Hey, tribe.
So once in a while, I post an excerpt of one of these newsletters on my personal Facebook page and it inspires pushback that helps me hone my public stance.
I welcome any pushback that doesn’t involve demonizing, delegitimizing, or applying double standards to Israel. The very best way to construct an argument is to address each objection and patch every hole anyone else can find or create within it.
But I’m also always mindful that if one person is thinking something, others are thinking that same thing. Very rarely does a unique opinion appear in a vacuum.
There are also plenty of grievances I encounter over and over. That’s the joy of doing Jewish advocacy on the left side of the political aisle. No matter what I say or where I position myself on the Zionist spectrum, some people will accuse me of selling my people down the river and others will call me a genocide apologist.
And in addition to such grievances, I’m also confronted with widely-held and yet dubious opinions about the war even by other Jews who love Israel and want her to prevail.
Some of these are:
Israel is losing this war.
Israel has mishandled the entire conflict in a disastrous way.
Israel has already won militarily so what’s the point of grinding on with the war effort and killing more civilians in the process?
This war is also being fought on the public relations front. That matters just as much as the one on the battlefield, and we can’t afford to lose it as badly as we currently are.
This or that Palestinian that you’re quoting with respect, Elissa, has said other things I find such an affront that I can barely tolerate your regard for him.
Elissa, isn’t this or that Palestinian you’re quoting with respect serving exactly the same role as the token Jews you complain about when the other side quotes them?
The Palestinians and Hamas are totally separate entities, with miles of daylight between them.
There are no innocent Palestinians.
So today, I want to offer you word-for-word excerpts of the dialogue I’ve had with other people so that you can — if you agree with me, and if you choose to engage the detractors in your own circles — counter the same objections in the same way.
All the content below was written in real-life exchanges online. I’m not inventing a single shred of conversation as a foil — I have every receipt.
*
The first exchange involved my amplification of a post by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a peace activist from Gaza who has lost many family members to this war. He posted the following content from the account of Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine:
And then he added his own commentary which began:
I'm disappointed & frustrated with the statement by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (who blocked me despite having never interacted with them). In it, they reaffirm the right of armed resistance, an explicit endorsement of Hamas and October 7 & the “all means necessary” narrative, reject the Two State Solution, and attack "normalizers" or anyone who's willing to talk to Israelis and engage in promoting pragmatic solutions to achieve coexistence and peace. They talk about Thawabit or redlines as if they’re a Palestinian “faction” instead of rational Westerners who are supposed to advance the cause and not cosplay as revolutionaries.
This is what losing the plot looks like: at a time of rising empathy & solidarity with the Palestinian cause, these students, heavily involved in the Columbia protests, decided that the best thing to do is take an extremist, maximalist, inflammatory, unreasonable, and totally illogical approach which is harmful to the pro-Palestinian cause. They brag about their extremist rhetoric and think it’s bad to expect that they work on improving messaging. There is nothing inspiring about their message or efforts, only rejections, calls for “escalations,” and attacks against anyone who doesn’t toe the party line. And not a word about Hamas and the deadly impact that the Islamist group’s program and decisions have had on the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Ahmed is a Facebook friend, and I have admired him for a long time, so I was glad for the opportunity to clarify my outlook in response to another reader here:
Her: “One of his demands is that East Jerusalem is in Palestinian control. Do you think that is anything that Israel should accept? Though this post isn't highly critical of Israel, his previous posts were highly critical of Israel for its war to rid Gaza of Hamas while not blaming Hamas for the death and destruction. And I thought we understand that Israel is not an occupation while he calls Israel an occupier. Didn't I read that he's saying here that Israel is committing a genocide? Is that something we accept or agree? Of course I feel deeply sorry for his personal loss, but I'm just trying to make an objective point.”
Me: “Ahmed and I don't agree on everything but I have the very highest respect for his voice and I wouldn't even care if he hated Israel with a passion, because he is genuinely committed to coexistence and peace, and he is honest about the shared responsibility of both peoples for where we are now. He does blame Hamas; he is very anti-Hamas and he knows we can't accomplish anything as long as they rule Gaza.
When allies for peace aren't tokens, they come with their own complicated, honestly-earned perspectives and we need to listen to them with real respect, even if we disagree and even if it hurts sometimes.”
*
Another exchange occurred further down in the same thread, but it referred to a second post of mine as well, one in which I derided the Columbia protestors’ use of token Jews as a smokescreen for all the anti-Semitism inherent in the campus unrest.
