IS ONE DEATH “TOO MANY”? (NOT IF IT’S A JEW)

WEEKEND LONG(ISH) READ: The idea that “one death is too many” sounds pleasantly humanitarian. What it means is two-fold: Israel has no right to defend itself. And not enough Jews are dying.

The death of more than 30,000 Gazans — possibly half of whom are innocent civilians — is a catastrophic tragedy.

One death is too many.

But let’s consider more deeply the phrase “one death is too many.”

In the case of Israel and Palestine, that true, if banal, phrase has more complex meanings than it suggests on the surface.

For people who do not believe Israel has a right to exist, there is, by definition, no just war. A country that has no right to exist has, by extension, no right to defend itself or its citizens. Therefore, not one dead Palestinian — the innocent, yes, but also the guilty — is unacceptable.

This is crucial to understanding the protests and outrage in the world today.

Much of the world does not care that every death — Israeli and Palestinian — is the fault of Hamas, who started this war and could end it today by surrendering. 

Rather than put the blame where it belongs, the chanting “pro-Palestinian” activists who are terrorizing students on North American campuses this week place the blame in precisely the wrong place, guaranteeing that the problem will continue.

If you are the sort of political extremist who believes Israel has no right to exist in the first place, then you certainly do not believe it has the right to militarily defend its existence from those who would seek to eliminate it — a condition you think is historically appropriate.

If you are an anti-Zionist — and especially if you are one of the inhumane sadists who celebrated October 7 — the phrase “one death is too many” has a different meaning for you.

It is not a statement of humanity. It is a statement of a perverted political ideology.

What it means is “one non-Jewish death is too many.”

In this context, though, the also term means that, despite what happened on October 7, not one Palestinian should die — including terrorists (or, as too many overseas whackadoodles call them, “resisters” or “martyrs”).

Meanwhile, what is especially galling is that those who excuse, or even celebrate, the deaths of Jews on October 7 (If you have ever uttered anything remotely like “October 7 was terrible, but …” this means you) turn around and wave the flag of peace and coexistence.

From other progressives, I have far too often heard a variation on the (deviantly idealistic) “Attacks lead to reprisals and then more attacks and where does it all end?”

Notice that this bromide is always expressed when Israel defends itself, not when terrorists kill Jews.

These activists don’t seem that upset that terrorists kill, rape, immolate, kidnap and behead. As we’ve seen, some are jubilant.

What seems to really get their goat is that Israelis won’t just accept that violence and murder. Those people always have to retaliate!

There is a recurring attitude among activists that, facing enemies that respect no rules of engagement, Israel should be adhering to the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

More than this, the underlying assumption is basically, Well, what did you expect?

When one subscribes to a perverted narrative in which the very existence of Israel is fundamentally unjust and regressive (eg., settler-colonialist, apartheid, imperialist, blah blah blah) then anything that happens to its citizens is, by depraved extension, just.

Not coincidentally, this dovetails with a core tenet of antisemitism: Whatever happens to the Jews is just what they had coming. They bring it on themselves.

But there’s more.

The gist is: Why won’t the Jews just turn the other cheek? Which is a variation on the New Testament theme that 100 generations of our Christian ancestors said of the Jews: Why won’t those people accept the word of our lord Jesus?

But the war we are currently witnessing is not Old Testament versus New. It is not “an eye for an eye” versus “turn the other cheek.” 

This and so much else in discussion is poisoned by the prejudices of thousands of years of religious bias carried by almost every human on earth — including (maybe especially) those who think we have extricated ourselves from religious bunkum.

This is not Old Testament “vengeance.” This is a modern, pluralistic, democratic country defending itself from genocidal terrorist armies sworn to kill all Israelis and Jews — and, for good measure, when that task is completed, people like me and probably you. Me because I’m gay. You because you probably fit into one of the multitudinous categories they deem worthy of death (drinking alcohol, being American, showing too much ankle, the list goes on. And on).

