I didn’t comment on allegations made by Israeli intelligence that employees of the UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) were involved in the 7 October Hamas attack on the State of Israel for a few days. I wanted to wait and see what the accusations amounted to; who, after all were these staff members, what part did they play in the attack, and to what extent was UNRWA itself actually complicit?

So, I waited for more details while the United States and other countries suspended their support to the organization… And then I waited some more and, here I am five days later, still waiting and reflecting on Samuel Johnson’s aphorism that “among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages…” or more simply, “truth is the first casualty of war.”

Make no mistake, it is certainly possible, even plausible that UNRWA staff members were involved in the attack, but I have no way to evaluate the plausibility apart from Israeli intelligence officials’ say-so and, as I always tell my students, I have to “consider the source.” What I mean is that the spooks and analysts in the Mossad and Shin-Bet, the State of Israel’s intelligence and counter-intelligence institutions, have a very specific job to do, and that job does not necessarily include telling the truth. They exist to protect the State of Israel’s interests, even when that means lying through their teeth.

Remember the story that came out a few days after the 7 October attack about the Israeli babies who had been decapitated by Hamas terrorists? The number of these infant victims was always vague; it was sometimes reported as being as high as 40, to “a number,” “many,” and “dozens.” Israeli government sources, especially from the intelligence agencies, reported what witnesses saw, without ever actually identifying the witnesses and, although President Biden continues to insist that he has seen photographic evidence of this outrage, no photographic evidence has surfaced after four months of war.

In effect, the only evidence for this atrocity is the word of Israeli intelligence officials whose job, after all, is to discredit the State of Israel’s enemies by any means necessary, and the media organizations who gleefully repeated the claims. (As we say in the news business, “if it bleeds, it leads.”) The story of the decapitated babies sort of faded away and has largely been discredited, even though there are people who still believe it. And they still believe it because they want to believe it; in a type of confirmation bias, it fits perfectly with their prejudices that Hamas, indeed all Palestinians – indeed, all Arabs – are uncivilized bloodthirsty savages who must be restrained by the State of Israel and “the most moral army on Earth.”

Never mind that Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, is a highly disciplined, modern paramilitary force that has never actually done things like decapitate people in frenzies of crazed violence in its entire history. How disciplined are they? After four months of fighting the best-equipped, most powerful army, navy, and air force in the Mediterranean, which outnumbers them by a factor od about 12 to one, the al-Qassam Brigades is still mounting an effective resistance. That speaks to a high level of discipline.

So, to be blunt, when Israeli intelligence authorities announced that twelve – and then thirteen – members on the UNRWA’s staff had participated, in some way, in the 7 October attack, my first reaction was to “consider the source,” and then to look for details. There have been very few of those.

As I noted, it is certainly possible that twelve (or thirteen) of the UN agency’s 30,000 employees were involved, in some way, in the 7 October attack, but in what way? Were they members of the al-Qassam Brigades who actually participated in the attack or were they people who assisted people who took part in the attack? Did all – or any – of them even know that they were involved, or were they patsies, or far-enough removed so that their involvement was somewhat obscure even to then?

And who were these UNRWA employees? Israeli officials decline to say. Remember this agency employs 30,000 people in many capacities to provide relief and humanitarian support to Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. Some of these people are the administrators and officials who actually run the organization but many, in fact the vast majority, of these employees are engaged in mundane tasks like driving trucks and helping to distribute aid resources on the ground, sweeping up the agency’s offices after hours, fixing the plumbing, and taking out the garbage. Moreover, many of these jobs are casual and temporary, and the Israeli allegations do not make clear whether these twelve (or thirteen) employees are current, or former, staff members, or whether they were hired for three hours one afternoon last July.

