Gaza is the test we failed

Earlier this week, Haaretz reported on the tactics of the Israeli Defense Forces in what has been named the "Netzarim corridor," a section of the Gaza Strip that has been completely flattened for the creation of military roads and facilities. Along this seven-kilometer (4.3 miles) wide line, homes have been burned, businesses removed, hospitals and schools demolished. And everyone who could not get away has been murdered.

This isn't a matter of shooting terrorists or looking for military targets. It's just been a process of mowing down human beings and leaving their bodies where they fell. One of the soldiers involved reported laughing as he and others fired dozens of rounds into an unarmed boy, shooting into his body long after the boy was dead. Then they walked over to the blood-soaked body for some photos.

"When someone pointed out he was unarmed and looked like a civilian, everyone shouted him down. The commander said: 'Anyone crossing the line is a terrorist, no exceptions, no civilians. Everyone's a terrorist.'"

The number of bodies left along the Netzarim corridor has become something more than just another heart-rending scene in a conflict that has been filled with them. It's become a horror worse than anything that should be imagined.

"The forces in the field call it 'the line of dead bodies'" a commander in Division 252 tells Haaretz. "After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs who come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that's where you must not go."

That's the kind of world the people are living in; one in which the borders are defined by packs of feral dogs feeding from unburied corpses. That's the world that both the Israeli government, and the United States government, have helped to build.

For reporting on the attack on Gaza, Haaretz has been sanctioned by Israel. Everyone who works for or with the Israeli government has been ordered to boycott the Tel Aviv-based paper. Haaretz is the oldest paper in Israel which has been published in Hebrew and English since 1919, but now it is being punished for being truthful.

Earlier this month, two reports appeared. One of these reports, from Human Rights Watch, found that "Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide." The second, from Amnesty International, simply labels Israel's action as genocide.

But the biggest thing about both of these reports is that neither of them is a surprise. Anyone watching even the sparse coverage that the months-long destruction of Gaza has garnered in the United States has seen enough to know what is going on. They've seen block after block of some of the most densely populated urban areas on the planet bombed, burned, and picked apart. They've seen masses of humanity driven headlong, seeking any place of refuge, and they've seen any place of safety systematically destroyed.

No one can, or should, defend the actions of terrorists who attacked Israel on October 7. But just as the American government used the 9/11 bombings as an excuse for invasions that led to the death of over 400,000 civilians, the Israeli government under Netanyahu has used Oct. 7 as an excuse to slaughter Palestinians wholesale.

What America did in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere included torture, cruelty, and crimes against humanity for which no one has ever paid the appropriate price. The same applies to Gaza. Except that Gaza is ongoing, arguably even more disdainful of human rights and human lives, and is an active poison in the international body politic.

Democrats in the United States spent the last year largely trying to pretend that Gaza was something we could sideline for the election. If we could just get activists to shut up, we could get back to talking about how inflation is getting so much better. Then we can continue to perform an act of modern realpolitik by expressing support for Israel while occasionally expressing lukewarm concerns over the tens of thousands of people being murdered out of vengeance.

Because, you know, it's complicated.

Here's a handy guide that can be applied both in Gaza and other situations: When politicians try to wave away some abomination by telling you that the situation is "complicated," what they really mean is that dealing with it in a moral and just manner might offend some of their donors. It means they're getting pressured to stay silent and go along—just like Haaretz. What's complicated is their unwillingness to stand up and risk their own wealth and power to hold the line against moral outrages.

The same thing applies to media outlets. When you see sources tiptoeing around Gaza, constantly leaving an Israel / Palestine-shaped hole in the news, that's because they are concerned someone will be upset over reading the truth. That someone might criticize them for being truthful. It's not complicated; it's moral cowardice.

Our willingness to sideline Gaza is exactly the kind of compromise with evil that cost Democrats the election. It makes us look weak—because we are weak. It shows that we will set aside our values if we think they interfere with retaining power. It shows us unwilling to get our hands dirty with an issue that doesn't fit the neat slogans and easy answers we've been repeating for decades.

But here's one old saw that still applies:  "Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor."

If Democrats hope to win in the future, they're not going to do it by being a less openly cruel version of the fascism that is sweeping the United States and threatening the world. Passivism and compromise are not the answer. They never are. We need to be just as aggressive in the support of justice as the purveyors of cruelty and hate. More. And there are many worse places to start than in demanding the United States end any support for Israel's military actions in Gaza.