the week: the railing against Israel is real

A woman protests outside the Singapore Israeli embassy; Singapore votes in favour of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip

This week a 20 year old Singaporean woman was caught placing placards outside the Embassy of Israel in Singapore, in an act of protest in defiance of the Public Order Act, after the authorities had already declared that permits will not be issued for any protests regarding the Israel Palestine conflict.

I support the right to peaceful protests of all kinds. I also support the right for qualified free speech, whether I agree with what is being said or not. That said, I find it curious why Singaporeans are so concerned with this one issue: from this protest to the one by Gilbert Goh, to the numerous “Free Palestine” messages one can find on Singapore social media. Where are all the protestors against the Saudis for their war in Yemen? Or the protests against the oppression of Uyghur people in Xinjiang? Or the protests against the mass deportation of Afghans from Pakistan? Or the protests against the civil war in Myanmar? Somehow people only get agitated about this one issue.

Before I talk about the Israel Palestine conflict, let me first state the obvious and undeniable truth: all war is bad. Any loss of civilian life in war is a tragedy. Let’s call this the Prime Proposition. If you might feel that my analysis of the situation is callous or lacks empathy to human suffering, know that above all I acknowledge the Prime Proposition, that I do not condone war, that I despise war as much as the next guy, that I believe peace is the ultimate virtue.

That said, people in this generation take the general state of peace in the world since the end of the Second World War for granted, and having known nothing but peace their entire lives they believe that peace is the natural state of things. However as Hobbes wrote in the Leviathan that the natural state of man is “war of every man against every man”, and having organised into city states and countries I don’t see why these states left to their own devices will not engage in similar behaviour. For most of history humans have been at war, war and conflict is the natural state of man. The periods of relative peace in the history of humanity, Pax Romana and Pax Britannica, were ushered in by a global hegemon which maintained the peace and allowed for global trade and flourishing. The current peace is only guaranteed by American hegemon after World War II. Granted this peace is not perfect, and the USA have started their fair share of wars in the name of maintaining peace, but this period in history has seen the greatest improvement of human lives globally. It has seen the most amount of people raised out of poverty, the most amount of countries and states which have flourished, and more impressively not just localised within America and Europe but across the globe.

To maintain this peace there is sometimes need for war. War against those who seek to commit acts of evil, or who would see to destroy the hard earned peace. In our societies today, we can think of nobody who would actively wish for war (except maybe the military industrial complex), but war is sometimes necessary. As Orwell said in his 1940 review of Mein Kampf, “Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades.” Not all humans are the same, and not all yearn for peace, there will always be those who choose war. The folly of those who have grown up in peace, and having known nothing but peace, think that all human beings are the same, that all cultures are similar, that all of us wish for the same things.

There are those who wish to do evil in this world, and war is sometimes necessary to defend against that. Hamas is truly an evil force in this world. They must be rooted out and destroyed. I understand that the Palestinian people are suffering, and I can empathise with the tragedy of the war that has befallen them, while still supporting the need for Hamas to be rid of this world. There can be no peace process while Hamas still exists. There needs to be a peace partner which the Israelis can work with, and Hamas can never be that partner, not while Article 13 of Hamas’ charter openly states that there will be no settlement. The Palestinian people can only benefit from Hamas being removed from power and from Gaza.

There is a misconception that Hamas and Israel are the same, that all acts of war and violence are equal. That’s a common refrain you hear: that since Israel has killed more Palestinian civilians than Hamas has killed Israeli civilians their actions must be morally equivalent to Hamas. It’s the pseudo-intellectual way of both-siding every argument, so one can feel morally superior without having to ever make a moral decision. There are crucial differences between Hamas and Israel: Hamas explicitly targets civilians in their attacks, and on the 7th October attack they purposefully targeted civilians, entering kibbutzes with the sole purpose of killing and raping civilians¹, whereas Israel is targeting legitimate military targets while taking steps to ensure that they kill as few civilians as possible². Any loss of life is a tragedy, and I don’t mean to underplay the brutality of war or the part Israel has played in the killing of innocent civilians. But there is a big difference between both sides, and alleging any kind of moral parity between the two is disingenuous.

