Why Can’t Pro-Israel and anti-Israel Advocates Understand Each Other?
The framing is different in the minds of different groups, resulting in constant misunderstanding and debate
How can two groups of people, one supporting and one accusing Israel, share most of the same facts, yet come to radically different conclusions?
The answer is framing. The way pro- and anti-Israel advocates see the issues, the moral frameworks they use, are completely different.
Oppression and anti-colonial framing
Anti-Israel activists generally focus on colonialism or injustice. In this view, powerful nations forced weaker nations and peoples into a subjugated state decades or centuries ago, creating structural inequalities that must be remedied today. Generally, the oppressed are darker skinned people in what is termed the “Global South” and the oppressors are lighter skinned people in industrialized countries.
These activists have a unique postion towards Israel, in that they think the best remedy would be to dismantle Israel, or demographically alter it so that Arab Muslims are in a majority and can turn Israel into an Arab state, possibly retaining a Jewish minority — or not — as they choose. In this way, the oppressed and subjugated people would be freed from the structurally oppressive system built generations ago, which they are trapped in.
In this framing, global stability is actually bad, because the world is economically unfair, and some countries have both more wealth and more power than others. Those without power are then entitled to rebel, “resist,” or even attack.
Civilizational and law-based framing
In contrast, traditional legal thinkers created international law to promote global stability, which generally means preventing violence even when violence is motivated by a heartfelt sense of grievance.
In law-based framing, while we may be empathetic towards someone whose ancestors were driven out of a territory during a war in the distant past, or were abused or humiliated in some other way, we do not then excuse their violent or destabilizing behavior.
Terrorism and targeting innocent civilians is also forbidden. To open up these actions as legitimate or allow that they “depend on the context” would create chaos and instability, so go against the very essence of international law.
This moral and legal framework is evolving and somewhat new. Even a century ago, nations often still engaged in “total war,” without restraints such as the restraints encoded in the Geneva Convention and earlier Hague conventions where the civilizational frame was formalized.
Note that modern, legal thinkers do still consider grievance and retain empathy for the downtrodden, even as they do not excuse crime based on a difficult past or sense of acute injustice. For instance, in cases of individual crime, a hard childhood or abuse factors in during sentencing, even though it does not alter the findings of guilt for a criminal.
The different framing as applied to Israel and Hamas
Anti-colonial framing considers Israel to be illegitimate, and all the people in it to be illegitimate as well, because their predecessors drove many Arabs out of modern-day Israel during the war in 1948, and because the entire nation was set up by the great colonial powers in 1947: at that time Britain and France divided up the Middle East, honoring both Arab requests for new Arab states (Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon) and Jewish requests for a Jewish state (the portion of Palestine which is now Israel).
Arab nations and UNRWA maintain this framing by considering even the great-grandchildren of 1948 Palestinian refugees to be “permanent refugees” even today. Little or no effort is made to gain full rights and acceptance for them in Arab states where most live, and even people born in Lebanon, Jordan or Syria are denied citizenship and often prohibited from working if they are descended from Palestinians who arrived in 1948.
In its most extreme form, anti-colonial framing allows even terrorist attacks of the most brutal kind as “resistance” to the existence of Israel. (Separately, there is a more limited idea of resistance to the ongoing activities such as occupation of the West Bank by Israel, but that is not grounded in 1947–48 or the original sin of colonialism.)
In contrast, legal framing promotes peace and stability by declaring entire classes of violent and destabilizing behavior to be always illegal. Invading a neighbor to alter their boundaries is forbidden, even if one claims their ancestors had rights to the land. Terrorism and targeting innocent civilians is also forbidden. To open up these actions as legitimate or allow that they “depend on the context” would create chaos and instability, so go against the very essence of international law.
While empathizing with the downtrodden is a good thing, the legal framing instead focuses on the future, and preventing future war and suffering. To excuse terror would allow every group — however small — to attack innocent civilians at any time, if they were sufficiently upset.
Specific grievances
Today’s Israelis are not directly responsible for actions in 1948, so in the legal and civilizational framing “the sins of their fathers” are not visited upon them.
From this legal frame, Israelis, as a nation, can take all legal actions needed to secure their borders and existence, even declaring war; as in most countries, people born in Israel are considered fully legitimate and should be safe in their country.
But in anti-colonial framing the 1948 war created “structures of oppression” which persist today. All Israelis (they would say) benefitted from British and Ottoman colonialism, as well as that of the U.N. when Israel was created. Because they benefit, Israelis are part of the structure and can be legitimately resisted, or even killed. Shockingly, it seems their families can also be killed or abused because anti-colonialism, as an extra-legal doctrine, does not focus on strict rules to limit valid resistance.
Origins of incompatible frames
The legal, civilizational frame dates back to about 1620 and Thomas Hobbes, who saw the destruction caused by implacable religious factions in the 30 Years’ and English Civil Wars, and proposed that people must yield power to rulers who can provide stability and reduce war. This ideal coincided with the Treaties of Westphalia where European countries agreed to respect one another’s borders and avoid invading or meddling, such as fighting over which version of Christianity is best. (Later, of course, some nations like Germany violated the treaties.) Until recently, then, the world fought hard against terrorism and chaos, and achieved remarkable success in increasing worldwide peace and stability from this frame.
The anti-colonialist frame was incubated in academia, among critical theory scholars, who focus on oppression and power dynamics. Some call this approach neo-Marxist in that it repurposes Marx’s fixation on class power imbalance and applies it instead to identity and international power imbalance. Younger people now learn the new idea of the centrality of colonial oppression at universities, where the frame thrives.
Talking past the frames
It is not clear how to overcome the divide.
I try, here in this piece, to illustrate the nature of the fundamental (framing) disagreement in hopes that people will understand one another better and engage in a real dialogue.
Those with a legal frame can, perhaps, understand how a yearning for justice and empathy for the downtrodden motivates anti-Israel activists.
And those with an anti-colonial frame may realize that applying their principles too broadly — to the extent that they justify terror or international attacks — has the effect of creating more war and disruption, however well intended.
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