It’s Time to Stop Trying to Erase Each Other
Palestinians and Israelis have more in common than they might care to admit. Starting with the basics, both groups are composed of human beings. This obvious fact isn’t often recognized in practice. Instead, Israelis commonly view all Palestinians as potential “terrorists” and, likewise, Palestinians may tend to view all Israelis as cruel monsters.
Beyond their shared humanity, both sides have pasts replete with profound pain and traumatic experiences, including the Holocaust and the Naqba. Both sides also have legitimate claims to the same land and legitimate rights to form a sovereign nation on that land. Unfortunately, both sides have terrible leaders who stoke hatred and promote violence as the primary solution to their problems.
Paraphrasing Nietzsche, it’s been said that one should choose one’s enemy carefully as that’s who one becomes most like. Just as Palestinians terrorized the Israeli civilian population by committing brutal atrocities and abducting hostages to Gaza on October 7th, the Israeli military has terrorized the Palestinian population by indiscriminate bombing resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, the destruction of most homes, and repeated displacements.
Tragically, both sides exhibit a loss of moral compass in wishing the other could be eliminated or would magically disappear or, perhaps, simply be relocated beyond some distant horizon. This sinister underlying current in both societies leads to efforts to deny the other’s right to exist, or more ludicrously, that the other has ever existed. Palestinians claim Israelis are merely colonialist interlopers, and Israelis harp on the fact that no Palestinian state existed in the past, thus ostensibly negating the legitimacy of present-day dreams of sovereignty.
Some offer self-righteous rationales for wiping Israel off the map such as claiming that no nation should privilege one religion over all others. Yet, we have witnessed how the Jews fared for 2000 years without a homeland—pogroms, a Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust and so on. Ultimately, a single democratic, secular state might be an ideal solution but getting there from here is no easy feat and it is difficult to envision it occurring in one fell swoop without a second holocaust. Furthermore, many Jews identify as a People and not solely religious adherents. In the case of other major religions, each has at least one—if not dozens—of nations in which they constitute a majority, even if that is not constitutionally mandated.
The claim that Israel is a colonialist society is a dubious one. Its founders were not representatives of a European power, though they did have to deal with the reigning powers at the time. The majority of current-day citizens are “Brown” as they were evicted or fled from Middle Eastern countries following Israel’s establishment. Jewish roots in the land date back to biblical times. At least some Jewish presence in the land has persisted over the past few thousand years. Jewish attachment to the land is exemplified by the Passover seder refrain: “Next Year in Jerusalem.” Many of the region’s nations were artificially created by European colonial powers. However, the Jewish population’s profound connection to the land and desire for a homeland was not an invention of European powers. Similarly pointless and misleading accusations could be hurled at Muslims who conquered the land from the Byzantines (who could likewise face charges of colonialism in their turn). A case could be made that countries such as Syria and Jordan are colonialist inventions carved out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire by the Sykes-Picot agreement, but nobody is calling for their dismantlement. Tragically, the founding of many nations has been associated with gross injustices. The United States was established by removing the indigenous peoples from their land and committing genocide against these peoples who continue to suffer the consequences, while building the economy on the backs of slaves. Yet, nobody calls for the U.S. to hand back the land to its rightful stewards. Do countries get a free pass after “x” number of years?
Likewise, Israelis distort and deny Palestinian history, claiming, for example, that they voluntarily fled the land when Israel declared independence, rather than being forcibly expelled at the hands of Zionist forces. Israelis ignore or deny the fact that the Muslim population vastly outnumbered that of the Jews at the time of Israel’s founding. Those Muslim inhabitants had roots in the land going back many centuries.
In a perversion of justice, some Israelis couch their goal of ethnic cleansing as an offer of a better life for Palestinians. But Palestinian connection to the land runs so deep that they have remained despite immense suffering and oppression. A Palestinian nation didn’t exist because the whole region was part of the Ottoman Empire rather than being divided into nations. But a national identity did form around the same time the Zionist endeavors to forge a nation began. (And, so what, if both nations are “fictions.” As Yuval Noah Harari has written, all nations are ultimately fictions, which exist only by virtue of our shared human imagination.)
Each side also erases the suffering of the other caused by the war in Gaza. According to the most recent polling about 40% of Gazans still support Hamas’s decision to launch the October 7th attacks. Among pro-Palestinian supporters, many pay superficial lip service to opposing the Hamas atrocities but immediately pivot to focusing on Palestinian suffering. Israelis express some dim awareness that the death of over 70,000 Gazans is a challenging situation for Palestinians but immediately add that the Palestinians started the war and supported the taking of hostages. They claim that Hamas left them with no choice but to target civilians as it embedded itself among them (as though that precluded any conceivable response other than overwhelming violence against civilians). Thus, the horrible suffering of the other is dismissed all too facilely.
These attacks on each other’s right to exist as sovereign nations generalize into hatreds on a larger scale, namely antisemitism and Islamophobia with accusations that mirror each other. Jews are accused of seeking to control the media, Hollywood, the global economy, and the world in keeping with the fabricated “Protocols of Zion.” And, of course, they’ve been accused of using the blood of Christian children to make their matzoh. Muslims allegedly all seek to take over the world and establish a caliphate subject to Sharia law. No doubt, ISIS would fit that narrative, but do the Muslims we actually know in our communities demonstrate any such inclinations? Of course not. Each religious group is quick to lambaste any hint of such cruel and ludicrous prejudices directed toward their group but are too often ready to make the same accusations about the other. Condemning a distorted stereotype, whether it be a conniving Jew or an innately violent Muslim is just one more way of erasing the other’s true identity.
Israel’s government pledges to never allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. It allows settlers to commit pogroms against Palestinian villagers in the occupied West Bank, hoping to chase them off the limited land they still own and farm. Palestinian supporters promise to liberate the land from the river to the sea, meaning eradicate Israel (and most likely its Jewish inhabitants). Hamas vows never to disarm, meaning it will strive to acquire the capability to wipe Israel off the map.
The never-ending cycles of violence will rage on as long as we continue these doomed efforts to erase each other. This sick fantasy that the other side can somehow be eliminated or vanish must be rejected. Neither side will disappear. Neither side should disappear. There are two peoples with legitimate rights to the same land. Genuinely recognizing that both have a right to exist and thrive together will be the first step toward a solution that includes peace, human dignity, and genuine security for all inhabitants of the land. The alternative is a downward spiral of violence leading to the death of the body, destruction of the soul and crumbling of dreams for all. The darkness of fear and hatred must yield to the light of hope and justice.