The truth seems to be that the State of Israel and its proxies doesn’t really want to say because, as long as you don’t know who these staff members are and how they participated in the 7 October attack, you might assume that the whole UNRWA is to blame. This was the strategy employed by Senator Joseph McCarthy when he announced in a speech in Wheeling, WV on 9 February 1950 that he had a list of names of “Communist agents” in the State Department. The number of names varied every time he mentioned the list (which was often), sometimes it was 205 names, sometimes 63, sometimes 57, like the “pickle varieties” sold by Heinz. No one really knew how many people were named on this magical list, and no one knew who those people were.

This was McCarthy’s point. If he had made the list public, it would have been possible to investigate whether the people named actually were “Communist agents,” and that would not have suited the Senator’s purpose at all. The unverifiable inuendo was the POINT. By leaving people to wonder, his allegations could not be disproven, and people inclined to believe in the Red Menace anyway, or some State Department janitor who might have innocently attended a concert organized by the Pierre Degeyter Club in Prospect Park in 1938, were left with their worries and paranoia. The point was to damn the entire State Department and the Truman administration with vague-but plausible accusations.

And that, clearly is the State of Israel’s goal: to damn the UNRWA as a whole with vague, unsubstantiated, yet plausible accusations about twelve (or thirteen) of its employees.

The UN agency has been a thorn in the State of Israel’s side since it was created in the wake of the 1948 War to provide relief for Palestinians displaced in the Nakba. The very fact of the agency’s existence has been, for the last 76 years, a tacit accusation that 700,000 Palestinians were expelled in order to create the State of Israel as a “Jewish state,” and that is something that Israeli leaders and Disapora Zionists would rather the world forget. After 1967, when Israeli troops occupied the West Bank and Gaza, where most of the refugees had sought sanctuary two decades before, the UNRWA was a constant witness, committing the unpardonable sin (from the Israeli perspective) of helping Palestinians live something approximating a normal life under the occupation.

The State of Israel wants the UNRWA gone because it wants the Palestinians gone, and as long as the agency is there to provide services, support, employment and aid, they have remained. In Israeli and Zionist thinking, there are no Palestinians, only Arabs indistinguishable from the Arabs in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, a fungible human commodity that can be, and should be, dissolved into the undifferentiated mass of the Arab world. The UNRWA is, and has been, an obstacle to making that happen.

The State of Israel is enraged that the UNRWA has been overseeing aid to Gaza in the current war, helping to bind Gazan wounds, and feed Gazan children, minimizing, in a small way, the abject misery of a civilian population under the constant barrage of war. This undermines the whole point of that war which, from the Israeli perspective, is to make the lives of the people of Gaza – all of them, and not merely the armed men of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and the bureaucrats of the Hamas administration – a living Hell. From the perspective of the Israeli government Gazan misery is a necessary precondition to Gazan capitulation – and the UNRWA has had the temerity to stand in the way of that goal.

So, the agency must go. In the minds of people like Benjamin Netanyahu and his gang the State of Israel must have a free hand, and the way to do that is to induce the countries that help to fund the UNRWA to cut it off. The vague accusations have indeed had the effect of discrediting the agency in the eyes of governments, like the United States, who want to believe them. With the principal aid organization in Gaza kneecapped at the very moment that its efforts are most needed, the State of Israel hopes it seems to fully deploy the most terrifying of all weapons of war – famine, pestilence, and misery.

Consequently, when confronted with these latest claims, I feel obligated to “consider the source.” So should we all.

***

Reconstructing Judaism, the body representing Reconstructionist rabbis and shuls in North America, appears to have launched a new campaign publicizing “Rabbis in Social Movements.” This is a good thing, since I do believe that we (Jews) have an obligation to be engaged in the work of tzedek and tikkun olam. I have also always been proud of Reconstructionism’s commitment to social justice and, although I am not formally a member of a Reconstructionist shul, I think that speaks well for all of us.