In this case, the seemingly humanitarian phrase “one death is too many” is not a statement of compassion. It is an expression of crude political calculation.

It’s not just anti-Zionism. There is a larger narrative into which the anti-Zionist narrative dovetails with classical antisemitism.

The idea that Israelis have no right to defend themselves is founded, at least in part, maybe mostly, on the idea that the role of Jews in the world is to be the eternal victim. In the human narrative, Jews are supposed to go like sheep to the slaughter. And we do not like to have our fairy tales upended.

Jews, who in 2,000 years of Western civilization’s narrative were weak and oppressed, left to the whims of the powerful among whom they lived, were, after 1948 but especially after 1967, recast as powerful, self-determined people self-determined in their own homeland.

Possibly more than anything Israelis might do to Palestinians, this image seems to stick in the craw of European and North American activists. A people who have always known their place suddenly step out of line and become something they had never been, in a script we have not approved.

“[W]hile I do not believe that most of the world believes that the only good kind of Jew is a dead Jew, I am growing to fear that, to too many people, the best kind of a Jew is a weak Jew,” writes historian Gil Troy.

It has been said that Jews can be powerless and pitied or powerful and unpopular. This tidy dictum is unquestionably false — the first part being demonstrably wrong, though the second part is absolutely true.

Israeli leaders sometimes seem unconcerned by how their words and actions appear to the outside world. They do not always make it easy for overseas allies like me to defend them. This is because they understand this dichotomy. The Jewish people, for the most part, have seen the implications of being powerless and pitied. Being powerful and hated isn’t ideal, but it’s better than being dead.

Plenty of progressives have a problem with Jews who can defend themselves. 

Consider the wildly disordered global reaction to Israel’s security barrier. 

The nominal criticisms — it serves as a land-grab because it crosses the Green Line in places; it separates farmers from their fields — may be legitimate. But the volume of indignation is not at remotely commensurate with those issues.

The complaint seems to have more to do with the very idea of the the government of Israel protecting its citizens from terror.

By definition, “anti-Zionists” don’t think Israel should exist. So why would an entity that has no right to exist have a right to perpetuate its existence?

By building a barrier to separate Israeli civilians from the people most likely to blow them up, Israel has made a tragic decision based on the conclusion that their only long-term hope for safety is to physically separate their civilians from mass murderers. We seem to view this as an infringement on the rules of war.

We subscribe to a narrative that views killing Israelis as the only tool the Palestinians have — and the security barrier doesn’t even give them a sporting chance.

Of course, overseas activists don’t admit they think Jews should go like sheep to slaughter. (Well, some do. Those calling for “10,000 October 7s” or who celebrated the actual October 7, certainly revel in the idea of slaughtered Jews.) But this is the subtext of jawdroppingly audacious military pronouncements by overseas activists and commentators.

In the midst of this war, armchair generals in the West — some of them avowed pacifists — opine on the legitimacy of Israeli military operations.

When the IDF pinpoints missile sites in Gaza, Western progressives accuse the military with perhaps the planet’s most precise targeting capabilities of “shooting fish in a barrel.” We proclaim Israel’s responses as “disproportionate” and second guess any and every Israeli action.

This would be astounding enough in any context: that people with no military knowledge and limited or no understanding of the complexities on the ground would make wild assessments about the appropriateness of the defence and border policies of a country that has an unparalleled history of cross-border attacks targeting civilian populations. That we feel confident in judging Israelis, who face enemies who repeatedly declare genocidal intent, is truly impressive.

The incessant refrain that Israel is wantonly, indiscriminately killing civilians — basically the core narrative of the anti-Israel activists — is especially galling. 

If Israel was wantonly, indiscriminately killing civilians, this war would have ended on October 8.

It is not a tasteful case to make with the images of dead and wounded coming out of Gaza, but all evidence is that the proportion of civilian casualties to military (in this case, terrorist) casualties are lower in this war than almost any parallel conflagration. (More on this in an incendiary future post.)

