I see your point I think. But as a Jew who has been marching with the Jewish Bloc (representing Na’amod, non-Zionist British Jews against the occupation) I have not felt the marches to be hostile to Jews, as you seem to be implying. I have seen thousands of people marching in support of the people of Gaza but I really haven’t seen or heard anything overtly pro-Hamas. ‘From the river to the sea’ perhaps, but the meaning of that is debated, it can be understood as supporting a free secular state, not as a call for the genocide of jewish Israelis. So I don’t accept the description of the PSC marches as hate marches- I march wearing a kippah and have experienced no hostility at all.
He is taking up a sympathetic mode he thinks precisely people like you want to hear. And thank fuck it's not working because it turns out the fabric has been menaced a bit too far for those lines to work. Ian is better than this.
If the Palestinian protest marches had chosen the path you suggest it would have required everyone who put Palestine at the centre of their politics to not be involved
Just look at Owen Jones columns, he knows he has to be careful because if his reputation and his position but he just can’t help himself, the hatred seeps into every column he writes
Having said that, despite being sympathetic to Israels position since the 90s and outright supportive since Arafat rejected the deals of 2000 and instead launched the Al-Aqsa intifada, I can’t really do it anymore. This awful Israeli government is hurting Ukraine every day by forcing the hypocrisy that lies underneath all foreign policy to the surface, they’re exploiting the timing of the US election and the knowledge Trump will join them in bombing Iran to try and hurt Biden/Harris. They couldn’t care less this will mean handing Ukraine to Putin.
I used to support Israel because for all its faults I believe in and support the West. I prefer liberal democracy to the other options so default to backing team liberal democracy, Israel used to be on our team, even under Sharon, but not any more. Bibi is on your team autocracy so now I’m not spending any more time defending Israel, certainly not an Israel that by working to elect Trump, either deliberately or just not caring that it is the result they’re destroying the hopes of Ukraine, a country and a leader that are unequivocally on our side
Yahoo needed Hamas. He had the power to push a settlement, but chose the headlines. Post 7.10.23 he could have proposed to help start a sovereign fund for others to contribute to build up Gaza subject to monitoring for 5 years by a combined Israeli and Gazan police. Get money into schools and hospitals. Vote Hamas out, or turn them in. We will police the streets at night to prevent them coming for you and when Gazans can see that their kids will truly be better off,the weed will come by the roots.but for Yahoo that was too dangerous. Better to bid up the slaughter. Bad time for democracies.
But no big project is easy. The IRA were criminally funded with roots too far spread to control. But in the Malayan Emergency, the people were protected. Gaza has a limited perimeter. With cameras and ID cards if anywhere can be controlled, the gaza strip can. And the alternative is what, to give up or else wait until the next generation of refugees gets so desperate to avoid their culture being erased they will try any horrors to make noise.
As a staunch supporter of Ukraine I see your point. However, Iran and Russia are allies and Putin is using Iranian-made weapons in Ukraine. Iran (or at least, its current government) is on your "team autocracy" for sure. Neutralizing Iran and its proxies would seem like a good thing for team liberal democracy - but probably not at the cost of another 4 years of Trump, and appeasement of Putin.
Ian, this is one of your most important articles ever. Reading news, social media, listening to talking heads etc, I’ve often felt like I’m the only person who thinks- and feels - like this. Like you. Like all lives should matter. I’ve wondered if I’m just wrong, if I’m missing something that’s obvious to everyone else (and both sides eagerly tell me that’s the case). And I feel so helpless. Yet talking with friends in “real life”, I find they all feel the same as me and you. But it seems almost none of our ‘leaders’ (media, politics, national) speak like this. Why have we ended up losing our humanity?
"all lives matter" so you just absolutely did not learn why that was a thought terminating pivot away from the very point of the issue. Great. This is the quality of a moral agent in 2024. All lives matter. While Magdi burns alive in Gaza and a few kilometers away young urban Chaim gets to play fortnite in the safety of a luxury apartment before he goes to lyon for the weekend. But our sympathy of course is with Chaim as his cousin went to a tone deaf festival next to an open air prison and never came back. All lives matter bro! Just keep the thoughts and prayers trucking maaaan.
What a strange reply. No one with any capacity for thought would see those examples as comparable. It’s reductio ad absurdum. Presumably I’d also have no interest in Magdi as I have a broken fingernail that needs attending to.
Most of us are entirely capable of more nuanced and deep thought than your comment. However Chaim’s cousin was a human life too, the very obvious point that you ignored.
Show me the way in which your ethical mode gives justice to either of them in an equal fashion without disempowering, sanctioning or in some necessary way recalling fhe Israeli government and it's current and future plans for the region. These are directly relevant issues. I don't ignore the point but I ask you if you're familiar with the notion of a maximal good and an ethical good. Because you have to do both. Strange or not it's the reply you got. "Presumably I'd also have no interest in Magdi as I have a broken fingernail to attend to". Seeing as that's made in proximity to the supposed absurdity of two hypothetical lives living parallel both having value and both needing defending ill grant the assumption you're objecting gimme proposing an absurd response and not letting a little truth slip in there. Ok. Rejecting the thought exercise, why is it that in the current state of affairs as presented by the full gamut of media reports and articles and blogs and government statements made all around the world amongst all the babble about necessary proportionality and rights to defense and arguments from the genuflection brigade, why is that a magdis life is consistently presented as necessarily less valuable than that of a Chaim. And why does this mirror almost perfectly the narrative that Israeli Statehood is necessarily positioned oppositionally to a Palestinian one. And if you can give me a good answer to that, one that that doesn't read as ultimately comforting navel gazing and aesthetic acts of symbolic solidarity I'll literally give you £20.
