Why the Calls for a Ceasefire Leave Me Cold

Throughout the world so many people are clamoring for a ceasefire in Gaza. The UN has called for one. The Pope called for an end to all bloodshed in Gaza. China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom called for a ceasefire. In fact, practically the entire EU. It sounds so absolutely just: halt the horrifying bloodshed. How could anybody in their right mind object to that? Who could NOT yearn for the cessation of killing?

So why not me, too? I have never hit anyone as an adult, and never will. I take absolutely no pleasure in seeing people hurt, never mind maimed or killed. Anybody who knows me would say I wish people well, in words and actions.

So why do calls for a ceasefire not move me?

I don’t hear an end to bloodshed but an exponential increase.

The problem is, I hear something different than other people. I don’t hear an end to bloodshed but an exponential increase. Hamas, a political entity that murders others and murders its own, swears it will attack again and again, causing yet another round of violence even more ferocious than the present one. Israel is not a synagogue or church. It’s a country that must safeguard its citizens from what has been called “the most sadistic mass terror attack in modern history.”

If Mexico were to shoot missiles at San Diego, the US government would go ballistic, especially if it was continuing to lob rockets at US citizens. Mexico would never look the same again. No country in the entire world would tolerate Hamas on its borders.

So the real question isn’t on Israel which is behaving as any other normal country would, but on the ones insisting, demanding a ceasefire. They, not Israel, have a lot of explaining to do.

And yet the cry for a ceasefire continues to resound throughout the world, gaining in intensity and passion.

It’s the pacifist’s outcry against bloodshed wherever he finds it, sees or smells it, which sounds noble, sure, but doesn’t take into account the rivers and oceans of bloodshed that will follow if no action is taken. (Think Neville Chamberlain and the millions of lives that could’ve been spared in WWII). What I hear in the present-day call “ceasefire” is an incantation, a holy invocation: No more war, no fighting. I hear a narcotic of simplicity, of absolute certainty about what needs to be done. The absolutist rigid thinking outright scares me.

But at least the pacifist is consistent. He or she isn’t selective about the battles they take on. All humans concern them.

The ceasefire criers that leave me freezer cold are the ones who are choosy about the injustices they allow to affect them.

The ceasefire criers that leave me freezer cold are the ones who are choosy about the injustices they allow to affect them, the wars that bring them protesting to the streets or screaming at Joe Biden that he has blood on his hands at Radio City. The death of a child in Gaza at the hands of the IDF makes them weep and bristle with moral umbrage, and yet the death of 80,000 children in Syria by the hands of other Arabs just makes them shrug. Maybe they should ask themselves why.

I think it’s safe to say that many of the above people calling for a ceasefire do not wish Israel – or me – well. How do I know? Because I can feel it. In fact, the derision and the lack of care, the recklessness with which they dispense with the fate of Israel leads me to believe that many would be happier if Israel would disappear altogether, from the River to the Sea.But I’m not entirely convinced that the clamorers for ceasefire wish the Palestinians or Gazans well, either. They may think they care, but it really doesn’t make a lot of sense. What they’re doing is ensuring that an oppressive sadistic fundamentalist regime remains in place. And they know it.

So the message itself, no matter how unimpeachable — stop the fighting — becomes tinny, even cartoonish.

What I hear just beneath the call for a ceasefire is: Israel, your existence has always been conditional. You’re on a very short leash. So please just shut up and do what you’re told. If that means you have to commit suicide as a nation, so be it. And to Gaza, what I hear is: Shut up and stop making trouble. You’re bothering me.

To Get Peace

I see a failure of imagination from these ceasefire callers. In their comfortable condos six million miles away from Israel, they have no clue what it’s like to have a savage enemy literally at your doorstep. They don’t care enough to understand what’s really at stake for Israel, understand its legitimate fears; nor do they care to understand what’s at stake for Gazans living under a government that prefers to see its own starve and killed. At best they know how to chant a meaningless slogan. At worst a slogan that would bring Israel’s demise. But it makes the ceasefire callers feel better. At least they’re doing something, they tell themselves. They’re talking to themselves.

A call for ceasefire coming from a true desire to save lives and a willingness to sacrifice would sound very different.

What if the President Biden or King Abdullah of Jordan declared, “I want peace, and I’m not going to shut up about it till it happens. So here’s what we’re going to do: Protest in the streets and in front of government embassies, demand Hamas release the Israeli hostages and allow its own Gazan citizens to evacuate and get humanitarian aid. Call on the British government — and every country — to no longer provide sanctuary to the Hamas billionaires swimming in UN humanitarian bucks. Kick them out, hound them, imprison them. That’s the first step. Till then, how dare we talk about ceasefire, when the fire of Hamas hasn’t been put out?  The problem of Hamas is everybody’s problem, not just Israel’s.”

This is a call for action that has meaning and leaves me warm. Best of all, I don’t pick up on any hateful signals underneath the call for action.