I’m sixty-seven. Like you, Ms. Gaitskill, I had a father who served in WWll. He was radically wrong about a great many things in his life, but he was right about one thing. When I was around forty, he told me that he was glad he had grown up during the Depression, then fought in the war as a teenager. “I was still young,” he said, “when I saw the worst the world could do. I suspect you’ll be old when you see it.”
i wrote and deleted several things already and thought i would take time to provide more historical context and also decry the hypocrisy of the silence for all the other atrocities happening now in this world except for the outrage against Israel for defending itself (you know Hamas’s aim and that they never stopped attacking even through the ceasefire - and just rejected another one!) and you must’ve read the nyt piece this week about the depraved sexual brutality which still doesn’t pierce the hearts of the justice mobs, or that no matter the evidence of diverted aid money into terror tunnels and it goes on and on and if you care to read about it, i can tell you that much has been written with nuance and historical detail about Israel’s history but all i can think of is that you reposted someone’s disgusting comment that the Israelis should have known better than to dance in their own country!!! As if!!! And all must know that this attack was planned and paid way in advance --- and talk about blaming the victim... i am so sad to see the twisting of well intentioned people to virtue signal how hard it is to see the innocents suffer... it’s hard on everyone, except the demented! Do we let the barbarians win? I don’t have the answers and i don’t know how to come to terms with radical islamists who believe in killing apostates and jews and gays and don’t think the US is immune. I am still most stunned by that comment from such an admired writer - please rethink your words.
Thank you for speaking up and for the link to Masha Gessen. I have stopped saying similar things out of fear of alienating traumatized Jewish people I know and being perceived as anti-Semitic. My father had his arm blown off in Italy in WWII. Ann Frank inspired me to keep a journal and think about moral responsibility.
I grew up in societies (South Africa, England, and the US) that were covertly anti-Semitic and largely indifferent to the murder of Jews during WWII, when they turned away Jewish refugees. I went to a private school with many Jewish students because other WASPY Boston area prep schools had quotas. The League of Nations (do I have this right?) created the boundaries of Israel in the aftermath of a Holocaust in which now-guilt-stricken and belatedly horrified Europeans had been complicit.
They then "solved" the so-called "Jewish problem" by fobbing it off on other people ---villagers, goat herders, farmers, voiceless people, non-Europeans--- the Palestinians -- on the theory that when Jews once again had a nation-state, they could defend Jews everywhere and all would be okay.
History has since repeated itself. Generational, historical and cultural trauma is continually re-enacted: first in 1948 when Palestinians were violently forced out of their villages and off their land and repeatedly since. Perhaps Oct. 7 was experienced by many Jews as Kristallnacht and the pogroms rolled into one. When trauma is triggered, it is frequently re-enacted and visited on the bodies of others.
I think those of us who are not Jewish have an obligation to understand this history better. I recommend two other books along with "A Day in the Life" -- My Promised Land, (by an Israeli journalist) and "Apeirigon," by an Irishman who I bet saw similarities to The Troubles.
I don't buy the conflation of "Anti-Semitism" (the hatred or dislike of Jews as Jews and indifference and inaction in the face of attacks on them) with "political opposition to the acts and policies of Israel." Nor do I buy the conflation of "opposing Israel" or "calling for a cease-fire" with "supporting Hamas." Nor do I buy minimizing or erasing the power differentials between Palestinians and Israelis.
Boycotts, sanctions and divestment worked in my native South Africa.
I first heard the treatment of Palestinians analogized to Apartheid by the Jewish-American pollster Stan Greenberg decades ago when he was a grad student at Yale. I was horrified by the labelling of Palestinians as "animals" to pave the way for the bombing and murder of women and children. There are enormous power differentials at work between displaced and ghettoized Palestinians and the Israeli nation-state, which draws some of its destructive power from our bombs, our no-strings and enabling military aid. It has become difficult to say this without fear of being shamed as anti-Semitic.
Surely Hamas wanted a war, just as al-Qaeda did in 2001, doing something so ugly that the response was bound to be disproportionate and full of its own horrors. By making their knees buckle, the powerful can be made to lose their minds. The US lashed out incoherently in 2001; it didn't make anything better. Mossad used to be very--scarily--capable of managing police actions, which should for God's sake have been the approach taken in the circumstances. Not war. My country doesn't get that, and maybe I don't have a right to expect Israel to do better. Horror without end: a first thought should be how not to invite more of it.
Thanks for this, as usual from you, so sophisticated and original exploration of various facets of an incredibly difficult issue. It is really helpful to me personally, as I was recently on a silent vipassana meditation retreat for 8 weeks, in seclusion from all news. Re-engaging with world news is extremely difficult, and your article really helps me.
