Debating the Israel-Palestine Conflict –Part 1

Debating the Israel-Palestine Conflict (in my Own Head)

The Hamas October 7^th attack on Israel and the ensuing Israeli military offensive have shaken our world for many of us. Heartbreaking reports and images of deaths, hostage-taking, destruction, famine, and other losses inflicted on both sides have been beyond distressing. The shaking of our world has also meant a confounding of our beliefs about ourselves and our collective identities as well as a compelling need to sort out our moral stances on an array of issues.

Ideally, an analysis of the conflict would be conducted in a neutral, objective, dispassionate manner, but such characteristics are in short supply when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict. We can only do our best to consider multiple perspectives. In my case, I’m a Jew and dual US/Israeli citizen who lived in Israel for fourteen years, which included service in the Israel Defense Forces, and I have many family members in Israel so my concern for and emotional connection to Israel is strong. Hearing these details, a reader might already have assumed I would blindly support Israel’s actions. This, however, would be an example—albeit a minor one– of the pervasive dehumanization that is largely responsible for the perpetuation of this conflict. Individual humans have unique opinions and should not be subjected to stereotyping. No individual can represent the broad spectrum of perspectives held by the members of a collective group (this certainly also holds true for Israel’s highly unpopular Prime Minister-Bibi Netanyahu).

I chose to leave Israel in 1988 due to disappointment in the Zionist narrative and what I perceived to be a lack of genuine interest in pursuing a peace process. Since that time, the shift toward right-wing, ultranationalism and religious coercion has continued relentlessly. The Israel of today is no longer the nation that was once a source of pride for many Jews. Of course, to some extent, that nation was always more myth than reality, but it has also evolved in ways that increasingly place it at odds with the Western, liberal democratic values endorsed by most US Jews. One root cause of the ugly turn Israel has taken is the ongoing occupation which poisons the soul of the occupier. The changing nature of the State of Israel fills me with both grief and anger as I seriously question that it can survive another 30 years or so without a radical switch in its current trajectory. If it does survive while maintaining its current course, it is unlikely to be a nation worthy of our support—to put it mildly. Israel is about more than its politics and wars. It is also a beautiful land and a diverse people (in fact, 20% of its citizens are Moslems); it’s a place of incredible cultural and scientific achievements; it’s a country of vibrant cities; it’s the creation of oases of agriculture in the desert. Tragically, all of that has been placed in jeopardy due to its leaders’ misguided policies and actions.

Perhaps, ironically, my bias might actually appear to be against the Israeli government. This is only because I believe it is our responsibility—and more constructive- to reckon with our own moral failings by identifying and correcting them rather than rushing to pin the blame on others. I have an aversion to the knee-jerk reaction of rallying around the flag when under attack, or swallowing propaganda and cliches aimed at self-justification. Each side should put its own house in order before casting aspersions on others. Have no doubt, however, that it would be just as easy a task to criticize Palestinian actions and statements. There is some substance to the comment made by Israel’s former Foreign Minister-Abba Eban—in 1973 that the Palestinians “never lose an opportunity to lose an opportunity.” What if the UN two-state resolution of 1948 had not been rejected by the Arab delegations? What if Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat had accepted the two-state solution offered by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak or President Mahmoud Abbas had accepted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s offer –at least as a starting point for negotiations even if the proposals fell short of their demands as initially presented? What if they had chosen the path of civil disobedience rather than plane hijackings, taking hostage and massacring Israeli high school students, and suicide bombings? What if Hamas had utilized its massive funding to construct a Dubai-like entity instead of building hundreds of miles of underground tunnels? Perhaps, a thriving and peaceful enclave in Gaza would have convinced Israelis that their security would not be threatened by Palestinian sovereignty. Sending thousands of terrorists swarming into Israeli villages has had the opposite effect, likely setting back any hope for peace—slim as that might be– by at least a generation.

My initial goal in writing about the conflict was primarily to clear up some of my own confusion on where I stand with regard to the conflict given the ways the situation has evolved over recent decades and information that has come to light which has challenged our idealized myths, such as that described by Benny Morris and other Israeli “New Historians.”

My goal is not to convince others that my conclusions are correct (I am not even certain I agree with my own conclusions and consider many to be still in a state of flux to some degree). It is certainly not my intention to add flames to the fire of people’s fury though it is difficult to express an opinion on the topic without risking doing so. My primary goal in sharing my thoughts is to persuade the reader that this conflict should not be viewed through a simplistic right/wrong lens, which only leads to a hardening of positions and perpetuation of the cycles of killing. Rather, it should be recognized as posing extremely nuanced and complex moral dilemmas. For myself, I have found the debating format, in which both—or multiple– sides to an argument are considered, to be helpful. Though some of my conclusions may, at first glance, appear to contradict each other, this is due to the variety of nuances involved. Before rejecting an argument, we must carefully reflect on the basis for our own beliefs. Have we considered all the relevant factors? Are we simply being defensive due to feeling vulnerable and isolated? What are our sources of information? For example, “news” reported in social media tends to be unreliable. Social media’s goal is to capture our attention, which is most expeditiously accomplished by pushing our anger buttons. Many bad actors strive to induce our rage for their own ulterior motives. Angry posts may even originate in Russia or China rather than with people we assume to be our compatriots.

