Gaza Genocide and War Crimes Accusations Against Israel Need to Stick… By Simon Frankel Pratt

Gaza Genocide and War Crimes Accusations Against Israel Need to Stick… By Simon Frankel Pratt

Simon Frankel Pratt is a lecturer in political science at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne

archived 26 Jan 2024 23:58:57 UTC

An expert's point of view on a current event.

Unsourced Allegations Feed Israel’s ‘Masada Complex’

The Israeli public is convinced the world is against it.

By Simon Frankel Pratt, a lecturer in political science at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne

January 26, 2024, 12:43 PM

But maintaining an appropriate sense of skepticism, without dismissing real atrocities, is important whoever the perpetrators are. Allegations should be investigated, but care should be taken to distinguish between substantiated and unsubstantiated claims. Defenders of Palestinians’ rights to the protections accorded civilians in war may not think this skepticism is important when it comes to Israeli military actions. Substantial evidence already suggests the operations of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could violate the laws of war, and one way to hold Israel accountable is to believe Palestinians when they testify that crimes have occurred.

Yet while eschewing all skepticism in favor of horror at the carnage is understandable, it does not link up to the diplomatic and domestic levers that could cause Israel to change the intensity of its military action, improve humanitarian aid flows, and restrain its soldiers. Israelis have become dangerously convinced that the world is deeply biased against their country. Spreading unsubstantiated allegations contributes to that belief—and allows Israelis to dismiss foreign criticism too easily. This is a serious problem, as Israeli public support will be crucial for pressuring the Israeli government to further reduce the intensity of its military action and develop solutions to the humanitarian crisis the war has now produced.

Disinformation has been a consistent and serious problem in this war. From the outset, footage of atrocities and violence from other conflicts has been shared as though it was depicting Israeli and Palestinian victims. Some pro-Israel commentators have claimed that genuine images and videos of dead Palestinian children are in fact hoaxes, products of an imagined “Pallywood” industry producing fake victims, while even major media outlets repeat unsubstantiated claims made by the Israeli government, ranging from a now-disputed guard rosters in underground facilities to the discovery of alleged Hamas suicide vests for children.

Others, including journalists and academics, have denied or dismissed the sexual torture and rape committed by Hamas attackers on Oct. 7 or claimed that large portions of Israel’s civilian dead were killed by Israel’s own security forces. Many expert commentators have discussed how difficult it is for members of the public to know what is happening when falsehoods circulate and every claim of victimhood is contested.

Much of the Israeli public has been conditioned by its politicians and media, for decades, to view foreign critics as implacably hostile, prejudiced, and uninterested in their right to safety. Audiences refusing to accept claims of Hamas atrocities, perhaps jaded by Israel’s own unconfirmed allegations, and willing to accept thinly evidenced claims of monstrous behavior by the IDF affirm this perception and make Israel less likely to deescalate. Put simply, if foreign critics deny Israeli suffering and believe Israel guilty of every alleged wrongdoing, they alienate everyone in Israel, including those otherwise sympathetic to calls for restraint.

One political scientist has referred to this as a “Masada complex,” in which the Israeli public imagines itself to be a besieged people facing death, with no option but resistance even to the point of suicide. Indeed, Israeli youth for generations went on pilgrimages to Masada, as part of the country’s collective memory of Jewish historical resistance. Generational Holocaust trauma and victimhood are socialized and collectivized in Israel. Perpetual sensitivity to the possibility of Jewish genocide has led to a militaristic society in which the IDF and the political elite are intertwined. For Israelis, statecraft is a redemptive project as much as it is an institutional one, aimed at restoring agency and political self-awareness to the Jewish people, while geopolitics carry a perpetual awareness of the apocalypse. The upshot of all this is a “security concept” fixated on overwhelming military power and anxious about the very survival of the Jewish people.

Israelis believe foreign audiences have dismissed the genocidal threat posed by Hamas while unreasonably inflating the destruction the IDF has inflicted. Lampooned in sketches by Israel’s famous comedy show Eretz Nehederet, Israelis believe foreign media is quick to believe the worst about Israel in any dispute over a mass death event during war while treating Hamas as legitimate and reasonable representatives rather than monstrous terrorists.

When observers deny the rape of Israeli women on Oct. 7, Israeli audiences view this as a denial of Hamas’s genocidal desire or intent, because Hamas’s massacre as similar to the Holocaust or earlier pogroms—a perception shared by Jews elsewhere as well. Indeed, for Israeli audiences, refusal to admit the true violence of Hamas’s attack may itself be an attempt to provide cover for genocide or indicate the desire to see one carried out without interference. When observers accept without hesitation that Israel is carrying out unlimited violence in Gaza, some Israelis even see this as a resurrection of the blood libel, analogous to Christian propaganda about Jewish ritual sacrifices and clandestine killings of gentile children. These reactions are the product of long-standing cultural trauma and memory—an underappreciated commonality Israelis share with Palestinians. The result is that Israelis, a majority of whom strongly support their war on Hamas as a security necessity in the face of a genocidal adversary, are insensitive to foreign horror and outrage over the conduct and effects of their military operation.

Scholars of international relations would identify this as a matter of “ontological security.” Nearly 20 years ago, pathbreaking research used psychoanalytic methods to identify the ways that anxiety, identity, and cultural commitments can lead countries and communities to pursue policies that make them less safe from violence or more isolated internationally. The insight of scholars such as Jennifer Mitzen and Brent Steele was that “security of the self” requires remaining true to one’s worldview, even when this involves painful material sacrifices. Israel’s fortress mentality, tendency for apocalyptic anxiety, and hyperawareness of past genocide have all contributed to a tendency to see any concession as total rather than limited. To concede anything is to concede everything.

