal democratic institutions as safeguards against anti-Jewish persecution and violence. Jews are the most successful minority population in the United States, and are more secure there, than are Jews who live in Israel, who must rely on an iron wall as protection against the Palestinian population whose oppression is the sine-qua-non of Jewish primacy in Israel.

This may be true, reply diaspora Zionist Jews, from the safety of the liberal democracies in which they choose to live, but Israel stands as a haven (a kind of back-up plan) to which we may flee, in the event our countries are envenomed by the recrudescence of a Nazi-like anti-Jewish terrorism. This is pure delusion. Israel would collapse within a week without the massive military, economic, and diplomatic support it depends on from the United States and its allies. And what would be one of the first acts of these countries were they to turn to a feared methodical anti-Semitism? Terminate their support for the self-proclaimed Jewish state. The supposed haven for Jews would quickly disappear. The reality is that Israel is no haven for Jews; it’s an instrument of US foreign policy in the Arab world which uses Jews against Arabs.

The third point is that the better alternative of a unitary democratic state, in which all peoples are equal, and none are subordinate to the other, can only become a possibility if the gross disparity in power between the G7-backed Israelis and the Palestinians is redressed. It can be redressed only by citizens of the G7 demanding the projection of liberal democratic values into the Palestinian question, in lieu of the current promotion of the illiberal and undemocratic value that supports an ethnic state of Jewish primacy and Palestinian subordination, and holds out the false hope of creating an ethnic state of Palestinian primacy and Jewish subordination as its complement. The two-state formula not only tolerates Zionist racism, it proposes Palestinian racism as the antidote, as if, to paraphrase Fred Hampton, the better way to fight fire is not with water, but with more fire.

The fantasy, that some will indubitably entertain, that the power imbalance can be rectified by the emergence of a multipolar world, is sheer naivete. Russia and China are not going to enroll as champions of the Palestinians, largely because they are too many realpolitik advantages in staying on good terms with the Israelis, and because states look after their own interests, not those of other peoples. The two US rivals are no more inclined to become paladins of the weak, dispossessed, and wronged, than is their chief competitor.

In light of this, the appropriate shibboleths are “equality for all, regardless of race, culture, or religion” and “a civic nation and state of all its citizens from the river to the sea.”  Since what happens in historic Palestine largely depends on what the US-led G7 allows to happen, bringing to flower the best in the Western tradition (equality) and eradicating the worst (colonialism and ethno-religious hierarchy) will depend on the exponents of equality pressuring their governments to abominate the project of Jewish primacy and Palestinian subordination and live up to their declared liberal democratic values.

The best way to show solidarity with the aspirations of Palestinians for equality and Jews for freedom from persecution is to demand a liberal democracy of universal equality in all of historic Palestine, or, in broader terms, working for the universalization of equality throughout the world and an end to the division of humanity by nation and class.

[1] War is defined here as the overt use of major violence. The Hamas-Israel War can be defined as an ongoing conflict, characterized by the more or less continuous use of low-level violence, punctuated by periods of major violence, or as a series of wars in which each war is defined as a period of major violence within a larger ongoing conflict. The October 7 attacks marked the beginning of a new round of major violence in the ongoing conflict, or a new war in a series of inter-related wars

[2] Arnold Toynbee and Louis Eaks “Arnold Toynbee on the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Spring, 1973), pp. 3-13).

[3] These include (a) Jews who believe that a supernatural being gave all of Palestine to a group of people called the Jews and that this being’s will must be realized; (b) Muslims who believe that all territory conquered in the Muslim expansion must be governed by the Quran; and (c) evangelical Christians who believe that a Jewish conquest of all of Palestine is necessary to bring about the return of Jesus.