I DON'T KNOW! That's practically the whole point. In an odd way, we're more or less on the same side. As was Ian. I cannot FAIL to notice that Magdi's life is consistently presented as less valuable, which was pretty much what Ian was saying in the article; Israelis presented as individual stories and Palestinians as large numbers. *That is precisely what I'm objecting to*. All I would say is that the answer doesn't lie in dehumanising the other side either. And I don't know what the answer is, and I don't have any power to impose one if, by some unimaginable miracle, I did. But my original point was a cry of protest (and agreement with Ian) that we can't, that it isn't right, to treat Palestinian lives as more expendable. That Magdi's life matters every bit as much as Chaim's cousin. I don't really understand why we seem to be at cross-purposes.
Have you ever been on a national Palestine march? I do not recognise your description. They are peaceful, diverse and are expressing solidarity with a people with no land and no rights. There are Jews on the marches. There are relatives of holocaust survivors. Noone is unsafe in central London. In the 6 marches I have joined I have seen a handful of placards I would prefer were not there. A handful in a sea of placards expressing pain and anger at the decimation of Gaza and it's people.
Thank you for putting into words the anger I feel in my heart daily. This for me sums up painfully the root cause of all this suffering "It's just tribalism" As a humanist and fellow liberal in the truest sense I hate it all so I largely stay silent about the pain I feel. I hate that I have to pick a side and that's the narrative forced on you and if you dare to say no to tribalism, as I have (this is why I left x) because you voice the opinion that death is death humanity is humanity and war crime is a war crime on whomever it is being acted upon you get branded antisemite or pro
Palestine. The only thing I am 'anti' is hate and
The only thing I am 'pro' is humanity. Its just a waste all of it a senseless cruel waste of life and to see these mad men escalate this war at the price of so many innocent people on both sides of the divide is devastating.
Wow a conclusion that requires absolutely nothing in terms of action or moral clarity or actually engaging with the world as it stands. Just gesturing at humanity. Basically the equivalent colorblindness in the face of racism. I'm sure that will make it all work out great.
I was visiting Bath and I saw a pro-Palestine March. It was peaceful. There were drums. They were handing out Naqba leaflets. I didn’t get the sense Ian that the march was like the one you described but maybe if I was a Jewish bystander I would have felt uncomfortable anyway. What is happening in Gaza has led to an increase in anti-semitism here. That has been reported whatever is happening in this march.
There has been footage coming out of Gaza and it’s shocking. It was regularly on the news. Hospitals being bombed, aid workers targeted, children in hospitals covered in blood and dust having lost entire families. Yes Arabs have been reduced to numbers. But the numbers of dead are huge and still growing. Israel are a democracy aren’t they? They’re our allies. But this wholesale slaughter of civilians is not what you associate with a democracy. I am aware of the rhetoric that has been building since Netanyahu fell in with the extreme right too before this started. Calling Palestinians “vermin”? This does not feel like the Israel of old. I watched the Al Jazeera documentary on the Israeli Festival. The casual way those young people were executed sickened me. I had to watch that documentary to find out more about this. I actually felt that was less reported on. But I could be wrong.
I can’t help feeling that Netanyahu and the extremists in his government want an excuse to keep bombing. They resist calls for a ceasefire, They could have got more hostages freed. Now Iran has started. Now please understand. I felt a kinship more with Israel as a democracy before now I feel like this is a fire burning out of control. Netanyahu I imagine wants Trump to win. What does that say for world peace? Peace for us? Let alone in the Middle East. It’s like we’re living in a world of extremes now.
Hang on a minute: Ian Dunt wrote this: "I wonder if the organisers of those pro-Palestine marches ever wonder how much they gave up. I wonder if they recognise, just even for a moment, what kind of coalition they could have built against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government if they had not tolerated patently anti-semitic rhetoric and behaviour. I wonder if they know how many Jews and non-Jews might have marched alongside them." Ummm - I have been on all the marches and there have ALWAYS been large numbers of Jewish people (and even Israeli Jewish people) on the marches. And very radical too. Some have been in their 80s and even 90s. Some on crutches and wheelchairs. There has never been ANY what you call "anti-semitism" (NB please look up the meaning of the word 'semitic' - it doesn't mean what most people think it does...). So. And by the way - I am Jew-ish and have been campaigning for a Free Palestine since 1967. To no avail of course because of people such as Ian Dunt who swallow the Israeli state propaganda in one gulp - without even using a prophylactic, let alone a glass of water. Wake up please. As the ICJ has said: it's Genocide that the Israeli state is pursuing - and lots of seaviews from houses built on the blood and bones of massacred Palestinian children, women and men.
While I agree with much of this, and felt extremely uncomfortable with the lack of empathy with the Israeli victims of October 7th or even justification of the attack on the part of some pro Palestinian friends, I think you are grossly misrepresenting the marches. There are some hateful placards and slogans etc but many Jews take part and do not feel at all threatened. Unfortunately the official organisations claiming to represent British Jews insist on interpreting anything opposing Israel as antisemitism. This whole issue has been muddied almost beyond redemption by the Israeli government which has an interest in making diaspora Jews feel insecure in their homes and so make them more willing to support Israel. Yes there is real antisemitism and it’s increasing. It must be fought wherever it appears, but sadly Netanyahu himself is happy to associate with antisemites like Victor Orban or with right wing American Christians who fervently support Israel but only because of their belief that all Jews returning to Israel is the necessary precursor to the return of Jesus, which will involve their conversion to Christianity. Hard to think that’s not pretty antisemitic, but he doesn’t care as long as it keeps the money and weapons flowing to Israel.