So why does this narrative focus on the idea of Israelis haphazardly killing civilians?

Because anti-Zionism stands on the shoulders of millennia of antisemitism and Western observers, whether we understand it or not (we don’t) carry ingrained racial biases that evoke a confirmation bias. So, when we see Israelis (that is, Jews) defending themselves, our brain interprets this, based on horrific cultural biases handed down from our ancestors that we deny we even carry (see: “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism”) as people “who only care about their own” drinking the blood of non-Jews.

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For those who believe that Israel has no legitimate right to exist — and this includes anyone who defines themselves as “anti-Zionist” — any effort by Israelis to defend themselves, by logical extension, is illegitimate. Even one death, to return to the phrase at the start, is “disproportionate.” Defensive war? No such thing!

This keening of lamentations about “disproportionate force” and the parallel idea that “one death is too many” is not a benevolent impulse. On the contrary, it means not enough Jews are dying.

Activists not only ignore but reward the Hamas strategy of maximizing the dead on both sides. They not only ignore but punish the Israeli strategy of preventing casualties — both Palestinian and Israeli. Never mind the massive infrastructure like Iron Dome, bomb shelters in Israeli playgrounds and safe rooms in every home. Justice means at least as many dead Jews as dead Palestinians — it’s only fair — and who gives a damn about the facts? 

Those who claim disproportionate force, of course, ignore the disproportionate intent. There is asymmetry in the relationship, certainly, but there is also asymmetry of intent.

Israeli actions, whether we find them excessive, unjust or punishing, are defensive acts. Yes, this might lead to excesses that are copiously reported and condemned, impacting innocent Palestinians as well as those perpetrating or planning violence. But intent matters.

And, again, if you want the killing to end, demand Hamas surrender. 

Only the Palestinians can make peace because only the Palestinians are making war.

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Once again, the “pro-Palestinian” approach to this conflict has the direct opposite impact of the one activists claim to seek.

The dismissal of Israel’s legitimate existential fears, the invalidating of its military defences, our isolating and vilifying of Israel, will lead to more security barriers, a retrenching into what we derisively call “militarism” (code, again, for “not enough Jews are dying”), and a strengthening of the country’s intransigent hardliners.

“There’s nobody who’s blameless in the Middle East, but we cannot really ever make a fundamental difference in the Middle East unless the Israelis think we care whether they live or die,” said the former U.S. president Bill Clinton. The road to peace in the region means “Not to agree with the Israeli government on everything, not to pretend that innocents don’t die, not to pretend that more Palestinian children don’t die than Israeli children. But that we can’t get anything done unless [Israelis] believe, when the chips are down, if somebody comes for them we will not let them be wiped out and become part of the dustbin of history.”

The dustbin of history is precisely where anti-Zionists want Israelis. There is plenty of evidence that that dustbin is also where they want all Jews.

When activists demonstrate that they do not care if Israelis live or die, they put Israelis into positions that push Palestinian needs further away. The more ostracized Israel becomes, the more averse its voters and leaders will be to compromise. Intelligent people must know that isolating Israelis and making them feel less safe in the world will reduce the likelihood of a resolution. (This is why I always use scoff quotes around the inapt phrase “pro-Palestinian” and you should too.)

So why do they do it?

The crazed, maniacal chanting on university campuses right now is not bringing peace and Palestinian self-determination closer but pushing it further away. 

It encourages Hamas and it convinces Israelis — and Jews everywhere — that Israel is as necessary as ever, maybe more than ever, as a potential place of refuge for every Jew in a deeply dangerous world.

Yet still we do it.

Because this is not about advancing the cause of Palestinians. 

This is about sticking it to the Jews. 

If you haven’t yet clued into this reality, you are not paying attention.

The idea that “one death is too many” sounds pleasantly humanitarian.

What it means is two-fold: Israel has no right to defend itself. And not enough Jews are dying.