Violent, Genocidal Anti-Palestinian Rhetoric Moving to US? | Religion Dispatches
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Last week, the man gunning for the top spot at the Anti-Defamation League, New York University senior fellow Thane Rosenbaum, authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal legitimizing Israel’s killing of civilians, telling Palestinians in Gaza that, because a plurality of their voting-age population voted for the political wing of Hamas in national elections eight years ago, “you forfeit your right to be called civilians… you have wittingly made yourself targets.”
On Monday, the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, David-Seth Kirshner made this same assertion at a pro-Israel rally of 10,000 people a few blocks from the UN (which had just issued a statement expressing concern over “the deteriorating situation). In a video posted to Youtube, he is heard saying: “When you are part of an election process that asks for [Hamas]… you are complicit and you are not a civilian casualty.” Kirshner then proclaimed that the Israeli army is “the most moral army in the history of civilization.”
It goes without saying that apart from being cruel, such logic is, as many others have noted, identical to the justification used by Osama Bin Laden for the morality of killing civilians on 9/11. That is, Americans (or Israelis) elected a government that acted unjustly or criminally, therefore Americans (or Israelis) as a whole are fair game. As Daniel Larison succinctly put it, such logic: “unintentionally endorses the logic of every terrorist group in history.”
For decades, most mainstream Jewish leaders outside of Israel have publicly supported the military adventures of the Israeli government, regardless of the Palestinian death toll. But they have at least paid lip-service to the sanctity of human life and expressed regret for the souls lost on both sides. As Israel’s latest assault on Gaza enters its fourth week, however, we are witnessing a significant rhetorical departure.