Those engaged in this conflict are utterly inexorable in their convictions and nothing will change that.
Though not a jew myself, I have a jewish DIL and 2 beloved Jewish granddaughters. I have bent over backwards to understand and to defend the absolute horror, fear and revulsion of Jewish people at the barbarity of the 7th October attack.
The truth is we are not permitted to be fair-minded.
We must be either for them or against them. I have been shot down in flames by many jewish people who see one side only - theirs.
I have been accused of swallowing western propaganda by many muslims.
We who reject the indisputable, savage inhumanity on both sides are attacked by both sides for being antisemitic or condoning genocide.
Netanyahu is as monstrous as those who carried out the attack.
He is no friend to the world or the Jewish people.
He's literally head of the worlds only Jewish state and is committing war crimes in front of you with impunity. At what point are you going to clue in that ALL of this is being done in the name of Jewish people even if they disavow it and that represents a real problem that can't just be gestured at or tut tutted over. I mean ffs can you not make a greater conclusion than 'oh he's just a bad man, definitely nothing else going on'
I do reject him & his crimes utterly, and I certainly do not disavow it. I agree with your assessment.
However, thank you for making my point with your reply. It is precisely people like you who refuse to accept that two things can be true at the same time who are the problem, and therefore make any progress toward a solution impossible.
Oh I accept entirely the premise that two things can be simultaneously true. I just don't then respond to that paradigm with a seeming moral disdain for anybody who actually advocates for an immediate approach to the situation and why they're so upset. You point at common humanity but then draw no necessary contingent obligation to respond radically and swiftly to the atrocities being performed by specific entities for specific ends. This will not absolve you. Get right with the truth. The presentation of morally ambiguous landscape only compounds the need for people like you and me to be brave enough to act when the material conditions are plainly a more definite shade.
Then elucidate your view Ronny. And mine it not extreme. What is extreme about acting against injustice instead of just... talking about it, or disavowing anyone who wants to do more than talk about it
What a lame “enlightened centrist” take on the pro Palestine marches. As a former fan of some of your articles, you’ve lost my respect for your patronising, innacurate and insulting characterisation of the protests. You talk up empathy like some Zen guru yet can’t understand why marchers were focused on the Gazans being genocided whilst Israeli victims already had the worlds and media’s full empathy and wall to wall coverage. Very disappointed in this shallow piece.
I joined a street march in October last year with vague notions of calling for a ceasefire and peace.
I began to feel uncomfortable about the growing group of overtly partisan young Palestinians sporting keffiyehs and flags so eventually left the march. On my way back I passed a woman in the street looking with anger and fear at the marchers approaching; I guessed she was Jewish. I determined to find out more about this ongoing conflict whilst trying to not take sides.
“Married to another Man” is a brief history by Palestinian academic Ghada Karmi; most of my other reading is from Israeli writers. I can recommend Gideon Levy, longtime reporter with Haaretz newspaper; Avi Shlaim Emeritus professor at Oxford University, born in Iraq but brought up in Israel where he served as a young man with the IDF; Jewish American academic and son of holocaust survivors Norman Finkelstein; academic Shlomo Sands from Tel Aviv; Australian commentator Anthony Lowenstein: Ilan Pappe who’s book “the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” is a revelation. These are unlikely to appear on the BBC or other mainstream media but are freely available on YouTube and other social media. ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ and ‘Standing Together’ are grassroots organisations worth checking out.
I now have a better grasp of history and context. The emotional turmoil remains. Sadly I am increasingly convinced that Israel is and always has been a terrorist state. My next challenge is to discuss with some of my Jewish friends.
Thanks Ian. In my house we've just finished two days of celebrating the Jewish New Year - in theory, a time when smartphones are switched off and family or friend groups gather to eat, drink and toast the year ahead after the same synagogue service as we attend every year with its comforting tunes and rituals. Except this year, there were even more of us than usual wearing stabproof vests and walkie-talkies (very carefully sourced, if you'll allow the black humour) on security duty to protect our local synagogue in leafy Hertfordshire from those who might wish us harm. And around the lunch table, the smartphones were on and the news alerts jumped on, while we checked in on relatives and friends in Israel who are wondering when the next attack will send them to the shelters and safe rooms (assuming they have warning).
Then there's the arguments. It's pretty much generational - my parents' generation and (sad to say) most of my 40/50something contemporaries taking one side of what they can only see as a binary, existential argument. It's us or them. They want to kill us. We're cleverer than them - the Iron Dome, the pager attacks, the terror leadership assassinations - that all proves it. And the BBC is the work of Satan.
Thankfully, my children (aged 18-22) and many of their generation are capable of understanding that it's not 1967 any more and that Israel has a government that is seriously compromised with extremist nutters who are a 'shanda' - a shameful embarrassment - to us all. It's horribly, horribly complex and they struggle to cope with the "aggressive certainty" that they get from their own community - and from university 'friends' who are just as aggressively certain on the other side. I've never been prouder than when they fact-checked an Islamophobic piece that a grandparent of theirs had shared on the family WhatsApp chat.
So thank you for expressing empathy, and being a voice that says: We're not going to settle the conflict on Substack, X or even Bluesky in favour of one side or the other - but here in the UK, we can make the angry people angrier, the scared people more frightened, and violence more likely - OR, we can stop and think about ways to act constructively (or we can just stop, which is probably better than adding to the cycle of hate).
