Israel’s Attack on Gaza
Some philosophical reflections

For what shall it profit a man,
if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
(Mark, 8.36)

The “Background” here simply sets out the facts familiar to those who have followed the news on Israel’s response to the 7^th October 2023 attack by Hamas; it concludes with a few orientational clarifications regarding the reflections in the subsequent sections. Those reflections are mainly philosophical, exposing some inconsistencies, poor reasoning and immoralities, with a final touch of Kant and Nietzsche.

Background

As a result of Hamas’s attack on Israel, 7^th October 2023, many leading American, British and other European politicians and commentators — including many religious leaders of Judaism and Christianity — have declared support for Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ in attacking Gaza and Gazans, declared by Israel as a war. That attack has been by way of siege, intensive continual bombardments (apart from a brief pause for hostage release) and continuing ground assaults throughout Gaza. The stated aim is to ‘destroy Hamas’, its military power, political leadership and, in some sense, its ideology.

The politicians and commentators have rightly condemned Hamas’s attack, some ‘horrific butchery’, that led to around 1,500 individuals in Israel, mainly Jews, mainly civilians, being killed or brutally harmed — including, as is usually emphasised, some babies, children, the aged and infirm. Nearly 250 were taken as hostages; some have been released, ‘traded’ for Palestinians earlier imprisoned by Israel.

Until the latter weeks of December 2023, many politicians, commentators and religious leaders have appeared somewhat relaxed about the Israeli destruction of Gaza, the killing of thousands and thousands of civilian Palestinians and the suffering, physical or psychological, of approaching two million. Various Western supporters of Israel now speak of there being ‘too many’ civilian casualties: by the end of 2023, well over 20,000 deaths with, no doubt, many more yet to be found under mountains of rubble. Those supporters call for Israel to take greater care to minimize civilian casualties while continuing its military action.

There has been the displacement of numerous of the two million Gazans into crowded refugee camps. They had followed Israeli instructions to move to areas in Gaza declared to be safe, at least temporarily, from bombing. On various occasions the ‘safe’ havens — refugee camps, hospitals, schools and so forth — and the routes to them have undergone bombing, resulting in further deaths, severe injuries and then more ordered evacuations to fresh areas proposed as safe.

Most Palestinians, wherever they be in Gaza, for weeks and weeks have been lacking adequate clean water, food, sanitation facilities, medical supplies, electricity, fuel and secure shelters. The Israeli forces have determinedly destroyed much of Gaza’s infrastructure as well as Palestinian homes, hospitals and mosques, effectively ensuring no easy right to return once the Israeli assault ceases. There has been a reluctance to permit any substantial humanitarian aid to reach Gaza and a determination to provide no means for the Gazans to escape, though Egypt has provided some minimal means of fleeing for non-Palestinians caught up in the attacks.

The aid agencies have described and filmed appalling conditions for the Gazans and the impossibility for aid workers to provide much help. They have documented the inevitable spread of infectious disease, malnutrition and despair among the population. Israel responds by insisting that its actions are necessary for finding and killing the Hamas fighters who have intermingled their locations within civilian locations by way of networks of tunnels.

The innocent Palestinian casualties have often been referred to as ‘collateral damage’ by the Israelis and their supporters. That is in contrast to the emphasis on the brutal murders by Hamas of Israeli babies, children, the elderly and the infirm. Western political leaders supporting Israel have only recently touched on how those Gazan casualties include babies, thousands and thousands of children, women and the elderly and infirm.

Israeli attacks have killed some UN and other humanitarian aid workers, medical staff, journalists, as well as, it seems, three Israeli hostages waving a white flag. That latter example may (or may not) be indicative of how the Israeli forces may be treating certain Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians surrendering. It is difficult to know, given that Israel has at times blacked out communications and has blocked independent reporters from entering Gaza.

The Israeli leadership under Prime Minister Netanyahu made it clear immediately after the Hamas October attack that Israel would ‘stop at nothing’ until Hamas was destroyed. Hence, Western leaders when giving unconditional support to Israel in the first weeks were probably aware of how a humanitarian catastrophe would develop, one over which they now, to some extent, wring their hands. Throughout the period, the US has consistently voted against UN calls for increased humanitarian provision or ceasefires; that is, until 22^nd December when it abstained over a resolution that merely called for ‘creating the conditions’ for a ceasefire and for the provision of increased humanitarian aid. The UK has tended to follow the US line of either opposing or abstaining regarding ceasefire proposals. The US continues to supply Israel with arms.

