This week the Jerusalem Post published a column by one
of its editors, a British immigrant in Israel, lamenting her
estrangement from friends back in Britain who keep seeing virtue in
Palestinian terrorism. The next day, this letter appeared by an
American immigrant:
The experience described so well…can happen in Israel
with Israeli friends. How is it that someone who would never think
of defending the KKK or Nazi ideology finds every possible way to
excuse, diminish or explain the same disregard for human life when
perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists?
Naivete or good intentions are no reason for closing one’s eyes
and continuing to listen to a friend defending the indefensible.
And being lazy to read up on Islam is not a valid reason for people
to continue talking nonsense and still consider themselves my
friends.
Unlike the letter-writer, I have Israeli friends who “defend the
indefensible” and have kept them. I understand his attitude,
though. These people are saying it’s somehow morally excusable to
blow up themselves, me, their children, or my children. If I don’t
break with them, it’s because I know they’re basically good folks
and the perverse thing they say, while a failing, is not a decisive
one.
In Israel, and probably also in the U.S. to a considerable
extent, this softness toward terrorism is the sine qua non of the
Left. Among the majority who recognize it as evil, the question
becomes practical: what should we do about it? Withdraw from the
terror enclaves and try to keep them surrounded and bottled up?
Keep patrolling them while allowing them to exist? Fight them
seriously and root out the terror? On such issues one can hold
discussions without a sense of betraying one’s deepest values.
The Left, however, cannot cross the Rubicon of just condemning
terror. I’ve seen the anguish and anger in leftist friends after an
attack. But after a while, they always come out at the same place.
It was we, our arrogance, our insensitivity, our one-sided
narrative, that drove this desperate person to do this. You and I
would do the same in his place — we would be mass murderers,
child-murderers.
The question, then, is why the leftist persists in this view of
things. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Maintaining an identity as a rebel and part of an
elite. Terror attacks cause feelings of anger and of
solidarity with one’s own. The attacks say that all of us
deserve to die, any of us could have been the ones in the
bus or the restaurant. The feeling that “we’re all in this
together” is one of the supports for a group under siege.
Many leftists, however, have an ambivalent attitude toward their
group. While affiliating with it and often (certainly in Israel)
willing to fight for it, at the same time they need to keep a
distance as superior critics who see through the vulgarities of the
rest of us. I’ve seen leftists experience the “we-feeling” after a
terror attack, but, eventually, shy away from it; they can’t allow
themselves to melt into the masses.
2. Accepting the intractability of the conflict. The
terror attack conveys a chilling message of total rejection and
hatred. The repeated attacks of the last twelve years have
convinced most Israelis, including many who were willing to give
the “Oslo process” a chance, that peace is not in the cards; hence
the popularity of the new unilateralism by which Israel supposedly
“defines its own borders.”
Many on the Left, however — particularly, in my experience,
female leftists — cannot accept this reality because it’s too
distressing and grim. The terrorist must be a social
protester who can be mollified; or, in another variant, he’s merely
an extremist and we have to “talk to” the moderates. People with
this mindset, while mostly willing to admit that Arafat was not,
after all, a moderate, were eager to embrace Mahmoud Abbas as a new
savior, and to this day are not interested in evidence of his lack
of moderacy and total lack of power.
3. Subconscious identification with the aggressor. This
is clearly the most problematic category. Many leftists, especially
more radical ones, are known to be people who nurse anger at their
parents, and at their society as an extension of their parents.
Leftists who seem stuck on the idea that we would “do the same
thing” if we were Palestinians, or Muslims, are the most suspect of
harboring such feelings. The most virulent Israeli leftists have
been known, indeed, to express such feelings openly when the
victims of attacks are settlers, a group they hate. While not
encountering such sentiments firsthand, in a couple of cases — the
most socially problematic — I’ve sensed them lurking.
Wanting to shun people who could not just condemn the 9/11
attack, or the latest slaughter in an Israeli mall, is
understandable and may even be right. Another approach is, given
the difficulty of the reality and the moral complexity of
individuals, to keep the doors open.
