Analysis | Hamas, Hasbara and the Holocaust: What Left and Right Get Wrong About the Israel-Gaza War, and Why

Credit: Photos: Win Mcnamee/Getty Images via AFP; Ludovic Marin/Pool via Reuters; Roy Boshi; Christophe Ena/AP Photo; LIAL/ Shutterstock, Screenshot from the YouTube channel "Tov.” Artwork: Anastasia Shub

Long resentful of Israel's well-greased propaganda efforts at the best of times, the left knows that wartime puts ’hasbaristas' (Israeli propagandists) into overdrive, and demonizing international organizations has long been a dark sport in the "whole world against us" narrative.

If the maxim "in war, truth is the first casualty" sounds quaint, that's because it is attributed to the Greek playwright Aeschylus, who lived over 2,500 years ago when things were … different.

Nowadays, the word "truth" alone sounds quaint. In the current Israel-Hamas war, our ability to see, gather information, consider and decide our positions – in other words, to think – seems to have been irreparably damaged. And after 10 weeks, I believe it wasn't the gun, the tank or the RPG that killed clear-headed thinking. It's tribalism.

It would be foolish to expect people to rise above tribalism in wartime, or ever. Liberal universalists and nativist Trumpians alike all have loyalties to some club; human beings always see our side of the matter first. But natural, even healthy, affiliations turn sour when we ignore things we don't like or take positions by rote because they align with our group, rather than judging right or wrong independently.

There are examples big and small, but it's the secondary themes and daily conversations I've been noticing lately – and let's start with where the left gets it wrong.

After October 7, left-wingers confronted hypocrisies too big to ignore, like allies in the progressive communities who lost their North Star to excuse, downplay or openly support Hamas' actions.

Demonstrators gathering during a "#metoo unless you are a Jew" protest outside United Nations headquarters in New York City earlier this month.Credit: Charly Triballeau/AFP

Other issues were more complex. When furtive rumors of sexual violence in the early days surfaced, some of us waited before jumping on near-immediate accusations against international organizations for neglecting the issue. Long resentful of Israel's well-greased propaganda efforts at the best of times, the left knows that wartime puts hasbaristas into overdrive, and demonizing international organizations has long been a dark sport in the "whole world against us" narrative. So some waited for evidence.

When evidence arrived, it was horrible. By mid-November, I began to trawl through the public statements of UN Women to figure out how the group addresses other conflicts. Unable to decide if the group, which is charged with working for gender equality and the empowerment of women, had truly abandoned its usual practice and was ignoring Israeli victims of sexual violence, I sent press inquiries asking for its side of the matter. There was no reply and the messages were never acknowledged. I no longer care if my conclusion serves right-wing interests: certain international agencies screwed this up badly, and damaged itself still further, full stop.

Another example: the right has long obsessed over the idea that global media coverage is hopelessly anti-Israel. A phalanx of "pro-Israel" media watchdog groups has inspected every word, daily, for decades, and hounds media outlets that stray from their designation of what is acceptable to say about Israel and Palestine. Most "gotcha" examples simply relate to any Palestinian perspective, or fail to change any overall news analysis. These groups give me the creeps.

However, slights and double standards – even unwitting ones – do grate. This week, international news media made headlines out of Israel's experiment with flooding Hamas tunnels underneath Gaza with seawater. The headlines carried alarming warnings of damage to the under environment and water sources – an absolutely vital concern. Hardly anyone even mentioned that Egypt had flooded the tunnels too, twice at least, from 2013 – not only with seawater but with shit.

Israeli soldiers walking through a recently discovered Hamas tunnel close to the Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip earlier this week. While Israeli plans to fill the tunnels with seawater provoked outrage, Egypt did the same and more a decade ago.Credit: Amir Cohen/Reuters

Was it good or bad for the environment? I wouldn't know because few addressed the problem: who expects Egypt to care about the environment? That's soft prejudice of low expectations if I ever saw it – also known as racism. The right is right on that.

Who's a disgrace?

But mainstream Israel – including right-wing, centrist and even parts of the anti-Netanyahu camp – embraces wrongful themes as well.

For example, Israelis continue to train their fury on the International Committee of the Red Cross for failing to visit the hostages, or convey medicine and other humanitarian needs. Weirdly, the American-Jewish actor Michael Rapaport turned up in Tel Aviv this past weekend to call the Red Cross a "fucking disgrace." Presumably, he was fed the idea by Israeli organizers and added his own expletive, but likely had no idea what he was talking about.

The situation is indeed excruciating, but it is simply not the Red Cross' job to change the parties' minds in a conflict. Beating up on the Red Cross is a misunderstanding of what they do (whether we like it or not, there would have been no other interlocutors trusted by all sides to transport these hostages home). Worse, it's a red herring, a distraction for the criminal failures of the Israeli leadership.

Medical staff and health professionals attending a demonstration in front of the International Committee of the Red Cross in London last month, calling for an immediate intervention in the case of the hostages kidnapped from Israel on October 7.Credit: Kin Cheung/AP

The Red Cross can't stop Israel's vast destruction of civilian lives in Gaza either, and I don't see Israelis concerned about that. Israeli demonstrators need to focus on the parties they hold responsible for their welfare – preferably with operative action items, like booting out this government.

Another right-wing theme just below the radar is the conspiratorial view that nefarious Israeli insiders knew in advance of Hamas' attack and let it happen, in a deranged mission to drive down the current government. Yedioth Ahronoth columnist Ben-Dror Yemini, who doesn't consider himself right-wing but is deeply attuned to (and often reflective of) mainstream-right-wing Israeli sentiment, has pointed out how the ideas of fringe influencers on the ultra-nationalist right have permeated much of Israeli society.

And by early December, a majority of Israeli Jews, 54 percent, believed (fully or moderately) that Israeli officials had advance notice or "enabled" Hamas' attack – but an astonishing 62 percent of those who voted for the governing coalition parties, according to the multi-wave panel survey (of repeat respondents) by the Agam Institute at Hebrew University. Among coalition voters, that figure is now "only" 57 percent, compared to a declining portion of Jewish respondents, now 48 percent.

Coalition parties need to check the crazy they are communicating. While the government is putting out public service announcements asking Israelis to avoid sharing digital disinformation, figures associated with coalition partners are pumping out Jewish space laser-esque messages – one more infuriating failure.

There are numerous additional sub-themes that everyone should rethink. The persistent Israeli belief that Israeli forces always make the utmost efforts to avoid harming civilians in conflict is disintegrating before our eyes, following the killing of three hostages last week and Yuval Doron Kestelman as he was shooting at attackers himself.

The idea that October 7 must be viewed as a second Holocaust was cut down to size by Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to combat antisemitism, in interviews with Army Radio and Haaretz this week in which she carefully pointed out differences, and viewed the comparison as superfluous.

U.S. antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt during a conference in the Vatican City last October.Credit: Gregorio Borgia/AP

Do the asking, and the answering

If secondary themes are so wrong, each side should be asking questions about the huge themes, the big stories we tell ourselves about what went wrong and what needs to happen next. The left should admit that it underestimated Hamas' commitment to fighting Israel far beyond any justified resistance to occupation and how widespread its perspective has become. October 7 was an attack on all Israelis for being Israeli and on Jews for being Jews. It was a pure physical rejection of even legitimate Israeli sovereignty. The left needs to cope with the fact that these views are more widespread than we wished to admit.

As for the right, what more needs to happen before it admits that one of its core beliefs is fiction, namely that "Israel has been trying the path of peace and land withdrawal and concessions"? Israel controls Palestinians everywhere between the river and the sea; only the mechanisms differ. The ideas that Benjamin Netanyahu is "Mr. Security" and that the conflict could be managed were both lies. And while we can keep talking victory, Israel has lost this war in so many ways: civilian and military deaths, hostages and a whole new generation that will suffer PTSD for years to come not only due to the injury Israel has suffered but for the injury Israel's leaders, soldiers and we as a country are inflicting on Palestinians.

To be sure, it's easier for me to identify what I view as wrong about right-wing positions – otherwise I wouldn't have been critical of them my whole life. But this is no time for the left to fall into lazy, predetermined thinking.

What I see is that over this time, right-left tribalism about Israel and Palestine has proven to be worse than tribalism between Israelis and Palestinians, and their supporters, both in the region and everywhere else.

Instead, we should stop and ask: Do I have the best intentions of the people who are destined to live in this land together in mind? Have I acknowledged that the fate of all Israelis and Palestinians is intertwined, and zero-sum thinking will perpetuate horrors upon them that reverberate onto us? If people with critical faculties ask – and answer – that question, we might cross tribal lines more than we thought possible.