Israel's circumstances test the limits of ideas that are core to liberalism. This causes discomfort for liberal countries, which prefer to keep liberalism's limitations out of view.
The laws of war, for example, cannot guarantee the prevention of human suffering. This is especially true when a party wages battle from behind and below its own civilians. Even if this party's adversary complies with the laws of war scrupulously, preventing harm to non-combatants is next to impossible.
Liberal countries fear that people will lose faith in international law if they understand this to be the case. Out of this fear, these countries obstruct honest assessment of the laws of war. They cave to the actors (including Israel's enemies) who thrive on maximizing their own civilians' suffering, all but declaring that if such suffering is unavoidable, fighting these actors adequately is forbidden.
They demand that Israel end the ongoing war not due to violations of international law, but rather because international law is, on the whole, being upheld. They are distraught precisely because Israel is following international law, and thus placing its limitations in full view. This is why Israel's wars always trigger a moral narrative among liberal countries, whereas most war-related human suffering does not.
Liberal countries also fear that people will stop believing in the inevitable triumph of humans' innate capacity for good. A core myth of liberalism is that most people in any society, when given the opportunity, will strive to live in peaceful productivity. Practically every general consensus in Palestinian society flies in the face of this myth.
The liberal world refuses to acknowledge Palestinians' insistence on rejecting peaceful coexistence alongside Jewish sovereignty. It cannot fathom that an entire society would overwhelmingly condone the deliberate targeting of non-combatants with violence to compel the surrender of territory. It won't bring itself to accept that the Palestinian national cause values liberation only insofar as the reward is domination, and that it bemoans the lack of such domination more than it bemoans a lack of safety and well-being.
Desperate to escape the need to take Palestinians at their word, liberal countries deny Palestinian agency altogether. They claim that Palestinians "don't mean it," and if they do, it's only because of what the Israelis do to them. Everything bad in Palestinian society is the result of Israeli policy. That's why there's no peace.
Liberal countries understand that they must be delicate in camouflaging liberalism's limitations. Blaming Israel too explicitly or directly may draw too much attention to the hypocrisy of demanding standards of behavior these countries would not uphold.
These countries have found a solution in Israel's Center-Left, which for decades has sought to soothe its own anxieties over how the country that was cast in its likeness has changed its face. Not unlike how societies across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East scapegoated the Jew to ease popular fears concerning the complex hardships of modernization, many of Israel's more liberal constituents sought and found a scapegoat to soothe their own societal trauma. His name is Benjamin Netanyahu.
In the portions of Israeli society that are mad with anti-Netanyahu frenzy, liberal countries find more than common cause. They find an escape from potential calls of hypocrisy or prejudice. "If so many Israelis say that it's all his fault, it must be fine for us to say it too."
Liberal disdain for Netanyahu is more than a way for people to pretend that without him, Israel would be a version of itself they find more pleasing. It's also a mechanism by which people pretend that without him, liberalism would not be tested so brutally and so honestly.
Absent Netanyahu, Israeli policy preferences on issues important to the liberal world would be remarkably similar to what they are with Netanyahu as prime minister. Liberal countries are careful to refrain from pointing this out, though. They maintain a tight grip on anything that, at least for now, shields their myths from being exposed as idealized fantasies.
If it were not for Netanyahu absorbing left and right the wails and whimpers of an agitated liberal world, these wails and whimpers could very well be directed at Israel as a whole. If we were virtuous, we would stand shoulder to shoulder and inform the liberal world that the best chance for liberalism to flourish is for it to be evaluated and implemented sincerely. Since we are not virtuous, let's at least be clever and not try to push the scapegoat aside so hastily.
Josh Warhit runs Warhit Media Services. He made aliyah from the United States in 2012 and served in the Nahal Brigade (infantry) in the Israel Defense Forces.