I would welcome a post/comment from someone with family & connections in Gaza or Lebanon - to hear the conversations around their tables, and the day-to-day experience they have right now. I honestly have no idea, and that doesn't reflect well on me. Happy New Year to us all.
There is so much that one could say but a country that bombs hospitals, schools and the rest with a self declared disregard for civilian casualties has lost any moral compass.
Also worth pointing out that the kibbutz and festival that was attacked was 10 minutes walk from the ghetto, the prison that is Gaza. Horrendous though it was, did the participants really have no idea of what was going on just over that brutal barrier? And why Gazans might feel so angry? It says so much about the echo chamber that Israelis have locked themselves into.
The biggest irony is that the people that were killed were some of the last Israelis on the Left who believed in the two states solution and who spoke out, actively in favor of peace. So they were aware of what was going on and some actually tried to help Gazans by taking them to hospital appointments in Israel.
The reason why it took so long for the IDF to come and rescue them was because they were considered unimportant in comparison with the far right settlers and the IDF had been reassigned to protect the latter.
And as for the festival goers, they were young people having a good time and the venue was only changed three days before October 7 so they would’ve had no time to think about anything.
I write this as somebody who thinks that nothing that happened on October 7 could justify Israel‘s response, but I also think that details are important.
You spend the first two thirds emphasizing just how desperate a rupture in the procedure is needed to break the stultifying media gaze and then just end up...absolving the man in charge of the country for having no spine. Oh it's a very complicated job! Oh he's just got it you know! Oh these are some very serious challenges! Yes. And failure to meet them, repeatedly, while actively purging leftists from your party like spilling dominos and keeping the same limp neolib appendage primed for another great market solutions that nobody asked for. I have a lot of respect for you Ian, in fact I think you're among one of the finest writers and journalisfs working today, but I just don't know how you can arrive at your end piece without deliberately hemming your language to fit basically a quietist mode when it comes to the labour government. And that's fine but you gotta give something beyond leaving it in moral destitution as though there aren't things that can be done right now to immediately alter the paradigm and if there are nothing should be said of it. Anyway. When you've got a chance check out Robyn Hitchcock's "Brenda's Iron Sledge". I feel like a tune is a good trade for going in on you a bit.
Oh am I just. Where did I do that. Iran you say. Well call me Ayatollah for not expecting every single country in the region to not fold immediately upon request by a rump state of empire. Amazing. It's almost like there's a whole discipline related to this called international relations and if you haven't already you might benefit from brushing up on it. What Israel is doing is not the "international rules based order" I want to see in the world thanks. And by the by, that's no an endorsement of the theocracy since I have to make that absolutely explicit in case I run into someone like you who's just started reading.
That's a wonderful coincidence, as I cannot edit my comments as I'm not a premium member, so Im stuck responding to something you didn't say. The class analysis writes itself.
I find Ian's piece thoughtful and the subsequent commentary telling! It was precisely Sinwar's strategy to precipitate the inevitable Netanyahu response, villify Israel, trigger a humanitarian disaster and an awful death count amongst the the civilian population in Gaza. The latter would inevitably turn everyone against Israel and throw the horrors of the October 7th genocide into a black hole to be forgotten. Sinwar counted on the cooperation of other Iranian regime puppets such as Hezbollah and the Houthi's to expand the anti-Israel war and all of them embed their operations, weapons, command and control and missile launch sites near civilian populations to ensure maximum innocent deaths to trigger the rightful horror expressed in this and other substance pages. Within that context, whether what Israel is doing is an act of self-defence or one of careless massacre is debatable given the current make-up of the Israeli government containing racist elements like Smotrish and Ben-Gvir. All in all, Netanyahu has little interest in the ethical implications of the actions of his government, only in his own political survival to shield himself from going to prison; using the rightful action of self-defense as a cowardly shield for political purposes. To be fair, who warns the population to flee before bombing areas where civilians are at risk? Do Hamas or Hezbollah do so? Well Israel does even if they make serious and very costly mistakes. Where were all those who say that Israel has no right to exist (historically wrong) and are (correctly) angered by Israel's oppression of Palestinian when Somali Muslims or the Royhingya were being massacred or the Uyghurs persecuted and put in concentration camps? Of course when it involves Jews...that is a different matter...all bets are off and villification is de rigueur. I know that there are many left wing Jews at the marches in solidarity with anti-war and pro Palestine protesters. As a Jew who is the son of a holocaust survivor I too am appalled at the violence, death, oppression, lack of humanity and anti-semitism this has triggered. I am appalled at the actions if the Israeli government, the IDF and settlers against Palestians in the West Bank. I am totally in tune with my Israeli brothers(some of whom are family and friends) who protest daily/weekly against the government and continued war. I am fir a Palestinian State but not one run by Hamas terrorist who's main aim is the annihilation of Jews and destruction if the State if Israel (that is truly what from the river to the sea means despite the dialectic ambiguity often posited by Western leftists). Hence in conclusion, Ian's article is a useful contribution to the necessary dialogue and the messy dialogue it engenders a poster child for the ambiguity, confusion and dissection that Sinwar had in mind when he planned and executed October 7th and the desired response with its deadly and horrific consequences.
I see your point I think. But as a Jew who has been marching with the Jewish Bloc (representing Na’amod, non-Zionist British Jews against the occupation) I have not felt the marches to be hostile to Jews, as you seem to be implying. I have seen thousands of people marching in support of the people of Gaza but I really haven’t seen or heard anything overtly pro-Hamas. ‘From the river to the sea’ perhaps, but the meaning of that is debated, it can be understood as supporting a free secular state, not as a call for the genocide of jewish Israelis. So I don’t accept the description of the PSC marches as hate marches- I march wearing a kippah and have experienced no hostility at all.
