I am diminished by the death of every noncombatant, whether they are Israeli or Palestinian. It happens that, at this point, Palestinian deaths have diminished me five times more.

I posted this in social media earlier this past week, just before Shabbes, as I reeled from the Gaza casualty figures released by Palestinian Authority officials in the besieged enclave. Zionist and Israeli friends – and I still have some – objected that the local government which compiled the figures is dominated by Hamas, which is true, and they are therefore unreliable, which is less true. By Friday afternoon, dozens of international bodies and NGOs – including the International Committee of the Red Cross, Palestinian Red Crescent, and the World Health Organization – confirmed that the Palestinian Authority numbers are both accurate and reliable.

Why, I asked myself, did my Zionist and Israeli friends insist on the accuracy of figures released by the State of Israel’s military and intelligence services? The latter have not proven their professionalism or the accuracy of their assessments in the last few weeks, and it is not like the State of Israel is any less-inclined than its foes to lie. One Facebook friend insisted that the State of Israel is “the only honest-broker” in the Eastern Mediterranean, apparently oblivious to the fact that it has flagrantly violated international law for more than 55 years in the Occupied Territories. I guess, I said, that lawbreaking is just something that “honest-brokers” do.

He has since blocked me and, as of the time of this writing, the deaths in Gaza have climbed to nearly 8,000.

In the comments to my post, a friend reminded me that the deaths of combatants – “civilians in uniform” and true-believers alike – diminish me, too. I reflected on all the Israeli and Palestinian parents, partners, children, and friends whose lives have been sundered by the death of a loved one, regardless of whether they died grasping an assault rifle or seeking shelter in the rubble of their home. That number is now climbing close to 10,000 deaths as the war enters its fourth week.

***

I have been outspoken about the war in social media from the beginning. All that I see is destruction, devastation and death, and atrocities committed by both sides. It is, perhaps, an occupational hazard of being a historian – and of the 20th century, no less! – that I don’t see a binary of “good guys” and “bad guys.” The notion that we should condemn Hamas terrorism – and I do, with all my heart – and grieve for dead, injured and abducted Israelis while ignoring the slaughter in Gaza strikes this Jew as morbidly chauvinistic. I mourn for Israel and weep for Gaza, and see no contradiction.

Now that the State of Israel has restored its security and beaten-back the brief-but-bloody Hamas offensive, however, I am much more concerned about the deaths of Palestinian women, children, other noncombatants under Israeli bombs, and for all who will die in the coming ground offensive. I am appalled that, in the slaughter, even the faintest hope of justice for the Palestinian people and for the security of Israelis, will be irretrievably lost.

Death begets death, and the vile rhetoric on both sides escalates to a keening shriek. As a Jew, I am most sensitive, at this moment, to the hateful accusations of being a “self-hating Jew,” or a “terrorist-sympathizer,” because I will not fall-in with the unquestioning embrace of a maximalist Zionism and that exculpates the State of Israel of what one former friend called “necessary collateral damage” before denouncing me as a “fucking asshole” and blocking me. This war is brutalizing all of us, as war always does, further warping Jewish life in a Diaspora already distorted by Israeli colonization. This “Third-Temple” thinking (as I call it), insists that I can only call myself a Jew if I am blindly obedient to the State of Israel and properly genuflect to Jerusalem.

The abuse, often stopping just short of threats of violence, has been excruciating; I really don’t like being called a “kapo,” a Nazi, or an antisemite by erstwhile friends and family. Those slurs are meant to injure and, I am sure my abusers will be pleased to know, injure they do. Yet, I feel an obligation to continue to stand in a kind of Amidah, to bear witness and to sanctify life, and to speak against death and destruction. There is nothing heroic in this; it is merely the articulation of our common, shared, humanity, and it is a stand that we must all take.

What follows are some of my social media posts from the last week. They form a kind of personal journal of war – my scattered thoughts and impressions as I try to navigate this moment of violence, horror, and fear. It is a modest effort to illuminate and stand against the darkness, and I will continue to post updates every week. What can one person do for peace and humanity in an environment like social media? Probably not very much; but maybe we can inspire each other.

***

Zionists, Israelis, and apologists of the bombardment and almost inevitable invasion of Gaza deploy a strange and ghoulish kind of logic. Namely that, while the State of Israel unquestionably has the right –indeed, the obligation – to defend itself and its citizens from terrorist attack, that right is unlimited and not only can, but should include the slaughter of civilian noncombatants. Often, they cling to the fantasy that the IDF is the “most professional military for in the world” and has preternatural skills that allow it to drop 1000-pound bombs and bunker-buster munitions in the most densely populated place on earth without causing civilian casualties. (Thus, the reports of more than 7,000 casualties in Gaza, deemed credible by the International Committee of the Red Cross and other NGOs, is mere “Hamas propaganda.”)

Let us not forget that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged that the current bombardment “is just the beginning,” and that there are leaders of the Israeli right saying the quiet part out loud and salivating at the prospect of “clearing Gaza.” So we, as humans, have an obligation of our own: to ask where the limits of legitimate defense lie, and when that defense spills over int the realms of punitive, aggressive war, and simple bloodthirsty revenge.

This is not a question that Zionists, Israelis, and apologists of the bombardment and almost inevitable invasion of Gaza do not wish to contemplate. For them, the 500% casualty rate suffered by the people of Gaza is not only defensible, but justly deserved because they regard all Gazans as collectively guilty for the Hamas attacks, or that Gazan lives simply do not matter in the State of Israel’s quest for perfect, absolute security. Perhaps we should ask if the continued slaughter of Gazans is any more likely to ensure that security than have 56 years of brutal, and illegal, Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories, the invasion of Lebanon, the blockade of the Gaza Ghetto, and the intermittent offensives that have killed more than 10,000 Gazans and 1,500 Israelis.