The media in Israel report very little of what is happening in Gaza, but replay the understandable distresses of the Israeli families affected, though with negligible reference to the hundreds of thousands of distressed Palestinian families — either orphans whose parents have been killed or parents whose children have been killed or are suffering. The Netanyahu government currently speaks of continuing the war for months, with repeated bombing and ground assaults. Certain Israeli families of the hostages are becoming increasingly sceptical of Netanyahu’s concern for the hostage release as a priority.

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What now follows considers a few of the oft-repeated arguments and considerations used by supporters of Israel to justify its actions and to condemn those who protest against those actions. I write mainly about the UK, but the observations also apply to the US and many other Western leaderships. I avoid involvement in arguments about quite what is permitted by international humanitarian law and what constitutes war crimes.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am writing of the Israeli government policies and the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF’s) military actions and their supporters. Obviously, there are some Israelis and probably many Jews outside of Israel who do not support Israel’s military action; sadly, there are many, though, who do support that action. For further avoidance of doubt, I am writing of ‘for the most part’; no doubt in most movements, leaderships, states, there are caveats and nuances required regarding the nature and extent of support.

Allow me to emphasize that my questioning of Israel’s actions does not imply that I support Hamas’s appalling actions or the destruction of Israel as a state. What is best for the ‘Holy Land’ region overall, for Palestinians and Jews, is a distinct problem. My questioning also does not suggest that I support ideologies or religions, whether they be versions of conservative Islam or ultra-Orthodox Judaism, that do not, for example, afford equal rights to women and men or to people of different religious faiths.

The protests against Israeli actions

These protests have come in for much condemnation; here are some examples of the condemnations. For ease, I write here of the UK.

1.1 Why, it is asked, have the large protests in the UK against Israel involved no significant protest against Hamas’s horrendous actions?

The answer is: because the UK government repeatedly and expressly condemns Hamas and strongly supports the Israeli actions and the elimination of Hamas. What has been needed — and is needed — to be challenged is the UK’s support for Israel’s attacks on thousands of innocents in Gaza.

Further, it should be noted that when there was a large march in London, protesting against antisemitism, with Israeli flags much waved, there seemed to be little concern for the plight of the Palestinians, a concern that would be much justified — yet that received negligible attention from the politicians and commentators who support Israel.

I note here the waving of Israeli flags to show how supporters of Israel as a Jewish state are ever keen to deem as antisemitic those who oppose Israel in its present form. Being anti-Zionist is not thereby being antisemitic; witness those Jews who are anti-Zionist.

1.2 Some argue that the protest marches calling for peace, for recognition of Palestine and condemning Israel’s devastation of Gaza and Gazans, are responsible for an increase in instances of antisemitism in the UK. It is also said that Jews now fear coming into London. No doubt, there has been some increase in antisemitism — and there may well have been increases in Islamophobia — but who quite knows the motives of those involved and quite what counted as antisemitic? Here are a few observations.

First, it certainly is not true that all Jews fear coming into London — many have no fear at all, including those who join the protest marches against Israel. Indeed, it is somewhat obscene for wealthy celebrities to parade their Jewishness, stirring fears of antisemitism without noting how any apparent fear of coming into London as a Jew is minor compared to the fears of two million Palestinians being bombed day and night.

Secondly, for various Orthodox Jewish groups and Celebrity Jews to keep repeating the fear probably helps further to generate that fear. In fact, it should be noted that the number of instances of antisemitism is so very small that even increases in terms of large percentages still leave the instances tiny proportionately.

Thirdly, there are in London many Jewish supporters of Israeli actions in Gaza. It is not antisemitic to argue against (not physically threatening, note) their position, pointing out that they are then indeed supporting the killing and maiming of thousands of innocent lives. That is not to ascribe collective guilt to Jews; it is to make the point that supporters of Israeli actions, whether they be Jewish or not, are indeed supporting some horrendous devastations of thousands of innocent people.

Fourthly, in the UK people are deemed victims of hate crimes if they perceive themselves as suffering hostility based on their race or religion, for example, their Jewishness. Therefore it is quite likely, particularly in view of the publicity given to apparent increased antisemitism, that some Jewish individuals perceive themselves as victims of antisemitism when in fact they are being challenged not for their Jewishness but for their support of Israel’s attacks. The charge of antisemitism may, indeed, sometimes be a means of closing eyes to what is being supported. In Britain, the charge has often been used politically to discredit left-wing advocacy for the rights of Palestinians and challenges to the discriminatory laws within Israel.