Further, the common objections to Israel are often levied either out of ignorance or in bad faith. First, the insinuation that Israel is somehow a coloniser in the Middle East, and therefore like other colonists they must relinquish the land in favour of the original occupants. This to me is a ridiculous contention. Even if you believe that the borders were drawn up by the British and is therefore corrupted by their colonial influence, the partition plans did go through the UN and was ratified by the general assembly at the time, with the majority of the member nations voting in favour of the plan. I accept that the arbitrary drawing of state lines by colonialists has created many border disputes that till today are still a matter of contention, but that can hardly be said to be the fault of the country that was created in this manner. By that logic every country that had been created out of previously colonialised land are similarly tainted. Even putting aside that argument, there is the problem of even saying who is native to the land in the first place, and who are the colonialisers. Consider this: it will be almost 80 years since the 1947 partition plan. 80 years is a long time. There may be Palestinians still alive that have once lived in what is now Israel, but the majority of the population will never have set foot into Israel, and have not known any life in Israel, whereas there will now be children who are the third or even fourth generation of Israelis who have only ever known life inside Israel. Of course, you may argue that the land belongs to the Palestinians because if you go back in time before 1947 the Palestinians were living in what is now Israel (never mind the fact that there would most definitely also have been Jews living in that area). But how far back do you want to look in history? If the present state of things are unsatisfactory to your argument, that currently the Jewish people who live there have more claim to the land as home than the Palestinians, and therefore one must look to history to understand to whom the land really belongs, then why stop at the period of history immediately preceding the birth of Israel? If we go further back, the land has been controlled by the British, the Ottoman Empire, the Mongols, the Arab caliphate, the Roman Empire, the Persians, and the ancient Kingdoms of Judah and Israel. To say that the Jewish people have no claim on the land would be an absurd contention. Further, majority of the Jewish people in Israel today come from the Middle East. Ashkenazi Jews, which come from Europe form only about a third of the Jewish population in Israel, though given that so many years have passed that the distinction is now almost meaningless given that the different Jewish ethnic groups have intermingled and integrated in Israel. I therefore find the argument that Israel is a colonialist country disingenuous bordering on ridiculous.

Second, there is the contention that Israel is somehow an apartheid state, and that they are intent on the genocide of Palestinians. Israel would have to be the most incompetent nation to ever commit genocide in history because the population of the Palestinians has almost doubled in the last 20 years. Within Israel itself, there is no evidence that it is in a state of apartheid, given that the Arab population in Israel have the same rights under the law as Jewish citizens. Further, Israel is the only country in the Middle East to have such a diverse population. Arabs comprise almost 20% of the population of Israel, far more than can be said about Jewish population in their Muslim neighbours.³ If Israel were truly in a state of apartheid surely the situation would be reversed.⁴ The accusation then is levied against the treatment of Israel of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. I will cede that the settlements that Israel has created in the West Bank leave much to be desired. Some of those settlements are illegal and should be removed, and such behaviour certainly does not help the peace process. But since 2005, Israel has returned Gaza to the Palestinians, and have removed any settlements in Gaza. Gaza has been under self rule since 2005, and since 2006 has been under the control of Hamas. There is an accusation that despite returning the land to the Palestinians, Israel has remained in strict control over the borders of Gaza, monitoring and controlling what goes in and out. Would you not do the same if your country were under constant attacks from your neighbour? Would you not seek to control what went in and out of their borders as well? Israel is the only country in this world that endures such constant bombardment from their neighbours, and yet is told by the rest of the world to do nothing about it. If Singapore received just one rocket from Malaysia (never mind a constant series of rockets over the course of decades), I have no doubt we would have troops crossing the causeway on the same day. And best believe that every shipment going into Malaysia would be controlled for the foreseeable future. But Israel is told to just endure it, and accept it. Of course they would control everything that goes into Gaza. Where has the billions of dollars of aid going into Gaza gone? Hamas could have turned Gaza into paradise on earth with that amount of money instead of building miles of terror tunnels.⁵ Even things which were built to better the lives of Palestinians have been repurposed into weapons. And Hamas actively boasts about doing these things. They revel in making their people suffer so long as the Israelis suffer too, because the aid only continues so long as the world sees their people suffering. I see no other way for Israel to protect itself, it was either controlling the borders and imports, or committing to a full scale invasion of Gaza and the eradication of Hamas like what is happening now. The people who did not like the restrictions of the imports certainly would like the invasion even less, but none of them can propose a viable alternative for Israel to protect themselves.

