Hasbara fights back: Killing innocent children is ‘unavoidable burden’ of Jewish self-determination

The shift we are seeing in the US discourse over the violent Israeli response to a Palestinian uprising is evident in our press. It is open to the Palestinian narrative in a way that it has not been for some time — like the brilliant piece by Refaat Alareer from Gaza that the New York Times ran on its op-ed page which poignantly captured the experience of trying to protect a family from a high-tech war machine aiming its weapons at a civilian population.

There are no high-tech warning systems here to alert us to incoming missiles or tell us to take shelter. We have to learn to read the patterns of Israel’s wanton strikes. Being a good parent in Gaza means developing a knack for what Israel’s drones and F-16s will do next.

On Wednesday night, after two hours of nonstop bombardment and Israeli missiles raining down all over the Strip — some landing just a few hundred meters away from our building . . . comes the intolerable indecision: I am caught between wanting to take the family outside, despite the missiles, shrapnel and falling debris, and staying at home, like sitting ducks for the American-made, Israeli-piloted planes. We stayed at home. At least we would die together, I thought.

Last night, Chris Hayes stepped out on the issue in a way he has not before. He featured Rula Jebreal and Lisa Goldman in a segment framed by historical violence on Jews in Europe; Hayes said it is “morally shocking” to see mobs of young Jewish Israelis organizing on social media to attack Palestinians.

Jebreal said that the violence against Palestinians in all realms of Israeli control is what the left has been telling Democrats for years.

What you’re seeing in Israel is Trumpism on steroids . . . Netanyahu weaponized ethno-nationalism and belligerent racism and unleashed it in the streets and now it’s the dominant sentiment in Israeli politics and Israeli society.

US appeals to stop violence are “asking the Palestinians, who are occupied, to protect their occupiers,” Jebreal says.

Pro-Israel propagandists are keenly aware of the shift in the discourse, and fighting it. Let’s look at what they’re saying.

The role of Jeffrey Goldberg has been taken up by, among others, author Sara Yeel Hirschhorn, who appeared on BBC. Asked about the recent reports from Carnegie and Human Rights Watch calling for equal rights for all people in the land, Hirschhorn said that the violence we are seeing today shows that while equality may be ideal, “the kind of violence that may be necessary to create a different paradigm” from the two-state paradigm is “truly staggering,” and “it may not be the right time for that.”

Last night Hirschhorn rationalized Israel’s privileging of Jews from the country’s new critics in the House of Representatives:

I have no problem with Ilhan Omar calling #Israel as #ethnonationalist #state, I just wonder if she can find me any nation-state on the face of the planet that IS NOT an ethnonationalist state.

The Israel lobby is plainly on the defensive over the images of disproportionate destruction/killing. Michael Oren attacked the New York Times for purveying a “total Hamas narrative.”

Gil Troy joins in: “You would think from the article that Israel is expelling hundreds of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah. The Western media’s complicity is not naive — it’s diabolical.”

But: hundreds of Palestinians have been evicted from East Jerusalem neighborhoods, and Palestinians regard this as part of a very long tradition of ethnic cleansing.

Longtime Israel supporter Bari Weiss has a piece at Substack that is very valuable inasmuch as it offers a naked justification of the slaughter of innocents, as the price of Zionism/Jewish self-determination:

it appears that more than 50 Palestinians have been killed. Some of these people are entirely innocent non-combatants, including children. This is an unspeakable tragedy. It is also one of the unavoidable burdens of political power, of Zionism’s dream turned into the reality of self-determination.

And the violence is necessary, Weiss says, because in the end . . . the conflict is all about antisemitism. Forget all that talk about settler colonialism and refugees and ethnonationalism:

The goal here is the eradication of the Jewish people. That is the bone-chilling truth. That is the core obstacle to peace.

AIPAC is sounding a similar theme. “From the very first moments of its independence, Israel has confronted enemies seeking its annihilation.”

The American Jewish Committee echoes the sympathy-for-Israel theme. “Since day one, the Jewish state had to fight for its survival. Today is no different.”

The hasbara is still working in some mainstream media, which says that Hamas fires its rockets indiscriminately, while Israel surgically strikes terrorists. Adam Johnson comments:

Its quite a PR coup. If an alien species who’s never heard of Israel or Palestine came down from space & I tried to explain to them the party that kills 250X MORE civilians is the one largely viewed as discriminate & prudent this would cause whatever alien bewilderment looks like . . . It’s a framework propped by impressive PR on Israel’s part (how many “door knocking” cable news features did we get in 2014?), a broader conflation of technical superiority with moral consideration and, mostly, glib racism that views Arabs as inherently indifferent to human life

Bari Weiss’s article was headlined “The Bad Optics of Fighting for Your Life.” Bret Stephens at the New York Times also says that the “terrorists” are manipulating imagery so that they look like victims of state violence: “the propaganda benefits from televised and tweeted pictures of wrecked buildings and human casualties and ‘disproportionate’ Israeli-Palestinian death counts.”

The American Jewish Committee is also old school. It has a campaign to send American love to Israel. “Show Israelis they are not alone! Join AJC in sending love to our brothers and sisters in Israel as they continue to be bombarded by Hamas rockets.”

The AJC appeal explicitly dehumanizes Palestinians: “Are you feeling heartbroken by the images of Israelis running to shelters from non-stop rocket fire from Hamas-ruled Gaza?”

At the center-right Israel lobby group IPF, Michael Koplow says that the Palestinians started the problem inside Israel.

It began with Arab mobs burning synagogues, stores, and cars, and regressed to retaliatory attacks by Jews against Arabs, and yesterday deteriorated even further to attempted lynchings by both sides. 

He has this pointed observation about Biden:

And the U.S., which always can and always should play a productive role, has been largely absent as the Biden administration holds fast to a policy that amounts to benign neglect and hoping that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes away. 

Liberal Zionists express anguish but do not single out Israel. Hadar Suskind of Peace Now, writes, “[W]we will continue to speak up for the humanity and inherent value of both Israelis and Palestinians.”

We will not be silent as so many elected officials, commentators and “Jewish community leaders” fall back on the old tribalist approach and demand that people “take a side.” This is not a sporting event, and we are not interested in scoring points for our team or cheering on others as they do so. I will not celebrate the death of others and I will not cheer the destruction of their homes.

Young Jews express greater solidarity with Palestinians. Marisa Kabas says it “breaks” her heart that the most prominent Jewish writers in the U.S. — like Bret Stephens — are “liars.” She posts a thread about the historical threat to Jews that has become a threat to Palestinian life:

i don’t have any answers. i don’t know how we fix it. all i know is that i exist solely because my grandfather was able to escape oppression while his family perished. and i’ll be damned if i’m told the death of palestinians is the price we must pay to survive.

h/t Dan Walsh, Scott Roth, Donald Johnson.