NICHOLAS WOODE-SMITH | Jewish identity not a licence to rewrite history

David Lewis is entitled to define his Jewishness however he pleases (“Jewish identity and dissent in the shadow of war”, May 12). He is right that Jews are not a political monolith. There is no obligation for every Jew to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s present government, or every action of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

But that does not confer a right to Lewis to rewrite Jewish history. He begins by declaring his pride in South Africa “leading the charge” at the International Court of Justice against “the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people”. He returns to the charge throughout, accusing Israel of having “already perpetrated” genocide in Gaza, and ending with the declaration: “Ethnic cleansing, genocide, war crimes. Not in my name.”

This is not a minor rhetorical flourish. It is the central accusation. And it is wrong. Genocide is not a synonym for war, civilian casualties, destruction, siege, displacement or even alleged war crimes. It is a specific legal and moral category requiring intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or in part.

Israel is not trying to exterminate Palestinians. Israel is fighting Hamas, the terrorist organisation that invaded Israel on October 7, massacred civilians, took hostages and then embedded itself among the population of Gaza.

This does not make every Israeli action correct. It does not mean Palestinian suffering is irrelevant. It does not absolve Israel of scrutiny. But a war against Hamas, fought in dense urban terrain against an enemy that uses civilian infrastructure as cover, is not genocide.

The evidence shows that the IDF has gone beyond what most countries would do to minimise civilian casualties. It created humanitarian corridors, provided immense amounts of aid, risked sensitive operations by prewarning civilian populations, and risked the lives of its own troops to spare the lives of civilians who very often ended up being terrorists in disguise.

Lewis misrepresents the realities of the war and naively portrays it as perhaps the most heinous crime that can be perpetrated. But the facts are not on his side. This was a war, not a genocide. A war, I might add, that Hamas started.

His historical argument is even weaker. Lewis attacks Adam Mendelsohn’s claim that “Jews are a people and deserve self-determination as do other peoples”, calling this a “glib and downright false” argument. He then says Jews were only “one small community among a multitude of peoples”, before making his most astonishing claim: “Never, before or since, has self-determination been granted on a land that was clearly also populated by another people.”

This is historical nonsense. Almost every act of national self-determination has occurred on land populated by more than one people. India and Pakistan were born from partition, amid Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and others scattered across both proposed states. Ireland’s independence left Protestants and Catholics divided across contested borders. The Balkans are defined by overlapping national claims. Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Kurds, Poles, Germans, Ukrainians and Hungarians all know that nations do not fit neatly into clean moral boxes or tidy lines on a map.

Almost every act of national self-determination has occurred on land populated by more than one people.

Self-determination is rarely granted on empty land. It is usually claimed on land inhabited by minorities, rivals, neighbours, former rulers, recent migrants and ancient peoples.

The existence of Arabs in Palestine did not erase the Jewish claim to Israel. Nor did the Jewish claim erase the rights of Arabs already living there to life, property, dignity and equal protection under law. That is the tragedy: not that Jews sought self-determination in their ancestral homeland, but that Arab leaders rejected any Jewish right to life, independence or freedom in the region.

While, I might add, Arabs enjoy equal rights in Israel, holding high offices in a multicultural democracy, Jews don’t enjoy the same rights in neighbouring Arabic countries.

Lewis cites the displacement of Palestinians in 1948, but treats it as if it occurred in a vacuum. It did not. The UN proposed partition. Jewish leaders accepted it. Arab leaders rejected it. War followed. Israel declared independence. Surrounding Arab armies invaded in attempted war of extermination against the Jewish people. A true genocide. The local Arab population suffered terribly as brutal consequence of war. But to present 1948 as a one-sided act of Jewish theft is not history. It is propaganda.

Nor are Jews foreign interlopers in Israel. Judaism is bound to Jerusalem, Judea, Israel and Zion by scripture, language, archaeology, memory and continuous presence. Jews prayed towards that land. They mourned exile from it. They returned to it whenever they could. Their national identity was formed there. Divorcing Judaism from Israel is akin to divorcing Islam from Mecca.

Lewis writes affectionately of Jewish humour, challah, Passover songs and communal life. But Jewish memory is not only food, ritual and family warmth. It is also exile, pogroms, dhimmitude, ghettos, expulsions, blood libels, gas chambers and the hard lesson that Jews are safest when they are not dependent on the goodwill of others.

That is why Israel exists.

One may criticise Israel. One may criticise Netanyahu. One may mourn Palestinian suffering. One may demand better from any state, including the Jewish state. But one may not call Jewish self-determination uniquely illegitimate, call Israel’s defensive war genocide, and then present this as moral courage.

Lewis is right that there are many ways to be Jewish. None requires pretending Jews have no right to the land of Israel. None requires turning Hamas’s war into Israel’s crime. And none requires lending Jewish identity to the oldest lie of all: that Jews, uniquely among the peoples of the earth, have no right to defend themselves, no right to sovereignty, and no right to go home.

• Woode-Smith is a political analyst and author.