“Don’t let them drive the tractor. They need to know their place.”
It was 1992.
I was living in Israel, breathing in the desert air, loving the family that adopted me on the kibbutz, and enjoying the company of the Palestinian day-laborers who came over from Gaza each morning to work. They had to get up at 3:00 a.m., wait in long lines, endure military inspection and possible questioning, just so that they could get to the Israeli fields at sun-up to pick fruit. My job was to use the forklift on the back of my tractor to set out big crates between rows of trees; the Palestinians—Mustafa, Ali, Jihad, Ahmad, Khaled, and others—would fill them up with citrus; and then I’d lift the crates out and set them along the side of the road to be picked up by big trucks and taken on to the processing plant.
Mustafa’s English was good, so it was easier for us to become friends. We’d sit in the dirt together and have tea during work breaks. He would tell me about his family in Beit Lahiya and his ample strawberry patch. I would tell him about my life back in the United States. One day, during lunch, I invited him to my cubia (room) on the kibbutz. I showed him pictures of my family. We had coffee and chocolate. Then it was time to get back to work. I climbed onto the side of the tractor, and Mustafa took the steering wheel and drove us back to the fields. Once we got there, my boss pulled me aside. It was then that he chastised me, explaining that I shouldn’t ever let them drive the tractors. It was bad for the hierarchy, which must be maintained: Jews on the top, Palestinians on the bottom.
No Good Guys
On October 7, 2023, my kibbutz was attacked by Hamas. The terrorists got there relatively late in their frenzied marauding, and so my kibbutz was ready and able to defend itself; no one was killed. But so many friends and relatives of my kibbutz family—people who lived in the nearby kibbutzim—were slaughtered. When I heard the terrible news, I immediately called and offered to fly to Israel to help out by doing whatever needed to be done: milk the cows, gather eggs, wash dishes, work in the kindergarten. My kibbutz mom told me, “It’s a war zone now. The kibbutz has been completely evacuated. Don’t come. There’s no point.”
Once Israel’s military response was under way, I wondered about Mustafa. Was he OK? It was impossible to reach him.
I called various friends—Israelis, Arabs—many who are experts on the situation in the Middle East. “What is going to happen?” I asked. “How will this end?” No one could say.
It was bad. No hope in sight. The two protagonists of this conflict—Hamas and the current Israel leadership—are both snakes.
Hamas is an Islamicist, religious fundamentalist, anti-democratic, racist, misogynist, anti-gay, theo-fascist, venomous force that blatantly and proudly seeks to kill all Jews, hides under hospitals, schools, and mosques, beheads babies, rapes women, kidnaps kids, uses its resources to continually attack Israel rather than build Palestinian infrastructure, is bolstered by the publicity surrounding Palestinian casualties, and seeks to derail any chance of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas is also a front for Iran—which funds and supplies Hamas—and Iran is led by a deeply wicked Islamic dictatorship. Both Hamas and Iran actively fight against just about everything progressive people stand for: democracy, free speech, due process, equal rights, human rights, women’s right, LGBTQ rights, religious freedom, animal rights, secularism, etc. Iran (which is Shi’ite) is desperate to keep Israel from making peace with Saudi Arabia (which is Sunni). Iran and Hamas both want to destroy any chance of peace, and they don’t care how many Palestinian civilians pay the price in blood.
Remember that in 2005, Israel withdrew from—stopped occupying—Gaza. The Palestinians there did not subsequently rise to this progress-promising occasion by creating a peaceful, thriving society. Instead, they imported weapons to use against Israel, which they continued to fire at Israel, year after year. That is the main reason there has been a severe blockade around Gaza. And don’t forget: Egypt enforces the blockade, too. So, if you call Gaza an “open-air prison,” you need to acknowledge that: 1) this is because it is run by Hamas, which actively seeks to destroy Israel rather than live as a peaceful neighbor; and 2) Egypt is an equal jailer along with Israel. And as for those who now call for a cease-fire: there was a cease-fire on October 6. But the next day, Hamas invaded Israel and killed, raped, burned, and beheaded—in the most brutal ways possible. And they would have continued to do so, hour by hour, house by house, family by family, unless violently stopped. It has been morally shocking that so many progressive people—before the blood had even dried on the legs of the assaulted women, before the blood had yet dried on the necks of the decapitated children—celebrated Hamas’s actions rather than simply condemning them outright as inhumane. To those who still seek a cease-fire to ease the suffering of innocent Palestinians, you must simultaneously urge Hamas to release all hostages, stop lobbing missiles at Israel, and lay down their guns. A cease-fire requires both sides to commit. Hamas’s genocidal intentions can’t be ignored; you can’t have a cease-fire with an armed entity that is hell-bent on your annihilation.
What about the other side? Alas, more cause for despair.
The current government of Israel is led by anti-democratic, fundamentalist, theo-fascist, messianic, Jewish-supremacists who seek to swallow up all the land of Palestine by continually building illegal settlements in the West Bank, denying the Palestinian people basic human rights, enforcing an apartheid system whereby Jews and occupied Palestinians experience grossly unequal civil, economic, electoral, and legal systems, and continuing decades of wanton destruction of Palestinian culture, life, and humanity. Progressive people who value the sagacious teachings of Rabbi Hillel—who believe in equal rights, justice, secularism, and peace—have no friend in the current Israeli government. Don’t be fooled by that Star of David flag; those wielding it right now do not represent the best of Jewish ethics. Rather, the current leadership of Israel seeks to thwart any chance of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. They want to continue decades of oppression, dispossession, and expulsion. They continue building settlements in the West Bank to destroy any chance of a viable Palestinian state. Most likely, Israel will use this current conflict to evict and kill even more Palestinians and build even more settlements. Israel has chosen an immoral, unworkable path. And Palestinian families pay the highest price.
