Many may imagine that the deaths of almost 300 children during the latest Gaza offensive will give even the most right-wing of Israelis pause for thought. Unfortunately, as far as the hard-liners are concerned, the opposite is the case. Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, long ago came up with a much-quoted formula which defined the killing of Palestinian children by Israelis as just another of the crimes that Arabs committed against Israel. “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children,” she claimed. “We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”
So there we have it. According to this specious logic, the more Palestinian children the Israeli Army kills, the more wronged and the more victimized the most enthusiastic perpetrators and supporters of such indiscriminate inhumanity believe themselves to be.
This is just one of the many reasons why the Israeli right is so impervious to accusations of disproportionality. Every crime Israel commits against Palestinians is widely rationalized instead as a crime the Palestinians have committed against Israel. There is no disproportionality, because all wrongs are Palestinian wrongs. Even the use of white phosphorus is, no doubt, the inevitable result of the Palestinians’ refusal to submit to Israel’s devout wish for peace, on its terms.
It is always important to declare one’s support for the State of Israel, if not its actions. It is important as well to remember exactly where all these troublesome and aggressive Palestinians came from, at the start of Israel’s great struggle for peace. The 700,000 Palestinians expelled from Israel when it was created in 1948 have grown in six decades to four million stateless individuals. Initially, the 700,000 wanted to be allowed to return to their homes. The majority now realize that the two-state solution offered at Oslo is the best deal they, or their children, are ever likely to get.
Yet this massive, and welcome, concession to the reality of the situation is still not quite enough for Israel’s leaders. The demand now is for “Palestinian unity”. It is not enough for most Palestinians to concede to the two-state solution. All Palestinians must do so before any practical progress can begin. Yet surely this position is entirely fallacious. At least the continued and vigorous pursuit of a Palestinian homeland on the West Bank would give a clear choice to those many Palestinians in Gaza who do wish to keep their children safe, above all else. The funds and the means for relocation that should have been made available to the Palestinians in 1948 still could be, and a partial solution, at least, would be in sight. This might not solve all of Israel’s problems, but it would at least solve some of Palestine’s.
The provocations of Hamas have indeed been a contributory factor in the reduction of the children of Gaza into sitting ducks. But if Israelis really believe that Hamas is “forcing” them to kill children, then it is time that they started thinking more creatively and generously about how they can desist from falling prey so very regularly to the manipulations of their enemies. The Israelis are never keen to give the Palestinians what they want. Why, if they really believe the rhetoric that says it is the Palestinians who want their babies to die, do the Israelis so readily make that lonely exception?