Conversely, we need to ask if stopping now, declaring a ceasefire, and finding a negotiated settlement that would recognize Palestinian sovereignty and autonomy, and would almost certainly demand the occupation of the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the intervention of the international community, would make Israelis any less secure.

The bombardment and invasion of Gaza is not about the security of the State of Israel and its citizens. It is about revenge and retribution.

***

In addition to 500lb and 1,000lb general purpose (dumb) bombs, the IDF is using 5,000lb GBU-28 “bunker-buster” ground penetrating bombs to destroy buildings in Gaza. The detonation of 2.5 tons of TNT 5-6 metres below street level creates an earthquake-like effect that shatters foundations and brings buildings to the ground. In a place as densely populated as Gaza, where the average population density is almost 17,000 people per square mile, and the highest density, in Gaza City proper, is closer to 25,000 people per square mile, that means that huge numbers of civilians are being killed by the blast and by debris, shrapnel, and collapsing buildings. The effective “kill radius” of a 1,000lb general purpose bomb detonated at or near ground level is about 800 metres. That means that, in open terrain, such an explosion will kill 90 percent of any people within a circle 1.6km (one mile) across. Gaza does not have a great deal of open terrain (at least, not yet), so one can expect a lower kill rate in that radius. Having said that, even if the kill radius is reduced to 400m, in a place where the average population density is 17,000 people per square mile, the effect of such an explosion would be horrific.

***

On top is a mugshot of former Israeli prime minister Menahem Begin after his arrest on terrorism charges by British authorities in 1946. Begin, a member of the Irgun, and the founder of Israel’s governing Likud party, planned and ordered the King David Hotel bombing carried out by the Lehi organization later that year, in which 91 people, mostly civilians, were killed. On the bottom is a wanted poster for Lehi terrorists. the face in the middle is that of former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, Begin’s successor. Lehi was notorious for its indiscriminate attacks on Arab civilians, as at Binyamina and the Cairo-Haifa train. Lehi is particularly remembered for the massacre of Arab civilians at Deir Yassin, where they slaughtered about 100 villagers, with Irgun support, and under orders from the Haganah command in Jerusalem in 1948.

A fascinating thing about these men was that, not only did the British authorities legally define them as “terrorists,” they assumed the label themselves. They called themselves terrorists with pride, and they were celebrated AS terrorists in Zionist romance fiction like Arthur Koestler’s novel Thieves in the Night and Elie Wiesel’s Dawn. Today, there are monuments throughout the State of Israel in their memory, and many streets and public places have been named in their honor.

Although I am not a Zionist, I personally do not believe that Israeli self-determination is or was illegitimate because its independence effort and, later, the government of the State of Israel was led by terrorists. I denounce and condemn their terrorism, and regard Lehi, Irgun, and their political wings and successors as bloodthirsty, brutal, terrorist gangs. Terrorism, of any kind, is criminal violence. Period. But that does not mean that I believe that the British, or Arab militants, would have been justified in slaughtering kibbutzniks and Jewish civilians. Nor do I believe that the right of the members of the Palestinian Yishuv to autonomy and self-determination was illegitimate because so many of their leaders were craven murderers.

My Zionist friends might want to reflect on this.

(History can be a bitch.)

***

At some point, we are going to have to have a conversation about how the State of Israel, with its claim to represent all Jews, its persistent violations of international law, the illegal settlements, the brutal repression of Palestinians, and the naked militarism of its culture, is a significant cause of antisemitism in the diaspora. It implicates all of us, regardless of whether we are Israelis or Zionists, regardless of whether we have a say in its policies, and makes us complicit in all that it does.

And, perversely, I am convinced that the antisemitism that this guilt-by-association cultivates in the diaspora is part of the design – it benefits Zionism and the State of Israel. Zionists deploy the insecurity that Zionism produces as a justification for Zionism.

This kind of thinking has a long history. In 1933, when he was the representative for the Zionist Organization’s Jewish Agency in Germany, negotiating with the Nazis to allow wealthy German Jews to transfer wealth and capital to Palestine and, eventually, emigrate, Levi Eshkol (then Levi Skolnik) observed that the streets of Germany were “paved with gold.” What he meant was that Nazi antisemitism, which would lead to the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, Kristallnacht in 1938 and, ultimately, the Shoah was producing a fundraising bonanza for the Zionist movement.

That bears consideration, especially since I am not convinced that such thinking is alien to the minds of today’s Israeli and Zionist leaders. As Vladimir Jabotinsky once said: “Every dead Jew is a step toward our goal.”

***

I often return to Martin Ceadal’s book Thinking About Peace and War when I am, you know, thinking about peace and war. Which seems t be very frequently these days. Recently, I have been referencing his ideas about dominant “peace-war theories,” the hegemonic ideologies of peace and war in any given society or culture, in my 20th Century World History class, as we have been approaching the Second World War.

Ceadal is a political scientist and a sociologist, so he approaches the matter somewhat schematically. But he proposes a taxonomy of dominant “peace-war theories” that can be a useful framework for understanding how societies think about peace and war. They are:

Militarism
Crusading
Defencism
Pacificism
Pacifism

Militarism holds that war is a positive good, and Pacifism holds that war is an absolute evil.

I have been thinking a lot about where my thinking – something like Bertrand Russell’s “practical pacifism” – fits into this taxonomy. But in doing so, I realized that the dominant “peace-war theory” in the State of Israel is militarism… A militarism as thorough as the German militarism denounced by Karl Liebknecht in 1914.

And that is, in fact, a sobering thought.

***