He is taking up a sympathetic mode he thinks precisely people like you want to hear. And thank fuck it's not working because it turns out the fabric has been menaced a bit too far for those lines to work. Ian is better than this.
If the Palestinian protest marches had chosen the path you suggest it would have required everyone who put Palestine at the centre of their politics to not be involved
Just look at Owen Jones columns, he knows he has to be careful because if his reputation and his position but he just can’t help himself, the hatred seeps into every column he writes
Having said that, despite being sympathetic to Israels position since the 90s and outright supportive since Arafat rejected the deals of 2000 and instead launched the Al-Aqsa intifada, I can’t really do it anymore. This awful Israeli government is hurting Ukraine every day by forcing the hypocrisy that lies underneath all foreign policy to the surface, they’re exploiting the timing of the US election and the knowledge Trump will join them in bombing Iran to try and hurt Biden/Harris. They couldn’t care less this will mean handing Ukraine to Putin.
I used to support Israel because for all its faults I believe in and support the West. I prefer liberal democracy to the other options so default to backing team liberal democracy, Israel used to be on our team, even under Sharon, but not any more. Bibi is on your team autocracy so now I’m not spending any more time defending Israel, certainly not an Israel that by working to elect Trump, either deliberately or just not caring that it is the result they’re destroying the hopes of Ukraine, a country and a leader that are unequivocally on our side
Yahoo needed Hamas. He had the power to push a settlement, but chose the headlines. Post 7.10.23 he could have proposed to help start a sovereign fund for others to contribute to build up Gaza subject to monitoring for 5 years by a combined Israeli and Gazan police. Get money into schools and hospitals. Vote Hamas out, or turn them in. We will police the streets at night to prevent them coming for you and when Gazans can see that their kids will truly be better off,the weed will come by the roots.but for Yahoo that was too dangerous. Better to bid up the slaughter. Bad time for democracies.
'Vote Hamas out'
Easier said than done. They murder their political opponents and even people who they think might be.
But no big project is easy. The IRA were criminally funded with roots too far spread to control. But in the Malayan Emergency, the people were protected. Gaza has a limited perimeter. With cameras and ID cards if anywhere can be controlled, the gaza strip can. And the alternative is what, to give up or else wait until the next generation of refugees gets so desperate to avoid their culture being erased they will try any horrors to make noise.
As a staunch supporter of Ukraine I see your point. However, Iran and Russia are allies and Putin is using Iranian-made weapons in Ukraine. Iran (or at least, its current government) is on your "team autocracy" for sure. Neutralizing Iran and its proxies would seem like a good thing for team liberal democracy - but probably not at the cost of another 4 years of Trump, and appeasement of Putin.
Ian, this is one of your most important articles ever. Reading news, social media, listening to talking heads etc, I’ve often felt like I’m the only person who thinks- and feels - like this. Like you. Like all lives should matter. I’ve wondered if I’m just wrong, if I’m missing something that’s obvious to everyone else (and both sides eagerly tell me that’s the case). And I feel so helpless. Yet talking with friends in “real life”, I find they all feel the same as me and you. But it seems almost none of our ‘leaders’ (media, politics, national) speak like this. Why have we ended up losing our humanity?
"all lives matter" so you just absolutely did not learn why that was a thought terminating pivot away from the very point of the issue. Great. This is the quality of a moral agent in 2024. All lives matter. While Magdi burns alive in Gaza and a few kilometers away young urban Chaim gets to play fortnite in the safety of a luxury apartment before he goes to lyon for the weekend. But our sympathy of course is with Chaim as his cousin went to a tone deaf festival next to an open air prison and never came back. All lives matter bro! Just keep the thoughts and prayers trucking maaaan.
What a strange reply. No one with any capacity for thought would see those examples as comparable. It’s reductio ad absurdum. Presumably I’d also have no interest in Magdi as I have a broken fingernail that needs attending to.
Most of us are entirely capable of more nuanced and deep thought than your comment. However Chaim’s cousin was a human life too, the very obvious point that you ignored.
Show me the way in which your ethical mode gives justice to either of them in an equal fashion without disempowering, sanctioning or in some necessary way recalling fhe Israeli government and it's current and future plans for the region. These are directly relevant issues. I don't ignore the point but I ask you if you're familiar with the notion of a maximal good and an ethical good. Because you have to do both. Strange or not it's the reply you got. "Presumably I'd also have no interest in Magdi as I have a broken fingernail to attend to". Seeing as that's made in proximity to the supposed absurdity of two hypothetical lives living parallel both having value and both needing defending ill grant the assumption you're objecting gimme proposing an absurd response and not letting a little truth slip in there. Ok. Rejecting the thought exercise, why is it that in the current state of affairs as presented by the full gamut of media reports and articles and blogs and government statements made all around the world amongst all the babble about necessary proportionality and rights to defense and arguments from the genuflection brigade, why is that a magdis life is consistently presented as necessarily less valuable than that of a Chaim. And why does this mirror almost perfectly the narrative that Israeli Statehood is necessarily positioned oppositionally to a Palestinian one. And if you can give me a good answer to that, one that that doesn't read as ultimately comforting navel gazing and aesthetic acts of symbolic solidarity I'll literally give you £20.
