What possessed Republican U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann to shout he would support Israel forever and “Goodbye to Palestine”? In a video shared widely on social media, Rep. Fleischmann is shown shouting, “Goodbye to Palestine,” amid an array of stridently pro-Israel declarations.
The Chattanooga Times-Free Press reported on the Tennessee Congressman’s public encounter with pro-Palestinian activists.
“Why do you support the genocide and all of the war crimes and collective punishment?” an activist asked. “Are you concerned about all the children dying in Gaza?”
Fleischmann responded, “Let me make it clear: Israel is our ally, will always be our ally, they are not guilty of genocide, and I will support Israel forever.” …
In the video posted Wednesday, an activist cited what he said was a statistic about child deaths in Gaza.
“Let me tell you a statistic,” Fleischmann responded. “The Jewish state will exist, it will always exist, and that is for God to do and to decide. And I will always support Israel. I will always support Israel, and you can tell the Palestinians, I will never support them!”
One of the activists said he was Palestinian and told Fleischmann to say it to his face.
“Then I will tell you, I will never support you,” Fleischmann said, turning to face the man. “Then I will tell you to your face: Goodbye to Palestine. I support Israel. Goodbye to Palestine. We will support Israel forever.”
Subhuman
The reality of a Palestinian state is an existential need for Israel. But it is also an existential threat, especially since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
But Rep. Fleischmann treats Palestinians as subhumans. He dehumanizes all Palestinians in his awful statement.
David Livingston Smith in Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate, says people believe subhumans “can be enslaved, tortured or even exterminated — treated in ways in which we could not bring ourselves to treat those whom we regard as members of our own kind. This phenomenon is called dehumanization.”
Fleischmann speaks today from a long line of Americans at home with dehumanizing. Speaking in 1848, Senator John C. Calhoun saw slavery as the foundation for a democratic union among whites, working and not:
“With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals.”
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, argued, “I say that the lower race of human beings that constitute the substratum of what is termed the slave population of the South, elevates every white man in our community. … It is the presence of a lower caste, those lower by their mental and physical organization, controlled by the higher intellect of the white man, that gives this superiority to the white laborer. Menial services are not there performed by the white man. We have none of our brethren sunk to the degradation of being menials. That belongs to the lower race — the descendants of Ham.”
Fleischmann fits the category of dehumanization.
How have we come to this?
I am shocked at how hard it has become to engage in deliberate conversation over issues of complexity. What really concerns me is the disappearance from our political arena of any sense of responsibility for the words our politicians utter. Somehow politicians have received the message they can blabber any nonsense and be rewarded.
“Somehow politicians have received the message they can blabber any nonsense and be rewarded.”
How have we reached the point where a member of the United States House of Representatives can make such a cruel, unfeeling, brain-dead comment and think he has said something courageous? I grew up in an environment where words matter, reasons matter, and rational deliberation was important. Now, we think slogans, sound bites and shout outs will save us.
More than two sides
First, rhetorically, Fleischmann makes the mistake of believing there are only two sides to every controversy or issue. He seems void of asking “What has happened to pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian?” His abject dualism defeats all attempts at conversation.
This dualism afflicts some liberals as well. I have heard liberal allies express admiration for Hamas in recent weeks; I am still dealing with the trauma that caused in my mind.
For an example of holding complex thoughts in mind at once, Thomas Friedman asserts, “To think about Israel, I think, today, you have to hold three thoughts in your head at the same time. … Israel is an amazing place. What it’s built in 75 years is amazing by way of ingathering of exiles, of culture, of revival of literature, of science, technology, agriculture. Israel, it’s an amazing achievement, number one. Number two, Israel does really bad stuff sometimes, particularly in the West Bank, steals Palestinians’ land, allows settlers to kill Palestinians with impunity, lets Israeli Arabs be treated as second-class citizens. And third, Israel lives in a crazy, dangerous neighborhood, and the weak don’t survive.”
Netanyahu is the problem
Netanyahu is the problem. We should pay attention because Netanyahu shows us what Trump will do if he becomes president in 2024.
Israel was lulled into believing Hamas wouldn’t dare start a war because Netanyahu had led them to believe this illusion. He was banking on Israel’s voters to say, “We don’t need a peace process. And not only that, but we can also afford to elect the most radical Jewish supremacist government in the history of the country. And we don’t need a strong Supreme Court.”
As Friedman argues, “Netanyahu was engaged in a political flight of fancy to, in effect, neuter the Israeli Supreme Court for two reasons — for the benefit of the settler movement, which wanted the Supreme Court out of the way because it was the one body standing in the way of their seizing Palestinian lands illegally, and his ultra-orthodox partners who understood and knew that the court was the one thing that was standing in their way of being relieved, formally, legally, by Israeli law from their sons having to serve in the Israeli army. Basically, Netanyahu wanted the court out of the way to dismantle Oslo and to dismantle its ability to impose its will on the ultra-orthodox.”
