Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
If you believe that all the violence and destruction in Gaza is the fault of Hamas, then by your own logic you must also accept that the coming wave of violent extremism and antisemitism which is going to ensue from the incineration of Gaza will exclusively be the fault of Israel.
I said this on Twitter the other day and Israel supporters got outraged and shared screenshots of my post shrieking with indignation that anyone would say such a thing, which is funny because I’m just reading their own line of reasoning back to them.
I’m not the one who says an act of violence excuses any violence done in response to it. I’m not the one who says history automatically restarts at the most recent act of aggression, thereby making any amount of retaliatory violence against civilians a justified response to an unprovoked attack for which the vengeful bear no responsibility. This isn’t my position. It’s theirs.
I personally think it would be terrible if the backlash for the Gaza holocaust leads to attacks on civilians. I personally do not believe any amount of violence no matter how horrific would excuse acts of collective punishment targeting civilians in the way Israel has been targeting civilian populations with deadly force in Gaza. But we all know such attacks are probably going to happen at some point, and it isn’t my reasoning which says that the perpetrators would bear no culpability for their actions. This is the reasoning of the Israel apologists.
If you believe Hamas is to blame for Israel’s actions in Gaza, then by your own logic you must necessarily accept that Israel is to blame for any backlash against those actions. If you don’t accept this then you are admitting your position isn’t guided by reasoning at all, and that you simply believe Israel should magically be able to inflict as much butchery and suffering on civilians as it likes without ever creating any natural consequences or backlash of any kind. Your mind exists in a fantasy world wherein Israel has some kind of divinely ordained exclusive right to violent force.
In the early months of the Gaza genocide, Palestine supporters began pointing out the contradictory logic which holds that nothing Israel did could justify October 7, but October 7 justifies anything Israel might do. At no time have Israel apologists ever deviated from this line of reasoning. This self-contradictory position has now become the official line at the White House, where all questions from the press about Israel’s atrocities in Gaza are met by assertions from Trump’s podium people that all blame for those atrocities rests exclusively at the feet of Hamas.
By that exact same logic, any blame for the violent extremism and antisemitism which is going to ensue from Israel’s actions in Gaza rests exclusively at the feet of Israel. This isn’t my reasoning. It’s theirs.
In reality it has always been baby-brained thinking to begin the historical record at the moment of the most recent aggression and pretend Hamas attacked an innocent Israel completely unprovoked. It’s a narrative promoted by predatory manipulators and believed by weak-minded human livestock; Israel was horrifically abusive to the people of Gaza prior to October 7, and had been routinely attacking and killing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in the months prior.
Israel apologists yell “Blame Hamas!” whenever people decry the genocidal atrocities taking place in Gaza in order to excuse Israel from its obvious culpability in those crimes. But it’s a paper-thin argument which can’t withstand the slightest amount of critical thought. You can’t whatabout your way into genocide being morally defensible. That is not a thing.
_________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my mailing list, social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Feature image via Wikimedia Commons/IDF.