But the timing makes me suspicious. Reconstructing Judaism has come under criticism – not just from me, but from activist rabbis in the Reconstructionist movement and adjacent, and from people in the broader Diaspora Jewish community (Reconstructionism is not regarded as a legitimate minhag in the State of Israel) – for its waffling on Gaza. While some, even many, Reconstructionist rabbis have been vocal critics of the Israeli War on Gaza, and have advocated for Palestinian autonomy and rights, the organization itself has taken great pains not to “take a side.”

Which is why I am skeptical of this “Rabbis in Social Movements” campaign. It almost seems like Reconstructing Judaism, as an organization, is attempting a kind of bait and switch: “We don’t have the moral courage to actually come out and condemn Israeli aggression and brutality but look at these other good things that we’re doing.”

More than anything, it makes me sad.

***

I want to see President Biden’s decision to sanction four Israeli settlers for terrorism and violence against Palestinians as a positive development. The sanctions, which prohibit David Chai Chasdai, Einan Tanjil, Shalom Zicherman and Yinon Levi from entering the United States, and which freeze their American assets, are the same as those imposed on accused terrorists and political extremists. The Biden administration apparently muttered in sotto voce that it had even considered sanctions against Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, though you’d have to wonder how serious that really was.

These sanctions are almost unprecedented; the US government did designate the Israeli Kach party, and its daughter organization Kahane Chai as terrorist organizations in 1995 (at the same time as Hamas), freezing its assets and prohibiting its members from entering the US. Of course, the Israeli government had already done that after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by the Kahanist terrorist Yigal Amir. In this latest case, the US is not following the State of Israel’s lead, and is Benjamin Netanyahu ever pissed-off.

As a general rule, anything that pisses Netanyahu off is just okay with me.

It is clear that Biden is sending a message with this executive order: to the progressives in the Democratic Party that “see? I’m not Netanyahu’s lapdog! I can have a backbone!” And to the government of the State of Israel that Washington’s patience is wearing thin. This might not be a bad thing, since Netanyahu – indeed, almost every Israeli leader since 1967 – has taken it for granted that Daddy Warbucks will always be there (and it has), no matter what they do.

My friend Gil Wald noted that the State of Israel often forgets that it is America’s client, rather than vice-versa, and the sanctions are doubtless meant to drive that point home. The Israelis (collectively) often forget that they live in the world, and their country’s policies and actions do not go unnoticed. It is doubtless a good thing that the guy who holds the State of Israel’s military purse strings had reminded them of this.

But the sanctions are ultimately an empty gesture – worse than that, they perpetuate a myth that the State of Israel would happily promote. That is, that the murderous violence against Palestinians is the work of individuals like Chasdai, Tanjil, Zicherman, and Yinon Levi, and maybe even prominent baddies like Ben Gvir and Smotrich, rather than it being the explicit policy and goal of the State of Israel itself. By defining the terrorism as an individual sin, the character flaw of a few cartoonishly evil villains, the executive order implicitly absolves the State of Israel and the Zionist project of its guilt: “The Naqba, the Occupation, and the brutal War on Gaza aren’t the problem, it’s just these scoundrels who have ruined it.”

So, I am skeptical. There is much that the President could have done yet chose not to do. If he is troubled by Israeli violence and Zionist terrorism, by the plight of Gazans dying by their tens of thousands under Israeli bombs and artillery and starving in the rubble of their homes, then he should cut the State of Israel and the IDF off immediately. Not just a few mouth-breathing troglodytes from the settlements.

Maybe Biden’s patience is wearing thin; maybe this is just a gentle hint to Netanyahu that he will soon be overdrawn at the Bank of US Government Tolerance and Sympathy. I can hope for it… But I don’t really expect it.

***

I keep getting these Joe Biden ads in my feed. In them, he calls me his “friend,” and then starts the whole folksy thing. While I do recognize that, in America’s broken political system, the electoral choice next November will be between him and Trump, necessitating (in my mind) a vote for Biden as an act of harm reduction.* But I am not his “friend,” nor will I be sending him a contribution for his campaign.

