Getting the facts right: distinguishing valid criticism from blinkered ideology

The “red-green alliance” between far-left movements (red) and Islamist movements (green) describes political groups with sharply different goals cooperating around common enemies: the United States and Israel. Many socialists defend secular government, gender equality, labor rights and freedom of conscience. Islamist movements vary but seek a religious political order that would sharply restrict those freedoms. A coalition based on shared opposition to the United States or Israel postpones those internal contradictions and conflicts.

The Palestinian cause has become a litmus test in this environment. Solidarity with Palestinians, opposition to civilian suffering and criticism of Israeli government policy are legitimate positions. The problem arises when activists must prove their left-wing credentials by treating any defense of Israel’s continued existence as disqualifying, or excuse violence against civilians as “resistance.” A leftist movement committed to universal rights cannot depend on whether the victims or perpetrators fit a preferred political narrative.

The distinction between criticism of Israel and rejection of Israel’s existence is essential. A person can condemn settlement expansion, discrimination, military conduct or a particular government without calling for the state to be dismantled. Slogans or programs demanding Israel’s destruction are not merely critiques of policy. Hamas’s 2017 political document rejects any alternative to “the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea” and does not recognize Israel. The “settler-colonial” label, when it becomes a claim that Jews have no indigenous connection to the land, erases a central part of Jewish history. The ancient kingdoms of Israel are documented in historical and archaeological sources, and Jewish religious and cultural life has persisted in the land through centuries of Diaspora, persecution and expulsions by Christian and Muslim leaders. The moral and political challenge is to acknowledge both peoples’ attachments, not to make one people’s national existence proof that the other has no rights.

When people who condemn colonialism demand the elimination of the only Jewish-majority state, treating Jewish national self-determination as uniquely illegitimate, despite Israel being the native land of the Jews, they have shown that they have become a hate group. That does not mean Israel’s policies are beyond criticism. It begs the question: Would the same activists accept the abolition of any other nation-state, or is Israel being held to a standard applied to no one else? Calling for Israel’s destruction without a credible plan to protect the lives and rights of its Jewish population is not a neutral call for justice. It turns Jews’ historic vulnerability into a test of political purity.

The current versions of anti-Israel movements use the big lie, calling Israel an apartheid state and saying Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Israel includes more than 2 million Arab citizens with the same rights as Jews. Arabs have served in the police, Knesset (Israeli parliament), Supreme Court and in almost any job or profession available in the country. This is proof that Israel does not practice apartheid. As to the genocide claim, Israel has killed about 74,000 Gazans among a population of about 2 million. About a third of those killed have been definitively identified as Hamas fighters. Hamas ideology glorifies death and fighting Jews and the group places military installations, fighters, weapons depots and rocket launchers in schools, hospitals, mosques and private homes to maximize civilian casualties. The Hamas leaders hid in tunnels not open to the general population. Israel supplied food, water and medicine to Gazans while fighting Hamas. Israel gave warnings to civilians to leave areas where military targets were going to be attacked. Those who hate the existence of Israel have used the civilian deaths caused by Hamas’ human shield policy to trumpet the genocide lie. 

Movements that normalize the destruction of Israel or romanticize attacks on civilians threaten the country’s security and deepen the fear that compromise will be met with further violence. This hampers any ability to negotiate with Palestinians as most Palestinians still call for the destruction of Israel. These movements call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Most BDS proponents seek to eliminate Israel rather than to change particular practices. This makes Israel less willing to cooperate with Palestinians or support concessions. The targeting of Israel also poses a political and strategic danger to the United States. Portraying American institutions and alliances as inherently illegitimate deflects from the threats posed by authoritarian and militant movements like the radical socialist-Islamist alliance that seeks to dismantle the United States from within. Coalitions built around civil liberties and equality fracture when principles are selectively applied.

A principled response is neither to suppress peaceful protest nor to silence criticism of Israel or the Palestinians. It is to insist on standards that apply consistently: defend Palestinian rights and Jewish rights; condemn attacks on civilians whoever commits them, distinguish a people from the armed group claiming to represent them and reject the idea that one national community must disappear for another to be free. The Palestinian cause should not require socialists to excuse the Islamist call for the destruction of Israel, and Jewish self-determination should not require anyone to excuse Israeli government policy. A politics of equal human dignity can hold both truths at once.

FARREL I. KLEIN is a retired psychiatrist and Rhode Island native.