Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War
Note to readers: See previous APOLOGIA post for Introduction, Endorsements, and Table of Contents. (Table of Contents is also listed below, with links. Or download pdf of the whole book here.)
Note to critics: Please read the whole of my little book (including notes) before offering criticism. Thanks.
Chapter 1: Israel is engaging in colonial retaliation?
Objection: Israel is a colonial state, so Israel is engaging in colonial retaliation in its war against Gaza, which means Israel’s actions are unjust.
Reply:
No. The following is from political analyst Rich Lowry:
According to an anti-Israel statement signed by dozens of student groups at Harvard, Israel is undertaking “colonial retaliation.”
An academic cottage industry is devoted to deeming Israel a decades-long exercise in “settler colonialism,” and Hamas itself is partial to the term.
The use of the word “colonial” in all its forms isn’t meant to accurately describe realty or clarify anything; rather, it is a term of abuse wielded to delegitimize Israel and justify every means of resisting its very existence.
The “colonial” smear can’t survive contact with the slightest critical scrutiny.
First of all, the original Jewish settlers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries weren’t sent by any mother country to set up enclaves for the honor and profit of the homeland. To the contrary, they were escaping countries that, in many cases, didn’t want them. It would have been perverse for Jews to have sought, say, to establish an outpost of Russia in the Levant, given the atrocities routinely carried out against them on Russian soil.
They thought of their venture as a return to a place that Jews had inhabited for thousands of years.
Indeed, the colonialism charge raises the question of how an indigenous people can be colonizers.
The Jewish people have had a connection to Israel since Abraham. The people became fundamentally identified with the land; indeed, they were synonymous. The land was a locus of the Jewish faith—the site of its holy city, Jerusalem; the place where many religious commandments, the mitzvot, were supposed to be performed; the object of yearning after the dispossession of Ancient Israel (“Next year in Jerusalem”).
There is a reason that Zionists had no interest in settling in Uganda, as was proposed in the early 20th century.
On top of this, Israel has been willing at key junctures, notably right at the beginning in 1948, to accept a two-state solution.1
Israel, then, is a state but not a colonial
state, and so Israel is not engaging in colonial retaliation. The fact remains
that Israel was attacked brutally and barbarically on October 7, 2023, an
attack in which 1200+ Israelis were murdered, many more injured, and 240+
people taken hostage (all numbers included babies, children, women, and the
elderly). Israel’s response is not colonial retaliation—it is self-defence.
Self-defence is morally permissible, according to just war theory.2
NOTES
1. Rich Lowry, Israel is not a colonial state, National Review, October 10, 2023. For additional thought from Alan Dowty, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and a Visiting Scholar at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, see Is Israel a settler colonial state? Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Washington, November 10, 2022. In addition, see Alan Dershowitz’s section “Israel Is Not a Colonial, Imperialist State” in his book War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism (New York: Skyhorse Publishing/ Hot Books, 2023), 7–11. And see Alan Dershowitz’s chapters 1, 2, 3, 8, and 11 in his book The Case for Israel (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
2. On just war theory, see Scott B. Rae, “War,
Violence, and Morality” in Rae’s book Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics, 4th edition (Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Zondervan, 2018), 288–313. On the topic of war and the Bible, see this book’s
appendix 3.
Table of Contents (links)
Chapter 1. Israel is engaging in colonial retaliation?
Chapter 2. Israel is a powerful state and thus the oppressor?
Chapter 3. Israel is not a legitimate state?
Chapter 4. Israel occupies Gaza?
Chapter 5. Gaza is like a Jewish ghetto?
Chapter 6. What about Gabor Maté?
Chapter 7. What about Gabor Maté, again?
Chapter 8. Israel targets a hospital?
Chapter 9. Israel’s attack on Gaza is as bad (or worse) as Gaza’s attack on Israel?
Chapter 10. Israel is wrong to cause Gaza to suffer?
Chapter 11. Israel is guilty of genocide?
Chapter 12. Israel’s response to Hamas is not proportional?
Chapter 13. Israel should agree to a permanent ceasefire?
Chapter 14. Israel should embrace a two-state solution?
Chapter 15. Conclusion and prayer
Appendix 1: Criticizing Islam is Islamophobic? (Part 1 of 2)
Appendix 2: Criticizing Islam is Islamophobic? (Part 2 of 2)
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