Merely seeing this man’s face days after he ordered the escalation of American military aggression in the Middle East, clearly as an incitement to incite Iran on the coattails of our client the State of Israel’s War on Gaza, makes me nauseous. If you study history, you will find that there is no randomness in clusters of incidents and decisions like this. The US and British offensive against targets in Yemen and Iraq are not incidental to the State of Israel’s brutal war, they are extensions of it. The time has come, some careerist wonk in the State Department or the National Security Council has decided, to expand the war to Iran.

… For whatever reason. Maybe the Biden administration knows that war leaders win elections, or this was just something of the shopping list that they’ve wanted so badly for so long, or maybe while we watch the slaughter in Gaza, we might not notice the slaughters elsewhere. In any case, this man who calls me “friend” and wants my money is playing with the possibility of global war.

That’s what’s going on in my life.

***

There is a disturbing kind of Holocaust denial in social media. Typically, it promotes the idea that the State of Israel has become like Nazi Germany, and that Jews have become just like their former tormenters. This rhetoric rests on the equation of the Israeli War on Gaza with the Holocaust, and the equation of the State of Israel with the Jewish people.

The State of Israel’s War on Gaza is an obscenity, and the International Court of Justice is currently deliberating whether it constitutes a genocide. Yet, to suggest that it can be equated with the Holocaust, the intentional and systematic extermination of Jews and Roma, independent – and frequently in contradiction of -Germany’s war aims in which millions died, and more than two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population was wiped out, vastly minimizes the scale of the Holocaust.

One can only make this equation if one does not actually know anything about the Holocaust, in which case one should not attempt to compare the two events in the first place, or if one actually believes that the scale of the Holocaust was much less than reported. (This latter is a common claim of “rationalist” Holocaust deniers.) In either case, it is Holocaust denial, as certainly as the wearing of Yellow Stars by MAGA anti-vaxxers and Israeli diplomats is Holocaust denial.

Be very clear about this when you compare the Holocaust to the War on Gaza, which is an intellectually legitimate thing to do, and before you equate the two events, which is not legitimate.

The other part of this is the notion that Israelis should be ashamed of doing to Palestinians what was done to them (the whole point of the antisemitic equation above). I am getting exhausted by constantly repeating to everyone – both Maximalist Zionists and anti-Zionists – that Jews and the State of Israel are separate categories.† Israelis did not experience the Holocaust; Jews did.

Even if one notes that the State of Israel was created in the wake of the Holocaust, received international support to provide a solution for the post-Holocaust refugee crisis, and because of global opinion shaped by the horror experienced by Europe’s Jews, and that the State of Israel has arrogated Holocaust memory, it does not matter. Equating the State of Israel with the Jewish people is what Maximalist Zionists do.

In any case, the Holocaust was experienced by Ashkenazi Jews (mostly, and the Sephardi of Greece and Southern Italy). And the State of Israel is not comprised entirely of Ashkenazi Jews. Equating Israelis with the part of the Jewish community that experienced the horror of the Holocaust shows a profound ignorance about who the Israelis and the Jews actually are and flattens us into meaninglessness. This is a form of antisemitism.

***

I find the celebration of Roger Waters as a pro-Palestinian icon very troubling, and the narration of BMG’s Music’s decision to end their relationship with the pop singer as the evidence of his heroic activism absurd. Roger Waters certainly is pro-Palestinian, but he is also a rank antisemite. Being pro-Palestinian does not make him an antisemite, but neither does it absolve him of being an antisemite. We need to think very carefully about whether our support for Palestinian rights and sovereignty and our demands for an end to the State of Israel’s War on Gaza should make it desirable, or possible, to embrace antisemites as our heroes. Not everyone who opposes the State of Israel is an antisemite, but some are, and Roger Waters is one of those. Are you?

***

* Though, it should be noted, I am not an American citizen, and so I will not be voting.

† There is some overlap: Most Israelis are Jews and many Jews are Israelis. Picture a Venn diagram, if that helps.