On culture wars – The Economist:

‘The imagery is enticing, the rhythm and rhyme are propulsive. “From the river to the sea,” runs the popular slogan, “Palestine will be free!” In recent days that couplet has resounded in squares from Toronto to Berlin. Wearing chequered keffiyeh scarves, Californian pupils declaimed it as they swept down school corridors. Activists projected the words onto a wall of a university in Washington, DC.

What do they mean? Superficially an idealistic vow of liberation, the decades-old expression also contains a threat: the river is the River Jordan, the sea is the Mediterranean and freedom, in this case, implies the destruction of the state of Israel. That is certainly the sense in which Hamas uses the phrase. The children chanting it at the base of Nelson’s column in London on October 21st, during a big pro-Palestinian march, may not have grasped the menace. But several marchers who were yelling the words, or bearing them on placards, seemed aware of it, clamming up defensively when asked to explain them.’

(…)

‘The Western left once sympathised with Zionism. That changed markedly after the six-day war of 1967 and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Especially since the end of apartheid in South Africa, the Palestinian cause has been a talismanic issue for left-leaning Westerners. Why it acquired this status is a matter of debate. In some analyses, Israel serves as an avatar for American power, or for bygone colonial struggles. Jewish groups and others have wondered why the casualties in, say, Syria or Afghanistan—where the perpetrators as well as the victims are Muslim—stir less bien-pensant concern.
After a period in which the issue receded in prominence in Western diplomacy and headlines, Gaza’s plight is now inspiring protests and disputes as never before. A glut of open letters by artists and other luminaries have decried Israel’s bombardment and Western leaders’ acquiescence to it. (Counter-petitions mourn the atrocities of October 7th and affirm Israel’s right to self-defence.) Pro-Palestinian rallies have been held in many cities, including some where they were notionally banned.’ (…)

‘“Silence is violence”, runs another popular protest slogan, a position taken by some on all sides. A range of institutions, from universities to unions, have been berated for the wording of their public statements, or for failing to issue one. Calls for peace have been likened to appeasement. And supporters of both Israel and the Palestinians make analogies with Ukraine to show the supposed hypocrisy of the opposing camp. Backers of the Palestinians see Gaza as the victim (like Ukraine) of invasion by a bullying neighbour. Pro-Israelis point to Hamas’s incursion and liken its barbarity to Russian war crimes.
The polarised passions and viral slogans are in part a sharp manifestation of the echo-chamber effect of social media. Millions of people have watched footage of Hamas’s depredations in horror. Many others are transfixed instead by images of Gaza’s agony. In Germany, for instance, where a synagogue has been firebombed and Stars of David daubed on Jewish homes, some Islamists exist in “parallel societies”, relying on digital and overseas news, says Felix Klein, the federal commissioner for antisemitism. So, he adds, do many on the far right, which commits most of the country’s antisemitic crimes. (There, as in America, the two groups have made common cause online.)’

(…)

‘As for demography: immigration is one factor skewing the culture war in the West over the tragic one in the Middle East. Muslim populations in Western countries are both growing and changing in composition. In the past, notes Yunus Ulusoy of the Centre for Turkish Studies and Integration Research in Essen, the Muslim population in Germany was of predominantly Turkish origin. Now, he says, around 2.1m Muslims in the country have roots in Syria, Iraq and other places that are hostile to Israel. They brought their views of the conflict with them—shaped, says Mr Ulusoy, by a sense of solidarity with the ummah, or global Muslim community.’

(…)

‘France, notes Dominique Moïsi, an eminent French commentator, is home to both the largest Muslim population in western Europe and the biggest Jewish one. It has a traumatic recent history of Islamist terrorism, and a more distant one of collaboration with the Nazis, both of which tend to bolster support for Israel. But it also harbours contrary strains of anti-Americanism and guilt over French colonialism in the Arab world. The result, says Mr Moïsi, is a “conflict of memories” that plays out in politics and on the streets.’

