A biblical hatred is engulfing both sides in the Gaza conflict – and blinding them to reason | Jonathan Freedland

I He sat this week with Hussein Agha, a man who gave his working life to search for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, negotiating from the Palestinian side of the table. It was more depressed than I saw before, determined that peace between the two sides could never come. Because Aga made it clear that this conflict was not related to a group of lines on a map or forms of words, and the goods in which diplomats circulated. This was about emotions, specifically hatred. He was afraid that the hate that has become very fatal so that it cannot be contained. “It is the Bible,” he said.

What was on his mind was the anger that prompted Hamas to slaughter about 1,200 Israelis on the morning of the sleeping Saturday for nearly 20 months, and the anger that prompted the Benjamin Netanyahu government to the Gaza bomb since then, More than 50,000 killedAccording to the Hamas -controlled Ministry of Health, over the past eighties, Denial food For those who stayed. He fears that the hate that fed these events, which nourish it, will grow larger and more toxic so that no one is. The whole ground should be placed waste and made it closed.

It is the biblical anger that devoured all the reasons. It is blind. It prevents those who hold it from seeing anything other than their side. It prevents them from holding an apparently opponent in their minds, even when both are true. Take, for example, two explanations we can present about this week’s events.

Israel’s use of hunger as a weapon of war, while keeping humanitarian aid from Gaza for 11 weeks, is indefinitely unable to defend, and has angered the world right. The partial lifting of the siege is provided with the smallest part of what is required and represents, by accepting Netanyahu, The amount of “minimum” that he can stay away from To maintain political support. This is a fact.

The deadly attack on the Jewish Museum, DC in Washington, DC, was on Wednesday evening, and it could not be morally defense Two young men died. The couple was one of the employees at the Israeli embassy, ​​but all the evidence indicates that they were randomly injured. Even if he hears the chanting of “free Palestine” or “I did so for Gaza“The armed goal was a Jewish institution full of Jews. This makes it an essential act. This is also a fact.

However, people are struggling to make facts simultaneously. They are afraid that by recognizing one of them, they will weaken the strength of the other in some way. Some have seized the killings in Washington to reduce the killings in Gaza; Others did the opposite.

In the first category, those who used the death of Yaron Lesinski and Sarah Milgerim were arguing that even talking about the suffering caused in Gaza by Israel was to incite terrorism. This was the step that Netanyahu himself took, a man who never slows down the exploitation of Jewish suffering for his narrow political purposes. Earlier in the week, France, Canada and the United Kingdom joined together Condeming the escalating Israel attack In Gaza, especially its hunger policy, which the Israeli Defense Minister described in March as one of the country “in the country”.Main pressure cranesAgainst Hamas. She gave fire in the capital Netanyahu to open to the response.

“I say to President Macron, Prime Minister Carne and Prime Minister Starmer, when I thank you for collective killers, rape, murderers and kidnappers, you are on the wrong side of justice,” The Israeli Prime Minister saidand Before publishing the phrase once, the left prefers: “You are on the wrong side of history.”

His argument amounts to the claim, which is often presented, that those who take care of the Israeli policy are guilty of “landing” in Israel. It does not happen to Netanyahu or its allies that what may undermine the legitimacy of the Israeli in the eyes of the surveillance world is not the condemnation of the actions of Israel, or the reporting of them, but rather the same measures.

Again, there can be two explanations, apparently in stress, right at the same time. Journalists who This week is a student Israel and Egypt made Gaza within the reach of international news organizations right to do so: the facts must be known. These facts, which were known one day, may push people to a state of anger – even deadly anger – this is why they should be dealt with very carefully.

Thus, the United Nations humanitarian president, Tom Fletcher, was right to be clear and comprehensive in his demands for Israel Leave food and medicine in GazaBut it was wrong to suggest that 14,000 children in Gaza would die within 48 hours – a statement Later it was necessary to correctBecause this warning applies to what will happen if the siege is preserved for another 48 hours, but for a full year. A sufficient grave, but not the same. Deep and fatal hatred works here; People can be moved to violence very easily. There is a small space to be casual.

I would like to say the same thing about Yer Golan, who is now a former general and has become the leader of the opposition Democrats in Israel. It deserves credit for the Israelis demanding a confrontation and he looked strongly to what many prefer not to see. He warned this week that “Israel is on its way until it became a pariah state, like South Africa, if we did not return to behavior as a rational state,” adding that “a sane country that does not fight civilians, does not kill children as a hobby, and does not give itself a target for the population.” This reference to the killing of children, and the use of the word “hobby”, He immediately allowed his critics Saying that he was refreshing the defamation of anti -Semitic blood that throws the Jews as a ritual fuel for Christian children.

This entire terrain is fraught with risks and must be moved very carefully, whether from within or without the conflict – and again, this means realizing that two things can be true at the same time. Yes, it is true that anti -Zionism is not always anti -Semitic. But this does not mean that never Entity of Semitism. Gary believed that he was publishing an anti -Zionist video. Fail Attached to anti -Semitic pictures cameIn the form of a mouse, a Nazi abbreviation is preferred to the Jews.

That episode was a reminder that, as much as we want these groups to be elegant and highly sealed – “Zionism” here and a fair game to attack; “The Jews” there are protected by racism-the borders between them are unclear and pore. A man in Washington was angry at Israel and was a Jewish museum that ended under fatal fire.

There are endless differences such as that to be done. Plain, apparently contradictory data that must be taken into consideration all at the same time. But it is impossible to see them when the anger and hatred will not be suppressed, when the mutual hatred with biblical proportions. AGHA no longer likes to speak in terms of peace or resolving conflict, but rather the most modest “arrangements” that may keep this anger under examination. In both cases, in one way or another, this must end.

• Jonathan Friedland is a guardian writer

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