What Does it Mean, Today, to Be 'With Israel'?"
If Israel wants peace then it will have to give freedom to the Palestinians.
“We are with Israel.” What is the meaning of this assertion? And can anyone deny this? What is a country but its people? Why should anyone have any hesitation in being with any people?
But being with Israel today means being against Palestine. It has been accepted that the slogan ‘Long live Israel’ will mean ‘Down with Palestine’.
It is also a strange thing that today all over the world, be it France or England, the US or Germany, Turkey or Africa, streets are reverberating with slogans like ‘We are Palestine’. Thousands and lakhs of people in these countries are holding the Palestinian flag. On the other hand, the governments of these countries are hoisting the Israeli flag on their buildings.
The governments are threatening those who utter the word Palestine with punishment. But their people are thumbing their noses at this threat and raising slogans on the streets: ‘From river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’
Objection has been raised to this slogan in England. The meaning of this slogan is the denial of the existence of Israel, this is the allegation. People participating in the procession said, when we raise this slogan, we do not talk about destroying Israel, we only demand the freedom of Palestine.
If one had to choose between these two, what would one choose? Does the flag of a country look good in the hands of people or in government offices? What would the people of Israel themselves feel? Do they consider it a matter of pride that the unarmed people across the world have the flag of Palestine in their hands and the anthem of Palestine on their lips but Israel exists only in the statements of armed governments? Which one of the two should be a matter of pride for any people?
How would the people of Israel feel seeing the colours of Palestine on the streets around the world? Would they be feeling lonely?
The one who is with Palestine should probably say that he is with Israel also. The right to life of these two people are not and should not be mutually exclusive. Which means the right to live with dignity.
Since the Palestinians do not have dignity, the Israelis feel insecure because it is in their name that the Palestinians have been robbed of their dignity.
So what does it mean to be with Israel? Who is Israel’s well-wisher at this time? The one that is pushing Israel deeper into the closed tunnel of war and violence? Or the one who is warning it that this tunnel is closed from the front and entering it means being trapped in?
Who is really with Israel? All those people who echo the Israeli government’s shout for revenge for the October 7 Hamas attack? Those who support or are silent after the Israeli government murdered more than 4,500 people in Gaza and pulverised it? Or those who are still saying that the answer to the Hamas attack is not to destroy Gaza? They ask Israel not be hotheaded as it has always been, and use this opportunity with a cool mind to get out of the vicious cycle of violence in which Israel has put itself and the Palestinians along with it for the last 75 years.
So are all those people and their leaders like Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak, who came running to embrace Israel’s criminal thoroughly discredited and war hungry Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, well-wishers of the people of Israel?
Is their priority the release of more than 200 people held hostage by Hamas? When the Israeli government started bombing Gaza, did it have these people, its own people in mind, who could be killed in this bombing? Instead of this bombing, would it not have been better to find a way to negotiate with Hamas and first free these hostages?
Be it Amira Hass or Gideon Levy or David Shulman, hundreds, thousands of Israelis are shouting that if Israel wants a life of peace then it will have to liberate Palestine.
Israel’s former advisor Daniel Levy said in his interview to Al Jazeera that before condemning the attack by Hamas, there is a need to ask the fundamental question, how did we all reach this point? Why are we forced to ask this question? Levy said that the need to ask this question would not arise if millions of Palestinians had not been crushed every day for 75 years in a tight space in one of the world’s most cruel prisons.
The question is not why Israel’s intelligence system failed and why it was not even aware of such long preparations by Hamas. The real question is who made Hamas powerful? Why did Israeli governments, and Netanyahu in particular, pit Hamas against Fatah? Why did Israel refuse to honour even the Oslo Agreement, and why did it continue to steal Palestinian land under the watchful eye of the US, continue killing Palestinians and humiliating them on an hourly basis?
After all, who created such a situation that Israel has to see Hamas in every Palestinian?
Daniel Levy cautions that even after razing Gaza, Israel will never have more security than it has today. The only guarantee of the security of the people of Israel is a free Palestine. When you suppress someone, you have to keep increasing that pressure because the desire of the person being suppressed to raise his head increases in the same proportion. Then you are always alert, putting a lot of your energy into increasing that pressure to keep him under your boot. It’s better to get off his back and let him walk straight. Then you too will be able to walk peacefully next to him. It is just that simple. If Israel wants peace then it will have to give freedom to the Palestinians.
Apoorvanand teaches at Delhi University.