By Dr Naomi Wolf
Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf
October 14, 2023
Israel/Palestine is one subject that is almost impossible to address conscientiously and coherently. That is especially true at a time such as this, when our feeds and news outlets are flooded with images of atrocities, amplified at a scale that is only possible in a digital era. We also have friends and colleagues and loved ones of loved ones in Israel, and we have in the past closely followed civil society in Palestine, especially in Gaza, so it is an especially difficult time in which to feel or express anything but horror and grief.
So this essay is not one of my usual synthesized essays. Instead, reflecting the prismatic horrors of the moment, it is fractured. I don't think anything that claims synthesis right now, or a unitary point of view, is honest or even sensitive.
First fragment: the images of Jewish civilians held or bound in contexts of unmitigated sadism, against a background of formerly peaceful civilian streets, felt to me, as it did to many Jews no doubt, like images from 1939-1940 Europe, but colorized.
I wrote on Twitter that these images and the attacks across on Israel's southern border, would force a sea change among American Jews. We have had a good, safe, thriving 80 years or so, in the United States. So we've had the privilege of not being forced to vote at the level of survival.
I was struck that President Trump, whom I have been taught to hate, was welcomed incredibly warmly by religious Jews at a speaking event which I attended; these were Jews who remembered Europe, remembered the pogroms, remembered the time when "in every generation they rise up to destroy us". As I wrote in the linked essay, I'd been impressed to reflect on the fact that President Trump had moved the Israeli Capitol to Jerusalem, brought about the Abraham Accords – which did in fact create a fragile peace, which peace was good for Palestinians as well as for Israelis – – and that he had been an unshakable and very strong ally for Israel. As no doubt for many Jews watching the current scenes of horrors across Israel's southern border, and instability rolling out in a terrifying counterattack over Gaza, that record of what that Republican President had achieved — compared with the pathetic and dangerous abandonment of the Jewish State and I'd say, of Palestine's real interests too — on the watch of a Democratic President — for me, required re-evaluation.
Most US Jews are Democrats, and are liberals, for important historical reasons that I will explain another time. But they have had such strong allies for Israel in US Presidents, for all of the decades past, I think many of us forgot the fragility of Jewish survival. I think that these scenes of violence in the Jewish state will cause a wave of buyers' remorse among liberal American Jews, who will rethink what it means for the world, including for the Jewish state, for America to be seen globally as weak; as an untrustworthy and unreliable ally; what it means for Jews and for the Jewish state for America to be led by a senile (sorry, but it must finally be said) puppet of China.
I've explained in many recent interviews, speaking as a former political consultant and former White House wife, what is so weird and degrading to Jews — and to Americans, and Israelis — about America's current reaction to the attack on Israel. Under ordinary circumstances, upon hearing of an attack of that kind, the US President would immediately give a resounding speech, emphasizing in the strongest possible terms America's support for Israel, and would also use language to de-escalate the tensions. We got a statement of "support" on Tuesday the 10th. The President said "when Congress returns" he would ask for other help: ""When Congress returns, I'm going to ask them to take urgent action to fund the national security requirements of our critical partners,"he said."
Under ordinary circumstances, the White House would not be blithering about for several days, merely phoning Netanyahu over "the holiday weekend," and then issuing weak, equivocal statements about "any country's" right to defend itself in general.
Under ordinary circumstances, the Secretary of State would be meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister in Israel the next day. If Israel itself was not safe — the two would meet somewhere — like, now.
It is almost five days after the attack and at last we are treated to a scene of Tony Blinken finally ambling onto a plane. His website explains that he intends to travel to Israel (and then at once to Jordan, sensitively enough) to "condemn terrorism" and "reiterate his condolences." "The Secretary will reiterate his condolences for the victims of the terrorist attacks against Israel and condemn those attacks in the strongest terms. The Secretary will also reaffirm the United States' solidarity with the government and people of Israel."
Every officially stated purpose of his visit is merely ceremonial and symbolic.
Hamas must be super scared!
If you have felt that something was weird, it is because this is all weird. This all reveals a dramatically redrawn world order well along in the making.
In the diplomatic world, these symbols and gestures are not trivial; they are all slaps in the face.
They don't just show Israel that their staunch longtime ally America is maybe shaky or in someone else's — another superpower's — pocket. They send the entire world that dangerous, destabilizing message.
China, for its part, is a (racist) superpower that is trying hard to redesign the world order so that the Saudis, Iran (and thus Palestine) and others are all aligned with the CCP in a bloc against the US and Israel. This would be a redesigned world order that can literally wipe Israel off the face of the earth.