"Released" or "Rescued"? "Leftist" or "Anti-semitic"?--Does Language Matter?
Monday, 17 June 2024
On 9 June 2024 (just a little over a week ago) four Israelis left their status as hostages and became free Israeli citizens once again. An estimated 274 people—or perhaps under 100— including one Israeli officer—the commander of the troops sent to retrieve the hostages—Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora—died as a result of this effort.
The Israeli raid in Nuseirat camp, which dates back to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, on Saturday led to the rescue of 26-year-old Noa Argamani, 22-year-old Almong Meir Jan, 27-year-old Andrey Kozlov and 41-year-old Shlomi Ziv, who were all kidnapped from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7. —CBSNews
Some sources reported that these four were “released” from captivity. Many sources lamented, some bitterly, how many innocent Gaza Palestinians died in this effort. (Whether it was the high number cited by Hamas or a lower number from the Israeli Defense Forces, war being as horrific as it always is, it’s really not possible to know what information is real and what is propaganda—or whether both are exaggerated.)
But this much seems clear to me: the hostages were rescued, not released; Hamas could have released them but did not. However many of those who died were innocent—maybe most, maybe only a few—if Hamas had released the hostages, none of those innocents would have been killed.
I’m getting more and more irritated—pissed, in fact—that people are abusing the language and misrepresenting what it means to be a leftist, socialist, or social democrat—all terms I think fit me. I call myself a Democratic Socialist in the mold of Michael Harrington, and honestly people are abusing these labels.
Edward Michael Harrington, Jr. (1928-1989)
When something is a matter of opinion, even an important opinion, people can disagree with me and not necessarily make me mad. If in your opinion there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful God, then your opinion and mine are quite different. Not all matters of opinion are equally things I can accept equally well. If you think the Palestinians are justified in blowing up Israeli buses with suicide bombers—because of their oppression and unequal power, I disagree, and I am very hard pressed to merely accept your view. This despite thinking, as I do, that Palestinians have suffered abuse and indignity at the hands of Israel.
If your opinion is that all Jews are immoral and don’t deserve to live, that may technically be only an opinion, but it’s a foolish, malicious, repugnant one that I do not consider remotely reasonable.
And if you object to the way something is being done, I’m going to take your objection far more seriously if you grapple with the complexity related to it. If you blithely declare that the 7 October 2023 attacks in Southern Israel were indeed war crimes but that Israel should not have responded by going to war against Gaza, then I want to know what you do think Israel should have done. Politely request that Hamas cut it out? Arrest the perpetrators—if so, how should they proceed to do that? Announce that it just shows how malicious Muslims can be and hope and pray that shaming them will get them to do better? Beg the U.N. to pass a resolution condemning the attack?
To persuade me, you will need to show a response that would plausibly improve the chances in the future that Israeli citizens would be safer, not less safe, from such attacks. Apparently, Hamas has consistently vowed to do such barbarous, sadistic, outrageous attacks again every chance it gets.
And if you say, “I’m for a cease fire now!”—I’d agree—but only if it’s a real, guaranteed ceasefire. After all it was Hamas that shattered an agreed-on ceasefire on 7 October, not Israel.
“Globalize the intifada”—a frequent chant at protests. What does that mean? Intifada = “shaking off” and thus it can be increase worldwide support for opposing oppression of Palestinians. But it also can—and has—been seen as a signal to harass or even murder Jews wherever they’re found (a horrific and quite different interpretation).. So, words—and what they mean to those saying or hearing them—matter.
Or if you point out that some Israeli leaders appear to have hate-filled hearts and are dead set on genocide—and can quote some of them pretty clearly to that effect—you may well convince me that that is dangerous and counterproductive. Same for Muslim schoolchildren allegedly being systematically taught to hate Jews. I’m not a pacifist but I do heartily distrust war as an effective way to change things. Truly, practicing a policy of “an eye for an eye rarely gets anywhere except to make the whole world blind” (attributed to Mohandas Gandhi—see https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/27/eye-for-eye-blind/).
I’m firmly for what I consider socialism, including a robust role for governments in improving the lives of citizens, very progressive taxes, etc. But socialism should have nothing to do with the kind of dangerous blind irrationality that leads a group to board a New York subway car and demand of everyone on board, “Who here is a Zionist?” or to attack the home of a Brooklyn museum director with red paint—or to vandalize the museum itself.
No solutions appear easily workable, if workable at all. Simple answers seem uniformly simple-minded.
Links to many things mentioned in this Letter—
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/14/when-protests-cross-the-line-into-antisemitism-this-hurts-the-palestinian-cause
https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/unlike-mike/
https://twitter.com/AdamAlbilya/status/1800837764818272289
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/12/middleeast/andrey-kozlov-family-israel-hamas-gaza-intl/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hostage-rescue-hamas-families-captives-gaza-rcna156522
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckddzvl9x00o
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-amit-segal.html
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Let's see:
1) Hamas kidnapped those hostages on October 7.
2) They held the hostages in an area densely populated with innocent Palestinian people, knowing that Israel could attempt a violent rescue of those hostages at any time.
3) When the IDF conducted the rescue, Hamas opened fire on them.
These are indisputable facts.
So, it follows that the civilians killed were 100% Israel's fault???
Thank you, Ed. I agree with everything you wrote. Much of the language protestors and others are using is disturbing, hyperbolic, and terrifying and vilifies Jews. The meaning and implications of words and phrases being thrown around and often misused matter greatly (e.g., "from the river to the sea," "genocide," "colonialism," "zionist and zionism"). Also, equating Jews and zionists with nazis, holding all Jews accountable for the actions of Netanyahu's government, etc. is horrible and unwarranted. It's also crazy that some people who Hamas would kill in a heartbeat (e.g., LGBTQ people) are engaged in pro-Hamas protests. (I chose to use the term "pro-Hamas" because I find so many protestors and others are acting and speaking as though they are pro-Hamas, not pro-Palestinian, perhaps without knowing it.) I wish most people would at least try to understand the complexities of the situation and the history of the region. People often have no idea what they're talking about and don't understand the damage they're causing. It's truly terrifying.