I DON'T KNOW! That's practically the whole point. In an odd way, we're more or less on the same side. As was Ian. I cannot FAIL to notice that Magdi's life is consistently presented as less valuable, which was pretty much what Ian was saying in the article; Israelis presented as individual stories and Palestinians as large numbers. *That is precisely what I'm objecting to*. All I would say is that the answer doesn't lie in dehumanising the other side either. And I don't know what the answer is, and I don't have any power to impose one if, by some unimaginable miracle, I did. But my original point was a cry of protest (and agreement with Ian) that we can't, that it isn't right, to treat Palestinian lives as more expendable. That Magdi's life matters every bit as much as Chaim's cousin. I don't really understand why we seem to be at cross-purposes.
Have you ever been on a national Palestine march? I do not recognise your description. They are peaceful, diverse and are expressing solidarity with a people with no land and no rights. There are Jews on the marches. There are relatives of holocaust survivors. Noone is unsafe in central London. In the 6 marches I have joined I have seen a handful of placards I would prefer were not there. A handful in a sea of placards expressing pain and anger at the decimation of Gaza and it's people.
He has not been on a national Palestine march. He has watched and scowled.
Thank you for putting into words the anger I feel in my heart daily. This for me sums up painfully the root cause of all this suffering "It's just tribalism" As a humanist and fellow liberal in the truest sense I hate it all so I largely stay silent about the pain I feel. I hate that I have to pick a side and that's the narrative forced on you and if you dare to say no to tribalism, as I have (this is why I left x) because you voice the opinion that death is death humanity is humanity and war crime is a war crime on whomever it is being acted upon you get branded antisemite or pro
Palestine. The only thing I am 'anti' is hate and
The only thing I am 'pro' is humanity. Its just a waste all of it a senseless cruel waste of life and to see these mad men escalate this war at the price of so many innocent people on both sides of the divide is devastating.
Wow a conclusion that requires absolutely nothing in terms of action or moral clarity or actually engaging with the world as it stands. Just gesturing at humanity. Basically the equivalent colorblindness in the face of racism. I'm sure that will make it all work out great.
I was visiting Bath and I saw a pro-Palestine March. It was peaceful. There were drums. They were handing out Naqba leaflets. I didn’t get the sense Ian that the march was like the one you described but maybe if I was a Jewish bystander I would have felt uncomfortable anyway. What is happening in Gaza has led to an increase in anti-semitism here. That has been reported whatever is happening in this march.
There has been footage coming out of Gaza and it’s shocking. It was regularly on the news. Hospitals being bombed, aid workers targeted, children in hospitals covered in blood and dust having lost entire families. Yes Arabs have been reduced to numbers. But the numbers of dead are huge and still growing. Israel are a democracy aren’t they? They’re our allies. But this wholesale slaughter of civilians is not what you associate with a democracy. I am aware of the rhetoric that has been building since Netanyahu fell in with the extreme right too before this started. Calling Palestinians “vermin”? This does not feel like the Israel of old. I watched the Al Jazeera documentary on the Israeli Festival. The casual way those young people were executed sickened me. I had to watch that documentary to find out more about this. I actually felt that was less reported on. But I could be wrong.
I can’t help feeling that Netanyahu and the extremists in his government want an excuse to keep bombing. They resist calls for a ceasefire, They could have got more hostages freed. Now Iran has started. Now please understand. I felt a kinship more with Israel as a democracy before now I feel like this is a fire burning out of control. Netanyahu I imagine wants Trump to win. What does that say for world peace? Peace for us? Let alone in the Middle East. It’s like we’re living in a world of extremes now.
Hang on a minute: Ian Dunt wrote this: "I wonder if the organisers of those pro-Palestine marches ever wonder how much they gave up. I wonder if they recognise, just even for a moment, what kind of coalition they could have built against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government if they had not tolerated patently anti-semitic rhetoric and behaviour. I wonder if they know how many Jews and non-Jews might have marched alongside them." Ummm - I have been on all the marches and there have ALWAYS been large numbers of Jewish people (and even Israeli Jewish people) on the marches. And very radical too. Some have been in their 80s and even 90s. Some on crutches and wheelchairs. There has never been ANY what you call "anti-semitism" (NB please look up the meaning of the word 'semitic' - it doesn't mean what most people think it does...). So. And by the way - I am Jew-ish and have been campaigning for a Free Palestine since 1967. To no avail of course because of people such as Ian Dunt who swallow the Israeli state propaganda in one gulp - without even using a prophylactic, let alone a glass of water. Wake up please. As the ICJ has said: it's Genocide that the Israeli state is pursuing - and lots of seaviews from houses built on the blood and bones of massacred Palestinian children, women and men.
It's kind of astonishing right?
While I agree with much of this, and felt extremely uncomfortable with the lack of empathy with the Israeli victims of October 7th or even justification of the attack on the part of some pro Palestinian friends, I think you are grossly misrepresenting the marches. There are some hateful placards and slogans etc but many Jews take part and do not feel at all threatened. Unfortunately the official organisations claiming to represent British Jews insist on interpreting anything opposing Israel as antisemitism. This whole issue has been muddied almost beyond redemption by the Israeli government which has an interest in making diaspora Jews feel insecure in their homes and so make them more willing to support Israel. Yes there is real antisemitism and it’s increasing. It must be fought wherever it appears, but sadly Netanyahu himself is happy to associate with antisemites like Victor Orban or with right wing American Christians who fervently support Israel but only because of their belief that all Jews returning to Israel is the necessary precursor to the return of Jesus, which will involve their conversion to Christianity. Hard to think that’s not pretty antisemitic, but he doesn’t care as long as it keeps the money and weapons flowing to Israel.