“Here in the U.S., Republican leaders like Rep. Fleischmann have swallowed the Netanyahu propaganda.”
There has been a lot of rage in Israel about the policies of Netanyahu. Yet here in the U.S., Republican leaders like Rep. Fleischmann have swallowed the Netanyahu propaganda. This has made him blind to the atrocities of Israel against the Palestinians. He has put too much faith in a government that wants nothing good for Gaza and is willing even to sacrifice all the good will Israel has accumulated since becoming a nation again.
Fleischmann could use a dose of reality: All governments lie. He has accepted without question the government of Israel’s party line espoused by Netanyahu. More thoughtful arguments are available from citizens of Israel.
“Netanyahu has become a very different kind of leader, one who subverts the national interest to his own. A wise leader encourages unity among his people; Netanyahu is stoking hatred and schism.” These words were part of a New York Times op-ed written by Matti Friedman, Daniel Gordis and Yossi Klein Halevi.
Yossi Klein Halevi is senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He’s the author of, among other books, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. He is somebody who believes narratives that are contradictory, narratives that even oppose each other, will have to be held at the same time, that reconciliation, if it ever comes, is not going to come because one story gets judged true and the other false, but because both stories and the many more can be held at the same time, respected, without asking one to triumph over all the others.
As philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre puts it, “The modern nation-state, in whatever guise, is a dangerous and unmanageable institution, presenting itself on the one hand as a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services, which is always about to, but never actually does, give its clients value for money, and on the other as a repository of sacred values, which from time to time invites one to lay down one’s life on its behalf. As I have remarked elsewhere, it is like being asked to die for the telephone company.”
Belief in total war
Fleischmann also makes the mistake of seeing politics as total war rather than the mediation of our differences. In a political stream where “nihilistic pathos,” a “destructive spirit of anarchy and chaos,” and a spirit of there’s only winning and losing, we end up with outbursts like those of Fleischmann.
“Such an approach shuts down all possibilities of a solution that would be non-violent.”
Such an approach shuts down all possibilities of a solution that would be nonviolent. Fleischmann has no desire for a political solution. He has pronounced the Palestinians “evil” and “satanic” — game over. In his small-minded world, no one needs to bother with investigating the suffering of Palestinians.
Fleischmann departs the world of rational deliberation for a sinister metaphysical world. He can’t recognize Palestinians as real people with real fleshly, bodily needs or as rational creatures. He resorts to shouting — a growing trend among Republicans ever since Congressman Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” at President Obama in 2009. Lauren Boebert heckled President Biden over Afghanistan in 2022: “You put them there” she shouted. Marjorie Taylor Greene screamed “liar” at Joe Biden over Social Security in 2023.
Democrats have not been immune to juvenile hijinks during the State of the Union. Nancy Pelosi shredded Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech in 2020 as she stood directly behind him.
This is the political reality we have created in the USA. The scenes of parliaments in brawls, shouting matches, cursing bouts, have been shown on American television for decades as examples of how Americans never would act. Now, we approach the real possibility that we are breaking down into a bunch of mindless shouters.
“Now, we approach the real possibility that we are breaking down into a bunch of mindless shouters.”
In this world, authoritarianism becomes propaganda that takes advantage of a pre-existing culture of fear and hatred, relying on a dualistic world where there can be only one winner and everyone else is a loser.
Holding Israel accountable
A third mistake: Fleischmann seems incapable of holding Israel accountable for its violence and death in Gaza. He takes the “Israel is right and everyone else is wrong approach.”
Somehow, some Christian leaders have overlooked the reality of disobedience to God’s will. Israel has a long history of disobedience. Unlimited retaliation violates Israel’s law of an eye for an eye: “If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exodus 21:23–25).
Friedman suggests: “Instead of playing dangerous games with Iran and Hamas, Israel must facilitate a legitimate Palestinian Authority, and the only way this happens is a two-state solution. Israel must work with the Palestinians who are prepared to accept Israel’s place in the Middle East and not with those who are determined to wipe all Jews from the earth.”
“Because there’s two groups of Palestinians out there and always have been. There are Palestinians who are ready to live with Israel as a Jewish state. They signed the Oslo Treaty. I know them well. They are there and they’re real. And there are Palestinians who are dedicated to wiping that Jewish state off the map.”
We need fewer outbursts from people like Fleischmann and more thoughtful dialogue from people like Tom Friedman, Matti Friedman, Daniel Gordis and Yossi Klein Halevi.
The time has come for civilized, thoughtful, rational people to put a stop to every thought, word and deed of man’s inhumanity to children, women and men.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 10 books, including his latest, Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy.