Breaking: Israel's Human Shields
What Happens When You Starve 14,000 Children to Death?
Taking a single life obliterates an entire universe; it is evil beyond comprehension.
When faced with unspeakable horror, like tonight’s apparent vengeance killing of two Israeli diplomatic staff in Washington, the rational mind instinctively seeks to understand and make sense of such profound darkness. When the cold reasoning behind an action lines up with preexisting political analysis, there is just as often an equal and opposite counter reaction: a passionate plea to our higher angels, to avert ideological arguments while “the full facts are still unknown,” while the corpses are warm.
So I am tempted to sit still, solemnly immersed in layers of grief and rage and bitter alienation while the facts of these killings become clear and complicated and conflicting narratives emerge in real time. I could just sit this one out entirely, as it is inherently profane to touch the thing at all—not just now, but at any point forward.
Yet I see it all with brutal clarity, and need no additional information to understand exactly what has just occurred: tonight two representatives of Israel’s openly and unapologetically genocidal government were sacrificed in an evil yet entirely predictable act of war: they were human shields.
Israel has pulled steadily further from humanity, from truth, from its promise of pluralistic democracy. Israel has chosen the path of Jewish extremism over fluid integration into the international order, and as a result has gradually turned every Jew in the diaspora into a human shield.
Traditionally the term “human shields” is deployed to offload moral and legal culpability for the death of innocent Palestinians onto Islamist extremists like Hamas who—either by direct action or through indirect complicity—are said to bear responsibility for every life Israel takes in the name of self-defense. This logical basis underpins the genocidal collective punishment of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Tonight’s retaliatory killings don’t just reveal the “human shields” talking point as transparent projection of Israel’s own willingness to sacrifice its people—it portends a conflagration of vigilante justice in a world that has failed to hold the Jewish state accountable for thoroughly documented and indisputable crimes against humanity.
Israel’s defenders often decontextualize debates by narrowing discussion down to whichever precise historical window best suits the argument they are advancing. Yet one need only look earlier in the day to draw a clear causal connection between Israel’s violence against state officials and the fatal reaction wrought on its own diplomatic staff.
On Wednesday Israeli soldiers fired “warning shots” at a group of diplomats, journalists and Palestinian officials touring occupied Jenin. We don’t yet know whether the response in DC came from a state actor or a non-state actor, but we know it was swift and deadly. Israel’s criminality takes the form of a fractal; whether one looks back over 24 hours, 24 months, or 24 years, no rational observer can be excused from perceiving a state fully outside the bounds of international law and basic human decency.
It didn’t have to be this way. At any point after the 1947-48 Nakba Israel could have leaned into a process of truth, reconciliation, and full citizenship for Palestinians. At any point after the Six Day (1967) War, Israel could have removed its illegal presence from the occupied West Bank. At any point after October 7, 2023 Israel could have ended its siege on Gaza and followed through on a mutual exchange of captives.
Over and over and over again, Israel has pulled steadily further from humanity, from truth, from its promise of pluralistic democracy. Israel has chosen the path of Jewish extremism over fluid integration into the international order, and as a result has gradually turned every Jew in the diaspora into a human shield.
As others have noted, this internal logic model only serves Israel’s sales pitch as the single safe space for global Jewry; by making the world less safe for Jews Israel perversely amplifies its purported appeal to practitioners of the historically persecuted religion.
Now we see—in real time—this predictable death loop play out right in front of our faces. But it will not end with official representatives of the State of Israel. In the days and years to come—if the righteous anger appropriately directed at Israel is not adequately addressed—we can only expect more violence and more terror directed at anyone even perceived as Jewish anywhere in the world.
It is not enough to stop the genocide. For the sake of the sacred rule of law—and in the name of protecting Jews—we must use every official, legal means to hold Israel to account and build a just and lasting peace:
End the siege and blockade of Gaza.
Surge aid and rebuilding resources into the strip.
Send in international peacekeepers to deter renewed violence from both Jewish and Islamist extremists.
Expel Israel from Gazan airspace and the border region.
Expel Israel from the occupied West Bank.
Engage cultural, academic, economic and political leaders from both societies in a thorough process of truth and reconciliation.
Establish full Palestinian statehood for Gaza and the West Bank.
Try criminals from both parties via the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court; leave no stone unturned.
Commemorate the histories, cultures, and destruction suffered by both peoples throughout both states.
These minimum steps are required in the global theater to ensure even a chance at future peace and stability. Inside the Jewish community, the Evangelical Christian community, the media, and the political mainstream here in the US some serious soul-searching will also be required to reconcile and rectify our role empowering an increasingly unhinged Israel and the antisemitism it generates.
Crazy, conspiratorial, and hateful people already find enough reasons to hate Jews. We don’t need to give them any more. If for no other purpose than to protect Israelis and the visibly Jewish, it’s well past time to end the siege, stop the genocide, and hold Israel to account. It’s time to free Palestine.
Echoes of Atrocity
My earliest Holocaust memories are stark, simple black and white paintings hung on the basement hallways of my childhood synagogue: A crevice with a skull wedged in. A pile of bodies. Barbed wire.
We Did This. Only We Can Undo This.
Realizing and acknowledging where I have been wrong on Israel has been critical to reconciling the mistakes of my past and embracing a more advanced, clear-eyed view of the present and the future. Biden couldn’t do it, Kamala couldn’t do it, and that error may well have cost her the election. Now we’re all paying the price.
🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨 Internal Jewish Community Relations Memo Defends Trump, Alleges Due Process
For those who—like me—saw the reporting and hungered to read the full intra-communal memo, the Fingerhut email is printed below. This text is verified from two independent sources, which is something I believe actual journalists try to do. 🤷♂️ Read it and judge for yourself.
I think this was a well thought out and thought-provoking piece. I particularly like the structured plan laid out at the end. I think that’s realistic, but it will take some true soul-searching on the part of Israel supporters, and Israel itself, to be willing to undergo
such a process.
I really like your writing. I think this "war" is terrible. It is hard reading about what is happening there. Of course it was terrible with the killing of the couple in Washington but your bringing them up as "human shields" was helpful to me.