Analysis | We Need To Talk About Willful Ignorance

One of the most striking minor characters in Herman Wouk’s World War II novel The Winds of War is Leslie Slote.

Slote is a cowardly American diplomat who, while stationed in Switzerland, becomes convinced of what nobody else dares believe—that the Nazis are attempting to exterminate Europe’s Jews on an unimaginable scale. Torn between his professional aspirations and social standing on one side and his sense of moral outrage—possibly only accessible because of his personal love for a Jewish woman—on the other, Slote eventually commits himself to raising the alarm at the State Department, only to be confronted by denial and indifference. The photos and documents Slote has obtained are dismissed as likely fraudulent. His fervor is interpreted as well-intentioned but probably a sign of instability. He is eventually offered a post he hopes will be able to exert some influence from, only to find that his new boss prefers the status quo.

Of course, we know that the Holocaust did unfold. But Wouk’s novel is a terrifying reminder of how even when presented with an opportunity to look at evidence, people with a political or psychological agenda can resist, divert and basically ignore any amount of human suffering or cognitive dissonance. This process doesn’t have to be conscious—more insidious is the subtle deemphasis we give the suffering of our perceived enemies. As Elie Wiesel famously said, “the opposite of love isn’t hate—it’s indifference.”

For instance, as I go about my life—both as Moment’s digital editor and as a visible and chatty Jew in one of the bastions of progressive America—I have found a certain, consistent ignorance by the pro-Palestinian left about the history of the Jewish people, and particularly of Jewish religion. Say what you will about colonialism, military aid to Israel or indigenous solidarity—Jews, as Jews, have a historical, cultural, religious connection to the land of Israel. Praying for Jewish return to that land has been core to Jewish liturgy and identity since centuries before the Prophet Mohammed was born, let alone the Rashidun conquest of Jerusalem from the Byzantines in 637 CE inaugurated the Muslim presence in the area. The inability of many protesters to see this and discuss it, or to entertain the idea that there could be such a thing as a humanistic, positive Zionism, is a primary obstacle to productive conversation in the United States—let alone to a true and lasting peace in the Middle East.

But by the measure of human life—which Jews, as others, hold to be among the most sacred things there is—the reluctance among many Jews to grapple with the scale of death and destruction in Gaza is far more serious.

Many Jews I’ve spoken to, when confronted with the death toll in Gaza since Israel waged war in response to Hamas’s October 7 terror attack, reflexively question the numbers put out by the Gaza Health ministry. This makes some amount of sense, since the Gaza Health Ministry is controlled by Hamas, but dismissing these numbers in the face of what is clearly a humanitarian crisis without an alternative way to quantify the death leaves us nowhere. In any case, mainstream media outlets and NGOs considered credible otherwise rely on these numbers. Whether the true number is more than 35,000, as the United Nations claimed a month ago, or just over 25,000, which was the number of identified bodies (again per the Gaza Health Ministry), doesn’t really matter. Israel’s death toll since October is orders of magnitude less—between 1,000 and 2,000. In fact, according to the Times of Israel, the total number of soldier and civilian casualties in Israel since the country was founded is 30,140. Life within Israel is more politically tense than ever before, but Americans I’ve talked to who recently traveled to Israel say they felt safe and the semblances of normal life are available to people who aren’t either serving in Gaza, in close proximity to someone who is, or displaced from the border regions. This is a world away from the scale of destruction and deprivation in Gaza.

To look at these numbers and disparities or read the testimony of Gazans desperate to flee and fail to understand why Israel is becoming isolated on the world stage, or to reduce the reason to mere antisemitism or discredit the accounts out-of-hand, is willful ignorance.

It is supported by another kind of willful ignorance—the normalization of the deeply unsettling nationalist shift in Israeli society and parts of American Jewry connected to it. Unapologetically genocidal rhetoric by Israeli leaders is one of the best arguments South Africa has in favor of their case in the International Court of Justice. Their views may seem extreme, but the core premise—the nullification of the two state solution without any allowance for a Palestinian presence in the country—has become an unspoken assumption in many Jewish spaces. Meanwhile, the American-Israel Public Affairs Council spends millions upon millions of dollars to punish reasonable criticism of Israel and stifle the democratic process, allying with 2020 election deniers beholden to Donald Trump as an ugly byproduct.

Our unwillingness to recognize the importance of these developments—the subtle influence they play on our own minds, or the way they fuel mistrust and hatred against Jews—is both strategically foolhardy in the extreme and morally blind. As morally blind as those State Department officials who hemmed and hawed over the Holocaust—but more foolhardy, since we and our children are the ones who will ultimately suffer the consequences.

Maybe Israel is held to a higher standard than the rest of the world. It’s certainly true that Jews, more so than other groups, are seen as more responsible for Israel’s actions than Russians or other people whose associated countries are under global scrutiny. But neither does that absolve us of our own responsibilities, nor does pointing it out give us any edge in discussions with people admittedly fixated on our shortcomings.

Willful ignorance. Everyone has it, but the only place we can fight it is within ourselves.