It’s All Backwards: The Bizarro Discourse on Israel’s Gaza War
Sometimes I wonder what sort of Bizarro World I’ve landed in. Everything is upside down and backwards. Everything is the opposite of what it should be.
What am I talking about? The whole global discourse on Israel’s war with Hamas.
But first: Let’s talk about this word “discourse.”
The word became popular in academia in the 1980s because of Michel Foucault, who in the 1960s and 1970s elaborated a deep philosophical system possibly to justify his taste for sadomasochistic gay sex. Much of that system has largely been forgotten outside of Gender Studies programs or perhaps the editorial board of the London Review of Books. But it left a legacy in the form of generations of graduate students attempting to do “discourse analysis.” At its most oversimplified (and most valid), the basic idea is that the very way people talk (discourse) about a thing defines the subjective reality of that thing (objective reality being much less important if it exists at all). He added that the discourse not only defines a thing, but it shapes perceived reality to serve some power structure. Of course, Marx said as much long before, as did Nietzsche. Anyway, the discourse on a topic shapes people’s understanding of that topic. It also creates barriers to understanding that topic any other way, perhaps by closing off alternative discourses, or simply excluding from the conversation different ideas or different possibilities. Everyone who shares a discourse follows along and perceives the thing the same way, unaware of the blinders imposed by the discourse.
Foucault explaining that nothing is true
Which brings us to the discourse on the Gaza war.
The discourse on the Gaza war, at least in the liberal West, has focused entirely on the question of whether Israel will agree to a ceasefire. There must be a ceasefire. From there, the discussion goes to whether Biden can pressure Netanyahu into a ceasefire, or whether Netanyahu will continue to flout Biden and international pressure. Netanyahu, per this discourse, is the bad guy. Biden himself has embraced this discourse, and naturally the State Department as well. The focus of American diplomacy is on a ceasefire. To that end, the U.S. has been courting Qatar—which bankrolls and shelters Hamas’s leadership—as well as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The idea, presumably, is that perhaps a suitable deal can be made by which Israel accepts a ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of a suitable number of hostages. So we ask the Qataris to ask Hamas what conditions might they accept.
Blinken with Qatari PM Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on February 6, 2024.
This discourse precludes, of course, the idea that perhaps a ceasefire is a bad idea, which I’ve argued here, or that perhaps it’s Hamas that’s the bad guy and not Netanyahu. Perhaps we should not be letting Hamas dictate terms of the hostage release? Perhaps it might be in everyone’s interest if Hamas lost the war, and the world’s focus should be on ensuring that happens? Thus, perhaps it’s Hamas the world should be pressuring? Or Qatar? The U.S. has leverage over Qatar if it wished to use it. The U.S. could even threaten Qatar. The U.S. could also wipe out Hamas’s leaders sheltering in Qatar or elsewhere with remarkable ease. Everyone says that Israel can’t destroy Hamas because its leaders are abroad and free to reconstitute the movement once Israel’s done in Gaza. Maybe something should be done about that? Israel can’t touch them, but the U.S. sure can. Why should Qatar benefit from this situation? Why should Hamas leaders abroad sleep soundly at night? And the real elephant in the room is Iran: God forbid the U.S. apply pressure where it might do some good, i.e. against Iran.
I’ve already written at length about why a ceasefire is a bad idea, so I won’t dwell on that here. But I wish to add that the present approach brings back bad memories of America’s oddly soft approach to the Taliban. They, too, sheltered in Qatar as well as Pakistan and elsewhere. Sure, Presidents Bush and Obama asked the Pakistanis nicely to do something about that, and about Mullah Omar living large in Pakistan, not to mention Usama bin Laden. Omar ended up dying in 2013 of natural causes long after killing him might have done any good. Obama finally took out bin Laden, but only after marshaling the courage to risk angering bin Laden’s hosts. I’ve long believed we could have dealt with Omar and bin Laden back in 2001-2002 had only Bush threatened Pakistan for real. It was always just a question of making Musharraf an offer he couldn’t refuse. Similar offers could be made to Qatari leaders. They certainly should be made to Hamas leaders. I read recently that Blinken did tell Qatari leaders that if they don’t help more Hamas leaders might have to be expelled. Why expel them when JDAMs exist? It really is that simple. The U.S. bombs jihadists ALL THE TIME, as recently as last week, so let’s not pretend we don’t do that sort of thing.
But the many possible alternative ways forward are invisible so long as the discourse excludes them. Biden will keep pressuring Netanyahu, and the press will keep talking about how terrible it is that Netanyahu won’t comply.
Does the current discourse serve a power structure, as Foucault and Marx et al. argued? I’m not so cynical as to suggest there are dark interests operating in the background, although one has to wonder why we coddle the Qataris so. I thought this was the only valid question Michael Moore made in his otherwise execrable Fahrenheit 9/11, when he pondered the Bush administration’s weird interest in protecting Saudi Arabia in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Perhaps force of habit from too many decades obsessed with the price of oil and gas? I rather suspect that comes close to the matter, not the oil per se but the force of habit. A deeply engrained path dependency reinforced by a preference for the status quo over the unknown. Let’s go a step further: It’s the discourse itself regarding how the nation conducts its foreign policy that has perpetuated itself, rather like a self-licking ice cream cone.