So I believe that we need to adjust our message of moral clarity to adopt a little more nuance, a two-tiered approach, something I am very comfortable with, but I can understand that others may flinch at.
The first tier is the moral, justified war against Hamas, which Israel must win decisively. Along with that, we join in grieving for the loss of all innocent life and recognize the human dimension of the tragedy that is playing out in Gaza right now.
But the second tier is the one skirted by most of Israel's supporters, though increasingly less so by Israelis themselves. The petition at the top of this posting states that we are "not called to solve the issue of sovereignty" and adds that "people of good will may disagree with the elected Israeli government." That's all well and good, but because the overall Palestinian-Israeli conflict is in fact now being played out at the same time as the war against Hamas, despite our determination to separate the two, post-Oct.7, we can't ignore it entirely. As Matthew Yglesias points out on his Substack, Israel is now engaged in not one, but two wars. He writes:
...while Israel is waging a just war in Gaza, they are in parallel waging an unjust war in the West Bank. This second war is much less spectacular, much more of a slow burn, and at the moment, is causing much less death and destruction to innocent civilians. That these two wars — one just but spectacularly deadly, one unjust but lower-key — are playing out in tandem is contributing to a confused and polarized debate over a set of issues that were already quite fraught. It also, in my view, greatly complicates the question of the right policy response for the United States of America.
Evidently, President Biden agrees with this assessment. According to Israeli officials, he was "infuriated" and "distracted" by recent Israeli actions on the West Bank.
We can argue over the justice or injustice of Israel's West Bank policies, but the point is that those policies have become the center of discussion, thereby muddying the moral waters over Oct. 7. And it's not just because of Chinese Tiktok or a Hamas propaganda campaign on college campuses. It's because, to a great extent, these questionable policies are being carried out right now, before the eyes of the world, as if the perpetrators are thinking that, since everyone's focus is exclusively on Gaza, no one is watching them.
Let me put it into context. Today the IDF claims to have discovered rocket launchers in Gaza placed next to a children's playground and swimming pool. That should be front page news. But the New York Times was covering the point-blank shooting of Bilal Saleh, who was shot in the chest by an Israeli settler as he was harvesting his olive trees in al-Sawiya, on the West Bank. It actually happened several days ago and was covered in the Israeli press. We can't blame Hamas for that coverage, nor can we really blame the Times. We can't blame social media or progressive college students or their professors either. It's hard to claim that Israel is facing an existential threat in Gaza, when her citizens are shooting olive farmers fifty miles away.
When we discuss West Bank policies, as they say, "it's complicated." Any discussion of the future of the West Bank now has to take into account that no Israeli in their right mind will accept adjusted borders that would place potential October 7s within range of all its population centers. But the government is so filled with messianic wackos that today one actually discussed to prospect of nuking Gaza. Bibi made him take a time out (I'm serious), but the damage had already been done. So yes, complicated.
But "complicated" is precisely the terrain we wanted to avoid this go-round. "Complicated" gets us right back where we've been every other time Israel has fended off Hamas. "Complicated" is not moral clarity.
Israelis have been through so much suffering this time. Is it asking too much to hope that after its monumental failure on October 7, the government might pull back the reins on the extremists for a while and focus exclusively on winning this just war against Hamas? By acting aggressively on the West Bank, and by continuing to show breathtaking incompetence at even caring for 200,000 internal refugees displaced from their homes, the government is forcing Israel's defenders to criticize them in the middle of a war and talk openly about, not if the Prime Minister will be replaced, but when.
So who is on the right side of history? Is it the genocidal group that butchers or kidnaps all Jews they encounter - including babies and the elderly - hates women and LGBTQ and has zero desire for coexistence with people of other faiths (or even many of their own)? Or is it the state built on the ideals of the prophets, Jewish values and democracy, forged from ancient ties to a homeland, devoted to bringing home broken refugees from all over the world?
This should not be a hard question to answer. But Israel is making it harder to answer.
We need their help if we are going to be able to give them help. I wrote in this space a few days ago:
We need to be prepared to make the morally-clear case for removing Hamas from power. They have ceded their right to run a country.
We invented the right side of history. Maybe we'll get there, if we can just steer the car away from that breakdown lane located on the extreme right side of the road. | 
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