Third, there is the contention that Israel’s war in Gaza is not proportional. After all, the death tolls in both countries are now incredibly disproportionate. This is an incredibly childish outlook of the world. A tit for a tat? Hamas had killed 1,200 Israelis, so now that Israel has killed more than that they are suddenly in the wrong? By that logic the Allies in World War 2 were in the wrong because they had killed way more German and Japanese civilians than the Axis Powers. This is a ridiculously stupid take on the situation. Proportionality in war refers not to the absolute number of military personnel or civilians killed, but rather that the involuntary damage done to civilians is not excessive in relation to the military advantage gained. Just because Israel is superior to Hamas and the Palestinians does not mean that they are in the wrong. It is commonplace for the youth of today, having been indoctrinated by Marxist teachings of Hegel and Gramsci in universities around the world to view the entire world through the lens of power. The oppressor-oppressed matrix is one of the worst ways to view the world, and it has spawned ridiculous notions like how minorities can never be racist against people from the majority race. This endeavour to categorise everything into the false dichotomy of the oppressors and oppressed leads to a world view where Hamas can never be in the wrong because they are a member of the oppressed class, whereas Israel by dint of their economic success have to be the oppressors. That is patently untrue. People who wield no power can be just as evil, if not more so, than people who do, just as people who are minorities can be racist against people from the majority race. This war can only end with the eradication of Hamas, just as World War 2 could only end with the eradication of the Nazis.

Fourth, this war will invariably create more terrorists than it kills. This argument is the most illogical of the lot. What should Israel do about Hamas then? Continue to let them commit acts of terror? People who make this argument have no good solution to the problem. There can be no peace process or two state solution with Hamas because they do not want it. There is no peace partner for Israel among the Palestinians. The myth that there can be no peace in the Middle East so long as the Israel Palestine conflict exists has been broken. Israel has brokered peace deals with Egypt and Jordan, and has normalised relations with the UAE. So the only solution is the complete eradication of Hamas. I understand the idea that this would create a cycle of violence that would in return create more terrorists. But consider the Nazis and the Japanese Empire in World War 2. The removal of the Nazis and Japanese imperialists consequently deradicalised both countries. There was never a consideration of leaving the Nazis or Japanese imperialists in control of those countries, because the eradication would create more Nazis. That would have been a ridiculous contention.⁶ The terrorists already exists. There is no other solution but to eradicate them.

In any case, even if I have done nothing to disabuse you of the notion that Israel is in the wrong, even if I have done nothing to convince you that there is true evil in this world that needs to be eradicated, know that the Singapore government has already voted in favour for a ceasefire in Gaza, on the same day that this 20 year old Singaporean woman was protesting outside the embassy. I disagree with the Singapore government’s position, and would much rather have seen them abstain from the vote. But I do understand that it is difficult to navigate these issues because of our position in the world. Our neighbours are largely Muslim, and there is a need to tread carefully around this issue. I don’t fault the government for voting yes to the ceasefire, inasmuch as I believe there would have been a moral imperative for Singapore to either reject the ceasefire or abstain from the vote, I think that realpolitik sometimes demands that we have to make these choices to further our country’s national interest. There is a difference in me mouthing off my opinions here and the government having to make a stand on the international stage, and I respect the decision.

1. GoPro footage of the attack filmed by the attackers themselves have been shown by the IDF, and reported by the CNN and NBC among other news outlets. There are many more examples out there, and one need only do a search on the internet to find them. If your response to this is that it is faked or staged in some way, then I think you are truly lost and there can be no rational conversation if we cannot even establish basic facts that have occurred.

2. Israel has issued warnings before attacks, used tactics like roof knocking to evacuate civilians, sent in a ground force to invade Gaza to clear the tunnels instead of carpet bombing the entire city. There is no other military in the world which is expected to operate with this level of caution or consideration for civilian life.

3. This is especially so after the mass expulsion of Jews from Arab countries. Almost one million Jews were forced to leave their homes in various Muslim countries to relocate to Israel. Today most of these countries have virtually no Jewish people left.

4. One need only ask themselves if they would rather be a Jew living in Palestine (or any other Muslim country), or an Arab or Muslim living in Israel? If one were a Prisoner of War would one rather be captured by Hamas or by the IDF? Would you rather be a queer person living in Palestine or in Israel?

5. Hamas have actively said that they have built the tunnels for themselves alone, and that it is the UN’s responsibility to protect the civilians. Any legitimate government would prioritise its citizens over its military, after all the function of the military is to protect civilians. To so openly state that is what they are doing is evil, and when people tell you who they are you should believe them.

6. There might be a real contention that the ideology of jihad cannot be destroyed by eradicating Hamas. Then we have to delve into exploring what it is about Islam or religion in general that perpetuates this, or if indeed it is religion that causes this. But that is a rabbit hole for another day.