We spent some time in class discussing why the arch was initially erected and used other artifacts and literary sources from the era to approximate a picture of the socio-political climate that led to the construction of the monumental arch.
When Emperor Nero died without a successor, the Roman empire plunged into a state of chaos with three more Roman nobles attempting a failing to secure the imperial seat. The last and only successful contender was Vespasian who returned from his campaign in Judea to seize the imperial seat. Vespasian understood that his position as emperor was precarious. He was not part of the old Julio-Claudian dynasty that had ruled Rome for the past century. In an effort to legitimize his position, he turned to the old republican period for inspiration. During his day, it was considered the good-old-days of Rome. His portrait rejected the stylized youthful and divine faces of the Julio-Claudians. Vespasian had his visage sculpted in a manner reminiscent of the realist portraits of the Republican era, that honored the wisdom and humanity of Rome's nobility.
Portraits that reminded people a prosperous by-gone age were not enough, Vespasian needed to look like the generals of the old days like Pompey and Julius Caesar who conquered vast swaths of land for the rapidly expanding empire. The problem was that by Vespasian ascent, the empire had reached its governable limits, so he turned to his successful quelling of the Jewish revolt of 66 CE.
Judea had been a Roman province for decades since Pompey annexed it over a century earlier in 63 BCE following the dissolution of the Hasmonean dynasty. The Jewish revolt was an internal revolt, a sign of unrest in an unstable empire. But the story of a costly repression of a small revolt was not one associated with glory and might. Instead Vespasian and his son Titus who lead the Roman response to the revolt portrayed it as a mighty victory against a foreign nation.
They paraded the spoils of war through Rome in a Triumphal parade just like the generals of old did when they conquered new territory. Using the spoils of war looted from the destroyed Judea, Vespasian renovated the Circus Maximus and built the Coliseum with the spoils of war. These new public works were adorned with inscriptions that boasted of the Flavian dynasty's victory over Judea.
This tactic of portraying a revolt as a war against a foreign adversary is not at all a new rhetorical strategy for ensuring popular support for a cause. Sometimes the difference between a rebellion and a war can be quite vague. Take for instance the United States Civil War. Technically the Confederate States of America was an illegitimate rebel group within the United States that sought to break away from the country. The Confederates posed a formidable threat to the continuity of the United States and occupied close to half of the entire country's organized territory. To call the Civil War a quashing of an internal rebellion would be an understatement.
As I write this piece, the Israel Defense Force, the Israeli army has invaded the Gaza strip. The relentless bombing of the urban areas of the territory that preceded the land invasion has likely killed 10,000 civilians. This brutal offensive was initiated in response to the bloodiest attack on Israeli territory in the countries history. On October 7th, hundreds of Hamas militants invades the area surrounding the Gaza strip and murders 1400 civilians living in the area, men women and children. They took around 200 hostages as well.
The response from the Israeli government to this attack has pretty consistent. The Israeli government narrative is that Hamas has effectively declared war on Israel, and now Israel will retaliate with more war. The US media has caught on to this and adopted the term "Israel Hamas War" to define the current conflict. This fundamental problem with this framing is that this conflict is not exactly a war. A war is fought between two states, and a state will generally admit defeat and surrender in following the rules of war as a means of diplomacy.
Israel is in fact quelling the rebellion of its unhappy vassal state. Though it would not entirely honest to call pre-Oct. 7th Gaza occupied territory, many Palestinian advocates refer to it as such, since Israel is able to exert significant control over what happens in the technically autonomous self-governing Palestinian territory. Hamas is more like a frustrated vassal state, rebelling against its overlord.
Everyone knows that this is really a rebellion, since Hamas fighters will never be fully eradicated from Gaza. The attacks of Oct. 7 were just an overly successful rendition of an attack that Palestinian refugees and their descendants have been inflicting upon southern Israel since the 1950s. These incursions are not acts of war, but rather attempts of rebellion to try to somehow reclaim some amount the property that the refugees lost in the Nakba.
The Israeli response to this feels more like the violent quelling of a rebellion, and not a war. Though some elements of expansionist Zionists in Israel may see this reoccupation of Gaza as an opportunity to build new Israeli settlements there, this war will probably not end in informal annexation of land.
The question stands about whether or not Netanyahu will benefit from the stabilizing benefits of being seen as a war hero. By painting this as a war and not a quashed rebellion, a victorious Netanyahu could strengthen his weakening grasp of Israeli politics. Or will his failure to secure his citizens from the attack of October 7th spell his downfall? Only time will tell of these things.
For the moment, I advocate for a ceasefire. The needless slaughter of Palestinian civilians is numbing to witness, just as the slaughter of Israeli civilians was one month ago. I have friends in the Israeli army who are most likely currently in Gaza and in constant danger of local insurgents killing or wounding them. A reality that I try to avoid thinking about because of how painful it is to consider. This quashing of rebellion is not worth the cost.
The promise of Zionism was a safe haven for the Jews, where they could live without fear of antisemitism. Clearly that promise has failed to come to fruition. Some well respected Jews would advocate the extermination of Palestinians from the land. Morally speaking, their plans are abhorrent and in a perfect world they would be dismissed on such grounds. But we live in a flawed world, so I must offer a Judeo-centric critique of such a plan in hopes that it will prevent them from entertaining the thought of such monstrous violence.
Antisemitism is not a genetic condition, you cannot rid yourself of ideological threats by murdering those who believe in the ideas. Especially such a global idea as antisemitism. The Palestinian antisemites exist in a relatively unique position. Unlike most antisemites, the Jews have actually hurt them. We as a community have not ever experienced such legitimate grievances vocalized in the form of antisemitism. The only thing that remotely compares were the Ukrainian peasants who participated in the Khmelnytsky revolt in 1648. The lives of those peasants were often mismanaged by Jewish Arendars who managed the land they worked on for their Polish noble landlords who lived far away in the Polish heartlands.
Though I am conscious of how similar my arguments sound to the Jewish assimilators of the late 19th century, who's belief that antisemitism would vanish if Jews assimilated. Perhaps the arrival of the parallel of Nazi Germany will come to disprove my beliefs. In the present I feel morally justified in advocating for the human rights of the Palestinians to be allowed to exist in a democratic country and to not be living in a situation in which they are caught in the cross-fire between two groups of elites who want to demonstrate their own military power.
Perhaps the solution is a secular one state solution that is neither Zionist nor Palestinian nationalist. History has shown that integration breeds tolerance and is a more effective cure to bigotry that violence. However overcoming the religious-nationalist visions of the Israeli Jews and the Palestinian Muslims will be a miraculous act, more impressive than the splitting of the Red Sea.
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