Given the trauma of so many centuries of persecution, pogroms, expulsions, exclusions, slaughters, blood libels, massacres, and ultimate Holocaust, many (most?) Jews have a very hard time accepting that their people can be the oppressor, the inhumane fist, the perpetrator of injustice. It just doesn’t compute. But, sadly, it is the case in Israel/Palestine. I’ve been there. I’ve lived there. I’ve seen it firsthand. Think about it: abused children often grow up to become abusers themselves. It isn’t too much of a stretch to see that certain elements of the Jewish people—long a hunted, hated, homeless, and persecuted minority—once they got power in Israel, used it abusively to victimize the Palestinians. Yes, Israel was established by an internationally legitimate vote of the United Nations. Yes, the Israelis initially accepted a two-state solution in 1948, and the Palestinians did not. Yes, Arab nations have repeatedly attacked Israel over the decades and would have exterminated the Jews had they been successful. Yes, Arafat shockingly refused to accept a two-state solution offered by Ehud Barak in 2000. But none of these historical facts negate this reality: Israel has been occupying Palestine—post 1967 Palestine—for over fifty years, and that occupation has devastated the people of Palestine and rotted the moral fiber of many Israelis.
Don’t look away. Watch accounts of former Israeli soldiers on YouTube who testify to the horrible things they have done. Familiarize yourself with B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group that documents the atrocities committed in the name of Zionism. Read the writings of Sylvain Cypel and Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. Get to know the Palestinian people—their history, their culture, their oppression, and their resilience. Read Rashid Khalidi, Saree Makdisi, and Ahed Tamimi. Visit Mondoweiss.net.
What’s the Solution?
An immediate cease-fire to ease the suffering of all civilians must be enacted, with a simultaneous release of all Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Israel must withdraw from all or most of the West Bank and commit to establishing a free and independent Palestinian state there, one that is well-linked to Gaza. An international team must de-fang Hamas and force them to lay down their arms and give up their stated goal of killing all Jews. Gaza must be rebuilt and overseen by a coalition of international state actors. Secular values must prevail over religious fanaticism. Should these things not happen, the only future will be one of endless violence, fear, and suffering—a death spiral in the sand without end.
To those on the Right, I say: Stop denying Palestinians their basic humanity. Stop treating their suffering as somehow deserved. It isn’t. Stop defending Israel’s continued violation of countless international laws. Stop making excuses for the Israeli government. Stop calling very legitimate criticisms of Israel anti-Semitic. Stop backing absurd laws that make it illegal to oppose Zionism or boycott Israel. Stop pointing to other nasty regimes—China, Russia, Syria, etc.—that commit atrocities and say, “Why pick on Israel?” Such whataboutism only proves that Israel is in a seriously immoral national peer group. If you truly love Israel, then fight for her security and peace by urging a more sane and sound approach to the conflict, one grounded in secular democratic values, international law, and human rights.
To those on the Left, I say: Stop excusing Hamas. There is no justification for their wanton and deliberate murder and rape of civilians. Stop castigating Israel as a “colonizer”; Israel was established by Jews fleeing persecution, not colonial invaders with armies. Most Israelis today do not trace their ancestry to Europe; their relatives were forcefully expelled from Arab nations. Stop condemning Zionism, which is simply the idea that Jews—a long stateless, persecuted, and butchered people—have a right to live freely in their own country. To say to the Jewish people, “You have no right to such self-determination or self-defense” is blatantly anti-Semitic, unless you say the exact same thing to every other people: Tibetans, Armenians, Swedes, Native Americans, Palestinians, the Rohingya, Kurds, Ukrainians, Ambazonians, the Triqui, the Yazidi, the Welsh, the Irish, the Kabyle, and so on. But to grant every other persecuted people, downtrodden nation, or minority ethno-religious culture that sees itself as a united community deserving of sovereignty that right—except Jews—is complete bullshit.
To my religious brothers and sisters, I say: While religion can sometimes bring out the best in people, in this instance, it is bringing out the worst. Religious faith and commitment are adding kerosene to the bonfires of nationalism, militarism, and vengeance. No matter what you believe, at least abandon the dangerously absurd notion that there is a mighty deity who sets aside certain real estate for some humans but not others. There is no such thing as “holy” land. Such concepts only lead to bloodshed. And please note: it is the more secular on both sides—Israeli and Palestinian—who are the most supportive of a peaceful two-state solution, while it is the more religious on both sides who beat the war drum the loudest.
To my secular brothers and sisters, I say: Our values of empathy and compassion are grounded in the self-evident ethic of treating others the way we would like to be treated, our understanding that only democratically enacted laws can maintain civil order, our knowledge that there are no magical beings who respond to prayers, and our insight that it is only us, in the here and now, who can make the world a better place. We must take the lead in supporting every effort to stop the death spiral. No one else will.
***
I still haven’t heard from Mustafa. I’m sure he and his family have had to flee multiple times in the past few months. Given the current death and injury rates escalating in Gaza, I wouldn’t be surprised if he were dead, injured, or starving. I can only wince, cringe, and mourn when I think of what his kids must be enduring.
“Don’t let them drive the tractor. They need to know their place.” It was 1992. I was living in Israel, breathing in the desert air, loving the family that adopted me on the kibbutz, and enjoying the company of the Palestinian day-laborers who came over from Gaza each morning to work. They had to get …