Him: “It's funny to see this right above the post where you picked, sorry, selected a Palestinian voice you agreed with about the protests.”
Me: “He has plenty of issues with Israel and calls them out. That's the difference. He doesn't just stand with the Zionists who want to push Palestinians into the sea.”
This, in my opinion, is the litmus test for tokenism. Does the Jew in question side against Israel 100% of the time, from every conceivable angle, while assigning no blame whatsoever to the other side, not even in response to a massacre of civilians, peaceniks and children? This is a perfect description of the organization known as Jewish Voice For Peace, or JVP. And never have I heard JVP invoked more often than I have during the last 6 months. Whenever there’s a social justice panel or teach-in purporting to showcase both Palestinian and Jewish perspectives, it seems that the “Jewish” representative is JVP a head-spinning percentage of the time. JVP seeks to dismantle Israel as a Jewish state. Needless to say, letting them represent the Jewish people, who are overwhelmingly attached to Israel, is tokenism at its lowest.
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Another exchange happened after a popular Jewish substack re-published my letter to Western Progressives. From the comment section:
Him: “I wait every day to hear the advance on Rafah has begun. Biggest mistake is to accept that there are innocent Palestinians.”
Me: “I'm not naive about the fact that a very considerable number of Palestinians support Hamas -- or that it's even fair to say the vast majority of Gazans and West Bank residents do. However, it's certainly not true that there are no innocent Palestinians. Every young child, for instance, is innocent by definition, even if they've been indoctrinated to hate us. And even if they're nowhere near the majority, some Palestinians undeniably do want peace with Israel. I know many of them.”
*
The last excerpt I want to provide has to do with all the ways we’re supposedly losing the war. For context, let me state that I’ll consider the war a success when the military capacity of Hamas has been reduced to the point of impotence. For that reason, I believe the IDF will — and should — destroy the last 4 Hamas battalions in Rafah. It was with this in mind that I had the following conversation with another Zionist:
Him: “The prosecution of the war on Gaza is not being done well.”
Me: “I think the impression that the war isn't going well is a wishful western invention. The PR isn't on our side, but when is it ever? Bibi has dropped all the vestiges of his once-formidable diplomacy and that isn't helping either. But the IDF has taken out 75% of Hamas' militants in 6 months, while maintaining a stunningly low civilian-to-combatant death rate. Think of how long we spent in Mosul and to what effect. Our war in response to 9/11 -- which was 1/12 the size of October 7 when adjusted for scale -- was 20 years long.”
Him: “The PR is a big part of the war… losing the PR war could be dire. It is the war.”
Me: “No, the PR is not the war, silly rabbit. Israel exists because the world already hated us, always has, always will. They can fulminate until they implode. THEY DON'T GET A VOTE. That's the whole point of having our own nation.”
Him: “I hear your point, and agree to some degree. Still, we lose funding from the US and we got a problem. We don’t have Jordan and UAE shooting down missiles and drones….”
Me: “All those countries are motivated by self-interest and that won’t change.”
This is a very important point to remember. I believe President Biden has a genuine love for Israel, but the U.S. isn’t backing the Jewish nation out of love. We’re backing Israel because she is a staggeringly valuable strategic and tactical asset in the West’s war with jihadist extremism.
Similarly, you can be sure that Jordan and Saudi Arabia didn’t enter the chat because they felt protective toward the Jews. They’re rightly much more afraid of Iran right now, and Israel is as strategic an alliance for them as she is for us.
No one has ever protected us for any reason other than self-interest, and that’s why I like to say that none of them get a vote.
Any Hamilton fans in the house? When I have this thought, I always picture the beautifully Jewish Daveed Diggs from the scene titled Cabinet Battle #1, sneering: You don’t have the votes! You don’t have the votes… you’re gon’ need Congressional approval and you don’t have the votes!
So in my own mind — and I recommend this, by the way, as it’s wonderfully therapeutic — I paraphrase the rap in my response to anti-Zionists: You don’t get a vote! You don’t get a vote… the Jewish nation has no need for your approval, and YOU DON’T GET A VOTE.
On that note, I wish you a beautiful and restorative Sabbath. What we lack in challah, let us make up with matza ball soup and matza brei.
I love you all with my whole heart. Shabbat shalom. Am Yisrael Chai.
You are such a blessing to me, to all who are smart enough to read your Substack and your FB posts, to the world, my dear. Thank you so much. <3 And yes, THEY DON'T GET A VOTE. As always, I stand with you and with Israel.
So well written and concise! I wish I could share it with others who need to see it!