So eloquently weitten.
Those engaged in this conflict are utterly inexorable in their convictions and nothing will change that.
Though not a jew myself, I have a jewish DIL and 2 beloved Jewish granddaughters. I have bent over backwards to understand and to defend the absolute horror, fear and revulsion of Jewish people at the barbarity of the 7th October attack.
The truth is we are not permitted to be fair-minded.
We must be either for them or against them. I have been shot down in flames by many jewish people who see one side only - theirs.
I have been accused of swallowing western propaganda by many muslims.
We who reject the indisputable, savage inhumanity on both sides are attacked by both sides for being antisemitic or condoning genocide.
Netanyahu is as monstrous as those who carried out the attack.
He is no friend to the world or the Jewish people.
He's literally head of the worlds only Jewish state and is committing war crimes in front of you with impunity. At what point are you going to clue in that ALL of this is being done in the name of Jewish people even if they disavow it and that represents a real problem that can't just be gestured at or tut tutted over. I mean ffs can you not make a greater conclusion than 'oh he's just a bad man, definitely nothing else going on'
I do reject him & his crimes utterly, and I certainly do not disavow it. I agree with your assessment.
However, thank you for making my point with your reply. It is precisely people like you who refuse to accept that two things can be true at the same time who are the problem, and therefore make any progress toward a solution impossible.
Oh I accept entirely the premise that two things can be simultaneously true. I just don't then respond to that paradigm with a seeming moral disdain for anybody who actually advocates for an immediate approach to the situation and why they're so upset. You point at common humanity but then draw no necessary contingent obligation to respond radically and swiftly to the atrocities being performed by specific entities for specific ends. This will not absolve you. Get right with the truth. The presentation of morally ambiguous landscape only compounds the need for people like you and me to be brave enough to act when the material conditions are plainly a more definite shade.
You completely misrepresent my view. I consider you to be extreme in yours.
Then elucidate your view Ronny. And mine it not extreme. What is extreme about acting against injustice instead of just... talking about it, or disavowing anyone who wants to do more than talk about it
What a lame “enlightened centrist” take on the pro Palestine marches. As a former fan of some of your articles, you’ve lost my respect for your patronising, innacurate and insulting characterisation of the protests. You talk up empathy like some Zen guru yet can’t understand why marchers were focused on the Gazans being genocided whilst Israeli victims already had the worlds and media’s full empathy and wall to wall coverage. Very disappointed in this shallow piece.
Thank you
I joined a street march in October last year with vague notions of calling for a ceasefire and peace.
I began to feel uncomfortable about the growing group of overtly partisan young Palestinians sporting keffiyehs and flags so eventually left the march. On my way back I passed a woman in the street looking with anger and fear at the marchers approaching; I guessed she was Jewish. I determined to find out more about this ongoing conflict whilst trying to not take sides.
“Married to another Man” is a brief history by Palestinian academic Ghada Karmi; most of my other reading is from Israeli writers. I can recommend Gideon Levy, longtime reporter with Haaretz newspaper; Avi Shlaim Emeritus professor at Oxford University, born in Iraq but brought up in Israel where he served as a young man with the IDF; Jewish American academic and son of holocaust survivors Norman Finkelstein; academic Shlomo Sands from Tel Aviv; Australian commentator Anthony Lowenstein: Ilan Pappe who’s book “the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” is a revelation. These are unlikely to appear on the BBC or other mainstream media but are freely available on YouTube and other social media. ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ and ‘Standing Together’ are grassroots organisations worth checking out.
I now have a better grasp of history and context. The emotional turmoil remains. Sadly I am increasingly convinced that Israel is and always has been a terrorist state. My next challenge is to discuss with some of my Jewish friends.
https://tempo.substack.com/p/are-we-the-baddies
Thanks Ian. In my house we've just finished two days of celebrating the Jewish New Year - in theory, a time when smartphones are switched off and family or friend groups gather to eat, drink and toast the year ahead after the same synagogue service as we attend every year with its comforting tunes and rituals. Except this year, there were even more of us than usual wearing stabproof vests and walkie-talkies (very carefully sourced, if you'll allow the black humour) on security duty to protect our local synagogue in leafy Hertfordshire from those who might wish us harm. And around the lunch table, the smartphones were on and the news alerts jumped on, while we checked in on relatives and friends in Israel who are wondering when the next attack will send them to the shelters and safe rooms (assuming they have warning).
Then there's the arguments. It's pretty much generational - my parents' generation and (sad to say) most of my 40/50something contemporaries taking one side of what they can only see as a binary, existential argument. It's us or them. They want to kill us. We're cleverer than them - the Iron Dome, the pager attacks, the terror leadership assassinations - that all proves it. And the BBC is the work of Satan.
Thankfully, my children (aged 18-22) and many of their generation are capable of understanding that it's not 1967 any more and that Israel has a government that is seriously compromised with extremist nutters who are a 'shanda' - a shameful embarrassment - to us all. It's horribly, horribly complex and they struggle to cope with the "aggressive certainty" that they get from their own community - and from university 'friends' who are just as aggressively certain on the other side. I've never been prouder than when they fact-checked an Islamophobic piece that a grandparent of theirs had shared on the family WhatsApp chat.
So thank you for expressing empathy, and being a voice that says: We're not going to settle the conflict on Substack, X or even Bluesky in favour of one side or the other - but here in the UK, we can make the angry people angrier, the scared people more frightened, and violence more likely - OR, we can stop and think about ways to act constructively (or we can just stop, which is probably better than adding to the cycle of hate).
