Suzuki's Thoughts: On the War in Gaza

On the morning of October 7, 2023, the world woke up to the alarming news that the conflict between Israel and Palestine had come to a head. That morning, the militant Palestinian group Hamas - which controls the Gaza Strip - launched a massive rocket bombardment of Israeli cities, followed by an unprecedented full-scale invasion of southern Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces were caught completely off guard by the sudden assault, and Israel once again found itself in a state of war.

For years I have been a staunch advocate of Palestinian rights and sovereignty. When I was 14, I wrote letters to newspapers in which I called for a boycott of Israel and condemned the Israeli government's treatment of the Palestinian people. In the West Bank, Israel has continued to build new settlements in Palestinian territory, in defiance of international opposition, and in Gaza, Israel has controversially bombed hospitals, schools, and maternity wards, killing countless civilians, in their efforts to target Hamas terrorists. Right-wing extremists in Israel - many of whom are in the government - have pursued an irredentist, ethnonationalist policy towards Palestine, and have engaged in what I would amount to small-scale ethnic cleansing.

My support for the Palestinian people and their sovereignty remains unchanged. Both Israel and Palestine have a fundamental right to exist. Each should live as sovereign, independent nations free from violence. 

But that cannot come with what happened on October 7.

Since invading Israel, Hamas has engaged in vicious atrocities against Jewish civilians in territories they've entered. Hundreds of attendants of a music festival were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists, and their bodies stripped naked and paraded around the streets in trucks. Entire families - men, women, and children - have been massacred by militants, with reports of women and girls being gang-raped before being killed. Hundreds of Israeli civilians have also been taken hostage by Hamas, and the terrorists have vowed to behead them on video if Israel retaliates.

Over the past two days, over 1,000 Israelis have died as a result of these attacks, and most of them have been civilians. In fact, not since the Holocaust have so many Jewish people been killed in a sustained act of violence as what we are seeing happen in Israel today.

The IDF has launched a sustained counterattack, driving back the Hamas invaders on all fronts and retaking most of the seized territory. But the war continues to this very minute, and as Israel begins to lay siege to Gaza, it is unquestionable that the worst of this conflict is still yet to come.

These images, videos, and news reports have horrified the entire world, myself included. Even as a longtime staunch supporter of Palestinian statehood and a vocal critic of Israel, I cannot under any circumstances condone or excuse what Hamas has done - and continues to do - to innocent civilians. Such barbarity is counterproductive to the cause of Palestinian independence, and will only serve to create further setbacks towards any prospect of a future two-state solution to this crisis.

However, not all supporters of Palestine feel this way. Nearly a hundred years ago, it was the far-right, ultranationalist, and fascist movements in the west that cheered on the destruction of "international Jewry" and celebrated the slaughter of Jews. But today, that cheering is coming from the far-left.

The response of the Palestinian solidarity movement in the United States has been nothing short of despicable. Far from condemning the violence and the atrocities being perpetrated by Hamas, these left-wing populists and socialist-types have instead praised Hamas as "freedom fighters" and "resistance martyrs". Yesterday, members of the left-wing "anti-war" ANSWER Coalition, Democratic Socialists of America, Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the Workers World Party held a rally in New York City in which they cheered on the attacks by Hamas and encouraged violence against "Zionists". Some of the rallygoers even displayed swastikas and chanted antisemitic slogans. 

In New York, crowds of these protesters cheered as a speaker mentioned that over 5,000 rockets had been fired by Hamas into Israel. "The people running this city are Zionist!", yelled one speaker into a megaphone. "Are we OK with that? NO!". Another speaker echoed similar sentiments. "What happened was freedom fighters fighting for freedom", said a rallygoer from the left-wing Worker's World Party. "Every person who died yesterday wasn't innocent. Every Israeli settler by default is a terrorist".

Messages like these have no place in a "human rights" movement. Messages like these belong in the wastebasket of history, like the Nazi regime that spawned them. I've said before that the western "anti-war" movement's love of war criminals and penchant for antisemitic conspiracy theories is thoroughly unrivaled on any front, but the level of hatred spewing from the mouths of these people has taken even me by surprise.

The ultimate irony of these messages is that these same messengers - members of the left-wing "anti-war" movement - have previously balked at sending weapons to Ukraine, decrying Ukraine as a "neo-Nazi state". Yet these same "anti-war" leftists seem to have no problem calling for the extermination of Jews, waving swastikas at their rallies, and celebrating the mass slaughter of Israeli civilians.

Who are the real neo-Nazis, again? The Ukrainian soldiers who fight for the freedom of a nation that is run by a Jewish president? Or the rallies where populist demagogues wave swastikas and cheer on the murder of Jews?

The anti-war left needs to have a serious moment of reflection at this moment in time. What they are cheering on here is nothing less than a crime against humanity. Regardless of how you feel about the Israel-Palestine conflict, under no circumstances can these atrocities being perpetrated by Hamas be justified, excused, or celebrated in any manner. Israel has just as much of a right to exist as Palestine does, and no side - be they Israeli or Palestinian - has any right to commit genocide or crimes against humanity. And those who celebrate these crimes against humanity are sick, depraved, demented, and have no place in a civilized society.