Just as the people of Israel shouldn’t be conflated with Netanyahu and his government, the people of Gaza shouldn’t be conflated with Hamas. Without making such a separation, one can end up in strange and reactionary places politically. Haven’t we seen evidence of this analytical failure — plenty of it in fact — and its consequences over the past week or so?

What could be predicted is now happening — an escalating war and the collective punishment of two million people living in Gaza. As horrific as it is, it could get much worse. Much will depend on the internal politics of Israel and the reaction of the international community to this mounting bloodbath. Calls for restraint and a ceasefire should fill capitals around the world.

To think that some on the left make the argument that the killing of children, young people, and old pensioners is a legitimate form of anti-colonial struggle reveals a moral vacuity and political bankruptcy that should receive an unqualified rebuke. I am sure that such words never were uttered, even in moments of anger and despair, by the great anti colonial leaders of the 20th century. Not Fidel. Not Mandela. Not Gandhi. Not Ho.

Closer to home, Martin Luther King, including in the most tragic moments of the civil rights struggle, never considered such heinous actions. Only the other side — the Southern racists — did. And without any moral indecision or scruples proceeded to murder and maim young Black children and teenagers.

Even in the most difficult moments, King refused to allow rage and revenge to frame his politics. With a laser-like focus he counseled non violent mass action, grassroots organizing, an expansive strategy and equally expansive tactics, and participation in every arena of struggle, not least electoral politics. In the end it paid off.

The system of Jim Crow came down. Today’s activists here and elsewhere would be wise to study this experience as well as the politics and values of the great anti-colonial leaders of the last century.

If there is something unseemly about Palestinian solidarity activists in the United States – and especially attending elite universities – showing either slight or no concern, or, worse still, vigorously defending the righteousness of killing Israeli children, young people, and older pensioners by Hamas terrorists (to call them freedom fighters is no drain the word of any meaning and a slap in the face to those who are), what can we say about these same “militants,” cheering on from the safety of their campuses or their comfortable homes that the people of Gaza press their fight against Netanyahu’s military blitzkrieg, to become fodder in an escalating, one sided war.

In this clash, Gazans, who did nothing to trigger this war, are quickly piling up as collateral damage and have absolutely no chance of winning against an aggressor that possesses a superior military capacity by a high order of magnitude. Moreover, Gaza, which was unlivable before the bombing began, will quickly become, if fighting continues at even greater intensity as Netanyahu promises, a city of ruins.

Thus anybody with a bit of common sense, anybody who decries the unnecessary loss of life, anybody unbitten by the peculiar bug of anti-imperialist solidarity that rests on the notion that the Israeli lives don’t matter should insist that the Biden administration and their representatives in Congress call for an immediate ceasefire on both sides, convey expressions of grief to the families in Israel and Gaza who have lost loved ones, provide humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza, and initiate negotiations between representatives of both sides to end the ongoing conflict and reach a mutual agreement on a two state solution that provides a viable state for the Palestinians and security assurances and measures that satisfy the Israelis.

To engage in mass slaughter, as we are seeing, first in Israel and now in Gaza, requires, it seems to me, more than real or invented grievance, anger, and weapons of war. To this lethal mix, systematic dehumanization of the other side, the collapse of one’s moral restraints, and the rise of political extremism have to be stirred.