(…)

‘Seeing the world in Manichean terms can be comforting. It turns confounding issues into simple clashes of good and evil, conferring a halo of virtue on those who pick the right side. As Yascha Mounk, author of “The Identity Trap”, argues, the emerging ideology offers just this form of comfort, sorting the world into opposing categories—coloniser and colonised, oppressors and oppressed—often along racial lines. In essence it transposes the terms of American debates over race onto other places and problems. “The American brand of anti-colonialism”, quips Mr Mounk, “is astonishingly colonialist.” In a polarised age, lots of people infer their opinions from their political allegiance rather than the other way round. This, thinks Mr Mounk, is part of the new ideology’s appeal: it furnishes an all-purpose vocabulary to apply to any conflict. In this schema, the powerless can do no wrong, least of all to the powerful—and nobody can be both. Liberation movements of all kinds are linked, as communist insurgencies purported to be during the cold war. As flares in the colours of the Palestinian flag were set off at Piccadilly Circus, a protester in London holding a “Queers for Palestine” sign explained that “All the struggles are connected.”’

(…)

‘That may not be the only form of political blowback. Plenty of liberal voters are dismayed by the responses of people with whom, in the past, they felt broadly aligned. Their coalition with more radical voters was already under pressure; for some liberals, the bedrock of common values that they thought underpinned it seems to have crumbled. If the debate over Gaza has been a symptom of polarisation in the West, it may yet prove to be a cause of realignment, too.
The consequences for Israel and the Middle East are unpredictable. At least in the short term, revulsion for Hamas seems to outweigh any qualms Americans might have had before the war over Israel’s rightward lurch under Binyamin Netanyahu. Most Americans, including most Democrats, tell pollsters that supporting Israel is in American interests. How far and how long that remains the case depends on a series of unknowns—starting with the conduct and outcome of the ground invasion of Gaza, and the new dispensation that may follow. Developments in domestic politics will matter, including the fervour of the Republican embrace of isolationism.’

(…)

‘Even as the disaster in Israel and Gaza unfolds, one of its morals is already clear. Amid the unchecked flow of images and ideas, Western public opinion and geopolitical conflicts are entangled in new and explosive ways. Culture wars and real wars are no longer separate struggles.’

Read the article here.

Wars have always been culture wars. Even the US invasion of Afghanistan had its opponents, not to speak of Iraq in 2003.

After the 1982 war in Lebanon the perception of Israel changed radically. It may have started earlier, but I would say that 1982 was the turning point. Also, because that war, unlike this war, was seen inside Israel by many as a war of choice. And in hinsight it was an unnecessary war that produced Hezbollah and a hopeless security zone where many Israelis died in vain. Not to speak of the betrayal by Israel of the soldiers of the SLA.

Yes, Palestine has become the talismanic issue for the left, as Israel has become the talismanic issue fur some evangelicals and the extreme right, those who hate Muslims.
But talismanic issues tend to be rather superficial. The activist in Boston or Amsterdam or Berlin might donate 10, 100, or 1000 dollars to Gaza, might be willing to demonstrate in the rain, but the time that some of the left in Europe went to Palestinian guerilla camps in the Middle East has long gone. It shouldn’t get too inconvenient. Activism should help your career, not sabotage it.

Israel is still a strategic asset to the US. Also, Israel is not Armenia. It has despite all its flaws an impressive army, especially an impressive air force (and some atomic boms), it won’t go quietly.
That’s the main reason for the international troops, mainly US, in the Eastern Mediterranean. Morality is an afterthought. The empire and the European don’t want the war of all against all in their backyard.
What counts is to prevent a war that is incontrollable, and a stream of refugees that will be incontrollable as well.
The terrorist organization Sendero Luminoso used the slogan: ‘Everything is an illusion, except power.’

That’s still accurate. Public opinion can be power too, but the warriors of cultural wars love to focus on details and symbols (especially the progressive warriors), the dirtiness of the world is not appealing to those warriors.
And yes, the day can come that Israel is not a strategic asset anymore to the empire. Before that day, Israel will need to have changed the game completely.
As some romantics have pointed out before me, the Israelis could work hand in hand with their brothers (Arabs) to outwit the empire.

The conflict of memories is real, which is a conflict of who suffered most, but if you are willing to sacrifice thousands and thousands to achieve your goals, the memory is for a few survivors.