Europe, Israel, Gaza: The Guilt Triangle That Leads to Genocide - Opinion - Haaretz.com
I want to point out a triangle of subconscious interests working under the surface of overt politics and leading to genocide in Gaza: European guilt, the Palestinians' yearning for a state-creating event and the Zionist craving to be a nation like all nations.
This unconscious triangle is not a substitute for reading the map of overt, recognized interests and forces dictating the moves of Israel, the Palestinians and the world. And it certainly doesn't replace the most important context – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has occupation in its heart and war crimes in its hands – but rather completes it.
The first triangle point: Europe. For 80 years, Europe – and Germany, in particular – has carried the Holocaust wound as a guilt that doesn't heal. This guilt has been passed down as an inheritance. The third generation, whose hands are clean, is looking for a way out of it. But not through denial. If the victim is perceived as one who commits heinous crimes, the persecutor could be absolved of the exclusivity of their guilt. It's not only us; it happens even to them.
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- Germany's enslavement to its past kept it silent on Gaza for far too long
Hence, the deep, almost subconscious stand that explains Europe's leniency to Israel's crimes in Gaza. Not only are they in no hurry to denounce them, not only are they not acting to stop them, but the silence itself stems from a hidden yearning: that Israel indeed commit the unforgivable so that it would be possible to forgive.
People gathered in front of the Brandenburg Gate for the final rally of the "March of Life" against Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism and for Israel in 2022.Credit: Christoph Soeder / DPA / dpa Picture-Alliance via AFP
So that they are able to forgive themselves. That's how Europeans will be freed of the past's guilt – not by moral cleansing, but by historical comparison.
The second point is the Palestinians. Into the cauldron of hidden interests add the Palestinians' historic understanding that the Jews received a state following the Holocaust. So they – as a state-aspiring nation – have a hidden interest in undergoing their own Holocaust.
In a previous piece, I warned of the "genocide trap" Hamas laid for Israel. Regrettably, I didn't write explicitly what seemed to me self-evident: that Israel must not fall into the trap, and that this trap doesn't exempt Israel from responsibility for the historic-political context that led to October 7 or to its retaliatory acts in Gaza.
The third point is the Zionists' concealed interest in being a "nation like all the nations." If we're in the ultimate aggressor's position, we'll be freed of the ultimate victim's role, and so, perhaps, we'll really be able to be like all the nations, normal for better or worse, and start a new score with history.
Israeli right-wing group holds banner saying "No victory without a Nakba" in Jerusalem on Monday.Credit: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Again, I'm not talking about conscious interests, one of which is to occupy as much territory as possible with as few Arabs as possible, as the radical right says shamelessly. I'm talking about Israelis' unconscious interests, on a level we're so far from being aware of that we're in complete denial, as evident from the belief that "the IDF is the most moral army in the world."
I wish to propose an analytic, not conspiratorial framework. In my eyes, the joining of these three points – a triangle of unconscious interests – creates a loaded field of forces pulling in a different direction from the words, in which the whole world looks at Gaza and cannot decide. The horrors aren't committed to appease this triangle but are carried out within it.
This triangle, in its distorted way, gives the horrors justification, explanation and a reward, too. It dulls the brakes from within and the outcry from without. It cannot be denied that nobody is really stopping Israel – neither from the outside nor the inside.
Israel must recognize the possibility that it has crossed the lines not despite the Jewish past, but because of it. So we have a double responsibility – both to ourselves and to all those looking on from the sidelines, hoping we settle the guilt score for them.