I would welcome a post/comment from someone with family & connections in Gaza or Lebanon - to hear the conversations around their tables, and the day-to-day experience they have right now. I honestly have no idea, and that doesn't reflect well on me. Happy New Year to us all.
There is so much that one could say but a country that bombs hospitals, schools and the rest with a self declared disregard for civilian casualties has lost any moral compass.
Also worth pointing out that the kibbutz and festival that was attacked was 10 minutes walk from the ghetto, the prison that is Gaza. Horrendous though it was, did the participants really have no idea of what was going on just over that brutal barrier? And why Gazans might feel so angry? It says so much about the echo chamber that Israelis have locked themselves into.
The biggest irony is that the people that were killed were some of the last Israelis on the Left who believed in the two states solution and who spoke out, actively in favor of peace. So they were aware of what was going on and some actually tried to help Gazans by taking them to hospital appointments in Israel.
The reason why it took so long for the IDF to come and rescue them was because they were considered unimportant in comparison with the far right settlers and the IDF had been reassigned to protect the latter.
And as for the festival goers, they were young people having a good time and the venue was only changed three days before October 7 so they would’ve had no time to think about anything.
I write this as somebody who thinks that nothing that happened on October 7 could justify Israel‘s response, but I also think that details are important.
You spend the first two thirds emphasizing just how desperate a rupture in the procedure is needed to break the stultifying media gaze and then just end up...absolving the man in charge of the country for having no spine. Oh it's a very complicated job! Oh he's just got it you know! Oh these are some very serious challenges! Yes. And failure to meet them, repeatedly, while actively purging leftists from your party like spilling dominos and keeping the same limp neolib appendage primed for another great market solutions that nobody asked for. I have a lot of respect for you Ian, in fact I think you're among one of the finest writers and journalisfs working today, but I just don't know how you can arrive at your end piece without deliberately hemming your language to fit basically a quietist mode when it comes to the labour government. And that's fine but you gotta give something beyond leaving it in moral destitution as though there aren't things that can be done right now to immediately alter the paradigm and if there are nothing should be said of it. Anyway. When you've got a chance check out Robyn Hitchcock's "Brenda's Iron Sledge". I feel like a tune is a good trade for going in on you a bit.
All the best
I've read this comment twice now to try to understand the point you're making. But what you're doing is making Ian's point for him.
Explain yourself.
Oh am I just. Where did I do that. Iran you say. Well call me Ayatollah for not expecting every single country in the region to not fold immediately upon request by a rump state of empire. Amazing. It's almost like there's a whole discipline related to this called international relations and if you haven't already you might benefit from brushing up on it. What Israel is doing is not the "international rules based order" I want to see in the world thanks. And by the by, that's no an endorsement of the theocracy since I have to make that absolutely explicit in case I run into someone like you who's just started reading.
Autocorrect "Iran" corrected to Ian. Apologies for the confusion.
That's a wonderful coincidence, as I cannot edit my comments as I'm not a premium member, so Im stuck responding to something you didn't say. The class analysis writes itself.
How am I making Ian's point for him..spell it out
I find Ian's piece thoughtful and the subsequent commentary telling! It was precisely Sinwar's strategy to precipitate the inevitable Netanyahu response, villify Israel, trigger a humanitarian disaster and an awful death count amongst the the civilian population in Gaza. The latter would inevitably turn everyone against Israel and throw the horrors of the October 7th genocide into a black hole to be forgotten. Sinwar counted on the cooperation of other Iranian regime puppets such as Hezbollah and the Houthi's to expand the anti-Israel war and all of them embed their operations, weapons, command and control and missile launch sites near civilian populations to ensure maximum innocent deaths to trigger the rightful horror expressed in this and other substance pages. Within that context, whether what Israel is doing is an act of self-defence or one of careless massacre is debatable given the current make-up of the Israeli government containing racist elements like Smotrish and Ben-Gvir. All in all, Netanyahu has little interest in the ethical implications of the actions of his government, only in his own political survival to shield himself from going to prison; using the rightful action of self-defense as a cowardly shield for political purposes. To be fair, who warns the population to flee before bombing areas where civilians are at risk? Do Hamas or Hezbollah do so? Well Israel does even if they make serious and very costly mistakes. Where were all those who say that Israel has no right to exist (historically wrong) and are (correctly) angered by Israel's oppression of Palestinian when Somali Muslims or the Royhingya were being massacred or the Uyghurs persecuted and put in concentration camps? Of course when it involves Jews...that is a different matter...all bets are off and villification is de rigueur. I know that there are many left wing Jews at the marches in solidarity with anti-war and pro Palestine protesters. As a Jew who is the son of a holocaust survivor I too am appalled at the violence, death, oppression, lack of humanity and anti-semitism this has triggered. I am appalled at the actions if the Israeli government, the IDF and settlers against Palestians in the West Bank. I am totally in tune with my Israeli brothers(some of whom are family and friends) who protest daily/weekly against the government and continued war. I am fir a Palestinian State but not one run by Hamas terrorist who's main aim is the annihilation of Jews and destruction if the State if Israel (that is truly what from the river to the sea means despite the dialectic ambiguity often posited by Western leftists). Hence in conclusion, Ian's article is a useful contribution to the necessary dialogue and the messy dialogue it engenders a poster child for the ambiguity, confusion and dissection that Sinwar had in mind when he planned and executed October 7th and the desired response with its deadly and horrific consequences.
Absolve the Israelis of all agency, squint and there you are.