In a way, the solution to the conflict is childishly simple: Both sides need to recognize: the immense pain and suffering of the other; the legitimate rights of the other, including the right to live in peace, freedom, and security; and the humanity of the other. Unfortunately, the adults in the room have proved to be utterly incapable of these basic steps. There may, therefore, be no peace in the region until visionary leaders replace the existing demagogues, terrorists, and wannabe dictators. Although the situation appears hopelessly intractable, we must avoid complete nihilism. In the wake of the Yom Kippur War, Anwar Sadat’s ability to relate to Israelis as human beings, was sufficient to build support for returning the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for peace. Other ostensibly eternal enemies such as France and Germany, and Irish Catholics and Protestants have managed to achieve peace. I prefer to cling to a sliver of hope that a similar future could someday arrive for inhabitants of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Claim: Israel is a settler-colonialist nation:

Argument:

The original founders hailed from Europe, albeit Eastern Europe. Britain and France did carve up the Middle East into somewhat arbitrary nations (per the Sykes-Picot Agreement) following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire with Britain given the Palestine Mandate. Some early Zionist organizations sported names such as the Jewish Colonization Association (founded in 1891). The underlying argument is that European “whites” usurped the land from the indigenous Palestinians. Israel’s establishment was indeed accompanied by the displacement of some 700,000 Palestinians and there is evidence that this was always the intent of the Zionist founders. Yitzhak Rabin acknowledged he participated in the expulsion of Palestinians from the Ramle/Lod area during the War of Independence-or what the Palestinians refer to as the Naqba i.e., ‘Catastrophe.”

(See The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi and My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit for background info.)

Counterargument:

Many pro-Palestinian protesters lump the Israel-Palestinian conflict into a world view in which it is currently the most glaring symptom of linked systems of imperialism, colonialism, and bias. From this perspective, the battle with Israel is practically synonymous with the battles against racism, police brutality and global climate change. This reasoning demonstrates a lack of nuanced, critical thinking. In reality, each of these purportedly “intersectional” issues is distinct in nature. Applying one broad brush stroke to paint them as merely different facets of a single struggle is to engage in black-and-white, overly simplistic, and biased thinking.

There has never been a Palestinian nation (though Moslem inhabitants of the land vastly outnumbered Jews for centuries). The local inhabitants’ identity as a Palestinian people started to emerge approximately one hundred years ago. There has been a previous Jewish nation—Israel. There has also been a continuous presence of Jews (albeit in minimal numbers for the majority of the time) in Palestine/Israel. The majority of present-day Israel’s inhabitants are not white Europeans. Rather, they fled or immigrated from Middle Eastern countries. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to flee Arab countries in the twenty years following Israel’s War of Independence. Even the European settlers were certainly not emissaries of a wealthy, powerful mother nation. Although the Balfour declaration of 1917 called for a Jewish homeland, the Zionists certainly did not view the British as reliable allies. In fact, Jewish underground groups battled the British Mandate forces. Nor could the Holocaust survivors be reasonably described as colonialists. Far from being powerful colonialists, Jews suffered centuries of persecution and exile at the hands of white Europeans. In fact, one could equally plausibly (or equally implausibly) argue that the Arab inhabitants were the settlers who occupied what had once been Jewish land though that too is a specious argument.

My Verdict:  False

Israel occupies Palestinian land and exerts discriminatory control over seven million Palestinians, but it does not truly fit the mold of a settler-colonial power.

What’s Your Verdict?

Claim: Zionism as an ideology is immoral.

Argument:

Zionism has discounted its impact on the Palestinians. It privileges Jews over other people in Israel as it insists Israel must be a Jewish nation. Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship are treated as second-class citizens and the other five million Palestinians are denied their legitimate rights. It has led to the confiscation Palestinian land and severe curtailment of the freedom and civil rights of non-Jews under its control. The Zionist agenda has led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Current religious Zionist leaders have been proponents of ethnic cleansing (“transfer” of Palestinians to Arab countries) and believe God has commanded them to settle the entire land of Greater Israel (including the occupied West Bank which they prefer to call Judea and Samaria).

Counterargument:

Younger generations may have limited and fading awareness of the context in which Israel arose. Antisemitism throughout the ages drove early Zionists to the conclusion that the Jews needed their own country as a safe haven. Zionism sought to establish a state for the Jews whose history of persecution, pogroms and the Holocaust clearly illustrated the need thereof. Due to the lack of a national home, the majority of European Jews could find no refuge from the Holocaust. The founding Zionists were secular and fought for a nation for the Jewish People, just as the Ireland is a nation for the Irish, France is a nation for the French, etc. In fact, these secular Zionists envisioned the replacement of the Jewish religion with a secular state and thus did not view Israel as a nation that would privilege one religion. Rather it was a home for a homeless nation.

One problem is that “Zionism” means different things to different people. For some it signifies privileging Jews over other people. For others it simply means some emotional connection to Israel or the right for Israel to continue in existence.

If the conclusion of this claim that Zionism cannot be justified is that Israel should not exist, then it is essentially encouraging a second Holocaust as that is the only conceivable way to get from an existing nation of seven million Jewish inhabitants to the elimination of the Jewish state. In reality, the debate over Zionism may no longer be particularly relevant as a Jewish state already exists now. Most nations have committed some act that should elicit shame in their histories, but only in Israel’s case is it suggested that the existing state should be dismantled. There is no serious debate about the right of the US to continue to exist even though its establishment was intertwined with genocide against Native Americans and slavery of Africans.

My Verdict: False with regard to its original version. True with regard to the religious Zionism of today.

The original Zionist goals were overall praiseworthy and moral from a big picture perspective, though unjust actions also certainly were committed in its name. “Zionism” can be defined in a variety of ways. If we limit it to the belief that a Jewish state currently exists and should continue to do so, then this is a just and reasonable claim.

However, the current version of Zionism has come to be dominated by religious Zionists whose actions are morally repugnant (including firebombing Palestinian homes and encouraging settlers to rampage through Palestinian villages, killing innocent Palestinian farmers, terrorizing Palestinian villages to induce them to abandon their land, etc.).  Unfortunately, Zionism, like the state of Israel has evolved in new and disturbing directions.

(See To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel and the Jewish People by Noah Feldman.)

What’s Your Verdict?