1.3 The protestors, it is insisted, must be supporting Hamas; this is because they explain Hamas’s actions, often referring to decades of Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians.

The insistence does not stack up. To explain — indeed, to understand — is not thereby to justify. For example, my explanation of the car crash is that the drivers were drunk. I may even understand why the drivers had got themselves into an alcoholic haze. That does not mean that I supported their drunken driving. Note too: the protestors can explain Israel’s actions — its reaction to Hamas’s attack — but obviously, they do not think those actions are thereby justified.

1.4 Many of the protestors wave Palestinian flags and some chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’; that shows, it is said, that they seek the destruction of Israel.

Of course, that does not follow. No doubt, many protestors if not all support a Palestinian state, but that does not mean the destruction of the Israeli state, though some may well want a reformed Israeli state such that it does not discriminate so much against non-Jews. Indeed various attempts at peace and ‘two-state’ solutions over the decades have been recognized by many Israelis, though currently neither by the Israeli political leadership with its ultranationalist religious right-wing nor by the Hamas leadership.

1.5 Supporters of Israel’s military action insist that protestors against that action are clearly denying Israel the right to defend itself.

The objection is ungrounded. Israel’s right to defend itself is not a right to do whatever it thinks necessary to defend itself. Let us reflect further. Even if the destruction of all Gazans were to be the sole means of ensuring the destruction of Hamas, and assuming that end to be desirable, it does not follow that those means are morally justifiable. A morally desirable end is not sufficient to justify just any means to that end, even if those means are the only available means.

1.6 Protestors, it is claimed, are manifesting hatred of Jews and hence are antisemitic.

It is true that there is a lot of hate in the protest marches, but it is hatred at the Israeli destruction of innocent Gazans and Gaza. That does not thereby manifest antisemitism — no more than the Israeli hatred of Hamas thereby is a hatred of Palestinians.

True, some protestors, indeed some Jewish protestors, object to the existence of a state identified as Jewish, but that again is not thereby antisemitic and is not thereby calling for the eradication of Jews from the ‘Holy Land’. No doubt there are a few antisemites involved, but that is no evidence that the protestors overall are such.

Many of us oppose theocratic states such as the Islamic Republic of Iran where Sharia Law rules, but that does not mean that we want the destruction of Iran as a state.

To repeat, opposition to Israeli policies and indeed to Israel as a Jewish state is not thereby antisemitic. Witness, for example, the various Jewish groups that also take part in the protests against the Israeli actions. Witness those Jewish groups whose members object to Israel as a ‘Jewish’ state. There is no good reason to believe that they are antisemitic or ‘self-hating’ Jews.

1.7 It has sometimes been argued that the many ‘left-wing liberals’ who oppose Israel’s attacks on Gaza are thereby paradoxically supporting the existence of a Palestinian state with a highly conservative, authoritarian, anti-liberal, brutal Islamic rule. That, of course, does not follow — just as support for an Israeli state is not thereby support for a highly conservative ultra-Orthodox Jewish state run on Hasidic lines.

Israel’s right to defend itself

2.1 As already noted, a right to X does not entail a right to do whatever is necessary for X. The end does not automatically justify the means. That holds even if the means are the only means available to secure the end.

Some actions are morally ‘beyond the pale’ — such as Hamas’s butchery of a thousand or so, mainly innocent people; such as Israel’s killing tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, adults and children, and harming hundreds of thousands.

2.2 Did Israel have any other means to defend itself?

The answer is ‘yes’. Israel could have driven out the attackers and secured its borders as it had done for decades. It could then have negotiated the release of the hostages by offering the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, many indeed detained without charge and many mistreated. True, Israel may then have felt it would remain continually under threat, but seeking to eradicate that fear by killing and maiming thousands of innocents does not justify the killing and maiming of those thousands of innocents.

Israel had successfully defended itself over decades, in the main without such large-scale killings and destruction of non-Jews. The caveat is that we may wonder about Israel’s 1982 support for the Phalange in Lebanon that led to the massacre in Sabra and Shatila of thousands. Another caveat, of course, is the way in which Israel established itself during the late 1940s, by causing many Palestinians to flee; that was the Nakba, the Catastrophe for the Palestinians, whereby Israel destroyed their homes, indeed much evidence of their existence. One may reflect on a seeming similarity between that treatment of the Palestinians and what is now being done in Gaza.