At the moment, the Israeli public is united in support of its military activities, even as it continues to be fractured by domestic opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right governing coalition. More extreme figures such as politicians Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as celebrities such as Eyal Golan and government ministers in non-security portfolios, have called for unambiguous retaliatory genocide. The broader public does not necessarily support these calls but is convinced that if it cannot win the war, the future of the country and its people is at risk.

Confronted with public opinion polls showing very high levels of Palestinian support for Hamas and for the Oct. 7 attack, and by some apparent foreign enthusiasm for the massacre from segments of the global anticolonial movement, Israelis believe that their fight is an existential one. They are convinced that hostile foreign audiences simply do not understand or care about the future of their country—making them ignorant at best and threats at worst.

For much of the Israeli public, a cease-fire—or even an imposed reduction in military intensity—is an unthinkable concession if the current war is an existential one. To be clear, this is an extreme reaction to reasonable demands for greater protection for civilians facing horrendous conditions of bombardment, displacement, and deprivation. Israel’s militarism, tendency to identify all threats as existential, and unwillingness to treat foreign criticism as good faith are causing a brutal callousness to Palestinian suffering.

But a complete cease-fire is, for better or worse, unlikely, and the next year is likely to see a continuation of military operations throughout a devastated Gaza Strip and amid a population already in grave crisis. Many lives will be saved by better humanitarian aid access and, crucially, IDF military conduct that takes greater precautions before opening fire and uses smaller explosive weapons, even though this raises the risk to Israeli soldiers—an obligation under international law. This will require domestic pressure from the Israeli public alongside Israeli government sensitivity to diplomatic pressure. So long as Israelis are caught in their Masada complex, they may refuse even at the cost of becoming international pariahs.

There is a way out of the Masada complex, however, without limiting urgent and legitimate criticism of Israel’s military excesses. While Palestinian commentators need not be expected to express empathy for Israel while their families are under bombardment, foreign critics can make a difference by recognizing Israeli suffering and Jewish fear in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack. This is consistent with research suggesting that persuasion and diplomacy are stronger when they begin from a position of empathy rather than hostility.

But this requires a tone shift—and a dose of political realism. As noted, some observers in other countries celebrated or at least excused Hamas’s actions, some prominently blaming Israel for the murder of their own citizens and others engaging in genocidal chants. They do so in the context of a media machine poised to grant outsized significance to these spoilers or treat them as representative of the pro-Palestine movement more generally. Such positions are disconnected from the realities that real stakeholders face; foreign commentators celebrating atrocity crimes have prioritized their abstract moralism over seriously engaging with the fact that Israelis and Palestinians have no choice but to coexist. And if they must coexist, they must do so without the need to continuously fight to prove their own humanity and right to life.

Yet this does not merely mean avoiding genocidal language. It also means avoiding narratives that paint one party as essentially villainous, guilty of every accusation and capable of every evil act. Every allegation should be investigated, and every victim deserves justice, but members of the public should ask if they are in a position to properly gather and assess evidence before sharing claims. Foreign critics of Israel should focus their rhetoric on well-documented violations and abuses, granting space and agency to journalists and investigators to gather evidence and report truth. With so many confirmed cases of law-of-war violations by Israel, it is also not necessary to endorse unconfirmed allegations as a condition for exerting pressure for a cease-fire or de-escalation.

Perhaps the most difficult sticking point, though, is the claim that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. It is more or less unfathomable for Israelis, whose cultural and national identities are thoroughly bound up in being victims of genocide, to accept that they are perpetrating one. Moreover, to accept the label of genocidaire is to take on a moral status that obliterates all right to sympathy or support. But it is unfair to demand that international audiences stop calling Israel’s conduct a genocide, as that claim is subject to expert and legal contestation and is also the discursive center of gravity to Palestinian demands for a cease-fire and for relief.

There is still a version of the claim that grants space to step back but does not accept the premise that Israel has forfeited all legitimacy or committed deeds from which no moral return is possible. Nothing can undo the destruction and death of Israel’s military campaign, but allegations of genocide can be accompanied with a question: If this isn’t a genocide, why isn’t there more humanitarian aid, more caution in the use of military force, and a clear plan for postwar reconstruction that restores the conditions of life to Gaza and seeks to heal the wounds of the fighting?

While those who have already broken through the walls of Israel’s cultural fortress, such as U.S. President Joe Biden, may receive a better reception from asking such a question, all commentators can make a small difference by linking allegations more closely to avenues of action. In other words, the allegation of genocide can be accompanied by an invitation, such as the ICJ has implicitly offered, to refute it through deeds rather than words.

When the fighting stops, Israel and Palestine will still exist. Palestinians will not be eradicated, and Israelis will not return to the myriad home countries of their diaspora ancestors. More than ever before, they will need to find a path toward a just peace. The occupation of Palestine must end if Israel is ever to enjoy full international legitimacy, and Israelis must find a way to elect a government capable of pursuing a diplomatic solution to the roots of the conflict. But if that is to happen, Israelis must learn (and see) that they are not in Masada and the world can treat them like any other state, capable of legitimate existence.

The way international audiences respond to events, assign credibility, and share claims of victimhood and criminal activities can have a large effect on this. The more scrupulously observers, especially those invested with official status or expertise, stay close to the available evidence, the less likely they are to feed Israeli fears.