Thanks, Mary. This was helpful. It doesn't make anything easier, but clarity of mind is always helpful. And thanks for recommending Masha's piece -- I hadn't seen it.
I wish Israel's response was more proportionate, but I'll share a simple, contrary view.
Palestinians have many legitimate grievances against Israel, but they don't turn these grievances into anything productive. Some people might think, "We've been oppressed by Israel for so long, and now we're going to organize so they can't oppress us anymore." Palestinians think, what? In 2000 they turned down a peace deal that was far better than anything you could imagine today. They commit formless violence that's always going to be outmatched by Israeli violence. Israel has an official policy of disproportionate retaliation. What they're doing in Gaza is very predictable.
People are now full of expressions of sympathy for Palestinians. It reminds me of a quote: "There is only one thing I hope to see before I die, and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore." When Palestinians are able to think like that, we'll be much closer to peace.
Thank you. Every voice willing to denounce the horror is a mitzvah. As an American Jew about your age, I was steeped in the hasbara tropes of “making the desert bloom,” etc. I think most American Jews, at least the educated ones, are experiencing a cognitive dissonance of epic proportion. Sooner or later the dam will burst. It may not be loud but it’s coming.
It’s weird to say, but I am reading Operation Shylock right now and learning a lot from it. I don’t normally look to novels to “learn from” them, and I haven’t always loved Philip Roth. But the novel is set in Israel and Gaza (for the most part) and looks at these places and the people in them from all sorts of angles. Even though it’s got an annoying-sounding metafictional premise (a writer narrator named Philip Roth finds out he has a doppelgänger imposter in Israel who is going around advocating for Jews to abandon Israel and return to Europe) it’s full of different voices and histories and is a lot more balanced and also deep than a lot of essays I’ve read about this issue. It’s also funny in an absurdist dark way at moments and a weird page turner. I recommend it I think.
Thanks again to you, Mary, my favourite blogger 😏 Since getting your email last evening, I’ve been thinking more about Gaza, Israel, Ukraine and Russia. It’s much like looking in a mirror, isn’t it, seeing the human condition writ large, much too large.
This is no time for pithy comments. Gessen’s words rang true when I read them a few weeks ago. And now yours set off an entire new set of memories.
My dad too, in North Africa before setting off for fascist Italy. And as a kid entering teenager-hood, totally enraptured by reading what turned out to be the original Israeli PR exercise, aka Exodus by Leon Uris. So, a few years later being introduced to another form of passion by Judith, fresh from a kibbutz, there were stars aplenty in my firmament before they began to be dimmed by Vietnam.
Fast forward to just about now. My initial reaction to the walls that came tumbling down on Oct 7 was much like that on 9/11 - brilliant tactics and just deserts for so many wrongs. And as the horrors began to be magnified, whose stories should be believed?
Ah yes, it’s easy to utter outrage from the comfortableness on this island in the far west of Canada, sipping coffee in the winter sunshine, awaiting a new year that will soon reveal the same old tired human traits of power, greed and racist corruption, escaping into old age by the skin of my teeth until sea levels rise, earthquakes hit and realizing there is really no escape at all.
Thanks for your words - again and again - and for listening.
I have feelings about Israel and Palestine, but very little real understanding. In my heart, I know my ignorance has been willful and self-protective. That needs to change.
I'm not qualified to tell Israelis or Palestinians what to do. I'd like to think I'd stay true to my pacifist beliefs if I were a member of any nation/people/whatever, with all the risks that would entail. But who knows what would happen if the IDF attempted to draft me, or a guy from Hamas put a gun to my head?
I have a similar, if more continuously schooled background with the history as yours, Mary. One little thing niggled from early on, though. I watched the Six Day War on the news in 1967, and realized that what I was seeing was French planes, piloted by Israelis, blowing up American tanks, driven by Jordanians. That's the point where I started wondering if maybe the US and NATO should stop facilitating the violence. The USSR too, of course, but my voice and vote didn't matter there.
The fact of the matter is this: the US has picked a side. And the question that Americans have to answer is: Does our picking of a side advance genuine peace?
Looking what we're seeing in Gaza, I'm comfortable saying that the United States ought to be doing something different. What that is, I don't know, but I'm growing more and more convinced that sending Israel more bombs is a mistake.
I really admire the self-examination and effort to learn and listen that this carefully written piece exemplifies. I especially appreciated the consideration given to how the words "simple" and "complex" are applied to make cases. Thank you.
Thank you so much for these thoughts, especially the perspective of your generation’s experience of Jewish people’s stories, whether through books or school or actual family trauma. I’m fascinated by how we react to events on account of our upbringing, and the bombing and killing occurring at this moment is certainly shaking up multiple generations’ understandings of Palestine and Israel.
