As a child I loved to watch as the Hanukkah candles burned down, guessing which would be the last one to give up its flame. Not having had any of my own children, I remain that child. This year the extinction of the last candles on the eighth evening of Hanukkah seemed especially poignant. The light gone, the darkness smothering all hope. More than 20,000 Palestinians and Israelis have been killed since October 7th, mostly civilians. Who knows how many more Palestinians lie under the rubble. There are still about 130 Israeli hostages somewhere in Gaza, imperilled by the bombardments and assaults of the military forces that are supposed to defend them as well as by their captors. More then 3,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza have been imprisoned by Israel since October 7th, subject to military courts, administrative detention and abusive and lethal conditions. The injured in Gaza are denied the medical resources for their recovery by an unrelenting invading army. Countless others, as many as 80% of the population, are homeless, the descendants of refugees displaced from their homes, finding no shelter in tents on flooded ground, increasingly vulnerable to hunger and disease. The returned hostages confront their trauma. There is so much trauma, so many bereaved, so many maimed, so much ruin. So little hope.

By chance, it was the candle to the furthest on the left that obstinately kept burning the longest. It is the obstinacy of the Left that gives me some hope. I do not mean the ideological Left of the UK, where I live, the adherents of various forms of political Marxism. The most influential of those, the Socialist Worker’s Party, issued a statement including this clause:

Too many on the liberal and reformist left have been quick follow their governments in condemning Hamas and affirming Israel’s right to self-defence. The flood of media atrocity stories has obscured what actually happened on 7 October. But when oppressor and oppressed clash there can be no neutrality or equivalence. We support the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people and their right to wage armed struggle against the Israeli settler colonial state.

¹

Hamas atrocities, according to the SWP, are legitimate anti-colonial armed struggle and its Islamist ideology somehow enables the SWP’s goal of of a secular, democratic state in all of Israel and the Occupied Territories. I’m happy to be liberal and reformist if that’s the cost of remaining ethical. But the SWP sound moderate in comparison to the Revolutionary Communist Group whose statement on the horrors of October 7th begins with:

Early on the morning of 7 October an audacious and unprecedented military action by Palestinian Resistance forces, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, was launched from Gaza into the occupied territory of the Israeli state. The Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) and our Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI) Supporter Groups extend our unconditional support to the Palestinians in their struggle to liberate themselves from illegal occupation by any means necessary.²

By any means necessary on this account includes rape and torture as well as murder and hostage taking of civilians. Unable to grasp that even Marxist dialectics cannot make two wrongs a right, this branch of the ideological Left sees a valid path to Palestinian liberation that, contrary to Palestinian journalist Rajaa Natour‘s brave statement, “include[s] a speeding jeep in the streets of Gaza with a half-naked Jewish woman strapped to its front.”

I am also not speaking of the less ideological left in the UK, the progressive left who have been moved by the horrific scenes of Israel’s assault on Gaza to join the massive demonstrations of solidarity with Palestine, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Protests of that size attract people and organisations of a broad range of opinions, including the ideological Left. It would be hard to disagree with the PSC’s announcement before their first major protest on October 14th that:

Every humanitarian will be appalled and horrified, as we are, at the scenes we are witnessing of a severe escalation of violence since October 7th… International law makes it clear that the deliberate killing of civilians, hostage-taking and collective punishment are war crimes. Such crimes must be condemned no matter who perpetrates them.³ 

Yet, less than a week after October 7th, the PSC was unable to name some of the perpetrators of those crimes as Palestinians, or some of the victims as Israelis. The day after the PSC’s first march, in my home town as well as London, I wrote on my Facebook page :

Yesterday I couldn’t bring myself to join in the protest organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, even though it has never been more urgent and vital to demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians. … For the most part, I can join in the chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as a call to end occupation and apartheid, for Palestinian independence. But I cannot shout it when I think that even one other person also shouting it sees a way to freedom through the brutal massacre of civilians.

There has been a left, anti- and non-Zionist Jewish bloc on the PSC rallies in London, including an organisation in which I’m still active, Na’amod. I went on one myself in Nottingham, on a week in which I felt the need to call for a ceasefire outweighed my desire to feel comfortable at a protest. I did not join in the chants of “From the River,” only the calls for a ceasefire. During the march I stayed close the drummers from the environmental group I’m active in, Extinction Rebellion, glad to be close to familiar people as I carried a sign with Na’amod’s logo, marking me out as Jewish and calling for the release of the hostages as well as a ceasefire.

Like many progressive organisations, Extinction Rebellion is pro-Palestinian by default. Its statement about the war claims that “The climate and ecological emergency has roots in centuries of colonial violence, exploitation and oppression – for which the UK bears a disproportionate share of responsibility.” In a over-simplification, Israel – often regarded as a colonial-settler state – becomes a root cause of the climate crisis. The statement about the war, which otherwise is generally thoughtful, ends with the phrase: “Only a just peace can secure a liveable future.”

But one sentence upset me because of a small omission. “We are horrified by the atrocities committed on October 7th, and the rapidly escalating violence and humanitarian crisis inflicted on the people of Gaza.” Why, I wondered, could it not say that atrocities had been committed against Israelis, against Jews? In a message to XR’s press team asking if the omission could be corrected, I wrote that “One of my reactions was ‘it doesn’t matter, don’t make trouble’ but that is a learned reaction from a long history of oppression, and it doesn’t help others to unlearn their oppressive behaviours to keep quiet about it.” I never got further than a response that it had taken a long time to arrive at this agreed statement after consultation with unnamed stakeholders, so the statement could not be changed. That was disappointing.  

I was happier to join a silent vigil organised locally under the umbrella of UK Friends of Standing Together, held on November 19th, mourning all the victims and calling for a ceasefire and release of the hostages. I helped organise a second vigil by the group on December 10th, adapting a script from an earlier vigil held by Na’amod. On both occasions fellow activists from Nottingham XR were there too. The slogans on the banners were written to suit the Standing Together movement. These events felt very different to the marches and rallies organised by the ideological or progressive UK left, though one of the ideological left groups, Workers’ Liberty, has led this initiative. The vigils had something of the spirit of a Left that does give me hope, the Israeli Left that is also an Israeli-Palestinian Left.

It is something of a Hanukkah miracle the Israel’s Left is still burning obstinately as the country moves ever further to the Right. Since the start of the war, its opponents have faced a police and judicial crackdown, having to fight for the right to protest and hold political meetings. Protests during wartime have been a feature of Israeli politics since the disastrous 1982 Lebanon War, a disaster which look set to be repeated with Gaza. This Left has issued a Jewish-Arab peace declaration condemning the atrocities by both Hamas and Israeli forces. It repeats the truths we should all have learned long ago:

there is no military solution to this conflict, nor can there ever be one. The only way to stop the bloodshed is a political agreement that will guarantee security, justice and freedom for both nations. There are no winners in war. Only peace will bring security.

The obstinate flame, the obstinate Left, the obstinate hope.

1. IST statement on the new war in the Middle East ↩︎
2. RCG statement on the military action of the Palestinian Resistance ↩︎
3. Press Release: March for Palestine ↩︎