2.3 Is Israel immoral — in attacking children and innocent adults?

Yes. It is disingenuous to claim that morality allows the killing of thousands and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children and innocent adults because that outcome is unintended, although foreseen.

Consider an arsonist setting fire to a locked children’s home with the children’s resultant deaths. Would you accept his plea that he was burning down the house, but not intending the death of the children?

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Comparability

3.1 Ever since the 7^th October 2023 attack, Israel has frequently announced that the attack by Hamas has led to the biggest destruction of Jews since the Holocaust of Nazi Germany in the 1940s. That, of course, is to put us vividly in mind of the horrors for six million Jews, the extermination camps and the Nazi desire, it seems, to rid Europe of all Jews.

First, the thousand or so Jewish victims of Hamas’s attack are numerically radically different from the systematic killing of six million or so.

Secondly, the Nazi programme was run by an initially powerful German state. Contrast Hamas and its very little power with today’s Israel, a very wealthy, militarily powerful nation, nuclear indeed, with the military backing of the US super-power.

3.2 Some have claimed that the actions of Hamas and those of Israel are not comparable. That is a curious claim for, of course, they can be compared. No doubt the claim is that they possess some highly relevant dissimilarities. Let us consider those and their relevance.

3.2.1 It has been argued, for example, that Hamas’s attack was unprovoked in contrast to the Israeli retaliation. That consideration, though, would need to address the extent to which Palestinians have been provoked by Israeli actions over decades, effectively operating largely an economic blockade of Gaza, creating an impoverished Gaza sometimes referred to as an overcrowded open-air prison. And that does not even raise the question of how the Palestinians found themselves trapped in Gaza, courtesy of Israel’s displacement of Palestinians in the late 1940s.

Even if there is no similarity between Hamas’s actions and Israel’s on the score of recent provocation, it does not follow that there are no other similarities of which Israel should be ashamed. Relatedly there is the West’s understandable outright condemnation of the Russian attacks on Ukraine’s civilians and infrastructure — yet support for Israeli attacks on Gaza’s civilians. Can that vast discrepancy in stance regarding which innocent civilians it is permitted to kill or injure be justified by the difference in the conflict initiations? In both cases innocent people — babies, women and children, the aged and infirm (to highlight the usual list) — are being killed or harmed without good justification.

3.2.2 Some argue that Hamas is committed to the destruction of the Israeli state, even to all Jews at least in the Middle East, whereas Israel is not committed to the destruction of all Palestinians. That contrast, though, would need much further examination.

The rhetoric of Hamas can, for example, be matched to some extent by the rhetoric of certain Israeli leaders who speak easily of Palestinians as animals or who support the Jewish settlers illegally taking over Palestinian homes in the West Bank and terrorizing the local Palestinian inhabitants, destroying their homes, farms, animals and produce — while the Israeli state turns a blind eye. Witness, for example, certain Israelis in power, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, National Security Minister and leader of the far-right Jewish Power; his aim is for Israel to encroach further and further, taking over all of the ‘Holy Land’ as rightfully and historically belonging to the Jews.

Further still, since 2017 the Hamas policy has been to oppose the Zionist state (as indeed do some Jews), but not the existence of Jews in the Middle East. Policies change and it is disingenuous to insist that all Hamas supporters are still committed to eradicating Jews in the Middle East. That would be akin to Israel refusing to reach peace accords with Egypt and Jordan because those countries once engaged in the rhetoric of Israel’s destruction.

3.2.3 Some seem to express outrage that in Gaza Hamas should have built a network of tunnels and developed capabilities to fire rockets — as if their attempt to secure some sort of homeland is illegitimate whereas Israel’s build-up of military might and gradual extension into occupied territories is perfectly acceptable.

3.2.4 There is often focus on Hamas’s taking of hostages as particularly offensive, yet silence on the numerous Palestinians, many from the West Bank, some children, who have been imprisoned by Israel over the decades, often without trial. Some Israelis point to the inhumanity of Hamas, shown by the hostages having inadequate food, facilities, and medical help — as if unaware that virtually all the Palestinians are suffering thus, given the Israeli attacks.

3.2.5 Attention is frequently drawn to the extreme brutality in some of the killings by Hamas on 7^th October, a brutality that involved, it seems, the butchery of babies and children. That, though, does not mean that such acts lack all comparison with Israeli actions over the years; there are examples of how Israeli forces have radically mistreated Palestinians when arrested. Indeed, who knows how dreadful some mistreatments are currently being committed by Israeli forces in Gaza?

That there are some horrific killings committed by a few, be they Hamas or anyone else, does not legitimize the belief that all would act in such a way. There is, as ever, a tendency for an invalid move from ‘a few’ to ‘most’ or to ‘all’. Further, however brutal and horrendous and indecent some killings by Hamas have been such that a case can be made that there is no comparison with Israel’s killings of Palestinians, it does not follow that Israel is therefore justified in its killings (however ‘benign’!) of innocent others.

3.2.6 The pro-Israeli line is to insist that a vital difference is that Hamas is a terrorist group whereas Israel is a legitimate state. Indeed, there are demands that public broadcasters such as the BBC should refer to Hamas as terrorists. Now, the territory of Gaza has been run by Hamas since it won a majority of seats in 2006. As with many such elections in numerous countries and territories — and much in the past — we may question the legitimacy; but if that and its attacks on other countries are the basis for insisting that Hamas should be labelled ‘terrorist’, then consideration could be given to deeming Iran, Russia and, indeed, Israel, as terrorist. It is true that Palestine is not a recognized state, but that is because Israel and its supporters have blocked attempts at the creation of a Palestinian state.

There are, as ever, the motivations in the application of the term ‘terrorist’. At one stage, the future first prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, was involved in the Zionist terrorist group, Irgun, which bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem (1946), killing and injuring well over one hundred individuals, many civilians. Terrorism can lead eventually to states that possess international legitimacy.

3.3 It is often argued that the responsibility for the deaths and sufferings of the Gazans rests with Hamas because of its October attack. ‘Had Hamas not attacked, then Israel would not have gone to war, leading to the death and destruction in Gaza.’ That counterfactual is true, but its truth does not justify the claim that Israel is not responsible for that death and destruction. It could have acted otherwise. Were such counterfactuals successful in avoiding responsibility, in ‘passing the moral buck’ to earlier agents, then that avoidance manoeuvre could be applied to save Hamas from responsibility for the Israeli deaths; had Israel not mistreated the Palestinians for so long; had the state of Israel not been created — and so forth.

3.4 Whatever the extent of, and type of, differences between Hamas and Israel in current times, as reviewed above, one feature regarding which they rightfully can be compared is that of wittingly causing horrific sufferings and deaths of innocents on the ‘other side’. In respect of that, Israel and Hamas can be compared and, using the term differently, ‘there is no comparison’: Israel’s continuing intensive destruction of lives, livelihoods and infrastructures of Gaza is radically, radically greater than Hamas’s attacks on Israel.

Underlying considerations

4.1 The conflicts in the Middle East — and elsewhere and indeed in the UK with its policy towards migrants — rest on some sort of belief that ‘this land is mine’. Participants should wonder whatever justifies that claim to territorial ownership, wherever it may be, a claim apparently so strong that, in the Middle East, it justifies the destruction of thousands of innocent people — be it via attempts by Hamas to kill Israelis or via Israeli bombing of Gaza leading to thousands and thousands of deaths and sufferings.

4.2 Political and religious leaders frequently assert support for human dignity, human rights and treating all people with respect, but when the chips are down, it seems that more or less anything goes — and those with the might decree what is right. Witness a whole range of deliberate destruction of innocents by countries that proclaim serious commitment to human dignity and rights — for example, the US detonating atomic bombs over Japan; the UK/US support for the Saudi Arabian military action in Yemen — and now for Israel’s destruction of Gaza, Of course, there are plenty of countries that lack serious concern for human rights and which also behave appallingly, both to others and to their own citizens; witness Myanmar, Russia, Iran and many others.

4.3 With the approach of ‘might is right’, there will be little that Israel could consistently complain about if, one day, tables are turned and there is a mighty Arab onslaught on Israel, perhaps with the backing of a new, as yet unforeseen super-power.

Sadly, these conflicts seem to display the truth of Immanuel Kant’s

From the crooked timber of humankind, nothing entirely straight can be made.

4.4 Although I write as a humanist and atheist, I applaud some words attributed to Jesus: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” That question also applies to nations:

For what shall it profit a nation, if it shall gain the whole territory and lose its own soul?

4.5 Israel’s appalling treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank over decades was unlikely to generate a feeling of ‘fellow human beings’ and friendship being addressed by the Palestinians to the Israelis or the typical Israeli to the Palestinians. It doubtless played into the hands of Hamas and connected groups with the extremist calls by some of their followers for the eradication of Israel. Indeed, some suggest that the conflict benefits the right-wing Israeli leadership: an embattled nation at war is likely to be unified in support of its government and opposed to compromises — at least for some time.

The current Israeli destruction of Gaza is unlikely to have any beneficial outcomes, save for the political survival a little longer for Netanyahu and his right-wing ultranationalist supporters. That may be beneficial to Netanyahu and friends, but neither to Israel nor to the Palestinians.

The Israeli destruction of Gaza certainly will not save Israel’s soul.

4.6 Israel is currently the most powerful nation in the region. Israel could have tried magnanimity, generosity and understanding; it could have sought to make amends for its mistreatment of the Palestinians over the decades since the late 1940s, making it possible that in the longer term Palestinians would no longer need to turn to the likes of extremist elements in Hamas for survival.

As it is now, that ‘hand of friendship’ is obviously a far, far, far more difficult scenario to see fulfilled; nonetheless, a future less extreme Israeli government could go for magnanimity, generosity and understanding — indeed display genuine remorse for how Israel has been and is behaving — and actively aid the development of Palestinian lands for the Palestinians. That would be the privilege of the powerful. Maybe one day there could be a one-state secular solution, with religious rights within that state for both Islam and Judaism — and indeed for other religions and for the non-religious. Of course, even if logically possible — even if one day possible in practice — its realization, to say the least, would not be easy.

4.7 An incongruity deserves reflection, an incongruity manifest in my writing this in the comfort and safety of a home in London, an incongruity of millions of people with comfortable lives closing their eyes to, or making pronouncements on, surrounding horrors, from the malnutrition and homelessness in Britain to the appalling plight of the Palestinians and millions of others be they in the Ukraine, Myanmar, Yemen or Sudan.

More locally, on 7^th October, there was — if I dare point out — the incongruity of the Israeli Supernova dance festival, with young Israeli people living it up, ‘raving’ in luxury, close to the border of the impoverished Gazans.

There is also the bizarre, even obscene, stance whereby some countries eventually now call for increased humanitarian aid to Gazans, while also supporting Israel’s continuing attacks that lead to more and more suffering of those who will hence be in need of more aid.

4.8 An underlying feature of all this is the sheer luck, good or bad, of where we happen to be with regard to whether we have secure lives or damaged, whether we are killed as innocent civilians or happen to be in safe areas. That luck relates to natural disasters such as earthquakes as well as to human interventions; with the latter, though, we feel things are worse because we judge that humans could have acted otherwise. The earthquake possessed no possibility of self-control; Hamas and the Israeli leadership possessed such a possibility, yet failed to use it.

4.9 That we seek to live lives — to flourish, to assert our ways of living, even to be pleased by them — while so many, so many, others suffer appallingly is behind Nietzsche’s question:

Have you ever said Yes to a single joy?
O my friends, then you said Yes too to all woe.
All things are entangled, ensnared, enamoured.

Of course, I have no answers to such conflicts and incongruities, to our interminglings and entanglements, but regarding Israel’s actions, I am sure that a good answer cannot be what Israel is now doing to two million people. I am sure that a good answer cannot be the support given by the UK government and others to Israel’s horrific attacks on two million Palestinians already leading impoverished lives because of Israeli policies over the decades. To highlight again:

For what shall it profit a nation,
if it shall gain the whole territory and lose its own soul?

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For my discussion as atheist and humanist with Dan Cohn-Sherbok, a rabbi and professor of Judaism, on Israel, Judaism, Zionism and antisemitism, before the appalling events of late 2023 — and indeed for what constitutes the survival of a people, be they the Jews, the Americans, the British — please see our book Arguing about Judaism: a Rabbi, a Philosopher and a Revealing Debate (Routledge, 2020).

For more on territorial rights, discriminations and justice, please see my The Myths We Live By: A Contrarian’s Guide to Democracy, Free Speech and Other Liberal Fictions (Atlantic Books, 2020).

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