I’m sixty-seven. Like you, Ms. Gaitskill, I had a father who served in WWll. He was radically wrong about a great many things in his life, but he was right about one thing. When I was around forty, he told me that he was glad he had grown up during the Depression, then fought in the war as a teenager. “I was still young,” he said, “when I saw the worst the world could do. I suspect you’ll be old when you see it.”
i wrote and deleted several things already and thought i would take time to provide more historical context and also decry the hypocrisy of the silence for all the other atrocities happening now in this world except for the outrage against Israel for defending itself (you know Hamas’s aim and that they never stopped attacking even through the ceasefire - and just rejected another one!) and you must’ve read the nyt piece this week about the depraved sexual brutality which still doesn’t pierce the hearts of the justice mobs, or that no matter the evidence of diverted aid money into terror tunnels and it goes on and on and if you care to read about it, i can tell you that much has been written with nuance and historical detail about Israel’s history but all i can think of is that you reposted someone’s disgusting comment that the Israelis should have known better than to dance in their own country!!! As if!!! And all must know that this attack was planned and paid way in advance --- and talk about blaming the victim... i am so sad to see the twisting of well intentioned people to virtue signal how hard it is to see the innocents suffer... it’s hard on everyone, except the demented! Do we let the barbarians win? I don’t have the answers and i don’t know how to come to terms with radical islamists who believe in killing apostates and jews and gays and don’t think the US is immune. I am still most stunned by that comment from such an admired writer - please rethink your words.
Thank you for this, Mary. I admire how you’re able to think yourself into understanding so many points of view.
Thank you for speaking up and for the link to Masha Gessen. I have stopped saying similar things out of fear of alienating traumatized Jewish people I know and being perceived as anti-Semitic. My father had his arm blown off in Italy in WWII. Ann Frank inspired me to keep a journal and think about moral responsibility.
I grew up in societies (South Africa, England, and the US) that were covertly anti-Semitic and largely indifferent to the murder of Jews during WWII, when they turned away Jewish refugees. I went to a private school with many Jewish students because other WASPY Boston area prep schools had quotas. The League of Nations (do I have this right?) created the boundaries of Israel in the aftermath of a Holocaust in which now-guilt-stricken and belatedly horrified Europeans had been complicit.
They then "solved" the so-called "Jewish problem" by fobbing it off on other people ---villagers, goat herders, farmers, voiceless people, non-Europeans--- the Palestinians -- on the theory that when Jews once again had a nation-state, they could defend Jews everywhere and all would be okay.
History has since repeated itself. Generational, historical and cultural trauma is continually re-enacted: first in 1948 when Palestinians were violently forced out of their villages and off their land and repeatedly since. Perhaps Oct. 7 was experienced by many Jews as Kristallnacht and the pogroms rolled into one. When trauma is triggered, it is frequently re-enacted and visited on the bodies of others.
I think those of us who are not Jewish have an obligation to understand this history better. I recommend two other books along with "A Day in the Life" -- My Promised Land, (by an Israeli journalist) and "Apeirigon," by an Irishman who I bet saw similarities to The Troubles.
I don't buy the conflation of "Anti-Semitism" (the hatred or dislike of Jews as Jews and indifference and inaction in the face of attacks on them) with "political opposition to the acts and policies of Israel." Nor do I buy the conflation of "opposing Israel" or "calling for a cease-fire" with "supporting Hamas." Nor do I buy minimizing or erasing the power differentials between Palestinians and Israelis.
Boycotts, sanctions and divestment worked in my native South Africa.
I first heard the treatment of Palestinians analogized to Apartheid by the Jewish-American pollster Stan Greenberg decades ago when he was a grad student at Yale. I was horrified by the labelling of Palestinians as "animals" to pave the way for the bombing and murder of women and children. There are enormous power differentials at work between displaced and ghettoized Palestinians and the Israeli nation-state, which draws some of its destructive power from our bombs, our no-strings and enabling military aid. It has become difficult to say this without fear of being shamed as anti-Semitic.
Surely Hamas wanted a war, just as al-Qaeda did in 2001, doing something so ugly that the response was bound to be disproportionate and full of its own horrors. By making their knees buckle, the powerful can be made to lose their minds. The US lashed out incoherently in 2001; it didn't make anything better. Mossad used to be very--scarily--capable of managing police actions, which should for God's sake have been the approach taken in the circumstances. Not war. My country doesn't get that, and maybe I don't have a right to expect Israel to do better. Horror without end: a first thought should be how not to invite more of it.
Thanks for this, as usual from you, so sophisticated and original exploration of various facets of an incredibly difficult issue. It is really helpful to me personally, as I was recently on a silent vipassana meditation retreat for 8 weeks, in seclusion from all news. Re-engaging with world news is extremely difficult, and your article really helps me.
Thanks, Mary. This was helpful. It doesn't make anything easier, but clarity of mind is always helpful. And thanks for recommending Masha's piece -- I hadn't seen it.
