Groucho Marxism

Since Israel began its genocide of Gaza nearly two years ago there has been a massive outpouring of grief and support for the Palestinian people from the general public here in the UK and across the world. Although this has been heartening to see, it is also concerning that a large section of the public seems to be at best unmoved by what is happening, and at worst supportive of Israel’s actions. I refuse to believe that anyone outside a tiny proportion of the population is actually indifferent to the suffering of other human beings (we usually refer to such people as sociopaths). Rather, I think this ambivalence is down to a handful of widely-held myths about the nature of the conflict. In this blog post I will attempt to debunk some of these myths.

Myth: Hamas started the conflict by attacking Israel. The roots of this conflict obviously go back many decades and to claim that it all started on October 7^th 2023 is absurd. Palestinians have been caged into a small strip of land in Gaza for years, and it was inevitable that at some point some of them would try to break out. Israel was well aware of this and was waiting for it to happen to given them the pretext to begin mass exterminating the Palestinian people. Whilst we should never condone violence against civilians, we need to be clear that Hamas is not the aggressor here: it is a resistance group fighting an illegal occupation, which it has a right to do under international law. If they were resisting occupation by a country the West wasn’t allies with they would be labelled as freedom fighters rather than terrorists.

Myth: This is a war and both sides are at fault for the suffering. The term ‘war’ implies a conflict between two relatively evenly-matched adversaries, but you only have to glance at the casualty statistics to see that this is not an accurate description of what is happening in Gaza. Since October 7^th 2023, around 2,000 Israelis have been killed and around 80,000 Palestinians have been killed, a ratio of 40:1. Furthermore, of the 2,000 Israelis killed, less than a half were civilians; whereas of the 80,000 Palestinians killed, scholars estimate around 80% were civilians. This puts the ratio of civilian deaths at around 64:1 – and this ratio will only increase over time as more Palestinian civilians are murdered. We are not witnessing a war here, we are witnessing a massacre.

Myth: The conflict would end tomorrow if Hamas released the remaining hostages. Israel is quite clearly using the hostages as a pretext for genocide. Releasing the hostages would obviously remove that pretext, but it seems likely that Israel would then simply find another excuse and carry on the genocide as before. It’s worth remembering that releasing the hostages wasn’t always the pretext: the original justification was that Israel was merely defending itself, which was quietly dropped once it became clear to everyone that Israel’s actions went way beyond self-defense. Then there’s the fact that in May this year, Benjamin Netanyahu said that there was no way Israel would halt its assault even if a deal was reached to release more hostages. It’s difficult to argue with that one.

Myth: Palestinians are motivated by Jew-hatred and would do the same to Israel if they could. The logic here seems to be that Palestinians support Hamas, and Hamas is motivated by Jew-hatred, therefore Palestinians must also be motivated by Jew-hatred. There are problems with both links in this chain of reasoning. First, according to recent polling, only around half of Palestinians support Hamas. And second, whilst the 1988 Hamas charter was described as antisemitic, Hamas’s 2017 charter removed the antisemitic language and declared Zionists, not Jews, the targets of their struggle. Hamas has also condemned the Holocaust, antisemitism, and the persecution of Jews. This seems to be yet another example of the deliberate conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

Myth: Hamas is at fault for using human shields. In previous conflicts, Palestinian armed groups have stored munitions in and fired indiscriminate rockets from residential areas. This is in violation of international law, but whether this counts as ‘using human shields’ is debatable. In any case, according to Amnesty International, there is no evidence that Hamas has been doing this during the current hostilities. Hamas spokespeople have reportedly urged residents in some areas of Gaza not to leave their homes after the Israeli military warned people in the area to evacuate; but such statements could have been motivated by a desire to avoid further panic. Regardless, even if Hamas was using civilians as human shields, that wouldn’t in any way excuse Israel murdering those civilians.

Myth: This is all the fault of Benjamin Netanyahu, not Israel. This is an example of the ‘great man fallacy’: the idea that history is primarily shaped by the actions of individuals rather than by broader social forces. Whilst it’s true that Netanyahu is a psychopath who wants to keep the conflict going for as long as possible to save his political skin, it’s also true that there are dozens of equally psychopathic Israeli politicians waiting in the wings who would happily carry on the slaughter if Netanyahu was removed. Then there is the fact that the Israeli people support their government’s actions: according to polling, nearly half of Israelis support killing all Palestinians, and most support expelling Palestinians from Gaza. Israel is a country gripped by genocidal mania and removing Netanyahu would not change that

In attempting to debunk these myths I am not claiming to be an expert on Israel-Palestine. On the contrary, I am just an interested layperson with access to the internet. The fact that I, a layperson, can so easily drive a coach and horses through these arguments with just a bit of Googling shows how pathetic they really are. These myths fall apart on the slightest contact with reality. There is simply no justification whatsoever for supporting Israel’s actions in Gaza, and anyone who does is either brainwashed or deranged.