I wish Israel's response was more proportionate, but I'll share a simple, contrary view.
Palestinians have many legitimate grievances against Israel, but they don't turn these grievances into anything productive. Some people might think, "We've been oppressed by Israel for so long, and now we're going to organize so they can't oppress us anymore." Palestinians think, what? In 2000 they turned down a peace deal that was far better than anything you could imagine today. They commit formless violence that's always going to be outmatched by Israeli violence. Israel has an official policy of disproportionate retaliation. What they're doing in Gaza is very predictable.
People are now full of expressions of sympathy for Palestinians. It reminds me of a quote: "There is only one thing I hope to see before I die, and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore." When Palestinians are able to think like that, we'll be much closer to peace.
Thank you. Every voice willing to denounce the horror is a mitzvah. As an American Jew about your age, I was steeped in the hasbara tropes of “making the desert bloom,” etc. I think most American Jews, at least the educated ones, are experiencing a cognitive dissonance of epic proportion. Sooner or later the dam will burst. It may not be loud but it’s coming.
It’s weird to say, but I am reading Operation Shylock right now and learning a lot from it. I don’t normally look to novels to “learn from” them, and I haven’t always loved Philip Roth. But the novel is set in Israel and Gaza (for the most part) and looks at these places and the people in them from all sorts of angles. Even though it’s got an annoying-sounding metafictional premise (a writer narrator named Philip Roth finds out he has a doppelgänger imposter in Israel who is going around advocating for Jews to abandon Israel and return to Europe) it’s full of different voices and histories and is a lot more balanced and also deep than a lot of essays I’ve read about this issue. It’s also funny in an absurdist dark way at moments and a weird page turner. I recommend it I think.
Thanks again to you, Mary, my favourite blogger 😏 Since getting your email last evening, I’ve been thinking more about Gaza, Israel, Ukraine and Russia. It’s much like looking in a mirror, isn’t it, seeing the human condition writ large, much too large.
This is no time for pithy comments. Gessen’s words rang true when I read them a few weeks ago. And now yours set off an entire new set of memories.
My dad too, in North Africa before setting off for fascist Italy. And as a kid entering teenager-hood, totally enraptured by reading what turned out to be the original Israeli PR exercise, aka Exodus by Leon Uris. So, a few years later being introduced to another form of passion by Judith, fresh from a kibbutz, there were stars aplenty in my firmament before they began to be dimmed by Vietnam.
Fast forward to just about now. My initial reaction to the walls that came tumbling down on Oct 7 was much like that on 9/11 - brilliant tactics and just deserts for so many wrongs. And as the horrors began to be magnified, whose stories should be believed?
Ah yes, it’s easy to utter outrage from the comfortableness on this island in the far west of Canada, sipping coffee in the winter sunshine, awaiting a new year that will soon reveal the same old tired human traits of power, greed and racist corruption, escaping into old age by the skin of my teeth until sea levels rise, earthquakes hit and realizing there is really no escape at all.
Thanks for your words - again and again - and for listening.
I have feelings about Israel and Palestine, but very little real understanding. In my heart, I know my ignorance has been willful and self-protective. That needs to change.
I'm not qualified to tell Israelis or Palestinians what to do. I'd like to think I'd stay true to my pacifist beliefs if I were a member of any nation/people/whatever, with all the risks that would entail. But who knows what would happen if the IDF attempted to draft me, or a guy from Hamas put a gun to my head?
I have a similar, if more continuously schooled background with the history as yours, Mary. One little thing niggled from early on, though. I watched the Six Day War on the news in 1967, and realized that what I was seeing was French planes, piloted by Israelis, blowing up American tanks, driven by Jordanians. That's the point where I started wondering if maybe the US and NATO should stop facilitating the violence. The USSR too, of course, but my voice and vote didn't matter there.
The fact of the matter is this: the US has picked a side. And the question that Americans have to answer is: Does our picking of a side advance genuine peace?
Looking what we're seeing in Gaza, I'm comfortable saying that the United States ought to be doing something different. What that is, I don't know, but I'm growing more and more convinced that sending Israel more bombs is a mistake.
I really admire the self-examination and effort to learn and listen that this carefully written piece exemplifies. I especially appreciated the consideration given to how the words "simple" and "complex" are applied to make cases. Thank you.
Thank you so much for these thoughts, especially the perspective of your generation’s experience of Jewish people’s stories, whether through books or school or actual family trauma. I’m fascinated by how we react to events on account of our upbringing, and the bombing and killing occurring at this moment is certainly shaking up multiple generations’ understandings of Palestine and Israel.
Whatever else, I think this is good to go into the mad mix of this collective dream / nitghtmare situation:
https://archive.vn/njsDG